The power of persuasion can get you far in this world, even if you’re not in sales, and a few simple communication techniques can go a long way to get someone to agree with you. Tutorial site wikiHow runs down “subconscious” actions for persuading others, like framing, mirroring, timing, or even touching the person on the arm or shoulder. This list is similar to our previously posted (and controversial!) top 10 conversation hacks. How do you convince someone to come on over to your side in conversation? Let us know in the comments. Photo by jurvetson. How to Persuade People With Subconscious Techniques [wikiHow]
When you’re hard up for just the right graph paper for your project or drawing, you can print out what you need at designer resource site Konigi. The site’s offering of free PDF templates range from straight-up full-page graph paper, to wireframes, storyboards, and storyboard with notes. The templates are especially geared for web and visual designers, and made to scan as well (the title bar and grid lines are non-photo blue). For more ways to put your printer to good use, see our top 10 printable productivity tools. Graph Paper [Konigi via Evil Mad Scientists]
Kick off your Lifehacker Monday by making sure you didn’t miss any of the biggest posts from last week:
Why Would You Use A DVD Rental Service?“It’s obviously no surprise to find that 90% of DVD-by-post customers choose such a service because of the “value, longer loan periods and no late fees”. The more interesting question is what reason the other 10% picked.” Gbridge Does Simple But Secure File Sharing, Syncing, And VNC (Windows)“Free application Gbridge sets up a virtual private network between any computer over the internet using your Google account as a starting point.” Digital TV Switchover Will Take Place Region By Region“It’s good to learn that Australia will be emulating the UK by adopting a region by region switching model, rather than the more drastic US approach of just switching off the analog signal and dealing with the chaos afterwards.” MobaLiveCD Runs Linux Live CDs Inside Windows (Windows)“MobaLiveCD, a free, stand-alone emulation tool, lets you run Linux live CDs from a window inside Windows, without any hard drive installation whatsoever.” Removing The Sanity Loadit Store From Windows Media Player“If you don’t want to have Loadit in your face every time you play a song or video clip, do you have any choice?” Instapaper App Saves Web Pages For Offline iPhone Reading (iPhone/iPod touch)“Instapaper Free, the iPhone app cousin of previously mentioned bookmarking tool Instapaper, lets you bookmark up to 10 web pages you want to read while you’re offline.” Battle Of the Linux Distros“Today we’re taking a look at the real differences between three popular distributions of open-source software, and offering our readers their chance to weigh in on why they like their own particular open-source OS.” FormatFactory Centralises DVD Ripping, Media Conversion (Windows)“Free media file converter FormatFactory is a handy all-in-one utility for taking one kind of audio, video, or picture file and converting it to another.” Microsoft Gives Up, Strips Default Apps From Windows 7“No matter how hard Apple strives to make Microsoft look uncool, one fact remains: Microsoft owns the desktop.” Rockbox 3.0 Supercharges Your MP3 Player“Windows/Mac/Linux: Open-source MP3 firmware Rockbox has released its first major update in three years, adding support and stability for more MP3 players and playback of more file types.” Microsoft Image Composite Editor Stitches Images Together (Windows)“Microsofts’ Image Composite Editor is a free application for stitching several pictures together into one panoramic photograph.” Lightning/Sunbird 0.9 Fixes Hundreds Of Bugs, Improves Calendar Views (All)“Lightning and Sunbird, Mozilla’s calendar and task-management apps, have upgraded to 0.9 releases that fix hundreds of bugs and improve functionality.” Skyfire Mobile Browser Adds Flash To Windows Mobile (Windows Mobile)“Skyfire, a browser for Windows Mobile that supports Flash, Ajax, and many media formats, has been released for public beta downloads with an upgraded 0.8 version.” Rockbox 3.0 Supercharges Your MP3 Player (All)“Open-source MP3 firmware Rockbox has released its first major update in three years, adding support and stability for more MP3 players and playback of more file types.” xVideoServiceThief Downloads Video From Over 50 Sites (All)“Download your favourite online video clips from YouTube, 5min, Metacafe, and more than 50 other online video sharing sites with free open source application xVideoServiceThief.”How to Stay Awake At Work“Funny how insomnia works–when it’s time to go to bed, you’re wide awake, but at work the next day, you can barely keep your eyes open.”The Unclutterer blog offers a smart way to separate your kitchen sponges into various roles. A reader there writes: In our household, we discovered a trick: the Good Clean sponge [for dishes]is used as-is, straight out of the package. When it gets downgraded to the Wiping Sponge [for kitchen counters and the table] , we cut one of the corners off. When the sponge gets downgraded again to a Skunging Sponge [the dregs of cleaning] , we cut another corner off.
Sounds like a great way to make sure you’re not using a skunky sponge on your cereal bowl. Separating the new from the used [Unclutterer]
Essential time management yields increased success and productivity, according to weblog QuickSprout. By eliminating distractions, getting enough sleep (especially power napping), and maintaining a balanced diet, you can maximize your productivity and get more done in the few hours you have available. One productivity killer is beating around the bush. Tell people what’s on your mind—being honest and to the point is a great way to accomplish things quicker. When you beat around the bush things don’t get accomplished as fast. Just think about boardroom meetings, people are hesitant to say what is on their mind, which causes meetings to drag on forever.
In other words, be direct and hope that your boss won’t spend precious meeting time criticizing the feedback. What are your biggest time saving tips, and how do you make time to save time? Share your tips in the comments. 10 Efficient Ways to Save Time So You Can Follow Your Dreams [Quick Sprout]
Windows only: Experience the popular ribbon user interface from Microsoft Office 2007 in your free, light text editor with Notepad 2008. Notepad 2008 most closely resembles the lightweight WordPad with the ability for users to change font sizes to format their text, but with the added options to customise the display of your text editor with one of three different appearances. The ribbon interface displays all features of Notepad 2008 onscreen so that no menus are needed. Notepad 2008 is a free download for Windows only.
Notepad 2008 (direct download) [via Life Rocks 2.0]
