scarydiy
Create Outlook Task, Note, Contact and Appointment Shortcuts
11:15PM Gina Trapani | Windows only: Reader Daniel tracks his to-do list using Microsoft Outlook’s Tasks, but hates having to switch into Outlook to create a new one every time. Instead, he added a custom shortcut to his Quick Launch bar that automatically creates a new task that he can fill in and drag and drop files onto. More »
Cancel Services Quickly
7:00AM Wendy Boswell | Sometimes, cancelling a service that you don’t want or need anymore can be a giant pain in the behind. However, calling outside of regular business hours might turn the tide your way: The biggest tip is to call well outside of normal business hours — in my company, customer service was open 24/7, but the retention department closed in the evening. If you call, say, before bed, or during the middle of the night, you’ll just be talking to a regular CS rep who has no incentive whatsoever to keep you as a customer. It can turn a twenty minute phone call into a two minute phone call. If you’ve ever had to deal with pushy reps this could be a lifesaver. What’s your best tip for getting out of services you don’t want? Thoughts in the comments. How to cancel a service [Boing Boing] More »
Schedule Wake-up Calls and Reminders at Wakerupper
4:00AM Adam Pash | Schedule free wake-up calls and reminders online with web site Wakerupper. Just enter the time and date you want your call, your timezone, phone number, email address, and an optional bit of reminder text that will be played text-to-speech style when you get the call. The site requires no registration, though registration is possible if you want to use the service for more than the occasional one-off wake-up call. Most of us have learned to use our cell phones as anywhere alarms, but if you’re paranoid about waking up when you’re travelling or before an important meeting, Wakerupper is a useful tool for creating anywhere, anytime wake-up calls (a little redundancy is always calming). Wakerupper [via Bnet] More »Mobile webapps
11:19PM Lifehacker US Edition | Google Calendar and Google Reader are now iPhone (and iPod Touch) friendly and Gmail has also undergone a graphical user interface overhaul which looks great on the iPhone, too. Thanks, Ian! More »
How Evolutionary Biology Explains Office Politics
12:00AM Lifehacker US Edition | There may be ancient evolutionary impulses behind modern-day office politics. If human nature is shaped by our monkey pasts, and the tens of thousands of years our species spent as hunter-gatherers, we might want to use some 100,000 year-old solutions to fights over the printer, snarky sysadmins, and lateral promotions. In that spirit, Stanford neuroscientist and author Robert M. Sapolsky offers Lifehacker some lessons from human prehistory to solve modern-day office dilemmas. More »Build a Fire Without Matches or a Lighter
4:00AM Adam Pash | Don’t have any matches or a lighter on hand but just happen to have fine steel wool and a 9-volt battery? Rub ‘em together and you’ve got fire. The likelihood that you are without matches or any sort of lighter but that you do have steel wool and a battery on hand seems slim, but either way this is a great bit of MacGyver ingenuity. How to make fire without matches or a lighter [5min] More »Get the most out of Flickr
11:37AM Sarah Stokely | Wired Wiki has a nice writeup of how to maximise your Flickr usage. They’ve thrown in some basic tips as well as a number of alternative apps or plugins for customising tasks like uploading photos. Nice to see them offering some Linux alternatives and Python gets a mention too.
It also rounds up some tools for uploading pictures to Flickr using mobile devices and email:
“Not many people know this, but you can also use Google’s free Picasa application to send photos to Flickr via GMail. As of version 2.0, you can e-mail directly to Flickr from the Picasa app, which will even automatically resize your photos before sending them. Just use the aforementioned Flickr e-mail address and send your pics from GMail.”
If you’re a dinosaur like me who’s still using Photobucket, this might kick you along to try out Flickr. :)
Get the Most Out of Flickr
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Top 10 Firefox Extension-free Tabbed Browsing Techniques
2:00AM Gina Trapani | Sure we love our Tab Mix Plus, but there’s a ton of tabbed browsing features baked right into Firefox that don’t necessitate the extra baggage of an extension. Power web surfers need close control of the dozens of tabs they chew through in a day. From extensive keyboard shortcuts to configuration tweaks to mouse manipulation, today we’ve got our top 10 favourite Firefox extension-free tabbed browsing tips. More »Why You Shouldn’t Send That Angry Email
1:30AM Gina Trapani | CEO Michael Hyatt says he learned his lesson when it comes to sending angry email: Several years ago, I wrote a fourteen-page diatribe to a business associate. I skewered him. I was right. He was wrong. And I had the proof. I laid it out in meticulous detail. I prosecuted my case like a lawyer before the bar. I sent it off with fire in my eyes and a healthy does of self-satisfaction in my heart. That’ll show him, I thought. More »
