Take a peek behind the curtain here at Lifehacker US’s virtual headquarters in my recent article for Macworld magazine, The Portable Office: Work Anywhere. Longtime readers won’t be surprised to find out that the Lifehacker staff are heavy Gmail, MediaWiki, Google Calendar, Campfire, and del.icio.us users.
Google Maps wants to help you get where you’re going on foot with a new option to switch your step-by-step driving directions to walking directions. The main difference between walking and driving directions appears to be time estimates, with Google estimating your walking pace at about 19 minutes per mile. The walking directions appear to deviate from driving directions at times, though from trying it in my neighbourhood I can’t pinpoint why it’s changing for the walking route. The other main difference is the ominous warning that I should “use caution when walking in unfamiliar areas.” Thanks for the dose of fear, Google. (I guess the same doesn’t apply to driving?) We’d heard some users were seeing walking directions rolled out a few weeks ago, but it looks like Google has recently unveiled the feature to all users (and yep, it works for Australia too). Google Maps [via Search Engine Roundtable]
If there’s one thing geeks and non-geeks alike all share, it’s an aversion to exercise. No matter how much you’d like to slim your waistline and lose the belly, it’s difficult to find a workout routine that not only works, but one that fits your needs and is easy to stick to. Over the years we’ve covered several fitness plans along with free and cheap technology to help you get in shape and stick to a training plan, and I’ve used many of these tools to help run two marathons. Read on for a look at the most simple yet effective plans we’ve covered—along with the best tech tools to help you get and stay in shape. Photo by luiginter.
Windows only: Tiny utility ToDo pins the contents of your todo.txt file onto your PC’s desktop. We already showed you how to incorporate text files onto your desktop using the multi-featured and complicated Samurize; ToDo is the other end of the feature spectrum in that it only does this one thing. Your todo.txt file must live on your desktop to use ToDo, and you can’t (yet?) change the text colour or position of the output, so you’ve got to be using a light-coloured wallpaper for the text to be legible. Hopefully ToDo will get a few more configuration options to make it extra useful soon. ToDo is a free download for Windows only, and requires .NET 3.5 to run. Thanks, Dan! ToDo [CodePlex]
Flickr user Gabriel Radic has an elegantly simple solution for organising icon clutter. His “Layered Desktop” background, free to download in high resolutions, divides your computer space into four areas—an aluminium board, a ruled sheet of paper, a sticky note, and wooden background. The idea is to treat the elements like you would a real desktop, putting temporary or urgent matters on the note, things you haven’t yet organized into the outer parts of the desk, and personal or work projects divided between the board and sheet, for example. The background works best on screens up to 1440 pixels wide. Looking for other subtle organisers? Hit the via link below for four more ideas.
Layered Desktop [via Simple Help]
