Author of The 4 Hour Workweek Tim Ferriss and author of One Person/Multiple Careers Marci Alboher team up for a talk at Google about redesigning your career. You may already know Tim Ferriss as “that nutty 4 hour guy,” but Alboher’s take on careers nicely tempers his extreme GTD techniques. Alboher’s book is about how to become a “slash”—that is, someone who does more than one specialised thing in their career. It sounds like the read for anyone who wants to crawl under their desk and die at the idea that they’ll be cranking one particular type of widget the rest of their career lives (even if they like those widgets). This talk’s a long one with lots of food for thought—download it to your iPod to watch at the gym (here’s one way to do that), or load it up on your media centre so you can get comfortable watching it from the couch. Authors@Google: Marci Alboher & Tim Ferriss [YouTube]
Breathing new life into the 90′s game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, researcher Stephen Dolan at Trinity College Dublin created the Six Degree of Wikipedia. Users can key in any combination of items into the script on his site and find how closely or distantly related the two things are. Lifehacker.com, coming in well under six degrees, is a mere 4 clicks away from Kevin Bacon. (Kevin Bacon – Game – Final Fantasy – Screenshot – Lifehacker.com) Six Degrees of Wikipedia [via Chronicle of Higher Education]
This week’s most popular posts are: Top 10 Office Supply Hacks“Given some spare time and a few neglected items in the office supply closet, anyone can make their workspace more functional, create a cool tools for their home and office, and even rescue seemingly ruined stuff.” Five Best Antivirus Applications“The internet is a glorious and exciting world, but unless you’re properly protected with a good antivirus application, it can also be a dangerous one.” Recover Lost Passwords with Free Tools“ACCESS DENIED. Those two bone-chilling words are the last thing you want to see when you’re trying to log into a system or open a file, but they’re not necessarily a dead end. Several free tools can help you find lost passwords you can’t remember or that your computer has saved but obscured.” Defrag Your Office for Increased Efficiency“One of the side effects of having so much stuff to help us get work done is dealing with the clutter it creates in our workspace.” Gmail Gets 13 Experimental New Features“Once your Gmail account is Labs-enabled, you’ll get a Labs tab in the Settings area of your account where you can enable 13 new experimental Gmail features, including signature tweaks, mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts, and even a game.”
Windows only: Freeware application VolumeTouch controls your system volume through your mouse’s scroll wheel and customizable keyboard shortcuts. VolumeTouch may appear very similar to previously mentioned Volumouse, and it is, but a few features set it apart in the pros column. Most notably, VolumeTouch adds a great live-preview volume meter that displays your volume level in meter or percentage form as you change it. On the flip side, it’s not quite as robust on features as Volumouse, so if you use Volumouse for more than basic system volume control, it may not be for you. Whichever you prefer, both apps are great for adding more control and quicker access to your system volume. VolumeTouch is freeware, Windows only. VolumeTouch [via FreewareGenius]
Mac OS X only: Donationware application iStat menus monitors your Mac from your menu bar—everything from CPU and memory use to system temperature and a better date and time interface. We’ve mentioned iStat menus once before, but it just saw a significant update including a better interface, new Leopard-only features, and improved monitoring. The app is totally customizable, meaning you only include the stats you want to track in your menu bar (but including everything would mean a lot of menu bar clutter). iStat menus is donationware, Mac OS X only. iStat menus [via TUAW]
Windows only: It’s a great feeling to find a productivity application that fits your workflow, but if your platform of choice is Windows Mobile you might only find that app after hours of tedious installing and uninstalling with lots of tiny screen time and stylus poking. Recently released to the general public, Microsoft Windows Mobile Emulator is desktop software that imitates Windows Mobile 6, Windows Mobile 5.0, and Windows Mobile 2003SE on your PC. Install and uninstall software, try out themes and new interfaces, and use the phone’s external buttons with the emulator—no stylus required.
If the 13 new experimental features in Gmail Labs have you salivating for new Gmail functionality, but your account still hasn’t been enabled, here’s a quick solution: Just copy and paste https://mail.google.com/mail/?labs=1#settings in your address box when you’re logged into Gmail to enable it manually. Once you do, you’ll have access to the new Quick Links, Superstars, Custom keyboard shortcuts, and yes, even Snakey. Note that this trick doesn’t work for Gmail for your domain. Thanks Bashar,frstie, and others!
We’ve shown you how to turn your classic Xbox and Mac into a super-powered media centre using Xbox Media Centre, but what about everybody else? Well, if you’ve got at least a 1 GB USB drive and a computer that can boot from it, you’re in luck. LiveXBMC, a blend of the XBMC and Ubuntu Linux, lets you do all the same big-screen media playing, file sharing, DVD ripping, and other media centre goodness without installing a thing, but with saved settings. Let’s get started creating a portable media monster with XBMC after the jump.
Mozilla product manager Alex Polvi’s state of Firefox 3-compatible add-ons post this week reports that while Google Notebook, Dictionary Switcher, and Screengrab! are Firefox 3-compatible, we’re still waiting on the likes of Firebug, Tab Mix Plus, and Del.icio.us bookmarks (all of which have beta versions in the works). Is add-on compatibility holding you back from trying out Firefox 3? Answer the official Firefox survey (and check out the survey results as they get collected.)
Google adds a little Javascript magic to their Advanced Search page, which now dynamically builds your query using operators like OR, -, and quotes around exact phrases. [via]
