Friday, September 26, 2008

Keep A Gratitude Journal To Help Falling Asleep

10:30PM Kevin Purdy | If you’re finding it hard to fall asleep once your head’s on the pillow, even after reducing pre-sleep screen time, the Dumb Little Man blog has a few suggestions. Along with meditation, eating right, and novel reading, freelancer Monkia Mundell suggests a bit of writing: Some people prefer to write into a diary, while others use a normal notepad. Whatever works for you is perfectly fine. Others yet use a gratitude journal. I love this, because it helps me to focus on the positive things in my life, rather than the negatives. It’s certainly true that trying to sleep while thinking of everything that’s gone wrong, or possibly going wrong tomorrow, is much harder than forcing yourself to lighten up a bit. What’s your favourite pre-sleep ritual that sets your mind to rest? Tell us in the comments. Photo by littledan77. 5 Ways To Fall Asleep Quicker [Dumb Little Man] More »

Why ‘Goal Setting’ Makes You Cringe

9:00PM Gina Trapani | When you’re good-looking, smart, hard-working, or lucky, good things just happen to you—or at least that’s how it appears. The teenage entrepreneur who becomes a bazillionaire, the first-time author who sells 60 million copies of her novel, the ADD-afflicted kid who started swimming and took home eight Olympic gold medals—everywhere you turn you hear a story of someone who’s achieved almost impossible goals, looking smug and untouchable in all their enviable glory. The part you don’t hear, however, is about the moment those people made a decision to try to do something, got laughed at and talked about, doubted themselves because of it, but worked their arse off to get there anyway. That’s what goal setting is, and that’s why if you want to get anywhere you want to go, you’ve got to do the same thing. More »

Anti-Social Networking Insults Your Friends

4:30PM Angus Kidman | Social networks are supposed to be friendly places, but sometimes the devil enters into you and causing a little mayhem seems like much more fun. Enter Anti-Social Networking, a Facebook application (albeit also a movie promo) which you can use to “send crap gifts, cheat at Scrabble and insult so-called friends”. The core of the application is an insult creation engine, where you can choose from lists to create the ultimate put-down — or at least amuse actual friends with a sense of humour. Other options include removing friends you haven’t spoken to in ages and (of course) a Scrabble-cheat lookup. [Anti-Social Networking] More »

BigPond Adds Twitter Support Channel

1:59PM Angus Kidman | Telstra’s BigPond Internet division has added a support channel on Twitter, allowing you to raise problems through the popular social network. Though most of the responses to date seem to effectively devolve to “a BigPond consultant will email U back”, it’s another weapon to keep in the support arsenal. BigPond Twitter [via ZDNet AU] More »

Australian Wesabe Forum Offers Finance Management Tricks

1:24PM Angus Kidman | One of the problems with many finance-centric webapps is that they don’t necessarily offer much in the way of support for customers outside the US. One exception is social-network-oriented budget tracker Wesabe, which claims support for adding account information from at least some Australian banks. There’s a small but useful Australian Wesabeans forum discussing the best ways to set up auto-import from online accounts and other features, which is worth checking out if you’re looking to automate your budget management and pick up hints from others on the way. If you enjoy the Wesabe experience, there’s also multiple access options, including a mobile client, Mac widget and even Twitter integration. More »

Test If Your Children Have Olympic Potential

11:30AM Angus Kidman | With Beijing 2008 now a distant memory, the Australian Institute of Sport is already trying to track down any potential medal winners for London in 2012 — and now it’s added a web twist to the process. Its eTID (Electronic Talent Identification And Development) site lets budding young athletes submit their results in a series of general and sports-specific tests, and invites youngsters with above-average results to visit the AIS for more testing and possible placement in a scholarship program If your offspring (or cousins) are showing potential in school sports, this is a relatively pain-free way of finding out if they can go further. eTID [via The Australian] More »

QuickGold Is Quicksilver For Your iPhone

9:00AM Adam Pash | iPhone/iPod touch only: Free iPhone application QuickGold is a keyboard-based app launcher aiming to fill the shoes of “Quicksilver for the iPhone” (hence the name). You invoke QuickGold by pressing the home button when you’re already at the homescreen. Once it activates, start typing and watch as its dynamic results quickly match what you’re looking for. QuickGold can match any app on your home screen (including web clips), searches contacts and phone numbers, launches web pages in your Safari history, and even includes built-in keyword search (e.g., ‘g lifehacker’ will search Google for Lifehacker). Available only for jailbroken iPhones through Cydia, QuickGold demonstrates one of the biggest frustrations for App Store development—namely that an app like this will never enter the app store under Apple’s current restrictions. For example, I’m sure this is exactly the kind of functionality Google’s mobile app would have liked to include, but the SDK doesn’t allow apps this sort of access to other apps on your phone. I guess that’s why god invented the PwnageTool and QuickPwn. More »

Build A Computer Desk From An IKEA Door

8:35AM Angus Kidman | Notebooks might be getting smaller and more common, but it still helps to have a decently-sized work area. IKEA Hacker outlines how Jonas upgraded his computer desk by using a cabinet door as a work surface, providing a large, high-gloss surface. This particular furniture hack used a Pax cabinet door, but you could go ultra-cheap by checking for discarded doors in the As-Is section. [IKEA Hacker] More »