Development on the Xbox Media Centre Mac port continues apace, with the new beta 3 which dropped today. Grab the update to get more fixes and additions from the Linux version, and see how XBMC turns your Mac into a better media center.
Got some downtime at the office but don’t feel comfortable pulling out a paperback to get some reading in on-the-job? Web site Read at Work serves up public domain works in PowerPoint-looking chunks. The site boasts a convincing Flash application that runs in fullscreen and looks exactly like a Windows XP installation. (You have to try it to truly appreciate it.) Granted, reading an entire book in this fashion is far from ideal, but if you’re desperate, it’s a fun—albeit weird—way to get your fix. Read at Work
There as many applications and methods for copying music from an iPod to your computer as there are iPod models themselves, which makes finding a sure-fire, free solution a matter of tedious trial and error. To save you the work, today we’re rounding up the best tools and techniques for getting music off any model iPod onto nearly any computer—for free. Whether you’re a Windows user looking to yank tunes from an iPhone, a Mac fan backing up an iPod classic, or a Linux enthusiast trying to get into your new nano, we’ve got you covered. Follow along for a detailed look at the best ways to transfer songs from your iPod to your computer, no matter what hardware or operating system you’re rocking.
Webapp MyFolia organizes and tracks your garden’s progress using all the current “Web 2.0″ tools out there—tags, a wiki, Google maps, and social networking. Sign up for an account at MyFolia to:Track your gardening progress – list your current plants with planting dates, track your seed stashes and note down your wish list plants. Share your garden with others and check out what other gardeners are growing near you. See who else is growing the same things you are – see their photos, read their journal entries and even leave them a comment or two! Join a gardening group (or start your own!) about any gardening topic under the sun.
Even if you’re not a gardener yourself, you can check out other people’s flowers and vegetables by just surfing the tags at MyFolia. Do you keep a gardening journal? How do you do it? Tell us about your Getting Gardening Done system in the comments. MyFolia [via Unclutterer]
Miss anything good this month on Lifehacker? Have a recap:Turn Your Point-and-Shoot into a Super-Camera“If you’re using a consumer grade point-and-shoot Canon digital camera, you’ve got hardware in hand that can support advanced features way beyond what shipped in the box.” Get Vista’s Best Features in XP“Despite the fact that most of you prefer XP to Vista and would rather Microsoft extended XP’s shelf-life, several new and improved features available in Vista would be great to have in XP.” Top 10 Things You Forgot Your Mac Can Do“Macs may be more expensive, and Mac users more elitist (ahem), but blind Apple loyalty aside, there are a number of neat features bundled into your Mac that make it super useful and fun.” Top 10 Firefox 3 Features“The newest version of our favourite open source web browser, Mozilla Firefox 3, offers dozens of new features and fixes, but only a handful will make the most dramatic difference in your everyday browsing.” Best Text Editors“From managing our to-do lists and writing code to jotting ideas and keeping a grocery list, nothing beats a solid plain text editor.” Learn to Play an Instrument Online“Chances are at one point or another, you’ve either purchased an instrument or considered doing so with the intention of learning to play it; most of us, however, never get around the learning part.” Best Online File Sharing Services“Whether you’re trying to share megabytes worth of music with a friend or send an important document to a coworker, nothing outshines a fast, easy-to-use file-sharing service.” Slipstream Service Pack 3 into Your Windows XP Installation CD“Next time you wipe your PC’s hard drive clean and reinstall Windows with that old installation disc, you don’t want to connect your fresh, unpatched and vulnerable system to the internet only to download 176 new updates from Microsoft.” XBMC Turns Your Mac into the Ultimate Media Center“You don’t have to mod your classic Xbox to run the best free media centre application around anymore: Dedicated developers have ported the Xbox Media Centre (XBMC) software to the Mac, and its killer features will convince you to abandon Front Row forever.”
Free eBay search tool Auction Bloopers does the exhaustive work of finding slight misspellings and typos in and around every word you type in, throwing them all into the online auction giant and returning with search results that include pretty much every possible result you might not find otherwise. We’ve previously highlighted a similar search tool, but Auction Bloopers notably uses extra, missing, and mis-ordered characters for model and serial numbers, making it a handy tool for gadget hunting. Auction Bloopers [via gHacks]
Gmail’s newer, less-refresh-required version 2, unveiled back in the fall of 2007, hasn’t been readily accessible to users of Opera’s browser. Tech blog CyberNet notes, however, that by using Opera’s 9.5 beta version, and using this no-browser-check-required link as your access point, you’ll get full access to all the AJAX-y goodness. If you don’t see changes right away, hit the “Newer Version” link in the upper-right corner. Get Gmail 2 in Opera 9.5 [CyberNet]
