Monday, October 27, 2008
Organise
Minimalist Conky Setup Ported For Windows And Samurize
11:07PM Kevin Purdy | Many readers were seriously impressed with the stylish, minimalist Conky setup we highlighted last week for Linux desktops. Just as many readers, however, wanted something similar for their Windows desktops running Samurize. In less than six hours, industrious commenter hyperhead had drafted the majority of that Conky setup’s tools into a Samurize config file, and now he’s offering it up for everyone. Read on for a shot of the Samurize setup in context and to grab the file for your own tweaking. More »
Communicate
Google Earth For iPhone Surfs The Earth Through
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | iPhone/iPod touch 2.0 only: Google has released an official iPhone Earth client app for the iPhone and iPod touch, giving your phone a tabletop, slide-and-pinch view of the world. There are only two layers at this moment—geo-located Wikipedia articles and Panoramio photos—and, as you might imagine, the app is a bit of a data hound and best used on a Wi-Fi connection. Having said that, though, there’s something irrepressibly cool about swiping your way around your neighbourhood, tiling your phone to angle and scope the terrain, and using your device’s current location finder to zoom down on yourself from space. Google Earth is a free download for iPhones and iPod touch models running the 2.0 software upgrade only. Google Earth [iTunes App Store via eHub] More »
Fix
Add Remember the Milk As A Vista Sidebar Gadget
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | A good task manager is something that could make Windows Vista’s somewhat unfairly maligned sidebar feature pretty useful—and Remember the Milk just so happens to be a pretty good task manager. Blogger Mark Godwin details how to turn the task manager’s iGoogle gadget into a sidebar tool you can size any way you want. We’ve previously shown how to plant web gadgets into the sidebar with the Amnesty Generator, but Godwin’s technique requires only a simple sidebar gadget installation, and it’s time well spent. Got your own web-to-Vista gadget tweak to brag about? Tell us in the comments. Remember the Milk on your Vista Desktop! [Mark Godwin's Blog] More »
Work
Battle Of The Thumb Drive Linux Systems
9:00PM Kevin Purdy | These days, it only takes an increasingly-cheap USB thumb drive and a program like UNetbootin to create a portable Linux desktop you can run on any computer that can boot from a USB port. But check out the list of distributions UNetbootin can download and install—it’s huge, and the names don’t tell you much about which distro is best for on-the-go computing. Today we’re detailing four no-install distributions—Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, Xubuntu, and Fedora—and helping you decide which might work for that spare thumb drive you’ve got lying around, or as just a part of your multi-gig monster stick. Read on for a four-way faceoff of bootable Linux systems. More »
Fix
4:00PM Angus Kidman | Finding life overwhelming? The Rebel Zen blog suggests an unusual approach: focusing totally on housework tasks as a form of meditation, thus satisfying your need for mental relaxation and a half-tidy dwelling simultaneously. As the blog notes:
Remembering that the idea is to remain focussed on your task as much as possible, this process will be easy if you are enjoying what you are doing, or if it requires a lot of concentration. It may prove more challenging if the job you are doing is dull, repetitive and, in itself, not challenging, but the benefits for practising this “moving meditation” are plentiful.
Do you fancy relaxing while you scrub? Tell us how you get through the daily chores in the comments.
How to meditate while you’re doing housework
Learn To Meditate While Doing Household Chores
4:00PM Angus Kidman | Finding life overwhelming? The Rebel Zen blog suggests an unusual approach: focusing totally on housework tasks as a form of meditation, thus satisfying your need for mental relaxation and a half-tidy dwelling simultaneously. As the blog notes:
Remembering that the idea is to remain focussed on your task as much as possible, this process will be easy if you are enjoying what you are doing, or if it requires a lot of concentration. It may prove more challenging if the job you are doing is dull, repetitive and, in itself, not challenging, but the benefits for practising this “moving meditation” are plentiful.
Do you fancy relaxing while you scrub? Tell us how you get through the daily chores in the comments.
How to meditate while you’re doing housework
Organise
1:30PM Angus Kidman | Last week’s Road Worrier column on less than obvious business travel essentials stirred up plenty of comments from readers, many of them relating to the specific items needed when a work trip takes you overseas. So this time around we’re going to look at the essential items a tech-savvy business traveller needs to take. More »
The International Business Traveller’s Gadget Packing Checklist
1:30PM Angus Kidman | Last week’s Road Worrier column on less than obvious business travel essentials stirred up plenty of comments from readers, many of them relating to the specific items needed when a work trip takes you overseas. So this time around we’re going to look at the essential items a tech-savvy business traveller needs to take. More »
Organise
11:30AM Angus Kidman | An announcement at eBay confirms that its Best Offer system, previously available only for cars, will be rolled out across all categories in early November. As the name suggests, Best Offer lets buyers propose a single price they’re willing to pay, and lets the seller decide whether to accept it or not — useful if you don’t want to risk selling something for too little with a low reserve, but don’t want to scare possible buyers with a high entry price. Items have to be listed with a fixed price initially, so if you’re convinced competition will be fierce, a standard listing may still produce better results.
eBay Australia General Announcements
More »
eBay To Add Best Offer In November
11:30AM Angus Kidman | An announcement at eBay confirms that its Best Offer system, previously available only for cars, will be rolled out across all categories in early November. As the name suggests, Best Offer lets buyers propose a single price they’re willing to pay, and lets the seller decide whether to accept it or not — useful if you don’t want to risk selling something for too little with a low reserve, but don’t want to scare possible buyers with a high entry price. Items have to be listed with a fixed price initially, so if you’re convinced competition will be fierce, a standard listing may still produce better results.
eBay Australia General Announcements
More »
Design
10:00AM Angus Kidman | While a big selling point for digital photography is that you can take multiple shots and then discard the duds, you don’t always get the chance to do that. Sometimes a single imperfect picture is all you’ve got, but that doesn’t mean your finger has to stray to the Delete key straight away. Here’s a handful of our favourite web apps for tweaking photos, offering ways of redeeming those less than perfect snaps without even having to install any software. More »
Tweak Imperfect Digital Photos With Web Applications
10:00AM Angus Kidman | While a big selling point for digital photography is that you can take multiple shots and then discard the duds, you don’t always get the chance to do that. Sometimes a single imperfect picture is all you’ve got, but that doesn’t mean your finger has to stray to the Delete key straight away. Here’s a handful of our favourite web apps for tweaking photos, offering ways of redeeming those less than perfect snaps without even having to install any software. More »
Fix
Skip To The Best Part Of A YouTube Clip
9:00AM Gina Trapani | You already know that with a little URL-hacking, you can skip to a certain time in YouTube clip embedded on your blog. Now you can do the same within the comments on a clip at the YouTube site. The TechCrunch blog describes how: To specify a point, append a tag to the end of your video link with the following syntax: “#t=1m45s” (you can change the numbers before the ‘m’ and ’s’ to edit the minutes and seconds, respectively). If you don’t have a blog and you don’t comment on YouTube, but you do want to share just the good part of a clip, you want the TubeChop webapp. There you can enter a YouTube clip URL, set the start time and end time of the best part using a slider, and send the chopped clip URL via email or on your site. Thanks, Bill! Update: In addition to TubeChop, Splicd can trim a clip down to the best part, too. TubeChopYouTube Enables Deep Linking Within Videos [TechCrunch] More »
Organise
8:30AM Angus Kidman | Get in the swim for the week ahead and make sure you didn’t miss any of last week’s best posts:
What Tactics Do You Use To Challenge Bills?“When my household contents insurance bill came in recently and was more than double the previous year’s figure, I was gobsmacked. However, a quick call to my insurer later and I actually ended up with a lower quote than the 2007 instalment.”
Five Best File Compression Tools“Whether you’ve been sent a simple ZIP archive, you need to create and share your own compressed files, or you’re staring down the barrel of some obscure archive format you’ve never seen before, having the right file compression application in your corner is a must.”
Qtpfsgui Makes Standard Digicam Shots More Vibrant (Windows/Mac/Linux) “Free, open-source image processing app Qtpfsgui takes in groups of standard digital camera shots of the same scene or object and runs them through a high dynamic range imaging filter, creating striking images with more depth of color.”
Five Technology Mistakes To Avoid In The Workplace“No matter what those rules — or how much mistrust they breed — there’s some sure-fire ways to misuse technology that definitely fall into the CLM (career-limiting move) category.”
The Ultimate Windows Desktop/Mac Notebook Alliance“When it comes to computers, you want it all: the portability of a laptop, the extensibility of a desktop, as well as the sleekness of Mac OS X and the wide selection of software for Windows.”
SoftPerfect Scans Networks from a USB Drive (Windows)“A good network scanner digs deep into any network it’s pointed at and opens it up for you to get into.”
Keyboard Shortcuts For The Outlook 2007 Ribbon“The Office Outlook Team Blog runs down how you can use keyboard shortcuts to access the various features of the Ribbon which appear when you’re composing a message in Outlook 2007.”
Calibrize Gets Your Monitor Calibrated In Three Steps“Free application Calibrize holds your hand through a simple three-step monitor calibration to ensure on-screen colours look the same from computer to computer.”
Add Google Calendar And Reader To Your Gmail (Firefox with Greasemonkey)“Two new user scripts integrate both Google Calendar and Google Reader onto the same screen as your email inbox.”
Drag & DropZones Turns Right-Clicks Into Gestures (Firefox)“Drag & DropZones is a clever interface tweak that allows you to perform nearly any action or search by dragging any page element–a link, email address, image, or page itself–onto a transparent grid you set up.”
More »
Last Week’s Best Posts
8:30AM Angus Kidman | Get in the swim for the week ahead and make sure you didn’t miss any of last week’s best posts:
What Tactics Do You Use To Challenge Bills?“When my household contents insurance bill came in recently and was more than double the previous year’s figure, I was gobsmacked. However, a quick call to my insurer later and I actually ended up with a lower quote than the 2007 instalment.”
Five Best File Compression Tools“Whether you’ve been sent a simple ZIP archive, you need to create and share your own compressed files, or you’re staring down the barrel of some obscure archive format you’ve never seen before, having the right file compression application in your corner is a must.”
Qtpfsgui Makes Standard Digicam Shots More Vibrant (Windows/Mac/Linux) “Free, open-source image processing app Qtpfsgui takes in groups of standard digital camera shots of the same scene or object and runs them through a high dynamic range imaging filter, creating striking images with more depth of color.”
Five Technology Mistakes To Avoid In The Workplace“No matter what those rules — or how much mistrust they breed — there’s some sure-fire ways to misuse technology that definitely fall into the CLM (career-limiting move) category.”
The Ultimate Windows Desktop/Mac Notebook Alliance“When it comes to computers, you want it all: the portability of a laptop, the extensibility of a desktop, as well as the sleekness of Mac OS X and the wide selection of software for Windows.”
SoftPerfect Scans Networks from a USB Drive (Windows)“A good network scanner digs deep into any network it’s pointed at and opens it up for you to get into.”
Keyboard Shortcuts For The Outlook 2007 Ribbon“The Office Outlook Team Blog runs down how you can use keyboard shortcuts to access the various features of the Ribbon which appear when you’re composing a message in Outlook 2007.”
Calibrize Gets Your Monitor Calibrated In Three Steps“Free application Calibrize holds your hand through a simple three-step monitor calibration to ensure on-screen colours look the same from computer to computer.”
Add Google Calendar And Reader To Your Gmail (Firefox with Greasemonkey)“Two new user scripts integrate both Google Calendar and Google Reader onto the same screen as your email inbox.”
Drag & DropZones Turns Right-Clicks Into Gestures (Firefox)“Drag & DropZones is a clever interface tweak that allows you to perform nearly any action or search by dragging any page element–a link, email address, image, or page itself–onto a transparent grid you set up.”
More » 