Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Communicate
IBM iNotes Ultralite Brings Lotus Access To iPhones
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | iPhone/iPod touch users whose offices rely on Lotus Notes for email, calendar, and contacts can now access their information through a customised Safari Mobile interface created by IBM. CNET reports that IBM and Apple are working on a full-fledged Lotus Notes Traveler app or interface for true push access, but in the meantime, iNotes looks like a pretty graceful way to fit your Apple phone into an IBM network. Your network administrator needs to have installed Lotus Domino Web Access 8.0.2 to grant you iNotes access; Notes users who’ve tried out this webapp, let us know what you think in the comments. IBM Lotus iNotes for iPhone [via CNET] More »
Fix
Why Animal Fat Might Not Be So Bad For You
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Salon interviews Jennifer McLagan, author of Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes, and comes away with the message that animal fat is not the death of your health, or your arteries. Noting that most people now eat less animal fat, but more fat overall, McLagan authors this tidbit to mull over when considering your next seemingly sinful recipe: Animal fats have lots of good fatty acids that fight disease, help absorb vitamins and lower cholesterol. Your body burns the short-chained fatty acids found in animal fats and stores the long-chained ones found in polyunsaturated fat. It is a myth that eating animal fat makes you fat. That’s not an endorsement for making bacon-wrapped duck a part of your weekly diet, but next time you’re thinking about shying away from recipes with lard or animal fat just on principal, it might pay reconsider. Photo by WordRidden. Why you should eat fat [via Serious Eats] More »
Design
How To Use Custom Windows Visual Styles
9:00PM Lifehacker US Edition | Customising the appearance of your Windows installation can be frustrating, because both Windows XP and Vista are limited to the Microsoft’s default themes out of the box. However, with a bit of tweaking under the hood, your Windows setup can try on a wider range of looks than come pre-installed. Let’s take a look at how to patch your Windows installation to allow customised styles, and a few places to find new and interesting styles online. More »
Communicate
4:45PM Angus Kidman | Google Translate has increased its range with the recent addition of 11 new languages. Of particular note for Australian travellers are three widely-used languages from this corner of the world: Filipino, Indonesian and Vietnamese. While this kind of machine translation is still fairly rough, it can help get the gist of text when you’re checking out (say) the site for an unfamiliar hotel.
Google Translate
[via Google Operating System]
More »
Google Translate Increases Range Of Available Languages
4:45PM Angus Kidman | Google Translate has increased its range with the recent addition of 11 new languages. Of particular note for Australian travellers are three widely-used languages from this corner of the world: Filipino, Indonesian and Vietnamese. While this kind of machine translation is still fairly rough, it can help get the gist of text when you’re checking out (say) the site for an unfamiliar hotel.
Google Translate
[via Google Operating System]
More »
Fix
3:18PM Angus Kidman | Windows only: Microsoft’s Word 2007 has lots of fancy editing options, but one it curiously lacks is a redaction tool — something that lets you permanently black out private details such as phone numbers or names before making a document public. The open source Word 2007 Redaction Tool tries to fill that gap, adding a Redact group onto the ribbon’s Review tab. While you could just try deleting or over-writing the relevant text, that’s often easy to undo with revision tools. This is definitely still in beta mode — it took me more than an hour to run the installer (I suspect the bloated, lethargic .NET was largely to blame there) and even then it refused to actually start-up within Word’s add-ons architecture. If you have more luck, share your experiences in the comments. Word 2007 Redaction is a free download for Windows only, requires the .NET Framework 3.5 release.
Word 2007 Redaction Tool
[via Microsoft Office Word Team's Blog] More »
Word 2007 Redaction Tool Helps You Blank Private Text
3:18PM Angus Kidman | Windows only: Microsoft’s Word 2007 has lots of fancy editing options, but one it curiously lacks is a redaction tool — something that lets you permanently black out private details such as phone numbers or names before making a document public. The open source Word 2007 Redaction Tool tries to fill that gap, adding a Redact group onto the ribbon’s Review tab. While you could just try deleting or over-writing the relevant text, that’s often easy to undo with revision tools. This is definitely still in beta mode — it took me more than an hour to run the installer (I suspect the bloated, lethargic .NET was largely to blame there) and even then it refused to actually start-up within Word’s add-ons architecture. If you have more luck, share your experiences in the comments. Word 2007 Redaction is a free download for Windows only, requires the .NET Framework 3.5 release.
Word 2007 Redaction Tool
[via Microsoft Office Word Team's Blog] More »
Fix
1:45PM Angus Kidman | The push-up is well regarded as part of any fitness routine, but if you need an extra incentive, here’s an option: Push Up Australia is trying to get Australians to do one billion push-ups and pledge a cent to charity for each push-up in the process. The site allows you to track your progress with a series of graphical tools, and highlights the most active exercisers — which could be just the incentive you need to work harder. If you’re not confident of your ability to do even one push-up, check out the one hundred push-ups in six weeks training program.
Push Up Australia
More »
Push Up Australia Pushes Push-Ups For A Cause
1:45PM Angus Kidman | The push-up is well regarded as part of any fitness routine, but if you need an extra incentive, here’s an option: Push Up Australia is trying to get Australians to do one billion push-ups and pledge a cent to charity for each push-up in the process. The site allows you to track your progress with a series of graphical tools, and highlights the most active exercisers — which could be just the incentive you need to work harder. If you’re not confident of your ability to do even one push-up, check out the one hundred push-ups in six weeks training program.
Push Up Australia
More »
Fix
11:58AM Angus Kidman | Nigerian scam emails — you know, “I am the widow of the late head of Nigerian national bank and I need to smuggle $US5 billion out of an account, will you help me for a cut of the profits?” — make much more amusing reading than your typical Viagra-laden spam, but still need to head pronto to your email trash. Unfortunately, there’s a sucker born every minute who falls for this kind of con. Mahesh Sharma at AustralianIT reports on a rare scam with a happy ending: Queensland Police co-operated with the Nigerian Economic Financial Crimes Commission to apprehend a young man alleged to have bilked a Queenslander out of $20,000. While it’s good to know that not all online criminals get away with it, it’s always worth remembering the basic rule: no-one is about to send you a large amount of money for no effort. Don’t respond, just ditch it.
Nigerian held on Web fraud [AustralianIT]
More »
Nigerian Scammers Getting Caught Is No Reason To Succumb
11:58AM Angus Kidman | Nigerian scam emails — you know, “I am the widow of the late head of Nigerian national bank and I need to smuggle $US5 billion out of an account, will you help me for a cut of the profits?” — make much more amusing reading than your typical Viagra-laden spam, but still need to head pronto to your email trash. Unfortunately, there’s a sucker born every minute who falls for this kind of con. Mahesh Sharma at AustralianIT reports on a rare scam with a happy ending: Queensland Police co-operated with the Nigerian Economic Financial Crimes Commission to apprehend a young man alleged to have bilked a Queenslander out of $20,000. While it’s good to know that not all online criminals get away with it, it’s always worth remembering the basic rule: no-one is about to send you a large amount of money for no effort. Don’t respond, just ditch it.
Nigerian held on Web fraud [AustralianIT]
More »
Fix
10:30AM Angus Kidman | As the list of features for Windows 7 gradually expands, there’s one minor tweak I’m looking forward to: startup and shutdown options that aren’t made virtually invisible. As I note in a report over at APC, Microsoft has acknowledged that its perhaps well-intentioned attempt to make people select sleep over other options by making that option much bigger on the Start menu while hiding other options (like restart) backfired. As a result, it will make the experience better (that is, more obvious) in Windows 7. My 5 cents: if Vista didn’t need rebooting so often, then it wouldn’t be such an issue. More »
Windows 7 To Offer Better Startup, Shutdown Options
10:30AM Angus Kidman | As the list of features for Windows 7 gradually expands, there’s one minor tweak I’m looking forward to: startup and shutdown options that aren’t made virtually invisible. As I note in a report over at APC, Microsoft has acknowledged that its perhaps well-intentioned attempt to make people select sleep over other options by making that option much bigger on the Start menu while hiding other options (like restart) backfired. As a result, it will make the experience better (that is, more obvious) in Windows 7. My 5 cents: if Vista didn’t need rebooting so often, then it wouldn’t be such an issue. More »
Fix
Breathe New Life Into Your Aging MP3 Player With Rockbox
10:00AM Adam Pash | Since the birth of the iPod in 2001, Apple has released generation after generation of new iPods packed with exciting feature updates. The problem is that your not-so-old iPod probably feels like it’s drifted into obsolescence. Sure they both still play music, but take a look at a first gen iPod next to an iPod touch and it’s not hard to understand where I’m coming from. Rather than pony up for a shiny new MP3 player, consider installing the open-source MP3 player firmware Rockbox on your current player first. Rockbox just hit a new release, and it’s never been easier to supercharge your MP3 player, from iPods and irivers to Archos and SanDisk players. More »
Communicate
9:00AM Angus Kidman | I was at a friend’s wedding recently, and during the after-dinner speeches it emerged that the couple had first met online. That didn’t strike me as at all remarkable, and it seems I’m not alone. A Galaxy Poll conducted on behalf of online dating service meetmyfriend.com.au found that 83% of single people aged between 25-39 favoured using an Internet service to meet for potential partners. Even allowing for the not-exactly-unbiased source, that’s a remarkably high number. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that dating someone you’d met online — whether casually through a common interest, or in a more organised way via a dating service — was frequently viewed as desperate, risky or second-best. Why have attitudes changed so fast? Does that data match your own experience? Share your take in the comments. More »
Has The Internet Dating Stigma Finally Ended?
9:00AM Angus Kidman | I was at a friend’s wedding recently, and during the after-dinner speeches it emerged that the couple had first met online. That didn’t strike me as at all remarkable, and it seems I’m not alone. A Galaxy Poll conducted on behalf of online dating service meetmyfriend.com.au found that 83% of single people aged between 25-39 favoured using an Internet service to meet for potential partners. Even allowing for the not-exactly-unbiased source, that’s a remarkably high number. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that dating someone you’d met online — whether casually through a common interest, or in a more organised way via a dating service — was frequently viewed as desperate, risky or second-best. Why have attitudes changed so fast? Does that data match your own experience? Share your take in the comments. More » 
