From The Tips Box: Audible Newspapers, Yahoo Weather, Bad Habits

Lifehacke readers offer their best tips for catching up on the news, customising Yahoo’s iOS Weather app, and quitting bad habits.

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.

Catch Up On Your Daily Newspapers with Audible

Amunategui discovers that Audible has more than books:

I don’t have three hours each morning to read through one or two daily newspapers. Unless you’re retired, an executive with free rein, or have a long train commute to work, it’s going to be hard to justify a subscription to any of these monsters. I either walk or drive to work, making reading a not so safe (nor smart) option. I also do not want to waste my precious screen time on general news (I reserve that for tech news).

Thankfully, Audible rescued me from this dilemma. It is the modern-day version of ‘Books on Tape’. There, you’ll find new and classic books read by professional actors (some by very famous actors like Jeremy Irons reading The Alchemist). But most of you already know that. What you may not know is that they also offer audio versions of many newspapers and magazines.

When time is precious, you want your information to be succinct and curated, which usually entails a fee. Audible (which is owned by Amazon and shares login credentials) offers several membership plans with a basic package at $US15 a month (the one I use). For that you get monthly credit towards one book of your choice and a free subscription to either the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.

I never knew Audible had newspapers as well, so for those of you that don’t want to listen to news podcasts from NPR and the like, this is a pretty cool alternative.

Re-Order Yahoo Weather’s Sections on iOS

Chris Werner tweaks Yahoo’s awesome new weather app to his liking:

Haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere yet, but just noticed the fields in iOS Yahoo weather app can be re-ordered by dragging.

Quit Bad Habits with Repetitive Typing

2¥ben uses his passwords to boost motivation:

Instead of passwords like, officialroughexistquiet or Olu353q0p9E0GIYPxcJ2, how about using a password that can help reinforce habit formation or habit breaking. For instance, Iwillqu1t$moking.

It is good practice to use a complex password, and we have all heard that this can simply be a few words that aren’t very common (like the XKCD method of four less common words).

Instead of just having a good password that is some random phrase, why not have a password that is a beneficial phrase you can say over and over again. Or you can keep saying officialroughexistquiet in your head every time you type your password.

Obviously, using this as a password has the potential for insecurity, as we’ve talked about before. But there are situations in which it might make sense — perhaps you use it as the username instead of your password, or as one of your text expansion snippet. Any way you can get yourself typing this throughout the day could help.

Picture: Michael Himbeault/Flickr