From The Tips Box: Floss Hacks, iOS Music


Readers offer their best tips for tricking yourself into flossing more often, getting more info about a track in iOS, and using Chrome in full-screen mode in OS X.

Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons — maybe they’re a bit too niche, maybe we couldn’t find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn’t fit it in — the tip didn’t make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favourites for your buffet-style consumption. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments or use the contact tab on the right.

Trick Yourself Into Better Oral Hygiene by Flossing in the Shower

Photo by Derek Preston.

Ted discovers the key to flossing more often:

You know how your dentist tells you to floss more, every time you go in? Well, I found this tip on Reddit: Floss in the shower. If you’re anything like me, you waste a bunch of time standing around in the shower anyway, so why not do something useful with that time? I started doing this a month or two ago, and it’s amazing how much my motivation goes up when it means an extra 30 seconds before stepping back into the cold, real world.

See More Info About a Track in iOS by Long-Pressing It

Thisisme shares a lesser-known trick in iOS:

A new feature in iOS 5 (or at least I never noticed it before): if you press and hold on a selection in the default music app it will pop up a blurb with the full name and artist, which you can then drag up and down through the list. Handy for those long podcast names that get cut off.

This is also useful when you have a bunch of long track names that cut off important information — like “(Live)” or “(Remixed by _____)”.

Use Chrome Tabs in Lion’s Full Screen Mode

Huh989 finds a nice feature in Chrome on Mac OS X Lion:

As my two “always open” tabs in Chrome are Gmail and Google Reader, I was happy to see that the full screen feature in Lion, which seems to have spotty support in many apps, works great for separate tabs in Chrome.

What I do now is quick open three windows in Chrome, load Gmail, hit Cmd+Ctrl+F to send it to a new full screen window, do the same for Reader, then I can head back to my first window, which I use for general workspace browsing.

Protect Your Christmas Decorations’ Wiring from Rain

Celeste27 tells us how to protect those loose plugs from shorting out in the rain:

Got my outdoor Christmas decorations up this weekend. Knowing they will be up for a month in all kinds of weather, I take a few minutes every year to weather-proof my electrical connections. All it takes it some plastic grocery bags and a roll of electrical tape (I guess duct tape would work too but electrical tape is actually easier to use). Any place you plug a string of lights to a cord, you wrap the connection with a plastic bag, then tape it in place with several rounds of electrical tape (take a plastic bag and lay it flat. Put the connected cords on it, fold it up over the cords, then wrap it around, and tape the bundle together.). Also, I tape over any open female plugs on light strings.


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