Wednesday, September 3, 2008
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Rohos Mini Drive Encrypts Your USB Drive Files
11:30PM Lifehacker US Edition | Windows only: Encryption tool Rohos Mini Drive secures the files on your flash drive—but unlike our favourite encryption utility TrueCrypt, it creates partitions you can access even without administrative access on the computer in question (like a coffee shop workstation). Creating a drive is simple: Install Rohos Mini Drive on your primary workstation, plug in the USB drive you wish to secure and the wizard walks you through the rest. The only hiccup you may experience is if you have multiple USB drives plugged in when you run the wizard; just make sure you specify which drive if the auto detection picks your camera’s SD card instead of your USB drive. Rohos Mini Drive has an autorun feature which can launch applications when it opens the partition, and a virtual keyboard for an added layer of security. The application uses AES 256 bit encryption and currently has a partition size limit of 1GB. Rohos Mini Drive is a free download for Windows only. Thanks, Pavv! Rohos Mini Drive [Rohos] More »
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What Bugs Newcomers About Linux
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | Gary Parkinson, editor of BBC 5’s Wake Up to Money show, takes his first dive into Linux and reflects on what keeps him from loving it—terminal commands, iPod problems, and, of course, hit-and-miss wireless. You’ve read why your fellow readers switched to Linux; do problems like Parkinson’s explain why you haven’t given Tux a try? More »
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RoboTask Automation App Free Today Only
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | Windows only: The Giveaway of the Day web site is offering the normally $120 RoboTask 3.1 software as a free download and registration for today only. If you’re forced to perform perfunctory file operations or software actions regularly, like renaming and zipping up a folder of files or uploading a regularly-updated file to an FTP server, RoboTask might be perfect for you. The open-source scripting tool AutoHotkey is always free, but if you prefer a click-and-choose interface to learning AutoHotkey scripts, RoboTask is a fairly straightforward way of making your computer do the menial work. RoboTask is free at the Giveaway of the Day web site for the next 19 hours only, and is for Windows systems only. RoboTask 3.1 [Giveaway of the Day] More »
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9:25PM Angus Kidman | The BlackBerry Bold largely replicates the keyboard of its predecessor the Curve, but has one notable difference: no num lock key. If you do want to type in a long series of numbers without holding down the alt key, hit alt and then the left shift key. You can disable num lock with alt or either shift key, and you shouldn’t need it in fields (like contacts number entry) which expect numbers anyway. If you want more BlackBerry keyboard shortcut goodness, check out handy shortcuts for locking and silencing your Bold.
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Enabling num lock on the BlackBerry Bold
9:25PM Angus Kidman | The BlackBerry Bold largely replicates the keyboard of its predecessor the Curve, but has one notable difference: no num lock key. If you do want to type in a long series of numbers without holding down the alt key, hit alt and then the left shift key. You can disable num lock with alt or either shift key, and you shouldn’t need it in fields (like contacts number entry) which expect numbers anyway. If you want more BlackBerry keyboard shortcut goodness, check out handy shortcuts for locking and silencing your Bold.
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9:22PM Angus Kidman | While the recent cut in interest rates is a welcome relief to mortgage holders, that hasn’t stopped a flurry of newspaper coverage on how we still like to spend too much, save too little and whine about our super. But are things really that bad?
Long-term surveys of Australians by Quantum Market Research suggests that despite the apparently inexorable rise of consumerism, most of us are quite confident that we’ve got it right. As analyst David Chalke put it at a recent conference I attended in Canberra while discussing the viewpoint of “average Australians”:
They are not going to hell in a credit-fuelled handbasket as they stuff their McMansions with plasma screens in their increasingly unhappy lives. We’ve actually got a lot smarter at managing money.
In particular, Chalke noted that the majority of us have learnt to make intelligent use of credit cards, paying them off before any interest falls due.
Do you feel that you’ve get money management under control? Educate us with your experiences, good or bad, in the comments.
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How Aussies are getting better at money management
9:22PM Angus Kidman | While the recent cut in interest rates is a welcome relief to mortgage holders, that hasn’t stopped a flurry of newspaper coverage on how we still like to spend too much, save too little and whine about our super. But are things really that bad?
Long-term surveys of Australians by Quantum Market Research suggests that despite the apparently inexorable rise of consumerism, most of us are quite confident that we’ve got it right. As analyst David Chalke put it at a recent conference I attended in Canberra while discussing the viewpoint of “average Australians”:
They are not going to hell in a credit-fuelled handbasket as they stuff their McMansions with plasma screens in their increasingly unhappy lives. We’ve actually got a lot smarter at managing money.
In particular, Chalke noted that the majority of us have learnt to make intelligent use of credit cards, paying them off before any interest falls due.
Do you feel that you’ve get money management under control? Educate us with your experiences, good or bad, in the comments.
More »
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Half the world won’t use keyboard shortcuts
8:21PM Angus Kidman | I’ve long been a passionate advocate of keyboard shortcuts, and they’re a core part of the Lifehacker ethos; if you want to make your time in front of a computer more productive, then learning the keyboard shortcuts for your commonly used apps can save considerable time. But it seems that lots of people don’t see it that way. More »
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Picasa Updates, Adds Face Recognition
8:00AM Adam Pash | Google’s Picasa is seeing updates on both the web- and desktop-based versions of the popular photo management application. The biggest new feature is coming to Picasa Web Albums in the form of people tagging, a Facebook-style tool that lets you tag faces in your photos by name and then view pictures of that person by simply searching. The difference between this and Facebook is that Google identifies all of the faces in your pictures automatically and groups together the faces that it thinks are the same, making people tagging extremely quick and easy to do. According to technology web site CNET, Google will also be releasing a new beta version of Picasa for the desktop today, the main improvements to which include a movie maker and online synchronisation of every edit of a photo. The download isn’t showing up for me yet, but people tagging is live, so give it a try and let’s hear what you think in the comments. Picasa Web Albums [via CNET] More »
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Which Chrome Feature Do You Most Want in Your Browser?
7:00AM Gina Trapani | Now that you’ve seen what Google’s new beta web browser Chrome can do, do any of its features inspire lust? Or is Chrome yet another minimalist browser that will never live up to the high bar established players have already set? If you’re a Mac or Linux user without access to Chrome—or heck, just a power user interested in Chrome’s take on web surfing, tell us what features had you saying, “I wish I had that in my browser.” More »
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Tune Instructor Brings Advanced ID3 Editing to Your Mac
6:30AM Adam Pash | Mac OS X only: Free application Tune Instructor adds advanced ID3 tag editing for your iTunes library through a smart third-party utility. The iTunes helper boasts features like search and replace for your tags, or it can set ID3 tags from a filename or set filenames from ID3 tags. It can automatically search and embed album art or lyrics—though I ran into issues with German-language lyrics sometimes showing up rather than English. The application has a lot of potential, and works well overall. I did run into a few peculiarities when testing it, but overall it offers advanced, worthwhile ID3 editing beyond what iTunes offers by default. Tune Instructor is freeware, Mac OS X only. Tune Instructor [via Cool OSX Apps] More »
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