Weblog Daily Tech Update details how to use the Quick Links feature available in the recently released Gmail Labs to create quick access links to the media attachments in your Gmail account. The Quick Links tool makes it dead simple to turn any advanced search into a quick sidebar link, and the post details a few advanced searches to create Quick Links specifically for video and audio. I’ve also added my own YouTube videos Quick Link for any email containing a YouTube link (I simply used http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=* as my search). If you’ve taken advantage of the Gmail Labs Quick Links feature, let’s hear how you’re using it in the comments. For even more advanced Gmail media wrangling, check out previously mentioned Xoopit. Quick Access to Gmail Attachments [Daily Tech Update]
Any platform running XBMC: AEON transforms your Xbox Media Centre with a beautiful new and friendly interface. Installing AEON is simply a matter of dragging it into your XBMC’s skins directory and then getting started. Whether your running XBMC on your Mac (a fork of which has just been renamed to Plex), your classic Xbox, or your thumb drive, AEON is an excellent tool to improve the look and feel. If you’d like to try XBMC on your Mac with a more social flair, check out previously mentioned Boxee.
One of the new apps slated for release during this Friday’s iPhone 2.0 launch is Friend Book, a “super Address Book” that promises to make dealing with your iPhone contacts much easier and fun. Made by Tapulous, a new company dedicated to iPhone/iPod touch apps, Joel Johnson at Boing Boing describes Friend Book’s “holy crap” feature: The coolest feature without a doubt is the new “Handshake”: put two iPhones running Friend Book together, shake them up and down, and the personal contact information of the phones’ owners will be beamed through the net to the paired phones. Handshake doesn’t work through a device-to-device connection, but instead passes location data back to Tapulous’ servers — two shaking phones in the same location means it’s time to swap information.
Friend Book, along with the company’s other two apps, Tap Tap Revenge and Twinkle will be free to download from Apple’s new App Store on Friday. Hit the play button to see Friend Book in action. Tapulous shows iPhone Apps: Friend Book, Tap Tap Revenge, and Twinkle [Boing Boing Gadgets]
When you want to backtrack a few paces in your web surfing clicktrail but not lose the page you’re on, in Firefox 3, click on your current tab, hold down the Ctrl key and drag it. This will duplicate the tab and keep its history in the copy—that way you can back out and stay where you are in another tab. Sadly this trick only works in Firefox for Windows, not on the Mac. Don’t forget, you can also drag tabs between browser windows in Firefox, too. What’s your favourite Firefox 3 shortcut? Let us know in the comments. Firefox 3 features you may not know [Mozilla Links]
Popular BitTorrent tracker Mininova has unveiled a new bookmarking feature that makes it easy to start a BitTorrent download on your home computer from anywhere. The new feature works by creating a personal RSS feed of all of your bookmarks. Since most popular BitTorrent clients support subscribing to an RSS feed of torrents, that means that each time you bookmark a torrent on Mininova, your BitTorrent client will automatically start downloading it. All you have to do is subscribe to your personal feed and get bookmarking. This is a very clever feature, but if you’d prefer even more control of your BitTorrent downloads when you’re away from your main PC, check out how to remote control uTorrent or Transmission over the internet.
New feature: personal bookmarks, remote downloading [Mininova blog via TorrentFreak]Windows only: Rainbow Folders, a free interface-tweaking utility, is a great tool for de-cluttering a desktop, directory, or other work spaces where distinct colours and shapes help your mind sort out what goes where. Rather than offering just four or five colour labels, Rainbow Colours lets you use Photoshop-like hue and saturation values to make distinct shades, and lets you choose between classic, XP, or Vista-style stand-up folders to further distinguish your stuff. The app can also add mouse-over tooltip text to a folder, in case your visual memory needs a quick refresher. Rainbow Folders is a free download for Windows systems only. Note: If the main link below is overwhelmed, you can grab the install package from Freeware Files. Rainbow Folders [via Download Squad]
Web search engine Searchme displays search results using the three-dimensional Cover Flow interface you’ve come to know and love in iTunes and on your iPod for web pages. Searchme also guesses related categories for popular searches. For example, a search for “new york” might be related to baseball or business news, restaurant information, and architecture, and Searchme will give you search results within the selected category. Searchme performs optimally within category searches; keyword searches alone don’t seem to yield the most relevant pages—for example, Lifehacker.com is nowhere near the top of the results for a search for “Lifehacker.” Still, if you prefer to view screenshots of pages before you actually visit the page and don’t use the Lifehacker-endorsed BetterSearch Firefox extension, the Cover Flow display grouped with search results might prove to be a valuable asset.
SearchmeBlogger Pamela Slim has a habit of writing during the quiet late-night hours, along with a sense that she can’t write unless she’s got a fat stack of Oreos next to her. Digging into the dieting tips of Martha Beck, she finds that her compulsive sweet tooth stems from the same place as her deadline anxieties. Her solution is to basically sit down and calmly think through why she’s not doing that badly whenever the late-night longings pop up: The starved and frightened brain drives overeating and low metabolism. The calm and secure brain drives a very different set of biological motivators and consequences. In other words, when your brain is fixed, you eat less and burn off excess as heat, whereas the “famine brain” caused by stress and hunger- including dieting — really does make you consume more and store more as fat.
