Windows XP and Vista only: Google releases an open source email uploader that moves existing email and contacts in your desktop client into your Google Apps Gmail account. (That’s Google Apps Gmail account, not vanilla Gmail.) Download and install the Google Email Uploader, and choose mailboxes from Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, and/or Thunderbird to start uploading. After the jump, screenies from the process.
Aw, shucks. Thanks to TIME.com for listing Lifehacker in their top 25 blogs. Also, thanks to the fine folks at Slate for mentioning Lifehacker in their roundup of the best books, articles, and web sites to help you get organised.
Mac user Dennis Best says that using David Allen’s Getting Things Done productivity system on your Mac doesn’t mean you need to find the ultimate GTD application—that the tools you already have in Mail.app, iCal and Finder get the job done fine. After trying out shiny GTD-specific applications (like Things, which dazzled us too), he’s settled on using those built-in tools instead. I’m with Dennis on this—instead of using a special GTD app, I stick to a calendar, email inbox, and a few text files to stay organized. Not to be all finger-waggy, but ultimately it’s up to you, not your software, to work the system. Getting things done (simply) in Leopard [Dennis Best via MicroPersuasion]
Group scheduling web application When Is Good makes picking the best time for everyone easy as pie. Similar to previously posted Doodle, no registration is required at When Is Good: simply fill in the calendar with your proposed times for a conference call, meeting, or family reunion. Then enter your email to get an invitation message with a unique URL to your event. Send that sucker out to your invitees, who choose which times work for them. When Is Good is smart about time zones, too—your cross-country invitees will see the available times in their local time zones. Much better solution for figuring out what time works for everyone than that endless email thread. When is Good
If you’re sick of Firefox 2 eating up over a gigabyte of memory only to freeze up and crash, it may be time to move onto Firefox 3. The new version of our favourite browser has seen its fifth and final beta release, and Mozilla says its for testing purposes only. However, the Firefox 3 beta is leaner, meaner, faster, and just plain better than Firefox 2—and don’t tell Daddy Mozilla, but even at this early stage, we’ve found it to be stable enough for full-time use. There are a few ways you can start using Firefox 3 without blowing your browser setup to hell or losing your most important extensions. Here’s how.
Two years ago on Lifehacker, you developed your digital photographic memory, easily installed Firefox extension packs, and built your own DVR.
You can get around Firefox fast without taking your fingers off the keys, but mouse fans will be happy to know there are a whole lot of ways you can get things done in the ‘fox by dragging and dropping text and images as well. For example, you can drag and drop:a URL (hyperlinked or not) onto an empty area on the tab bar to immediately have that URL opened in a new background tab. an image onto the address bar to immediately have that image open in the current tab.
CyberNet News runs down more more drag and drop goodness in Firefox; hit the link to see the rest. Helpful Tip: Drag & Drop Text/URL’s in Firefox [CyberNet News]
Windows/IE7 only: Nothing’s better than heading to a web page to find some information and being greeted with a slow-loading, over-the-top Flash intro, right? For distracting, crash-causing, or otherwise troublesome animated pages, Toggle Flash, a free Internet Explorer 7 add-on, soothes the pain pretty quickly. Once you’ve installed the toolbar button, a single click turns off Flash functionality in the background; click again, hit refresh, and the videos, animations, and other Flash elements return. It’s small, it uses no background memory, and it just works. Toggle Flash is a free download for Windows systems and Internet Explorer 7 only; hit either link below for help getting the button to show up on your toolbar. Toggle Flash [via Simple Help]
Lifehacker reader and blogger Clara posts a tip she picked up from a Taiwanese life hack television show on keeping papers together without using staples or binder clips. The technique requires scissors, a steady hand, and the patience to really learn the method on one’s first few tries, but Clara notes that she’s kept up to 15 sheets firmly together with the trick. Not applicable to documents you can’t afford to have clipped, obviously, but it makes for an eye-grabbing way to deliver documents, and perhaps a shot at a MacGyver moment if you find yourself without office supplies—the two notches could be hand-ripped, after all, if you were crafty about it. How to bind papers without staples or clips [Bloomize]
Opera has released a new beta version of their Mini browser for cell phones and PDAs that includes pretty serious improvements for anyone who’s serious about their hand-held browsing—namely, actual file downloading, uploading to select online services like Flickr and Gmail, and saving of web pages for offline access. Previous versions of Mini, like most mobile browsers, could only handle files that the browser or the device itself knew what to do with, but Mini now lets you save files and web pages to the device’s storage, assuming it has a working version of the JSR-75 access protocol running in the background. Opera also threw in page-based “Find” searching and claims its server-based page cache is running 50 percent faster in recent tests. Opera Mini 4.1 beta is a free download for most devices that work with Java. Opera Mini 4.1 Beta [via Google Operating System]
