Tuesday, March 3, 2009

DisplayFusion 3.0 Manages Everything Across Multi-Monitor Setups

11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | Windows only: If you’re looking to manage windows and wallpapers on multiple monitors, it’s tough to go wrong with the reasonably priced, and recently updated monitor manager DisplayFusion. We’ve sung the praises of DisplayFusion before, for its ability to customise your dual monitors. DisplayFusion has recently been revamped to include even more features including the ability to grab wallpapers from not only your computer and Flickr, but from the excellent wallpaper collection at Vladstudio—a popular wallpaper site based on responses to where you found your favourite multi-monitor wallpaper. While the addition of new resources for new wallpaper is great, it isn’t nearly as newsworthy as the addition of multi-monitor windows management. Like previously reviewed UltraMon, DisplayFusion now has the ability to span your taskbar across all of your monitors. You can switch windows between your monitors using hotkeys or by clicking on the title bar of the window with the middle mouse button. There is one small hiccup with the window management tool, though: if you’re using multiple monitors, it doesn’t allow you to select which monitor the window will move to like UltraMon does. Using the hotkey or middle mouse button sends the window to the next monitor in the sequence as Windows sees them. As you can see in the screen shot up top, my monitors are arranged in a 2-1-3 pattern, so to move a window from the centre monitor to the far right one requires two clicks. Not a deal breaker by any means, and not even an issue if you only have two monitors, but something to keep if you’re sporting three or more monitors. If you can tolerate the loss of some of the tweaks available in UltraMon, like the multi-monitor screensaver tool, DisplayFusion costs less than half of UltraMon’s $US40 price at $US16. I’ve used both over the last year with dual, and then triple, monitors and, dollar for dollar, DisplayFusion is a great value. The day DisplayFusion adds a handy titlebar button for tossing windows from one monitor to another, I’ll stop using the two applications side by side and use DisplayFusion exclusively. DisplayFusion has a limited-functionality free edition, and you can request a 30-day trial licence to test out the full package before purchase. DisplayFusion is $16 for a lifetime licence and is Windows only. DisplayFusion 3.0 [Binary Fortress]

Readability Bookmarklet Quick-Formats Pages For Smoother Text

11:05PM Kevin Purdy | A helpful little browser bookmarklet from Arc90 strips all but the main text out of any web page and re-formats its layout, size, and margins, creating a newspaper or novel-like page for easier text digestion.Head to the Readability page linked below, choose your “Style” (newspaper, novel, eBook, or terminal), your text size, and how wide across the page you want the text to spread. Grab and drag the customised bookmarklet to your toolbar, and click it when you come across text that’s smooshed, oddly formatted, or surrounded by stuff you don’t want to see. When it works, it does just what it says, and the fonts and rendering are quite relaxing. But it doesn’t catch every site’s text. Intrigued? Check out this video demonstration/mission statement: More »

Working At Night Messes With Your Metabolism

10:30PM Kevin Purdy | New research suggests that its not just food options and lifestyle choices that put night workers at higher risk for obesity and other health problems—it’s that human bodies can’t really adapt to a late-night rhythm. Researchers have long been concerned about the higher risks of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other ailments for people who work on night shifts. The short version of the findings from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is that when everyone is put on the same health and lifestyle axis, those who slip outside the normal human routine of waking at morning and sleeping at night—also known as tweaking their circadian rhythm—run up against their body’s resistance, as noted by Wired: The (night-shifted) subjects’ bodies soon produced less leptin, a hormone secreted from fatty tissue that signals a body to stop eating by triggering feelings of satiety. They experienced increases in blood glucose and insulin, which are linked to diabetes. Levels of cortisol, a hormone released during periods of stress and linked to nearly every disorder in which night work has been implicated, shot up. Test subjects’ blood pressure also rose. Those findings came from test subjects who were waking up four hours later each day, though, not someone working permanently on a night schedule. So if you’re working on a rotating day/night schedule, whether planned or as a result of excess overtime, it’s not just your free time begging you to come back to stability—your body wouldn’t mind a regular schedule either. em>Photo by cell105. Night Shift Makes Metabolism Go Haywire [Wired via Gizmodo] More »

iGoogle Adds Sidebar Chat, Works Just Like Gmail

9:00PM Kevin Purdy | Google’s start page is rolling out a sidebar chat tool, which uses Gmail users’ existing chat settings if they have them but can also chat between iGoogle users without Gmail (all 12 of them?) We kid, we kid. iGoogle’s chat works almost exactly like Gmail, offering the same status options, providing mouse-over details on contacts and quick links to email, chat, and choose their appearance frequency in your list. If you want to invite a non-Gmail friend to chat, you can do that from the “Add friends” link—they’ll have to sign up for iGoogle, but after that, you’re both inside Google Talk/Chat. The two noticeable drawbacks to iGoogle chat are the lack of Gmail’s AIM support, and no pop-out options for the chat windows that pop up from the lower-right corner. If you use iGoogle to get things done and don’t want any chats, you can sign out and minimise the chat bar to a single line. It’s a US-English-only thing for now, but “coming soon” for other languages and countries. Does Google Talk make your iGoogle page a better all-in-one home page, or is it feature overload? What features would you like to see installed? Trade your takes in the comments. Chatting away on iGoogle… [Official Google Blog] More »

Install Google Chrome Without Google’s Pushy Updater

6:00PM Adam Pash | Windows only: Google has gotten in the bad habit lately of requiring you to install Google Updater to download any of its desktop apps, but if you’re not keen on the required Updater install (and want to try Chrome), try the Google Chrome Standalone installer. It downloads a full “offline” installation package for Chrome. The downside: It won’t automatically update when Google Updater pushes out new versions of Chrome. But don’t worry, we’ll keep you updated. Alternately, check out previously mentioned Portable Chrome if you’d like to carry Chrome on your thumb drive. [Google Chrome Standalone Installer via Google Operating System] More »

Make Concert Shots Better With Picasa’s Black And White Filter

4:30PM Angus Kidman | The idea of converting concert pictures to black and white to hide their flaws, which came up in a post earlier today, is pretty nifty — but what if you don’t fancy getting to grips with the complexities of Photoshop or GIMP? Fortunately, there’s a basic black and white converter built into Picasa, a friendlier if less subtle tool. To access it, double-click on the image you want to edit, select Effects then B&W. As the example above demonstrates, going monochrome isn’t going to do much for issues like camera shake or generally low image quality (the shot in question is a hasty catch on a BlackBerry), but it can add a certain atmosphere. (By the way, if you can identify the performer, you’re even more tragic than me!) More »

One Hundred Words A Day Encourages You To Write Exactly That

3:00PM Angus Kidman | While you not think it from the size of the blogosphere, many people find it hard to get motivated to write regularly. The One Hundred Words A Day Blog has one simple idea: anyone can post to say that they’ve written 100 words that day. (That might not sound like much, but do it every weekday for a year and you’ll have half a novel.) Whether the time taken posting to the blog might be better used to write another 50 words, it’s a motivational technique worth considering if your ambitions keep dying whenever you get near the keyboard. One Hundred Words A Day More »

Awdio Lets You Go Clubbing From Your Browser

1:30PM Angus Kidman | Looking for a wider range of current music than what’s on your iPod but can’t muster the time or energy to leave your house and go clubbing? Awdio offers live music streams from a selection of global nightclubs (including lots from Australia, albeit with a distinct Melbourne bias), played directly into your browser. Just click on the club name to get started. Since the broadcasts are live, your favourite club might well be silent if you log in during working hours, but there’s enough coverage to ensure you’ll find something. Awdio is free to use, requires registration. Awdio More »

GrabaDiscount.com.au Offers Cash-Off Vouchers For Local Businesses

12:00PM Angus Kidman | There are plenty of sites which include online discount vouchers and codes amongst other Internet bargain hunting tips, but GrabaDiscount.com.au is one of the first we’ve encountered that concentrates solely on the vouchers side of the equation. Sign up for the site and you can hunt down bargain vouchers for everything from car parts to health spas, mostly from small businesses rather than franchises. There’s rather more “percentage off” deals than outright freebies, but in these cash-conscious times, it can’t hurt to browse. GrabaDiscount.com.au is free to use, requires registration to print vouchers. GrabaDiscount.com.au More »