Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Organise
Better Tech Habits
11:30PM Gina Trapani | For a quick rundown of how to overhaul your work habits Lifehacker-style, check out my most recent PC World story, 20 Tech Habits to Improve Your Life. Most of the items on the list will be old hat to longtime readers, but it’s a good overview for newer folks looking for better ways to telecommute, back up, use keyboard shortcuts, and get email under control. More »
Fix
Turn Off WebSlices in IE8 Beta
11:03PM Kevin Purdy | Anyone testing out the new, but familiar, features in IE8 Beta 2 might find themselves annoyed by constant mouse-over reminders of the browser’s WebSlice function. Tech-Recipes.com shows how to turn the WebSlice nags off, using an option stashed deep in the preferences menu. More »
Organise
BackType Tracks Your Comments or Others’ Across Blogs
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Free web service BackType aggregates all the comments you make on various blogs and web sites. The site uses the URLs entered in commenter forms or in the posts themselves to track a person’s musings, or can combine URLs under a single account URL. It’s a great tool for those who want to catch up on discussions they left behind, but the site also provides a search engine of its indexed comments and links to see another social-browser’s comments. This type of URL tracking would normally leave the door open for comment impersonators, so BackType offers a moderation option to have you approve any comments posted under your name. BackType is a free service, requires a sign-up to use. BackType [via Download Squad] More »
Communicate
Write Your Own Your Own IM Bot
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | The Digital Inspiration blog details a relatively simple method for creating your own interactive instant messenger “bot” that will take action once it receives an IM. Creating the bot requires an invitation from the IMified service, as well as some web space to host a bot script. Once you’re set up, you’ve got an online presence that can reply with custom messages to chatters, send out group emails based on what you type to your secret IM contact, and much more. Hit the link below for a tutorial and example Google search script. How to Write Your Own IM Bot in Less Than 5 Minutes [Digital Inspiration] More »
Design
3:20PM Angus Kidman | Design for web sites and other electronic media is frequently a derivative process, with ideas being copied from site to site in an endlessly self-consuming cycle, so sometimes it pays to seek inspiration from a different field. One of the feature sessions at the recent Melbourne Writers Festival was about how book designers come up with their ideas, and I went along to seek out some fresh creative strategies. Read on to learn about the tactics used by three award-winning book designers and how you can adapt them for other design projects, online or elsewhere. More »
Learn better design from book designers
3:20PM Angus Kidman | Design for web sites and other electronic media is frequently a derivative process, with ideas being copied from site to site in an endlessly self-consuming cycle, so sometimes it pays to seek inspiration from a different field. One of the feature sessions at the recent Melbourne Writers Festival was about how book designers come up with their ideas, and I went along to seek out some fresh creative strategies. Read on to learn about the tactics used by three award-winning book designers and how you can adapt them for other design projects, online or elsewhere. More »
Organise
3:15PM Angus Kidman | There’s plenty of baby naming resources on the Internet, but the majority have a US-centric focus and thus discuss names like Liondrae that with any luck we won’t see on Australian shores for a while. One useful exception is the Baby Names Explorer, which lets you see how popular a given name was in each decade over the past 100 years, using data from the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. My own name (Angus) has enjoyed a steady surge in popularity, and I’m pleased to see no Liondraes in sight. If you want to work out whether your future offspring will be the only child in their class with that name, this is a good place to start (though I implore you to resist the other trend of mindlessly mangling spelling to make a name “unique”). Thanks Sean!
[100 years of baby names]
More »
Ranking potential baby names by popularity
3:15PM Angus Kidman | There’s plenty of baby naming resources on the Internet, but the majority have a US-centric focus and thus discuss names like Liondrae that with any luck we won’t see on Australian shores for a while. One useful exception is the Baby Names Explorer, which lets you see how popular a given name was in each decade over the past 100 years, using data from the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. My own name (Angus) has enjoyed a steady surge in popularity, and I’m pleased to see no Liondraes in sight. If you want to work out whether your future offspring will be the only child in their class with that name, this is a good place to start (though I implore you to resist the other trend of mindlessly mangling spelling to make a name “unique”). Thanks Sean!
[100 years of baby names]
More »
Communicate
1:19PM Angus Kidman | Having recently rolled out an iPhone app, electronic program guide (EPG) provider IceTV continues to expand its platform repertoire with the launch of a Facebook application where users can update their recording schedule, see how their tastes in TV compare to other friends using the service and get program recommendations. As ever, you have to pay to subscribe to IceTV itself, but it still remains the most flexible Australian EPG option in terms of device support. Non-subscribers can get a free trial account to access the basic Facebook service if they wish. It’d be good to see better integration with Facebook itself, but if you’re already spending a large chunk of your day on the site, this is a simple way to schedule last-minute recordings.
[IceTV via Gizmodo AU]
More »
IceTV adds Facebook application
1:19PM Angus Kidman | Having recently rolled out an iPhone app, electronic program guide (EPG) provider IceTV continues to expand its platform repertoire with the launch of a Facebook application where users can update their recording schedule, see how their tastes in TV compare to other friends using the service and get program recommendations. As ever, you have to pay to subscribe to IceTV itself, but it still remains the most flexible Australian EPG option in terms of device support. Non-subscribers can get a free trial account to access the basic Facebook service if they wish. It’d be good to see better integration with Facebook itself, but if you’re already spending a large chunk of your day on the site, this is a simple way to schedule last-minute recordings.
[IceTV via Gizmodo AU]
More »
Organise
11:09AM Angus Kidman | The government-funded GROCERYchoice supermarket comparison site has survived its controversial first month and has been refreshed with a new set of data. The latest calculations suggest that Coles is the cheapest supermarket chain in 40 of the 61 regions assessed, reducing its dominance from the first survey. However, the fundamental issue remains: with no knowledge of the contents of the test baskets used, it’s hard to meaningfully relate this information to your own weekly shopping habits. As money-saving tactics go, eating a cheap meal every week or taking up minimal cooking would probably help you out more.
[GROCERYchoice]
More »
GROCERYchoice gets updated data, no fundamental improvements
11:09AM Angus Kidman | The government-funded GROCERYchoice supermarket comparison site has survived its controversial first month and has been refreshed with a new set of data. The latest calculations suggest that Coles is the cheapest supermarket chain in 40 of the 61 regions assessed, reducing its dominance from the first survey. However, the fundamental issue remains: with no knowledge of the contents of the test baskets used, it’s hard to meaningfully relate this information to your own weekly shopping habits. As money-saving tactics go, eating a cheap meal every week or taking up minimal cooking would probably help you out more.
[GROCERYchoice]
More »
Work
Can Google Build a Better Browser?
9:44AM Gina Trapani | Holy browser wars, Batgirl! Google announces it will release a brand new open source web browser tomorrow, called Google Chrome. Whaa? Yeah, that’s what we said. Here’s what Google says: On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go. More »
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