Keep an eye on that eBay auction in its closing minutes automatically with Page Reboot, a web service that refreshes a given web site every 30 seconds (or any interval you set). Similar to the ReloadEvery Firefox extension, drop the URL into Page Reboot’s refresh box, set the refresh interval (in seconds) and go. A bookmarklet version is also available.
PAGE REBOOT [via Micro Persuasion]Personal growth blogger Peter says that before we get overly ambitious, we should apply some basic rules to our daily living. We can improve our outlook on life by defining our successes, having a positive attitude, and by getting a grasp on our health, wealth, and relationships. Here are a few of my favourite tidbits: An open mind: some of our beliefs and actions are so ingrained that we automatically disregard any evidence that we should think or act otherwise. Keep an open mind, and you may just come across a better way of seeing or doing things.
The first national research project to study participants in Open Source in Australia has been launched. The survey, called the Australian Open Source Industry and Community Census, is being conducted by Open Source consultancy Waugh Partners. Pia Waugh blogged about the survey, and why they’re keen to hear from as many companies – and individuals – as possible:
“It has an Australian focus specifically so that the final report (which will be freely available to download) will help educate and inform Australian Government, corporates and education about the realities rather than the perceptions of our industry and community locally. Hopefully it will reflect the strength, diversity and opportunities presented by the Australian Open Source industry and community, so everyone needs to stand up and be counted.”
ExtremeTech has published an overclocking guide for those who want to get every last drop of speed out of their computer. I liked the fact that the article talks you through how to work out which components in your PC are overclockable, and then goes on to explain how to do an ‘overall overclocking’ of all those components.
But I do have to giggle at an article which starts off saying: “Once upon a time, overclocking was considered a risky and dangerous thing to do… Now, it’s almost insane not to.” and then goes on to issue warnings like:
“When you overclock a PC, it’s never truly stable. The PC was not designed to run with different things at different clock rates that aren’t necessarily compatible with each other. What you gain in performance you lose in piece of mind: This thing could crash at any moment.”
I guess it’s horses for courses. I don’t want an Top Gear car which might get insane speeds for a whole 60 seconds before turning into a cartwheeling fireball o’death.. nor does overclocking really appeal to me. I don’t have high performance needs, and I don’t want to sacrifice reliability. Your mileage may vary, of course. If you overclock I’d be interested to hear why, and how much it affects your system reliability.
Mobile web start page Paged Mobile provides shorthand web navigation from their mobile start page. From its short URL (http://pa.gd/) to its web URL shorthand (which generally uses the first four letters of a URL followed by the last), most popular shortcuts on Paged only require four keystrokes. For example, you can navigate to Lifehacker by entering lifr, or Remember the Milk with remk. In addition, Paged Mobile employs YubNub web command line-like operators and shortcuts, so you can search Wikipedia by typing .wp Lifehacker (searches Wikipedia for Lifehacker). Granted, you’ve probably already got a lot of your favourites bookmarked in your mobile browser anyway, but Paged Mobile’s simple shorthand makes it a very useful mobile start page.
Paged mobileYouTube will begin adding 30-second bumper ads to video clips starting in 2008, according to DirectTraffic. Guess we’ll have to wait and see how intrusively it’s implemented and if TubeStop can still block ads. UPDATE: As pointed out by our savvy tech gossip brothers at Valleywag, the source story is fishy at best (dated as 23/04/07… damn backwards dates!), so the report should be taken with a microscopic grain of salt at best. [via Gizmodo]
Web utility URL Split creates single URLs that direct users to up to seven different web sites. For example, clicking this link five times will direct you to five of my recent Hack Attack Features in the order I linked them (one, two, three, four, and five). The site is built on an interesting idea, but in practice it could use some work—in particular, one would expect to be able to continue following the link chain from each link location (through some sort of proxy hosting). As is you have to continue opening the same link in a new tab until you see that it repeats, which really just causes more ambiguity than it’s worth. If it worked as I suggested, though, URL Split could be a nice tool for sharing simple link tours or step-by-steps.
URL Split [via MakeUseOf]Stop your headache before it starts by following MSNBC’s eight daily reminders designed to help you nip any potential headaches in the bud, starting with: 7 a.m.: Abide the alarm Snoozing in for more than an hour can disrupt your sleep-wake cycle, and anything that tinkers with your body’s natural rhythms may prime you for pain…. Commit to waking up (and going to bed) at the same time every day — yes, that includes weekends, too.
The article also suggests sticking with your caffeine habit (though it will just perpetuate the problem), adjusting your posture, drinking lots of water and exercise—among other headache savers. Photo by powerbooktrance.
How to stop a headache before it starts [MSNBC]Our recent poll on online backup shows that most Lifehacker readers prefer Mozy to back up their data in the cloud. However, there were lots of shout-outs for flat-priced, unlimited storage Carbonite in the comments. Mozy offers 2GB of storage indefinitely for free and works for Mac and PC; Carbonite offers a 15 day trial and charges an affordable $50 a year for unlimited storage.
The Age has written up a Vodafone offer giving a year of free GPS to new subscribers to its Vodafone Compass GPS service. The service, only available on the Blackberry Curve 8310 handset, is free if you sign up before 1 December 2007. The normal charges are $2.50 per 24 hour pass, $8 per month or $79 per year. Details of the Vodafone offer are here. The Age article says Vodafone will offer the Compass service on more handsets by Christmas. Telstra offers its Whereis navigation service for $15 a month on the Blackberry 8800. I have to admit I’m a bit of a GPS novice. I’ve tried and liked the Tom Tom, but not used any mobile phone equivalents. I have to admit I like the idea of being able to use the phone GPS to avoid having to have a standalone GPS gadget, so I’d be interested to hear from users who’ve tried mobile phone GPS.
