From The Tips Box: Reselling Gadgets, Forum Threads, Pen Storage

Readers offer their best tips for reselling old gadgets for more, getting up-to-date on busy forum threads, and storing pens and pencils at your workspace.

Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favourites. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments or send it using the contact tab on the right.

Watch Unboxing Videos When Reselling Gadgets

Gregory finds out how to keep all your gadgets’ accessories straight when it’s time to resell:

This was a Lifehacker-esque thought I had this morning when trying to get a camera’s original boxing, manuals, etc. back together, which is a veritable origami project with everyone following Apple’s lead these days. After, say, you’ve sold an item you listed as having “original packaging and manual included”, to reverse engineer the thing, and figure out what went into which plastic bag, slot, etc., watch an unboxing video that someone posted when the item was first released.

Tweak Forum URLs for Up-to-Date Bookmarks

Demarcmj shares a small URL hack for online forums:

A gripe that that I’ve always had with virtually every online forum is that when you bookmark a topic in your browser it “locks in” the page you’re on because it’s part of the URL. This is a pain because every time you come back to the topic, you need to press an extra button to get to the most recent page of posts.

What I’ve noticed is this. If you bookmark a post that ends with something like:

.../showthread.php?t=1380505&page=62

You can replace the page number with something ridiculously high, and it will always take you to the most recent page.

/showthread.php?t=1380505&page=9999

I can’t confirm that this works on every internet forum out there, but on the three that I’ve tried today, XDA, RootzWiki, and the Swype Beta Forums, it has worked.

Organise Pens and Pencils in a Container with an Index Card

Art discovers a dead simple method for keeping pens and pencils separate:

I just found this quick hack when trying to get my desk organised last week. Just take an index card, fold it in two, and put it in your container! I hope it’s helpful!

Turn a Business Card into Makeshift Collar Stays

Tron_Paul makes business cards useful again:

While I wear mostly button-down collar shirts, I have quite a few straight-collar shirts. I happened to find myself in a bind one day when I didn’t have a pair of collar stays — the little pointy plastic thing you insert in the collar to make it stay straight). Well, without them, I know within an hour the collar would be bent and look horrible, so I took a business card and cut a few strips from it. The height of the business card is pretty close to the length of a collar stay. The cards I have were pretty thick, but even then I cut extra strips and put in two per side. Just a temporary fix, but held for the day.