Friday, May 9, 2008
Keep IE7 Removable
11:45PM Kevin Purdy | Microsoft warns Internet Explorer 6 stragglers users that upgrading to Service Pack 3 with IE7 installed eliminates the ability to uninstall IE7, so wait until after SP3 installs to put it on. (Phew.) [via] More »
Yahoo Debuts Beta “Glue Page” All-In-One Search Results
11:30PM Gina Trapani | Yahoo’s testing out a new kind of search page layout: when you search for broad-reaching terms (like Einstein, and happily, Lifehacker), you may arrive on their beta “Glue Page,” which groups web page results, images, Wikipedia, news, blogs, and video clips into separate areas on the page. See it for yourself. More »Take the Triage Approach to Information Overload
11:10PM Kevin Purdy | Philipp Lenssen, who’s normally blogging about Google products and developments, sent a single question to workers at some of the country’s top tech firms on how they deal with all the email, feeds, voicemail, and other clatter clamoring for their attention. The answers are informative and, in some cases, pretty surprising. Elinor Mills, reporter at CNET, talks about her reasonable “triage” approach: I scan email and see what needs immediate attention, set aside things that can wait and then go back to them in order of importance, hoping that none of them expires in the meantime … I scan the RSS and iGoogle headlines several times a day. It is overwhelming the amount of information that gets thrust at you every day all day, especially in the daily news business. I also make a lot of lists of ideas to pursue and stories I’m working on to try to stay on top of it. More »
Track Your Domino’s Pizza Order from a Terminal
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | US-centric: Now you can truly see why our commenters dubbed Python the programming language that “can do anything.” One intrepid (and hungry) hacker, possibly named Nick Jensen, put together a small script that tracks Domino’s Pizza orders from phone call to doorbell ring. Download and launch the script (with instructions at the link), plug in your phone number, and you don’t have to get up until that cheese-covered saucer is at the door. It’s just another true sign of how life-changing the command line can really be. Thanks, HowToGeek! dominos.py More »
Track Phone Calls with Outlook’s Journal
9:00PM Gina Trapani | Windows only: Microsoft’s lesser-known Journal feature can attach transaction details to contacts—which makes it perfect for storing notes about phone calls. When you want to keep careful track of who you called when and what you talked about and decided, the Productivity Portfolio says the Journal’s the way to go. Hit the link to get a step-by-step Journal tutorial, or just press Ctrl+Shift+J to get started on a new Journal entry in Outlook now. Microsoft Outlook Journal | Documenting Phone Conversations [Productivity Portfolio] More »What gives you happiness in life?
4:00PM Sarah Stokely | I just read a really interesting article by Adele Horen in The Age, about a conference on happiness held by buddhist teaching group, the Vajrayana Institute. One of the presenters was a Harvard psychologist, Daniel Gilbert, who says that people are very bad at predicting what will make them happy.He said that while often people choose having kids as a path to happiness, studies have shown that happiness is in fact adversely affected by having kids, and doesn’t return to its previous level until the kids move out of home (ouch!).The upshot was that we have a biological urge to reproduce, but we don’t have a biological urge to do things to make us happy.Another presenter – a professor of psychology and psychiatry – had studied MRIs of buddhist monks and said that meditation is a way of changing the “hardwiring” of our brains to achieve greater happiness and compassion.Most people do seem to struggle with balancing their short term versus long term goals, and their need versus wants. So my question is – what gives you happiness in life – and if it took you a while to figure it out, how did you get there?
Happiness is… not having children [The Age] More » Choose snacks that will keep you productive and healthy
3:40PM Sarah Stokely | Snacking is often thought of as something people do because they’re bored or they are overeaters. But the Dumb Little Man blog today takes a different tack, saying you should aim to consume 200 calories every two to four hours to keep your blood sugar levels from dipping too low.
“Always plan to snack. It’s thinking that you won’t eat anything between breakfast and lunch that leaves you standing in front of the candy machine at 10.30 in the morning, starting a cycle that’s going to ruin our day.”
They’ve helpfully made a list of the criteria for a healthy snack:
choose something with a low Glycemic Index (GI)
it must be filling (otherwise, why bother?)
it must be interesting to eat (crunchy, tasty, contrasting of sweet/sour – this is up to your taste)
self regulating – which means it’s served in a way which will limit how much we eat. You need to control the portion size – not open a large packet of bikkies and graze on them for the rest of the day.
Click through to the article to see their 5 snack suggestions, which include spicy nuts, homemade popcorn and a Mexican diced apple and lime recipe which sounds awesome. Makes my raw cashews and yoghurt seem pretty tame. :) Got any other snack ideas? Share in comments please.
5 Snacks That Will Smash that Afternoon Groggy Feeling [Dumb Little Man] More » eBay’s bid for a PayPal monopoly is on the nose
2:52PM Sarah Stokely | I missed this piece from APC about a public meeting which eBay held in Melbourne to try to calm eBay sellers unhappy at its bid to force all eBay buyers to use PayPal (the payment service which, completely coincidentally, eBay happens to own). Angus Kidman did a great, colourful writeup of the night.Sounds like the company didn’t do the greatest job of selling their plan to the audience, and they fell down when answering the crucial question of why eBay wants to remove the choice of payment options from users of the auction site:
“We’re not allowing people to offer unsafe choices, just like in this democracy you can’t go out and buy heroin on the streets.”
I really hope the ACCC puts a halt to eBay’s plan. Consumers should have a choice, and the fact that they’re trying to mandate that buyers use PayPal, a company they own, makes it even more repugnant.
eBay boss: Not offering PayPal is like buying heroin [APC]
More » Google Treasure Hunt
2:13PM Sarah Stokely | Argh! The Engineers over at Google Australia have launched a treasure hunt for geeks – they’ll be releasing four puzzles “drawing from computer science, networking, and low-level UNIX trivia”, with prizes for the first people to solve them. The blog post is scant on details but it’s enticing – check it out to see the first clue. More » 
