Friday, January 23, 2009
Work
OperaTor Browses With Portable, Tor-Driven Anonymity
11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | Windows only: OperaTor combines a thumb-drive-friendly version of the peedy Opera web-browser with transparent privacy through the Tor network. Other than a slight lag when first loading the browser—because you can’t see a lightweight proxy loading in the background—the Tor-connected experience was no different than loading regular Opera. That means no configuration or connection settings, which is great for private proxy newcomers. If you don’t dig the alternative-to-the-alternatives Opera browser, you can use previously mentioned PortableTor in connection with any portable browser you find out there. OperaTor is freeware, Windows only. OperaTor [via Portable Freeware] More »
Organise
MashiCal Combines Any iCal Feeds You Throw At It
11:10PM Kevin Purdy | If you’re looking to combine all your iCal-feeding calendars—and you’re not, say, a Google or Yahoo Calendar user—MashiCal could be your solution, as well as a way to separate your shared feeds from personal stuff. The site claims to be able to handle pretty much any feed or file you give it with the .ics extension, and it worked for at least two Google Calendar feeds and an exported ICS. If you’re trapped using separate calendar services and want a combined view, or want to offer up a whole bunch of feeds to a group, MashiCal could surpass Google and Yahoo for the sign-up/setup/share hassle alone. Better still, MashiCal doesn’t require a new sign-up, as it can log you in with your Google, Facebook, OpenID, and a few other credentials. MashiCal is free to use, requires a login with a third-party account to use. Check out a video demonstration of MashiCal combinations below: More »
Fix
SetteMaxer Tweaks A Handful Of Windows 7’s Settings
10:30PM Kevin Purdy | Windows 7 (beta) only: Even the earliest leaked Windows 7 betas haven’t been around long enough for multi-purpose tweaking tools to come around. SetteMaxer, though, offers a few of the tweaks familiar to the customisation crowd. The screenshot above is exactly what SetteMaxer is—just a handful of check boxes and an “Apply” button. It’s definitely worth reading at the project page below what specifically each feature does when applied, though most are familiar fixes like User Account Control/Defender disablers, menu speed options, and program crash controls. Still, with any tweaking utility of this type, be absolutely sure you want to make a change before you do so—some options, like “disable task scheduler,” can have some serious, system-endangering punch to them. If you see anything worth enacting in the list above, grab the executable, run it, apply the change, and you can delete it if you want, as SetteMaxer is a stand-alone file. It’s a free download for Windows 7 beta systems only. SetteMaxer for Windows 7 [via Life Rocks 2.0] More »
Money
In Praise Of Fixing Your Own Appliances
9:00PM Kevin Purdy | Betsy Teutsch took a $1,000 hit to the chin when the plastic knobs on her stovetop range broke off. When a similar fate befell her under-sink water heater, she refused to give in. After tracking down the heater maker and receiving a “no dice” email reply, the Get Rich Slowly guest-blogger powered up her persistence, called an actual human representative (with the help of GetHuman, and found exactly what she needed. When I asked if they manufacture the knobs or buy them from a supplier, Bingo! He passed along the number of their knob supplier. That company was wonderful; their business model includes servicing harried householders crazy to replace appliance knobs. For a $10 charge, the correct knob was quickly dispatched and works perfectly. No more turning the dial shaft with a screw driver and risking it breaking off completely! Like Teutsch, many of us end up facing down large purchases because of small, seemingly impossible-to-replace items breaking down. With patience, research, and a nothing-to-lose attitude, though, you can end up saving a good deal of capital with an appliance repair that doesn’t require a training course. What’s the smallest/dumbest/rarest fix you’ve made that saved you cash? Where have you turned when trying to hunt down a seemingly impossible appliance? Share your secrets in the comments. Repair, Restore, Rejoice: Making the Most of Home Appliances [Get Rich Slowly] More »
Organise
4:30PM Angus Kidman | We’re sure you’ve got the patriotism/BBQ/concert side sorted, but if you get some spare time over the long weekend, here’s five ideas from the past week worth following up:
Set up a GiveDo.com search for your favourite charity
Get your pet a date with MyPetNeedsLove
Try out Plinky as a means of maintaining your web presence
Start using SpendingDiary to avoid personal fiscal chaos
Find the best of Twitter on EpicTweet
Lifehacker will continue to publish US posts over the weekend; normal Aussie service will resume on Tuesday.
More »
Five Things To Do This Australia Day Weekend
4:30PM Angus Kidman | We’re sure you’ve got the patriotism/BBQ/concert side sorted, but if you get some spare time over the long weekend, here’s five ideas from the past week worth following up:
Set up a GiveDo.com search for your favourite charity
Get your pet a date with MyPetNeedsLove
Try out Plinky as a means of maintaining your web presence
Start using SpendingDiary to avoid personal fiscal chaos
Find the best of Twitter on EpicTweet
Lifehacker will continue to publish US posts over the weekend; normal Aussie service will resume on Tuesday.
More »
Organise
3:00PM Angus Kidman | Hacking iTunes to allow half-star ratings might seem cool, but it can also cause problems. The Popjustice blog points out one of the potential flaws:
We’ve got a smart playlist which selects 8GB of ***** songs and chucks them onto our iPhone, as well as another that selects 3GB of the most recently added ***-and-above songs and puts those on the iPhone too. Every few weeks we have a clearout of stuff with one star. That has been fine. Now we can give things half a star it’s all gone horribly wrong and everything’s a mess.
While this methodology could be adapted to deal with a wider range of ratings, it does highlight the issues involved when you’re trying to select the best bits of hundreds of gigabytes of music for a limited capacity player. Share your preferred solution to rating and managing your overflowing content in the comments.
Half-star ratings in iTunes: is this the way forward or the beginning of untold misery? [Popjustice]
More »
Do Half-Stars Make It Harder To Manage Your iTunes Collection?
3:00PM Angus Kidman | Hacking iTunes to allow half-star ratings might seem cool, but it can also cause problems. The Popjustice blog points out one of the potential flaws:
We’ve got a smart playlist which selects 8GB of ***** songs and chucks them onto our iPhone, as well as another that selects 3GB of the most recently added ***-and-above songs and puts those on the iPhone too. Every few weeks we have a clearout of stuff with one star. That has been fine. Now we can give things half a star it’s all gone horribly wrong and everything’s a mess.
While this methodology could be adapted to deal with a wider range of ratings, it does highlight the issues involved when you’re trying to select the best bits of hundreds of gigabytes of music for a limited capacity player. Share your preferred solution to rating and managing your overflowing content in the comments.
Half-star ratings in iTunes: is this the way forward or the beginning of untold misery? [Popjustice]
More »
Work
1:30PM Angus Kidman | No matter how organised you think you are, there’s stuff you’re simply never going to get around to. Dumping those options from your future to-do list can make all the difference. Tech author Thomas A Limoncelli , author of the book Time Management for System Administrators, put it well during his keynote at Linux.conf.au earlier this week:
As geeks we often think priorities are the order we’re going to do things in, but really priorities set lists of things that we’re not going to do as well.
Not that this doesn’t mean you should ditch long-term goals — there’s nothing wrong with forward planning in that sense — but there’s no point in beating yourself up over stuff that simply won’t happen on your watch. Better to acknowledge that it won’t happen (and pass the baton elsewhere if it’s a work task) and focus on a realistic list. More »
Setting Priorities Means Ditching Stuff, Not Ordering It
1:30PM Angus Kidman | No matter how organised you think you are, there’s stuff you’re simply never going to get around to. Dumping those options from your future to-do list can make all the difference. Tech author Thomas A Limoncelli , author of the book Time Management for System Administrators, put it well during his keynote at Linux.conf.au earlier this week:
As geeks we often think priorities are the order we’re going to do things in, but really priorities set lists of things that we’re not going to do as well.
Not that this doesn’t mean you should ditch long-term goals — there’s nothing wrong with forward planning in that sense — but there’s no point in beating yourself up over stuff that simply won’t happen on your watch. Better to acknowledge that it won’t happen (and pass the baton elsewhere if it’s a work task) and focus on a realistic list. More »
Communicate
12:00PM Angus Kidman | You don’t want anyone in your online social network to think you’re boring, but it’s often hard to come up with updates that are punchy and amusing. Save yourself from being unfollowed on Twitter or abused by your Facebook pals with Plinky. Plinky asks questions (like “name three songs you would put on a road trip mix tape” or “Defend your vice”) and then builds them into posts which anyone can view. You can set up Plinky to automatically feed updates to Facebook, Twitter and a bunch of blogging services, including WordPress, Blogger, TypePad and LiveJournal. New prompts get supplied each day (and you can suggest future prompts to the service). It’s no substitute for real creativity, but we all know there are days when that is in short supply. Plinky is free, requires signup. Thanks Mark J!
Plinky
More »
Plinky Comes Up With Content For Your Status Updates And Blogs
12:00PM Angus Kidman | You don’t want anyone in your online social network to think you’re boring, but it’s often hard to come up with updates that are punchy and amusing. Save yourself from being unfollowed on Twitter or abused by your Facebook pals with Plinky. Plinky asks questions (like “name three songs you would put on a road trip mix tape” or “Defend your vice”) and then builds them into posts which anyone can view. You can set up Plinky to automatically feed updates to Facebook, Twitter and a bunch of blogging services, including WordPress, Blogger, TypePad and LiveJournal. New prompts get supplied each day (and you can suggest future prompts to the service). It’s no substitute for real creativity, but we all know there are days when that is in short supply. Plinky is free, requires signup. Thanks Mark J!
Plinky
More »
Work
11:00AM Angus Kidman | Writer L.J. Sellers was having trouble keeping track of character traits and details in a crime novel she was working on, so she turned to Excel. As well as imparting the useful discipline of adding key details every time new information was added in her manuscript, this also had an unexpected creative benefit:
What’s great about this file is that each column can be sorted individually. I separated out the first and last names so I could alphabetize/sort each list individually. So if I come up with the name Kirstin, I can quickly sort first names and check the middle of that column and see how many characters have first names that start with K. Yikes! Better come up with a different name.
This might seem an obvious choice if you’re a spreadsheet devotee, but it’s a useful reminder that not all of us spend our days thinking about ways to reuse existing tech. While Sellers favoured Excel, you could get identical results with OpenOffice.org’s Calc module or any other spreadsheet system. If you’re a budding writer with another means of organising your work (some of Sellers’ commenters praise OneNote), let’s hear about it below.
How To Create a Character Database [L.J. Sellers via Inside Office Online Blog]
More »
Use A Spreadsheet To Track Characters In Your Epic Novel
11:00AM Angus Kidman | Writer L.J. Sellers was having trouble keeping track of character traits and details in a crime novel she was working on, so she turned to Excel. As well as imparting the useful discipline of adding key details every time new information was added in her manuscript, this also had an unexpected creative benefit:
What’s great about this file is that each column can be sorted individually. I separated out the first and last names so I could alphabetize/sort each list individually. So if I come up with the name Kirstin, I can quickly sort first names and check the middle of that column and see how many characters have first names that start with K. Yikes! Better come up with a different name.
This might seem an obvious choice if you’re a spreadsheet devotee, but it’s a useful reminder that not all of us spend our days thinking about ways to reuse existing tech. While Sellers favoured Excel, you could get identical results with OpenOffice.org’s Calc module or any other spreadsheet system. If you’re a budding writer with another means of organising your work (some of Sellers’ commenters praise OneNote), let’s hear about it below.
How To Create a Character Database [L.J. Sellers via Inside Office Online Blog]
More »
Fix
