Windows only: PocketPC app GetPDAScreen takes screenshots on your mobile device. There's no installation required: simply launch the EXE on your PC, and take a screen capture of any device connected to your computer via an Active Sync connection with a mouse click. Save the resulting screenshot as a bitmap or copy it directly to the clipboard for pasting into your favourite image editor. GetPDAScreen is a free download for Windows only.

Read More »

TechRepublic's 10 Things blog posts 10 shortcut ideas for Linux users (and Terminal-friendly OS X hackers) to make the terminal a friendlier, faster place to work. To use them, open up the .bashrc file found in your home directory and add lines in the following manner:

Alias NICKNAME='full command here'

Replace "NICKNAME" with a quick-type command, and put the full command in quotes. One example offered up by TechRepublic is a command to open up a file you regularly edit, like your /etc/apt/sources.list repository list, with a single command:

Read More »

Need an image with dark blue and green undertones for desktop wallpaper or a design project? Multicolr Search Lab, a free search utility, digs through roughly 3 million images in Flickr's "Interesting" set for photos featuring the colours you select. You can make one colour more prominent by selecting it multiple times, and the results seem pretty genuine—my only complaint is that you have to find the colours with your eyes, and can't put in hexadecimal or RGB values grabbed from graphics programs. The colour search engine also has a front end for Alamy Stock Photography for those in need of definite royalty-free images.

Windows and Mac OS X only: Apple just made the latest version of iTunes 7.7 available for download Update: and it includes the newly-opened iTunes App Store, which is available for iPhone users who have the iPhone 2.0 Software Update. The iPhone 2.0 software has not been officially released. From the iTunes 7.7 Readme:

Read More »

If you've already got an iPhone or an iPod touch and you aren't planning to buy the new iPhone 3G, you've still got goodies coming your way from Apple this week. Right beside the iPhone 3G, Apple is set to release the iPhone 2.0 software update, its new App Store, and iTunes 7.7 -- so if new hardware's not in your future, at the very least new software is. While the iPhone 2.0 update won't add any mind-blowing features to your device, it does promise to fill in a few gaping holes in the touch interface. (Oh yeah, and the App Store, scheduled to open today, lets third-party developers fill in the rest.) Apple chief Steve Jobs announced iPhone 2.0 features during his WWDC keynote, but that was over a whole month ago—so let's take another look at what exactly you're getting this week in the iPhone 2.0 update.

Read More »

Anyone who regularly uses a social network (be it Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or whatever) recognises the potential to solve problems by drawing on collective social intelligence, but could that same approach help us deal with the global warming challenge? In an article for the ABC, futurist Mark Pesce argues that similar collaborations amongst individuals could prove more effective in developing sustainable power sources than waiting for inevitably slow government reactions:

A promising young entrepreneur offers to build a plant, using AUSRA technology, to provide enough electricity to power 5,000 homes, if he can get guaranteed multi-year purchase contracts from 5000 buyers. (Like a mobile contract, but for electricity.)  With these contracts in hand, he can secure the financing from a CBA or Macquarie Bank to build the plant, plug into the grid and provide that clean green power. All of this can be managed using nothing more than a website and the goodwill of Australians who want to do something - anything - to slow down global warming.

Would you want to take part in such a scheme? How else might social networks help deal with environmental challenges? Share your thoughts in the comments.
DIY carbon change [ABC Unleashed]

If you're in the market for a new car, or just wondering how secure your current set of wheels is, the RACV's annual review of how secure different models are is essential reading. While some manufacturers produced consistently good results, there are plenty who aren't doing enough, especially with cheap but effective technologies such as self-voiding vehicle labels. The document itself is a PDF; it'd be good to see a proper interactive version next year.
[RACV Car Security Ratings]

Following Optus, Vodafone is the second Australian telco to officially disclose its iPhone pricing plans, albeit less than 24 hours before the phones go on sale. Frankly, there's nothing at all appealing in Vodafone's pricing scheme, but they do have one useful possible option for queue-jumping: buying online. Click after the jump for our analysis of Vodafone's offer.

Read More »

It looks like eBay still needs to encourage sellers in the wake of its embarrassing PayPal backdown. Less than two weeks after its last discount listing offer, the auction site is now offering a 10-day period of free insertion fees for auctions starting at $0.99 or below, running from July 12 to 21. That's only a saving of $0.30, but if you're keen to sell some stuff with low reserves, it's as good a time to do it as any.

Windows only: Freeware applications from web site E-sushi put common Windows actions—like opening and closing your CD or DVD drive—in your system tray. Apart from the eject system tray shortcut (through a tool called Disc Tray Toggler), E-sushi's iPower lets you logoff, reboot, or shutdown from the system tray, and MiniBin puts your Recycle Bin in your system tray. The downside, of course, is that you have to run an extra application to get each individual feature, so you'll probably want to determine just how much each feature is worth to you depending on how much RAM you've got to spare. All three apps are freeware, Windows only.

Read More »

Weblog Daily Tech Update details how to use the Quick Links feature available in the recently released Gmail Labs to create quick access links to the media attachments in your Gmail account. The Quick Links tool makes it dead simple to turn any advanced search into a quick sidebar link, and the post details a few advanced searches to create Quick Links specifically for video and audio. I've also added my own YouTube videos Quick Link for any email containing a YouTube link (I simply used http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=* as my search). If you've taken advantage of the Gmail Labs Quick Links feature, let's hear how you're using it in the comments. For even more advanced Gmail media wrangling, check out previously mentioned Xoopit.

Read More »

Any platform running XBMC: AEON transforms your Xbox Media Centre with a beautiful new and friendly interface. Installing AEON is simply a matter of dragging it into your XBMC's skins directory and then getting started. Whether your running XBMC on your Mac (a fork of which has just been renamed to Plex), your classic Xbox, or your thumb drive, AEON is an excellent tool to improve the look and feel. If you'd like to try XBMC on your Mac with a more social flair, check out previously mentioned Boxee.

Read More »

One of the new apps slated for release during this Friday's iPhone 2.0 launch is Friend Book, a "super Address Book" that promises to make dealing with your iPhone contacts much easier and fun. Made by Tapulous, a new company dedicated to iPhone/iPod touch apps, Joel Johnson at Boing Boing describes Friend Book's "holy crap" feature:

The coolest feature without a doubt is the new "Handshake": put two iPhones running Friend Book together, shake them up and down, and the personal contact information of the phones' owners will be beamed through the net to the paired phones. Handshake doesn't work through a device-to-device connection, but instead passes location data back to Tapulous' servers — two shaking phones in the same location means it's time to swap information.

Friend Book, along with the company's other two apps, Tap Tap Revenge and Twinkle will be free to download from Apple's new App Store on Friday. Hit the play button to see Friend Book in action.

Read More »

When you want to backtrack a few paces in your web surfing clicktrail but not lose the page you're on, in Firefox 3, click on your current tab, hold down the Ctrl key and drag it. This will duplicate the tab and keep its history in the copy—that way you can back out and stay where you are in another tab. Sadly this trick only works in Firefox for Windows, not on the Mac. Don't forget, you can also drag tabs between browser windows in Firefox, too. What's your favourite Firefox 3 shortcut? Let us know in the comments.

Read More »

Popular BitTorrent tracker Mininova has unveiled a new bookmarking feature that makes it easy to start a BitTorrent download on your home computer from anywhere. The new feature works by creating a personal RSS feed of all of your bookmarks. Since most popular BitTorrent clients support subscribing to an RSS feed of torrents, that means that each time you bookmark a torrent on Mininova, your BitTorrent client will automatically start downloading it. All you have to do is subscribe to your personal feed and get bookmarking. This is a very clever feature, but if you'd prefer even more control of your BitTorrent downloads when you're away from your main PC, check out how to remote control uTorrent or Transmission over the internet.

Windows only: Rainbow Folders, a free interface-tweaking utility, is a great tool for de-cluttering a desktop, directory, or other work spaces where distinct colours and shapes help your mind sort out what goes where. Rather than offering just four or five colour labels, Rainbow Colours lets you use Photoshop-like hue and saturation values to make distinct shades, and lets you choose between classic, XP, or Vista-style stand-up folders to further distinguish your stuff. The app can also add mouse-over tooltip text to a folder, in case your visual memory needs a quick refresher. Rainbow Folders is a free download for Windows systems only. Note: If the main link below is overwhelmed, you can grab the install package from Freeware Files.

Read More »

Web search engine Searchme displays search results using the three-dimensional Cover Flow interface you've come to know and love in iTunes and on your iPod for web pages. Searchme also guesses related categories for popular searches. For example, a search for "new york" might be related to baseball or business news, restaurant information, and architecture, and Searchme will give you search results within the selected category. Searchme performs optimally within category searches; keyword searches alone don't seem to yield the most relevant pages—for example, Lifehacker.com is nowhere near the top of the results for a search for "Lifehacker." Still, if you prefer to view screenshots of pages before you actually visit the page and don't use the Lifehacker-endorsed BetterSearch Firefox extension, the Cover Flow display grouped with search results might prove to be a valuable asset.

Blogger Pamela Slim has a habit of writing during the quiet late-night hours, along with a sense that she can't write unless she's got a fat stack of Oreos next to her. Digging into the dieting tips of Martha Beck, she finds that her compulsive sweet tooth stems from the same place as her deadline anxieties. Her solution is to basically sit down and calmly think through why she's not doing that badly whenever the late-night longings pop up:

The starved and frightened brain drives overeating and low metabolism. The calm and secure brain drives a very different set of biological motivators and consequences. In other words, when your brain is fixed, you eat less and burn off excess as heat, whereas the "famine brain" caused by stress and hunger- including dieting — really does make you consume more and store more as fat.

Read More »