Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Fix
Glary Utilities Optimizes Your Windows PC
11:30PM Tamar Weinberg | Windows only: Free application Glary Utilities performs vital maintenance on your system to keep it in tip-top shape. Glary Utilities performs six key functions, from optimising your registry to clearing out that spyware you accidentally installed. The application also removes dangerous entries from your Start Menu, fixes invalid shortcuts, erases your web browsing and application usage history, and frees up space on your hard drive by deleting temporary files. Glary Tools was voted a user a favourite by many of our readers in our best Windows maintenance tools Hive Five, and with all these features and functionality, we’re not surprised. A free version of Glary Utilities is available for download for Windows only, though there is a professional version available for $US39.95. Glary Utilities More »
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p7zip Adds Built-In 7-Zip Tools to Ubuntu
11:10PM Kevin Purdy | The Tombuntu blog points out a seriously helpful package available in Ubuntu’s extended repositories that make creating super-efficient 7-Zip archives simple and fast, whether you’re right-clicking or working with a command line. Run this command to install it: sudo apt-get install p7zip Users of other Linux distros should find a similar package in their own sources. Once installed, creating compressed archives for storing or emailing is as simple as selecting the files, right-clicking, and choosing “Create Archive,” and de-compressing just as simple. Add 7z (7-Zip) File Archive Support to Ubuntu [Tombuntu] More »
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Incollector Keeps Tagged Notes in Your System Tray
10:51PM Kevin Purdy | Windows/Linux: Free note-taking app Incollector is a pretty convenient and lightweight way to keep small bits of data close at hand, while also keeping everything organised and easily accessible. Pull up Incollector from the system tray and tell it what kind of note you’re adding—conversation snippet, web address, plain text, among others—and what tags apply to it. Add comments, give it a star rating, and all that data can be used to create saved searches, filter by tags or ratings, and even search from the system tray by right-clicking the icon. Incollector isn’t a high-powered, universal note collector, but it fills its desktop role nicely. Incollector is a free download for Windows and Linux systems. incollector [via FreewareGenius.com] More »
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Favtape Plays Back Your Pandora or Last.fm Favourites
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | Marking a song as “Loved” or a “Favorite” on music discovery apps like Last.fm and Pandora doesn’t help you a whole lot when you want to hear them again. Free mashup site Favtape bridges the gaps between your Last.fm or Pandora profile, track-finding sites like Seeqpod, and the dead-simple interface of a site like Muxtape to create a playlist of your marked tracks. Some tracks might not actually play once loaded into Favtape, but it’s a cool way to create an instant playlist of songs you’ll definitely like. Favtape.com [via TechCrunch] More »
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Get Your Computer Online Using Your iPhone’s Data Connection
9:00PM Gina Trapani | The best way to put your newly jailbroken iPhone 2.0 to good use is to turn it into a mobile phone modem for your laptop. When tapping out an email or pinching and swiping on the iPhone’s web browser just doesn’t get the job done—and you want to use the full keyboard and screen on your laptop in a Wi-Fi-less place—you can get your computer online using the iPhone’s data connection. We’ve covered how to “tether” your iPhone before, but now that the iPhone 3G connection is speedier and the jailbreak process updated, here’s a refresher course. (Of course, if you’re on one of the data-light plans such as Telstra, this could be a really expensive idea – proceed with caution.) More »
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5:44PM Angus Kidman | As the Beijing Olympics loom ever closer, free resources to help visitors to China for the games are gathering steam. Hot on the heels of Lonely Planet’s free Chinese phrasebook for the iPhone, AsiaHotels.com is offering a tourist guide to the games as a free PDF.
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Plan your Olympic travel with free Beijing PDF guidebook
5:44PM Angus Kidman | As the Beijing Olympics loom ever closer, free resources to help visitors to China for the games are gathering steam. Hot on the heels of Lonely Planet’s free Chinese phrasebook for the iPhone, AsiaHotels.com is offering a tourist guide to the games as a free PDF.
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5:19PM Angus Kidman | Dear Lifehacker,I was hoping I could put a question to the Lifehacker community. I know a lot of folks out there are Eee PC owners, and I’ve finally caved and ordered myself a 901 (it’s a 20GB Linux model — I may switch distro as I run Ubuntu/XP on my main rig). I’m curious about whether there’s anything I should do/gather in preparation, while I wait for my black beauty to be delivered. Essentially, it will put my waiting-for-a-new-toy-anxiety on hold, and I’ll be that little bit more organised when it actually gets here. I realise there are many Lifehacker posts that are Eee-centric already, however they’re mostly for taking it apart or using it, once you have it. Any advice? Cheers, Paul C
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Ask Lifehacker: How should I prepare for my new Eee PC?
5:19PM Angus Kidman | Dear Lifehacker,I was hoping I could put a question to the Lifehacker community. I know a lot of folks out there are Eee PC owners, and I’ve finally caved and ordered myself a 901 (it’s a 20GB Linux model — I may switch distro as I run Ubuntu/XP on my main rig). I’m curious about whether there’s anything I should do/gather in preparation, while I wait for my black beauty to be delivered. Essentially, it will put my waiting-for-a-new-toy-anxiety on hold, and I’ll be that little bit more organised when it actually gets here. I realise there are many Lifehacker posts that are Eee-centric already, however they’re mostly for taking it apart or using it, once you have it. Any advice? Cheers, Paul C
More »
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5:00PM Angus Kidman | I don’t kid myself that four days spent in Tokyo, staying in Western-oriented hotels and with someone around to translate most of the time, is going to lead to in-depth insight into Japanese culture and work approaches. Nonetheless, there were a few self-evident lessons about the future of technology. Click after the jump for some quick ideas to help you approach organising from a different angle. (Photograph of votive prayers at the Meiji Shrine, which might put your to-do list into perspective.)
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Taking a Japanese approach to getting organised
5:00PM Angus Kidman | I don’t kid myself that four days spent in Tokyo, staying in Western-oriented hotels and with someone around to translate most of the time, is going to lead to in-depth insight into Japanese culture and work approaches. Nonetheless, there were a few self-evident lessons about the future of technology. Click after the jump for some quick ideas to help you approach organising from a different angle. (Photograph of votive prayers at the Meiji Shrine, which might put your to-do list into perspective.)
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1:23PM Angus Kidman | Rampant confusion over mobile phone plans and charges (and yes, we’re still waiting for Vodafone to get back to us on its particularly bad case of iPhone plan perplexity) has apparently got so bad that the ACCC is getting involved. ACCC head Graeme Samuel has reminded consumers to be especially careful with excess data fees:
“The ACCC is particularly concerned that consumers may be misled if they are not made sufficiently aware that their data allocations can be exceeded – at significant cost. In the case of smartphones, consumers can download greater amounts of information from the internet than ever before. With this, comes the potential for them to exceed their phone plan value and incur considerable additional charges.”
This is sound advice, which we’d almost deem obvious if so many people hadn’t signed up sight unseen for iPhone deals. The ACCC is asking phone companies to supply evidence of their consumer education programs in this area; given the speed with which many responses are handled in telcos, we’d suggest self-education is still the best option. Read that small print carefully!
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ACCC dives into mobile charges debate
1:23PM Angus Kidman | Rampant confusion over mobile phone plans and charges (and yes, we’re still waiting for Vodafone to get back to us on its particularly bad case of iPhone plan perplexity) has apparently got so bad that the ACCC is getting involved. ACCC head Graeme Samuel has reminded consumers to be especially careful with excess data fees:
“The ACCC is particularly concerned that consumers may be misled if they are not made sufficiently aware that their data allocations can be exceeded – at significant cost. In the case of smartphones, consumers can download greater amounts of information from the internet than ever before. With this, comes the potential for them to exceed their phone plan value and incur considerable additional charges.”
This is sound advice, which we’d almost deem obvious if so many people hadn’t signed up sight unseen for iPhone deals. The ACCC is asking phone companies to supply evidence of their consumer education programs in this area; given the speed with which many responses are handled in telcos, we’d suggest self-education is still the best option. Read that small print carefully!
More »
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