Web site Boolify makes advanced web searches easy through a simple drag-and-drop interface. Intended as an educational tool, Boolify teaches users how to create boolean searches in Google using operators like OR and NOT (-) to get very specific search results. Boolean searching isn’t new by any means, but if you’ve never gotten the hang of it or you just prefer a more visual approach, Boolify is worth a look. If you’re way past this, then our top 10 obscure Google search tricks may be more up your alley. Boolify Project [via About.com]
Blogger Ron Brinkmann doesn’t want to buy an overpriced laptop stand or build his own DIY laptop stand. Instead, he takes the cheap and easy route and uses a $6 hot water bottle as a water-cooled laptop stand. Brinkmann says: Yup, buy a hot water bottle, fill it up with tap-water (room-temperature is fine) and insert strategically between laptop and lap. It’s comfy, acts as a nice heat-sink, and as a bonus it probably blocks a fair bit of the dangerous ‘electronic rays’ that are shooting out of the bottom of the computer straight at your important bits.
The previously mentioned PC Decrapifier utility, which cleans pre-installed bloatware that ships with new Windows laptops, sees an update today and detects more applications than ever, like Norton 360, the Microsoft Office 2007 Trial and Activation Assistant, and Symantic LiveUpdate. [via]
Men’s Health magazine online offers four free workout videos that you can download, drag into iTunes, and sync directly to your iPod. The routines range in intensity from the at-home muscle plan—which suggests a circuit of exercises you can do at home—to more gym-focused workouts like the “Ultimate Strength-Boosting” workout. The videos are short and serve more as reminders for how to correctly do the exercises rather than 30-minute as-you-go walkthroughs. For even more free iPod video workouts, check out previously mentioned iPod Gym. The Men’s Health videos require a free registration with the site (or quickly stopping the page load before it hides the direct video links).
Writing things down, on paper or on-screen, is the best way to make sure you remember important info and tasks, but sometimes you’ve got to rely on your plain old brain to keep essential data sorted and handy. Whether it’s a client’s name, a password or combination you want stored only in your head, or answers for an upcoming test, there are plenty of techniques and tools to help you lock in important stuff and pull it out when needed. After the jump, we round up some memorable memory-boosting hacks. Photo by furryscaly.
Make it seem like you’re sending email when you’re really playing hooky with Outlook’s built-in “defer delivery” rule. Tech blogger Dennis O’Reilly runs down how to set up Outlook to delay sending messages for a certain amount of time (like half an hour) automatically. You can also set individual messages to be sent on certain days at certain times in Outlook—good for scheduling future messages ahead of time. Delay the messages you send from Microsoft Outlook [Workers' Edge]
FLVto is a web app with three buttons, one input box, and one simple-but-great function of converting YouTube and other Flash-based videos to MP3 audio files. We’ve shared a reader-submitted download-and-convert method, but FLVto makes the process pretty foolproof. Paste a YouTube or other video link (or upload an FLV file), hit “OK,” then wait for your download prompt. The sound quality is only as good as the video’s (as in mono sound, 60 kbps on one sample download), but with more videos going up in higher-resolution, stereo-sound formats, that could improve—assuming this app stays up and running. FLVto is free to use and doesn’t require a sign-up. FLVto [via MakeUseOf.com]
Mac OS X only: Back in the non-Stacks days of Tiger, you could add a folder to the Dock and expand it into a hierarchical menu. Now with Stacks you can’t easily navigate subfolders from a folder on the Dock, but small utility AppMenuBoy aims to change that—for your Applications folder, that is. Start up AppMenuBoy and expand your Applications folder into a Tiger-style hierarchical menu, as shown after the jump.
Sticking to to-do lists with specific next actions can help you get things done, but we can all get lost along the way, whether in the wide-open playground of a browser or some other time sink. Productivity blogger Andre Kibbe suggests fighting a procrastination jones with a little self-awareness and a “Crutch Activities” checklist kept close at hand. Instead of cursing yourself each time you find that you’ve spent 90 minutes in your inbox when you meant to check email for 10 minutes, add “Checking email” to your Crutch Activities checklist. Review and update the checklist regularly, and develop protocols, like batching, for controlling these impulses.
