Monday, June 23, 2008

Lose Weight Publicly with Twitter

11:30PM Gina Trapani | Blogger Dennis Best is peer-pressuring himself into losing weight by using Twitter to broadcast his progress and setbacks. Twitter’s 140 character update limit makes for an easy, low-overhead method of staying accountable to friends. [via] More »

Google Trends Now Showing Site Traffic

10:40PM Kevin Purdy | Google Trends has a newly-added ability to show unique visitor statistics for multiple sites—just type in site URLs separated by commas to get rough traffic estimates based on searches and other data. The thumbnail chart here suggests that Apple.com gets a bit more regular interest than Windows or Ubuntu’s home pages. [via] More »

Prune Your Photo Collection with Picasa’s Stars

9:00PM Lifehacker US Edition | If you’ve accumulated a mess of digital photos and you know that many less than album-worthy ones are cluttering up your hard drive, Picasa can help prune your collection. Photography blogger Dave shares the following trick for quickly trimming down your collection to only the good stuff. Instead of focusing on the pictures which need to be deleted, focus on the ones you really like. Using the star function in Picasa, star each “keeper” in your collection. Once you’ve starred all the keepers select all of them via Edit – Select Starred and then select the inverse of the starred photos via Edit – Invert Selection. You now have selected all the photos that aren’t album worthy and can delete them to make room for future photos. Here’s more on organising your digital photos with Picasa. File management / work flow using Picasa [Dave's Photo Tips] More »

Keep USB modems in place on your Eee PC

2:01PM Angus Kidman | Adding a wireless USB modem to your Eee PC (or any other ultra-compact notebook) makes it a true go-anywhere machine, but there’s one slight nuisance: you’re left with a modem hanging off the side. Not necessarily a problem on your desk at home, but on a crowded train or in the back of the taxi it can quickly become a real nuisance as it bounces around. Conventional notebook owners can eliminate that hassle with a PC Card, but that’s not an option with most ultra-portables. My simple (if not entirely elegant) solution to this conundrum was to whack a medium Command Picture Hanging Strip on the back of the modem, and another one onto the back of the Eee screen on the bottom right-hand side (nearest the USB port). The velcro-like attachments let you fix the modem easily in place when you need it (be careful not to apply direct pressure to the display itself), and the standard short cable that comes with pretty much every USB modem covers the distance nicely without excess. More »

Avoid speed cameras with Speedwarnings

1:55PM Angus Kidman | Heading out in the car but don’t want to get pulled up by cops or caught out by speed cameras? Speedwarnings offers an SMS update service; text a regional shortcode to receive regular updates on police and camera activity in your area (as tracked by parent company Road Info; there’s a phone number for ringing in your own reports). The site also offers the slightly less socially questionable option of fuel price updates for cheap service stations in Mebourne, though at 55 cents a message you’d want to be getting a big discount to make the subscription worthwhile. Speedwarnings currently covers Victoria only. If your GPS supports it, another alternative for general road information (including traffic levels and unexpected accidents) is the SUNA Traffic Channel. More »

Make Your Own Plastic with Milk

1:00PM Kevin Purdy | Your average container of milk contains a protein called casein, which, once reduced with a little vinegar, can be made into a homemade plastic and formed into anything you’d like. The plastic takes less than an hour to make and two days to dry, and, with a little sanding and painting, can be made into some seriously impressive homemade gifts. Hit the link for the full instructions, which require only some basic kitchen equipment to pull off. Homemade Plastic [Instructables via Hackszine] More »

Quickly Remove Formatting In Microsoft Programs

12:00PM Lifehacker US Edition | When you’re copying and pasting something to or from a Microsoft application such as Word or Outlook and you want to remove the formatting there is a quick keyboard shortcut to do so. Rather than use the mouse and the Paste Special button, you can simply paste the text, highlight it, and hit Ctrl+Space to remove the formatting and convert the selection into plain text. (Australian editor adds: I still think it’s easier to just paste with Control-V, hit Ctrl-Shift-F10 for Smart Tags, and select ‘Paste text only’ — much faster if there’s a lot to select.) Quickly Remove Formatting when you Copy-Paste Text In Office [Digital Inspiration] More »

Firefox KeyFixer Makes Home and End Keys Work Like Windows

11:00AM Adam Pash | Mac OS X only: Freeware application Firefox Keyfixer changes the default behaviour for your Home and End keys in Firefox. By default, pressing Home or End moves your Firefox window rather than the cursor. If you’re used to or prefer the default Windows behaviour, Firefox Keyfixer swaps the functions so that those buttons move the cursor to the beginning or end of a line of text. We’ve mentioned Firefox Keyfixer before, but the new version updates the app for Firefox 3 and tweaks Page Up/Down as well. If you’re looking to do the same thing for OS X as a whole, check out previously mentioned KeyFixer. Fixing Home and End Keys on Firefox 3 for Mac OS X [Matt Ball on Technology] More »

Lucipedia Offers Journals and Forums for Lucid Dreaming

10:00AM Kevin Purdy | Whether you’re a complete controlled-dream neophyte or a veteran of lucid sleep, Lucipedia can help you learn more about controlling your subconscious wanderings. Signing up gives you a journal space to track your memories and successes, as well as free reign to edit collaborative articles on any dream-related topics. Lost as to what lucidity exactly is? Check out these how-tos and FAQs on the topic, and then get to work on flying to your job in your mechanised power-suit. Lucipedia More »