Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Organise
Create Kitchen Kits To Avoid Frantic Drawer Searching
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | The Daring Young Mum site suggests an alternative to digging through your often crammed drawers full of measuring spoons and cups to find a tablespoon right away—create a “kit” to pull out and put away. Even if the kit itself ends up a loosely-organised affair, only your measuring spoons and cups are contained in a box—any kind of disposable cardboard box, really—so you’re not pushing aside baking spatulas or serving spoons and other minutiae. If you’ve got more cupboard space than drawer room, it’s a kind of creative throw-back to childhood toy chests. How do you keep your cooking gear close at hand, yet organized enough to find what you need? Offer up your organisng ideas in the comments. Tips for Tuesday – Best Kitchen Organisation Tip [Daring Young Mum via TipNut] More »
Communicate
TweetNews Ranks News Stories By Twitter Links
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Noting that breaking news stories move a lot faster through Twitter than aggregation sites like Google/Yahoo News and Digg, a Yahoo BOSS engineer created a news search tool that ranks based on Twitter links. TweetNews keeps an eye on Yahoo News and compares its headlines with which news stories are culling links on Twitter updates. A story’s popularity amongst the tweeting masses will push it up farther on TweetNews. There’s no landing page full of links, though, just search functionality. You can see the Twitter updates each result is pulling from in a drop-down box, and the absolutely minimal site loads seriously fast. TweetNews is free, no sign-up required, and a decent addition to any news-watcher’s arsenal—especially those who like to be really, really up-to-date on what’s happening. TweetNews [via TG Daily] More »
Work
Last Freeware Version Finds Free Copies Of Popular Apps
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | When finishing up a re-install, or helping out a friend, it stinks to find out your favourite free app is now a paid-for affair. The Last Freeware Version website can help. The site has one of those names that ruins our Lifehacker-style headlines, because it just does what you’d think it does. The organisation could use a little work, being a series of pages organised by an app’s last update, but you can quickly scan or Control+F search the All LFV page to grab links to apps like IsoBuster, RegCleaner, FastStone Capture, and other apps that exist in the dual realms of free and licence-based. We’ve used LFV in our own features before to track down apps, and it’s pretty handy when you just know a certain app is available gratis somewhere. Free to use, no sign-up required. Last Freeware Version [via Download Squad] More »
Money
6:13PM Angus Kidman | There’s a growing perception in the community that the fastest way to get rich is to become a plumber, or otherwise pursue a trade. But new figures show that while tradies do pretty well in the salary stakes, graduates do even better. Andrew Trounson at The Australian reports that a 10-year study by the Australian Council for Educational Research found that getting a degree increased salaries by 31%, while an apprenticeship saw them rise by 23%. Getting a university place may be harder than ever, but there appear to be definite fiscal rewards (as well as the intellectual ones; I wouldn’t have wanted to go to uni with no-one except people worried about how rich they were going to get). Photo by the University of New England
Universities are already showing signs of struggle in coping with increased demand [The Australian]
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Higher Education Still Key To Better Salary
6:13PM Angus Kidman | There’s a growing perception in the community that the fastest way to get rich is to become a plumber, or otherwise pursue a trade. But new figures show that while tradies do pretty well in the salary stakes, graduates do even better. Andrew Trounson at The Australian reports that a 10-year study by the Australian Council for Educational Research found that getting a degree increased salaries by 31%, while an apprenticeship saw them rise by 23%. Getting a university place may be harder than ever, but there appear to be definite fiscal rewards (as well as the intellectual ones; I wouldn’t have wanted to go to uni with no-one except people worried about how rich they were going to get). Photo by the University of New England
Universities are already showing signs of struggle in coping with increased demand [The Australian]
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Communicate
2:00PM Angus Kidman | If you’ve got the lingering suspicion that your mobile phone has a lot of features you’re ignoring because they’re too hard to activate, you’re not alone. The BBC reports on a study which found that 61% of new phone owners gave up on new services if they didn’t work straight away, while 95% said they would use more services if they weren’t so confusing to access. (While the article cites the iPhone as an example of progress, the associated MobileMe service is hardly a poster child for ease of operation either.) Do you think phone interfaces could be improved, or is complexity an inevitable result of devices doing more than just making calls? Share your thoughts in the comments.
New phone features ‘baffle users’ [BBC News]
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Mobile Phone Interface Design Is Too Complex
2:00PM Angus Kidman | If you’ve got the lingering suspicion that your mobile phone has a lot of features you’re ignoring because they’re too hard to activate, you’re not alone. The BBC reports on a study which found that 61% of new phone owners gave up on new services if they didn’t work straight away, while 95% said they would use more services if they weren’t so confusing to access. (While the article cites the iPhone as an example of progress, the associated MobileMe service is hardly a poster child for ease of operation either.) Do you think phone interfaces could be improved, or is complexity an inevitable result of devices doing more than just making calls? Share your thoughts in the comments.
New phone features ‘baffle users’ [BBC News]
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Work
Gizmo Drive Mounts ISO, BIN And VHD Disk Images
1:40PM Adam Pash | Windows only: Free application Gizmo Drive mounts almost any virtual hard drive you can throw at it, including ISO, BIN, CUE, and the new virtual hard drive (VHD) images supported in Windows 7. The purpose of disk image mounting tools is generally the same: Rather than burning a new CD or DVD whenever you want to access a file inside a disk image, these applications simply mount the image as though it’s a physical hard drive on your computer. We’ve featured several disk mounting utilities in the past, including previously mentioned ISODisk and Pismo File Mount, but Gizmo Drive may be the first we’ve seen that’s added VHD support as well—which may come in handy for XP and Vista users once Windows 7 comes along. The application is included in a packaged install with other apps, so be sure to check only what you want to install. Gizmo Drive is a free download, Windows only. Gizmo Drive [via Download Squad] More »
Work
Find A New Job By Offering A Bounty
1:35PM Adam Pash | TheJobBored weblog offers some radical advice for landing a job in tough economic times: Offer a reward to the friend or colleague who helps you land a real job. It’s an extreme measure, and it might require some tactful manoeuvring on your part, but—as the post points out—crazier things have been done. If you’ve ever tried this or some other rather extreme method for securing a job, let’s hear more about it in the comments. Photo by Rob Lee. More »
Work
Windows 7 Shortcuts Updates, Adds More Features
1:00PM Adam Pash | If you liked the initial release of Windows 7 Shortcuts—a tiny, lightweight application that enables some of Windows 7’s best keyboard shortcuts in Vista and XP—you’ll be happy to know that the app has updated with support for even more shortcuts, feature improvements, and bug fixes. Head to the Windows 7 Shortcuts release history for details and to grab the latest. Thanks Rupert! More »
Work
Google Web Drive On Its Way?
12:20PM Adam Pash | A user in the MacRumors forums posted this screenshot from the recently released Picasa for Mac beta, which included an option to move photos to a “Google Web Drive.” Google users have wanted a cloud storage solution from Google ever since Gmail’s huge storage capacity made web storage seem viable, but an official storage solution from Google has yet to be seen. Google Blogoscoped suggests that the pictured “Google Web Drive” may be the solution Google lovers have been waiting for. For cloud storage solutions that are available now, check out the five best file syncing tools, most of which sync between the web and your desktop. Photo via MacForums More »
Work
12:00PM Angus Kidman | Expat blogger Matthew Gain taps into recent news stories about how Australians behave in the workplace and discusses his own experiences working in London. He suggests that Australian directness can indeed be a problem when adapting into other workplace environments, and that this isn’t always obvious if you work in an apparently similar culture like the UK:
In my case I spent six months not knowing what I didn’t know and so went about my business thinking it was easy and exactly the same as back home. The next six months were some of the hardest in my working life as I realised what I didn’t know.
Have you found being Australian a help or a hindrance when working overseas (or dealing with overseas organisations)? Share your experience in the comments.
Tips for Aussies wanting to work in the UK
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Are Aussies Too Brash To Work Overseas?
12:00PM Angus Kidman | Expat blogger Matthew Gain taps into recent news stories about how Australians behave in the workplace and discusses his own experiences working in London. He suggests that Australian directness can indeed be a problem when adapting into other workplace environments, and that this isn’t always obvious if you work in an apparently similar culture like the UK:
In my case I spent six months not knowing what I didn’t know and so went about my business thinking it was easy and exactly the same as back home. The next six months were some of the hardest in my working life as I realised what I didn’t know.
Have you found being Australian a help or a hindrance when working overseas (or dealing with overseas organisations)? Share your experience in the comments.
Tips for Aussies wanting to work in the UK
More » 