Eagle eyed tipster Korian spotted a new Apple store at Myer Brisbane – Level 4, 91 Queen St. As part of the opening they’re running demonstration sessions every day Wedneday til Sunday on the following timetable: 10am – making Hollywood-style movies (15 minutes) 12.30pm – It just works. Getting started on a Mac (30 minutes) 4pm – more fun with photos (15 minutes) I spoke with one of the Apple guys from the Brisbane store who said the demos will be an ongoing thing, so if you have questions for an Apple Expert, here’s your chance. Thanks for the tip, Korian! More »
Web site Tape It Off the Internet (TIOTI) is an online television portal designed to help you find and watch your favourite TV shows, either through streaming online video, BitTorrent downloads, or links to purchase the episode or season from iTunes or Amazon. The goal of TIOTI is to make finding and watching your favourite television shows easier than your regular BitTorrent experience—sort of a “non-geek” BitTorrent tracker and then some. TIOTI takes some getting used to, but if you’ve never been happy with the BitTorrent experience (even after our beginner and intermediate guides), Tape It Off the Internet might be worth a try.
TIOTI [via TorrentFreak]Zen Habits had a thought provoking post on the differences between habits and tasks, and how and when you might include habits (or tasks-you-want-to-become-habits) on your to do list. The thing I really appreciated about this post was the idea of identifying or choosing ‘triggers’ for habitual behaviour:
“I wake up at 4 a.m., after being triggered by an alarm clock. My getting up triggers my habit of starting my coffee and drinking water. Now, I’m using the drinking water as a trigger to exercise.”
That gave me a “lightbulb over the head” moment, and an idea for training myself to exercise every day, rather than just three days a week. Yay!
If you work in a job where you have to estimate work—whether you’re a freelance worker, consultant, or regular Joe or Jane Q. Worker who needs to let your boss know how long it’ll take to finish a project—you know that a poor estimate can lead to lots of undue stress. The Web Worker Daily weblog offers an introduction to making appropriate and realistic work estimates so you don’t end up with this kind of last-minute stress.
Estimate in inch-pebbles, not milestones. When you’re faced with a large piece of work to estimate, don’t try to come up with a single number to cover the entire job all at once. Break it down into pieces, and then break those pieces down into pieces until the pieces are small enough that you can see how you would do each one and put a number on them. As a general rule of thumb, if the pieces take more than 4 to 8 hours, they’re not small enough yet. Most people have trouble guessing their time to perform any job that will take longer than that.
Share the estimation tips and tricks that keep you stress-free and productive in the comments.
Web Worker 101: Estimating Basics [Web Worker Daily]Windows/Mac: Freeware streaming television application Joost has released the 1.0 beta of their snappy, attractive on-demand video player. We took you on a tour of Joost a while back, but since then Joost has seen significant interface upgrades, more content deals, and—most importantly—has dropped the invite-only requirement. If you’re looking for a high-quality television experience on your desktop without building your own DVR or rolling your own BitTorrent season pass, Joost is currently the best solution out there. If you’ve been putting Joost through the paces since we last mentioned it, let’s hear how it’s been working for you in the comments.
JoostIn yet another attempt to compete with Google Docs, Adobe has acquired online word processor Buzzword, after today’s Microsoft Office Live Workplace announcement. Now who’s going to snap up Zoho? More »
If you’re trying to lose a few pounds, self-improvement site Better Life Forum suggests that you’ll want to make your goals as definite as possible: A simple statement like, “I want to lose some weight,” is an ambiguous and an indefinite statement. What is important is to be precise on your goals. It would be better if you will set some detailed amount of pounds that you really want to lose. Envisage yourself what you will look like after reaching your desired weight. Doing this will inspire you to lose weight. In fact, maybe even more than what you have planned in mind.
Anything that helps with the difficult process of losing unwanted weight is a good deal—if you’ve successfully managed to lose pounds, please share what made you successful in the comments.
Staying Motivated to Exercise [Better Life Forum]Anyone with hard water in their community can relate to the problem of some pretty impregnable stains. Cool Tools has a nifty solution for this: I used to scrub fruitlessly at toilet bowl rings until one day I tried pouring in some white vinegar (maybe a cup or two) and leaving it overnight. Everything came off in about a minute after that.
The tip goes on to add that if you’re in a hurry, you can leave the vinegar in there for as little as twenty minutes; I’ve gotten this to work on showers and sinks as well.
Tips 23 [Cool Tools]The BBC’s Science and Nature section has an interesting quiz titled the “Sleep Profiler”, a quick (took me about 5 minutes) assessment tool you can use to figure out how to make the most of your sleepy time. My quiz results told me that I have a pretty good handle on how much sleep I’m getting, but that I may want to lay off the caffeine late at night—there was actually a whole page of results directed at my unique answers that turned out to be very helpful. So! If you have a few minutes, take the assessment and share your results in the comments.
Sleep Profiler [BBC Science]None of this will be new to power Gmailers, but Wired offers a nice howto on getting the most out of Gmail. More »
