Linkdump

Here is a list of recent stories I have found noteworthy but don’t have the time to blog about specifically. Call this a bit of a trial-run; most of them are Lifehacker articles but next time I’ll try to mix it up a little.

Highlight overused phrases with the Cliché Finder – Lifehacker

The Cliché Finder leaves no stone unturned in the hunt for overused phrases in your writing.

Create smart sets in Flickr with SmartSetr – Lifehacker

Web site SmartSetr lets you create smart sets for your Flickr account based on predefined criteria, like tags, text, date taken, or date uploaded.

Download of the Day: Ophcrack Live CD – Lifehacker

The free, open source Ophcrack Live CD is a Windows account password cracking tool designed to help you recover lost Windows passwords.

Download of the Day: Docsvault (Windows) – Lifehacker

Windows only: Organize, manage, search and archive all your documents with Docsvault Home Edition. Reminiscent of the PaperPort document-management software that used to come with Visioneer scanners, Docsvault helps you organize saved and scanned documents using a simple cabinet/drawer-style filing system.

How to Change the World: The Art of Schmoozing

The key is to establish a relationship before you need it. And this is why I’d like to provide the art of schmoozing.

Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive 20 Different Ways to Manage Your To Dos «

How many ways are there to manage your task list? Almost as many as there are people with tasks to do.

Geek to Live: The command line comeback – Lifehacker

But I don’t use the command line, you say. Oh but you do! Let’s take a closer look at this surprising “circle of life” right back to the trusty old command line with some examples of CLI in modern personal computing.

Track your reading trends with Google Reader – Lifehacker

Google has added a Trends feature to Google Reader, allowing you to track your reading and subscription trends in Reader.

Boot Linux from a flash drive – Lifehacker

you can boot the Linux distro Knoppix right from your USB flash drive. A simple new tutorial shows you how.

Mac Switchers Tip: Remap the Home and End keys – Lifehacker

details on how to remap those keys to behave the way they do on other operating systems.

What Does 200 Calories Look Like?

Each of the photographs below represents 200 calories of the particular type of food; the images are sorted from low to high calorie density.

Free e-book teaches Ruby programming – Lifehacker

Mr. Neighborly’s Humble Little Ruby Book, a new e-book that teaches the basics and then some.

Mac: KDE for Mac

KDE – mac software for download at iusethis:

KDE is a powerful Free Software graphical desktop environment for Linux and Unix workstations and the upcoming 4th major release version will be also be developed native for Mac OS X.

The main focus of this Mac port is NOT to give you a new desktop, but to open up lots of cool KDE applications to Mac users.

I love KDE. I ran Simply Mepis 3.3 for a few months early in 2005. KDE is the best thing about Linux. Without the grooviness of KDE, I probably would not have stuck with Linux for so long.

I did try a Windows XP port of KDE, some months back. It wasn’t particularly stable or useful (yet) but it was great to see that we won’t need Linux to run KDE, or at least you not when the ports are done.

You can go to the Home of KDE on Mac OS X to learn about it and download the files. It’s still in alpha, so I won’t try it myself yet. But like a lot of things in life, it’s just nice to know it is there.

Download of the Day: Comodo Personal Firewall (Windows) – Lifehacker

Download of the Day: Comodo Personal Firewall (Windows) – Lifehacker:

Windows only: Keep your PC safe with Comodo Personal Firewall, a free security program designed to block outside intruders and keep your PC from “leaking.”

Unlike the free version of ZoneAlarm, Comodo recognizes thousands of known programs as safe, meaning it won’t bombard you with pop-up warnings for those programs.

I used the free version of ZoneAlarm myself for years, until SP2 gave every activated copy of XP a built-in firewall. There was a time when ZoneAlarm was great, it would let you know the name and location of the .exe file that was trying to access the internet, and you could make an informed choice. But towards the end I found I was getting asked about programs referred to as ‘Generic Process’ or ‘Run DLL as App’ accessing the internet. Clearly these types of descriptions could mean anything from a regular system service to a nasty bit of spyware, and so the app became unusable.

Personally I think you are better off with XP’s built in firewall combined with a bit of common sense about what programs you install in the first place.

I can’t vouch for Comodo, but I thought the post worth linking to. It’s possible in the future I may try it, if I find I need more than the XP firewall. There are some interesting comments, as usual, offering suggested alternatives.

PC: Rip and watch, the only way to experience DVDs.

Hack Attack: One-click DVD rips – Lifehacker:

I love a good DVD as much as the next guy, but the whole optical media world has been on my shitlist lately. I’m sick of renting or Netflix-ing a DVD, getting an hour into it, then hitting the scratchety-skip zone that freezes up my DVD player and leaves me unable to finish my stories.

My solution to this problem is to rip every DVD I rent to my hard drive as soon as I get it. In my experience, a rip smooths over those un-renderable sections of the DVD without issue, so when I’m ready to watch the ripped DVD, it’s certain to be scratch and skip-free.

Same here. DVDs suck anyway. It’s bad enough you have to sit through the propaganda from distributors, but now you often get anti-piracy messages on rental DVDs.

I don’t want to be forced to wade through a few minutes of drivel. It’s kinda ironic that these things that are supposed to help alleviate piracy are the very things that force me to rip the DVD.

And of course, as Adam says in his post on Lifehacker, you often encounter read errors that bring your evening’s viewing to a halt.

None of this is fun. Watching DVDs is supposed to be entertainment.

About 4 times a year I watch an actual DVD, and I almost always regret it. Rip and watch, the only way to experience DVDs.

Software: eBay Solutions Directory

eBay Solutions Directory – Tools & services that make buying and selling on eBay even easier:

The Solutions Directory features eBay and third-party software and services designed to improve your productivity on eBay.

The eBay website has always been ungainly, and is in desparate need of a web 2.0 make-over. In the meantime, here is eBay’s own list of software that will make your auctions easier.

Vista: Australian Prices for Windows Vista OEM

At least one major Australian IT distributor has listed their wholesale prices for the OEM version of Vista and is due to have stock by the end of the month. OEM versions of windows are intended to be sold with a computer, and are cheeper than boxed retail versions. However, many online discounters will sell the OEM versions, allowing you to pick up a legal (or semi-legal) copy of windows fairly cheep.

I’m not going to reveal the wholesale prices, but the following is a rough guide to the retail cost of Windows Vista OEM. This is the amount that a legit widows license will contribute to the cost of a whitebox system as built and supplied by your friendly local PC sale and repair shop.

Vista Home Basic $159
Vista Home Premium $199
Vista Business $259
Vista Ultimate $349

At this price, Vista Home Basic is more expensive than XP Home, and most people will want Vista Home Premium at least, which means that the average home user will be paying about $70 more for windows than they do now. And if you want a budget system, you’ll have to add to that a cheap graphics card for about $100 to get the best of the new features. XP Home was quite happy with onboard graphics.

In that sense, midrange systems (which are likely to have a graphics card anyway) are looking like they will be much better value than low end systems (which typically relied on onboard graphics to keep the prices low). This is not necessary a bad thing for the industry.

Online discounters could slash Vista prices by about 10-20% off these values. I have no news about boxed retail versions or upgrade versions. Typically a full boxed version is about twice the price of the OEM version and an upgrade price is somewhere in-between.

Web Wednesday: Podcasts (and the pleasure and pain of syncing with iTunes)

Finally, with iTunes 7 and the latest iPod software, Apple have provided compelling reasons to opt for a Nano for listening to podcasts. It’s far from a perfect implementation, but at least for now I can stop in the middle of a podcast, listen to some music, and return to the podcast knowing that the unit remembers where I was. I have always been able to do this with audio books, so I don’t know what has taken them so long to get this right.

If only the sync option could be made intelligent. At the moment you have the ‘dumb and dumber ‘ options of syncing podcasts based on which ones you’ve heard, or based on the last x episodes. Neither option is implemented in a way suited to real human beings.

One sensible option would be ‘podcasts in the last x days’. Principally because some podcasts are daily and some are weekly. I don’t want to have to keep 5 back episodes of TWiT (over a month’s worth), just so I can have the most recent 5 episodes of Buzz Out Loud (just a weeks worth).

A better option would be to make the sync realise that if I’ve started to listen to a podcast, it should only count it as heard if I have listened to the whole thing (or perhaps 80% of the whole thing, sometimes there is some drivel near the end). Syncing based on whether a podcast has been heard or not would then be a genuinely user-friendly option.

As it stands, I do use syncing based on whether I have listened to the podcast or not, but this means I have to be paranoid about plugging the Nano in to my iBook. If I know there are podcasts I am only part way through, I must listen to the end before plugging it in. It’s a stupid annoyance, but that’s the best choice from a poorly pair of options. It’s just a good thing that the battery lasts so long.

So yet again we take 3 steps forward and 2 back, and one has to organise one’s life around the computer. This is what WaitState is all about.

Your reward for getting this far, either by reading the above (a thousand thanks) or by skipping straight here, is some links to the web pages for some of my favorite podcasts.

The TWiT Netcast Network with Leo Laporte:

Netcasts you love from people you trust.

The standard by which all others are measured, at least in tech.

CNET Podcast Central – CNET.com:

Home for all of CNET’s podcasts. From Buzz Out Loud, a daily digest of tech news that’s relevant, hard-hitting, or just plain goofy, to help and how-to, to the latest in auto tech, you’ll find it all here.

Some nice, shorter podcasts that fill in the time between TWiTs and complement it rather nicely.

ABC Online: Podcasting
The Australian Broadcasting Corporations news and current affairs podcasts. Comparable to the BBC and NPR, many programs will be of interest outside Australia.

Keep in mind that at this time of year many podcasts are in recess. Still, it is a perfect time to catch up on missed episodes or try some new podcasts.

If you are looking for a program to download podcasts, there is always iTunes which has a built in search function and an extensive directory. If you want something else, I recommend Juice, the cross-platform podcast receiver. Juice even works with Bit-Torrent based feeds, which many legitimate podcasters try to use to save bandwidth.

OSX: Journler – The Perfect Program for GTD

ok scarfone: Journler: The Perfect Program for GTD on Mac OSX:

Journler is an excellent choice for GTD

Yes it is.

I’ve tried a lot of outliner, organiser and note-collector style utilities, and Journler is clearly the best and it’s free. It can be used as a blog tool too, but I still prefer ecto for that.

Ok Sarfone’s page is a nice tutorial for using the program for GTD.

XP: 15 Windows Explorer alternatives

15 Windows Explorer alternatives compared and reviewed – Simplehelp:

Windows Explorer, the default file manager for Microsoft Windows, hasn’t really changed all that much over the years.

Not it hasn’t. It’s slow, prone to lockups and can be infested by spyware due to it’s close integration with Internet Explorer. If you want to move a lot of files quickly, you’d be wise to check out some of these alternatives.

Are Linux apps crap on purpose?

Are linux apps the result of lazy design, the self-absorbedness of their creators or runaway group-think?

One sometimes wonders if the user interface of some Linux apps are deliberately bad. The intent being to make them in-accessable to normal computer users and thus the secret purview of an elitist club.

Given the astounding quality of some freeware/open source in the Windows and OSX worlds, I can’t help but wonder if this is true. It’s not surprising that the best Linux apps are also cross-platform, like FireFox.

This doesn’t mean every app needs flashy icons. It just means that some kind of convention should be followed so that functions can be accessed logically. It also means that screen real-estate should be used economically without being cluttered.