Friday, August 15, 2008
Fix
Hot Wire Your Car
11:15PM Kevin Purdy | Wired’s How-To Wiki details how the bane of many an unlucky car-owner’s existence, the ability to start a car without a key, can be mastered and used for good, particularly if you find yourself stuck somewhere without a key or an ignition that just won’t cooperate. It starts out with a low-tech screwdriver hack and moves onto the electrical disembowelment of the steering column you’ve seen in countless flicks (or true crime shows). It is, of course, entirely illegal, in a felonious way, to hot-wire a car that’s not yours, but knowing how to do it teaches you a bit more about cars, and maybe makes you useful in one or two crucial life moments. Hit the link for the lesson, and share your own (legal) hot-wiring tales in the comments. Hot Wire Your Car [How-To Wiki] More »
Design
Strata Human Theme Modernises Firefox in Ubuntu
10:37PM Kevin Purdy | One of Firefox 3’s notable improvements was shipping with themes that matched the native operating system. In Ubuntu, that meant tiny, vaguely cartoonish orange arrows, which, while colour-coordinated, was a disappointment to some. The Strata Human 1.0 Firefox theme does a nice job of adding the larger, rounded buttons of XP and Windows, with a perfectly-matched orange-brown coloration. If that back button looks a bit too big to you, Gina’s shown us how to take it down a peg. Strata Human 1.0 is a free download for Firefox 3. Strata Human 1.0 [Firefox Add-ons via Daily Gyan] More »
Fix
Phlox Adds Vista-Style, Extension-Free Renaming to Windows XP
10:04PM Kevin Purdy | Windows XP only: Free system utility Phlox has a single, small purpose, but it’s one that’s caused certain people to hunt down free ways to get Vista’s features into XP. That feature is a smarter renaming scheme, one that doesn’t make you re-type the file’s extension just to change its name. Hit the F2 key on a file, and it does its advertised job. As the FreewareGenius blog points out, however, it uses about 5MB of memory to get the job done, so fans of scripting utility AutoHotKey can get the same feature, or check out system-wide tweakers in Adam’s XP-like-Vista guide that do the same. Phlox is a free download for Windows systems only. Phlox [MysterCrowley via FreewareGenius.com] More »
Design
How to Block Distracting Animated Favicons
9:00PM Lifehacker US Edition | If you’ve spent any time stumbling around the net, you’ve run across a site using an irritating animated favicon—a moving icon that shows up in the address bar, the site’s tab, and even the bookmarks toolbar in Firefox. (Here’s one at the DHL site.) While there’s no way by default to disable animated icons in Firefox other than completely disabling all favicons, there are a couple of possible ways to block a particularly distracting web page icon. More »
Work
2:41PM Angus Kidman | Here at Lifehacker improving your productivity is one of our big goals, but we’re not such getting-things-done zealots that we don’t recognise the value in occasionally aiming to do nothing whatsoever. In a recent piece for The Guardian, Tom Hodgkinson makes a good argument for why being unproductive can have benefits:
Faffing is completely harmless, whereas its opposite – dynamic, purposeful activity – is often very harmful. Faffers do not tend to kill people or make them work 12-hour days or sell them shoddy merchandise or lend them vast sums of money that they cannot pay back.
Hodgkinson also offers an amusing list of ways to waste time, though even making a list is perhaps contrary in this context. But reading it is a good way of faffing your way to Friday’s close.
The joys of simply faffing around [The Guardian]
More »
Why faffing about can be a good idea
2:41PM Angus Kidman | Here at Lifehacker improving your productivity is one of our big goals, but we’re not such getting-things-done zealots that we don’t recognise the value in occasionally aiming to do nothing whatsoever. In a recent piece for The Guardian, Tom Hodgkinson makes a good argument for why being unproductive can have benefits:
Faffing is completely harmless, whereas its opposite – dynamic, purposeful activity – is often very harmful. Faffers do not tend to kill people or make them work 12-hour days or sell them shoddy merchandise or lend them vast sums of money that they cannot pay back.
Hodgkinson also offers an amusing list of ways to waste time, though even making a list is perhaps contrary in this context. But reading it is a good way of faffing your way to Friday’s close.
The joys of simply faffing around [The Guardian]
More »
Communicate
2:25PM Angus Kidman | We’ve covered Text2Go, an Aussie-developed automatic text-to-speech converter, before, but the newest release has a very Web 2.0 twist: it accepts corrections from users when words get mispronounced and adds those into the program’s overall speech generation engine. No automatic service can be perfect, but if you want a block of text converted to speech (easy way to absorb material from your iPod while jogging), Text2Go is worth a look. The full version of Text2Go goes $US25, but you can download a 30 day trial version for nothing. [Text2Go]
More »
Text2Go adds user corrections to automatic speech service
2:25PM Angus Kidman | We’ve covered Text2Go, an Aussie-developed automatic text-to-speech converter, before, but the newest release has a very Web 2.0 twist: it accepts corrections from users when words get mispronounced and adds those into the program’s overall speech generation engine. No automatic service can be perfect, but if you want a block of text converted to speech (easy way to absorb material from your iPod while jogging), Text2Go is worth a look. The full version of Text2Go goes $US25, but you can download a 30 day trial version for nothing. [Text2Go]
More »
Organise
2:14PM Angus Kidman | I encountered a minor nuisance while at Delhi airport on my way back from a quick trip to India: the Wi-Fi network you have to pay for. I stumped up for the connectivity, but a colleague had less luck — not because he wasn’t willing to pay, but because the service in question would only accept Visa, and not MasterCard.
When I first began travelling the world, it was accepted wisdom that you needed both Visa and MasterCard to be sure of credit cards being accepted, with the former predominant in Europe and the latter a necessity for the US. These days, I find that pretty much anywhere that takes credit cards accepts both — but as the Wi-Fi example shows, the experience isn’t universal. Having a backup card certainly avoids that kind of problem, and also gives you an emergency option if one card is damaged or stolen (especially if you don’t store them together).
But is that a sensible strategy? Is carrying two cards just in case one doesn’t work fiscal prudence gone mad? What other strategies do you use to avoid being caught out when it comes to paying for goods on the road? Share your thoughts in the comments.
More »
How many credit cards should you travel with?
2:14PM Angus Kidman | I encountered a minor nuisance while at Delhi airport on my way back from a quick trip to India: the Wi-Fi network you have to pay for. I stumped up for the connectivity, but a colleague had less luck — not because he wasn’t willing to pay, but because the service in question would only accept Visa, and not MasterCard.
When I first began travelling the world, it was accepted wisdom that you needed both Visa and MasterCard to be sure of credit cards being accepted, with the former predominant in Europe and the latter a necessity for the US. These days, I find that pretty much anywhere that takes credit cards accepts both — but as the Wi-Fi example shows, the experience isn’t universal. Having a backup card certainly avoids that kind of problem, and also gives you an emergency option if one card is damaged or stolen (especially if you don’t store them together).
But is that a sensible strategy? Is carrying two cards just in case one doesn’t work fiscal prudence gone mad? What other strategies do you use to avoid being caught out when it comes to paying for goods on the road? Share your thoughts in the comments.
More »
Organise
PeaZip Compresses and Extracts File Archives
8:00AM Adam Pash | Windows/Linux: Open-source file archive manager PeaZip creates and extracts files from a number of the most popular archiving formats, including ZIP, RAR, 7Z, and more. Our nod for file archive managers normally goes to 7-Zip, but with an attractive, user-friendly interface, customizable right-click options, and a standalone portable version you can add to your thumb drive, PeaZip has a charm worth checking out. PeaZip is free, Windows and Linux only. PeaZip [SourceForge via CyberNet] More »
Work
Nano Wireless Mouse Clings to Your Laptop
6:00AM Adam Pash | The Logitech V550 cordless laser mouse is perfect for laptop lovers on the go who prefer a mouse to the trackpad with its clip-and-go dock. Just affix the small dock to your laptop, and whenever you need to move around, clip the mouse to the dock and go. This diminutive mouse also boasts a tiny wireless receiver so you don’t have a huge USB dongle hanging out the side of your laptop. It’s a simple idea, but if you’re one of many who prefer the mouse to the trackpad, it’s a very clever idea. The V550 will set you back around $60. V550 Nano Cordless Laser Mouse for Notebooks [Logitech via Gizmodo] More »
Work
