Windows only: If you need to grab both video and still screen captures, but don’t have the need or budget for professional software, Extensoft Screen Capturer can do both with ease. With Extensoft’s app, you can capture the entire screen or specified areas of it. Captured images can be saved as BMP, JPG, PNG, and TIFF formats. Video captures can be saved in either WMV or AVI format—there are codecs for DiVX, ffdshow, and XviD, among others, for post-processing, and audio can be grabbed during video sessions as well. Almost all of the menu commands for controlling Extensoft Screen Capturer have corresponding keyboard shortcuts, making it easy to use mouse-free. Screen Capturer is free but does require a basic name/email registration. The registration is sent instantly and requires no validation. Extensoft Screen Capturer is freeware, Windows only.
Extensoft Screen Capturer [via Confessions of a Freeware Junkie]Safari 4 Beta sprinted from the gate with a claim to being “3x faster than Firefox” at JavaScript rendering. We’re calling Apple’s ante and updating our browser speed tests with the latest builds.
No more triple-clicking for every file you want to send over Gmail. Clicking “Browse” now lets you select multiple files at once to attach to a message, and tiny progress bars are displayed while each file uploads sequentially. Nice improvement over all that clicking, and fewer guesses as to whether “Still working …” means progress or eminent browser crash. [Official Gmail Blog]
If you are doing your own photo printing, you presumably already know you’ll get better output if you spend more on paper and ink. (Sounds like marketing speak, but it’s all too true in this case.) Regardless, there are some other tricks you’ll need to get the best results, all of which kick in long before you click on the print icon. More »
“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” is undoubtedly the most useful money management principle you can learn. So when faced with something like Comes With Music, Nokia’s all-you-can-eat music subscription service, the question immediately becomes: what’s the catch? More »
If your pasta sauce range doesn’t extend beyond bolognese and whatever’s in a jar on the supermarket shelf, a free ebook of pasta recipe ideas might give you another reason to break out the macaroni. The book is designed to promote Latina’s fresh pasta range, but of course you can use the recipes with anything. I especially like the look of the salad nicoise.
Latina Deliciously Fresh Cookbook (PDF, requires email address) [via OzBargainThere’s thousands of kilometres of optical fibre running around Australia, but generally precious little chance of using it for high-speed Internet access unless you’re a large corporation. As such, Internode’s announcement of a fibre-to-the-home package with speeds of up to 100Mbps is an interesting development. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean you can ditch ADSL in your existing premises: the deal is only available in new homes constructed on estates, with the first sites in Queensland and South Australia. The pricing isn’t too bad though. The entry-level $49.95 a month gets you a 25MBps connection, though you’ll chew through the 5GB download limit pretty quickly (at which point you’ll get shaped to a very non-fibre 64Kbps). Picture by Fernbrooke Estate Internode
Rather than shell out for new exercise DVDs to keep your workouts fresh and your fitness resolutions going strong, weblog Unclutterer suggests several free exercise video podcasts to keep the sweat pouring. The Unclutterer post features a couple of their favourite podcast workout sources.
Replace exercise DVDs with video podcasts [Unclutterer]Mac OS X only: doubleTwist simplifies media management, whether you want to sync to your mobile device, share it with friends, or upload it to YouTube, Flickr, or Facebook. It’s so easy your grandparents could use it.
Dear Lifehacker, Is there any way to block windows into a specific area on a screen, so when they maximise they don’t stretch over top of the whole desktop and hide my desktop widgets?
Sincerely, Hidden Widgets
