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Yahoo's testing out a new kind of search page layout: when you search for broad-reaching terms (like Einstein, and happily, Lifehacker), you may arrive on their beta "Glue Page," which groups web page results, images, Wikipedia, news, blogs, and video clips into separate areas on the page. See it for yourself.
Philipp Lenssen, who's normally blogging about Google products and developments, sent a single question to workers at some of the country's top tech firms on how they deal with all the email, feeds, voicemail, and other clatter clamoring for their attention. The answers are informative and, in some cases, pretty surprising. Elinor Mills, reporter at CNET, talks about her reasonable "triage" approach:
I scan email and see what needs immediate attention, set aside things that can wait and then go back to them in order of importance, hoping that none of them expires in the meantime ... I scan the RSS and iGoogle headlines several times a day. It is overwhelming the amount of information that gets thrust at you every day all day, especially in the daily news business. I also make a lot of lists of ideas to pursue and stories I'm working on to try to stay on top of it.
US-centric: Now you can truly see why our commenters dubbed Python the programming language that "can do anything." One intrepid (and hungry) hacker, possibly named Nick Jensen, put together a small script that tracks Domino's Pizza orders from phone... Read More »
Windows only: Microsoft's lesser-known Journal feature can attach transaction details to contacts—which makes it perfect for storing notes about phone calls. When you want to keep careful track of who you called when and what you talked about and decided, the Productivity Portfolio says the Journal's the way to go. Hit the link to get a step-by-step Journal tutorial, or just press Ctrl+Shift+J to get started on a new Journal entry in Outlook now.
Posted by Sarah Stokely at 4:00 PM on May 9, 2008
I just read a really interesting article by Adele Horen in The Age, about a conference on happiness held by buddhist teaching group, the Vajrayana Institute. One of the presenters was a Harvard psychologist, Daniel Gilbert, who says that people are very bad at predicting what will make them happy.
He said that while often people choose having kids as a path to happiness, studies have shown that happiness is in fact adversely affected by having kids, and doesn't return to its previous level until the kids move out of home (ouch!).
The upshot was that we have a biological urge to reproduce, but we don't have a biological urge to do things to make us happy.
Another presenter - a professor of psychology and psychiatry - had studied MRIs of buddhist monks and said that meditation is a way of changing the "hardwiring" of our brains to achieve greater happiness and compassion.
Most people do seem to struggle with balancing their short term versus long term goals, and their need versus wants. So my question is - what gives you happiness in life - and if it took you a while to figure it out, how did you get there?
Happiness is... not having children [The Age]
Posted by Sarah Stokely at 3:40 PM on May 9, 2008
Snacking is often thought of as something people do because they're bored or they are overeaters. But the Dumb Little Man blog today takes a different tack, saying you should aim to consume 200 calories every two to four hours to keep your blood sugar levels from dipping too low.
"Always plan to snack. It's thinking that you won't eat anything between breakfast and lunch that leaves you standing in front of the candy machine at 10.30 in the morning, starting a cycle that's going to ruin our day."They've helpfully made a list of the criteria for a healthy snack:
Posted by Sarah Stokely at 2:52 PM on May 9, 2008
I missed this piece from APC about a public meeting which eBay held in Melbourne to try to calm eBay sellers unhappy at its bid to force all eBay buyers to use PayPal (the payment service which, completely coincidentally, eBay happens to own). Angus Kidman did a great, colourful writeup of the night.
Sounds like the company didn't do the greatest job of selling their plan to the audience, and they fell down when answering the crucial question of why eBay wants to remove the choice of payment options from users of the auction site:
"We're not allowing people to offer unsafe choices, just like in this democracy you can't go out and buy heroin on the streets."
Mac OS X only: Free, open source application PandoraBoy pulls the popular streaming internet radio site Pandora out of your browser and integrates it with your Mac desktop. With features like global hotkeys, support for your Apple Remote, and even integration with Growl, PandoraBoy looks to be the ultimate Pandora companion for OS X. PandoraBoy is free, Mac OS X only. Windows users looking for a similar solution, check out PandoraBrowse or our bevy of other ways to get more from Pandora.
US-centric: Next time you miss a call from an unknown number, check if it's a telemarketer on the CallerComplaints web site. CallerComplaints maintains a user-submitted database of telemarketer phone numbers and even rounds up the worst offenders. Registering with the Do Not Call list is your best defence against unsolicited calls, but for those telemarketers still pushing through, CallerComplaints could come in handy.
AU - in Australia the relevant bodies are the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman which oversees telcos/ISPs and the Do Not Call Register
Windows only: Freeware application Advanced Run is a replacement for the traditional Windows Run dialog that can run any program as another user without logging you out of your account. Aside from that, Advanced Run does all the same things your regular Run dialog does, and Advanced Run will launch in place of it whenever you hit Windows-R or Start -> Run. It also adds a Run As option to your right-click dialog, so you can launch any program on your desktop as another user. Advanced Run is freeware, Windows only (go to the Downloads tab to download).
US-centric: MacRumors is reporting that AT&T's web site has officially confirmed free access to over 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots for iPhone users, including Starbucks and Barnes and Noble. That means that with a little know-how, anyone can get free Wi-Fi... Read More »
A Microsoft student promotion that slashes 91% off a copy of Office Ultimate applies to anyone with a .edu email address—and most universities offer .edu addresses to their alumni for free. Microsoft Office Ultimate, which retails for $680, is available to students for only $60 until May 16th. But if you can snag a .edu address, you too can cash in on the deal—all you have to do is get yourself an alumni email address at your alma mater. The promotion's web site says you have to prove you're enrolled in coursework, but the New York Times reports that a senior VP at Microsoft confirmed all you need is an .edu email address. Let us know if you snag the deal and how it goes in the comments.
AU - Microsoft's Australian "It's Not Cheating" site is promoting a student rate of $75 for Office Ultimate which is valid until 15 May.
Language translation service Google Translate has added the ability to automatically detect the source language, streamlining translations when you don't recognise the language. When you stumble onto a foreign language web site, the most difficult part of using sites like Google Translate is that you often don't know what the source language is. Google Translate's new Detect Language feature removes this limitation altogether, so translations are quicker and easier. Apart from the new auto-detection, Google Translate has also added support for nine new languages, and can translate from any one of them to any other. Not bad.
Whether you're trying to share megabytes worth of music with a friend or send an important document to a coworker, nothing outshines a fast, easy-to-use file-sharing service. On Tuesday we asked you to share your favourite file-sharing service, and over 200 nominations later, we've rounded up the five most popular services. Hit the jump for a look at the top five, and then cast your vote for the ultimate file-sharing service.
PC World magazine writer Tom Mainelli lists five software apps that save him time every day—from a web-based fax service, to FolderShare, to a graphics application called SmartDraw. Not exactly the items that would be on my list, so now I want to know: What are the web and desktop applications that save you the most time each day? Your answer will depend on what kinds of tasks you do every day, but chances are there will be some tools that come up frequently for Lifehacker readers. Tell us what your best software application time-saver is and why in the comments.
Windows/Mac/Linux (Adobe Air): Klok, a free time and project-tracking app for the Adobe Air platform, is a great time-tracking solution for multi-platform users, as well as anyone who likes to keep it simple. Simple projects allow you to simply create and describe time entries on a drag-and-adjust grid, or use a template like "Web project" to automatically create sub-categories of HTML, design, text, and the like. You can also use Klok as a work timer using the "Work On" button, and export reports and invoices for clients. Klok is a free download for any system running the Adobe Air platform.
If you saw Adam's recent Hive Five roundup of text editors, you might have noticed that Vim, a child of Unix/Linux favourite Vi, still carries a lot of favour among coders and back-to-basics text workers. Now you can try out Vi and all its shortcut/macro goodness online with jsvi, a JavaScript-written clone of the basic Vi interface. It's obviously focused on code, carrying substitutions and spell checking for the most common languages, but it's a fun place to try out coding for newcomers, or for programmers to do a little quick hacking when they're away from their systems.
Track Your Domino's Pizza Order from a Terminal
PandoraBoy Brings Streaming Radio to Your Desktop
Get 91% Off Microsoft Office Ultimate
Google Translate Automatically Detects and Translates Languages
