Friday, June 27, 2008
Communicate
Yahoo Mail Offers Random Subject Lines in a Click
11:31PM Gina Trapani | Discovered a fun little feature in Yahoo Mail this week that made me wish for the same in Gmail: the Subject-O-Matique, a random subject line inserter. When you just can’t think of the right subject for your message, click the subject button in the new version of Yahoo Mail to automatically fill in something cheeky or goofy. Hit the play button above to see some examples. The closest Gmail’s got to this is its random signature experimental feature. [via Webware] More »
Work
TinyPaste is a TinyURL for Long Text Strings
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | If you’ve got a big heap o’ text to drop on your blog, in Twitter, or any chat program that doesn’t really love paragraph pasting, TinyPaste is a reasonable solution. Like TinyURL, the one-click tool simply takes in long strings of text and converts them to short URLs, which, when clicked, bring up the text inside a mostly clean screen. There’s also a Firefox extension for right-click transformation of text into TinyPaste links. The service is free to use, doesn’t require a sign-up. TinyPaste [via TechCrunch] More »
Organise
Feedly Turns Google Reader into a Social Start Page
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Create a start page with a wider view of your Google Reader feeds and social contacts with Feedly, a free Firefox extension. The add-on’s main service is spinning your Google Reader feeds into a more magazine-like spread, letting you browse over multiple categories, glimpse post pictures, and have all your read items sync back to Reader. The navigation bar also creates tabs for the Twitter friends you’re following, and offers serious customisation for layout, item sharing, and other features. The extension adds a distractingly orange button to your navigation bar, but you can simply bookmark its chrome pages if you want to nix it. Feedly is a free download, works wherever Firefox does. Feedly [via Online Tech Tips] More »
Organise
Google Media Server Streams Your Files Easily Between Screens
9:30PM Kevin Purdy | Windows only: Send videos, pictures and music between Windows PCs or any Universal Plug n’ Play device (like a Playstation 3) with a simple Google Desktop Gadget called Google Media Server. The gadget allows you to offer up all the media indexed by Google Desktop to any other device with the gadget, or that can grab UPnP media, and also offers access to your Picasa Web Albums and YouTube videos. For anyone looking for an easy way to shuttle their digital media back and forth across a standard home network, this gadget might be the “just works” kick-starter. Google Media Server is a free download, requires a Windows system running Google Desktop 5 or later. Google Media Server [via Google Operating System] More »
Work
Backyard Shed Turned Home Office
9:00PM Gina Trapani | Reader Brian DeHamer needed a home office but lived in a crowded house, so instead he used extra space out behind his garage. He writes: More »
Communicate
3:19PM Angus Kidman | Dell’s new Studio notebooks are pretty spunky, but from a productivity point of view they have an even bigger benefit: support for wireless broadband from both Telstra and Vodafone. While building in a 3G modem is not unusual, most notebooks tend to be tied to a single carrier, which is bad news if you live in the wrong reception area or already have a long-term contract with another provider.The flexibility is welcome, but it isn’t absolute. You have to select the carrier you want at the time of purchase, and the machine will then ship with a new SIM card, leaving you to contact the provider and select a plan. And if you already have a Telstra or Vodafone 3G data account, you’re seemingly out of luck: the official word from Dell is that only the provided SIM is supported and there’s no scheme for using an existing subscription. So it’s fiddlier than a “one modem fits all” solution, but a useful step forward nonetheless.
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Getting a choice with notebook-bundled broadband
3:19PM Angus Kidman | Dell’s new Studio notebooks are pretty spunky, but from a productivity point of view they have an even bigger benefit: support for wireless broadband from both Telstra and Vodafone. While building in a 3G modem is not unusual, most notebooks tend to be tied to a single carrier, which is bad news if you live in the wrong reception area or already have a long-term contract with another provider.The flexibility is welcome, but it isn’t absolute. You have to select the carrier you want at the time of purchase, and the machine will then ship with a new SIM card, leaving you to contact the provider and select a plan. And if you already have a Telstra or Vodafone 3G data account, you’re seemingly out of luck: the official word from Dell is that only the provided SIM is supported and there’s no scheme for using an existing subscription. So it’s fiddlier than a “one modem fits all” solution, but a useful step forward nonetheless.
More »
Work
12:39PM Angus Kidman | It may have taken a while to gets its internal systems in order, but eBay now seems to have accepted that it’s not going to be easy to make PayPal the sole payment method available to Australian sellers. Having previously deferred the plan until July 15, eBay has now officially held off on banning other payment methods until further notice. While it remains a requirement to include PayPal as an option, other methods — such as bank deposits, money orders, cheques, or rival payment systems — are now back on the table. Why eBay didn’t simply stick to this plan in the first place rather than shredding its brand remains a mystery we may never solve.
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eBay puts off compulsory PayPal again
12:39PM Angus Kidman | It may have taken a while to gets its internal systems in order, but eBay now seems to have accepted that it’s not going to be easy to make PayPal the sole payment method available to Australian sellers. Having previously deferred the plan until July 15, eBay has now officially held off on banning other payment methods until further notice. While it remains a requirement to include PayPal as an option, other methods — such as bank deposits, money orders, cheques, or rival payment systems — are now back on the table. Why eBay didn’t simply stick to this plan in the first place rather than shredding its brand remains a mystery we may never solve.
More »
Fix
12:31PM Angus Kidman | Although Google’s indexing methodology is now much more sophisticated than merely tracking link referrals, creating inbound links to a site remains a popular tactic — and one that’s increasingly exploited by unscrupulous site promoters who use hacking techniques potentially add invisible links to their sites onto other legitimate pages. Not only does that give bogus operators higher rankings more traffic, it can also affect your own site’s visibility, since Google and other spiders often rank sites lower if they appear to be designed to game search rankings.Blogger Patrick Altoft suggests a neat trick to track possible intrusions of this kind on your own site: using Google Alerts to track the addition of spurious terms to your site. This isn’t a perfect approach, and you’ll need to deal with any security vulnerabilities that make such code injection possible in the first place, but it’s a neat way to detect obvious attacks.How to use Google Alerts to find out if your site gets hacked [BlogStorm]
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Use Google Alerts to detect site hackers
12:31PM Angus Kidman | Although Google’s indexing methodology is now much more sophisticated than merely tracking link referrals, creating inbound links to a site remains a popular tactic — and one that’s increasingly exploited by unscrupulous site promoters who use hacking techniques potentially add invisible links to their sites onto other legitimate pages. Not only does that give bogus operators higher rankings more traffic, it can also affect your own site’s visibility, since Google and other spiders often rank sites lower if they appear to be designed to game search rankings.Blogger Patrick Altoft suggests a neat trick to track possible intrusions of this kind on your own site: using Google Alerts to track the addition of spurious terms to your site. This isn’t a perfect approach, and you’ll need to deal with any security vulnerabilities that make such code injection possible in the first place, but it’s a neat way to detect obvious attacks.How to use Google Alerts to find out if your site gets hacked [BlogStorm]
More »
Work
12:16PM Angus Kidman | A tax perk many Australians have taken advantage of is the ability to buy a home notebook via salary sacrifice. However, the rules got tightened up in the May budget, making it impossible to depreciate laptops purchased this way and much harder to get them without incurring FBT. An article at apcmag.com (written by this very Lifehacker editor) looks at just how the new rules apply, and whether it’s worth even trying to get a tax-free machine.Did Kevin Rudd kill laptop salary sacrifice? [apcmag.com]
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Why getting a tax-free laptop is now so much harder
12:16PM Angus Kidman | A tax perk many Australians have taken advantage of is the ability to buy a home notebook via salary sacrifice. However, the rules got tightened up in the May budget, making it impossible to depreciate laptops purchased this way and much harder to get them without incurring FBT. An article at apcmag.com (written by this very Lifehacker editor) looks at just how the new rules apply, and whether it’s worth even trying to get a tax-free machine.Did Kevin Rudd kill laptop salary sacrifice? [apcmag.com]
More »
Fix
