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Hack a Day
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Vitamin D, the Windows/Mac remote webcam monitoring software that we liked for customizable accuracy, and which one reader used to nab proof of a derelict dog walker, has hit a 1.0 release and announced its pricing. There's still a free version that does most of what the (soon-to-expire) beta does, but is limited to monitoring one camera. A Basic ($49) version supports two cameras, and Pro ($199) license monitors as many camera streams as your computer can handle. [Vitamin D via TechCrunch]
Nearly everyone has heard the glory of compound interest sung—how if we all saved from our first day in the workforce until our last we'd have an enormous nest egg. Get that egg faster by investing your labor, too.
Photo by wili_hybrid.
Over at the aptly named Early Retirement Blog, they argue in favor of not just focusing on investing some of your income for retirement but also investing your time and labor. While they don't argue with the conventional wisdom that you should be socking away some of your income towards your retirement goals, they suggest that in addition to that you should be using your labor and time during your working years to increase your available income:
It is often said a person's earning power, that is, the ability to earn an income, is by far the biggest asset anybody has. This is entirely true, but what this doesn't tell you is that you can magnify your earning potential several times over working for yourself rather than somebody else. This means finding a low-maintenance side gig and banking the earnings. This is what Tim Ferriss refers to as a muse in his book The Four Hour Work Week. If you do it right, you can net an additional $15,000-20,000 per year per muse, each requiring only a few hours per week (or month, if you choose wisely) to maintain.
The goal, by their measure, is to invest not just money in an interest-bearing vehicle, but to invest your time in securing new income opportunities—essentially diversifying your income sources like one diversifies an investment portfolio. You can read their whole take on the process at the link below. Have your own experiences scoring extra cash with side gigs, freelancing, or other kinds of outside-the-9-5 money making? Let's hear about it in the comments.
Set Aside 10% of Your Work for Retirement, Not 10% of Your Income [via GetRichSlowly]
Windows 7 does a pretty good job of detecting applications made for older Windows versions and offering a compatibility fix. If you've got an app that just won't run, though, take a dive into the Compatibility Mode's deeper settings for a solution.
Mysticgeek writes at the How-To Geek's home away from Lifehacker about the ins and outs of Compatibility Mode, Windows 7's hidden-but-awesome feature for making older programs work more seamlessly inside itself. Mysticgeek includes a fix Windows 7's overeager installation checking in his review, but also shows how to find online patches and fixes for apps that Windows 7 claims not to support, and fine-tune how certain apps are run.
For Windows 7 users requiring access to older apps, it's a fine guided tour of a feature that doesn't just jump out at users and explain itself.
Using Program Compatibility Mode in Windows 7 [the How-To Geek]
By the time an email missive makes the rounds and comes back to the manager, it can be a cluttered, confusing mess. The Wall Street Journal recommends a few solutions for cutting down and cleaning up an email with a succinct reply.
Hard-to-follow email is one of Google Wave's best use cases, but unless the corporate world adopts Wave en mass tomorrow, we're all going to get lots of >>>> in our inbox for a while to come. If you're a team manager, or just the person in charge of putting a multi-reply, multi-forward email thread to bed, the Journal suggests some syntax and message massaging that might do the trick:
- State your position clearly, even if context follows below in the email string. "Yes" helps less than "Yes, you can have the extra funding to hire 5 temporary workers."
- Summarize the discussion to date: "See below: R&D is looking for more time but Sales risks losing customers if we don't act now."
- Force focus when necessary: "Let's focus on cost now and revisit the morale and equity issues at our staff meeting next week."
- Change subject lines cautiously. Tighter, more relevant subject lines work best, but even one letter's difference upsets inbox sorting mechanisms.
- Cut extraneous or repetitive information.
Hit the link for nine more ideas in being a better email manager, and share your own wild email taming tips in the comments.
Top Ten Mistakes Managers Make With Email [WSJ.com]
Using its vast compendium of voice and translation data, Google appears to be working toward a semi-real-time, or "speech-to-speech," translation technology for future phone models, according to The Times UK. Google's head of translation services is quoted as saying that speech-to-speech requires "high-accuracy machine translation and high-accuracy voice recognition, and that's what we're working on." Would you let Google listen in on your international calls and do your translation for you? [via Gizmodo
You're pinging somebody over email right now, but they'll probably need a reminder or follow-up in two days. CC twodays@followupthen.com, and if that person hasn't responded yet, they'll be automatically re-pinged 48 hours from now. It's a neat service, and it's free.
That's the main way FollowUpThen works: CC a message that needs a second push to an address like 5hours, 2days, 1week, or even 10minutes@followupthen.com, and if your recipient doesn't reply (with FollowUpThen as one of the addressees) before your time period is up, the original message is re-pushed by FollowUpThen.com, with a little email graphical tweak, seen above, and a notice that FollowUpThen is acting on your wishes.
If you want to handle the second notice yourself, add the @followupthen.com timed address to the BCC field, and it will only get back to you, with a reminder of what you sent. You can also send a message directly To: followupthen.com, and your reminder is pushed back to you at the time you specify. All these uses, and some basic explanation of FollowUpThen's methodology, is explained in this quick video tutorial:
newVideoPlayer( {"type":"video","player":"http://www.youtube.com/v/DiSuII5ONkU&hl=en&fs=1&fmt=22","customParams":[],"width":500,"height":412,"ratio":0.824,"flashData":"","embedName":null,"objectId":null,"noEmbed":false,"source":"youtube"} );
No software installs required, and it works from pretty much email client after you verify your address upon first use. If you've got a clever use case for FollowUpThen involving webapps or other tools beyond the standard person-to-person email, tell us about them in the comments.
FollowUpThen
Once you get beyond the basics of a comfortable computer chair and a computer that runs the apps you need, a significant part of office design revolves around style. Today's featured workspace is a small office with plenty of style.
Lifehacker reader Kokonut Justin took what could have been a boring office with plain white walls and a regular old desk and added a ton of visual interest to the space with some cleverly positioned shelves and lighting. A lower shelf provides arm-reach accessible storage for desktop odds and ends and the higher shelf provides storage for books. Between the two is a large black and white print which is downlit by three LED puck lights, another set provides down lighting for his work space. Check out the effect in the image above and the gallery below:
gawkerGallery(5465903, 5,);
If you have a workspace of your own to show off, throw the pictures on your Flickr account and add it to the Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool. Include some details about your setup and why it works for you, and you just might see it featured on the front page of Lifehacker.
Black, White, and Down Lighting [Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool]
Have a hankering for some tasty homemade ice cream but don't have the patience? The DIY folks at Make detail how to make serious ice cream in 15 minutes with a little help from our old friend, dry ice.
We've featured a couple of shortcut recipes for making ice cream or sorbet on-the-quick, but most of the time these recipes could benefit from a little more time cooling down. Make's method gets serious about their cooling process to pull off their homemade ice cream in just 15 minutes. Head over to the full post for the details, and be careful—that dry ice and coolant can be trouble if not handled properly.
Make: Projects - 15-minute ice cream with a dry ice bath [Make]
Good news, Indiana Jones wannabes: Wired's How-To Wiki offers a quick, five-step instructional guide for grabbing an item with a whip—so let's get cracking.
It's a pretty simple step-by-step process, though remember—simple doesn't necessarily mean easy, and that whip of yours can do some serious damage, so be careful:
There are few tools that can break the sound barrier while fetching the TV remote. But throw a whip right and its tip can travel 900 mph (producing a sonic boom), then curl back to snare the object of your desire. Anthony De Longis, who coached Harrison Ford for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, shows us how to lash out.
Once you master the whip-grab, you may still lack the rugged good looks and wry sensibility that makes Indie such a charmer, but hey, you can grab stuff with a whip. Things could be worse.
Snag Stuff With a Whip [Wired How-To Wiki]
BitTorrent tracker Demonoid secured a close second to The Pirate Bay in our recent comparison of the five best public BitTorrent trackers, but the catch with Demonoid is that—although it's a great public tracker—it's only semi-public, meaning that the best Demonoid experience comes with an account. Registration for Demonoid is normally closed to new users, but today Demonoid's opened its gates to new users here. No idea how long it'll last, so grab one while they're hot. [via FreakBits]
I have been putting the final touches on the Gear Clock kit which is made up of wooden gears. I have a new appreciation of the effort it takes to make something work well when it is constructed out of wood. MechanicalSculptor makes it look easy! This Parabola project us a true work of art, it’s so smooth and repeatable. His work is a real cut above. 
Podcasts offer a fantastic way to catch up news, listen to radio shows, and get great media delivered right to your computer (they're like newsreaders for media). Check out these five popular podcast managers and let the entertainment come to you.
Last week we asked you to share your favorite tool for managing your podcast subscriptions. (The term for downloading a podcast is actually podcatching, and a podcast manager is a podcatcher—the more you know!) We rounded up the top five nominations, and now we're back for you to review them and cast your vote for your favorite podcast manager.
gPodder (Windows/Mac/Linux, Free)
gPodder looks like a simple no-frills podcast manager, but underneath the hood you'll find a huge array of options and some perks—like the ability to sync to iPods, directory-based portable players, and MTP-compatible players. gPodder doesn't include a built-in player but you can specify your favorite video and audio player. If you delve into the advanced options menu, you'll find options for nearly every aspect of the software's functionality—you'll definitely want to read the gPodder wiki before going crazy with the toggle switches however. You can also access some of the more advanced tools found in podcast managers like iTunes, such as the ability to alter the playback speed of your podcasts, but such tinkering requires a close reading of the manual and isn't immediately accessible to the user right after installing the application.
Like you can use iTunes without an iPod, you can use the Zune software without an actual Zune player. Microsoft's offering in the podcast management department isn't half bad considering how new to the portable music arena the Zune is—relative to the iPod, at least. You can subscribe to podcasts from the greater web, browse the Zune marketplace to select from thousands of podcasts, rearrange the order of podcasts using the order-series function, bookmark your place in long podcasts, and stream over the web through your Zune.net account. If you are syncing your podcasts to a Zune, you can enjoy a few nice perks, like the ability to update your podcasts to your Zune over your wireless network and sharing your podcasts with friends' Zunes.
Miro is a lightweight and open-source video and podcast manager with strong emphasis on streaming and web-based media. Although other contenders in the Hive Five support video-based podcasts, Miro really shines when it comes to smooth and pleasant playback of video podcasts thanks to its roots as a video player. You can manage your podcasts, set them to automatically download, or make them wait for your go ahead. You can also set how long they'll hang around before expiring and set those values differently for video and audio to help manage how much disk space your podcasts chew up. Miro also imports and exports your podcasts in OPML format, which makes it compatible with all major feed readers and other podcasting clients.
Not only is iTunes a popular podcasting manager in its own right, it helps that iTunes was the first introduction many people had to the idea of podcasting. Many a new iPod owner has installed iTunes over the years and upon looking at the navigation column asked, "What's a podcast?" Many of the tricks available in the music-management side of iTunes are available when managing your podcasts. On top of just managing the subscription itself, you can increase the playback speed of your podcasts so you can consume more of them in a shorter span of time, bookmark where you left off both in iTunes and on the iPod, set up smart playlists to blend one podcast into another or make a constantly refreshing playlist of your new podcasts, and tell iTunes how long to archive your podcasts before making room for the new ones. Although iTunes wasn't designed to be a stand-alone podcast manager, it has done a fine job integrating podcatching.
Juice—formally known as iPodder—is an open-source podcast manager. If you're looking for an extremely lightweight, no-frills podcast manager, it would be tough to get lighter and more streamlined than Juice. Juice is focused on grabbing podcasts, downloading them for you according to their refresh rate or your set schedule, and little else. It has a built-in directory and a few basic tools—like a cleanup tool for deleting old podcasts—and that's about it. While the lack of bells and whistles might turn some people off from using Juice—it certainly lacks the visually stimulating built-in directories you find in iTunes and Zune—if you just want a program that doesn't tax your system resources and downloads the podcasts you want, you can't go wrong with Juice.
Which Podcast Manager Is Best?(polls)
This week's honorable mention nod goes to Google Reader. Many readers already use Google Reader to manage their text-based feeds, so it was a natural extension for them to use it for their podcasts. The interface is simple and spartan, but you can listen to your podcasts right in Google Reader with the basic built-in media player.
Have a favorite podcast manager that didn't make the Hive Five? Let's hear about it in the comments.
Ed. note: If you don't use a full-fledged media box but wished you could have a remote to control Windows' built-in media center (à la the Apple Remote with Front Row), here's a tweak that'll let other remotes control Windows Media Center.
Reader hjuliao discovered an easy tweak to make Windows accept other IR codes (like the Zune remote) without third party software:
Are you jealous of the Apple remote? Wish you can have such a small remote for Windows? Well there is one. The remote control for the Zune works just fine in Windows 7 media center. As long as you have the media center IR receiver all you have to do is change the IR Id on the registry.
By default Windows is listening on channel 1; the Zune remote is channel 8. This is also the same channel for the Xbox 360 multimedia remote. You can set the value to 8 but this means that the regular MCE remote would not work. So what you want to do is set the ID to 0, this would make Windows listen to all the IR ID's.
Open the registry. Scroll down to
ComputerHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetservicesHidIrRemotes745a17a0-74d3-11d0-b6fe-00a0c90f57daFind the
REG_DWORDnamedCodeSetNum0and change the value to Zero. Reboot the PC and enjoy.I have only tried this under Windows 7; however I don't see it not working in any other version of Windows. I love it especially for when I use Hulu or Boxee. Please note that the Xbox 360 media remote will work as well, since it shares the same channel as the Zune remote.
No one at Lifehacker HQ has the necessary equipment in one place to test this one out, but it does seem to be a valid tweak. Try it out and let us know how it works for you in the comments. Thanks hjuliao!
This Autopilot for Aerial Photography slide show that was done for Barcamp Antwerp looks really interesting.
“The autopilot has a built in mixer. On first use you need to tell the autopilot what the channel and mixer arrangement of your transmitter/airplane combination is. To put the autopilot in calibration mode, switch on the transmitter, put all sticks in the center and switch channel 6 to “ON”. Now turn on the airplane.
At this point you can calibrate the autopilot by putting all sticks in the center and subsequently actuating the aileron stick from full left to full right and back to center, followed by elevator (fullup, then down, then center), rudder (left, right, center) and throttle (zero throttle, max throttle, center). The autopilot will confirm completion of the procedure by turning the rudder full left, then full right and then back to center.”
As promised the contest this week will be a bit harder. Also the previous winners of all outstanding contests including the Happy Holidays 2009 Contest will be determined and posted today. The prize this week is one of those popular micro helicopters. It uses IR from the controller to send control data to the small chopper. It’s sure to provide tons of cat tormenting fun. You don’t need to find the make and model of the item in the picture but you do need to determine what it is used for.
This contest will run for one week (February 6, 2010 - February 12, 2010) . Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item pictured above and give an example of what can be done with it.
Please do not give the answer in the comments.
Send an email to contest @ hackedgadgets.com with “Name the Thing Contest” as the subject, and the message body consisting of:
The winner will be chosen at random from all of the correct entries.
Below are some pictures of the prize.
Photographing things that happen in a split second—like a drop of water hitting a puddle—is difficult enough, but when the subject of the photo is in motion, like a flitting honey bee, it requires laser-triggered precision.
The photo above was captured by a Belgian photographer that has fused his enthusiasm for photography and electronic wizardry into one hobby. His photography rig is a technological sight to behold, the camera is flanked by flashes and two arms that have infrared lasers which act as a trigger for the shutter. Check out the picture below to see him at work in the field with the rig:
For those of you who are unfamiliar with macro photography, especially that of insects, a bit of explanation on just how awesome his franken-camera is. In my personal collection (I am a professional photographer) I have at most a dozen photos that come even remotely close to the awesomeness of his insect macros.
When you're trying to photograph a bee in flight using a powerful macro lens, you're entirely at the mercy of the bee. You have to set up your camera, get it incredibly steady, and hope that a bee will come into the tiny field of focus you have. If you get a perfectly crisp shot of a bee in flight about to alight on a flower, that means you managed to luck out and have a bee fly into the tiny business-card thin depth of field window your macro lens provides and you snapped the picture at the exact 1/100th of a second that was occurring.
The beauty of his rig is that the lasers which trigger the shutter of the camera are aligned perfectly in the exact sweet spot of the lens. Using the rig you can't miss a shot because the shot only occurs when the action is occurring in the frame and in focus. (I am so envious of this amazing setup!)
You can visit the link below to see his technical schematics and diagrams, along with photos of him constructing the rig. If you have no intention of building such an elaborate rig, we'd still suggest taking a peek at his galleries. His work is amazing and the type of ten-thousandth-of-a-second exposures he captures like a mosquito—a mosquito!—in flight are incredible. You can view his insect gallery here and his water droplets gallery here.
Laser-Triggered Macro Photography Setup [Flickr via Make]
newVideoPlayer( {"type":"video","player":"http://www.youtube.com/v/qh4GWI_EUxE&hl=en&fs=1&fmt=22","customParams":[],"width":500,"height":412,"ratio":0.824,"flashData":"","embedName":null,"objectId":null,"noEmbed":false,"source":"youtube"} ); Windows/Mac/Linux: Brewtarget is a free, open-source application designed to help homebrew enthusiasts create and organize their beer recipes.
From the project homepage:
I was fed up with the lack of good open source beer software, so I thought I would make a small application that would do all the calculations for me.
The ultimate goal of the project is to be able to take a set of user-given constraints and immediately formulate a recipe.
If Brewtarget turns out not to be your pint of beer (har har), brewsta is another free, cross-platform, open-source alternative worth a look. This editor's definitely going to forward these apps on to his homebrewing dad, but if we've got any other experienced homebrewers out there who've got their own homebrew hacks and helpers, let's hear about it in the comments.
Brewtarget is a free, open-source application for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
Brewtarget [SourceForge]
Dropping off your bottles to be recycled is great and all, but with this DIY solution you'll be able to recycle them in-house into decorative cups and organizers.
Over at the design and DIY blog Curbly, user Plastolux admired the interesting colors of the various wine bottles that passed through his house. It seemed a waste to let such pretty bottles get shipped off to the recycling plant so he came up with a unique way of recycling them. He cut off the top of the bottle using a simple glass cutter designed for wine bottles and then got creative:
After I cut my first bottle I thought, how can I make these more unique? I have access to a sand blaster, so I had some lettering and shapes cut at my local vinyl shop and applied them. I had them blasted then remove the vinyl and I was left these beautiful raised translucent shapes. I really don't see these as drinking glasses but more for your bathroom toothbrush or a fancy pen holder. Someone suggested you could put a candle in them as well, I think that could look pretty cool with the more detailed designs.
For those of you without access to a sandblaster—check the phonebook, you'd be surprised how many small sand blasting shops are around—you can follow his tutorial but instead use glass etching cream from your local arts and crafts store. Check out the link below for a full tutorial including information about the cutter and more pictures of his neat designs.
Hardware enthusiast Dave Hacks read about the Viper SmartStart system, capable of remote starting your car from anywhere, all for $500. He loved the idea, but not the price, so he rolled up his sleeves and made his own on the cheap.
After looking into the system, I soon stumbled onto the fact that the system is ridiculously expensive, as is everything that has to do with the Goddamned iPhone newer technology. Further research on the subject yielded little hope, as all other systems were out of my budget (cheap as hell).
He details the step-by-step process in great detail on his blog in three parts. The project as a whole cost him $71.03, and while it certainly requires some time and know-how on your part, the end result is pretty cool.
Remote Start using Cell Phone: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3 [Dave Hacks via Jalopnik]
Windows 7 has a lot of neat new features (such as Aero Peek) that help you see what's behind a window, but reader Verygoodyear shares a very simple, one-key solution for any Windows version that, surprisingly, is new to us.
When moving a window in Windows, if you move the window, keep your finger held down on the mouse and then press Esc, it puts it back where you got it from.
Some of you may have known about this before, but we were a little shocked when we read Verygoodyear's tip—it's perfect for checking what's going on behind the frontmost one without disrupting your window layout and you don't need to activate Aero Peek to do it. Were we just incredibly slow on the uptake on this one (it works all the way back to XP), or is this simple-but-useful shortcut new to you, as well? Let's hear it in the comments.
Sometimes the most interesting stuff in an unfamiliar city is hiding in plain sight. With the right location-aware and map-friendly web tools, you can find the best cheap eats, picture-worthy sights, and much more. Start with this list of in-the-know apps.
Photo by epicharmus.
We've previously taken an example tour around Austin, TX with tools to find the best spots in new cities, some of which are detailed here, as well. For this list's sake, we'll assume you're familiar with the most popular local search tools, like Yelp, UrbanSpoon, and, well, Google and Google Maps. Beyond those tools, we wanted to provide a list of less well-known sites and services that pin down stuff you might not know about that is right around the corner.
10. See what pads are for rent or sale
There are plenty of webapps that let you cherry-pick apartments for rent and homes for sale from the comfort of your monitor at home. If you're right in the perfect neighborhood and want to know what's up, you've got other options. Realtor.com's iPhone app is the newest entrant to the game, but has, as you might expect, quite a database to pull from. HotPads.com has a similar location-aware app for Android phones, one that can also provide turn-by-turn directions to any listing you pluck out. Real estate data and "Zestimate" provider Zillow has an iPhone app too, but can also work from any phone with its very minimalist text interface. For more apartment-specific tools, head over to our readers' five favorite apartment search tools. (Original posts: Realtor.com, Zillow mobile)
I use Flickr mainly to find the food that people feel is worth embarrassing their table enough to take a picture of, but the photo-sharing site's nearby photo finder helps you discover sights and locations you never knew about, right around the corner from where you are. You can simply search Flickr for your location ("Chicago"), find a neat-looking photo and add /nearby to the photo's URL, or you can hit the "Map" link on any photo that has its location tagged. (Original post)
If all you want is a connection, we've got you covered. Gina's definitive guide to finding free Wi-Fi recommends such tools as WeFi and JiWire, along with other means of hopping on the net from almost anywhere. If you want somewhere you'll actually enjoy being with your laptop, LaptopFriendlyCafes.com covers 104 spots in New York City (and a scant few shops elsewhere), or type "laptop" or "wi-fi" into local review aggregator Yelp and see what comes up.
Having a good handle on the Craigslist listings for the area you're in is like knowing someone who's always up in everybody's business—and knows where all the deals and low-key events are happening. Craigsphone for iPhone and Android phones does a great job of reformatting Craigslist for mobile viewing, calling, and mapping; in NYC and San Francisco's Bay Area, it can even show you what's close to your exact location. If you're elsewhere and want updates on items or apartments up for grabs, check out our classic Craigslist for power users guide, which explains how to make RSS feeds your always alert friend. (Original Craigsphone post)
If you have time before you head out, either on a trip or in your neighborhood, hit up your local alternative weekly's web site or newspaper's entertainment guide. If you're looking for a quicker glance, listing and calendar aggregator Goby does a notably good job of rounding up everything that's listed as a public or paid even in and around a location. Most of the stuff tends toward high-profile events and family-friendly happenings, but that might be perfect for that one rained-out vacation day in an otherwise sunny city. (Original post)
Unless you're married to, or best friends with, a concert promoter, you're going to have a few moments every year where you'll hear about an awesome show by a band you're digging at a neat venue—last week. Not so if you sign up at Bandsintown, or grab its iPhone app, both of which can keep you in the know about shows coming to your town, or whatever you consider a reasonable driving distance. Music streaming and discovery service Last.fm can also email you about shows from its vast database of artists happening nearby, and there is, of course, always signing up for notifications at your truly favorite artists' web sites. Just be sure to create a smart Gmail filter to keep the "NEW EP OUT SOON!" emails from cluttering your inbox. (Original Bandsintown post)
Google's not the first entrant into the geo-location game, but the new "Near Me Now" link on its mobile home page is notable for being quick, simple, and not requiring a separate app to access (it's all web-based). It's out right now for iPhone and Android phones, but we hope it expands soon, as the pleasure of finding out scads of info about all the restaurants on the street you're facing, with the click of a link, belongs on every phone. (Original post)
Sites and apps that offer restaurant reviews often suffer from overstuffed and not-quite-trustworthy data. A great, authentic Somali restaurant might get only one single-star review from an eater expecting something different, while a sugary-sauced Chinese joint might get a high volume of three-star ratings because, well, it's always open. Visit the forums of foodie sites like Chow/Chowhound, eGullet, and Roadfood.com, do a search for your town, and see what people serious enough to sign up for a site named "Chowhound" and the like are saying. For a tall pint of great beer, try Beer Advocate's forums.
Remember how the Terminator could pull up information on anything he saw, as he saw it? With an iPhone or Android unit, you are (scarily?) close to that reality. Apps like augmented reality browser Layar for iPhones and Androids, and the "Monocle" in the Yelp iPhone app use your phone's camera, GPS chip, and motion/balance sensors to take what you're looking at, pull down the web's knowledge about it, and bring it back to you. Yelp shows businesses that have been reviewed by somebody, anybody, while Layar is the true walking tour app. You choose which "layers" to add to your view, like Wikipedia mentions, Flickr photos, real estate listings, and Google Maps listings. It's like having someone back at your computer meticulously research everything you're seeing and feed it to you, but you don't have to wear a Secret-Service-style earpiece to do so. (Original posts: Yelp, Layar)
Need to fill up, but feel like you're about to pay tourist-trap prices? Down to just pocket change and an inch of credit-card space? The new classic GasBuddy is always reliable, but MSN Auto's overnight gas price finder has earned kudos, too. For cheap food and drinks, give Cheap-Ass Food a look, and give MappyHour a peek for drink specials. If you're looking for a way to spend some time without having to eat, drink, or drop much cash, DiscountYeti finds free museum days and other local discounts and maps them out for you. (Original posts: cheap eats, gas prices).
Chrome: If you've ever wanted to see what people are saying about a web page you're visiting beyond the site's own comments, Chrome extension Twitter Reactions will show you the most recent tweets that are talking about the page.
The idea isn't unlike other universal commenting systems, like Google Sidewiki—but instead of just seeing the comments of Google Toolbar users, you can see what the entire Twitterverse is saying about the page that you're on. It takes a bit of filtering with all the retweets or simple linking going on on Twitter, but it's definitely interesting to see what people are saying beyond the site's integrated comments and who's linking to it—especially if it's your own site or blog (you might be surprised how many people have linked to you on Twitter!).
Twitter Reactions is a free download, works wherever Google Chrome does (Note that you need to be on the beta channel for Linux or the dev channel on OS X for extension support). Thanks, Chris!
Twitter Reactions [Google Chrome Extensions]
This Coffee Can Clock is a nice piece of work, there is a good build log and tons of details here at the Wise time with Arduino blog.
“The electronics is based on Wiseduino (Arduino clone with DS1307 real time clock on board), with a LED matrix shield sitting on top. The shield is built with 74HC595 shift registers that drive two bi-color (red, green, and orange by subtraction) 8×8 LED matrices.”
This is an inspirational TEDx video of Dennis Hong of RoMeLa. If you think that you recognize his you are right, he was recently chosen as Popular Science’s “Brilliant 10″ for his robotics.
“Dennis Hong is an expert in the area of novel robot locomotion mechanisms, design and analysis of mechanical systems, kinematics and robot mechanism design, humanoid robots, and autonomous systems. He is the inventor of the three-legged walking robot STriDER. He was awarded the prestigious Faculty Early Career Development award from the National Science Foundation in 2007.“
Readers offer their best tips for viewing full Dropbox directories online, putting leftover paint back in the can, and ramping up your professionalism at work.
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About the Tips Box: Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons—maybe they're a bit too niche, maybe we couldn't find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn't fit it in—the tip didn't make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favorites for your buffet-style consumption. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments, share it here, or email it to tips at lifehacker.com.
KosciaK shares a script to view full directories from Dropbox online:
The main drawback of Dropbox is that you can't easily publicly share whole directory (in Dropbox/Public), you have to share public links to separate files. That's why I've written Python script dropbox-index which can generate the html page with a list of all shared files in the directory (and subdirectories if you want) so you can just send a link to this one index.html file.
Photo by Bev Sykes.
bastion72 shows us how to store leftover paint effectively:
Using a flat head screwdriver punch a few holes in the lip of a paint can to let the paint leftover from your pour drip back into the can. When you put the lid back on it won't make a mess and it seals the holes so your paint won't dry in the can.
Photo by Zoe Volt.
Bonsai_halcyon lets us know how to make a good impression with your boss while not looking out of place to your coworkers:
If you work in Business Casual environment, one way to stand out and make a positive impression is to be better dressed than the people around you. However, if you're wearing a polo today and a suit tomorrow, you'll probably get strange looks and "where's the interview" jokes ( /suspicion) from coworkers.
Luckily, there is a solution: use the weather as an excuse to gradually ramp up your style. Start with tucked in dress shirts for a few days, and throw in an understated suit jacket over a polo every once in a while. Work your way up to dress shirt under jacket, and then the occasional jacket/tie deal. You might even subtly time your better-dressed days with staff meetings or presentations where some of the bigwigs are in attendance.
Using this method, you can achieve the impression you want without the baggage of looking like the guy who is suddenly gunning for the top and bucking the casual atmosphere.
Lee Richard lets us know a better way to tone down the bitterness of your coffee:
Do you use a powdered creamer in your coffee or tea? Well, you might want to take a peek at the ingredients label. There's typically some pretty nasty stuff in there. Just the partially hydrogenated oil is enough to turn me off.
If you use non-dairy creamer for the convenience (as I once did), and your body can handle milk, you may want to consider switching to powdered milk instead. A teaspoon or two adds the same creaminess, and (in my opinion) actually tastes better than the artificial stuff. Not to mention, it's a heck of a lot cheaper.
This week we compared our favorite media centers to help you choose which fits you best, demystified browser cookies, and passed on our favorite Gmail ninjitsu.
If you have a lot of interior doorknobs with key locks on them, sooner or later you're bound to lose the key or lock them inside the room. Here's what to do to get back in.
When one of my interior doors got locked with the keys inside recently, I learned all I ever wanted to know about lock-picking and doorknob assembly. Locksmiths are expensive, so let me share everything I tried and show you how I eventually got the door open.
If the doorknob in question is a simple push-button affair, most of the time all you need to do is jab a paperclip in the hole and push on the locking mechanism. If the doorknob just has a slit on the outside handle, a butter knife should do the trick.
Keyed locks are a bit trickier to open but it can be done. The easiest approach is to grab a paperclip and tension wrench. If you don't have a tension wrench handy, a very small hex key (roughly the same diameter as the paperclip) will do in a pinch. Take a hammer and flatten the end of the paperclip as flat as you can get it, then grab your makeshift lock-picking tools and head to the door. eHow explains what to do next:
Insert the flattened end of the paperclip above the tension wrench. Push it in until you meet resistance. This is the first pin of the lock. Push up on the pin with the paperclip to try and move it out of the way. When it works, the tension wrench will turn a little further. Hold the wrench in this position, still applying pressure so the pin doesn't drop back down.
Take the paperclip out and push it back in again. When you meet the resistance of the next pin, push up on it as well until it moves and the tension wrench turns. Repeat this procedure with the rest of the pins until the lock opens.
Some lever-type doorknobs respond nicely to the credit card treatment and let you pretend you're a secret agent while you get the door open. wikiHow says just slide the card into the crack in the door, right where the lock is.
Tilt the card so the side that's closest to you is almost or is touching the doorknob. Push it until you feel it slide in more. Bend the card the opposite way, forcing the lock to go back. Quickly open the door. It is a good idea to lean against the door while doing this, which will help it to pop open.
If you want to go all MacGyver on the locked door, grab a vacuum cleaner, dental floss, and a piece of paper. Use the step-by-step guide over at Instructables to show that locked door who's boss.
Sometimes, no matter what you do, the lock just won't budge. In that event, it's time to just remove the entire assembly. Slide a butter knife under the collar where the doorknob meets the door and pop the collar loose so you can get at the screws holding the doorknob together. Once the screws are removed, the doorknob will come apart and you'll be able to easily slide back the mechanism holding the door closed.
If all else fails, there's nothing a hammer wont fix. First, give the doorknob itself several good poundings until it's good and dented. This does absolutely nothing to help unlock the door but it's a great way to get back at the lock that's giving you so much trouble.
Next, insert the claw end of the hammer underneath the top of the doorknob's collar. Put a stiff piece of cardboard where the hammer meets the door to protect the paint. Cover the knob with a thick towel in case metal parts go flying, then yank the hammer down hard. Do this a couple of times until the screws holding the doorknob together snap.
When you go to the hardware store to buy a new locking doorknob, be sure to have some spare keys made while you're there.
How to Open a Locked Door With a Paperclip [eHow]
Sometimes it's not enough to prioritize our to-do lists and add buffers to our schedules. To re-energize yourself and stay on track, consider declaring a Super Simple Month.
Photo by chatirygirl.
If your schedule is overflowing with commitments and dozens of low- and medium-priority things you have to do, take a step back and see if you could pare them down for the next 30 days without any major backlash.
Erin over at organizational blog Unclutterer did exactly that.
I've declared February as a Super Simple Month in our house. To me, a Super Simple Month is defined as no travel for work, one social engagement a week or less, no shopping except for necessities, and no new large projects (craft, writing, organizations, etc.). The goal is to finish some items already in progress on my to-list, relax as much as I can with my family, and be as low-key as possible.
Think about what commitments you could set aside for one month without too much hassle. You don't want to back out of a promise to coach your son's little league team at the last minute, but what about begging off your once-a-month poker game? You've got to nail your work deadlines, but do you really have to organize the office bowling league?
Where can you cut back in your schedule and live "super-simply" for a month. Share your ideas in the comments.
Setting limits with a Super Simple Month [Unclutterer]
Facebook is revamping their messaging system into a full-fledged email client, according to tech news site TechCrunch. We can't imagine ditching our beloved Gmail accounts for Facebook's alternative anytime soon (at least not without some serious innovation from Facebook), but for those true Facebook nuts, it could be a viable email alternative. [TechCrunch]
Windows only: Distraction-eliminating application CinemaDrape covers your desktop with a black screen except for the application you're currently working in, so you can eliminate background distractions and help yourself focus on getting something done.
The application is provided in both the installable and portable varieties, but the installed version is easier to use—you can simply use the Ctrl+F12 shortcut key combination to launch the dark screen effect for the current window under the mouse. If you were using the portable variety instead of the installed version, your best bet would be to setup a shortcut and assign the shortcut key manually.
Once you've switched into distraction-free mode, you can easily resize the dark screen area, use the Esc key to close out of the dark screen, or you can also right-click anywhere in the dark area to access the options menu, where you can setup pre-defined areas or change the other options like opacity and colors. CinemaDrape is a free download for Windows users only.
CinemaDrape [Hellogramming via Download Squad]
Nowadays, we can do so much photo editing after the fact that we often don't realize what a difference framing makes. Despite what you may think, stepping forward will probably be better than cropping later (or digital zoom) when taking photos.
Photo by ralphbijker.
Helen Bradley explains on her Pro Photo Blog:
If there is one technique most digital camera users can use today to instantly improve their photos it is to stand at least two or three steps closer to their subject. Most photographers stand too far away from their subjects so the subject ends up being very small relative to the rest of the photo. When you move closer to your subject you make them larger in the viewfinder so they fill the photograph.
When you're taking a picture of an actual object, like a person, a tighter photo is far more interesting and dramatic than one with lots of background. In the age of digital cameras many of us less seasoned professionals often think that we can just crop and zoom after the fact, but that isn't necessarily so—cropping and digital zooming do not achieve the same effect as actually getting the lens closer to the subject (note that optical zooming does work, in this case—most cameras have both, so if you have to use the zoom, make sure you're using the right one). Got any other tips for more interesting photos? Share them in the comments!
Better Photos Tip #8 - Take 2 steps forward [Pro Photo Blog via Lifehacker Australia]
If you're outside of the US and sick of not being able to see good TV online or just tired of waiting for Hulu to get your favorite shows, you'll want to check out TVGorge and its huge archive of shows.
TVGorge breaks through international barriers by bringing fresh American TV content to viewers outside of the United States and other approved viewing areas. Want to see the season premier of LOST without waiting several months for it to be released in your viewing area? You can watch LOST as well as 125+ other popular television shows like Dexter, Dollhouse, Entourage, and Archer.
How does TVGorge bring in such fresh content? They use an indexing engine to scan for the online content offered by other sites and then organize the content with episode guides and other information, all repackaged for the enjoyment of people inside and outside the reach of traditional streaming services like Hulu. Will they survive the phalanx of lawyers likely sharpening their spears as we speak? Maybe not, but in the meantime you can finally watch the premiers of your favorite shows without waiting a year for rebroadcasting in your locale.
Have a favorite site for catching up on shows and movies online? Let's hear about it in the comments.
TVGorge [via gHacks]
The official Mozilla Add-ons Blog has issued a security notice to Firefox users regarding two experimental add-ons that made their way onto the Firefox Add-ons pages containing malware. The extensions in question—Sothink Web Video Downloader and Master Filer (neither of which had we even heard of)—target Windows users and have been removed. Mozilla reassures users:
AMO performs a malware check on all add-ons uploaded to the site, and blocks add-ons that are detected as such. This scanning tool failed to detect the Trojan in Master Filer. Two additional malware detection tools have been added to the validation chain and all add-ons were rescanned, which revealed the additional Trojan in Version 4.0 of Sothink Web Video Downloader. No other instances of malware have been discovered.
When you're trying to build a good credit history, one oft-repeated piece of advice is to get a couple of credit cards and pay them off on time. Credit cards aren't the only way to skin the credit cat, though.
Photo by SqueakyMarmot.
Not everyone likes the idea of carrying around credit cards in the first place, much less using them just to establish a good credit history. If credit cards aren't your cup of tea, take look at some alternatives recommended by finance blog Suburban Dollar:
Borrow from Yourself – This is the easiest method to establish your own credit history without a credit card. Buy a Certificate of Deposit (CD) from a bank. Then take out a secured loan against the CD for the same amount of time. Put the money you borrowed in a high-yield checking account. Then use the money you borrowed to payback the secured loan. You'll be establishing a credit history and earning interest on your checking account and CD. There are some downfalls to this method. You need the starting capital to fund the CD. You could end up paying more interest on the secured loan than earn through your CD and checking account; however, it's probably less than what you'd pay in fees and interest if you used a credit card. Just make sure to weigh the true costs before going down this road.
We've looked before at ways to safely build your credit history and how to get credit when you have no history at all. What things have you done to build or improve your credit without taking out credit cards—or are you perfectly happy with your credit card? Share your tips in the comments.
Can you Build a Credit History Without Getting a Credit Card [Suburban Dollar]
Ed. note: We publish tips every day with hopes at least a few will find a useful place in our readers' lives, and occasionally we hear back about how things turned out. Here's how today's tip tester used previously mentioned Vitamin D.
Photo by Ed Yourdon.
We'll skip the part about how surveilling someone without their knowledge feels at least a little bit creepy and go straight to what happened:
I had a suspicion that my dog walker was not coming at the times she claimed, as I came home early from work once as she was just leaving. (Well past her visitation time). I asked a neighbor who recently started working from home to just keep an eye on the time that our walker was coming by. A few weeks later, she came by and told us that our dog walker wasn't even walking the dog on Mondays. (No idea why Mondays, we never got that answer.) She would come in and be out in under 2 minutes. She was fine the other 2 days/week she came by. Our neighbor waited a few Mondays to verify she wasn't missing anything.
I had just read about this web cam security software on Lifehacker, so I figured I'd set it up. I put it on our dining room table, with 2 web cams, which were in plain sight. Granted, there was lots of clutter on the table, but nothing was hidden. After the first time, we were in shock. I wanted to confront the dog walker in person, so I planned to leave work early the following week. Our neighbor also helped out by walking our dog after the 'visit', so our dog didn't suffer. Although he has a strong bladder and could make the time before my wife came home.
I asked the dog walker to come by after work, (not an unusual request, if I ran late). My wife and I both waited, but she never showed. After a phone call, she claimed to have already been there. In short, she denied the whole thing, even after seeing the videos. She never mailed us back the key, (I changed the locks that night regardless). Our new dog walker is fantastic.
Windows: Booting your computer up in the morning is one of the most tedious parts of starting your computer use for the day. What if you could gain the benefits of a reboot and still start quickly out of a hiberation?
The premise of Boot Snooze is that it takes less time to pull the computer from standby or hibernation mode than to do a full reboot, but rebooting a computer is necessary and sometimes beneficial. With Boot Snooze you shut down your computer, performing a full reboot, and then Boot Snooze puts it back into hibernation or standby mode.
You could obviously do this manually by rebooting your computer every night and then hibernating it immediately after it finished up the startup routines, but that would negate the time saving benefit of having Boot Snooze do it for you and leaving your computer fresh and ready to use in the morning without the down time of booting up.
Boot Snooze is freeware, Windows only. Have a favorite tool of your own for speeding up boot times or just helping you to spend less time waiting for your computer to do things? Let's hear about it in the comments.
Boot Snooze [via Download Squad]
Grab a warm drink, kick off your shoes, and throw your planner to the other side of the room. It's that oh-so-special time of week again, and our weekly open thread is officially open for business.
Photo by Hexadecimal Time.
Same drill as always, open-threaders: You can chat and ask questions with your fellow readers all week long at the #openthread hashtag page, but our weekly open thread post is your opportunity to reach the most readers. Ask questions, offer advice, discuss productivity tips, or just chat about whatever's on your mind. You'll need a commenter account to participate, then you're ready to roll. Happy Friday!
A while back we highlighted a Google Voice Quick Reference cheatsheet you can keep near your phone that lays out Google Voice's voicemail menu tree so you can quickly skip to whatever action you want. The cheatsheet (above) just updated with a few more details here and there, so if you're a Voice user, it's worth grabbing. [Cool Geex]
newVideoPlayer( {"type":"video","player":"http://www.youtube.com/v/MpjpVAB06O4&hl=en&fs=1&fmt=22","customParams":[],"width":500,"height":412,"ratio":0.824,"flashData":"","embedName":null,"objectId":null,"noEmbed":false,"source":"youtube"} ); iPhone: We can't think of a person who couldn't use a little help with everyday planning, research, and chores, but unfortunately we can't all afford a personal assistant. Siri is a smart voice-recognition virtual assistant for your iPhone.
Give the video above a look for an idea of how Siri works. Essentially, you speak your bidding, it interprets what you say, and it goes hunting for what it is that you want. Ask it to look up movie showtimes, make reservations, get a taxi, fetch flight info, set up reminders, or just get the weather forecast. Granted, you can find plenty of tools to do these things separately, but Siri culls all these tasks into one smart, voice-activated app.
Siri is a free download from the iTunes App Store, so if you're interested, there's no harm in trying it out. Thanks Bryce!
Siri
Windows/Mac/Linux (AIR): It's always fun to throw a party and let your guests get goofy with a camera. Free photo app Party Booth creates photo-booth-style picture strips from a webcam, and can automatically upload them to Facebook, Twitter, or other services.
After setting up your camera and connecting Party Booth to whatever social/photo service you'd like—and, most definitely, making sure you know just how visible those photos might be—it's a very simple app to use, which might be perfect for, well, later in the night. Simply hit the space bar, and a timer ticks off until Party Booth captures four frames of your guests. You can set up the photos for old-time, vertical four-strips, two-by-two grids, and many other options, including the addition of custom backgrounds.
Don't like the idea of automatic uploads? Set Party Booth to just save to your disk, and your job is safe on Monday.
It must be said that Party Booth costs $38 for a full version, which isn't cheap for software you'll probably only use every so often. It does, however, offer a 10-day free trial that only nags you upon launching the app. That's perfect for giving it a go at an upcoming shindig, and it makes a nice complement to other photo projects to document your party.
Party Booth runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux under Adobe AIR.
Party Booth - Photo Booth Kiosk Webcam Software [via Download Squad]
Wings are a near-mandatory menu item for Super Bowl gatherings, but they're finicky—never quite right from the oven, but getting soggy on the drive from the pizza joint. One methodical foodie has the home-cooked solution: an overnight baking powder bath.
Food writer and chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, who you might remember from his magnum opus on making your own Shake Shack burgers, went on a search for a homemade wing that delivered the same kind of taste experience as the deep-fried wings and drumettes from a favorite corner bar or pizza stop. The key, he writes, is "well-rendered, blistered, bubbly, crackly skin," which sauce can cling to and prevents the whole affair from becoming soggy. A standard oven-baked wing is more slick, doesn't hold as much sauce, and loses its crisp quickly.
After trying a few methods, including a failed tip from food hacker Alton Brown, the wing hunter tried a trick gleaned from lazy Sunday mornings:
For instance, adding a bit of extra baking soda to pancake batter-thereby making the batter more alkaline-improves its browning capabilities. Would the same trick work on my chicken wings? I baked five batches of wings on a rack set in a rimmed baking sheet.
Lopez-Alt eventually settled on baking powder, because baking soda gave the wings an off taste. Be sure to read the full post for the full how-to, because there's more to it than just tossing your wings in a tablespoon of pH-fixing powder. Overnight open-air refrigeration is required, and the whole process requires day-ahead planning. Still, from what the author tells us, it's worth the effort, and you and your guests may not have to surrender quite so much cash, or ingest quite so much oil, to get a great wing.
While you're boning up (see what I did there?) on game-day preparations, check out a video guide to eating a wing with less mess, and dig into Lifehacker readers' best Super Bowl snacks.
The Food Lab: In Search of the Best Oven-Fried Buffalo Wings [Serious Eats]
If you've been resistant to adopting the habit of haggling on prices, there's never been a better time than now to start practicing. The economic slow-down and the desire of retailers to keep moving products makes for fertile practice.
Photo by GianCayetano.
For the last few decades with consumerism in full-tilt overdrive and showing little signs of slowing down, bartering and haggling fell out of the national vocabulary of Americans—and many citizens in prosperous Western nations. The recent economic down-turn, however, has unleashed the inner haggler in many people and made it a great time for you to start if you'd been resistant to becoming a haggler or thought it awkward or socially unacceptable. Over at the Washington Post they highlight the shift in American spending:
A recent Consumer Reports study found that 66 percent of American consumers had haggled at least once in the preceding six months, with an 88 percent ka-ching rate on gadgets, clothes, furniture and steak. "People like this," Koehn said. "They are not going to go back to giving their money away. Why would they?"
The recession merely popped the lid off a retailing shift that has been brewing for a decade. EBay gave millions of consumers dealmaking training wheels (top bid for a "Goonies" DVD: $3.50). The Internet offers instant pricing data (do a Google search on "Lucky jeans and deal and DC"). And don't forget Priceline, which lets consumers name their price for flights, hotels and rental cars (thank you, William Shatner).
Not only do they delve into the history and psychology of the shift in American spending and haggling patterns, but they also send one of their reporters out in the world to haggle and see how he fares. Their reporter used a variety of techniques ranging from simply asking for a discount, noting that a product was not as fresh as it was and should have a discount, using his phone to show the price offered by a competitor to get a discount, and other methods. The techniques that he used aren't as important as the fact that he shifted his mindset from never asking for a discount to always asking for a discount. The end result of his week-long experiment in haggling was that he saved a total of $730 on goods and services just by asking.
If you're unsure where to start when it comes to haggling, we'd suggest reading over our guide: Reduce Your Bills by Just Asking. The tips in the guide apply to everything, not just to lowering your bills. Using them will make your first negotiation experience feel less confrontational and more like you're engaging in a mutually beneficial exchange with the company you're dealing with. After all, a product sold for 20% off to a willing customer is often a bigger win for all parties involved than a product not sold to anyone at full price.
Have your own stories of negotiation and haggling? Tips and tricks you want to share? Let's hear about it in the comments.
In Tough Economic Times, Shoppers Take Haggling to New Heights [via GetRichSlowly]
Tools that help you download videos from YouTube and other video sharing services on the web are old hat, but BenderConverter is a simple-to-use web-based solution with a wide variety of download options.
At BenderConverter you can not only perform the basic conversions available at most conversion sites—like turning a web-based video into an MPEG or AVI file—but you can also download it as an audio file (MP3 and WAV) or a variety of video files like 3GP for phones, MOV, MP4, and WMV. You can even download it converted to an animated GIF or have BenderConverter convert the frames into JPEG images.
Have a favorite web site, bookmarklet, extension, or other tool for grabbing video off the web? Let's hear about it in the comments.
BenderConverter [via MakeUseOf]
If you're tired of the boom-bust cycle of getting chores done, you might want to consider adopting the Eight-Minute Rule as the guiding force in taming your chores and tedious tasks.
Photo by modomatic.
The Eight Minute Rule is roughly the household/chore equivalent of David Allen's two-minute rule. For those of you unfamiliar with David Allen's Getting Things Done system, his two-minute rule dictates that whenever you have a task that will take less than 2 minutes to do, you shouldn't take the time to enter it into your GTD workflow—you simply do it. The Eight Minute Rule is based on a similar perception of the importance of small blocks of time and how much you can really accomplish if you focus on getting the stuff done—that you'd rather not be getting done—in eight minute blocks:
Most of the things that need doing around the house can be done in under ten minutes. That's a really short period of time. If you have your snooze button set to ten minute intervals, you'll appreciate just how little time that is.
BUT. It's enough time to do LOADS of stuff:
- Taking out the trash – 2 minutes
- Loading the dishwasher – 4 minutes
- Hoovering one room – 7 minutes
- Ordering a crate of tonic water online – 4 minutes
- Ironing two shirts – 8 minutes
- Going around your bedroom, picking up every stray sock and t-shirt and chucking all in the laundry bin – 5 minutes
- Paying five utility bills – 6 minutes
Although it seems like a simplistic solution, I can speak from personal experience to the power of taking tiny blocks of time and blasting through chores. Since my work—writing for Lifehacker, grading papers and composing lessons for my college students—is almost entirely desk-based, it's easy to get sucked into working at my desk and hardly budging as I move from task to task. Using the Pomodoro Technique I work on the "work" for about a half hour and then blast through the house like a gazelle doing what most people would consider housework—throwing laundry in, putting clutter away, loading the dishwasher—but that I find a nice break of physical action after being at the computer. Way more of the little things like laundry and tidying the kitchen get done when I use that system than when I try to set aside an hour a day or a few hours on a weekend to do the same thing.
Have a favorite technique for getting tedious chores done quickly or actually making them enjoyable? Let's hear about it in the comments.
The Eight-Minute Rule [How to Get a Grip]
Most of us store our board games piled up in the top of a hallway closet or on a shelf in the basement. One board game enthusiast decided to store them by hanging them on the wall as art.
Over at the craft-centric blog Infarrantly Creative, they wanted to add some color and visual interest to the recreation room in their house. Their solution? Build what is essentially a reverse shadow-box frame where the board from the board game is the front of the frame and the back of the frame is storage for the pieces and game accessories. When it's time to play the game, you just take it off the hook on the wall and play it. Check out the link below for detailed step-by-step pictures of the construction process and photos of the room decorated with the game-art.
Have a clever storage idea of your own to share? Let's hear about it in the comments.
Game Board Storage Art [via TipNut]
PBS news show Frontline recently aired a great Digital Nation feature, in which attention spans and multi-tasking were a notable topic. One talker asks a valid question: Is your attention span actually all that worse now, or are your distractions just different?
New York Times writer Virginia Heffernan relates in the above video the notion that seems to permeate any discussion of focus, attention spans, and related matters: the idea that, these days, our minds move from place to place far too quickly, our tasks get only a few blips of attention each, and deep, quiet things, like reading a book, seem impossible.
Other speakers, like M.I.T. professors and The Flickering Mind author Todd Oppenheimer suggest that those growing up in the digital age are conditioned for instant gratification and entertainment, and suffer from an inability to focus as a result. Heffernan suggests we just distract ourselves with different things these days: instant messages instead of window staring, emails instead of book jacket reading.
We thought we'd put it to our readers, many of whom can remember studying and working before Wi-Fi, 3G, BlackBerry contracts, and SMS put our work, and distractions, literally everywhere. Tell us how you feel in the poll below, and offer up your more verbose take on whether living in the Digital Nation has really changed how your mind works.
Did You Have Better Focus Before the Ubiquitous Net?(opinion)
Listening to podcasts is a great way to consume information, including everything from physics lectures to current events to old-time radio rebroadcasts. This week we want to hear about your favorite tool for managing your podcast subscriptions.
For those unfamiliar, podcasts are the audio/visual—although primarily audio—equivalent of RSS news feeds. You subscribe to a particular podcast, and that podcast is delivered to your podcast manager to be enjoyed at your computer, over your networked radio at home, or loaded onto your phone or portable media player to listen on-the-go. If you, for example, are a fan of a particular NPR show that is on while you're at work, you can subscribe to the podcast for the show and a podcast manager (or podcatcher, as they're sometimes called) will download the podcast to your desktop, ready for you to listen to at your leisure.
This week we want to hear about your favorite software for managing your podcasts. What application do you use? Why do you use it? What features make it stand out among other podcast managers?
Hive Five nominations take place in the comments, where you post your favorite tool for the job. We get hundreds of comments, so to make your nomination clear, please include it at the top of your comment like so: VOTE: Podcast Manager. Please don't include your vote in a reply to another commenter. Instead, make your vote and reply separate comments. If you don't follow this format, we may not count your vote. To prevent tampering with the results, votes from first-time commenters may not be counted. After you've made your nomination, let us know what makes it stand out from the competition.
About the Hive Five: The Hive Five feature series asks readers to answer the most frequently asked question we get: "Which tool is the best?" Once a week we'll put out a call for contenders looking for the best solution to a certain problem, then YOU tell us your favorite tools to get the job done. Every weekend, we'll report back with the top five recommendations and give you a chance to vote on which is best. For an example, check out last week's Five Best Public BitTorrent Trackers.
Google Store Views could take you beyond the storefront Street-View style, Dropbox may be coming to Android and BlackBerry devices, and a former Microsoft VP explains the creative destruction behind the gates at Redmond.
Habitually showing up late for meetings and missing deadlines are tell-tale signs you need to up your organization quotient, but clutter (mental or otherwise) could be affecting your work in other, more subtle ways. Weblog Unclutter has a few questions for you:
Photo by tiswango.
* Do client/supervisor requests often linger unanswered for more than 24 hours?
* Do you have action items on your to-do list that have been there for more than a week? a month?
* When you come into work in the morning, does it take you more than 15 minutes to start doing work-related tasks?
If the stress of one of those less obvious problems is getting to you, Unclutterer has several simple suggestions. For example:
When planning your day, schedule 30 minutes to focus on these lingering tasks. Keep scheduling time for these activities until you are able to cross all of them off of your to-do list. Then, make a commitment to never let an action item linger on your to-do list for more than a week (or two, based on your type of work). These lingering items create a great deal of anxiety, and that anxiety can slow you down.
Once you get yourself better organized, there's a good chance it will show in your job efficiency, and that's when you know you're on to something. What are your best tips for finding your efficiency sweet spot and staying organized at work? Share them in the comments.
How is Disorganization and Clutter Affecting Your Job Performance? [Unclutterer]
Fax machines are going the way of the dodo, yet sometimes there's no easy way to transfer forms back and forth, especially ones that need to be filled out and sent back. FillAnyPDF steps in to fill the gap.
FillAnyPDF is a free web-based service where you can upload any file in PDF, PNG, JPG, or GIF format. You don't need to do anything to your form before or after it's uploaded; the service will do all the heavy lifting for you.
You can email a link to anyone and they can open the form and fill it in right on the site, no download necessary. Of course if they want to print out a copy for themselves, that's an option too. FillAnyPDF lets users type right into a document, add images or HTML markup, redact, highlight, or white text.
The service accepts standard handwriting input from a mouse or writing pad so the document has a realistic signature on it. Digital signatures—a simple typed name—are acceptable as legally binding as well, thanks to the app's native IP logging and tracing features.
One obvious use for a service like FillAnyPDF is to make it easier for freelancers and clients to manage contracts, tax forms, and other paperwork. That's a lot of private information flying around the internet, but the company says your data is safe:
- Your account and documents are password protected, so no one will be able to access your data unless you grant them permission.
- All forms and sensitive information on the site are encrypted with full 128-bit SSL security.
- Our servers are housed in state-of-the-art secured facilities with security and backup power. The servers have redundant hard drives (RAID) and daily backup to a separate device.
Even if you're not comfortable sending personal information via a service like FillAnyPDF, it's still a great tool for managing more generic paperwork that doesn't involve private information. If you give it a go, let's hear what you think in the comments.
FillAnyPDF
While we happen to love comments and the lively discussion that occurs in them, we understand that not everybody wants to see the comments left by other internet users. Shutup.css lets you apply a custom stylesheet and eradicate comments across the web.
It's as simple as it sounds. Download the Shutup.css file at the link below and apply it to your custom styles in your web browser. For most browsers you can find custom style sheets under the advanced settings. If you're a Firefox user you can download Stylish to manage styles and give you finer control over which sites the Shutup.css file is applied to—it also makes toggling it on and off easier.
Once you have the style applied to your browser nearly all web sites with comments will no longer be displaying them. The screenshot above shows the end of a Lifehacker article with the style sheet not applied and then applied, removing the comments. Easy but effective.
Have a favorite user style hack? Prefer just to silence YouTube comments? Share it in the comments below.
Shutup.css [via Make]
The Geek Group has acquired a retired KUKA robot. They have made a series of videos about taking it apart to see what makes it tick. Lots of the pieces will be re-purposed into other projects that they have on the go. That is one massive robot, I would have preferred to see it brought back to life but it is also interesting seeing how all the bits and pieces interact. We have seen lots of fun things that can be done with KUKA robot arms, there was the Ice Cream Making Robot, the KUKA DJ Robot, and of course all the fun rides made from robot arms!
If you can't get used to the new search feature in Windows 7, or you just prefer using Everything, Google Desktop, or Launchy, you might be interested to know you can disable it.
While we're not recommending to average users to disable the built-in search functionality, if you really don't use it, you could save yourself some CPU cycles by getting rid of it. Over at How-To Geek (my home away from Lifehacker), we've got a guide to the quick steps to disabling the built-in Windows Search feature, but you can do it easily by simply heading into the Control Panel, searching for "Turn Windows features on or off", and then unchecking Windows Search from the list.
Once you've restarted your PC, you'll notice that the search box is gone from the start menu, and there will no longer be a search box in Windows Explorer when you're browsing through the file system. You should also note that Microsoft Outlook's "Instant Search" feature depends on Windows Search, so that will use the slower Outlook search instead.
It's definitely not a setting for everybody—and frankly this writer loves the Windows 7 search box, but if you never use it, at least now you know how to disable it. If you prefer your instructions in step-by-step format, click the link for the full guide.
How To Disable Search In Windows 7 [How-To Geek]
We recently showed you how to add Bit.ly URL shortening to Quicksilver, and now reader Kevin has made an AutoHotkey script so Windows users can enjoy quick, keyboard-based URL shortening.
Kevin was also nice enough to include some instructions for those that want to customize the script (which some may need to, depending on the speed of your internet or browser of choice). All you need to do to launch the script is hit Ctrl+Shift+B, and the current URL in Firefox will be shortened and copied to the clipboard. (Note, you can use another browser, but you'd need to modify his script.) You could change the shortcut if you want as well. The script is as follows:
; AutoHotkey Version: 1.x
; Language: English
; Platform: Win9x/NT
; Author: A.N.Other
;
;
#NoEnv ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
SendMode Input ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir% ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.
waitTimeLoad = 700 ;; for slower internect connections, this number needs to be larger (in milliseconds)
waitTimeKey = 200 ;; for slower computers, this number needs to be larger (in milliseconds)
^+b:: ;; delete this to make this script run once and stop (for keyboard launchers)
IfWinExist, ahk_class MozillaUIWindowClass ;; modify ahk_class for use with other browsers
WinActivate
Send ^l
Send ^c ;; put URL in clipboard
Send ^t
Send http://bit.ly/?url=
Send ^v
Send {Enter}
Sleep %waitTimeLoad%
Send ^a
Sleep %waitTimeKey%
send ^c
Sleep %waitTimeKey% ;; change this for your pc
send ^w
msgbox %clipboard%`n`nShortened URL Copied to clipboard
return
Just throw it into your Startup folder or add it to your existing AHK startup script (You'll need AutoHotkey installed for this to work). Got any other tips for quick URL shortening? Share them in the comments! Thanks, Kevin!
Today's featured workspace has quite a few points of interest: it's a temporary Mac-based rendering farm temporarily set up in a theater to handle the heavy lifting of designing the visuals for a stage production.
Greg Purnell is a Lifehacker reader who is also currently working on a production of Galileo that involves quite a bit of technical wizardy. His team has set up a temporary camp in the theater where Galileo will be shown, working right in the seats the theater patrons will be sitting in when the show opens. The workspace is two banks of tables, the longest 24 feet in length, covered with computers including a miniature rendering farm. Check out the photos below and Greg's interesting photo notes.
Left: This headset is for communicating with others during rehearsal. For instance, the projection designer, the lighting designer, or the stage manager.
Right: Once content has been created, it travels down to the other end of the table to be programmed and cued into a timeline that will run during a performance. Projections are programmed with Dataton Watchout software which is connected via midi to the MA Lighting GrandMA (light desk). During a performance, when the stage manager calls a cue, the GrandMA will trigger the Watchout projections computer to execute the next cue. The projections and lighting systems are therefore completely integrated with each other.
This is just one of the workstations on the projections tech table. Each of the three content creation workstations consists of a Mac Pro with dual 24" Samsung SyncMaster displays, and probably a personal laptop too. These machines are loaded with the Adobe Production Premium CS4 suite and other relevant software.
Left: Much of the content was created, animated, and rendered using Adobe After Effects.
Right: You can see almost the entire 24' length of this work area. Of course, this entire setup is temporary and is only setup for the week or so that the show is in tech. Once the show opens, everything goes away until the next production.
If you have a workspace of your own to show off, throw the pictures on your Flickr account and add it to the Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool. Include some details about your setup and why it works for you, and you just might see it featured on the front page of Lifehacker.
The Theater Rendering Farm [Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool]
The new Libraries feature in Windows 7 makes it easier to manage your files and folders. Today we take a comprehensive look at everything you can do with Windows 7 Libraries.
The Libraries feature in Windows 7 provides a central place to manage files that are located in multiple locations throughout your computer. Instead of clicking through a bunch of directories to find the files you need, including them in a library makes for quicker access.
Access Libraries
To access the libraries in Windows 7, type libraries into the search box in the Start Menu and hit Enter.
The default libraries in Windows 7 will open up in Explorer which are Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos.
Anytime you're in Windows Explorer, you'll be able to access libraries from the Navigation Pane.
Using Libraries
In these examples we'll take a look at the Documents Library, but the procedures will work for any library you want to add locations to. If you've been working in Windows 7 for a while and storing documents to the My Documents folder, when you open the Documents Library, you'll see those documents. Some applications install folders in the My Documents folder by default and you'll see those as well.
What if you have documents stored in a folder other than My Documents? You need to add it to the Documents Library. There are a couple of ways you can go about it. Right-click on a folder and select Include in library from the context menu, then choose the Documents Library. Keep in mind that when you add a folder to a library, that folder is still in its original location.
Or when you have the folder containing your documents open, select Include in library and choose the library to put them in from the dropdown.
Here we take a look at the Documents library that contains files that are located in different places throughout the hard drive, including some on another partition.
You can also remove items from libraries as well. When you're in a library, click on the locations link.
The Documents Library Locations window opens up and from here you can add or remove locations.
Create New Libraries
The default libraries are all well and good, but if you really want to take advantage of this feature, you'll want to create your own. While in the libraries directory click on the New library button and give it a name.
In this example we made a new library called Work Projects. The first time you open it you'll be prompted to include a folder.
Browse to the location with the files you want to add then click Include folder.
Now the files included in that folder will show up in the new library.
After you've created some libraries they'll be added to the list to select from.
Add Network Locations
While libraries are a handy new feature, it's not perfect. Not all folders can be added to libraries as Microsoft has stuck some rules on them. You can pretty much add anything from a local drive, including other volumes or partitions. External USB drives formatted as NTFS or Fat32 can be added as well. Things get kind of weird when you're trying to add network and non-indexed locations.
Thankfully there's a handy free utility you can use that makes adding network locations a lot easier. Win7 Library Tool is small and straight forward to use. Just click on the Create a new library button.
Then add the network location you want included in the library. Notice this tool will also allow you to easily change the library icon which is a neat additional feature.
In this example we've added a home network share that contains music files to a library named MP3 library.
Conclusion
This should help get you started using Libraries in Windows 7, which at first might take some getting used to. Once you understand how they work and start creating your own, you'll find they're actually pretty useful. Once you get going, you'll find the Win7 Library Tool makes adding network locations a snap. How about you? Do you use libraries in Windows 7? Leave a comment and let us know what you like or don't like about the feature.
Understanding the Libraries Feature in Windows 7 [the How-To Geek]
Whether you work from home full-time or just once in a while, it's important to create a motivating atmosphere that makes you want to get stuff done. We want to hear a little bit more about your home office.
Photo by T.
One key to staying focused while working at home is to create a dedicated work space that you can turn your back on at the end of the day. While you may not have the space to set aside an entire room as an office, the kitchen table probably isn't your best bet either. Try to find a nook somewhere that you can use exclusively for work and, more importantly, turn your back on at the end of the day so your unfinished tasks aren't staring you in the face during your down time.
Web design blog Smashing Share has more ideas on how to create a motivating work life at home:
A whiteboard, or even a good old-fashioned blackboard, is great way to jot down ideas when brainstorming, work out plans and make notes for future reference. While it's likely you will make use of digital calendars and personal organizers, a paper calendar on the wall helps with mapping a work schedule and keeping track of deadlines.
You don't have to be a full-time freelancer or telecommuter to have a home office. Maybe you're easing yourself into freelancing while keeping your day job, or just bring work home with you once in a while. We're curious how many readers have a home office. Which is why we're wondering:
Do You Have a Home Office?(polls)
Share your secrets for turning an area of your home into a motivating work environment in the comments.
Create a Motivating Work Life at Home [Smashing Share]
If you've got a SlingBox and an iPhone, you could previously fork over another $30 to get the SlingPlayer app and watch your home TV and recordings ... over Wi-Fi, which kind of defeated the whole purpose of mobile watching (aren't you usually home already when you're on Wi-Fi?). But Sling and AT&T have reached an agreement on 3G streaming, so the SlingPlayer will get an upgrade to truly mobile TV streaming as soon as Apple approves the upgrade. Existing SlingPlayer owners will get the upgraded version free. Would watching your Sling content over 3G make sense for you, or is this a whole lot of money to spend when there's already lots of streaming TV on the web? [NYTimes via Gizmodo]
Want a wall-sized satellite view of your neighborhood? A full-page street map of the town you're visiting? Google Map Buddy, a free, portable map maker, grabs data from Google Maps and arranges it exactly how you want it.
When you un-zip and run Google Map Buddy, it asks you to choose your Google Map nationality, then opens a browser to let you search out the location you're looking at. Once you get there, hit "Select area," then draw a rectangle around the area you want to capture. After fine-tuning the zoom level and hitting "Create Map Image," Map Buddy goes to work grabbing, tile by tile, your area's map. It generates a generally high-resolution PNG of your area, and provides the individual map tiles to keep and arrange yourself into a larger grid, if you'd like.
The software itself can be described as "picky"—you have to "X" out any particular business or destination that pops up in a dialog box on the map, and after zooming in on the Google Map browser to your destination, Map Buddy asks you for a deeper zoom level than what you've already set. So it's not an elegant tool, exactly, but it does deliver the very printable, full-picture map of your destination.
Map Buddy is a free download for Windows systems only, and doesn't require installation.
The Google Map Buddy [Augmented Reality Software via The Red Ferret Journal]
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Having food allergies are a big enough hassle in your native country, let alone when traveling where you don't speak the language very well. Allerglobal helps you make language-specific food allergy cards to communicate in restaurants.
At Allerglobal you can select from dozens of food allergies and generate a printable card that you can use while traveling. Alleerglobal translates the cards into 27 languages—although we selected English so that you could read what the stock phrases on the card were, you can just as easily select Italian, French, or other languages. If you're traveling and your use of the local language is shaky or nonexistent, it's definitely worth printing off a few cards before you leave the country.
Have your own tip, trick, or handy printout to make traveling easier? Let's hear about it in the comments.
Allerglobal [via MakeUseOf]
iTunes is letting more of its content out onto the open web these days, offering up song previews and, just recently, iPhone/iPod app details. You can check out screenshots, reviews, pricing, and most of the other details you'd get inside iTunes from your browser now when you click on a direct app link. Not every direct app link worked in a quick morning test, but over time, expect far fewer grumbles from those who don't have iTunes installed but want to see just a few things inside Apple's walled garden. [TechCrunch]
Your home may be set up for wireless internet, streaming, and file sharing, but try telling your printer that. If you're stuck lugging your laptop to a USB connection, a wireless print server may be a worthy purchase.
The ever-helpful Digital Inspiration blog lines up three of the most likely suspects available for purchase, costing between $60-$80. You can often find them cheaper, and slightly used, and some models, like the Netgear WGPS606, can also serve as a wired router for other non-wireless devices.
Why would you plunk down more than three Andrew Jacksons on a print server, when printers with built-in wireless will probably be $50 in a year or two? Digital Inspiration has a few suggestions:
- If your current printer is relatively new and you paid more than $100 for it, then it may be more economical for you to simply purchase a wireless print server instead of purchasing an entirely new printer with the same features.
- If a wireless printer in not available in your area, you can buy a regular USB based wired printer and get someone to ship you a wireless print server. This would incur less shipping costs than ordering a wireless printer.
- Some wireless print servers can be used as wireless routers. If you do not have a wireless router at your place, you can opt for a wireless print server as it will not only turn your printer wireless but you also get to setup a wireless home network.
Now here's the real question. Have you found a wireless print server with more features or better functionality than what's posted at the link? Found another, cheaper solution to the last wire-required device in your house? Tell us all about it in the comments.
How to Turn your Wired Printer into a Wireless Printer [Digital Inspiration]
Call it rapid-tasking—it's not doing too much at once, but switching between tasks, priorities, and work modes far too quickly. Heavily scheduled-out writer Amber Singleton Riviere learned to avoid utter chaos and burn-out by implementing more and better buffers.
Photo by everywhereisimagined.
Without giving yourself time to stop, think, and prepare for your next task, you are, at some point, no long working—just reacting. Riviere details how a conscious decision to implement her own buffers led to more output and fewer meltdowns.
Buffers around vacations, breaks and sick leave. It takes a little time to get back into the rhythm of working, and usually there's a backlog of emails, blog maintenance, writing and other tasks that have to be tackled in addition to the regular work. Try adding a buffer of a quarter to a third of the time you were out to compensate for the added workload, as well as the "jet lag" caused by time away from the regular routine.
Buffers around weekends and work weeks. This is one place where I actually have been doing much better with maintaining buffers. I reserve Monday mornings for accountability calls and planning so that I can see where I'm going in the weeks ahead and where I've been in the past week or two. On Fridays, I'm trying to get into the practice of using an hour or so to plan out the coming week and make any adjustments to my schedule and workload, based on any projects and appointments I have on the docket.
That last point sounds a lot like implementing a weekly review. Implementing a smaller version of it into each day is probably a great idea that far too few of us think we "have time for" anymore.
What moments of reflection can't you live without? When do you know you need to calm down and take a look around? Offer up your own buffer setups in the comments.
The Importance of Buffers [WebWorkerDaily]
Readers offer their best tips for storing cables, bringing salad dressing with lunch, and masking odors with simple household objects.
Don't like the gallery layout? Click here to view everything on one page.
About the Tips Box: Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons—maybe they're a bit too niche, maybe we couldn't find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn't fit it in—the tip didn't make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favorites for your buffet-style consumption. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments, share it here, or email it to tips at lifehacker.com.
wheeeler shares a nice tip on keeping cables stored and organized, tangle-free:
I used to have an old Rubbermaid bin full of knotted-up cables (mostly USB, Cat 5e, and miscellaneous others), but my wife had (another) great organization idea that really solved the problem.
Liquor stores routinely throw away those big cardboard boxes with cardboard dividers that keep bottles from clanking together. She picked up a few different sizes and started putting the cables into the different Corona-sized compartments.
That box is in a storage shed right now, but I'm attaching a picture of a Patrón box that is about to be stuffed. The Patrón compartments are about 4"x4", so they would be better suited for my power strips or the kids' old toys, but she also picked up a wine case that would be good for cables.
Photo by Kevin Spencer.
emmielee tips us off to a household item that simplifies bag lunches:
Old Play-Doh containers (the teeny tiny small ones) hold 2 tbsp. of salad dressing! Small enough to throw in with your lunch to put the salad dressing on before you eat. (Extra tip: Wash out the Play-Doh container first!)
Let it be known that Play-Doh is non-toxic, so no health concerns with this tip. Let it also be known, though, that it is non-delicious, so you should still wash that container out well.
Photo by Andrew Magill.
Kevin Ferguson shows us how to easily mask odors in the house:
Light a match after you smell up a bathroom- the match's burning masks the smell of whatever dirty deed you just did!
Pyroticsky lets us know how to keep your mirror shave- or makeup-ready immediately after a shower:
Use shampoo to prevent fogging. Rub a little bit of shampoo onto bathroom mirrors to prevent them from fogging up while in the shower. This also works for scuba masks
This can be especially useful if you have a mirror in your shower that isn't the fog-free kind.
If you live in a cold climate freezing pipes is a common concern. A frozen pipe is more than an inconvenience since most pipes are copper and the expanding ice can easily burst the pipe. So even after the pipe is thawed out you have a big job ahead since you now need to repair your plumbing. Viktor from Karosium has come up with a cost effective solution to dealing with the issue. His Microcontroller Temperature Controlled Pipe Heating System turns on an old computer power supply which powers some heat tape only when the pipe needs to be warmed up. Most people who run heat tape will turn it on when it gets cold and let it run all winter, this solution will certainly save lots of electricity.
“I designed a controller from what I had on hand. An old ATX PSU and an ATMega8(overkill). The AtMega is powered by the standby voltage of the PSU (5VSB). PSON is connected to PORTB.0 so the AtMega can switch the ATX PSU ON or OFF depending on temperature. (The PSU turns on when PSON is pulled low). The heating cables are hooked up to a 4pin Molex Connector. The DS1621 was actually a thermostat IC and I was considering using it in a standalone configuration but sadly that can’t be done as the thermostat functionality doesn’t start until a “Start Convert” command is sent to the chip through I2c. That meant a microcontroller was mandatory, so instead of relying on the internal functionality of the chip I just implemented the thermostat function in code. This also meant I only had to run 4 wires from the temp probe instead of 5, and I had 4 wire telephone cable lying around.”
Mozilla gets its first (full-size) Firefox browser running on an Android platform, Amazon inches toward a touch-controlled Kindle, HTML5 and free video get dissected, and Steve Jobs gets sharp-tongued in the grunge era.
If you've got a rice cooker stashed in a cabinet somewhere, you seriously need to haul it out and put it to work. It can make you some amazing one-pot meals in no time flat.
Photo by Corsica_JP.
Despite their name, rice cookers are essentially giant steamers, so anything that benefits from moist cooking does great in the contraption. Fish, chicken, dumplings, vegetables—all kinds of good stuff. In fact, ethnic food like Caribbean or Middle Eastern cuisine make some of the tastiest dishes around. The New York Times explains:
Domingo Guillen uses his to make vast batches of Puerto Rican arroz con gandules, rice and peas, before a weekly domino game at his apartment in the Inwood section of Manhattan. Fairuza Akhtar, a restaurant owner in Jackson Heights, Queens, who was born in Pakistan, has developed a quick method for making fragrant, creamy biriyani with whole spices and bites of chicken, at home in her rice cooker. 'My mother would fall down in a faint,' she said, referring to the traditionally reverent attitude toward biriyanis in Northern India and Pakistan. 'But rice cookers are the way of the modern world.'
If you want to experiment with your rice cooker but don't want to get too exotic right out of the gate, then start small by whipping up a batch of oatmeal or hot cereal. If your cooker has a time delay, you can even load it up the night before and wake up to a stick-to-your-ribs breakfast on a cold morning.
Real Simple has a few other ideas on using a rice cooker to put together steamed veggie side dishes and cool desserts like poached fruit. According to them, soups and hearty stews are also a great bet.
Give your rice cooker enough liquid and time and it will create long-simmered dishes without scorching or boiling over (the way slow cookers sometimes can). Try split-pea soup with ham, or put beef (that's been browned on the stove) and vegetables in the cooker with tomatoes, wine, and herbs for a hearty dinner.
I make all kinds of cool (and sometimes weird) stuff in my rice cooker. Bean dishes are a snap and perfect for softening pintos for refried beans. Salmon wrapped in a foil pouch is awesome, and you can cook long-grained wild rice right underneath it so everything's done at once. Or, snap a pound of pasta noodles in half, cover with water, and let your cooker take over. I've even made a cake with my trusty cooker—just mix all the ingredients right in the rice pan and turn it on.
I know Lifehacker readers are a clever bunch, so let's hear your ideas for meals and sides in the comments. Now, go forth and cook.
The Steamy Way to Dinner [NYT]
If your company is already tightening its belt, it might not do much good asking for a raise during your next performance review. Instead, consider asking for other perks that might be almost as good as cash in your pocket.
Photo by TedsBlog.
Workplace blog WorkAwesome has some great tips for getting the equivalent of a raise from your boss the next time you're due for a compensation hike. If she's likely to turn down even a cost of living raise because of budget cuts and layoffs, hit up the higher ups with creative ways to recognize your value as an employee.
How about a flexible schedule? If you're a morning person, maybe they'll let you come to the office at 7:00 and head out in the early afternoon when your co-workers are still chained to their desks. Or, maybe you can offer to work longer days Monday through Thursday and take Fridays off.
Telecommuting is another option to explore:
Would they be willing to let you work from home a day or two a week? If you got to be around the house more often, your dog would stop mistaking you for an intruder. You could also save thousands on your kids' therapy abandonment issues if you were able to appear on the sidelines of some of their sporting events before Junior starts growing a beard. I'm puzzled by places that don't allow at least some telecommuting. I tend to get more work done from home because I want to show my accountability when I'm not physically in the office. I'm also more relaxed and creative. Companies don't have to lease as much commercial space and it keeps cars off the road
Hit up the post for more ways to ask for other perks in exchange for a fat raise at your next review. Have you ever tried something like this with your boss? How'd it go? What kinds of creative ideas did you come up with? Share in the comments.
Reality Breakdown: Raises on Lowered Budgets? [WorkAwesome]
Windows: If you checked out the Mac-only Ommwriter and were disappointed that there wasn't an equivalent tool for Windows, you're in luck. CreaWriter is a distraction free writing tool that lets you customize your writing experience.
Click on the image above for a closer look.
CreaWriter is a free Windows download that creates a distraction free writing zone. The screenshot above is the entire screen, no toolbars, alerts, or widgets visible. In fact the icons you see in the upper right corner are only there when the mouse is passed over them—they allow you to create a new document, save your document, and make minor changes like increasing or decreasing the font size for ease of use. You can save your work as a TXT, RTF, and DOC, compatible with nearly every word processor around if you want to import it for post-editing.
CreaWriter has both a background image and background ambient noise enabled. You can disable them all together and just have a white writing space, but we customized ours—we liked the RainyMood site so much that we shared with you last week, we made our background noise a rainstorm and found a picture similar to the background image of RainyMood. If you want an in-depth look at all the features, you can check out the overview at How-To Geek or jump right to the author's site below to download the application.
CreaWriter is freeware, Windows only.
CreaWriter [via How-To Geek]
Reader t.click's desktop sports an amazing, totally transparent skin for the Opera browser that uses Aero Glass to render virtually the entire interface.
We've already shown you how the latest snapshot version of the Opera browser gives you great Windows 7 integration, and that functionality can be used in alternate skins as well—which is how the Z1-Glass skin turns the entire interface into glass.
The rest of the desktop consists of:
Got your own awesome desktop customization trick or fully-tweaked desktop configuration? Post it over in the Lifehacker Desktop Show and Tell Flickr Group or the new Productive Geek featured desktops forum complete with a description of the programs and tweaks you used (and preferably links as well!), and we just might feature it here.
The All-Glass Opera Desktop [Flickr]
Lorem ipsum is a block of dummy text in Latin often used in design and publishing to fill space in a mockup. The brilliant Dummy Image Generator is like "lorem ipsum" for images.
Like "lorem ipsum", the Dynamic Dummy Image Generator offers a glimpse at what content might look like in a layout, but instead of placeholder text, it creates a placeholder image. Using the service is dead simple:
Sometimes you just need a placeholder image right at your finger tips. Just enter the width + x + height at the end of this URL and off you go!
Example:
[dummyimage.com]
You can even use a dummy image as a source in your HTML, like <img src="http://dummyimage.com/340x123" alt="A Dummy Image">, which would look like this:
The Dynamic Dummy Image Generator is free to use, and is a bit on the geeky side, but if you're a designer or just spend the occasional free minute tinkering on the web, it's a really simple, well-executed idea.
More and more lightweight laptops and netbooks are shipping sans optical drives. Don't buy an external drive for for $50+ for those few times you need it, turn an old USB HDD enclosure and DVD drive into an external drive.
It seems like not having a CD/DVD drive would put you at a disadvantage but optical media just isn't that frequently used anymore in the age of high speed downloads—I've never needed an optical drive on my netbook and I've only used the optical drive on my desktop a few times in the last year. Still in those rare instances where you really need an optical drive it's frustrating to be without one. Don't run out and buy a $50+ external drive you're only going to use once in a blue moon if you've got—as most geeks do—a pile of old parts.
Over at Hack A Day they highlight how a reader took some spare parts and made an external DVD drive:
[Alec] needed a way to connect an IDE DVD drive using USB. Rather than order a connector he pulled the circuit board out of an old USB hard drive enclosure and connected to his DVD drive. Bang, recognized and running.
The beauty of this hack, simplicity aside, is that unless you're militant about cleaning out old hardware—and I don't know many computer enthusiasts who are—you've likely got enough parts to build more than one of these franken-drives on hand. If you find yourself using the DVD drive more frequently you can always shop around online for an inexpensive enclosure to make the connection more permanent.
Have a hack for squeezing life out of old hardware or combining hardware in handy ways? Let's hear about it in the comments.
USB HDD Enclosure to DVD Connector
If you want to get off your duff and onto your treadmill but think you can't spare time away from work, now you've got no excuses. Consultant Jenny Evans demonstrates how to build a treadmill work station quickly and on the cheap.
You should be able to pick up the supplies to make this slick treadmill table for about 20 bucks at your local home improvement store. All it takes is a plank of wood and two brackets (Evans used Tornado E-Z Ancors) to secure it to the arms of your treadmill.
Attach the braces to the wood, then secure it to the arms of your treadmill, and you're done. Now you'll have plenty of space to keep a laptop, books, your day planner, and a beverage with you while you walk along your endless road. Check out the video to see how dead-simple the project really is.
You could spend a few extra minutes staining or painting the untreated wood, but it's not strictly necessary. You're aiming for functionality here, not beauty. Once you've rigged your setup, Evans says it's surprisingly easy to work while you walk. If you plan on jogging or running, typing is right out of the question, but you can always use the time to catch up on the last episode of Lost.
Would having your laptop at your fingertips while you work out motivate you to use your treadmill more often or do you like getting away from it all and leaving the internet behind for a while? If so—and this one doesn't tickle your fancy—we've featured other treadputer and bikeputer setups in the past.
Make Your Own Walking Work Station [PowerHouse Performance Coaching]
Windows only: uTorrent is far and away the most popular BitTorrent client among Windows users, and they've recently pushed out a shiny new 2.0 release, bringing with it bug fixes, performance improvements, UDP support, automatic bandwidth regulation, and more.
We explained the UDP update when uTorrent 2.0 beta came out way back in August of last year, but in a nutshell it means better performance for torrent trackers and ultimately for you, the user.
We also discussed the new transfer cap when the release candidate hit the streets, but again, simply put, it allows you to set bandwidth transfer caps to limit how much your client uploads or downloads over time to help avoid going over ISP caps.
As for uTP (which is kind of like your router's Quality of Service functionality):
uTP is an alternative communication method for BitTorrent traffic that allows the client to automatically regulate its bandwidth usage to avoid adversely impacting your internet connection. This will allow you or other users on the network to download their torrents but still allow others on the network to function with little difference. This does not require any additional setup.
In addition, uTP in this version has added its own form of STUN, a method of getting incoming connections without direct connectivity to the Internet. This allows µTorrent to punch holes through routers and firewalls to increase connectivity and improve speeds. It is even possible to connect two firewalled peers through uTP's NAT traversal feature.
In a nutshell, uTorrent 2.0 is a download any BitTorrent lover will probably want to grab in short order.
uTorrent 2.0 is a free download for Windows. The app is available for the Mac, but this 2.0 release doesn't apply. Note: Be sure to skip the Ask.com toolbar when you're installing—unless of course you want it, which you don't.
uTorrent 2.0 [via Download Squad]
Google Chrome: Setting a web site to refresh is old hat, but what if you want to refresh multiple sites and keep an eye on all of them? Revolver-Tabs refreshes and rotates your browser tabs.
Revolver-Tabs is a Google Chrome extension that allows you to refresh not just one, but all of your browser tabs, at set intervals. In addition to reloading the page it rotates through the tabs one by one so that the individually refreshed sites are displayed without any interaction from you.
Although the author designed the extension to be used for standalone kiosks or during presentations—both great uses for it—it's also just as useful for keeping tabs on auction sites, status and announcement pages, and other frequently updated sites without any interaction. It's a great candidate to get tossed on your second monitor for watching sites that don't have RSS feeds or that you want to get immediate feedback from without waiting for RSS delays.
If you're a Firefox user make sure to check out Reload Every, you can set the frequency of reloads but can't set the tabs to rotate. Have an extension or bookmarklet that makes your web browser even more useful? Let's hear about it in the comments.
Revovlver-Tabs [via gHacks]
The ZAGGsparq is a portable power supply about the size of an Airport Express that can charge up to two USB devices at a time and hold enough juice for up to four full iPhone charges.
To use the ZAGGsparq, you just plug it into the wall to store up a charge of its own. Then when you've got a USB device that needs charging (think your phone or MP3 player), just plug it into ZAGGsparq and get charging.
I just got this small instant power charger over the holidays and I already love it, though it can only handle about one iPhone charge. It's also only $19, compared to ZAGGsparq's $100 price tag, so that's something worth considering. Whether you go the cheap or the spendy route, portable chargers seem to be getting cheaper by the day, and they can provide a great boost for your gear when you're on-the-go.
If you've already got a portable charger you swear by, share it with us in the comments.
ZAGGsparq [via Unpluggd]
If you're looking for a way to organize all the information you find and research you do online, and you've had enough with bookmarking, copying and pasting, and cobbled-together techniques not cutting it, Zotero is a comprehensive information manager for Firefox.
Zotero is, at its heart, a citation manager. It was designed to facilitate research and to make organizing and including that research in essays and publications pain free. As such, it's an excellent tool for any scholar, researcher, or student to have in their toolbox. Its utility extends well beyond preparing to write a paper, however, as it allows you to grab nearly anything off the web and insert it into the Zotero system. The following video gives a quick overview of some of Zotero's features:
If the overview video caught your interest, read on and check out some of the other great screencasts to see the individual features in action.
Getting Items in Zotero
You can add items in a myriad of ways to Zotero. From within Firefox, just click the Zotero icon in the address bar, on the status bar, or hit CTRL+ALT+Z to activate Zotero. You can add nearly everything on the web from books—Zotero will add in all the information about the book automatically—to highlighted portions of web pages, to full out saving entire web pages for future reference. Unlike bookmarking a web page, Zotero saves the page just like you would save it to your computer. Thus when you go to reference it later on, even if it has moved or been deleted, you still have the images and text archived. In addition to capturing information from the web, you can supplement your Zotero archive by adding files right from your computer like images, HTML documents, PDFs, and more.
Zotero allows you to organize your research into collections. The collections are highly flexible and an item can belong to multiple collections simultaneously. They use the analogy of the playlist—and it's fitting—you can "mix" your research into as many collections as you need. Your Zotero library is the master collection of all your research, and from that research you can pull citations, clippings, PDFs and so on, and create a collection representing your current area of interest or research like "19th Century Medieval Literary Criticism" or "Potential Markets for Growth". Collections are easily modified and even shared.
Although Zotero was built to facilitate researchers using Firefox and working on the web, the system—through the use of plug-ins—allows you to work in your favorite word processor using Zotero. They've made plug-ins for Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, and NeoOffice. If word processor support is a deal breaker for you, make sure to check out their word processor compatibility chart. Check out the Word integration in the video below:
As the video shows, inserting citations and even changing them in-text is easy. You're not just limited to citations in word processors however, you can drag and drop citations right from Zotero into any text box. Zotero comes with a built-in library of common citation formats like AMA, APA, Chicago Style, MLA—over a dozen by default. If that isn't enough you can dip into the style repository and select from hundreds of alternative citations styles. On the rare chance you can't find a citation style—and it would be rare!—you can hop over to the Zotero support forum and put in a request that they add it to the archive.
Syncing Your Research and Files
Nobody wants to lug around a computer or flash drive and risk losing all the research they've done. Zotero has multiple channels for syncing your data to ensure your research is safe. Zotero syncs itself to the servers, if you have it installed on multiple computers you can sync all the instances of Zotero through the Zotero servers, and to further replicate your data you can share it with friends through the Zotero group system so that your joint research is stored across multiple computers.
Zotero is a complex yet easy to manage research tool. Fully intended for academic research, you can use it outside of academia to manage your research on any topic from nearly any source on the web. Our overview here highlights some of the best features of Zotero, but a quick browse through the support section on Zotero's web site will show you even more capabilities and innovative ways people are using Zotero to help wrestle with the enormous amount of information web-based research provides.
If you have experience with Zotero or just have a research tip or trick up your sleeve, let's hear about it in the comments.
Over the weekend, Amazon and book publisher Macmillan got in a tussle over the price of Macmillan's e-books. In short, Macmillan wanted to—and ultimately did—hike the main price for e-books from around $10 up to between $13 and $15.
Naturally, it got us wondering:
How Much Would You Pay for an E-Book?(survey)
Choose the answer that's closest to what you'd be comfortable paying on a regular basis rather than what you'd prefer. (Who wouldn't prefer $1 to $5?) Once you've logged your preference above, let's hear more specifics for how you determined what you're willing to drop on e-books in the comments.
We've previously explored the brown-sugar-loosening powers of a slice of bread, but if you want to keep your dark brown stuff from clumping, skip buying a ceramic bear and reach over a few inches to grab a couple of marshmallows.
My own household has cabinets that tend to dry the heck out of anything, and would-be bakers spend a good amount of time cursing our brown sugar. The "brown sugar bear," purchased in the junk aisle at the grocery store, hasn't done anything so far to help. This little food saver seems to make sense, though, given marshmallows' ability to hold moisture in nearly any conditions. And it will save us from having to sacrifice bread to make cookies, which always seemed like a strange Faustian bargain.
Brown sugar fix [Chicago Tribune]
Android: Got a blog? Got a Droid, Nexus One, or other Android-powered phone? Now you can write, edit, moderate comments, and preview your posts and pages with WordPress' own Android application.
The app's exceedingly similar to what's available on the iPhone, except, well, you use "long presses" instead of sideways swipes to act on posts, comments, and pages. You'll need to enable XML-RPC under the "Remote Publishing" section of your Writing settings at your WordPress blog, but it's just a single checkmark to tick.
Here's the app in action, courtesy of WordPress:
WordPress for Android is a free download for (you guessed it!) Android phones, available in the Android Market.
WordPress for Android [WordPress.org via Android Guys]
Windows: If you frequently switch between Windows and OS X you likely find yourself hitting the wrong hot keys and wanting for some of the Mac functionality in Windows. MaComfort can help bridge the gap.
MaComfort brings popular Mac keyboard combos to Windows—using the Windows key as an Apple key—but it isn't limited to just keyboard shortcuts. It also enables virtual desktops, active corners you can program to perform specific actions, quicklook to preview files, and support for skins and plugins.
The free version limits the virtual desktops to four, limits your available skins, and disables plug-ins—all other functionality is left intact. MaComfort basic is freeware, paid versions start at $15. Have a program that helps you use the shortcuts from one operating system on another? Let's hear about it in the comments.
MaComfort [via gHacks]
If one of the windows in your house or apartment lets in far too much cold, noise, or light at night, thin store-bought curtains won't do much to block it off. A thick-but-manageable Roman shade might be just the solution.
One Instructables user lives where it gets cold enough that "when you look at the framework ... there's ice all over it." To kill the drafts, and block out some light and noise, they created a fold-down Roman shade, made of a fleece throw that was warm but not so heavy as to be an annoyance to hoist back up in the morning.
It's not a one-hour project, and it involves a sewing machine and a drill/powered screwdriver. It's also not a replacement for getting a more energy-efficient window installed. If you're in an apartment, however, or just need a fix until a major window project, this shade looks like an addition to our list of cheap winterizing moves worth the hassle.
Roman Shade, Insulate a window [Instructables]
You don't need overpriced "recovery" products after exercise, but eating a low-carb meal can have real benefits for your next workout, and for your general health and metabolism. It all has to do with tissue storage and insulin reception.
Photo by SuziJane.
After a round of aerobic (active movement) exercise, eating a lower-carb meal helps the body store sugar from your bloodstream in muscles and other tissues, making more energy available for your life, and your next exercise, if you're fairly regular about it. The side benefit is a generally improved metabolism, and a means of helping avoid insulin insensitivity, a pre-condition that often leads to diabetes.
As part of a study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers fed one of three meals to test subjects after 90 minutes of exercise on a treadmill or stationary bike. One was relatively balanced between carbohydrates, protein, and fat, and had a moderate amount of calories. One was otherwise balanced, but scaled back on the carbs. A final meal was lower-calorie, but had a higher amount of carbs. The results:
In all three exercise sessions, researchers say there was a trend for an increase in insulin sensitivity. But when the participants ate the low-carbohydrate meal following exercise, it increased their insulin sensitivity even more.
Researchers say the results show that people can reap important health benefits from exercise without starving themselves after exercise or losing weight.
While you're plotting your perfect low-carb, post-workout meal, be sure to replenish your fluids as well. Tell us what makes for a great meal after a hard workout in the comments.
What You Eat After Working Out Matters [WebMD via The Food Times]
If you're running Google Chrome on Linux, switching to the "dev" channel seems like a smarter bet than ever. The newest release includes support for desktop notifications (as previously suggested), and better integrates with your GTK/GNOME theme by using its text and button selection colors. Plug-ins, too, can now be stashed in a location in your home folder for backup and maintenance. [Google Chrome Releases]
iPhone/iPod touch: TouchMouse is a free application for the iPhone/iPod touch that, when paired with its accompanying control software on your Mac or Windows computer, turns your touchscreen into a mouse and keyboard.
Once you download the software to your iPhone or iPod touch and pair it with the server software—Logitech has versions of the TouchMouse Server software available for Windows XP, Vista, and 7 as well as Mac OS X—you'll be able to use your device as a mouse for controlling your computer. The interface allows you to click the mouse buttons, move the cursor via the touch screen, and pull up a small keyboard to enter text on the computer.
While such an arrangement isn't a practical replacement for a full-out wireless keyboard, it is a great tool for presentations or for pairing with one of the awesome media centers we've highlighted. If you have another app for turning your iPod touch or iPhone into a remote or clever things to do with them once you have them set up as remotes, let's hear about it in the comments.
TouchMouse [iTunes App Store via The Unofficial Apple Weblog]
Earlier today, several Twitter users received emails from Twitter prompting them to change their passwords because of suspicious activity that appeared to have resulted from phishing. Turns out it was something different from a traditional phishing scam altogether, and it involved BitTorrent.
From the Twitter Status blog:
It appears that for a number of years, a person has been creating torrent sites that require a login and password as well as creating forums set up for torrent site usage and then selling these purportedly well-crafted sites and forums to other people innocently looking to start a download site of their very own. However, these sites came with a little extra - security exploits and backdoors throughout the system. This person then waited for the forums and sites to get popular and then used those exploits to get access to the username, email address, and password of every person who had signed up. Additional exploits to gain admin root on forums that weren't created by this person also appear to have been utilized; in some instances, the exploit involved redirecting attempts to access the forums to another site that would request log-in information. This information was then used to attempt to gain access to third party sites like Twitter.
Yet again a good reminder to choose strong (and different) passwords for each site—and if you have a hard time remembering all of them, stick to a secure password management solution.
Reason #4132 for Changing Your Password [Twitter Status Blog via TechCrunch]
Chrome's browser share gets goosed in January, our own Gina Trapani offers some video advice for conquering your email inbox, and I find a workaround for my biggest Snow Leopard annoyance.
iPhone/iPod touch: If you carry a ton of stuff around on your iPhone or iPod touch, you know syncing it can take forever. BackOff turns off iTunes' automatic backup process so you can sync faster.
Okay, before you go galloping off to download this slick free utility, let's go over the most important point one more time. BackOff prevents iTunes from making a backup of your iPhone or touch to speed up syncing. That may not be a big deal once in a while, but most of us may want to have a recent backup of your device in case something goes kablam! one day and you lose your device's data. Still, since most of what's synced to the phone lives on your computer, some users would happily go without the backup in favor of quicker syncs.
BackOff is a pretty bare-bones utility and doesn't really do anything beyond disable automatic backup. If you need to do more than speed up your sync sessions, check out how to sync an iPhone with multiple computers.
BackOff installs in a flash, and turns on and off in one click. It's available on Windows and Mac, and it requires iTunes 9.0.2 or higher. What tricks do you rely on to speed up your iPhone or touch syncing? Let us know in the comments.
BackOff [via Life Rocks 2.0>]
Last week we asked you to share your favorite BitTorrent tracker, then we rounded up the results so you could cast your vote on the top five contenders. We're back with the results.
Before we dive in, it's worth noting that this week's Hive Five required a little in-progress clarification. Our initial call was a request for best public trackers, but a lot of votes were for best indexers—to read more about the differences, see the actual Hive Five. We chalked that up to us not explicitly stating the difference between a tracker and an indexer and when the Hive Five was compiled, we opted to focus on the aspect of the two that the end user really cares about: downloading and using torrent files. With that in mind, the results:
The Pirate Bay, though no longer a tracker in its own right, took home the largest number of votes to weigh in at 29%. Following with a not-so-shabby second place was Demonoid (27%) and then the popular isoHunt with 19%. Rounding out the Hive Five was BTJunkie (15%) and KickAssTorrents (5%).
Have a BitTorrent-related tip or trick? Let's hear about it in the comments. If you have an idea for a future Hive Five, send an email to tips at lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line.
Web-based party invitation sites are handy for helping you notify guests via email of an upcoming bash, but let's face it, the invites themselves aren't always particularly cool. Use Paperless Post to send swanky invitations and save-the-date notices.
Besides being eco-friendly, these paperless invitations look hot. They're just like the fancy, embossed ones that come in foil-lined envelopes, but they reach your guests via email box instead of postal box.
Whipping one together is simple. Choose from seasonal, invitation, or save-the-date cards, then scroll through the options to choose a style. Casual invites will have designs or patterns, while formal cards are more subdued and classic. Once you've chosen the paper style and added any images you want to include, select from a wide range of font styles and colors.
You'll get a chance to preview the invitation, and when it's all pretty and ready to send Paperless Post collects the names and email address of up to 25 of your closest friends to invite for free. Pricing plans at various levels hook you up with more virtual postage if you want to invite more people or host another event.
Even if you don't throw many parties, Paperless Post is still a good site to bookmark for the future. Since the cards are so customizable, they're a great option for sending classy thank you notes to people via email.
Paperless Post
Nexus One users should expect an over-the-air update on their phones, starting today, that will bring multi-touch, pinch-to-zoom functionality to the device. The much-loved multi-touch gestures of the iPhone have been the envy of Android users in the past, and while we've highlighted various methods for enabling multi-touch on your Android device, it's great to see the functionality hitting Android without any extra hacking. The update also includes previously mentioned Google Goggles and an update to Google Maps Navigation (the awesome turn-by-turn GPS-guidance app), including a driver-friendly night mode. Last but not least, the update should improve 3G connectivity on some phones. [Nexus One News and Updates]
Windows only: Explorer extension Lammer Context Menu adds a number of very useful features to the right-click menu, from standard stuff like Copy Path all the way to wild cards, batch rename, and mounting virtual drives.
Once you've installed the extension, you can simply right-click on a file or folder to access the new utilities—you can open a command prompt, copy the path, search, mount folders as a virtual drive, register DLL files, or use the very useful feature to select all files of the same type in the current folder. There's also some more advanced dialogs, like the path operations screen where you can move, copy, delete based on wildcards, or the batch rename files dialog.
Lammer Context Menu is a free download for Windows, works in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows, and is compatible with UAC in Windows 7 or Vista.
Lammer Context Menu [via freewaregenius]
The head of the screw you stripped while you were hanging that shelf may not have seemed like a big deal at the time—until you needed to unscrew it, that is. Next time you're having trouble, try a rubber band.
Home hacks and design blog Apartment Therapy offers a a few simple, smart tips for removing a stripped screw without any special equipment like an extractor—like using a rubber band:
A rubber band may aid in providing enough grip to remove, or at least loosen, the screw. Place a wide band rubber band [in between] the screw driver (we recommend bumping one size up from the screw head which caused the strip) and the screw, then apply hard, but slow force as you turn. If you're fortunate, the rubber band will fill in the gaps caused by the strip and allow extraction.
They also suggest more obvious solutions like changing the size of your screwdriver, using pliers when possible, or just pounding the screwdriver into the screw head with a hammer, hoping you can create your own traction. If you've ever tried the rubber band trick—or have your own favorite method—let's hear how it worked in the comments. If your screw's just fine but your screw hole is stripped, a golf tee may be all you need.
How To Remove a Stripped Screw Without an Extractor [Apartment Therapy]
