Saturday, March 29, 2008
View Incoming Email with Mail.appetizer
11:00PM Adam Pash | Mac OS X only: Freeware Mail.app plug-in Mail.appetizer notifies you of incoming messages by displaying a preview of their contents. Growl users may wonder why you’d choose Mail.appetizer instead of the GrowlMail plug-in, which offers the same functionality. Well, GrowlMail has a buggy history, especially with Leopard. (In fact, I suspect it’s the reason why Growl’s currently broken for me). The Mail.appetizer plug-in is freeware, Mac OS X only. The current version is a beta, so be prepared to run into a few bugs. Mail.appetizer [via Cool OSX Apps] More »
Improve Your Windows Desktop Search with Windows Search 4.0 Preview
11:00AM Adam Pash | Windows only: Microsoft has released a new version of their Windows Search tool out into the wild—an update to the desktop search tool that comes baked into Vista. Aside from promises of having squashed most reported bugs from the original and improving search times by about 33%, the Windows Search 4.0 Preview also includes support for XP. That’s right, XP users, one of the best things that Microsoft did when they made Vista is now available for your XP desktop as well. Of course, if you haven’t already found a competent desktop search app on XP (like Google Desktop, for example) while Microsoft has been taking its sweet time, chances are you may not really need one to begin with. On the other hand, if the promises of the 4.0 Preview sound worth a shot, head over to Microsoft and grab the free download. More »
Customize Your Own Firefox Sidebar Web Page
10:00AM Gina Trapani | Readers are submitting their best life hack for a chance to win an autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life. Here’s our latest winner. Reader Zalary put some HTML skills to work to turn the Firefox sidebar into a one-stop shop of frequently used utilities. Zalary says: More »
CD/DVD Spindle Cable Organizer
9:00AM Adam Pash | Reader Geoffrey writes in with this clever cable decluttering tip for repurposing CD or DVD spindles: I just discovered a nice re-use of those CD/DVD spindle cases: use them to store cables for your computer. I’ve just wrapped them in a circle, and then closed the case as usual, and now my cords are all in one spot where i can see what’s in there! Handy! Not only does the spindle work perfectly for this (perhaps with the addition of a twist-tie or something so the cords don’t go flailing when you open it up), but it’s also a great way to put those old spindles to use without sending them to the trash heap. More »
More Than One Way to Take a Vacation
8:00AM Gina Trapani | Some people just don’t know how to take a vacation—but others sure do and do it with style. Entrepreneur Brad Feld falls into the latter category and describes his various flavors of vacation, from quarterly, disconnected “Spend Time Away” trips, to occasional unplugged “Go Dark” weekends, to “Downshift” time where he limits work to just a couple of hours a day. Not all of us have this kind of flexibility (and vacation time!) but Feld makes the great point: when you set the expectation of work to relaxation ratio before you vacation, it’s a better time for everyone. What’s A Vacation? [Feld Thoughts via Micropersuasion] More »
Set Up Better Time Machine Access
7:00AM Adam Pash | Weblog MacApper prefers to keep a clean Dock, and as such doesn’t particularly like the new Time Machine icon cluttering up the Dock. Since Time Machine is basically an extension of Finder, the post suggests adding a Time Machine shortcut directly to the Finder toolbar. Setting it up is simply a matter of heading to your applications folder and dragging the Time Machine icon to your toolbar. Once you’ve done that, just activate Finder and click the Time Machine button whenever you want to hit up your files in Time Machine. Simple, yes, but it makes a lot of sense. If you want the Time Machine button to fit in better with the rest of the toolbar buttons, go download this Time Machine button. The Quickest Tip for Time Machine [MacApper] More »
Watch Star Wars in Text via Telnet
6:00AM Gina Trapani | While it’s not technically an Easter egg, one of the most eye-popping tips in last Sunday’s Top 10 Easter eggs post comments was a pointer to a telnet server that broadcasts Star Wars Episode IV to your command line as animated text. You didn’t read that wrong. Give it a try: from any command line, type telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl and sit back to watch the show. This is the least productive thing you’ll do all day, but you know what they say about all work and no play. After the jump, see a handful of screenshots—just 4 of the 13,935 frames that make up the entire movie. More »Invoicing Now at Zoho
5:27AM Gina Trapani | Zoho adds an invoicing application to their growing suite of webapps aiming squarely for small business users. See how Zoho’s offerings stack up against Google Apps. [via] More »Firefox Extensions Now Easier to Find
5:04AM Gina Trapani | Mozilla launches the new and improved Firefox Add-ons web site, which includes unapproved extensions in search results (and marks them as “experimental”) and smartly detects which extensions are compatible with your version of Firefox. [via] More »
