Thursday, August 28, 2008
Fix
Troubleshoot a Slow Home Network
11:30PM Gina Trapani | Not getting the bit transfer rate you used to at home? The New York Times covers how to troubleshoot a slow home network, including rebooting your router and changing the Wi-Fi signal’s channel to avoid interference with neighbours and other devices. More »
Work
Tips for Talking Your Way Into a Job
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | It takes a lot of work to find a great job and make your resume stand out, but that all led up to the big moment—the one where you stop planning and writing and start actually talking to the people you may soon work with. We’re offering up a few tips on staying cool, telling your story without bragging or boring, and being prepared for any curve balls, so take a look before you pick up the pinstripes from the dry cleaners. Photo by jeremyfoo. More »
Organise
Free Replacements for Paid Tools
9:00PM Kevin Purdy | There might be no such thing as truly free beer, but in the world of computers and software, you can often brew your own substitutes to premium paid software and service with just a few double-clicks and some know-how. Aside from the dough you shell out for a computer and net connection, you can get a lot of neat stuff done without spending another cent, and we’ve highlighted a few of our favourite no-cost solutions and work-arounds to tools that normally go for a good bit of cash. Check them out, and chip in with your own cheapskate solutions, after the jump. Photo by Daquella Manera. More »
Fix
12:16PM Angus Kidman |
Having reported on the new beta of IE8, I was keen to get it installed, but soon confronted an error message telling me I had to dump beta 1. That looked tricky, since it didn’t appear in the Vista uninstall programs dialogue, and Microsoft’s own knowledge base article wasn’t any help. However, as this handy blog post points out, Internet Explorer 8 is viewed by Vista as an update, not a program, so you need to click on ‘View installed updates’ in the program uninstall screen to locate and get rid of it. (And yes, of course you have to reboot.) More »
How to get rid of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1
12:16PM Angus Kidman |
Having reported on the new beta of IE8, I was keen to get it installed, but soon confronted an error message telling me I had to dump beta 1. That looked tricky, since it didn’t appear in the Vista uninstall programs dialogue, and Microsoft’s own knowledge base article wasn’t any help. However, as this handy blog post points out, Internet Explorer 8 is viewed by Vista as an update, not a program, so you need to click on ‘View installed updates’ in the program uninstall screen to locate and get rid of it. (And yes, of course you have to reboot.) More »
Work
9:08AM Angus Kidman | Microsoft has released the second beta of Internet Explorer 8, promising “anyone who browses or works on the web will enjoy IE8 Beta 2.” There wasn’t anything in the first beta that would make me switch from Firefox 3 for my day-to-day browsing needs, but I’ll be curious to see if they’ve improved on the sluggish performance of that initial build and how the rather obvious AwesomeBar clone plays in practice. More »
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is out now
9:08AM Angus Kidman | Microsoft has released the second beta of Internet Explorer 8, promising “anyone who browses or works on the web will enjoy IE8 Beta 2.” There wasn’t anything in the first beta that would make me switch from Firefox 3 for my day-to-day browsing needs, but I’ll be curious to see if they’ve improved on the sluggish performance of that initial build and how the rather obvious AwesomeBar clone plays in practice. More »
Organise
HashTab Verifies the Integrity of Your Downloads
8:00AM Adam Pash | Windows only: If you download a lot of applications from the internet, chances are you’ve seen an MD5 hash next to the download link. This unique hash is used to verify the integrity of your download, ensuring that the file you got is in fact the file you were supposed to get. HashTab is a simple utility that adds a new tab to the Properties window of Windows Explorer that displays the file hashes for that file in several commonly used hash formats. To verify the authenticity of a download, then, you would just right-click the downloaded file, select Properties, and then compare the file hash in the new File Hashes tab to the hash posted on the download page. HashTab also compares files on your desktop to help you determine whether or not the files are identical. It’s probably not for everyone, but if you do a lot of downloading and are interested in verifying the authenticity of those files, HashTab is a simple solution. HashTab [via Shell Extension City] More »
Organise
7:45AM Angus Kidman | The recent death of Dave Freeman, author of 100 Things to Do Before You Die, has prompted much discussion of the ‘things to do before you die’ publishing phenomenon, including this interesting overview from the BBC News site. While list-making is, unsurprisingly, popular here at Lifehacker, I’ve never been personally convinced of the virtues of the ‘deathlist’ approach, whether that’s listing places to visit, extreme sports to test or even career goals. For one thing, stuff on a list of things to do ‘before you die’ is rather easy to defer in favour of more urgent tasks. For another, as the BBC article points out, you can easily get into micro-management, creating endless lists of films to see, books to read and places to visit at the expense of doing anything. Have you created a ‘before you die’ list? Do you enjoy reading the books even if you’ve got no intention of following up? Let us know in the comments. More »
Do you have a ‘before you die’ list?
7:45AM Angus Kidman | The recent death of Dave Freeman, author of 100 Things to Do Before You Die, has prompted much discussion of the ‘things to do before you die’ publishing phenomenon, including this interesting overview from the BBC News site. While list-making is, unsurprisingly, popular here at Lifehacker, I’ve never been personally convinced of the virtues of the ‘deathlist’ approach, whether that’s listing places to visit, extreme sports to test or even career goals. For one thing, stuff on a list of things to do ‘before you die’ is rather easy to defer in favour of more urgent tasks. For another, as the BBC article points out, you can easily get into micro-management, creating endless lists of films to see, books to read and places to visit at the expense of doing anything. Have you created a ‘before you die’ list? Do you enjoy reading the books even if you’ve got no intention of following up? Let us know in the comments. More »
Work
UNetbootin Creates USB-Bootable Linux the Easy Way
7:30AM Kevin Purdy | Windows and Linux only: Free bootable image creator UNetbootin automates the downloading, imaging, and installing of Linux distributions onto USB thumb drives, creating a persistent, boot-anywhere desktop. We’ve previously featured rather involved guides to putting Linux on a flash drive, but UNetbootin does it all for you, from downloading the right ISO to setting up a USB stick as a bootable Linux drive. It can also convert almost any bootable ISO, so if you’ve got an old, smaller thumb drive not seeing much use these days, you can use UNetbootin to install a partition editor, a file-recovering live CD, or the Windows password-cracking Ophcrack. UNetbootin is a free download for Windows XP and higher and Linux systems. UNetbootin [via Tombuntu] More »
Fix
How Easily Are Your Accounts Hacked?
6:30AM Adam Pash | Using only information from Facebook, blogs, and resumes, security expert Herbert Thompson hacked into his friend’s bank account in minutes. Makes you want to seriously rethink your answers to lost password “challenge” questions. More »
Fix
