Saturday, June 21, 2008
Organise
This Week’s Best Posts
10:00AM Lifehacker US Edition | Here are this week’s most popular posts: How to get the most out of Sydney’s Apple store“Apple Store #215 opens at 367 George St on June 19, with 125 employees just itching to meet all your Mac and iPod-related needs. Our nine-point guide will help you get the most out of a visit to the three-storey store.” Power User’s Guide to Firefox 3“You already know about Firefox 3’s marquee new features, but now it’s time to dig deep and unearth the shortcuts, tweaks, and even Easter eggs that Mozilla marketing doesn’t mention.” Is four beers a binge?“Debate is currently raging over reports that new drinking guidelines for Australia will define binge drinking as more than four mid-sized alcoholic drinks a day for men. “ The History of Firefox 1.0 to 3.0 in Screenshots“Mozilla released Firefox version 1.0 to relative obscurity in November of 2004, and four short years later, the much-anticipated Firefox 3.0 will hit the streets with ambitions of setting a new world record tomorrow.” Top 10 Apps Worth Installing Adobe AIR For“Adobe AIR, a downloadable platform for running web-friendly apps on any operating system, is still pretty fresh on the market, but it already has a healthy number of applications in development or near completion.” Speed Testing the Latest Web Browsers“We ran the latest editions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera 9.5, and Safari for Windows through some unscientific but highly geeky tests ourselves on a plain old Windows computer. Take a look at the full (and somewhat unexpected) results.” The Browser Stopwatch Speed-Tests Page Load“The Webmonkey site offers a snippet of JavaScript that lets you speed-test your browser yourself, and we’ve modified it and created a bookmarklet from it so you can do your own tests.” Four Extensions That Tweak Firefox 3’s “AwesomeBar”“There aren’t a whole lot of ways to configure the Smart Location bar in Firefox 3’s default options dialog—but there are a few new Firefox extensions that can do it for you.” More »
Design
Lego Digital Designer Builds Your Lego Masterpiece
9:00AM Adam Pash | Windows/Mac OS X only: Freeware application Lego Digital Designer is a virtual Lego kit for your Windows or Mac desktop. Once installed, you can either use LDD to build your own masterpiece from scratch or—if you’re lacking patience—you can get a head start by using one of their starter models. With over 763 brick types to choose from, your LDD-design will have reached well beyond the limits of your normal lego kit. Once you’ve built the perfect prototype, you can upload the results to the Lego web site to order a custom kit with every brick you’ll need included! Lego Digital Designer is freeware, Windows and Mac only. Lego Digital Designer [via Cool OS X Apps] More »
Communicate
Give an Effective Presentation Like Al Gore
8:00AM Adam Pash | The Wired How-To Wiki asks Nancy Duarte from Duarte Design—the company that put together Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth slide show—to share her tips and tricks for creating a successful slideshow. For example: Presentations work best when the presenter uses it as a mnemonic device to help the audience remember a message. The message suffers when its used as a crutch for the presenter. Nobody wants to see the back of a presenter and nobody wants to watch someone read a list of bullet points from a slide. When they do, it makes the presenter look lazy and distills the emotional message. Many of the tips are common sense, but there are a few gems worth taking note of if you’re looking to boost your presentation chops. If you prefer the presentation flair of a Steve Jobs to Gore, check out how to give a presentation like Steve Jobs. Make a Presentation Like Al Gore [Wired How-To Wiki] More »
Fix
Burn More Calories in Less Time with Interval Exercises
7:00AM Adam Pash | Yahoo Health says the secret to optimizing a short workout and burning more calories in less time lies in interval training. Study subjects who spent just 20 minutes mixing sprints with jogging lost three times the fat off their legs and butt in 15 weeks, compared to those who jogged steadily for 40 minutes, research from the University of New South Wales in Sydney finds. Intervals may spark fat-mobilizing hormones, and they amp your cardio capacity so your future runs will actually feel easier. Interval training isn’t a new idea by any means, but if you’re crunched for time and are looking to get the most from your workout, intervals might be the perfect choice. Before you head out the door, be sure to put together an interval running iTunes playlist. Photo by espinr. Burn More Calories in Less Time [Yahoo Health] More »
Organise
Sidenote Is a Universal, Unobtrusive Note Drawer
6:00AM Adam Pash | Mac OS X only: Donationware application Sidenote adds an unobtrusive sidebar to your Mac desktop for taking and organising multiple rich text notes. Under normal circumstances, Sidenote takes up a couple of pixels on the edge of your screen (though you can make it completely invisible in the Preferences), so it doesn’t take any space until you need it. You can invoke Sidenote by either hovering your mouse over that edge or with the user-definable keyboard shortcut. In fact, virtually every aspect of the program is accessible via a keyboard shortcut, which any keyboard lover can appreciate. The application manages multiple notes, prints, emails, and exports notes, and is almost entirely customisable. Sidenote is donationware, Mac OS X only. Sidenote [via TUAW] More »
Work
Run Windows Apps in Linux with Wine 1.0
2:00AM Kevin Purdy | No matter how easy Linux distributions make it for newcomers to install and use a free, open-source operating system, nearly everyone has at least one program that only works in Windows. Wine, a free Windows compatibility tool for Linux (and other Intel-based systems), aims to make those programs run without too much cross-system trickery. If you can’t get around needing to open true Microsoft Office files, Adobe Photoshop, or your addictive game of choice on your Linux desktop, Wine is for you. With Wine’s stable 1.0 version just released, it’s a good time to check out this quietly awesome app. Let’s get a few Windows applications running in Linux. More »
Fix
Tweak the ‘AwesomeBar’’s Suggestion Algorithm
1:30AM Gina Trapani | Firefox 3’s Smart Location bar suggests URLs as you type based on an algorithm that combines both how often you’ve visited a web site before, and whether you’ve got it bookmarked. A combination of frequency and recency of visits, the Mozilla developers call the “AwesomeBar”’s suggestion algorithm “frecency”—but it’s not set in stone or hidden away somewhere. In fact, the weight of each attribute is set inside your Firefox’s about:config area. Let’s take a look where they are, and how to adjust them. More »
Fix
KeyScrambler Encrypts Browser Keystrokes
12:30AM Lifehacker US Edition | Windows only: If you’ve got that paranoid feeling that something’s monitoring what you type into your web browser—like a private email or online banking login—protect yourself from keyloggers with free browser plug-in KeyScrambler. Operating as a layer between your keyboard and your web browser, KeyScrambler encrypts your key strokes and decrypts them as they are placed into the browser, so that a keylogger would only intercept the encrypted stream, not the actual text—essentially gibberish instead of your personal information. KeyScrambler Personal (the free version) is available as a plug-in for Firefox and Internet Explorer; pay-for upgrades from US$30 to US$45 extend its key scrambling technology to other applicatons such as Outlook, Quicken, and more. For another free keylogger evasion app that works beyond the browser, check out Anti Keylogger Shield. Thanks for the tip, theNitwit! KeyScrambler Personal Edition [QFX Software] More »
Design
