Friday, May 30, 2008
Work
Text2MindMap Turns Indents into Ideas
11:10PM Kevin Purdy | You might have heard about the power of mind mapping from studious co-workers or, say, a certain blog, but never had the drive to jump in and start sketching. Text2MindMap, a free visualisation web app, makes turning your ideas into node-based maps as easy as hitting Tab. Type or paste text into an input box, using indents to break up your ideas into categories, and then customise the font size, node colours, and more. When you’re done messing with your map, download it in JPEG format (interactive Flash downloads are said to be coming soon), and there’s no limit to how many you can create. More »
Work
Creating Web Input Forms with Google Spreadsheets
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Lynette Chandler of Tech Based Marketing has put together a short-and-sweet guide to setting up a data-gathering web form using Google Docs‘ spreadsheets tool. Follow the easy-to-grasp instructions, and you’ve got a clean form that can be embedded on any page and streams data back to a spreadsheet you control. Great for grabbing info for events, adding a “Contact Me” form to your web site, or any other data-gathering need. Featured video: quick and easy forms [via Office Tweaks] More »
Design
Bradicon Converts Most Any Image Into an Icon
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | Web app Bradicon is a super-simple tool to convert most of the major graphics formats—JPG, PNG, BMP, or GIF—into icon files. We’ve previously posted a similar tool, but Bradicon’s wider file range and two-step process make it a great bookmark for anyone fixing a desktop or personalizing a file package. Thanks, Jerame! More »
Organise
PstPassword Recovers Lost Outlook Passwords
9:00PM Gina Trapani | Windows only: When you dig up that old Outlook PST (Personal Folders) file from years ago you cleverly secured with a hard-to-guess password—and now you can’t guess it—you want PstPassword. Turns out that Outlook passwords aren’t that difficult to figure out, because this handy utility detects the PST’s on your system (or you can open one up specifically) and reveals several possible passwords that can open the file. The developer writes: More »
Organise
6:32PM Angus Kidman | Last weekend, I indulged in some entirely unseasonal spring cleaning
activity and took the cudgels to my Facebook profile. I attacked my
Applications list and got rid of all those stupid quizzes people had nagged me
to take, and I ditched a whole bunch of random groups (sadly, I never did get
around to panic buying carrots on May 15). End result? A much less cluttered
profile and a renewed enthusiasm for the site. Take a few minutes to clean up
your profile; you’ll be glad you did.
More »
Something for the weekend: Facebook tidy up
6:32PM Angus Kidman | Last weekend, I indulged in some entirely unseasonal spring cleaning
activity and took the cudgels to my Facebook profile. I attacked my
Applications list and got rid of all those stupid quizzes people had nagged me
to take, and I ditched a whole bunch of random groups (sadly, I never did get
around to panic buying carrots on May 15). End result? A much less cluttered
profile and a renewed enthusiasm for the site. Take a few minutes to clean up
your profile; you’ll be glad you did.
More »
Work
5:46PM Angus Kidman | Optus, 3 and Vodafone might claim to only support Windows and Macs with
their wireless broadband systems, but in fact you can use any of them on a
Linux Eee PC without special driver software. Here’s the step-by-step guide to
getting it set up for Australian 3G networks.
More »
Making wireless broadband work on the Eee PC
5:46PM Angus Kidman | Optus, 3 and Vodafone might claim to only support Windows and Macs with
their wireless broadband systems, but in fact you can use any of them on a
Linux Eee PC without special driver software. Here’s the step-by-step guide to
getting it set up for Australian 3G networks.
More »
Fix
1:01PM Angus Kidman | It’s not surprising that Google decided
to make a submission to the ACCC over eBay’s controversial plan to
make PayPal the sole payment method available on the site. It’s not
surprising that Google asked that its name was kept off the public
version of its submission. And sadly, it’s not surprising that — as
a great story at AuctionBytes reveals — an
Australian eBay user, David Bromage, managed to deduce Google’s
involvement by looking at metadata attached to the PDF file. But is
it possible to avoid those kinds of problems?
More »
Google’s eBay glitch shows importance of checking your metadata
1:01PM Angus Kidman | It’s not surprising that Google decided
to make a submission to the ACCC over eBay’s controversial plan to
make PayPal the sole payment method available on the site. It’s not
surprising that Google asked that its name was kept off the public
version of its submission. And sadly, it’s not surprising that — as
a great story at AuctionBytes reveals — an
Australian eBay user, David Bromage, managed to deduce Google’s
involvement by looking at metadata attached to the PDF file. But is
it possible to avoid those kinds of problems?
More »
Work
10:55AM Angus Kidman | In a fascinating piece for BBC News, Maragret Robertson
argues that it’s only a matter of time before we all start listing
our experience with PC and console games on our resumes. Not only is
gaming now so widespread that it’s a legitimate inclusion in the
hobbies list, she suggests, but it’s even a good way of demonstrating
your potential usefulness to an employee:
It’s becoming increasingly common for
gamers to list things like running World Of Warcraft guilds in their
applications, and increasingly common for employers to recognise the
organisational, managerial and inter-personal skills such experience
brings.
I’m in two minds about this –
undoubtedly games (especially online games) can demonstrate
persistence and collaborative skills, but if I saw someone talk about
their WoW guild-building skills, I’d start questioning why that
candidate couldn’t talk about more directly relevant experiences for the job at hand.
What do you think? Time to add Halo to the CV, or will that frag your chances of getting hired?
More »
Would you list your games skillz on your resume?
10:55AM Angus Kidman | In a fascinating piece for BBC News, Maragret Robertson
argues that it’s only a matter of time before we all start listing
our experience with PC and console games on our resumes. Not only is
gaming now so widespread that it’s a legitimate inclusion in the
hobbies list, she suggests, but it’s even a good way of demonstrating
your potential usefulness to an employee:
It’s becoming increasingly common for
gamers to list things like running World Of Warcraft guilds in their
applications, and increasingly common for employers to recognise the
organisational, managerial and inter-personal skills such experience
brings.
I’m in two minds about this –
undoubtedly games (especially online games) can demonstrate
persistence and collaborative skills, but if I saw someone talk about
their WoW guild-building skills, I’d start questioning why that
candidate couldn’t talk about more directly relevant experiences for the job at hand.
What do you think? Time to add Halo to the CV, or will that frag your chances of getting hired?
More »
Organise
