Friday, March 6, 2009
Design
GifNinja Turns Still Images And Video Into Animations
11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | If you’d like to make an animated GIF but don’t want mess around with downloading software, GifNinja is a web-based application for converting images and video into animated GIFs. GifNinja will turn a series of five uploaded images or a four second long video clip into an animated GIF—four seconds isn’t a set cap, but the GifNinja FAQ suggests it to keep the GIF files under the file size limitations of popular social networking sites. You can adjust the speed of your animation for the effect you desire, don’t worry too much about the initial adjustment you’ll be able to refine it after seeing how the speed looks with the actual images you’ve uploaded. Once you’ve finished tweaking the speed, you have the option of making the picture available to the public for viewing and rating or simply downloading the file without the public display. Alternately you can upload an existing animated GIF and have GifNinja break it apart into the separate frames which can be viewed immediately or downloaded in a zip file. The service is free and there are no watermarks or alterations made to your image. GifNinja [via MakeUseOf] More »
Use Gmail’s Canned Responses For Smarter Autoresponders
9:30PM Kevin Purdy | Web Worker Daily details how Gmail’s canned responses work wonderfully with smart filters to let you auto-respond to certain people, or emails with certain keywords, when you’re on vacation or too busy to reply right away. By drafting a response and saving it as a “Canned” item, you can have it sent in reply to mail sent by certain addresses, or fitting any of Gmail’s other super-powered filters. So rather than turning on a blanket “Hi, I’ll be away …” auto-responder, for instance, you could create a canned response that goes out to everybody except clients or employers who you don’t want to seem distant and detached from. Or you could just simply let a few friends and family into your vacation email box without bothering them with your boilerplate text. WWD also notes that Canned Responses gives you the ability to quickly attach multiple signatures to Gmail—although that’s something you can handle with a Firefox extension—and knock out quick, templated messages about contracts, DMCA notices, or whatever notes you regularly send with just a few changed variables. How are you using Canned Responses to save yourself time on email? What’s your killer filter to knock down repetitive messages? Share it with the class below. 3 Handy Uses for Gmail’s Canned Responses Feature [Web Worker Daily] More »
Organise
4:30PM Angus Kidman | Naturally, we’re not opposed to a cocktail or two. But if you do feel the urge to plonk yourself in front of the PC this weekend, here are five ideas from the last week on Lifehacker that you might care to explore:
Find out if there’s any cafés near you with free Wi-Fi using Laptopfriendlycafes.com
Get that nightclub experience without leaving home by checking out Awdio’s live streaming from clubs
Get less distracted next week by setting up a tangents log
Back up your DRM-protected music by burning it to CD — after all, even Microsoft says it’s OK
Check out the revamped version of Lifehacker favourite Foxmarks, now known as Xmarks
More »
Five Things To Do This Weekend
4:30PM Angus Kidman | Naturally, we’re not opposed to a cocktail or two. But if you do feel the urge to plonk yourself in front of the PC this weekend, here are five ideas from the last week on Lifehacker that you might care to explore:
Find out if there’s any cafés near you with free Wi-Fi using Laptopfriendlycafes.com
Get that nightclub experience without leaving home by checking out Awdio’s live streaming from clubs
Get less distracted next week by setting up a tangents log
Back up your DRM-protected music by burning it to CD — after all, even Microsoft says it’s OK
Check out the revamped version of Lifehacker favourite Foxmarks, now known as Xmarks
More »
Fix
3:00PM Angus Kidman | A quick tour through the grotesque gourmet delights at picture blog This Is Why You’re Fat — there’s deep-fried cheeseburgers (pictured), a meat cake covered in strawberry cream cheese and a McGangBang (McChicken inside a double cheeseburger) for starters — might be enough to finally convince you to embrace a healthier diet. If you’re trying to suppress your appetite, it’s definitely worth a quick glance around. On the other hand, there’s a risk you’ll decide life’s too short to be slim when there’s all those fatty dishes to be consumed. Don’t hold us responsible.
This Is Why You’re Fat
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This Is Why You’re Fat Showcases Grease-Laden Food
3:00PM Angus Kidman | A quick tour through the grotesque gourmet delights at picture blog This Is Why You’re Fat — there’s deep-fried cheeseburgers (pictured), a meat cake covered in strawberry cream cheese and a McGangBang (McChicken inside a double cheeseburger) for starters — might be enough to finally convince you to embrace a healthier diet. If you’re trying to suppress your appetite, it’s definitely worth a quick glance around. On the other hand, there’s a risk you’ll decide life’s too short to be slim when there’s all those fatty dishes to be consumed. Don’t hold us responsible.
This Is Why You’re Fat
More »
Travel
1:30PM Angus Kidman | Among the tools buried on the Webjet travel search site site is a flight alert system which lets you specify a chosen destination and date range, and then sends you either a daily or weekly email with the best current deals for that destination. It’s a potentially helpful option for budget travel planning, but some caveats apply. There’s a similar service on offer from previously mentionedI Want That Flight as well, and the concerns we raised for it apply here too: flights tend not to get cheaper, so if you know when you want to go, you’re better off committing as soon as possible. And as we’ve also pointed out before, if you do get details of a good deal, you’re almost certainly better off then seeking it directly on the relevant airline site rather than paying Webjet’s high booking fees.
Webjet My Deal Finder [via OzBargain]
More »
Webjet My Deal Finder Emails You Cheap Flights
1:30PM Angus Kidman | Among the tools buried on the Webjet travel search site site is a flight alert system which lets you specify a chosen destination and date range, and then sends you either a daily or weekly email with the best current deals for that destination. It’s a potentially helpful option for budget travel planning, but some caveats apply. There’s a similar service on offer from previously mentionedI Want That Flight as well, and the concerns we raised for it apply here too: flights tend not to get cheaper, so if you know when you want to go, you’re better off committing as soon as possible. And as we’ve also pointed out before, if you do get details of a good deal, you’re almost certainly better off then seeking it directly on the relevant airline site rather than paying Webjet’s high booking fees.
Webjet My Deal Finder [via OzBargain]
More »
Fix
Ask Lifehacker: How Do You Survive Without Running Water?
12:00PM Angus Kidman | Dear Lifehacker, This morning I awoke in my apartment and noticed a distinct lack of running water. I live in a non-English speaking country, and while I’m slowly learning the language – it’s not quite there yet. There’s a good chance that I will have a difficult time getting hold of my landlord, so, my question. Does Lifehacker or the community have any tips for a coddled city-boy who has never been without running water in his life? Washing? Dishes? Coffee? The toilet? Any advice would be awesome. There’s some heavy construction across the road, so I’m assuming they’ve shut off the mains, but knowing this country they could do it again, and again, or for a couple days …and I would rather be prepared. Dry Regards, Paul More »
Money
10:30AM Angus Kidman | Spending time working out the week’s footy tips hardly qualifies as a productivity boost, but the new footy tipping site launched by eBay does have one advantage over the traditional office sweepstakes: a top prize of $5,000. eBay is running tipping competitions for both the NRL and AFL; you need to be a registered eBay user (and have PayPal to get the prizes), but that isn’t likely to cut out very many of your colleagues. If you’ve got a preferred site for setting up the office tipping frenzy, share details in the comments.
eBay Footy Tipping
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eBay Launches AFL And NRL Footy Tipping Comps
10:30AM Angus Kidman | Spending time working out the week’s footy tips hardly qualifies as a productivity boost, but the new footy tipping site launched by eBay does have one advantage over the traditional office sweepstakes: a top prize of $5,000. eBay is running tipping competitions for both the NRL and AFL; you need to be a registered eBay user (and have PayPal to get the prizes), but that isn’t likely to cut out very many of your colleagues. If you’ve got a preferred site for setting up the office tipping frenzy, share details in the comments.
eBay Footy Tipping
More »
Communicate
9:00AM Angus Kidman | It’s no surprise that Australians are consuming more media in the Internet age: after all, there’s so much more to choose from. Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson at the Courier Mail reports that a Nielsen Online study found the average Australian now spends a total of 89.2 hours a week consuming media in all forms. The Internet leads the charge, accounting for 16.1 hours. If you’re thinking that sounds like a lot of waking hours, you’d be right. I suspect that’s partly because people will often multitask (the study found almost half of us listen to the radio while surfing the Web), but also because trying to divide these activities up is a bit pointless. If you’re watching TV or reading a newspaper online, does that count as Internet hours, TV hours or newspaper hours? And who really has time to count anyway?
Australians now spend much more time online [Courier Mail]
More »
Aussies Are Multi-Tasking Media Gluttons
9:00AM Angus Kidman | It’s no surprise that Australians are consuming more media in the Internet age: after all, there’s so much more to choose from. Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson at the Courier Mail reports that a Nielsen Online study found the average Australian now spends a total of 89.2 hours a week consuming media in all forms. The Internet leads the charge, accounting for 16.1 hours. If you’re thinking that sounds like a lot of waking hours, you’d be right. I suspect that’s partly because people will often multitask (the study found almost half of us listen to the radio while surfing the Web), but also because trying to divide these activities up is a bit pointless. If you’re watching TV or reading a newspaper online, does that count as Internet hours, TV hours or newspaper hours? And who really has time to count anyway?
Australians now spend much more time online [Courier Mail]
More »
Work
Firefox New Tab Prototype Has Cool Ideas, Still Rough Around the Edges
8:45AM Adam Pash | Firefox’s design hot-shot Aza Raskin is back with some more interesting Firefox prototyping, this time in the form of a fresh idea for the new tab page. The page borrows some thoughts from Google Chrome and now Safari’s default new tab pages (i.e., displays thumbs of pages you like to visit and offers a search box), but puts a slightly different spin on it. Most notably, for sites like Lifehacker, the new page appears to tap the site’s RSS feed to display the most recent posts. We’ve been playing around with it a little bit this afternoon, and though we’re excited to see where it’ll go, so far it’s pretty rough around the edges—both in form and function. If you’d like to try it out or you want to know more about what the designers were thinking, hit the link. [New Tab Page: Proposed design principles and prototype] More »
Work
