What’s more useful than winning a free car? Winning a free car that’s got more tech on board than you can imagine, including an on-board Next G router and a built-in mobile drive-in (we kid you not). And that’s what’s on offer with the GizMod Rukus.
Got a talent for design? As part of Gizmodo’s awesome GizMod project to ultra-customise a Toyota Rukus, the vehicle is being re-skinned with a design from a Gizmodo reader. When else are you going to get a chance to have your own design applied to a car for free? Hit Gizmodo for full details on how to enter. [Gizmodo]
Last November, I wrote about how Nick Broughall, editor of Lifehacker’s sibling site Gizmodo, had gotten the organising bug and was using Things, his iPhone and email to keep track of tasks. Of course, half the challenge with any organisational system is maintaining that initial fervour, so I promised we’d get back to Nick and see whether the approach was still working. His verdict? It’s going pretty well but the software needs work. As he explains:
My inbox rarely has more than 10 emails in it at a time – I’m continually filing my emails and feeling organised in that department. But I’ve found Things just doesn’t work for me as well as I’d hoped — I think the fact that I need to have a 3rd party program just doesn’t sit too well. One of the things I did like about Things was the ability to drag things to the icon in the dock and have it create a new to-do automatically. The problem was that when I did that from emails, I’d need to do it a couple of times before it worked, which was too much effort. So now, I still use Things for stuff I need to do a bit in the future, but I tend to leave the most important and pressing tasks in my inbox.
Ease of use is a critical factor in getting organised, so Nick’s lucky he’s been able to balance his needs between two programs without too much hassle. But if you’re a Mac fiend (like Nick) and think that approach could be refined, let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.
You’ve been talking to (or screaming at) your Windows PC for years, but unless you were willing to shell out hundreds of dollars on pricey software, chances are it wasn’t listening to a word you were saying. With Microsoft’s new freeware tool, Windows Speech Recognition Macros, the days of you talking into your computer’s unsympathetic ear are over. Not only is it listening, but it’s up to the task of doing whatever you want it to.
Despite the fact that most of you prefer XP to Vista and would rather Microsoft extended XP’s shelf-life, several new and improved features available in Vista would be great to have in XP. This new functionality may not be enough to get you to switch to Vista, but that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. Let’s take a look at a few ways you can incorporate Windows Vista’s best features into your current XP PC for free.
Windows/Mac only: Share any song in your iTunes library and download any song from your friends’ iTunes libraries over the internet with freeware application Mojo. Essentially, Mojo makes sharing music with your friends through iTunes wildly simple, from its simple interface to its brilliant implementation. If you’ve ever used apps like previously mentioned ourTunes to download music from shared libraries, you have an idea of what Mojo does, bu you should still prepare to be amazed. I’m head over heels for Mojo, so hit the jump for a full-on screenshot tour and detailed walk-through and overview of everything Mojo has to offer.
When you finally decide it’s time to do something about that rat’s nest of cables that’s spreading like kudzu, you don’t have to spend a lot of time and money to get it under control. Whether you’re looking to stow your headphone wires tangle-free in your gym bag, hide the ugly wire spaghetti you keep kicking further under your desk, or organise your gadget chargers and power plugs, we’ve got some cord management tricks for you. Hit the jump for photos and videos of our top 10 favourite ways to get cables under control.
We’ve seen what you can do with limitless workspace possibilities in our Coolest Workspace Contest, but fact is, most of us don’t have the limitless freedom to tweak our workspaces that many of the Coolest Workspace entries did. With that in mind, and with the idea that necessity is the mother of invention and all that, today we’re kicking off our first Coolest Cubicle Contest, with $500 to Amazon at stake. So without further ado, hit the jump to take a look at this week’s coolest cubicle submissions.
All platforms: Mozilla has just published the latest iteration of Firefox 3, Beta 3. Intended for testers and early adopters who are willing to live on the edge, Firefox 3 has fewer memory issues than its predecessor, but most likely your most important extensions aren’t yet compatible with it. Our previously posted Firefox 3 Beta 1 screenshot tour doesn’t include Beta 3 changes, but this in-depth review of Beta 3 does show off Firefox 3′s newest look, buttons, dialogs, and features. Update: Here’s a summary of the improvements over Beta 2:
Windows only: Rip and back up any DVD to your hard drive with DVD Rip, a freeware Windows application that automates the entire DVD-to-hard-drive backup process. All you need to do is insert your DVD, run DVD Rip, and let it take care of the rest. Why? A while back I explained why I’d soured on optical media, the gist of which was the ease with with DVDs are damaged. Sick of scratched, skippy DVDs, I put together a simple AutoHotkey script that automated DVD rips in conjunction with a freeware application called DVD Shrink. I’ve since gone back and drastically improved the original DVD Rip application complete with options and improved automation.
