Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Organise
TinEye Finds Instances Of An Image Across The Web
11:30PM Lifehacker US Edition | Search engine TinEye finds instances of an image across the web. After signing up for a free account, you upload an image or provide a URL to an existing image on the web and TinEye will search for other places that image exists. How effective is it? To test the system I decided to “face stalk” our very own Gina Trapani using a head shot photo I know she’d used for a variety of interviews in the past. TinEye found a few instances I had overlooked, but ignored other instances that came up under a cursory Google image search. More »
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Google Groups Now Searches All Web Forums
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | Google has expanded its Groups search to cover the wealth of web-based forums across the general net, with results snippets showing post authors, last updates, and other stats. Looks to be a pretty good resource for asking tech support questions of the entire internet or seeking out rare, forum-only software. [via] More »
Communicate
US Election Day Post-Mortem, Geek Edition
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Google’s official blog rounds up yesterday’s top searches, with interesting oddities (cassoulet forever?). Our sibling site Gizmodo explains how CNN’s hologram interviews work. And CNET offers a humorous/insightful look at last night’s fervor through ten election night tweets worth remembering. More »
Organise
Show Hidden Files With A Keyboard Shortcut
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | Te How-To Geek offers up a AutoHotKey-based application that turns hidden file showing on and off in any version of Windows. The small application runs in the background from startup, and can be set to activate with any key (Win+H being the default). For those who do a good deal of file copying and system wrangling, it’s a serious time saver that’s probably worth the less than 2MB memory taken up by the utility. For a Visual Basic-based solution of similar convenience, try CyberNet’s own utility as well. Keyboard Ninja: Toggle Hidden Files with a Shortcut Key in Windows [The How-To Geek] More »
Fix
Early Look At Firefox’s Private Browsing Mode
9:00PM Kevin Purdy | Firefox users have long had the capability to surf the web without leaving any cookies, URL history, or other identifying marks, given add-ons like Stealther and many others. In the next upgrade to the open-source browser, 3.1, the browser itself will offer a “Private Browsing” mode for anything you don’t want shown to anyone else on your system—you know, like gift ideas! Private Browsing is enabled in the latest test builds of Firefox 3.1, so let’s take a look at how it works, and what it looks like, below. More »
Work
4:30PM Angus Kidman | Social networking sites continue to flourish: Facebook signed up 30 million new users in the last three months. But while sites like Facebook and MySpace might have started out seeking to enrich your private life, they’re increasingly being tapped into by work-centred applications. This week, Facebook and Salesforce.com announced a partnership that will see Salesforce.com’s web applications – for distinctly non-leisure-like tasks such as tracking sales leads – made available within Facebook itself. Executives from both companies (pictured above with a demo app looming behind them) clearly think that’s a good idea, but even after watching them spruik it, I’m not so sure. More »
Do You Want Work Apps With Your Social Networks?
4:30PM Angus Kidman | Social networking sites continue to flourish: Facebook signed up 30 million new users in the last three months. But while sites like Facebook and MySpace might have started out seeking to enrich your private life, they’re increasingly being tapped into by work-centred applications. This week, Facebook and Salesforce.com announced a partnership that will see Salesforce.com’s web applications – for distinctly non-leisure-like tasks such as tracking sales leads – made available within Facebook itself. Executives from both companies (pictured above with a demo app looming behind them) clearly think that’s a good idea, but even after watching them spruik it, I’m not so sure. More »
Organise
2:50PM Angus Kidman | Google Operating System reports that YouTube is once again allowing users to search for playlists. Combining related videos (such as a series of tutorials or, if you’re a rampant disrespecter of copyright, segments of a TV show) makes it easier to watch them in order. YouTube has a brief walkthrough on how to build a playlist in its help system, though it’s not perfect as yet. For instance, YouTube claims you can embed playlist content, but I couldn’t get that option to work as described.
Find YouTube Playlists [Google Operating System]
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Build And Find Playlists In YouTube
2:50PM Angus Kidman | Google Operating System reports that YouTube is once again allowing users to search for playlists. Combining related videos (such as a series of tutorials or, if you’re a rampant disrespecter of copyright, segments of a TV show) makes it easier to watch them in order. YouTube has a brief walkthrough on how to build a playlist in its help system, though it’s not perfect as yet. For instance, YouTube claims you can embed playlist content, but I couldn’t get that option to work as described.
Find YouTube Playlists [Google Operating System]
More »
Fix
12:09PM Angus Kidman | Looking for somewhere to mount a microphone when you’re recording podcasts or your own music? Conceptual design blog SGArts came up with a quick but effective solution: superglue the microphone to an extendable lamp. He used the Antifoni from IKEA, but any similar lamp would do.
lamp microphone ikea hack [via IKEA Hacker
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DIY IKEA Mic Stand
12:09PM Angus Kidman | Looking for somewhere to mount a microphone when you’re recording podcasts or your own music? Conceptual design blog SGArts came up with a quick but effective solution: superglue the microphone to an extendable lamp. He used the Antifoni from IKEA, but any similar lamp would do.
lamp microphone ikea hack [via IKEA Hacker
More »
Organise
10:30AM Angus Kidman | Microsoft’s Outlook Team Blog walks through how you can customise the RSS feed in Outlook 2007, changing the displayed details for each feed. Although I’m confirmed Outlook addict, I actually prefer Google Reader for feed tracking, but if you do want to keep it all in Outlook, this kind of customisation is appealing.
Custom RSS View [Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog]
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Customise Your Outlook RSS Feed
10:30AM Angus Kidman | Microsoft’s Outlook Team Blog walks through how you can customise the RSS feed in Outlook 2007, changing the displayed details for each feed. Although I’m confirmed Outlook addict, I actually prefer Google Reader for feed tracking, but if you do want to keep it all in Outlook, this kind of customisation is appealing.
Custom RSS View [Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog]
More »
Work
9:02AM Angus Kidman | The Microsoft Office Word Team blog runs down how you can see inside the contests of a Word 2007 file (essentially, renaming it to a .zip extension and then looking inside at the collection of XML files; the details are in the Appendix). The same technique can be used on any Office 2007 file, and could prove useful if a file gets corrupted and you’re trying to extract some key data. It also provides an insight into how Office files are structured, though casually parsing XML is not for the faint of heart.
Microsoft Office Word Team Blog
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See Inside Office 2007 Files
9:02AM Angus Kidman | The Microsoft Office Word Team blog runs down how you can see inside the contests of a Word 2007 file (essentially, renaming it to a .zip extension and then looking inside at the collection of XML files; the details are in the Appendix). The same technique can be used on any Office 2007 file, and could prove useful if a file gets corrupted and you’re trying to extract some key data. It also provides an insight into how Office files are structured, though casually parsing XML is not for the faint of heart.
Microsoft Office Word Team Blog
More » 