Saturday, March 22, 2008
Read Word 2007 Files in Internet Explorer, No Word Required
10:00AM Adam Pash | If you ever find yourself needing to review the contents of a Microsoft Word 2007 document (DOCX) but you’re sitting at a computer without a Word installation or any other comparable word processor, weblog Digital Inspiration details how to read the document with nothing but Internet Explorer. In a nutshell, the method involves changing the doc’s file extension to ZIP, unzipping it, and then finding a document.xml file inside the unzipped archive. From there, you can open that XML file in IE (or virtually any text editor, for that matter). As the post mentions, your document will lack any formatting, but it will allow you to read the content, which is essentially what matters anyway. Read DOCX Files in Internet Explorer – No Word 2007 Required [Digital Inspiration via Of Zen and Computing] More »
Three Radio Buttons for a Kindle
9:42AM Gina Trapani | Got 15 seconds to spare for a chance to win a Kindle? Our advertising team needs some sales pitch stats. Answer our three-question survey and enter an email address (so we can contact you if you win!) for a chance to win a Kindle, which retails for $399. Standard contest rules apply, deadline for entry is Monday 5PM EST, and we won’t do anything stupid with your email addy. Three questions—Now go! More »
Get Things Done by Recognising Good Enough
9:00AM Adam Pash | If you’re the type who strives for perfection in everything you do, weblog Lifehack.org suggests that you might benefit a great deal from recognising when you’ve taken a project to “good enough.” It can be hard to accept imperfections, though. We all want to shine, and often feel that we won’t be recognised unless our work is absolutely flawless. Yet there are plenty of examples where this isn’t the case. The post details methods for planning to good enough, along with how to cope with working until good enough rather than perfection and maintain confidence in your work. Are you a “good enough” type, or is it perfection all the way for you? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments. Photo by macrophile. Getting to Good Enough [Lifehack.org] More »
Low-Cost Ways to Conserve Water at Home
8:00AM Adam Pash | Yahoo Green covers several low-cost methods of reducing your water use at home intended to save you money and save your planet. The quality of the tips vary, but the article includes a lot of tips that anyone can implement for free. For example, to minimise appliance water consumption, the article suggests: Fully loaded: Dishwashers and clothes washers should be operated when full for optimum water conservation. If you must wash partial loads, adjust the water levels as appropriate. Scrape, don’t rinse: Pre-rinsing dishes before loading the dishwasher is unnecessary. Scrape off food and then trust that bad boy to do its job. Your mileage may vary with some of the tips, but it’s at least worth finding out, for example, if you can get away with scraping rather than rinsing. Thanks Ellen! Low-cost ways to conserve water at home [Yahoo Green] More »
Share Files Up to 5GB for Free with File Dropper
7:00AM Adam Pash | Upload and share files up to 5GB for free with web site File Dropper. The site is missing at least one very important feature—namely that you can’t see the upload progress, which is a very big deal when uploading large files—but it’s also the largest upload limit we’ve seen from a free file sharing service in a while. If large files aren’t all that important to you, check out the very cool, previously mentioned EatLime (for files under 1GB) or Drop.io (for files under 100MB). File Dropper More »
Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron Beta Now Available
6:23AM Gina Trapani | The beta version of the next release of Ubuntu Linux—dubbed “Hardy Heron” just as founder Mark Shuttleworth promised us—is now available for download by intrepid testers. Beyond just being hardy, the heron looks packed with goodies, like GNOME 2.22, the Linux Kernel 2.6.24 as well as the Firefox 3 beta 4, Transmission BitTorrent client, Vinagre VNC client, and a new easy Windows installer called Wubi (pictured). We haven’t installed it (yet), but if you have, tell us what you think in the comments. The Ubuntu beta is a free download. Thanks, Calvin! More »
Filter FriendFeed by Service
6:00AM Adam Pash | Firefox with Greasemonkey: The FriendFeed by Service Greasemonkey script does just what it sounds like, filtering results in your FriendFeed by service. The one pervasive concern lodged against FriendFeed when we reviewed it earlier this week is that FriendFeed introduces too much overflow with its all-in-one stream. With the FriendFeed by Service script installed, you can filter your feeds by service so you can see at a glance, for example, what music your friends are into on Last.fm or what bookmarks they made in Del.icio.us. FriendFeed by Service is free, requires Firefox with Greasemonkey. More »
And the Winner Is…
5:00AM Adam Pash | The results are in from yesterday’s Coolest Cubicle showdown, and the winner is… Mark MacAskill’s Cubes of War cubicle! Big congrats and $500 in Amazon bucks go to Mark, whose oh-so-cool cubicle pulled away with a commanding lead. As Mark said when he submitted his cubicle, “The war on terror is second only to the war on boredom. And my cube was definitely boring before I transformed it into a weapon of mass destruction.” Hit the jump for one last peek at Mark’s winning cubicle. More »
Jailbreak Any iPhone or iPod Touch in 45 Seconds
3:00AM Adam Pash | If you’ve been waiting for Apple to officially open the iPhone and iPod touch for development, you may have been disappointed to find out that you won’t get third-party applications until June. That means that if you’ve been aching for those killer third-party apps already available to folks with jailbroken iPhones or iPod touches, you’ve still got a few more months of waiting to go. However, by downloading and running one simple application, you could be up and running with a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch in just under a minute. Sound appealing? Here’s how it works. More »
