Friday, August 1, 2008

Clean Your Grill with an Onion

11:00PM Tamar Weinberg | Wipe your grill clean without the chemical waste by rubbing an onion against the grate of the grill. The Apartment Therapy blog explains that scrubbing a halved onion faced downwards on a heated grate will remove the grime and grit without requiring the hard and frustrating scrubbing of a Brillo pad. Plus, it’s an affordable green alternative that won’t cause putrid smells like most chemicals do. That is, as long as you like the smell of onions. Photo by allygirl520. Clean the Grill with an Onion? [Apartment Therapy] More »

Closing Microsoft Office’s Annoying Clipboard Bar

10:00PM Lifehacker US Edition | As anyone who works in an industry that uses Microsoft Office exclusively can tell you, there are certain Office annoyances that grate on your nerves over time. For me, one of the biggest Office annoyances is the Clipboard bar that decides to dock itself to the side of whichever Office application I had the misfortune of using Ctrl+C in. More »

Apple Pulls iPhone Tethering App

4:07PM Gina Trapani | A $YS9.99 iPhone tethering application called NetShare made a brief appearance in the App Store, but now it’s no longer available. The app purportedly let you use your iPhone’s data connection on your laptop by using it as a proxy server. Of course, you can tether your iPhone 2.0 for free by jailbreaking it. More »

Twitter adds flexibility to privacy protection

12:47PM Angus Kidman | If you want to avoid being followed by a lot of spammers and complete strangers, Twitter’s protected profile model (where you have to approve followers) has always been the way to go. Protection is now much more appealing following a back-end change which makes the approach more flexible. Previously, you had to follow anyone you approved to follow you, which doesn’t make sense for one-way links like news broadcasters. Now you can approve someone to follow you without being forced to follow them at the same time. Useful if you’re concerned with protecting your Twitter privacy. [Twitter Blog] More »

Export iPhone Text Messages to a Spreadsheet

9:00AM Gina Trapani | iPhone 2.0 only: Want to save that string of flirty text messages for posterity (or evidence)? While there’s no super-easy way to get your SMS history off your iPhone, with some elbow grease it’s possible. While this method is a bit complicated and more proof of concept than anything else, let’s take a look at how you can FTP into your iPhone, transfer your text message database to your computer, and open it up in a spreadsheet application like Excel. More »

Virgin Mobile enters iPhone fray: where’s the best deal now?

8:41AM Angus Kidman | As expected, Virgin Mobile has officially launched its iPhone plans in Australia — and they look like a relative bargain. With 3 also launching iPhone data plans (even though it can’t sell the phones), Optus updating its plans soon after launch and Telstra dropping its data charges yesterday, the plan landscape is now looking rather different than it did on iPhone launch day just three weeks ago. Click the jump for our analysis of where the best deals are now (assuming you can find someone with a phone in stock). More »

DIY Wireless Network Printer

8:00AM Gina Trapani | Handy do-it-yourselfer computerguru365 turned a network-capable laser printer into a wireless printer by mounting a small Wi-Fi router inside its case. This is a really cool mod: After installing a network card, he found space inside the printer to mount a small router (running the DD-WRT router firmware, no less), wired up and mounted LED lights, and tucked both the power and Ethernet cable hook-ups inside. This project’s not for the timid, and not really necessary, as you can just set the router on top or near the printer—but the result looks really good. (Of course you’ll get better bandwidth by keeping the antenna outside the printer.) DIY computers and electronics: DIY Wireless Network Printer [DIY computers and electronics via ] More »

Turn a bookend into a notebook stand

7:29AM Angus Kidman | You can spend quite a lot of money on a notebook stand, but here’s an idea that costs a lot less: use a $0.95 Bokis bookend from IKEA. Something to bear in mind when summer approaches and you need some air circulating around your beloved PC. (If you’re in the mood for saving money, the same post at IKEA Hacker also looks at how you can use a cheap shoe rack as a monitor stand.) [Eganz via IKEA Hacker] More »

Delicious Bookmark Site Overhauled and Renamed

6:20AM Gina Trapani | Popular social bookmarking site del.icio.us is now Delicious.com and it’s sporting a brand new look and a speedier backend. No more URL confusion! Watch a quick video of the transformation. More »

Save Time and Typing with Outlook 2007’s Quick Parts

6:09AM Lifehacker US Edition | Outlook users, if you find yourself entering the same things into email messages, you should take a look at the Quick Parts feature, which saves snippets of both text and images for easy reuse. While Gina briefly mentioned this feature in her guide to Tweaking Outlook to empty your inbox faster, let’s take a closer look at how to use it. More »