While books can be a dime a dozen these days (literally in some cases), sometimes you have a damaged book on your hands that a simple trip to Barnes and Noble can’t replace. For books with sentimental, historical, or other value to you it’s possible to perform simple repairs on your own. The members of the Preservation Services of the Dartmouth College Library have put together a comprehensive beginner’s guide to repairing damaged books.
The New York Times’ Marci Alboher (yes, that Marci Alboher) interviews Gina (yes, that’s me) about programmer productivity habits, passwords, to-do lists, cloud computing, and my dirty little (unproductive) secret. Here’s the full Q&A.
If you liked the good looks of XBMC-based social media centre Boxee when we gave you the tour but have been waiting for the promised Linux version, your wait is over. [via]
Windows only: Free application MakeInstantPlayer converts any video file into an EXE file complete with the player and codecs needed to play it. If you’ve ever shared a video with a non-tech-savvy friend just to get reports back that they couldn’t get it to play, this application offers a simple solution: Just run your video through MakeInstantPlayer and send the resulting EXE instead (which in my test is about 5 MB bigger than the original). Your friend can simply run the EXE—which bundles the MPlayer media player and everything else they need to play back the file—and start watching. It may not be an application you’ll use every day, but under the right circumstances, this clever app might be just what you need.
MakeInstantPlayer [via Hackosis]As of yesterday’s announcement of CalDAV support in Google Calendar, you can now sync your Google Calendar with virtually any popular desktop calendar for free. Not only can you enjoy your favourite desktop calendar software and still get the benefit of the web interface, you can also sync any desktop calendar with any other across platforms using GCal as a go-between. Let’s take a comprehensive look at how to set up bidirectional syncing between Google Calendar and your favourite desktop calendar—from Outlook and iCal to Sunbird and Thunderbird—for free.
Webapp Blow Up displays Flickr photos in a full-screen slideshow for closeup browsing. When you want to show off your vacation photos from this summer that you uploaded to Flickr, head over to Blow Up Your Flickr and enter your username. Blow Up will pull down your photos and display them full screen, with a hideaway thumbnail navigation. Web site owners, you can even download the Blow Up app and install it on your own site.
Blow Up [via ReadWriteWeb]Windows Vista’s Aero looks and effects are generally nice to look at, but when you’re trying to squeeze the last bit of power and life out of a battery, or just running some memory-hungry stuff, you don’t always need them. Windows Vista Magazine details a registry hack you can make to add “Aero On” and “Aero Off” shortcuts to your desktop right-click menu, making it simple and quick to toggle the fancier stuff (it’s the second major tip, about 1/3 down the page). We’ve already shown how to disable Aero for particular programs, but this trick might work better for working on the go, gaming, or other situations where you need to cut out the whiz-bang stuff. PC Heaven [Windows Vista Magazine]
Self-educator Josh Kaufman says you can bypass business school an earn a “Personal MBA” by reading the best books in business—and he offers 77 of his picks. Kaufman writes: Top MBA programs don’t have a monopoly on advanced business knowledge: you can teach yourself everything you need to know to succeed in life and at work. The Personal MBA Recommended Reading List features only the very best business books available, based on thousands of hours of research. So skip b-school and the $100,000 loan: you can get a world-class business education simply by reading these books.
Windows only: Free utility Desktop Media does the simple but immensely helpful task of putting instant icons for removable media on your Windows desktop. That means no more clicking through to “My Computer” to grab pictures off your thumb drive, CD, external hard drive, or whatever else you normally plug in. We’ve featured similar software before, but Desktop Media uses far less memory than such programs—in fact, just 1.6 MB on my Vista system. No small feat, and quite a nice utility. Desktop Media is a free download for Windows systems only. Thanks, Ryan! Desktop Media [Ian Perez]
