Career advice blogger Penelope Trunk has launched a career blog network called Brazen Careerist. The network of 50 young bloggers will focus on Gen Y professional and entrepreneurial issues.
The headline story over there at the moment is "Improve your life with video games" and I spotted another story about how to use entrepreneurship for social change - both in keeping with the ethos of Penelope's own blog: "advice at the intersection of work and life".
I'm a little older than Gen Ys but I recently read Penelope's book Brazen Careerist and found a lot of the things she identified as important to Gen Y are important to me too - ie work life balance, having fun and learning on the job and feeling like an important part of the team. So I don't think the "Gen Y" label should put older careerists off reading. I look forward to reading more from their blog network. :)

I just had a question emailed in by Edward, who asks:

"I'm looking for an application that runs on startup, detects any applications that have been added to the startup menu, then shuts itself down (to preserve memory). Is such an app possible?

 

Or, is there a way to run such a startup restorer just before shutting down to achieve the same results?

 

I know there are programs that stay resident and monitor changes, but this takes up memory and processor time."

When you run an online business you don’t have much call for business cards - your URL is your business card. However two days before I had to attend a real, live ‘networking’ event I thought I’d better get some business cards organised. Leaving it to the last minute meant that I had to do it myself. Hit the jump to read how I did it.
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Pioneer may be about to achieve Sat Nav nirvana with its new AVIC-F500BT, according to Nick over at Gizmodo AU. It's come up with an in-car Sat Nav that you can pop out and take with you.

"When it's in your car's dash, you can use it not only as a satnav, but as a control system for your iPod, MP3 player, Bluetooth handsfree kit and, with the right connections, even as a screen for an installed reverse camera."

Hopefully if they're making it a portable device as well, they'll optimise their maps for pedestrians (have you ever noticed how useless Google Maps is for getting walking directions anywhere?). Price and launch date are yet to be confimed.

Wired News reports on a recent survey of 1,000 people in which the participants reported getting an average of six hours and 40 minutes of sleep on weeknights. The same participants estimated they would need around 40 more minutes of sleep to perform their best at work, and almost one-third of the participants admitted to falling asleep or becoming very sleepy at work at some point in the last month. We all know how important sleep is to increased productivity at work and all-around happiness and well-being, so clearly many of us are facing some serious sleep debt. We've asked this once before at the end of a related post, but in light of the findings reported on in the Wired article, we're curious:

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Windows/Unix: Free, open source instant messaging application Pidgin has just released a significant new update, chock full of bug fixes and some snazzy new features—among them more file transfer support, interface improvements, and improved customisation. For more details on the changes, check out the official ChangeLog. Pidgin is free, open source, works on all Windows and Unix platforms. If you're new to Pidgin, check out the ten must-have Pidgin plug-ins to get even more out of the killer cross-platform app. If you're a die-hard Pidgin user, let's hear why you love Pidgin in the comments.

Blogger Jenny says that when she puts an important item in a "safe place" so she won't lose it, she usually winds up forgetting where it is and, well, losing it. Her solution is to make a private, searchable database of locations via email:

I put my passport back where I found it and then I emailed myself:
Subject: Passport
Message Body: In your backpack in the closet.
I also copied my brother on the email and applied the label "Stuff." This way when I lose my passport next time I can simply pull up my email and see where it is located.

Looks like a good way to "index" stuff when you're defragging your home.

We've already highlighted how to subscribe to RSS feeds of your Gmail labels, but the Google Operating System also points out how easy it is to subscribe to a feed of all your unread email using the built-in unread label. In essence, you'd just add the following URL to any feed reader that supports authentication (of which Google Reader is not one):

https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom/unread/

The really cool part of this feature is that you can open the email directly in Gmail from the item in your newsreader. Just remember, if you're subscribing to your Gmail unread feed in a newsreader that makes feeds public, be sure your privacy settings are properly configured so you don't end up sharing any of your private email messages.

Speaking of Firefox keyboard shortcuts, reader John writes in:

Noticed a peculiar thing on my girlfriend's MacBook the other day—I hit "g" then Enter from Firefox's location bar, and voila, Gmail launched. I have a keyword bookmark on MY computer configured to make Firefox act this way, but not on hers... maybe this is a built-in Firefox "Easter egg"?

Not sure if the g shortcut would be considered an Easter egg, but I confirmed that it works on a pristine Firefox 2.5 profile on Windows, too. Strangely, the dict keyword, which used to take you to dictionary.com, is no longer built in. We're big fans of configuring our own keyword bookmarks. If you haven't already, here's how. Thanks, John!

By almost every account, Spotlight on the Mac has improved tremendously in Leopard, so in an effort to re-introduce the usefulness of OS X's built-in desktop search application, the UsingMac weblog dives into the nitty gritty of building precise and powerful searches in Spotlight. Fantastic tricks abound, like searching files by filetype using the kind operator (e.g., kind:music). You'll also find a handful of hugely useful keyboard shortcuts, like revealing the file in Finder by pressing Cmd-Return (rather than launching the file with Return). Whether you're just returning to Spotlight in Leopard or you've always enjoyed the desktop search options of Spotlight, getting to know the keyboard shortcuts and search operators built into the app can do wonders for your file-searching productivity.

Managing music between your iPod and your iTunes library can be cumbersome at times, if only because you can't actually do a lot of management on your actual iPod. To that end, a howto from DIY web site Instructables details how to automatically remove unwanted songs from your iPod using smart playlists and the star rating system built into your iPod and iTunes. The idea is simple enough, but if you find it difficult to remember songs you want to banish from your iPod once you're actually plugged into your computer, this setup will take care of those songs automatically. Got similar methods of your own? Let's hear about them in the comments.

Mac OS X Leopard only: Dig into advanced user settings on your Mac by Ctrl+clicking on an account name in the System Preferences>Accounts area. There you can change Leopard's default login shell, the account's home directory or short name, and other important, scary, things that are just daring you to mess with them. (Actually, don't, unless you really know what you're doing.) As for shell options? Mac OS Hints explains:

In the resulting Advanced Options screen, either type in the path to your preferred shell, or choose among the various shells already installed in /bin: bash, tcsh, sh, csh, zsh, or ksh.

Do you prefer an alternative shell on your Mac? Why? Tell us in the comments.

Windows only: Freeware application Nero DriveSpeed slows down the read speed of your CD or DVD drive so you don't have to endure the loud jet-engine whirring of your drive every time you want to listen to a CD or watch a DVD on your computer. Obviously there are plenty of times when the 48x read speed of your drive comes in handy—particularly when you are transferring data from an optical disc—but if you're just listening to a CD, for example, your drive really doesn't need to spin up to top speed. After installation, DriveSpeed can prompt you whenever you insert a disk and you can choose whether to run in Fast or Silent mode. Nero DriveSpeed is freeware, Windows only.

Getting work done on the road when you visit another state for a few days is one thing, but flying halfway around the world with your laptop bag is a whole other ball of wax. The 13-hour flight, foreign power outlets, lack of or spotty Wi-Fi, and the pain that is hauling all your stuff onto ferries, tuk-tuks, and buses every few days can sure put a damper on mobile computing. I just spent the last nine days in beautiful Thailand with two friends who have been backpacking through Southeast Asia for several months. While it wasn't an official working vacation (quite the opposite), I still learned a few back-breaking lessons about computing in that region firsthand and from my pals.

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Desktop photo manager Picasa is a Google product, and photo-sharing web site Flickr's owned by Yahoo, and the two companies don't make it obvious how to get the apps to talk to one another. When I returned home from a vacation on the beaches of Thailand, I had a hard drive loaded with photos and I wanted a way to organise, caption, and publish them all at once without duplicating work. Here's how I did it with Picasa and Flickr.

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My book publisher tells me that the second edition of the Lifehacker book, Upgrade Your Life, is hot off the press, and several copies are boxed and loaded onto trucks headed towards Amazon's warehouses as I type. If you're planning on buying the book, pre-order from Amazon now before it starts shipping to take advantage of Amazon's 5% discount on all book pre-orders (which puts the price well below 20 bucks.) Upgrade Your Life is meatier, better-looking, and more up-to-date than the first edition, and good karma will come to anyone who gives it a read. I promise.

Windows only: EndItAll is a free utility that lets you choose a handful of system and critical processes and applications that you don't want to shut down—and then kill all the others. Launching EndItAll gives you a prompt similar to Windows' Task Manager, where you choose the programs that should be protected, restarted, or closed. While the app seems to catch most system processes and auto-protect them, it still requires a bit of knowledge about your system and what killing will do to a process before using. Once you've got your footing, however, EndItAll can create a batch file that performs its own function for your multi-kill convenience. EndItAll is a free download for Windows systems only. For other, generally more safe tips on pruning your processes for more memory, check out our guide to mastering Windows' task manager.

Lifehacker reader Will writes in with a memorisation system he picked up while taking an art class that required him to remember long dates attached to paintings. Using a "Red Table" of mnemonic sound-to-numbers devices, he converts long numbers into words, which he can then re-convert by knowing which letter sounds correspond to certain numbers. He's posted a multi-page beginner's guide to this system, which includes links to other guides and even a software tool to help with the conversion. For another angle on memorising numbers (or anything else), try the number/rhyme technique and the readers' suggestions that follow.

The How-To Geek continues his quest to make Vista actually convenient for a wider group of people with a few tips on taming AutoHotkey, the Windows scripting language that can automate keyboard actions, knock down repetitive email, and do much more. For those who write simple scripts that hardly ever change, the solution is simple:

All you have to do is right-click on the script, choose "Compile Script"...And now you can run the executable version as administrator.

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The TipNut blog happens across a pretty neat solution to keeping your coupons organised, writing your shopping list, and more, using a zippered, binder-style personal organizer/planner. There are, of course, more elegant coupon-only solutions—like the mini-Pendaflex Gina picked up last year—but unwanted planners tend to pop up on holidays and around offices at the calendar year start. If you've got a spare one or just one that isn't getting enough use, you can also store gift cards, write down your personal splurging weaknesses, and note prices for comparison. Hit the link for more ideas and advice on storing and organising coupons.

iTunes, Amarok, or any podcast aggregator of your choice—they do a great job of fetching and organising your favorite periodic mp3s, but what if you just have one or two shows you occasionally listen to? The Geeks are Sexy blog recommends using an Rss-to-email service to have your podcasts sent directly to your email. For podcasts that regularly turn out smaller mp3 files, it's a feasible solution, and it gets you the shows immediately, rather than relying on your memory or an always-open pod-catcher to check for them. Better still, users of Gmail and other web-based email can often play the files directly from the message with built-in players. For another podcast alternative, try using Netvibes as your aggregator.

YouTube announced in November that they would be testing out encoding videos at higher resolutions (and with higher-quality audio encoding). Now it appears that a small sampling of uploaded videos can already be seen at their higher resolutions, simply by adding a little tag to the end of the video's URL. To get a (slightly noticeable) bump in resolution, try adding &fmt=6 to the end of the address line. The trick, according to YouTube watchers, seems to work primarily with newer videos, and bumps the resolution from 320x240 to 448x336. Add &fmt=18 to the end of the URL, and you might get an MP4-encoded version, with better audio and a 480x360 resolution.