Saturday, March 7, 2009
Work
Windows 7 Will Let You Uninstall Most Built-In Apps
7:30AM Lifehacker US Edition | The official Engineering Windows 7 blog announces that you’ll be able to do more than simply uninstall Internet Explorer from Windows 7—you can turn almost every built-in application on or off, including Windows Search, Gadgets, and even Media Player. [Engineering Windows 7] More »
Fix
RunKeeper is Like Nike+ For Your iPhone—Only Better
7:00AM Adam Pash | I was crazy excited about the prospects of Nike+ coming to the iPhone, having used the fitness tracking program with a nano for over a year. But that didn’t happen; instead, RunKeeper did, and it’s even better. We’ve covered RunKeeper (along with another Nike+ alternative) once before when we detailed how to roll your own Nike+ iPhone for free, but RunKeeper has since seen some excellent updates worth pointing out. More »
Work
Organise Your Quick Launch With A Double-Height Taskbar
6:00AM Lifehacker US Edition | The Vista Forums walks through the process of adding multiple quick launch toolbars to your double-height taskbar—making an organized application launcher with no extra software. The process is relatively straightforward, requiring you to simply create separate folders for each group of icons, and then add them to the taskbar with the Toolbars -> New Toolbar item on the taskbar context menu. Once you’ve added the toolbars, simply arrange them in a group below the taskbar buttons for an organized, dock-like experience without running any additional software. Hit the link for the full walk-through, complete with screenshots. Thanks, puntai! For more on quickly starting your applications, check out our five best application launchers. Double Height Taskbar with Program Icons [The Vista Forums] More »
Design
Shutter Makes Linux Screenshots Faster And Easier
5:30AM Kevin Purdy | Linux only: Free screenshot manager Shutter provides a really handy upgrade from the built-in GNOME screen grabber, sending your images to editors, auto-thumbnailing, sending to FTP or hosting sites, and doing much more. Shutter is actually the 0.7 version of what was once known as GScrot—and, boy, did that name need changing. The free app is a serious boon to bloggers, technical writers, or anyone else who needs to show off part or all of their Linux desktop. Shutter lets you pick which image format to paste or save your PrtSc-triggered shots to (though you can set other hotkeys for Shutter), which app to open them in, pre-set compression or thumbnail resizing, and generally automate all the stuff you’re used to doing by hand after a screen grab. Can’t manipulate your desktop to show a certain window without it being covered? Shutter can focus its capture on any running screen element, and you can stack your different screenshots in tabs. Site owners and bloggers will dig the auto-uploading and saving tools offered. Shutter is a free download, and should work on most GNOME-based Linux distributions. Ubuntu-based repositories and source packages are offered at the link below. Shutter [via Stefano Forenza] More »
Work
HTML To PDF Converter Turns Web Sites Into PDF Files
5:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | If you’d like to save a web site for posterity without the mess of saving the page and all its files, the web-based HTML to PDF Converter can crank out a PDF. The service is pretty straightforward, with a spot to plug in the link to website you want to convert, then click Make PDF and either save or open the file. Out of curiosity I tried non-HTML files from the web, including TXT files and image files like PNG and JPG. The site will convert all of them to PDF, but with mixed results for image files—it appears if an image is larger than an 8.5×11 sheet when “printed” at its native resolution, it gets chopped up. If web-to-PDF is a regular thing for you, try the PDF Download extension we’ve previously written up. HTML to PDF Converter is a free service and the PDF files it produces are not watermarked or labeled. HTML to PDF Converter [via MakeUseOf] More »
Work
An Exhaustive Look At The Web Browsers Of Today And Tomorrow
4:30AM Adam Pash | Maximum PC takes an in-depth look at the stable and beta releases of the big names in the browser wars, rounding up in all 9 incarnations of browser’s competing to be your gateway to the web (Firefox 3 and 3.1 beta, Internet Explorer 7 and 8 beta, Opera 9.6 and 10 beta, Safari 3 and 4 beta, and Google Chrome). We recently walked you through our browser speed tests, putting the latest and greatest browsers through the paces, but if you’re looking for a more in-depth examination, the MaxPC article is seven pages full of charts and graphs thoroughly evaluating each offering. [Browser Battle: Nine Browsers of Today and Tomorrow Compared] More »
Design
The Desk ‘Top’ As A Desktop
4:00AM Lifehacker US Edition | Reader Design Hobo’s desktop was made to look like the top of an actual desk—complete with coffee stained paper and sticky notes. More »
Organise
Pick Me Generates Random File Lists
3:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Windows only: You’ve got a hard drive filled with media, but no idea what you want to watch or listen to next. Pick Me produces a list of random files for you to choose from. Pick Me is a really, truly tiny application (about 122k) with a singular function. You point Pick Me at a directory and it returns the number of random files you specify. Sure, many media tools like iTunes have a random shuffle feature, but what if you want to “shuffle” other kinds of files, or work outside a single library? >Pick Me generates random file lists for any kind of file type. You can filter based on extension to create lists of movies, images, or whatever random goodness you seek. The response time is snappy, too. On a 1TB drive packed with media, Pick Me returned the results in a matter of seconds. If your problem is really needing something new altogether, make sure to check out previously reviewed TasteKid and Jinni for movie recommendations or Muffin Music and I Like B-Sides for new music suggestions. Pick Me is donationware, Windows only. Pick Me [via gHacks] More »
Work
Magic Formation Is A Circular Dock Launcher
2:00AM Lifehacker US Edition | Windows only: Application launcher Magic Formation adds a circular dock that can be triggered by hotkeys or mouse gestures—just draw a circle on the desktop to make it show up. Using the application is fairly simple—just invoke it with your mouse gesture; adjusting the mouse gesture sensitivity through the options dialog is probably necessary to trigger the dock more easily. There are plenty of other advanced options in the preferences, from using a hotkey to trigger the dock to assigning a mouse key instead—making this interesting application worth a look for anybody in the market for a better application launcher. Magic Formation is a free download for Windows only. For more ways to quickly access your programs, check out the five best application launchers, or get full-featured mouse gestures with previously mentioned gMote. Magic Formation [via Shell Extension City] More »
Communicate
