Great data deserves an eye-catching presentation, but most charting and graph-making software offers an overwhelming array of options. Andrew at the Extreme Presentation Method blog offers a flowchart to pick the wisest choice. Andrew’s flowchart, available as a JPEG or PDF, starts with the question “What would you like to show?”—comparison, distribution, composition, or relationship—and drills down from there based on how much and what type of data you’ve got to show. Engineers and other Excel wizards probably have this knowledge hard-coded in their mouse fingers, but it’s still a great reference tool for them or anyone looking to show a lot of data and not have it all look the same. For a similar chart-picking tool, check out the previously mentioned Excel plug-in Chart Advisor.
Choosing a Good Chart [via Digital Inspiration]The Wise Bread blog points out that with people moving for a variety of financial reasons these days, it can be a good time to buy used exercise equipment, if you’re not too predatory. If you’re looking to keep a New Year’s resolution or just start a home gym, taking a peek through Craigslist or your local real estate flyer can open up some opportunities for buying cheaper than new. As Wise Bread points out, your local realtors might also have some bargains: If you are aware of the hardship that exercise equipment can cause, offer a fair price for the equipment (many times fitness machines have also been given as payment for moving services.) By buying it directly from the homeowner, they are getting a better deal than if they sold it to a second-hand exercise shop, and you will pay far less, as well. You can also talk to realtors and “stagers” in your area, as they often use equipment in walk-throughs and model homes. Once they no longer need it, however, it often gets thrown away or put into storage for a lofty fee.
It’s pretty bad karma to leap on every displaced homeowner with low-ball prices, of course, and buying equipment you don’t need or won’t use isn’t worth any price. But in many cases, just having someone to haul away some heavy equipment is a benefit to someone in the midst of moving out. 6 Ways to Create a Great Home Gym For Less [Wise Bread]
Google Chrome lacks native RSS reading and handling, for the moment. There’s a nifty webapp, however, that can fill some of the void for users of web-based feed readers. The applet at RAMisp.org’s page is tailor-made for Google Chrome users who use Google Reader, Pageflakes, Netvibes, or My Yahoo for their RSS reading. Let’s assume, though, that a halfway savvy coder could modify RAMisp’s page to incorporate other readers (and please post a link if you host it!). To use the service, head to feeds.ramisp.org in your Chrome browser, then drag the “Auto-Detect RSS” bookmark onto your bookmarks bar (if you don’t see a bar, activate it with Control+B). You can also grab a “View RSS Feed” if you want to see a site’s feed in your browser. Head to any page with an RSS feed available, hit your “Auto-Detect RSS” link, and you’ll land on a page with the feed displayed and auto-subscription links at the top:
There’s no shortage of ways to download YouTube’s videos, including Lifehacker’s Better YouTube extension, the KeepVid webapp, and tons of similar tools. But YouTube is starting to offer a few official download links. Right now, the only obvious spot for them is in President-Elect Barack Obama’s ChangeDotGov channel, in the lower-left by the play button (although they don’t show up on the official channel page, you’ll have to click the video titles to grab from their standard player pages). The videos pull down as decent-quality MP4s, and it’s the same download whether you switch to HD viewing or not. It makes sense that government-provided videos would be available for free downloads and offline viewing. If you spot the download links anywhere else on YouTub>, share with the crows in the comments. ChangeDotGov Channel [YouTube via Google Operating System]
McDonald’s rollout of free Wi-Fi offers a useful on-the-road option if you need connectivity in a hurry, but there’s some catches to be aware of. More »
Nokia’s Comes With Music music subscription service for mobile phones is apparently going to be landing in Australia soon. Australian IT quotes a Reuters report which says that the service, already operational in the UK, will appear in Singapore and Sydney in “the next 10 weeks”. I’m still not sure whether music subscription services make sense, but it will almost certainly have to be an improvement on Sanity’s much-derided Loadit service (if you’re among the haters, here’s some methods of removing it from Windows Media Player). Unusually for a subscription service, the music accessed via the Nokia offering can be retained if the subscription expires, although with a high-priced phone and limited download options that could still prove a poor-value deal. What features would you like to see on a phone music subscription plan? More »
Pidgin already has support for a variety of messaging protocols, add to its chat-tacular arsenal with add-ons for Facebook and Twitter. Over at Download Squad they’ve put together a step by step tutorial covering how to soup up Pidgin. We’ve previously covered the Pidgin Facebook plug-in, but integrating Twitter updates is definitely a new-trick-on-the-block. The trick requires a gmail account so you can access the gTalk protocol in Pidgin as well as a plug-in for the Twitter API. Check out the tutorial for detailed instructions and turn Pidgin into your mecca of messaging. For more customisation ideas check out the ten must have plug-ins for Pidgin. How to add Twitter and Facebook support to Pidgin for Windows [Download Squad]
Blogger and Internet marketer Khoa Bui found that using electronic to-do lists and task managers just wasn’t getting him the desired results:
I found with personal experience that if I write down the things I want to complete on a digital file on my computer, I only complete maybe 20% of the tasks on the list, or sometimes I even completely ignore the document.
Bui instead adopted a much more old-fashioned method: using a file box with index cards to store and categorise tasks. Check the video for details of his system. Now, I suspect this method isn’t for everybody: I much prefer having this kind of thing on my BlackBerry, because then it’s always with me and it’s easy to back up, and many others work best with a purely online solution like Remember The Milk. But if you like keeping your planning firmly in the physical world, it’s a good tactic.
The 3×5 Box Organiser MethodWindows only: KidRocket is a stand-alone application designed to protect kids from the internet and your computer from your kids.
Like previously reviewed KidZui, KidRocket is a hybrid activity centre and browser. KidRocket can be locked to the desktop to prevent your kids from unwittingly wrecking havoc on your computer. It includes a web browser that operates off a pre-selected white list of kid-friendly sites. In addition to the web browsing function there is a variety of activities like interactive math flash cards and a simple paint program. For older kids you can enable a basic email client and create a safe list of emails so that your budding social networking aficionado can email grandma. One of the handiest features of KidRocket is that it is entirely portable. All application settings are written to a sub-folder of the directory the file is run from. You can easily toss it on a flash drive and take it along when travelling. If the features of KidRocket seem a bit too Little Tyke’ish for an older child, make sure to check out KidZui which has a more sophisticated feature set and social networking component. KidRocket is freeware, Windows only. Thanks wickedcupofjoe! KidRocket
With more mobile phone accounts in the country than people, it’s no real surprise that Australians are enthusiastic about using their cherished device anywhere they can. A survey of 500-odd Aussies by Microsoft found that 53% were in favour of allowing in-flight calls. Most said they would like that facility to inform relatives of last-minute flight changes — though anyone who heads out to pick someone up at the airport without checking first online deserves to wait if you ask me. Amidst a sea of predictable stats about how younger people use their phone more, the other notable figure was that Australians still prefer numeric keypad phones to touch-screen devices, though only by a small margin (38% versus 36%). More »
