Monday, March 16, 2009
Work
Last.FM Downloader Lets You Download Last.FM Streams And Cover Art
11:30PM Jason Fitzpatrick | Windows only: Last.FM Downloader is a lightweight application for grabbing music from the popular streaming music service Last.FM and saving it for local use.Unlike some of the similar applications we’ve previously reviewed, Last.FM Downloader doesn’t require .NET or installation. The application is completely stand alone with no installation required. Usage is straight forward, run the application and plug in a URL for the song or playlist you want to download, you can even grab the similar artists playlist if you’re looking for a little variety. While the author’s web site notes that you don’t need a Last.FM account, it seems to be only semi-true: for some strange reason I could download the similar artists playlist without being logged in but I could only download individual songs when logged in. Last.FM Downloader is portable freeware, Windows only. Last.FM Downloader [via Life Rocks 2.0] More »
Work
GNOME Do Updates With New Clock, Lots Of Fixes
11:00PM Kevin Purdy | Fans of GNOME Do, the Quicksilver-like application launcher for Linux, will be glad to hear that a lot of kinks have been worked out in its 0.8.1 release, and a few new features added in. The big new thing is the analogue clock option, which looks pretty nice and turns into an array of world times you selected when clicked on. More importantly to most users, though, the smoothness and appearance of the smart and functional Docky theme has been overhauled, hopefully giving more users with varied graphics powers a better experience. There’s also a few “behavior” changes that I haven’t quite ferreted out yet; GNOME Do users, post your own finds in the comments, and I’ll update the post. GNOME Do is a free download for Linux systems only. Hit the link below for help on getting it into your distro. GNOME Do – Download [via Ars Technica] More »
Travel
4:00PM Angus Kidman | Given the amount of publicity it has received, it’s mildly disconcerting to realise that there are only three airlines (Qantas, Singapore and Emirates) actually letting the general public fly on the Airbus A380. If you want to test out the mega-plane, you’ll need this list of flights which offer A380 service. More »
Complete List Of A380 Flights
4:00PM Angus Kidman | Given the amount of publicity it has received, it’s mildly disconcerting to realise that there are only three airlines (Qantas, Singapore and Emirates) actually letting the general public fly on the Airbus A380. If you want to test out the mega-plane, you’ll need this list of flights which offer A380 service. More »
Money
2:03PM Angus Kidman | It’s already been delayed once, but eBay Australia is this week planning to force all users to migrate to the new version of the My eBay interface. Its official announcement says the process “might take a few days to complete”. The change hasn’t showed up yet in my eBay account, which still includes the option to “opt out” back into the old version. Liking or loathing the new version? Tell your story in the comments.
More »
eBay Finally Switching My eBay Interface (Probably)
2:03PM Angus Kidman | It’s already been delayed once, but eBay Australia is this week planning to force all users to migrate to the new version of the My eBay interface. Its official announcement says the process “might take a few days to complete”. The change hasn’t showed up yet in my eBay account, which still includes the option to “opt out” back into the old version. Liking or loathing the new version? Tell your story in the comments.
More »
Organise
12:00PM Angus Kidman | Cricket tragics will put up with just about anything to get a fix of willow on leather, but if you’re going to take the day off work (or stay up half the night) to watch a televised match, it helps to know if it’s likely to be rained out. Weather Underground’s provides forecasts for all scheduled ICC matches, with hour-by-hour predictions and Google Maps links to the venue. The same site also offers weather predictions for a bunch of other sports, but cricket is the most relevant to an Australian audience. For further cricket tech, don’t forget the official Cricket Australia YouTube channel and the cricket travel tracker
Cricket Weather: Weather Underground
More »
Cricket Weather Provides Predictions For Upcoming Tests
12:00PM Angus Kidman | Cricket tragics will put up with just about anything to get a fix of willow on leather, but if you’re going to take the day off work (or stay up half the night) to watch a televised match, it helps to know if it’s likely to be rained out. Weather Underground’s provides forecasts for all scheduled ICC matches, with hour-by-hour predictions and Google Maps links to the venue. The same site also offers weather predictions for a bunch of other sports, but cricket is the most relevant to an Australian audience. For further cricket tech, don’t forget the official Cricket Australia YouTube channel and the cricket travel tracker
Cricket Weather: Weather Underground
More »
Fix
10:00AM Angus Kidman | Microsoft has belatedly responded to criticisms of its most recent cumulative update for Outlook 2007 — in particular, the issue (raised by Lifehacker a few weeks ago) of the “don’t install this unless you have to” warning on the update download page and associated emails. In a post on the Outlook team blog, Microsoft says it won’t be using that as a shield to hide behind if things go wrong:
This is a fully endorsed product from Microsoft that you should feel confident about installing.
However reassuring you find that, the post also points out that some users have been experiencing delays of an hour or more while Microsoft rebuilds their PST file as a result of the new update. As such, I’ll be holding off until I can spare a few hours for their fix.
Frequently Asked Questions about the February CU [Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog]
More »
Microsoft Defends Outlook Patch That Takes More Than An Hour To Install
10:00AM Angus Kidman | Microsoft has belatedly responded to criticisms of its most recent cumulative update for Outlook 2007 — in particular, the issue (raised by Lifehacker a few weeks ago) of the “don’t install this unless you have to” warning on the update download page and associated emails. In a post on the Outlook team blog, Microsoft says it won’t be using that as a shield to hide behind if things go wrong:
This is a fully endorsed product from Microsoft that you should feel confident about installing.
However reassuring you find that, the post also points out that some users have been experiencing delays of an hour or more while Microsoft rebuilds their PST file as a result of the new update. As such, I’ll be holding off until I can spare a few hours for their fix.
Frequently Asked Questions about the February CU [Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog]
More »
Organise
Calibre Manages Your E-Book Collection
9:30AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Windows\Mac\Linux: If you’ve got a virtual pile of e-books but no good way to organise them, Calibre is a feature rich e-book manager, complete with Cover Flow-like looks and network sharing. Whether or not you have a portable e-book reader, Calibre is packed with features to help you organise your e-books. To start, you simply tell Calibre where you store your book files. It does a pretty good job pulling the necessary information and self-populating, although you’ll still find yourself making occasional edits, like swapping the author and title fields. If you’re a LibraryThing user, you can also hook into that account to populate the fields. More »
Organise
8:30AM Angus Kidman | Kick off your Lifehacker Monday by making sure you didn’t miss any of the biggest posts from last week:
What To Check When Considering Naked DSL“Naked DSL — a broadband connection via a phone line but without paying a line rental fee for the associated voice service — is an increasingly popular strategy for saving money on communications costs. Going naked can help cut down your monthly bills, but before taking the plunge there are some key issues you’ll need to consider.”
Ten Must-Have Gmail Filters Available For Download (GMail)Now that you can export and import email filters with Gmail, we’ve decided to compile some of our favourite filters for organizing your inbox into a single, handy download. Come and get it!
Four Experimental Firefox Extensions We’re IntoEvery so often, Lifehacker rounds up Firefox add-ons that are too new for official approval, but seriously neat-looking. This batch can automate download management and image uploading, queue up MP3s, and manage Gmail tasks anywhere.
Find Free Transport In Most Australian Capital Cities”
Australia’s different capital city public transport systems don’t have much in common — but many of them do offer free bus services in their CBD areas (along with the occasional no-cost tram or train). Check out our comprehensive listing to save money (and traffic jams) the next time you’re in an unfamiliar city.”
Simple User-Interface Trick Makes Your Remotes Idiot ProofEver written out detailed schematics so visiting friends or family members could operate your home theatre setup? It’s annoying, right? Web site Designing Interactions highlights an incredibly simple but surprisingly workable solution.
How Are You Finding The New Look Facebook?”
It doesn’t seem that long ago since Facebook’s major redesign caused so much controversy, but now the social networking giant is at it again, with a slightly refined design which looks like nothing so much as a Twitter clone.”
Put Google Calendar And Notes On Your iPhone Wallpaper (iPhone/iPod Touch)Two free apps for the iPhone and iPod touch give users the ability to add any text they’d like, or their upcoming Google Calendar appointments, to their home/unlock screens. Check out how they work in screenshots.
BackTrack Is A Security-Focused Live CD Packed With System Tools (Linux Live CD)BackTrack was the winner of our recent Hive Five for best Live CD, so we decided to take it for a test drive and show off a few of the features for everybody else.
Avoid Mediocre Portraits With These TricksYou have a camera and a willing subject, but you’re not sure how to break your portraits out of the flat blandness that plagues many snapshots. Avoid boring compositions with these tips.
Songbird 1.1 Grabs Album Art In One Step, Runs Lighter And Faster (Windows/Mac/Linux)The free, multi-platform iTunes assaulter (if not quite killer) Songbird busts out great improvements for a 1.1 version, including a one-click album art grabber, performance improvements, and loads o’ little tweaks.
iTunes 8.1 Parties With iTunes DJ, Genius For TV And Movies (Windows/Mac)While the timing is mainly meant to support the new, ridiculously small iPod Shuffle, iTunes 8.1 adds a few other cool features.
New Windows 7 Build (7057) Hits BitTorrent (Windows)A new build of Windows 7 appears to have shown up on the BitTorrent scene-build 7057. From first impressions over at Neowin, the build features some UAC fixes, improved superbar resizing, and some nice user interface updates like new user icons, wallpapers, and a snazzy new logon and shutdown dialog.
OpenWith.org Tells Your Mum How To Open That File (For Free) (Windows)The built-in tool for dealing with unknown file types in Windows simply doesn’t work. OpenWith.org does, and it points you, or your less free-software-savvy friends, to downloads that fit the bill.
UBitMenu Brings The Microsoft Office 2003 Menu Back To Office 2007 (Windows)We love Office 2007’s ribbon for its impressive keyboard shortcut integration, but for those of you who miss the Microsoft Office 2003 menu that’s entrenched in your muscle memory, UBitMenu can help.
More »
Last Week’s Best Posts
8:30AM Angus Kidman | Kick off your Lifehacker Monday by making sure you didn’t miss any of the biggest posts from last week:
What To Check When Considering Naked DSL“Naked DSL — a broadband connection via a phone line but without paying a line rental fee for the associated voice service — is an increasingly popular strategy for saving money on communications costs. Going naked can help cut down your monthly bills, but before taking the plunge there are some key issues you’ll need to consider.”
Ten Must-Have Gmail Filters Available For Download (GMail)Now that you can export and import email filters with Gmail, we’ve decided to compile some of our favourite filters for organizing your inbox into a single, handy download. Come and get it!
Four Experimental Firefox Extensions We’re IntoEvery so often, Lifehacker rounds up Firefox add-ons that are too new for official approval, but seriously neat-looking. This batch can automate download management and image uploading, queue up MP3s, and manage Gmail tasks anywhere.
Find Free Transport In Most Australian Capital Cities”
Australia’s different capital city public transport systems don’t have much in common — but many of them do offer free bus services in their CBD areas (along with the occasional no-cost tram or train). Check out our comprehensive listing to save money (and traffic jams) the next time you’re in an unfamiliar city.”
Simple User-Interface Trick Makes Your Remotes Idiot ProofEver written out detailed schematics so visiting friends or family members could operate your home theatre setup? It’s annoying, right? Web site Designing Interactions highlights an incredibly simple but surprisingly workable solution.
How Are You Finding The New Look Facebook?”
It doesn’t seem that long ago since Facebook’s major redesign caused so much controversy, but now the social networking giant is at it again, with a slightly refined design which looks like nothing so much as a Twitter clone.”
Put Google Calendar And Notes On Your iPhone Wallpaper (iPhone/iPod Touch)Two free apps for the iPhone and iPod touch give users the ability to add any text they’d like, or their upcoming Google Calendar appointments, to their home/unlock screens. Check out how they work in screenshots.
BackTrack Is A Security-Focused Live CD Packed With System Tools (Linux Live CD)BackTrack was the winner of our recent Hive Five for best Live CD, so we decided to take it for a test drive and show off a few of the features for everybody else.
Avoid Mediocre Portraits With These TricksYou have a camera and a willing subject, but you’re not sure how to break your portraits out of the flat blandness that plagues many snapshots. Avoid boring compositions with these tips.
Songbird 1.1 Grabs Album Art In One Step, Runs Lighter And Faster (Windows/Mac/Linux)The free, multi-platform iTunes assaulter (if not quite killer) Songbird busts out great improvements for a 1.1 version, including a one-click album art grabber, performance improvements, and loads o’ little tweaks.
iTunes 8.1 Parties With iTunes DJ, Genius For TV And Movies (Windows/Mac)While the timing is mainly meant to support the new, ridiculously small iPod Shuffle, iTunes 8.1 adds a few other cool features.
New Windows 7 Build (7057) Hits BitTorrent (Windows)A new build of Windows 7 appears to have shown up on the BitTorrent scene-build 7057. From first impressions over at Neowin, the build features some UAC fixes, improved superbar resizing, and some nice user interface updates like new user icons, wallpapers, and a snazzy new logon and shutdown dialog.
OpenWith.org Tells Your Mum How To Open That File (For Free) (Windows)The built-in tool for dealing with unknown file types in Windows simply doesn’t work. OpenWith.org does, and it points you, or your less free-software-savvy friends, to downloads that fit the bill.
UBitMenu Brings The Microsoft Office 2003 Menu Back To Office 2007 (Windows)We love Office 2007’s ribbon for its impressive keyboard shortcut integration, but for those of you who miss the Microsoft Office 2003 menu that’s entrenched in your muscle memory, UBitMenu can help.
More »
Fix
Turn A Wine Bottle Into A Terrarium
7:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | It’s no ship in a bottle, but it is a novel way to add some low-maintenance greenery to your desk. With a little bit of patience, you can turn a wine bottle into a terrarium. While it may not be the first thing you’d think to recycle a wine bottle into, the results are pretty neat. Inspired by the awesome terrariums designed by artist Paula Hayes, seen below, Dr. Vino tried his hand at turning an empty bottle of rose wine into a moss filled terrarium. More »
Work
