Thursday, July 24, 2008
Organise
Declutter Your Car With The Three-Bag Approach
11:30PM Lifehacker US Edition | At some point nearly everyone has had a collection of empty bottles and fast food containers riding shotgun with them. Take a few tips from Sue Brenner, a new contributor at the organizational blog Unclutterer, and have your car in order in no time. Her tips range from diving the car into quadrants and working systematically through them to sorting all the material you find into three bags. Along with your trash and recycling bins, bring three grocery bags with you when you clean out your car. Label the first one “Does Not Belong Here.” Write on the next one, “Give Away/Return,” and label the final one, “Storage.” Each bag will serve as a receptacle for the variety of things that found their way into your car. The “Does Not Belong Here” bag, for example, would be good for tossing in the spoons, client folders, and other items you want to keep but don’t belong in your vehicle. Return these items to their homes after you’ve completed your car uncluttering project. More »
Organise
Turn ‘View Hidden Files’ On and Off in Windows with a Shortcut
11:14PM Kevin Purdy | The CyberNet blog has posted a seriously helpful cut-and-paste script that anyone can turn into a shortcut to turn Windows’ hidden file showing on and off. Normally, showing hidden files—like folders named with a starting “.” and configuration files—is accessed through the options in Windows Explorer windows or shell extension tools, but this Virtual Basic script can be stashed anywhere and accessed from a keyboard shortcut. Great solution for those who alternate between showing and hiding hidden files. Shortcut to Show/Hide Hidden Files [CyberNet] More »
Organise
Tomfox Shuttles Web Text into Tomboy Notes
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Linux with Firefox only: Free Firefox extension Tomfox does exactly what a fan of the Tomboy note system might think. Adding a “Create Tomboy note” option to Firefox’s right-click menu, it creates a new note from selected text. Even better, it puts the title of the web page at the top, and a link to the page at the bottom of your new note, helping you remember just where you grabbed that text from. Tomfox is a free download, works with Linux/Firefox and the Tomboy note program. Tomfox [via Paul Mellors] More »
Fix
EjectUSB Forces Program to Let Go of Your Thumb Drive
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | Windows only: EjectUSB could be considered the nuclear option of USB drives that just won’t property eject in Windows, because there’s an “application or process” accessing it. Put EjectUSB on your thumb drive and run it, and the program will mercilessly kill every program, process, or anything else touching your drive, letting you safely remove it without any fear of data loss. It’s obviously something you don’t want to use when you’ve got important files open, but it’s also a lot more convenient than restarting the computer. EjectUSB is a free download for Windows only; hit the via link below for a command line alternative for Linux systems. EjectUSB [via Daily Gyan] More »
Organise
9:13PM Angus Kidman | Standalone Outlook users suffer a little when it comes to getting their calendars and contacts into the cloud. Google offers a synchronisation tool for its Calendar, but the software is (at least in my experience) far too unstable to use. Now Microsoft itself has entered the fray, launching a beta version of release 12.1 of its Outlook Office Connector, which lets you sync information from Outlook into Live (Hotmail). Microsoft has offered this service before, but used to charge for it; now it’s on offer for free. Beta is very much the word; we had trouble getting anything to sync at all. If you’ve had more success, let us know your experiences in the comments. [Microsoft via Official Outlook Team Blog]
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Outlook Office Connector offers free sync to Live
9:13PM Angus Kidman | Standalone Outlook users suffer a little when it comes to getting their calendars and contacts into the cloud. Google offers a synchronisation tool for its Calendar, but the software is (at least in my experience) far too unstable to use. Now Microsoft itself has entered the fray, launching a beta version of release 12.1 of its Outlook Office Connector, which lets you sync information from Outlook into Live (Hotmail). Microsoft has offered this service before, but used to charge for it; now it’s on offer for free. Beta is very much the word; we had trouble getting anything to sync at all. If you’ve had more success, let us know your experiences in the comments. [Microsoft via Official Outlook Team Blog]
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Design
Would a Prettier Linux Make You Switch?
9:00PM Gina Trapani | Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth (who we interviewed last year) announced that he’s out to make Linux a better-looking operating system than Mac OS X—within two years. An ambitious goal! At O’Reilly’s OSCON conference this week, Shuttleworth said: “I think the great task in front of us in the next two years is to lift the experience of the Linux desktop from something stable and usable and not pretty, to something that’s art,” Shuttleworth said. “Think of the way the iPhone uses a pure software experience, it abstracts away all the hardware,” he said. “You can paint anything on the screen because it’s all software.” More »
Communicate
8:40AM Angus Kidman | ABC iView (called Playback during its beta period) has now been opened up to all Australian Internet users, offering access to a fair chunk of the national broadcaster’s output on full-screen streaming video across six channels. Unlike the Windows-only ABC Shop Download, the site is accessible on any browser supporting Flash (so Windows, Mac and Linux users all have options). There’s plenty to keep you entertained: a rough calculation suggests there’s already about 80 hours of programming on the service, the news channel will be updated on a daily basis, and the ABC has promised additional channels in the future. iView is free to access (via an Australian connection; the service is blocked overseas). As with all streaming media, you’ll need to keep an eye on your download cap if you use the service extensively — unless you’re with iiNet, which is excluding iView from its quota.
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ABC launches free iView online TV service
8:40AM Angus Kidman | ABC iView (called Playback during its beta period) has now been opened up to all Australian Internet users, offering access to a fair chunk of the national broadcaster’s output on full-screen streaming video across six channels. Unlike the Windows-only ABC Shop Download, the site is accessible on any browser supporting Flash (so Windows, Mac and Linux users all have options). There’s plenty to keep you entertained: a rough calculation suggests there’s already about 80 hours of programming on the service, the news channel will be updated on a daily basis, and the ABC has promised additional channels in the future. iView is free to access (via an Australian connection; the service is blocked overseas). As with all streaming media, you’ll need to keep an eye on your download cap if you use the service extensively — unless you’re with iiNet, which is excluding iView from its quota.
More »
Work
Orca Browser is Avant for Firefox
8:00AM Adam Pash | Windows only: The free Orca Browser is a web browser based on the Firefox 3 core with the same speed and features of Firefox in addition to a handful of extra features. Those extra features include a built-in ad blocker, flash blocker, auto form-filler, and perhaps most useful, an online storage account that syncs your bookmarks, auto-form information, and more with an online account. Orca is made by the same folks who developed the freeware Avant Browser, which is based on Internet Explorer with an emphasis on speed and improved features. More »
Organise
7:10AM Angus Kidman | Following a restricted beta which began last December, Google has made its Wikipedia competitor Knol open for general use. While Knol borrows the general concept of “anyone can contribute” common to most wiki projects, it has a slight twist, as Google’s software engineers explain:
With Knol, we are introducing a new method for authors to work together that we call “moderated collaboration.” With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public. This allows authors to accept suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of their content. After all, their name is associated with it!
Knol is free to use, requires a Google account to sign in. [Knol via Official Google Blog]
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Google opens up Knol wiki creation tool
7:10AM Angus Kidman | Following a restricted beta which began last December, Google has made its Wikipedia competitor Knol open for general use. While Knol borrows the general concept of “anyone can contribute” common to most wiki projects, it has a slight twist, as Google’s software engineers explain:
With Knol, we are introducing a new method for authors to work together that we call “moderated collaboration.” With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public. This allows authors to accept suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of their content. After all, their name is associated with it!
Knol is free to use, requires a Google account to sign in. [Knol via Official Google Blog]
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Fix
