Saturday, March 28, 2009
Organise
Google Contacts Gets A Proper Standalone Page
9:30AM Adam Pash | We pointed out a standalone Google Contacts page once before that used a URL from deep inside Gmail, but it looks like since then Google has made it even simpler to access your contacts: Just point your browser to http://www.google.com/contacts and enjoy. More »
Organise
Customise Your Gmail Labels With Unicode Characters
8:00AM Adam Pash | Inspired by previously mentioned tinyarro.ws URL-shortening service, reader David decided to try inserting helpful Unicode characters in his Gmail labels to give more context to each label. With Unicode characters, David is able to divide his labels into logical groups without a a custom script like Folders4Gmail. More »
How To Fake A Clean House In A Pinch
7:00AM Adam Pash | You’ve got guests coming over in an hour and the place is a disaster. The household mavens at Real Simple explain how to fake a clean house when you don’t have time for the real thing. The tips range from obvious to useful to even a bit strange, but in all it’s a pretty good read. For example, the first tip hits the useful-and-strange nail on the head: Reserve one side of sofa cushions to be shown to guests. Before company arrives, flip over the cushions to reveal good-as-new fabric. When guests are gone, flip them back. We can’t help but wonder if you’d be better served actually doing a proper cleaning than tackling some of these fake cleaning chores, but the post does offer a few gems. If you’re a master at the quick clean, help out your cleanliness-challenged co-readers by sharing your best tricks and shortcuts in the comments. Photo by givepeasachance. How to Fake a Clean House [Real Simiple] More »
Design
Magnifique Customises Your OS X Theme
6:00AM Adam Pash | Mac OS X only: Not keen on Leopard’s default theme, or just prefer to ditch the status quo for something more your style? Free application Mangifique quickly and easily swaps custom themes in OS X. Magnifique is surprisingly easy to use. After you install it, you can browse through a handful of available theme downloads to find one that suits your fancy. Once you’ve chosen a theme you’d like to try on, just download it via the Magnifique browser and apply it. You’ll want to restart Finder, your Dock (don’t worry, the app comes with buttons to do this for you), and any other application that you want to see the newly applied theme with—and voila, you’re rolling with a custom theme. As with any serious, system-wide customisation tool, you should approach Magnifique with some amount of caution. We haven’t thoroughly tested it yet, but we were able to successfully apply a skin and restore to our default without any problems, so Magnifique is passing the test so far. If you give it a go, let’s hear how it’s working for you—and what themes you’re liking—in the comments. Thanks Tobiah! Magnifique More »
Design
Grab Every Region’s Windows 7 Wallpapers In One Download
5:30AM Kevin Purdy | Microsoft allowed Windows Vista Magazine to bundle up every wallpaper from Windows 7’s regional releases and, boy, we’re glad they did. One file brings a lot of new looks to any desktop, Windows 7 or otherwise. The 29MB download includes most of the wallpaper from the free and legitimate Windows 7 themes we’ve peeked at, but also adds a few (apparent) newcomers from the international betas of Microsoft’s upcoming OS. If it’s overkill for you to grab all the wallpapers and drop them into your picture archive, Windows Vista Magazine also thumbnails and hosts a download-able.JPG of each wallpaper at the link below. Note: You’ll need a third-party app to unpack the .rar-formatted all-in-one file; we recommend 7-Zip for Windows, the Unarchiver on Macs, and most Linux systems have something you can search for in the repositories to get the job done. Give your Windows Vista desktop a Windows 7 makeover! [Windows Vista Magazine via Daily Gyan] More »
Communicate
Skype For iPhone Coming Next Week?
4:30AM Adam Pash | According to our siblings-in-hardware over at Gizmodo, Skype for iPhone (and iPod touch, natch) may be released as early as next week—which, if it comes true, should be great news for anyone who’s looking to save some iPhone call costs. [Gizmodo] More »
Organise
Use Google Reader From Within Outlook
4:00AM Lifehacker US Edition | Reader David writes in with a useful tip for consolidating windows—he embeds Google Reader into Outlook as a replacement for the built-in RSS support. Replacing the current RSS Feeds folder with Google Reader instead is easy—just right-click on the folder, choose Properties, enter the URL to Google Reader on the Home Page tab, and then check the box for “Show home page by default for this folder”. You can even use the full URL to a specific folder in Google Reader, or create extra folders in Outlook and use a different URL for quick access to different views. More »
Fix
Supercharge Your Next Run With A Cup Of Coffee
3:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Many people drink coffee to give them a little boost to get through a pile of paperwork or a looming deadline. Turns out a simple cup of coffee boosts sports performance too. While you might be under the impression that for caffeine to have a significant effect on athletic performance you’d have to ingest a ton of it, that isn’t the case. The New York Times reports: For years, researchers believed that you needed about 5 to 6 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight. An 80-kilogram, or 176-pound man, for example, would need about 400 milligrams of caffeine, or 20 ounces of coffee. Now, Louise M. Burke, the head of sports nutrition department of the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, reports that athletes get the full caffeine effect with as little as 1 milligram of caffeine per kilogram of body weight. Instead of 20 ounces of coffee, a 176-pound man could drink 4 ounces of coffee, or about two 12-ounce cans of Coke. While we’d never condone people slugging back shots of espresso to shave a few minutes off their time trials, the benefits of a cup of coffee can be seen outside of competition. If you’re already a coffee drinker, timing your morning or afternoon coffee fix around your workout schedule can help you get more out of your routine. What do you think? Is a cup of Joe before hitting the gym or track a harmless boost or a sure step towards selling your blood plasma for ‘roid money? Photo by Steve Key. Caffeine – A Legal Performance Booster [The New York Times] More »
Design
The Graffiti Desktop
2:00AM Lifehacker US Edition | Reader zackshackleton’s desktop blends system stats and useful information into a picture of a train covered in graffiti—it takes a careful eye to even notice they are there. More »
Work
