Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Work
Rebuild Your Resume with Five Simple Fixes
10:38PM Kevin Purdy | Once you’ve spotted a great job anywhere online, you need to get your foot in the door. In most cases, your foot is your resume, and every person you’ve ever met with a job has sincere, if contradictory, advice on making yours shinier than all the others. We’ve picked out five bits of advice that actually help you plan, write, and present your resume, rather than rely on oldie-but-goody generic advice. Follow along and dig up that dusty old Word file to see what you can do to make yourself more appealing the next time you’re stopping at the post office on lunch break. Photo by ceeb. More »
Communicate
9:56PM Angus Kidman | One of the big disincentives to signing up to mobile broadband services — especially as your main means of Internet access — is the excess data charges you face when you go over the limit. Primus has just introduced two plans that eliminate data limits in favour of ’shaping’ your connection down to a 64Kbps speed. That’s a familiar model in ADSL, but hasn’t been much used in wireless broadband before. Primus is offering a $49.95 a month plan which is shaped after 6GB and a $79.95 plan which drops after 12GB; for both, you need to sign up for two years and get an access speed of up to 3.6Mbps (via the Optus network). Would a shaped wireless broadband plan appeal to you, or would the lack of speed drive you mad at the end of each month? Share your thoughts in the comments.
[Primusvia Australian IT]
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Primus offers shaping for mobile broadband
9:56PM Angus Kidman | One of the big disincentives to signing up to mobile broadband services — especially as your main means of Internet access — is the excess data charges you face when you go over the limit. Primus has just introduced two plans that eliminate data limits in favour of ’shaping’ your connection down to a 64Kbps speed. That’s a familiar model in ADSL, but hasn’t been much used in wireless broadband before. Primus is offering a $49.95 a month plan which is shaped after 6GB and a $79.95 plan which drops after 12GB; for both, you need to sign up for two years and get an access speed of up to 3.6Mbps (via the Optus network). Would a shaped wireless broadband plan appeal to you, or would the lack of speed drive you mad at the end of each month? Share your thoughts in the comments.
[Primusvia Australian IT]
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Fix
Speed Up Your Vista Installation with vLite on a Flash Drive
9:00PM Lifehacker US Edition | Sometimes the most effective way to clean up Windows is to just wipe your hard drive and start over with a fresh re-installation, and that process can be so long and tedious—unless you know the shortcuts. Power Windows re-installers already know about slipstreaming with nLite for XP and using vLite for Windows Vista to trim down your installation disk to just the bare essentials and speed up the process. If you want to speed up your reinstall even further, you can copy your Windows installation files over to a bootable USB stick that has much better transfer rates. Here’s how. More »
Communicate
7:06PM Angus Kidman | In the UK, Apple has just been busted by an advertising standards body for claiming that the iPhone offers “all the parts of the Internet”, despite the conspicuous absence of support for widely-used technologies such as Java and Flash. Advertising regulations aside, the Safari browser on the iPhone is a major selling point, but there’s no doubt it doesn’t render everything perfectly. How have you found the iPhone browsing experiences? Do you find yourself cursing the absence of Flash, or is a Wi-Fi screen in your pocket more than ample compensation? Share your thoughts in the comments. (I prefer a browser that more actively reformats for mobile screen sizes rather than relying on a zoom feature, but that’s probably a question of taste.)
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Does the iPhone need Java and Flash?
7:06PM Angus Kidman | In the UK, Apple has just been busted by an advertising standards body for claiming that the iPhone offers “all the parts of the Internet”, despite the conspicuous absence of support for widely-used technologies such as Java and Flash. Advertising regulations aside, the Safari browser on the iPhone is a major selling point, but there’s no doubt it doesn’t render everything perfectly. How have you found the iPhone browsing experiences? Do you find yourself cursing the absence of Flash, or is a Wi-Fi screen in your pocket more than ample compensation? Share your thoughts in the comments. (I prefer a browser that more actively reformats for mobile screen sizes rather than relying on a zoom feature, but that’s probably a question of taste.)
More »
Communicate
5:56PM Angus Kidman | You may well have encountered Lasoo, the Australian site which offers digitised versions of junk mail catalogues, before, but the operation just underwent a major update with the launch of u.Lasoo, which essentially adds social networking and shopping comparison . You can enter your own posts which link to Lasoo deals or other shopping bargains, and rate posts from other users. The big difference from similar sites such as OzBargain is that you can also run Google AdSense ads on your posts, using an existing AdSense account. While in practice this might not earn you a lot of money — I suspect posts without extra ads might end up rated higher and attract more users — it’s an interesting twist on a familiar model.
[u.Lasoo via OzBargain]
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u.Lasoo adds social networking and AdSense to bargain shopping
5:56PM Angus Kidman | You may well have encountered Lasoo, the Australian site which offers digitised versions of junk mail catalogues, before, but the operation just underwent a major update with the launch of u.Lasoo, which essentially adds social networking and shopping comparison . You can enter your own posts which link to Lasoo deals or other shopping bargains, and rate posts from other users. The big difference from similar sites such as OzBargain is that you can also run Google AdSense ads on your posts, using an existing AdSense account. While in practice this might not earn you a lot of money — I suspect posts without extra ads might end up rated higher and attract more users — it’s an interesting twist on a familiar model.
[u.Lasoo via OzBargain]
More »
Work
Ubiquity Prototype Offers a Natural Language Web Command Line
5:24PM Gina Trapani | Firefox only: Mozilla Labs unveils the first iteration of a natural language web service connector called Ubiquity, a Firefox extension that adds a command panel to any web page. Ubiquity will look familiar to Quicksilver, Launchy or Enso users: you invoke Ubiquity using its key combination on any page and begin to enter your command in the suggest-as-you-type text field. Ubiquity’s command set consists of “user-centric mashups” that let you perform tasks using various web services in one place using natural language. For example, you can look up a topic on Wikipedia in-page without switching tabs; you can insert a Google map into a new Gmail message (invoke Ubiquity and type “map [business name]“); you can send a web page to your friend John (hit the Ubiquity key combo and type “email to john”); you can select a paragraph of text in a foreign language and translate it in-page, or map a list of addresses from Craiglist by just selecting them. See these examples and more in practice in the introductory video. More »
Communicate
1:12PM Angus Kidman | As if it wasn’t hard enough trying to pick an iPhone data plan, now there’s something else you need to watch out for: thinking that you’re connected for free via Wi-Fi at home, but then discovering that you’re actually using 3G (and being charged accordingly). Danny Gorog at APC rounded up a selection of complaints from users at Whirlpool who all got nasty shocks when the first bill has come in. Have you suffered any iPhone billing problems? Share your experiences in the comments.
iPhone users hit with huge bills for . . . home WiFi [APC]
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Wi-Fi usage can cost on your iPhone
1:12PM Angus Kidman | As if it wasn’t hard enough trying to pick an iPhone data plan, now there’s something else you need to watch out for: thinking that you’re connected for free via Wi-Fi at home, but then discovering that you’re actually using 3G (and being charged accordingly). Danny Gorog at APC rounded up a selection of complaints from users at Whirlpool who all got nasty shocks when the first bill has come in. Have you suffered any iPhone billing problems? Share your experiences in the comments.
iPhone users hit with huge bills for . . . home WiFi [APC]
More »
Work
BurnAware Free Burns CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray
9:00AM Adam Pash | Windows only: BurnAware Free burns data, audio, and video CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs. Since we last mentioned BurnAware, it was bought up by a software company, turned shareware, and has now made the round trip back to freeware—so if you ran into the shareware version when you tried downloading it, BurnAware Free is worth a grab. There are still shareware versions that support advanced features like simultaneous disc writing, but chances are you’ll be happy with the free version. This one could come in particularly handy if and when you actually get a Blu-ray burner on your PC. BurnAware is freeware, Windows only. For other great alternatives, check out previously mentioned ImgBurn or Totally Free Burner. More »
Communicate
Adium Updates, Supports Facebook and Adds New Features
6:00AM Adam Pash | Mac OS X only: The popular open-source instant messaging application Adium has released a significant update chock-full of improvements. Most notably, Adium is working to keep in step with IM apps like Pidgin and Digsby by integrating Facebook chat. In addition, the new release adds Cmd-F search to the contact list (a godsend), significant performance improvements, and lots more. Adium is free, Mac OS X only. Adium More »
Design
