Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Design
Create a Flow Chart in Word 2007
11:10PM Kevin Purdy | Mysticgeek, a blogger over at The How-To Geek’s realm, posts a step-by-step tutorial to creating flow charts with presentation-worthy looks in Microsoft Word 2007. If you’ve got an eye for design, you can add shadows, 3-D effects, and subtle colour shading to your boxes and lines, but if you’re just looking for basic flow chart functionality, you’ll only need to make it halfway down the post. Lacking a copy of Office 2007? Check out a free online tool like Project // DRAW, or do it on paper with a five-minute flowchart template from blogger John Richardson. Create A Flow Chart In Word 2007 [Mysticgeek's Realm | The How-To Geek] More »
Organise
8:33PM Angus Kidman | Google’s addition of Suggest auto-complete suggestions to its main search box isn’t going to be universally popular; one Lifehacker reader commented speedily that it was potentially a major nuisance. If you don’t want suggestions for what you’re looking for — perhaps because you prefer accessing your own query history — relief is at hand. As the Google Operating System reveals, going to Google’s Preferences pane, and selecting ‘Do not provide query suggestions in the search box’ will switch off Suggest. (The option won’t appear if Suggest hasn’t been enabled when you access it.)
Google Operating System
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How to switch off Google Suggest
8:33PM Angus Kidman | Google’s addition of Suggest auto-complete suggestions to its main search box isn’t going to be universally popular; one Lifehacker reader commented speedily that it was potentially a major nuisance. If you don’t want suggestions for what you’re looking for — perhaps because you prefer accessing your own query history — relief is at hand. As the Google Operating System reveals, going to Google’s Preferences pane, and selecting ‘Do not provide query suggestions in the search box’ will switch off Suggest. (The option won’t appear if Suggest hasn’t been enabled when you access it.)
Google Operating System
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Communicate
2:46PM Angus Kidman | Internode today launched its Naked Extreme broadband plans, which potentially overcome one of the biggest problems with ADSL: the distance limit from exchanges, which for conventional services is just above 4 kilometres (and that’s in cable length, not as the crow flies). In exchanges where it has installed its own equipment, Internode now claims it can extend ADSL services as far as 7.5 kilometres, offering a potentially much larger coverage area. If you’re suffering in a broadband blackspot, this would be worth checking out to see if your region is covered. The company also enjoys a solid reputation for customer service, though I would be lying if I said my own recent switch to Internode was trouble-free.
[Internode]
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Internode extends reach of ADSL broadband
2:46PM Angus Kidman | Internode today launched its Naked Extreme broadband plans, which potentially overcome one of the biggest problems with ADSL: the distance limit from exchanges, which for conventional services is just above 4 kilometres (and that’s in cable length, not as the crow flies). In exchanges where it has installed its own equipment, Internode now claims it can extend ADSL services as far as 7.5 kilometres, offering a potentially much larger coverage area. If you’re suffering in a broadband blackspot, this would be worth checking out to see if your region is covered. The company also enjoys a solid reputation for customer service, though I would be lying if I said my own recent switch to Internode was trouble-free.
[Internode]
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Fix
2:09PM Angus Kidman |
No, I wasn’t aware that it was Privacy Awareness Week until this morning either, but this global initiative does seem like a good opportunity to make sure that you’re striking the right balance when it comes to your online (and offline) privacy. The Privacy Commissioner has long offered a handy 10-step guide to protecting your personal information. If your business has accidentally leaked other people’s information the newly-released Guide to Handling Personal Information Security Breaches might be a godsend. Here at Lifehacker, we’ve covered dozens of privacy protection tools and techniques, from keeping files on your own PC private to what to do when using public computers. (If you’re after some freebies, my current local library is giving away Privacy Awareness Week bookmarks which I’m guessing will also be on offer in other libraries and community centres.)
[Privacy Awareness Week]
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What should you do for Privacy Awareness Week?
2:09PM Angus Kidman |
No, I wasn’t aware that it was Privacy Awareness Week until this morning either, but this global initiative does seem like a good opportunity to make sure that you’re striking the right balance when it comes to your online (and offline) privacy. The Privacy Commissioner has long offered a handy 10-step guide to protecting your personal information. If your business has accidentally leaked other people’s information the newly-released Guide to Handling Personal Information Security Breaches might be a godsend. Here at Lifehacker, we’ve covered dozens of privacy protection tools and techniques, from keeping files on your own PC private to what to do when using public computers. (If you’re after some freebies, my current local library is giving away Privacy Awareness Week bookmarks which I’m guessing will also be on offer in other libraries and community centres.)
[Privacy Awareness Week]
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Work
1:50PM Angus Kidman | Word processors might check your spelling and point out obvious grammar problems, but they can’t do much about ambiguity, inappropriate tone or incorrect vocabulary. If you want a real live human to fix up the awkward prose in that assignment or work report, Edit My Text, which offers a pay-as-you-go editing service based in Australia, might fit the bill. Pricing starts at $5.95 to edit 250 words through to $49.95 for a 3000-word piece, with a promised turnaround of 24 hours during the week. We haven’t tested it out ourselves, but Lifehacker reader Sasha says it delivers on what it promises: “Heaps of people who don’t write well would find this a God-send!”
[Edit My Text]
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Edit My Text provides live editing service
1:50PM Angus Kidman | Word processors might check your spelling and point out obvious grammar problems, but they can’t do much about ambiguity, inappropriate tone or incorrect vocabulary. If you want a real live human to fix up the awkward prose in that assignment or work report, Edit My Text, which offers a pay-as-you-go editing service based in Australia, might fit the bill. Pricing starts at $5.95 to edit 250 words through to $49.95 for a 3000-word piece, with a promised turnaround of 24 hours during the week. We haven’t tested it out ourselves, but Lifehacker reader Sasha says it delivers on what it promises: “Heaps of people who don’t write well would find this a God-send!”
[Edit My Text]
More »
Organise
10:26AM Angus Kidman | You might have already encountered Google Suggest, which offers suggestions for what you might be looking for as you type it, on Google Maps or YouTube. (This isn’t the “did you mean” suggestion after the search has performed, but live options in your search dialog). Google has
Google adds Suggest to main search site
10:26AM Angus Kidman | You might have already encountered Google Suggest, which offers suggestions for what you might be looking for as you type it, on Google Maps or YouTube. (This isn’t the “did you mean” suggestion after the search has performed, but live options in your search dialog). Google has
Organise
10:09AM Angus Kidman | A recent survey by airfarewatchdog found that 85% of people would like to see a separate section on planes for people travelling with their kids. While that’s both unrealistic and a little selfish, screaming young ‘uns can add to what’s already a stressful experience for many people. Here’s some suggestions for how to survive the experience, drawing on some ideas from airfarewatchdog. More »
How to survive flying with other people’s kids
10:09AM Angus Kidman | A recent survey by airfarewatchdog found that 85% of people would like to see a separate section on planes for people travelling with their kids. While that’s both unrealistic and a little selfish, screaming young ‘uns can add to what’s already a stressful experience for many people. Here’s some suggestions for how to survive the experience, drawing on some ideas from airfarewatchdog. More »
Work
How to Cook and Use Every Part of a Whole Chicken
8:00AM Adam Pash | Personal finance weblog The Simple Dollar explains how to cook a whole chicken and use every last bit of it for a frugal alternative to buying more expensive chicken breasts. From [$11.50], you can produce a meal of chicken and vegetables to feed a family of four, a meal worth of leftovers, a bag full of chicken pieces in the freezer for a future meal for a family of four, and a bag of chicken stock for another meal or two. That’s five complete meals and the key ingredients for eight more meals. More »
Communicate
7:38AM Angus Kidman | Need a quick translation of a word into English? Type ‘translate’ followed by the word into Google’s search box and it will now look the English translation for you straight away. While this doesn’t offer the range of language pairs found in Google Translate, it’s a quick fix for getting a translation from commonly encountered languages into English (currently, it covers French, Spanish, German, Russian, Chinses, Hindi, Italian, Korean and Portugese, though only into English from those languages).
[Google via Google Operating System]
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Use Google’s translate keyword for on-the-fly translations
7:38AM Angus Kidman | Need a quick translation of a word into English? Type ‘translate’ followed by the word into Google’s search box and it will now look the English translation for you straight away. While this doesn’t offer the range of language pairs found in Google Translate, it’s a quick fix for getting a translation from commonly encountered languages into English (currently, it covers French, Spanish, German, Russian, Chinses, Hindi, Italian, Korean and Portugese, though only into English from those languages).
[Google via Google Operating System]
More »
Organise
