Wanna limit the time you spend goofing off online? Ask MetaFilter user myrrh created a timer that counts down a certain number of minutes in your browser title bar (or background tab) and pops up a browser alert dialog when it’s done. Run a timed work dash or limit your Facebook break without installing any extra software—the magic all happens in this page’s Javascript. Hit the link to give the timer a try. Thanks, Iron!
Title bar timer [via Ask MetaFilter]Miss out on the best of Lifehacker this September? Here’s a list of our most-viewed posts of the month: Transform Your Classic Xbox into a Killer Media Center“Don’t ditch your classic Xbox just because you can’t play Halo 3 on it: nowadays it’s easier than ever to transform that old neglected console into a Unix-based media command center.” Find Out If Your Computer Is Secretly Connecting to the Web“If you are trying to track down why your computer is running so slooowwwly, try using this simple DOS command to uncover a possible problem.” Yahoo Mail Innovates, Gmail Stagnates“Less than two years after their beta release, Yahoo Mail has begun rolling out of beta after releasing an onslaught of innovative feature improvements along the way.” Turn Your Windows PC into a Media Center Powerhouse On the Cheap“If you’ve purchased a new Windows computer in the past few years that’s running Windows Media Center Edition or Vista Home Premium or Ultimate and you aren’t taking advantage of its baked-in DVR Media Center software, it’s time we change that.” Top 10 Wikipedia Tricks“Without a doubt, Wikipedia is one of the most useful and amazing sources of information on the internet–but chances are you aren’t using it to its full potential.” Install Third-Party Applications on Your iPhone“In less than two-months time, a persistent and merry band of iPhone hackers have been pushing out application after killer application for the iPhone, and hacking your iPhone to install those applications has become dead simple.” Best Free Software to Unlock Your Favorite Hardware“It sucks that your favourite gadgets have more functionality than their default software exposes, but it rules that several software applications are built to unlock that potential for free.” Top 10 Ways to Put Your Remote Server to Good Use“An always-on server can come in all kinds of handy for running automated tasks, syncing your data, remote controlling downloads and acting as a proxy.” Soup Up Your Xbox Media Center“So you’ve turned your classic Xbox into a full-blown media centre (or you’re thinking about it) and now you want to add the finishing touches–like games, album art and streaming video–to your setup.”
Ever have one of those dragging days? The Happiness Project suggests you can get an instant short-term energy boost simply by going outside: Go outside into the sunlight; light deprivation is one reason that people feel tired. Research suggests that light stimulates brain chemicals that improve mood. For an extra boost, get your sunlight first thing in the morning.
This is especially important for those of us who spend our workdays behind a computer screen; natural light not only can energise you, but it also saves your eyeballs from getting too tired. This Wednesday: Nine tips for giving yourself an energy boost in the next TEN MINUTES. [The Happiness Project]
If you’re looking for new and exciting ways to share your pics with friends and family, you’ll want to check out Animoto, a site that lets you create professional looking video slideshows. You can import your pictures from online or from your computer, as well as choose music, which images to feature, and lots more. A full-length video costs a measly $3 or you can buy an all-access pass which gives you unlimited full-length videos for an entire year for $30; however, I found that the 30 second shorties served my purposes just fine. Animoto
A couple of weeks ago we told you about a cool feature on using geotagging to link photos to locales. Well the author behind that story, Stephen Shankland, has written a follow up in which he goes through some of the traps he encountered while using geotagging, and how he got around them. He also talks about the newer, high end cameras with GPS interfaces, and riffs about how he’d like to see this technology develop.
For those of us who aren’t quite the moleskine ninjas that we aspire to be (yet), Gretchen Rubin of the Happiness Project suggests one scratch paper a day. I have a “scratch paper for the day.” I keep a pad of paper by the phone, and anytime I have the urge to make a note to myself, I discipline myself only to use that pad of paper. At the end of the day, I toss the piece of paper, after copying anything I need to keep.
Since I’m a compulsive note/list maker, this method appealed to me, mostly because it’s so dang easy to implement. How do you keep your notes organised? Please share in the comments. A simple, easy, cheap way to fight the clutter that appears on your desk. [The Happiness Project]
Launchy lovers and early adopters might want to check out Launchy 2.0 alpha and help in the testing process. Thanks Dan! More »
Web site Treedolist hierarchically organises your to-do list, notes, bookmarks, RSS feeds, and pretty much anything else you can think to drop into it. At its most basic, you can think of it as a simple to-do list with the ability to add structured and nested lists and then filter your lists by due dates, labels, and a number of other useful methods. It gets interesting, though, when you realise that you can also add more information, like RSS feeds, and share branches of any tree with other Treedolist users. And—like any good online to-do list—Treedolist has several useful keyboard shortcuts.
Treedolist [via Micro Persuasion]It’s only when you’ve scheduled automatic tasks for your computer to do for you that you have true reign over your silicon gadget minions. Weblog Of Zen and Computing lists what jobs your computer can do for you, like spam filtering, Google Alerts, and image batch resizing. I’d add backup, downloads, hard drive cleaning and spyware/virus scanning to the list. What do you automate on your computer? Do tell.
Time Saving & Automation Round-up: Let the Computer Do the Work [Of Zen and Computing]Google’s updated its advanced search operator options to make finding pages by date a lot easier. Recently the big G’s gotten a whole lot faster at adding new pages to their index, and now you can search for pages that Google’s found within any number of days, weeks or months. Hit up the advanced search form to use a handy (but limited) dropdown, or go beyond defaults using URL parameters like this: More »
