Saturday, March 1, 2008
XP or Vista?
11:00AM Adam Pash | According to News.com, Microsoft is slashing prices on several versions of Vista, dropping upgrade versions of Vista Ultimate to $219 from $299 (full version drops to $319) and Home Premium to $129 from $159 for U.S. customers. Naturally, the price drop has raised a lot of eyebrows from Vista haters and XP die-hards, which got us wondering which our smarty-pants readers prefer: More »
Cap Your Browsing Bandwidth with Firefox Throttle
10:00AM Adam Pash | Windows only: Firefox extension Firefox Throttle caps your download and upload rates in Firefox so you can throttle the amount of bandwidth Firefox can use. The extension is full-featured, with options for excluding specific web domains and toggling the bandwidth throttle, along with some simple traffic stats for the current session. If you really want to take control of how your internet connection’s bandwidth is used up, setting up Quality of Service rules on your router is by far a better solution, but if you just wanted to limit the amount of bandwidth your browser can eat, the freeware, Windows-only Firefox Throttle should do the trick. Firefox Throttle [via Shell Extension City] More »
Beef Up Your Firefox Downloads with DownThemAll 1.0
9:00AM Adam Pash | Firefox/Thunderbird (Windows/Mac/Linux): If you download a lot of files through your browser, chances are Firefox’s default download manager doesn’t really impress. Luckily there’s DownThemAll, the free Firefox extension and download manager that makes managing, speeding up, and supercharging your downloads a breeze—and today, DownThemAll has updated to their 1.0 release (after over a year without a major release). The new DownThemAll boasts more stability, increased performance, an updated interface, along with a few new features. DownThemAll is free, works with virtually any Mozilla application. If you’re new to the download manager, check out our guide to DownThemAll. DownThemAll [Firefox Add-ons via DownThemAll] More »
DIY iPod Nano Video Enlarger
8:00AM Adam Pash | Okay, so we just highlighted how to build your own iPod projector, but consider this the power-of-optics weekend, because another iPod nano owner frustrated with the small-screen viewing experience has transformed a 35mm slide viewer to a full-fledged nano TV, complete with speakers. The result is called the Nanoscope, and it’s awesome. Introducing Nanoscope [YouTube via Retro Thing] More »
Add Lyrics to Music Videos on YouTube
7:00AM Adam Pash | Firefox with Greasemonkey: The YouTube Lyrics Greasemonkey script adds a lyrics box to the YouTube sidebar, which is perfect for following along with the lyrics on the wealth of music videos available on YouTube. The search is automatic when you hit the Lyrics link, and it can search several lyrics services for the song. The script will, obviously, work best when the artist and song title are part of the YouTube clip’s title. YouTube Lyrics is free, works wherever Greasemonkey does. YouTube Lyrics [Userscripts.org via Google Operating System] More »DIY iPod Video Projector
6:00AM Adam Pash | An inventive user on DIY web site Instructables steps through making a DIY iPod video projector using cardboard, a glue gun, mirrors, and gobs of black electrical tape. As you can see in the video above, the final product requires no power, working instead through the magic of light and optics. That also means that you need a dark room for ideal viewing (which is why the projection in the video doesn’t look that great), and the guide could be a bit more specific on the setup details, but in all it makes for a great weekend project. Make an iPod Video Projector [Instructables] More »
Create Your Own Cross-Platform Backup Server
4:00AM Kevin Purdy | Backing up your data on a regular basis is important, and turning a spare computer into a backup server is often the best way to make sure it gets done. But most methods require either a good deal of command-line learning or serve only one operating system. Not with Restore, a free, open-source backup system that can install or run from a live CD, work with any OS, and operate through a simple browser-based interface. Today I’ll demonstrate backing up a Windows laptop to an older desktop, but you’ll see how Restore can be easily molded to fit just about any home backup needs. More »
Use Unix Commands in Windows’ Built-In Command Prompt
2:45AM Kevin Purdy | Lifehacker reader Michael writes in with a nifty tip that was lurking in our comments all along, but deserves to see the bright light of posting. If you’re already using the Unix-like Cygwin, it’s an easy hack to embed Cygwin’s commands into your standard Windows comand prompt; if not, it might be worth checking out the free download. The instructions follow after the jump. More »
Avoid Impulse Buys to Halt “Shopping Momentum”
2:00AM Kevin Purdy | You’ve probably proved this theory to yourself and groaned about it, but researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business can prove it—buying one item reduces the amount of deliberation that goes into buying the next item, and the next one, and so on. In other words, as Get Rich Slowly’s J.D. puts it: Once a person decides to buy one thing, this creates “shopping momentum,” increasing the likelihood that he will buy additional items. If you pick up an impulse item (like a magazine or candy bar) as you enter a store, this can serve as a trigger to encourage you to buy more. It’s a good reason to find your impulse buy weaknesses and stay clear of them, if possible, to avoid arriving home with a long, unexplainable receipt in your pocket. How Shopping Momentum Leads to More Shopping [Get Rich Slowly] More »
