The Modofly artist collaborative etches your favourite designer notebook—the Moleskine—with beautiful and eye-catching artwork. The Moleskine won best designer notebook by a landslide in a recent faceoff, but to differentiate yourself from all those other Moleskine toters, you want one of Modofly’s creations. The bad news is that Modofly’s Moleskine’s are even more expensive than the original at 36 bucks a pop, but good looks don’t come cheap. The Silver Bullet robot is pictured here; hit the jump to check out a few more of our favourite geeky Modofly Moleskine picks.
Mac OS X only: Rename large groups of files—like that batch of photos fresh off your camera’s memory card—using simple or complex rules with Name Mangler. Simple options include numbering files sequentially, adding a prefix or suffix, or changing case. In advanced mode, you can script any number of those actions and save them. Name Mangler also produces reusable droplets you can add to Finder; then, whenever you want to batch rename a set of files, simply drag them onto the droplet without even starting up the application. Name Mangler is a free download, donations requested, for Macs running Leopard only.
Name Mangler [Many Tricks via Cybernet News]Why waste time schooling clueless email senders one by one when you can build a web site to do it for you? A recent trend among email-overloaded web developers who don’t want to explain the basics of email etiquette to frequent senders is to set up a web page that does it instead—then reply to senders with a link to the page, or just include it in their signature. Merlin Mann’s Thanks, No turns down unwanted email; Mike Davidson’s five sentences explains why his email messages are so short; and now Brett Kelly’s BCC, please asks that bulk senders use the BCC field to hide his address from everyone else on a big list. The question is: would you ever actually use any of these explainer pages?
Windows only: Visual Controls is a super-tiny, stand-alone application that does just one thing—modify which applications can show icons inside your Control Panel—and does it very well. The changes you make are instant and permanent, so even if you only download Visual Controls just to get rid of the ubiquitous QuickTime button and then delete it, it will have been worth your time. The program, however, can also make a nice addition to your thumb drive system-fixing tools. Visual Controls is a free download for Windows systems only, and requires the .NET 2.0 or higher framework. Visual Controls [via gHacks]
Linux only: Flyback, the previously mentioned Linux backup utility that aims to mimic Mac OS X Leopard’s Time Machine for set-and-forget usability, has a cutting-edge 0.5 version available in its Subversion repository that adds a good number of great things. Choosing what to back up, which external drive or server to place it on, and when exactly to do it, is a lot easier to grasp for those not schooled in rsync. The Ubuntu Unleashed blog has detailed instructions on getting the cutting-edge SVN version installed on your Debian, Ubuntu, or Red Hat-based system. Flyback [Google Code via Ubuntu Unleashed]
The Workers’ Edge blog points out that a macro written by Dave Rado back in the days of Word 97 to back up and restore time-saving, typo-fixing AutoCorrect settings in Microsoft Word still does the trick for the most modern Word 2007 installation. It’s simple to use and a lot easier than tracking down your AutoCorrect file yourself. Simply install the macro (with detailed instructions offered at the via link below), launch it, and choose where to save a Word document with your custom AutoCorrect settings, and hit “Restore” to import settings from a different installation. Of course, you could always switch over to app-neutral text substitution utilities like Texter, but this macro should be a real time-saver for those who have finely tuned their Word. AutoCorrect Macro [via CNET | Workers' Edige]
US only: Napster debuts its brand new DRM-free MP3 store today. Like Amazon MP3, the songs will play on any device and any number of computers, and cost $.99 per single, and $9.95 per album. [via]
Next time you need to give a presentation from afar, fire up Zoho Show, invite a few attendees, and give the presentation in real-time with Zoho Show’s Remote feature. You invite participants, and as soon as everyone shows up and you start the remote presentation, what they see matches exactly what you’re doing. You advance a slide, their browser advances a slide. Even if you don’t plan on using Zoho Show to deliver the final product, it could still come in handy to review and collaborate remotely on PowerPoint presentations (which Zoho Show imports seamlessly). Zoho Show [via Digital Inspiration]
