Friday, April 4, 2008
Add Flavour to Your Water with Natural Add-Ins
11:38PM Kevin Purdy | Water—it helps maintain energy, it can break a sugary soda habit, but glass after glass of the plain stuff can leave you longing for something with more kick. The Wise Bread blog offers up a few not-so-common suggestions for adding a little kick to your H20 without spending or stressing: Ginger – If you like spices, ginger is a great way to add a “zing” to your water. If it is added to boiling water it is also a great way to clear your throat and sinuses during a cold. Citrus – My husband’s family members often freeze a small citrus fruit called kalamansi in ice cube trays and then put the ice cubes in water for flavour. The same can be done with other citrus fruits and the water produced would be infused with vitamin C. Herbs – Mint, lemongrass, and parsley are great for adding aroma and a hint of green to your water. If you want to release the flavour you can crush the plants a little bit before putting them into your water. More »
MySpace Music
1:33PM Sarah Stokely | The Oz reports that MySpace has announced it’s launching an ad-supported music portal called MySpace Music. MySpace is already home to over 5 million musicians, and MySpace Music service like will be “woven” into their profiles. It will offer paid ringtone and music downloads, concert tickets, tshirts and band merchandise. More »
Five Fast-Food Restaurants to Feel Good About
1:00PM Adam Pash | US-centric: If you’re on the go so much that you rarely have time for more than some quick fast-food fare, web site Health.com rounds up five of the healthiest fast-food chains around. Before you get too excited, a lot of the restaurants on the list are regional, so they’re not available to everyone. Also, keep in mind that just because a restaurant is relatively healthy, that doesn’t mean that everything they serve is healthy (let’s just say Jared didn’t drop weight by inhaling two Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki subs every day). With that in mind, Health.com’s five healthiest fast-food choices, as judged by these rules, are: More »Crackberry good for business, bad for spouses
12:56PM Sarah Stokely | A new Australian study of Blackberry users has found that the cult PDA makes people more productive by blurring the lines between work and home, but that angry spouses are hitting back at the device.The joint study between the UNSW Australia School of Business and the University of Sydney found that the device with its always-on email delivery enabled users to work “harder, faster and more frequently,” researcher Judith McCormack told the Fin Review today.The downside they found was that organisations were having to replace Blackberries more often than other equipment – as a result of family members growing frustrated with the device. “One organisation said they go through a lot of handsets, suggesting that they are actually damaged, flushed down the toilet or thrown at the wall more frequently than one would expect.”Either that, or they read Gina’s guide to email management and didn’t want always on email disturbing their work anymore. :) More » Automatically Mute Your Speakers Overnight
12:00PM Adam Pash | Windows only: Last week we highlighted how to mute your Mac on a schedule, and this week weblog Inspect My Gadget details how to set up similar functionality in Windows. The post suggests a few tools that might do the job, then settles on adding a scheduled task to Windows to mute your computer using a freeware utility called Mute. It requires a minimum of setup but works perfectly, which is always nice. Like the idea of all that automation? Check out how you can get more from Windows Scheduled Tasks. How-to: Schedule your speakers to automatically mute overnight [Inspect My Gadget] More »Lifehacker comments back in action
11:48AM Sarah Stokely | Thanks to the readers who wrote in yesterday to let us know that our comments were borked. We’ve been having some CMS versus server pain but our techie team has been working hard to get things upgraded, stable and happy and it’s looking good now. (Thanks Kaan!)
More » Best First Programming Language to Learn?
10:00AM Gina Trapani | Reader Sheila considers herself a power user but wants to extend her tech skills to programming. She writes in: The more I hear about people automating things with scripts and programs they write themselves, the more it seems that being able to write code is a good skill to have—at any job. I’m not a programmer, but I’m interested in maybe becoming one. What’s the best language for someone who’s savvy but still very much a beginner to learn? We’ve got our own opinions on this, but first we want to hear from you. All the coders out there: where should an aspiring programmer start? Help us point Sheila in the right direction in the comments. More »
Stay Productive on Your Thumb Drive with Tiny USB Office
9:00AM Adam Pash | Windows only: If you’re serious about keeping your workspace portable, previously mentioned tools like the Portable Apps Suite or MojoPac are the go-to resources for Windows users. However, if your thumb drive is already scrimping for space, and you just want a few super-lightweight apps that can handle most general office tasks, from word processing and spreadsheets to email and file sharing, the Tiny USB Office might be for you. Weighing in at under 2.5 megabytes, this lightweight suite of office apps is a no-brainer to throw on any old USB stick for a little productivity on the go. Tiny USB Office is freeware, Windows only. More »
Laser-Focus Your Spotlight Queries
8:00AM Gina Trapani | When you just can’t seem to hunt down that file you know you’ve got stowed away somewhere on your Mac, it’s time to break out the Spotlight big guns—advanced search operators, that is. Macworld runs down advanced Spotlight operators which will be familiar to power Google searchers. Here’s a sampling: Enclose phrases in quotes, like "time machine" Use AND, OR, and NOT to narrow or widen your search, like java NOT coffee or invoice OR bonus Search by document attributes using operators like author:authorname, kind:pdf (for PDF files), and date:today What’s your favourite Spotlight operator? Give it up in the comments. Create good queries in Spotlight [Macworld] More »
