Saturday, March 8, 2008
Roll Your Own Coffee Roaster On-the-Cheap
12:00PM Adam Pash | Love the taste of fresh-roasted coffee but don’t feel like shelling out $100+ for your own home roaster? The Cool Tools weblog details how to use an old popcorn popper (the author bought his for $3 at a thrift store) to roast your coffee beans. His method, which works virtually the same way as popping popcorn with the gadget, is simple, and the results look promising. If you’re a coffee connoisseur you may eventually want to go all out and purchase a more expensive roaster, but if you just want to try it out, the popcorn-popper-as-roaster looks effective. Popcorn Popper as Coffee Roaster [Cool Tools] More »
How to Copy a DVD
11:00AM Gina Trapani | Wired magazine’s How-To Wiki covers the step-by-step for duplicating a video DVD using free and pay-for software. They recommend using Mac The Ripper to rip the DVD (sans copy protection) to your hard drive. (We also like Drive-in.) From there, you’ve got to purchase something like Roxio Popcorn or Toast to burn a DVD player-friendly copy; alternately, make it iPod/media center-playable using the free, open source LH favorite, Handbrake. How do you back up and copy your DVDs? Let us know in the comments. Burn a DVD on Your Mac [Wired How-To Wiki] More »
Bloxes Cardboard Modular Building Blocks
10:07AM Gina Trapani | If you love Legos, but you want adult-sized, eco-friendly ones that can build things like platforms and office dividers, you’ll love Bloxes. Put together these interlocking cardboard blocks any which way to create furniture strong enough for regular-sized humans to stand and sit on. Bloxes can connect with each other on all six sides, so you can use them to build walls, benches, tables, tunnels—whatever you can think of. And because the varied surface and complex internal structure helps dampen sound, they’re great for managing acoustics in offices, studios and other places. After the jump, check out some photos of Bloxes in action. Photo by Scott Robbin. More »
Get Things Done with Quicksilver and GeekTool
10:00AM Adam Pash | Blogger Leo Babauta rounds up five great GTD applications for the Mac, then finishes off the post highlighting his own homespun setup, which uses a combination of the Quicksilver append action and the text-embedded desktop tool, GeekTool. When all is said and done, this setup will allow you to quickly and easily add tasks to your to-do lists through Quicksilver without losing focus on what you’re doing, then display those items on your desktop for easy reviewing with GeekTool. It’s a simple but effective setup, so if that sounds appealing to you, head over to Zen Habits for a full introduction. 5 Amazing Mac Apps for Getting Things Done (Plus a Custom-Rigged Setup) [Zen Habits] More »
“Photograph” Small Items With Your Scanner
9:00AM Gina Trapani | When you’re selling a small item online and you need a plain, closeup photo, blogger Mason says you can avoid flash washout or screen reflections using a flatbed scanner instead of a digital camera: Cell phones, mp3 players, discs, pretty much anything with a basic dimension can be scanned on your flatbed scanner…. To the right is a sample of a phone that was scanned. Not bad eh? What the…..is that me in my tighty whiteys reflected in the screen!?!? Oh nope, wait, it was done using my flatbed scanner. Seems like a good way to get a blank background in a photo with no setup. How do you get good photos of the stuff you’re selling online? Let us know in the comments. Scanner/Camera?? [the neverx blog] More »
Find Your TV Show of Choice Online at Prime Time Rewind
8:00AM Adam Pash | Catch your favourite TV show online, regardless of the network, with web site Prime Time Rewind. The site, which aggregates online TV from all the major networks, provides a love-it-or-lump-it cube interface that displays shows by genre or network. If you find a show you want to watch, just click click the Play Show option and Prime Time Rewind embeds the same video in your browser that you’d watch directly on the network web site. It’s not the friendliest or most intuitive of interfaces, but the site does offer a lot of content, and if all else fails with the cube, there’s always the search box. Prime Time Rewind [via ReadWriteWeb] More »
Savvy Circle Monitors Your Wishlist for Price Drops
7:00AM Gina Trapani | New shopping webapp Savvy Circle watches items you’re interested in buying online and emails you when they go on sale. Sign up for a free account and add items from the online stores it supports—from Amazon to Zappos to Newegg and more—to your shopping list on Savvy Circle. Then wait for email notifications when and if the item goes on sale. I’ve added a few items to my shopping list but haven’t gotten a sale notification yet, but if you’re looking for a deal on something or other it can’t hurt. Looks like Savvy Circle is only taking a limited number of sign-ups for now, so jump in while you can. Savvy Circle More »
Sync Your IM Contacts and Address Book with AdiumBook
6:00AM Adam Pash | Mac OS X only: Free, open source application AdiumBook acts as a bridge between your Adium IM contacts and your Address Book contacts to help you manage and keep all of your contacts in sync. You can add Adium contacts to Address book or update a contact’s entry with Adium’s information, as well as search across your Adium and Address Book contacts from one simple interface. If your contact data is spread across your traditional address book and IM contacts, AdiumBook might be just the tool to bring them together. AdiumBook is free, Mac OS X only. AdiumBook [via Cool OSX Apps] More »
Set Up a Web-Based Desktop with EyeOS
4:00AM Kevin Purdy | When you’re at a computer that’s missing a vital file or application, like an office workstation that’s locked down, a friend’s system or coffee shop computer, you can still get to a desktop that contains your essentials—on the web. A “webtop” is a virtual desktop that you access using only a browser, and it can include much of the stuff you’d expect on a local computer desktop: like file storage and management, a calendar, RSS reader, email client, and photo viewer. While there are several web desktops available these days, the free and open source EyeOS application is the most accessible, useful, and promising one out there. Follow along to see what a web-based desktop looks like, and how it can help you get things done when you’re locked down or out of pocket. More »
