Thursday, April 17, 2008
Ad-Aware Beta Adds Vista, 64-Bit Compatibility
11:30PM Kevin Purdy | Windows only: Ad-Aware, the hard-to-believe-it’s-free spyware-cleaning app, has released a beta version that includes full support for Windows Vista and 64-bit platforms. Also included in the upcoming free version is a rootkit removal tool, faster update downloading, and an interface make-over that looks a bit more modern than the blue buttons long-time users are used to. All the ease-of-use and thoroughness that make Ad-Aware’s current version part of our Lifehacker Pack of must-have downloads likely apply to this beta, as well. Ad-Aware Beta is a free download, requires a registration and email confirmation to grab. Ad-Aware Beta [via Download Squad] More »
How Do You Make Sure You Wake Up?
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | Even the most motivated morning people among us can wake up seemingly unable to rise from bed and tackle the day. Over at the UbuntuCat blog, the author notes that moving his alarm clock to another room, along with having an impatient cat, have (almost) fixed his multi-snooze tendencies. We’ve offered up some alarm clock hacks and morning motivation tips before, but let’s hear it from those who have escape the pull of “Just Five More Minutes,” and those still fighting to become a functional morning person: How do you make sure you get up in the morning? How do you prevent your groggy self from making decisions your working persona will regret? Share your tips, philosophies and wake-up war stories in the comments. The art of the snooze [UbuntuCat] More »Pocket Mojo competition
4:55PM Sarah Stokely | Anthony over at Pocket Mojo is running a competition to encourage people to get more use out of their mobile phone. He’s giving away an 8GB microSDHC card and a MobileMate Micro Reader to the best reader submission, so head over to his site and check it out. More » Update Twitter via Email
2:05PM Sarah Stokely | Yesterday we told you how to update your Twitter status via IM using Google Talk. Today the twittering continues – this time learning how to update Twitter via email. The tip comes from the Digital Inspiration blog, which recommends setting up a dummy Blogger account to do your Twitter updates via email.Once you’ve set up the Blogger account (stokelytwitter in my case), go to the Dashboard, then Settings, then Email. Here you can set up your email-to-blogger email address. In my case it was stokely.twitter@blogger.com. Make note of this email address.Now you can use your OpenID (remembing that you can now use your Google account details to sign into OpenID enabled sites) to associate the feed from your newly created Blogger account (stokelytwitter.blogspot.com/rss.xml) with your twitterfeed account.You’re now set up to tweet via email. All you need to do is send your desired message to the email address you set up and it’ll appear in your Twitter feed. Sweet!
Send updates to Twitter via Email from Mobile Phones – no SMS [Digital Inspiration]
More » Improve your life by treating yourself like a cat
1:56PM Sarah Stokely | If you want to increase your happiness, check out this list of 9 ways you can improve your life – by treating yourself like a cat! It was the best thing I read yesterday by a long shot – it was nice to be reminded that while we might lavish our feline friends with the best care, we sometimes neglect ourselves.
The list includes those perennial feline favourite activities like stretching, napping and bathing, as well as a call to pay attention to what you eat:
“I stopped free-feeding my cats and they lost weight, yet I kept
stuffing my own face and stayed overweight! Eat protein, eat vitamin
and mineral rich foods and the right sort of fats. Check out the
complexity of your pedigree cat food and compare to your own diet. Eat
grass. I provide cat grass for my cats and they chew on it every day
before each meal. Fibre and fresh leafy greens are essential for us every day.”
The list comes courtesy of the multi-talented Kate Conroy – the producer and presenter of environmental online radio show and podcast A Climate Affair.
Like what Kate has to say? Check out her Lifehacker interview and her Climate Affair podcast.
Treat yourself like a cat [Serenity Now] More » 
Free Alternatives to the MacHeist Bundle
10:01AM Adam Pash | Every now and then, a web site called MacHeist packages up a handful of popular Mac shareware and offers the entire bundle for a significantly discounted rate. Despite criticisms from developers, MacHeist is an obvious win for consumers looking to score some great shareware on-the-cheap. Now MacHeist is back with another bundle offering 12 Mac apps for a measly $49. To be honest, though, this time around I’m not terribly impressed with the options, so I’m rounding up no-cost alternatives to the current MacHeist bundle (minus the three games) that will give you most if not all of the functionality of their shareware counterparts for a grand total of $0. More »
Save Money on Food by Buying Whole Animals and Other Extreme Saver Secrets
8:00AM Adam Pash | Yahoo Finance profiles several “extreme” savers, folks who call saving money a passion and go to unconventional lengths to stretch their dollars. For example, to save on rising food costs: Uber saver Mike Hegarty, a CPA in Des Moines, Iowa, says he saves $500 a year on meat by purchasing whole animals from local farms. In case you’ve never done it and you’re having a hard time visualizing it in your garage, when you buy a quarter of a cow from a local farm, a butcher cuts it into the familiar hamburger, flank and sirloin steaks and packages it for you. An extra bonus: Local farms often raise all-natural or even organic beef, pork and chicken. The article highlights other unorthodox tips for saving money on retail, automobiles, charity, commuting and housing, phone service, and travel. If you’ve got an extreme saver tip of your own, let’s hear about it in the comments. Extreme Savers Share Their Secrets [Yahoo Finance] More »
David Allen on the Curse of the Eternally Urgent
6:00AM Adam Pash | Productivity guru and Getting Things Done author David Allen discusses what he calls the curse of the eternally urgent, the cycle in which we feel like we’re constantly putting out fires. Ignoring secondarily important actions and projects because you are too busy and concerned with urgent things fosters continual crisis management. It never self-corrects; it self-perpetuates. Where do fires and crises come from? Usually from not-so-urgent things that people ignore because they are distracted by the crises of the moment. Then, ignored, they cause the next fires and crises. More »Ask MetaFilter Roundup
5:00AM Lifehacker US Edition | Can someone explain Usenet to me? What kind of flowering indoor plants will keep flowering? What items can I spend a little more on to get much more quality? What are some alternative to keeping clothes in a chest of drawers? Easiest way to put a DVD clip on Google Video? More »
