Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Design
Meditate For Three Seconds To Look Better In Photos
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | The Photojojo photography site parcels out 10 tips for looking good in portraits, whether you’re setting the timer and running or handing over your rig to another shooter. Along with choosing the right time of day (morning or late afternoon) and a vibrant background, the site recommends a trick I’ve heard from many news photographers taking portraits: Ask the photographer to count to three before taking the picture. Close your eyes and breathe in. Then, just before the shutter clicks, breathe out, open your eyes and smile. Your face will look relaxed and your smile will be real. Simple, but effective. Got your own shutter secrets for better portraits? Spill ‘em in the comments. Photo by !!!! scogle. Ten Ways To Look Fabulous in Pictures [Photojojo] More »
Work
Track Free And Price-Dropped iPhone Apps
10:15PM Kevin Purdy | For the iPhone app addicts out there: 148Apps not only reviews and offers up lists of the (top 148) free apps, free games, and other categories, but offers an feed-friendly list of apps that have dropped in price, sometimes all the way to free. Got a better source for app news and deals? Tell us in the comments. [via Just Another iPhone Blog] More »
Communicate
‘Mail Goggles’ Prevents Regrettable Late-Night Email
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | A new Gmail Labs feature dubbed “Mail Goggles” has Gmail ask you a series of math problems before allowing you to send out emails late on certain nights—like, say, those nights when you’re artificially motivated to tell your boss/significant other/frenemy just what the deal is. You can adjust the bewitching hours and difficulty of the math problems in your general settings. [via Official Gmail Blog] More »
Design
Emerge Alternative Shell Clears Your Desktop
9:00PM Gina Trapani | Windows only: The free Emerge Alternative Desktop Shell replaces Windows’ taskbar, Start menu, and right-click context menu with a super-minimalistic version. In short, Emerge leaves you with essentially an empty desktop, a clean slate for some killer customisations. Emerge also clears away icons and menus Launchy users don’t need. When you first install Emerge, you may feel a bit out of sorts—where do you click when there’s no Start menu? Right click on your desktop to get access to your Start menu programs and quick launch toolbar and Emerge’s settings. Ctrl+Click on the Emerge Tray (upper left hand corner on your desktop by default), to further customise the look and feel of the tray. The learning curve on Emerge isn’t flat, but poking through the documentation and trying out various settings will make the dedicated desktop customiser very happy. Emerge is a free download for Windows only. Got another Windows shell replacement you like better than Emerge? Post it in the comments. emergedesktop.org More »
Communicate
4:30PM Angus Kidman | The US presidential election is attracting a lot of attention for the role that technology is playing in the campaign, but the most interesting approach I’ve encountered recently comes from a lot closer to home: New Zealand. As Google’s official blog points out, Helen Clark and John Keys (the two contenders for the PM’s job in the forthcoming New Zealand election) will take questions submitted on video via YouTube and answer them as part of the televised debate on October 14. That certainly beats selling yourself via Facebook then banning your staff from using it. More »
New Zealand Leads The Globe In Tech Politics
4:30PM Angus Kidman | The US presidential election is attracting a lot of attention for the role that technology is playing in the campaign, but the most interesting approach I’ve encountered recently comes from a lot closer to home: New Zealand. As Google’s official blog points out, Helen Clark and John Keys (the two contenders for the PM’s job in the forthcoming New Zealand election) will take questions submitted on video via YouTube and answer them as part of the televised debate on October 14. That certainly beats selling yourself via Facebook then banning your staff from using it. More »
Communicate
3:00PM Angus Kidman | When Optus launched its prepaid 3G broadband service back in August, we noted that there was a nasty catch: usage was charged in 10MB blocks. Now Dan Warne at APC reports a new and nastier twist: the value of recharges on the service has just been dramatically reduced, with (for instance) $30 now getting 1GB of downloads rather than 2GB. Telstra’s rival prepaid service is the main alternative, but also comes with a sting due to its 30-day expiry rules. The moral? As ever, choose carefully before going prepaid.
DOUBLE THE PRICE: Optus hikes wireless charges [apcmag.com]
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Optus Wireless Broadband Declines In Value
3:00PM Angus Kidman | When Optus launched its prepaid 3G broadband service back in August, we noted that there was a nasty catch: usage was charged in 10MB blocks. Now Dan Warne at APC reports a new and nastier twist: the value of recharges on the service has just been dramatically reduced, with (for instance) $30 now getting 1GB of downloads rather than 2GB. Telstra’s rival prepaid service is the main alternative, but also comes with a sting due to its 30-day expiry rules. The moral? As ever, choose carefully before going prepaid.
DOUBLE THE PRICE: Optus hikes wireless charges [apcmag.com]
More »
Organise
1:19PM Angus Kidman | Unsurprisingly, it’s not only software prices that are rising in the wake of global economic hiccups. Mahesh Sharma and Mitchell Bingemann at AustralianIT report that prices are likely to go up on lots of consumer electronics as well. That applies even in the price-sensitive entry-level subnotebook market, as IDC analyst Felipe Rego explained to the paper:
If it is a macro-economic problem, not only the sub-$1000 products will face price pressure, but also the next price tier, and then everything.
So if you’re eyeing off a new micro-machine, it might make sense to splurge soon, before the price increases kick in.
Dollar drop means costly Xmas [AustralianIT]
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Discount Notebook Prices Could Rise Before Christmas
1:19PM Angus Kidman | Unsurprisingly, it’s not only software prices that are rising in the wake of global economic hiccups. Mahesh Sharma and Mitchell Bingemann at AustralianIT report that prices are likely to go up on lots of consumer electronics as well. That applies even in the price-sensitive entry-level subnotebook market, as IDC analyst Felipe Rego explained to the paper:
If it is a macro-economic problem, not only the sub-$1000 products will face price pressure, but also the next price tier, and then everything.
So if you’re eyeing off a new micro-machine, it might make sense to splurge soon, before the price increases kick in.
Dollar drop means costly Xmas [AustralianIT]
More »
Communicate
12:00PM Angus Kidman | Telstra’s own BigPond Twitter support channel has come in for a fair degree of criticism from Twitter users for only offering a “contact us” canned response to queries. An alternate way of tracking the telco on Twitter is via the WeLoveTelstra channel, a bot which picks up any tweets which mention Telstra. Unsurprisingly, that gives it a somewhat negative slant — people are far more likely to point out service faults than praise Sol’s crew to the skies — but it’s an interesting perspective on Telstra’s performance and activities. More »
WeLoveTelstra Tracks Telstra Comments On Twitter
12:00PM Angus Kidman | Telstra’s own BigPond Twitter support channel has come in for a fair degree of criticism from Twitter users for only offering a “contact us” canned response to queries. An alternate way of tracking the telco on Twitter is via the WeLoveTelstra channel, a bot which picks up any tweets which mention Telstra. Unsurprisingly, that gives it a somewhat negative slant — people are far more likely to point out service faults than praise Sol’s crew to the skies — but it’s an interesting perspective on Telstra’s performance and activities. More »
Organise
10:30AM Angus Kidman | Seven’s Sunrise site offers a list of hints on how to cut down on physical junk mail. The suggestions tend to the obvious, but there’s contact numbers for getting off at least some mailing lists. Another useful option a relative of mine used was to return any unsolicited offers for credit cards and the like in the enclosed reply-paid envelope, pushing up the costs for the junk mail sender. If you’ve got extra hints for cutting down junk mail, let’s hear them in the comments.
Junk mail – how to stop the papers trail [Sunrise]
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Cut Down On Junk Mail
10:30AM Angus Kidman | Seven’s Sunrise site offers a list of hints on how to cut down on physical junk mail. The suggestions tend to the obvious, but there’s contact numbers for getting off at least some mailing lists. Another useful option a relative of mine used was to return any unsolicited offers for credit cards and the like in the enclosed reply-paid envelope, pushing up the costs for the junk mail sender. If you’ve got extra hints for cutting down junk mail, let’s hear them in the comments.
Junk mail – how to stop the papers trail [Sunrise]
More »
Organise
9:00AM Angus Kidman | I’d barely posted yesterday about Carbonite’s Australian launch when I received an apologetic email from the company, noting that because of current US economic conditions, the price of an annual subscription had gone up from $64.95 to $71.95. That’s not a huge difference over the course of a year — and full-scale backup is probably never going to be viable as an entirely free service — but it does demonstrate that the online software community isn’t immune from the broader economic situation, and we can probably expect more of these in the future. If you’ve encountered any other recent examples of tech product and service price rises, share them in the comments.
More »
Economic Uncertainty Hits Software Prices
9:00AM Angus Kidman | I’d barely posted yesterday about Carbonite’s Australian launch when I received an apologetic email from the company, noting that because of current US economic conditions, the price of an annual subscription had gone up from $64.95 to $71.95. That’s not a huge difference over the course of a year — and full-scale backup is probably never going to be viable as an entirely free service — but it does demonstrate that the online software community isn’t immune from the broader economic situation, and we can probably expect more of these in the future. If you’ve encountered any other recent examples of tech product and service price rises, share them in the comments.
More » 