Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Where You Find the Time to Spend Online
11:30PM Gina Trapani | Where do people find the time to do things like edit the Wikipedia? They watch less television, says author Clay Shirky in a fantastic, brief talk at the recent Web 2.0 conference. Shirky makes a compelling case that people are just learning how to deal with the “cognitive surplus” of free time modern life affords us. We’re waking up from the “collective bender” of mindlessly watching sitcoms and instead, we’re choosing instead to spend our free time volunteering, interacting, and Web 2.0′ing online. Hit the play button to watch Shirky make his case for the full effect, or hit the link below to read the text transcript of his talk. Next time your TV-watching friends make fun of you for opting to blog instead, point ‘em to this talk. Gin, Television, and Social Surplus [Here Comes Everybody] More »
What Disposable Items Do You Re-Use?
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | Over at the TipNut blog, they’ve rounded up 20 supposedly disposable items and how to reuse them, in ways both common (newspapers for kitty litter liners) and unique (greasing pans with used butter wrappers). There’s a handful of items that might make you think twice before trashing, but with so many products turning the way of use-and-toss these days, there’s got to be far more creative reusable hacks out there. So I put it to you, dear readers: What items do you never toss before getting a little bit more out of them? How do you save money (and save landfill space) without spending a lot of time? What web sites do you turn to for reusable inspiration? Drop your tips, ideas, and links in the comments, and we’ll consider them for a future post. 20 Things You Can Use Twice Before Tossing [TipNut.com] More »
Translate.Net is One Desktop Translator to Rule Them All
10:40PM Kevin Purdy | Windows only: Ever use an online translation service and wonder if you can get more accurate results elsewhere? Translate.Net, a free Windows translation aggregator, knows just how you feel. The desktop app puts your words or phrases through 17 different language translation engines and dictionaries, letting you scroll through and compare results. A total of 25 languages are supported, but the program remembers your recent translation directions to save you the time of scrolling to find the right pairing. A great tool for language learning, or just seeing how different one phrase can be interpreted. Translate.Net is a free download for Windows systems only, requires .NET Framework 2.0 Translate.Net [via FreewareGenius.com] More »
Apply the 80/20 Rule to Your Diet
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | The 80/20 rule of economics can be applied to a lot of life’s dilemmas, but blogger Jodie Clements used the rule as one of her “10 Commandments” to help her drop 10 pounds and feel better overall. The 20 percent, in her case, applied to eating the foods she really wanted to enjoy: Eat healthy 80 percent of the time – the other 20 percent – eat whatever the hell you like (but not after 9pm). The whole point of eating well for the long term (your whole life) is knowing that you can also have whatever you want sometimes and that yes, a little bit of what you fancy really does do you good. So – how about eating healthy Monday to Friday and saving the fun for the weekend? Works for me. More »April 2008’s Most Popular Posts
9:00PM Lifehacker US Edition | Ready for May flowers? First, a last April shower of this month’s most trafficked posts: Top 10 Harmless Geek PranksApril Fool’s Day: “Since the dawn of time, geeks have been playing harmless pranks on their beloved (but unsuspecting) associates, and it’s up to all of us to carry the torch forward.” Five Best Instant Messengers“On Wednesday we asked for your favourite instant messaging applications, and over 550 comments later, we’ve culled it down to the most popular five.” Turn Your iPod Touch into an iPhone“The iPhone and iPod touch are almost indistinguishable devices except for one major difference—you can make calls from your iPhone, and you can’t from your iPod touch.” Trim Down Windows to the Bare Essentials“When you’re installing Windows in a virtual machine or on old, slow hardware, you want the leanest, meanest and fastest-running configuration possible.” Five Best DVD Ripping Tools“Whether you want to watch a movie on your iPod or back up your too-easily-scratched DVDs, DVD ripping is a mysterious realm for many.” Top 10 Ways to Trick Out Your Desktop“For something that you look at every day of your working life, your computer desktop doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves.” Hardy Heron Makes Linux Worth Another Look“If you’ve flirted with the idea of switching your desktop operating system to Linux but never took the leap, the time is now. This week’s release of Hardy Heron, an Ubuntu release that will be supported until 2011, offers a freer, more productive space for work and play than ever before.” The Complete Field Guide to Testing Firefox 3“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.” Five Best GTD Applications“On Wednesday we put out our call for the best applications that help you practice the Getting Things Done productivity system, and from a mighty list of viable contenders, we’ve taken your votes and determined the five most popular of the bunch.”TiVo and Sony PlayTV PVR launches set for later this year
12:47PM Sarah Stokely | If, like me, you’ve been waiting for a plug and play PVR then our pals at Gizmodo have a lot of interesting news to share. First up, Seven has confirmed that TiVo is definitely launching here, but not until August.(I was turned down for the TiVo beta – first beta I’ve ever been knocked back for! sob!)And if you’re PlayStation inclined, Sony have announced we’ll get its PVR addon for PS3, PlayTV sometime in the 4th quarter.I’ve never been a huge fan of pay TV, but I’ve been enjoying the Foxtel IQ lately.My question to you is, have you found a PC-based PVR that “just works”? I’ve heard good things about MythTV but never tried it. I’ve only used Microsoft’s Media Center to play music. Yes, I’m pretty much a noob. More » Synch a Nokia bluetooth phone with a Ubuntu Linux PC
12:21PM Sarah Stokely | Leigh Dyer over at Atomic has written a walkthrough for getting a bluetooth phone (in this case, a Nokia 6110) synching with Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon release).The article covers how to get your phone set up to talk to your PC using the Nautilus file manager and GNOME-VFS module (which will let you browse and copy files from your phone). I have to admit I haven’t used bluetooth in yonks. If you try this, let us know how it went in comments.Synching a bluetooth phone with a Linux box [Atomic] More » 
Best Text Editor?
9:00AM Adam Pash | You don’t have to be a programmer to appreciate the joys of plain text, and there’s no better way to wrangle your text files than a solid text editor. Plain text files are appealing because they’re searchable, lightweight, portable, and truly platform agnostic; plain text just makes life easier. With an abundance of excellent text editors available beyond your operating system’s default, choosing the best program to manipulate and manage your plain text files isn’t so easy. Luckily we’ve got you, our loyal readers. So for this week’s Hive Five, we want to hear all about your favourite text editor. Hit the jump for details and to nominate your favourite. More »
Smart-Open Files and Applications for a Cleaner Desktop
8:00AM Adam Pash | If you’re keen on keeping a desktop free from the clutter of a hundred open windows, weblog AppleDoes points out a simple OS X keyboard shortcut that will simultaneously open a file or application while closing the Finder window you launched it from. How? Just hold your option key. So if you’re about to launch an application, for example, holding option and then double-clicking the app will open the app and automatically close the Finder window you opened it from. This trick also works from the keyboard—so Cmd-Opt-O will open your app or file and automatically close the Finder window. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s a handy little shortcut to keep your virtual world just a touch neater. Open an application from the App folder and close its folder [AppleDoes] More »
