Thursday, January 22, 2009
Money
SpendingDiary Is A Simple Expense Tracker
11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | SpendingDiary is a simple, functional web-based expense tracker that tags expenditures, generates reports, and gives good data on your money flow. The site has a completely functional demonstration account available—a nice touch that makes it really easy to test drive without handing over an email address. SpendingDiary has a simple interface—for every entry you assign a name, a category, and the amount you spent. You can generate reports for the day, week, month, or a custom date range, and your expenses displayed in a slick pie graph, broken into the tags you’ve set up. Your data is also exportable to other formats, including the ever-friendly CSV. SpendingDiary [via MakeUseOf] More »
Fix
Create A Landscape iPhone Stand From Pencils And Rubber Bands
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | The Geeky Gadgets blog details a fun, easy iPhone/iPod touch stand anyone with five pencils and four rubber bands can put together in a few minutes for a sly mini-theater. Actually, the author notes that original iPhone owners might only need four pencils, but a fifth horizontal support pencil is needed for the 3G model’s thickness. Eraser-tipped pencils are also put to great use as non-slip pads at the base your DIY creation. Your office supply truss/tension construction skills may vary, but most folks should be able to get a version together with the basic supplies. For another at-your-desk stand, check out the paper clip stand. If your DIU skills are non-existent, consider the plate stand alternative. Feature: The Pencil iPhone Stand [Geeky Gadgets] More »
Design
ThemeMaker Puts Custom Pics And Colours On Your iGoogle Start Page
9:30PM Kevin Purdy | A week after it was originally announced, Google rolls out a tool to “create iGoogle themes.” It can’t do everything we’d hope for, but check out what you can accomplish in the screenshots below. More »
Fix
Building A PC Case From Spare Shampoo Bottles
4:30PM Angus Kidman | A feature of Linux.conf.au 2009 in Hobart is Batteries Not Included, a tech-influenced art event — and one of the more striking installation ideas is the Frank Zappa Project, a garbage bin for collecting plastic shampoo bottles from delegate hotel rooms to be recycled into casing for machines built as part of the OLPC project. As of Thursday, the bin isn’t looking too full, but I’d expect the volume to grow as the conference nears its end and people use up their shampoo. (Alas, I’ve been unable to contribute myself, as my hotel has fixed-to-the-wall dispensers rather than individual bottles.) More »
Money
3:00PM Angus Kidman | New figures show credit card fraud is getting worse for Australians — but also provide some handy reminders on how to reduce the chances of your card details getting ripped off. More »
Minimising The Risk Of Credit Card Fraud
3:00PM Angus Kidman | New figures show credit card fraud is getting worse for Australians — but also provide some handy reminders on how to reduce the chances of your card details getting ripped off. More »
Travel
1:00PM Angus Kidman | Telstra continues to expand its repertoire of sites with the launch of BigPond Travel, which offers pretty much what you’d expect: booking tools for flights, accommodation and other options, and destination content sourced from Lonely Planet. The underlying booking system comes from Zuji, which means caution about booking fees is advised: there’s a $12 per person fee on domestic flights, for instance, which you could easily avoid by booking with the airlines directly.
BigPond Travel
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BigPond Travel A Costly Way To Book Trips
1:00PM Angus Kidman | Telstra continues to expand its repertoire of sites with the launch of BigPond Travel, which offers pretty much what you’d expect: booking tools for flights, accommodation and other options, and destination content sourced from Lonely Planet. The underlying booking system comes from Zuji, which means caution about booking fees is advised: there’s a $12 per person fee on domestic flights, for instance, which you could easily avoid by booking with the airlines directly.
BigPond Travel
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Work
JustCloseSomeTasks Saves Memory By Closing Inactive Apps
12:00PM Lifehacker US Edition | Windows only: Task cleanup utility JustCloseSomeTasks monitors your running applications for inactivity and marks them for closing to free up precious memory and equally precious taskbar space. Using the application is as simple as checking the boxes for the applications you want to close and clicking the Close Tasks button or using the Ctrl+[ keyboard shortcut (configurable in the preferences). Once an application has been running but not used for more than 5 minutes, the boxes are checked by default, but you can exclude an application through the right-click menu—useful for applications like email that you might want to keep open all the time. I've found this application especially helpful for cleaning up the dozens of Windows Explorer panels that clutter my taskbar after a few hours of working—letting me close only the ones I haven't used in a while. JustCloseSomeTasks is a free download for Windows users. For a similar application with more features, check out previously mentioned EndItAll or just learn to master the task manager yourself. JustCloseSomeTasks [via Download Squad] More »
Organise
11:30AM Angus Kidman | Last November, I wrote about how Nick Broughall, editor of Lifehacker’s sibling site Gizmodo, had gotten the organising bug and was using Things, his iPhone and email to keep track of tasks. Of course, half the challenge with any organisational system is maintaining that initial fervour, so I promised we’d get back to Nick and see whether the approach was still working. His verdict? It’s going pretty well but the software needs work. As he explains:
My inbox rarely has more than 10 emails in it at a time – I’m continually filing my emails and feeling organised in that department. But I’ve found Things just doesn’t work for me as well as I’d hoped — I think the fact that I need to have a 3rd party program just doesn’t sit too well. One of the things I did like about Things was the ability to drag things to the icon in the dock and have it create a new to-do automatically. The problem was that when I did that from emails, I’d need to do it a couple of times before it worked, which was too much effort. So now, I still use Things for stuff I need to do a bit in the future, but I tend to leave the most important and pressing tasks in my inbox.
Ease of use is a critical factor in getting organised, so Nick’s lucky he’s been able to balance his needs between two programs without too much hassle. But if you’re a Mac fiend (like Nick) and think that approach could be refined, let’s hear your thoughts in the comments. More »
Gizmodo AU’s Editor Streamlines His Organisational Approach
11:30AM Angus Kidman | Last November, I wrote about how Nick Broughall, editor of Lifehacker’s sibling site Gizmodo, had gotten the organising bug and was using Things, his iPhone and email to keep track of tasks. Of course, half the challenge with any organisational system is maintaining that initial fervour, so I promised we’d get back to Nick and see whether the approach was still working. His verdict? It’s going pretty well but the software needs work. As he explains:
My inbox rarely has more than 10 emails in it at a time – I’m continually filing my emails and feeling organised in that department. But I’ve found Things just doesn’t work for me as well as I’d hoped — I think the fact that I need to have a 3rd party program just doesn’t sit too well. One of the things I did like about Things was the ability to drag things to the icon in the dock and have it create a new to-do automatically. The problem was that when I did that from emails, I’d need to do it a couple of times before it worked, which was too much effort. So now, I still use Things for stuff I need to do a bit in the future, but I tend to leave the most important and pressing tasks in my inbox.
Ease of use is a critical factor in getting organised, so Nick’s lucky he’s been able to balance his needs between two programs without too much hassle. But if you’re a Mac fiend (like Nick) and think that approach could be refined, let’s hear your thoughts in the comments. More »
Work
10:00AM Angus Kidman | Enhancing any piece of software always requires a balancing act: what if the improvements also result in new problems for existing users? Over at APC, I’ve reported on what father-of-Linux Linus Torvalds had to say on the issue during a session at Linux.conf.au in Hobart. Linux is firmly built on the principle of not incorporating a fix, even for a well-recognised bug, if that fix in turn breaks something else:
The number of machines does not matter. you always hear about machines that break; you never hear about machines that work. If you tell me this fixes more than it breaks, I laugh in your face.
That’s a rather different attitude to, say, Microsoft, which sometimes consciously makes decisions that stop older systems from working (such as ripping the original Windows help engine out of Vista, for instance), and frequently bases its design choices on the relative number of machines that will be affected. Photo from Wikimedia Commons
Linus Torvalds on regression, laziness and having his code rejected [APC]
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Linus Torvalds On Why A Working OS Is Better Than A Revamped One
10:00AM Angus Kidman | Enhancing any piece of software always requires a balancing act: what if the improvements also result in new problems for existing users? Over at APC, I’ve reported on what father-of-Linux Linus Torvalds had to say on the issue during a session at Linux.conf.au in Hobart. Linux is firmly built on the principle of not incorporating a fix, even for a well-recognised bug, if that fix in turn breaks something else:
The number of machines does not matter. you always hear about machines that break; you never hear about machines that work. If you tell me this fixes more than it breaks, I laugh in your face.
That’s a rather different attitude to, say, Microsoft, which sometimes consciously makes decisions that stop older systems from working (such as ripping the original Windows help engine out of Vista, for instance), and frequently bases its design choices on the relative number of machines that will be affected. Photo from Wikimedia Commons
Linus Torvalds on regression, laziness and having his code rejected [APC]
More »
Work
