I thought that the use of whiteboard markers was confined to offices which actually have whiteboards, but thanks to the Lifehack.org blog I have been enlightened (once I figured out that dry-erase markers is American for whiteboard markers).
You can use them to write notes to yourself on the bathroom mirror or glass desk (I like this one), or to label frozen food. Another nifty hint - cover an index card with contact and voila, instant reusable mini-whiteboard!

The list fails to point out the golden rule of dealing with whiteboard markers. Make sure you check that the pen is NON-PERMANENT before applying it to any of the surfaces listed above. Let's face it, every office you've ever worked in has some stupid doodle on the whiteboard left behind by someone who broke this rule. Don't be that someone. :)

10+ Things to Do with Dry-Erase Markers [Lifehack.org]

Ever since people realised that the OLPC's XO laptop would make a really cool mini-laptop for anyone, not just a kid, there seems to have been a rush of mini-laptops onto the market. The sub-1kg ASUS EeePC is the latest to hit Aussie shores, and today CNet in the US has written up the release of an energy efficient mini-laptop from Zonbu. As they rightly point out, a laptop weighing around 2.25kg with a screen size of 15 inches isn't exactly a mini-laptop.
If we're going to stretch the definition of "mini" that much, this isn't exactly a new category of laptop - Toshiba's had an ultra thin lappy on the market for several years, and Sony has a pretty tiny Vaio too. Guess it comes down to how you define it.
So would you look at replacing a standard laptop with a mini one? Read my review of the ASUS EeePC tomorrow to get my take on it. :)

It's not news that many of us aren't getting enough sleep, but BBC News offers several tips from a director of Clinical Sleep Research for getting to sleep when your head hits the pillow that you may not have heard before. For example:

Tensing until your muscles hurt may not seem the most sensible way of getting to sleep, but it's a popular and proven cognitive technique. Systematically tense each muscle group in turn until it starts to hurt... and then let go. This creates a warm feeling of relaxation, and any tension should flow away. The theory is that with physical relaxation comes mental calmness.

You may have heard of this method (Progressive Muscle Relaxation) before, but there was one tip that was completely new to me:

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SmallOfficeAustralia has begun a site tracking the slow march Apple seems to be on in bringing the iPhone to Australia. Entitled "The Collective Screams: Release the iPhone in Australia already!", the page also has a rumour section which says that Virgin Mobile is keen to step up to the plate if Telstra doesn't get the contract. I'm still firmly in the "if it's locked to Telstra I'm really not keen" camp so here's hoping.
Apple was being very coy about the iPhone at its Media Christmas party last week - not a hint about when we might see it on these shores. I was pretty disappointed that while they had a table full of "new" products to show us like the iPod Touch and the new Nano, there was narry an iPhone in sight. Considering how long it's been on the market in the US, and how much Australian journalists have already written about the iPhone, I think that's pretty poor. I'm lucky that I've gotten to have a play with an iPhone that a friend bought in the US and brought back here, but plenty of other writers are flying blind with only the Internet hype machine to guide them. Surely that's not what Apple wants?! :)

We've already shown you how to organise your office Secret Santa online, and now Wired comes to the rescue to answer the prickly question of what to buy Mr No Personality from Marketing when you get his name in the draw.

Their advice? Research the person you have to buy for. Don't get something too personal (eww underwear?!) and make sure you stick to the dollar limit which is usually set for office Secret Santas.

The best Secret Santa I ever participated in was in an office of crazy, tech and gadget obsessed geeks who gave each other random, silly gadgets. They were handed out at the staff Christmas lunch, which rapidly descended into a gadget-brawl of epic "plastic T-Rex versus punching nun" proportions. I'm still vaguely jealous of the guy who scored the mini catapult that shot little plastic pigs at people. :)

And the moral of that geeky little story is just to remind you that you can buy something little and cheap that still gives the recipient a laugh and some fun. I personally would much prefer that to something bland and safe like some scented soap.

So have you ever come up with a brilliant Secret Santa gift (or scored a total dud?). Leave tips in comments please.

Choose Gifts for Office Parties [Wired]

Got an upcoming gift exchange at the office but not sure what cheap but hopefully not-too-crappy gift to buy for your officemate? Wired's guide to choosing the right gifts for office parties has you covered. The howto suggests several... Read More »

In other OSDC news, speaker Stewart Smith gave a Lightning Talk on OpenOffice 2.3 yesterday. To illustrate the speed issues with the open source office suite, he started to open the program at the start of his talk. And finished the talk before the program had successfully opened. Admittedly Lighting Talks are usually 5-7 minutes long, but still. Ouch.

I'll admit I'm disheartened to hear that even on a high end laptop, OpenOffice can be so ridiculously slow. Have you used Open Office, or are you using it now? How have you found it? Should I be looking around for a different open source office suite?

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): View Exif data for photos you're viewing in Firefox—like camera make, model, exposure, and other technical details—with the FxIF Firefox extension. Once installed, right-click any image (from the looks of things it needs to be the original image—not thumbnailed, for example) and click Properties. In addition to Firefox's default set of image properties, FxIF adds the Exif data as well. On the other hand, if you're only interested in the Exif data for Flickr pics, check out the Flickr EXIF Decorator Greasemonkey script. FxIF is free, works wherever Firefox does.

The Open Source Developers Conference is on in Brisbane this week and one tidbit of cool news to come out of it was Google's announcement of the Highly Open Participation Contest - an open source competition for teenagers.

Google's teaming up with a swag of open source organisations to provide a list of challenges for entrants, ranging from code, documentation, research, outreach, quality assurance, training, translation and user interface.

Participants will be in the running to win $10,000 and a trip to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California.

So if you have a smart kid brother or sister who you think might get a buzz out of it, point them towards http://code.google.com/opensource to get started.

The contest is open to students age 13 and older who have not yet begun university studies. Contestants will be able to claim tasks until 7pm on January 22, 2008, with winners announced on February 11.

More information is available here.

Weblog Ririan Project offers several tips for breaking (but not necessarily quitting altogether) your TV habit. For example:

Throw out the remote control. It's impressive how much less television you'll watch if you have to get up every time you want to change channels or adjust the volume. Plus, it eliminates all those hours you spend channel surfing.

The post also suggests reading at least 30 pages of a book or magazine before you start watching TV or rearranging your furniture so the TV isn't the focal point along several other worthwhile tips for cutting back. And since you're watching less TV around bedtime, you'll also sleep better.

Read More »

We'd all love a little GPS on our phone, but generally a device with GPS built in (plus the price of service) costs more than many of us are willing to shell out. Luckily the latest (beta) version of Google Maps Mobile has added a new feature called My Location, which uses data from cell phone towers to provide an approximation of your location on a Google Map—meaning GPS-like results from any phone that can run Google Maps Mobile!

Once installed, just fire up Google Maps on your supported phone and hit '0' to view your location (you're the blue dot). If your phone already has GPS built in, the new Google Maps Mobile will use it to pinpoint your position. If you don't have a GPS-enabled phone, you may see an approximate location indicated by a blue dot with a lighter blue circle around it so you know there's a little uncertainty about exact location.

While this isn't real-time turn-by-turn directions, it's still a helluva lot better than nothing—and should make putting Google Maps Mobile to use on-the-go a lot quicker and easier. (I'm just waiting for the iPhone Gmaps to update with this.) Google Maps Mobile with My Location is freeware, works on "most web-enabled mobile phones, including Java, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Nokia/Symbian devices." If you give it a try, let us know how well the My Location feature is finding you in the comments.

You may not be able to power an iPod with an onion, but there are plenty of neat tricks and techniques that actually do work with everyday foods. We've posted dozens of food and beverage-related stories here at Lifehacker over the past three years, but today we've compiled the top 10 most clever, interesting, fun, and useful food hacks of them all, with video clips. Come on in to check 'em out.

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To make his web site feed subscriptions more manageable, blogger Matt Wood organises them not by topic, but by how much he can stand to miss 'em. So instead of categories like "Sports" or "Blogs," he uses folder names that range from "Can't Miss" to "Skip 'Em" (feeds he only reads when he has time). The folder names are different, but I use the same system because it gives you permission to hit "Mark all as read" more often and with less guilt. How do you organise your feeds? Let us know in the comments.

If you run Windows on your Mac with Boot Camp with an Apple keyboard, you start to miss certain keys: like Print Screen, Del, the Windows key, and Insert. For a while I was just living without them, but turns out there are key combinations that map to all the Windows keys in Boot Camp, like:

Forward Delete in Windows - Fn+Delete

Print Screen in Windows - F14

Backspace in Windows - Delete

Insert in Windows - Help

The rest of the list is over at the Apple site. Good bookmark for that Boot Camp'ed Windows install.

Windows only: See your device drivers and their versions at a glance and back up your "just works" drivers list with DriverView, a free application for Windows systems. The all-in-one-window view is itself a helpful upgrade from looking through devices individually in the Device Manager, but the real value here is in the list generation. Create an HTML-formatted backup list for your future troubleshooting needs or export to text to show friends or forum members just what's gone wrong. DriverView is a free download and works with Windows Visa, XP and 2000.

Tech support website Satisfaction walks the middle ground between the extensive, but nameless, answers found on community forums and official, but not always extensive, answers from company reps. Covering webapps, gadgets, and desktop applications, Satisfaction has more than 400 companies being discussed, and some of them, including Google, Sandy, Twitter and Microsoft, have actual employees helping to answer questions and troubleshoot. If you ask a new question, Satisfaction emails you when the answer appears, or you can follow the thread via RSS. It's not an all-in-one stop yet, but especially for help with webapps and newer programs, it's a good place to find help beyond the FAQs.

Linux only: Convert your video files for DVDs, iPods or easily-playable formats from inside your file browser using a simple script. Users of Linux systems running on a KDE desktop just need to download the ffmpegmenu script and place it in the appropriate file browser folder, and a new "Video Encoding" menu will appear in your sidebar. Detailed instructions and download links are at the link below. The ffmpegmenu script works in Linux only and requires a KDE environment, or at least the majority of the KDE tools installed in any desktop.

Childrens' goods sharing website Zwaggle isn't just an eBay clone with a focus on cribs, toys, and other kid-specific gear. No money trades hands between "buyers" and "sellers," but points are distributed for giving away unnecessary stuff (as well as signing up other members) that can be used later to get items that are needed, for only the cost of shipping. The site has a green-friendly focus, and it makes sense—new parents always tend to over-buy or get far more gifts than their child can possibly use. Zwaggle might be a money-saving way for parents to save a few items from hitting the landfill or, just as importantly, cluttering up storage space they'll definitely need later.

In yet another Google Maps upgrade in recent days, the My Maps feature has been opened up for collaboration. That means that you and your friends can add markers (with custom icons and pictures if you'd like), draw out areas and collaborate to map out great food, awesome photography spots or whatever strikes you. If one of you already has something mocked up in Google Earth or their own My Map, you can start by importing a KML or GeoRSS file. Chalk up another useful addition to what was already a great tool for making personalised maps.