Reader okchickadee’s desktop takes a Mad Libs wallpaper and blends system statistics into the blanks—making one of the most entertaining and unique desktops we’ve seen.
Ever wished you had some high-speed chase footage after you finished tearing down the freeway after crooks? Of course you have! You need a quick, cheap DIY camera mount. This one couldn’t be cheaper or easier. All you need is a camera, a large sponge, some grip-matting, and a weight to help hold your camera in place. Once you’ve got all the necessary materials, it’s just a matter of cutting the sponge to fit your camera. It may not work for the most serious off-roading, but it’s a quick and simple way to mount a camera in your car for normal driving situations. And while you’re getting camera-mount crazy, check out how to mount a camera on your bike if you’re more of a bicycle type.
Car Dash Camera Mount [Instructables]If you are a fan of Firefox’s keyword bookmarks, you might have noticed that using a search bookmark without a search term will typically lead you to a “No Results Found” error page—annoying, but fixable. Reader Rupert writes in with an excellent tip that can be used to create smarter search bookmarks—but requires a little bit of javascript editing. The general idea is that the javascript can be used to detect whether or not you entered a search term, and navigate to the home page of the site rather than the search page.
We’re not here to judge your distractions: day dreaming, flash games, hovering bosses, whatever it is that steers you off course. But we’re wondering how you physically or mentally keep your focus-grabbers at bay, without clever software. In case you just arrived here from Google, you should know Lifehacker is obsessed with software that helps you get things done. But today we want to hear about what you do at your desk, whether at home or in the office, to keep the big distractions out of mind. Do you arrange your seating and workspace to minimize stop-and-chats from co-workers? Time your coffee breaks to coordinate with a distracting supervisor’s movement patterns? What tools or techniques have you used to focus, fence off, and otherwise conserve those precious minutes in your day? Share the wealth in the comments below. Photo by dougwood.
Windows only: Our favourite Outlook plug-in, Xobni, has left its year-long beta and updated with significant performance improvements. As a key component in our top 10 Outlook boosters, we’re thrilled to see Xobni join the post-beta world. [Xobni via Download Squad]
Windows Vista only: The Vista for Beginners weblog walks through the process of setting up and using speech recognition macros that save you time by automating keystrokes with a voice command. Their guide covers creating macros that can do anything from launching applications, sending batches of keystrokes, inserting blocks of text, or even creating aliases for some of the default commands that might be difficult to remember—a very useful read for anybody interested in making their computer do what they say. For another take on the same topic, check out our must-read guide to controlling your PC with your voice.
Enhance Windows Speech Recognition by Using Macros [Windows Vista for Beginners]Windows: If you have a window that you want to keep open without risk of accidental closure, NoClose gets the job done. The lightweight application disables the X button in the Windows titlebar for the windows you select. Select the window you want to lock and then hit CTRL+1 to lock and unlock the window. You can also add rules for Windows so that NoClose will remember which windows you want locked. While locking your work station when you’re away is the best way to keep things just as you left them, NoClose is a great solution to keep an errant mouse click or moment of thoughtlessness from closing a window or application you need open. NoClose is freeware, Windows only. NoClose [via Elitefreeware]
Whether you’re putting together a resume, flyer, or web page, everyone needs to find and compare fonts some time. Here are some tools that can help you find the perfect font.
Jealous of the very cool search-by-voice feature available to Google Mobile users on both the iPhone and Android? Well, if you’re a BlackBerry user, today you get to join in the fun. Not only does the new Google Mobile for BlackBerry feature search-by-voice, but it also adds a My Location feature to search so that you can do local searches for nearby businesses. BlackBerry users, rejoice! You can grab the latest version from your phone by pointing your browser to http://m.google.com/.
Google Mobile [via Official Google Mobile Blog]Google search has been on a roll lately, and today brings yet another addition—an “options” panel that switches your results to reviews, forum posts, recent items and a timeline, and even a nifty “Wonder Wheel.”
