You don’t need to plunk down $150 for a Wii Fit to track your progress toward a healthier body—even if that downhill skiing game looks mighty fun. If you’re trying to curb unnecessary calories and stick to an exercise plan, there are tons of free applications that want to see you succeed. Whether you’re facing a fast-food menu or polishing off a light entree, you can log, track, and make healthy decisions from your desktop, or just as easily from a phone. Take a look at a few suggestions for accomplishing your fitness goals, after the jump. Photo by angela7dreams.
Honing your outdoor culinary skills is a lot more simple than it seems, given the right tools, a little preparation, and a few tips on technique. Take a look at some pointers on getting the right gear, turning out great meals, and even preparing for uncooperative weather, after the jump. Photo by Another Pint Please….
Blogger Jeff Kelley prefers his windows take up specific areas of his screen, regardless of the monitor he’s plugged his MacBook Pro into. His solution? An AppleScript that determines his screen size and arranges his windows appropriately. Whenever he wants to rearrange his desktop to those specifications, he just runs the script. Geek factor aside, the script can be easily modified to maximise your screen real estate to fit your tastes. Windows users have apps like WinSplit Revolution and Sizer, but if you’ve been looking for similar functionality for your Mac, Jeff’s script is a good starting point. Resize Your Windows Automatically for Different Resolutions [Jeff Kelley's Blog]
One intrepid Ubuntu hacker has written up a little script that allows your Xbox 360 to locate and stream music from any computer running Ubuntu. Downloading, setting up, and activating the script will require a bit of terminal work, but the commands can be easily copied and pasted from the Ubuntu Forums post linked below. Got a better solution for connecting the two systems that normally would never get along? Share your solutions in the comments. Stream music to your Xbox 360 [Ubuntu Forums]
In today’s earlier list of five extensions you won’t need in Firefox 3, we said you won’t need any special toolbars, third-party apps, Greasemonkey scripts, or extensions to get Firefox to use webapps like Gmail to open certain types of links—like email mailto links. This means that when you click on an email address that uses the standard mailto: link, Firefox 3 itself can launch Gmail instead of a desktop app. By default, the Firefox RC 1 only comes with Yahoo! Mail as a possible mailto: link handler, which leaves Gmail users out in the cold—unless you know how to set it up by hand, that is. Here’s how to set up Gmail as your default mailto: webapp.
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.
The Workers’ Edge blog points out that a macro written by Dave Rado back in the days of Word 97 to back up and restore time-saving, typo-fixing AutoCorrect settings in Microsoft Word still does the trick for the most modern Word 2007 installation. It’s simple to use and a lot easier than tracking down your AutoCorrect file yourself. Simply install the macro (with detailed instructions offered at the via link below), launch it, and choose where to save a Word document with your custom AutoCorrect settings, and hit “Restore” to import settings from a different installation. Of course, you could always switch over to app-neutral text substitution utilities like Texter, but this macro should be a real time-saver for those who have finely tuned their Word. AutoCorrect Macro [via CNET | Workers' Edige]
Next time you need to give a presentation from afar, fire up Zoho Show, invite a few attendees, and give the presentation in real-time with Zoho Show’s Remote feature. You invite participants, and as soon as everyone shows up and you start the remote presentation, what they see matches exactly what you’re doing. You advance a slide, their browser advances a slide. Even if you don’t plan on using Zoho Show to deliver the final product, it could still come in handy to review and collaborate remotely on PowerPoint presentations (which Zoho Show imports seamlessly). Zoho Show [via Digital Inspiration]
If you started investing $448 a month at 30 years old, Yahoo Finance says that a reasonable 8% return would put your savings over the million dollar mark in 35 years. The problem, of course, is finding that extra $450. To help ferret out every quarter in your couch cushions, the article suggests seven different potential expenses that, with slight adjustments, could easily produce the extra cash you need to start down the road to a million.
If a careless weekend in the sun has you red-faced and uncomfortably squirming in your chair, weblog Wise Bread rounds up a handful of cheap home remedies for your poor, sunburned skin. From vinegar to a crushed aspirin-and-water concoction, you can throw together most of the remedies using items you’ve already got in your pantry. Of course, a better solution is a good defense against the sun, but if you spent your weekend under a 97-degree springtime sun like I did, these tips—which don’t include our previous oatmeal sunburn soother—could be just what your suffering skin needs. Photo by A. M. Kuchling. Cheap and Simple Sunburn Remedies that Really Work [Wise Bread]
