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Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Hide and Show Desktop Icons on OS X with an Automator Service [Video]
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Make Your Holiday Travel Easier with Packing Cubes [Stuff We Like]
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Benefit from an Interview Rejection by Debriefing Yourself [Interviews]
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Android Market Adds "Similar" Tab for Easier App Discovery [Updates]
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Tuesday, December 7, 2010
The Best Things to Buy in December [Buying Guide]
In a way, December is the month in which everything is nominally "on sale." But what's really discounted and worth buying, if you're not just buying gifts? These are the items that tend to be cheaper in this cold, cheery month.
Every month, we look back at our big post on the best times to buy anything and when, and pull out items each month for further inspectoin. We revamp the timeline for that month, and remind everyone of the latest items coming up cheap (or just cheaper than usual) this month.
Here's what's newly cheap in December; click for a larger view.
As always, these tips aren't intended to make you buy, buy, buy. But if you do happen to need something seen here, maybe now's the time to be looking for deals. On to the savings:
Shrubs, bushes, bulbs, etc.: Anything you can buy now and store at a halfway decent temperature until spring, you can likely get at a discount. Greenhouses and garden shops are starting to feel the post-season decline, and landscape goods that can make it indoors go pretty cheap this time of year.
Wedding dresses (and other wedding gear): It's the best of both discount worlds: hardly anybody's buying right now, but stores are anticipating a whole bunch of bridal shoppers after all those unbearably cute Christmas morning engagements. Because of the slow season and decent stock, you can drive the price around a bit, says SmartMoney.com.
Tools: Because, really, who wants to work on their shingles when it's snowing, as AOL Shopping points out? But if you know you're in need of decent tools for when things start to defrost, now's a good time to grab them.
Champagne: There's really only one time of year when everyone thinks about buying Champagne, and it's right before New Year's Eve. So the Champagne firms get cut-throat in trying to lure everybody to their brand, so go ahead and stock up, within reason, while the getting's good, according to SmartMoney.com.
HDTVs and home theater equipment: All the new shiny stuff arrives in spring, so it's getting near the time when you might be able to punch a few hundred dollars off last years models, as Kiplinger, via Consumer Reports, suggests. The deals actually get better in January, but now's not a bad time to start looking if you're grabbing a gift for someone you obviously like a whole lot.
Off-color cars: Meaning the kind that are purple, orange, or gold, not that they tell rude jokes. If you're okay with the colors that aren't as popular, now's a great time to hit the dealership, find a car that isn't silver, black, or red, then drive down the year-end price. That tip comes courtesty of a Forbes piece by Mark Di Vincenzo's, whose book Buy Ketchup in May has been previously featured and highly inspirational.
We're going to peek back at this and other installments in our "Best Things to Buy" series later this year, so we can update and improve our buying guide for 2011. If you know of something we missed this month, tell us why it's cheap in the comments, and we'll check it out. The author of this post can be contacted at tips@lifehacker.comBest Text Editor? [Hive Five Call For Contenders]
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Synapse Is a Super-Fast, Tightly Integrated Application Launcher for Linux [Downloads]
Linux: Free app Synapse goes beyond the simple application launcher to tightly integrate with your Linux system, quickly accessing any recent action you've performed so you can return to it or perform something similar in an instant.
GNOME-Do is still one of our favorite Linux launchers, but it hasn't updated in over a year. If you're looking for something a bit fresher (and without the ugly Mono dependencies), Synapse is a great replacement. It's similar to GNOME-Do and other application launchers in the sense that, with a quick keyboard shortcut, you can launch an application or take action on a certain file, depending on the plugins you have installed.
However, while the plugin list isn't quite as extensive as the more mature GNOME-Do, the Zeitgeist plugin allows for a lot of cool things. Zeitgeist (which comes pre-installed on Ubuntu) is a service that logs all your activity—files opened, websites visited, conversations held—and all these are quickly available through Synapse. You can look up recently used files (say, if you closed that document by accident or want to repeat the song you just heard) and even find other similar files. It's a slightly different approach to quick launching, and one that may have a slightly bigger learning curve but it has a ton of possibilities since Zeitgeist logs so much.
Apart from all that, you also have the usual plugins—Banshee, Rhythmbox, Dictionary, Log out/Shut Down/Suspend, and quick Terminal commands, to name a few. If you rely heavily on some of GNOME-Do's more custom plugins, you might have to wait a bit before Synapse fits into your workflow better, but if not, it's definitely worth checking out. Hit the link below to read more.
Send an email to Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com.Gmail's Mute Feature Gets Smarter, Keeps Your Inbox Cleaner [Email]
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Splashtop Instant-On OS Boots You Into Chromium Quickly (on Some HP Laptops) [Video]
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What Are Dropbox's Bandwidth Limits? [Ask Lifehacker]
Dear Lifehacker,
Like most Lifehacker readers, I love Dropbox. I use it a lot, but I'm wondering: What bandwidth limits Dropbox places on my file sharing? Could I use Dropbox to host static files for my web site?
Signed,
Devoted to Dropbox
Dear Devoted,
You can use Dropbox in all sorts of clever ways, but if you're sharing a lot of large files, you may run into some trouble with bandwidth limits. Tech guru Amit Agarwal explains:
The other day I shared how you may use Dropbox as a CDN to host the static content of your WordPress site. That will not only improve the performance of your website, because you are now using a CDN, but will also decrease the bandwidth requirement of your own web server since some of the files are getting served through Dropbox.
Dropbox provides nearly 2.5 GB of free storage space and that is obviously more than enough to host all the images, CSS and other static files of most websites. However, there's a caveat you should be aware of.
If you have a low-traffic site, the above solution may work without issues but for everyone else, it may not always be a good idea to use Dropbox as a file hosting service.
That's because Dropbox imposes certain bandwidth limits on files in the Public folder and if you exceed that limit, the URLs of your public file may be temporarily disabled thus returning a 404 error to your visitors.
According to Dropbox support, public links for free accounts may not use more than 10GB of bandwidth per day while that limit is 250GB per day for paid Dropbox accounts. The links are automatically suspended if any of your files exceed that limit.
For comparison, let's say you have a one page website hosted on Dropbox and the entire weight of all the images, CSS and other static files served through that page is around 400 kb. That means the page should have less than 25k impressions in a day for you to stay within the Dropbox limit.
And if another site decides to hotlink to your static images, it may exhaust your "free bandwidth" quota even sooner.
Hope that helps (and thanks, Amit)!
Love,
Lifehacker
Make an Altoids Tin DIY CompactFlash Card Reader [DIY]
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Monday, December 6, 2010
Run Google Gadgets on Ubuntu, No Screenlets Needed [Google Gadgets]
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Create a Stronger Resume by Keeping It Brief [Resumes]
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Keep iPhoto From Auto-Launching Every Time You Connect Your iPhone [Annoyances]
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Use a Matchstick When a Hole Is Too Big for a Screw [MacGyver Tip]
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Use Search Operators in the Android Market for More Useful Search Results [Search]
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Tower Is a Graphical Front-End for Git [Downloads]
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Remains of the Day: Google Quietly Releases Chrome 8 Stable with Built-In PDF Viewer [For What Its Worth]
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Gazaro Protect Watches Your Best Buy Purchases for Price Drops and Potential Refunds [Downloads]
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Sunday, December 5, 2010
YouTube Leanback Adds Personalized Channels for Your Couch-Viewing Pleasure [Video]
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Dwolla Offers Simple Payments Across Social Networks and the Web [Video]
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LastPass Acquires Xmarks, Keeping Free Bookmark-Syncing Plans Available [Bookmarks]
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Cluttered Gray to Organized Red: An Office Makeover [Featured Workspace]
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How to Set Up Your Android for Automated Wi-Fi Syncing with DoubleTwist [Howto]
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The AirSync upgrade to doubleTwist and its Android app is really cool—press a button, and music, pictures, and videos sync across Wi-Fi. You can move past the button, though, and have your Android sync everything wirelessly on a regular schedule.
When this is set up—and, really, it only takes about 15 minutes, much less if you've already connected AirSync—you'll have a computer and phone that "check in" with each other regularly over Wi-Fi. No cables needed, and you don't have to click the Sync button.
Even if you're not a big fan of doubleSync's desktop player (and a good number of our commenters aren't), you can simply use it as your go-between, as it syncs iTunes and Windows Media playlists and libraries, too. Better still, if you're like me and take loads of pictures and videos with your Android and never get around to transferring them to your system, this will take care of that automatically, dropping them wherever you'd like.
The latest doubleTwist for Windows: Grab it at doubleTwist's site. The Mac desktop client supports airSync, but doesn't (yet) do an automatic check for your phone over the Wi-Fi network—it's coming soon, according to developers.The doubleTwist Android app & AirSync upgrade: AirSync is currently priced at $1.99, "until the next release," so grab it now if you're interested in wireless syncing. Be sure to grab the doubleTwist player app first.A wireless network at home: AirSync requires a semi-open Wi-Fi router to find the two devices and pair them together. Trying this at a coffee shop or other public or locked-down network won't get you far.Before setting up our automated sync schedule, you'll want to ensure that both your desktop and Android doubleTwist apps are set up to find each other and communicate when they see each other.
Install doubleTwist on your desktop or laptop first. When that's done, install doubleTwist, and then AirSync. Launch the AirSync app from your application menu, or hit the "Settings" link from the doubleTwist player's main screen. Make sure AirSync is enabled here, and press the Set Up AirSync link.
You'll get a linking code on your Android screen. Now's the time to make sure your Android and Windows computer are connected to the same Wi-Fi network.
If they are, generally, they should see each other, and doubleTwist on your computer will ask you to type in the code you see on your Android screen. Type it in, then give both apps a few minutes to set up their initial connection. Nothing doing? Check that your Wi-Fi connection at home is set to a "Home" connection, i.e. one that allows device finding. You can change this by searching out the "Network and Sharing Center" from the Start menu, then clicking on the link underneath the network you're connected to. Set your connection to Home, if you're able. Some Wi-Fi networks are not set up to allow such inter-device communication; this type of connection tends to work best over a standard residential Wi-Fi router.
With your device connected over Wi-Fi, look for it in the left-hand sidebar of doubleTwist. Click on its name, and click through each tab you see on the right-hand side. You may not see all of them—certain syncing features are only available for Android 2.2 at this point. But go ahead and decide what you want doubleTwist to send to your phone, and whether you want new stuff on your phone synced back.
Done with that? Hit the "Edit" menu at the top of the doubleTwist window, then choose Preferences. Click over to the Advanced tab, then check the box for "Automatically sync devices when connected." You can also check on "Don't show system tray sync notifications" if you'd like a totally quiet sync experience.
Over in the Library tab, make sure doubleTwist is putting stuff where it should, and grabbing from where it will find things. You can keep doubleTwist, and therefore your Android, up to date with your iTunes and Windows Media playlists, if you don't plan on actually using doubleTwist to play and organize music. Hit OK when you're all done.
If you're not sure how everything will work out, go ahead and connect your Android to your computer by USB, making sure to turn on USB storage to access your SD card. If that's annoying, there's a setting in doubleTwist to automatically connect through USB whenever it's plugged in. Try out a few syncs to make sure everything ends up where you'd like it, then disconnect to set up the final stage.
We're going to set up doubleTwist so that it automatically runs at an interval you choose—hourly, ever day at 3 p.m., whenever you log on—whatever you'd like. We can also set up a task that will kill off doubleTwist after it's done syncing. You don't have to do that second step, but doubleTwist is, while lighter than iTunes, still something you might not need running all the time.
• Create a shortcut to the doubleTwist application. The easiest way I know of is to open the Start menu (in Vista or Windows 7), start typing in "doubletwist," then click and hold on the app result. Hold down the Alt key and drag the app to the desktop, or into a folder for safe keeping (either way, you'll move the shortcut off the desktop eventually).
• Right-click on that new shortcut and select Properties. In the Shortcut tab, look for the "Run" option, and click the drop-down to select Minimized. Hit OK, and now stash this shortcut somewhere it won't get deleted.
• Open the Task Scheduler (type it into the search box of your Start menu). In the right-hand pane, click the link to "Create Basic Task." We're going to set the times when doubleTwist launches on your system and looks for your phone.
• 
In the first box, give you task an obvious name—"Launch AirSync" works. Hit Next. Now is when you pick how often doubleTwist will try to sync. Most likely, you'll pick Daily, which can actually be set to be hourly. Hit Next. On the next screen, pick the first time of day you want doubleTwist to launch. We'll try to set doubleTwist to be quiet, but you might still stay away from times when you're doing important work. Hit Next again, then pick "Start a program" when asked which task you'd like the app to perform. Finally, hit the "Browse" button on the next screen, and point it to that minimized shortcut you create for doubleTwist. On the last screen, showing everything you've set up, check the box for "Open the Properties dialog ..." near the bottom, then hit Finish.
• In the properties box that launches after finishing your task creation, click over to the Triggers tab, and double-click on the "Daily" trigger you created. If the Properties box doesn't show up, simply double-click on the task you created in the "Task Scheduler Library." When your "Edit Trigger" window appears, look for the controls at bottom. You can set your doubleTwist app to launch every hours, every 3 hours, and so forth. Once or twice a day is probably enough for all but the most heavy of phone users.
While you're poking around in the Properties, be sure to check out the Conditions tab. One of the conditions turned on by default is that this auto-launcher only runs when the computer is on AC power—you can disable that if you'd like. You can also set the task to only run when you're connected to a certain Wi-Fi network, which might be smart to set for your home network.
When doubleTwist launches, it should quietly drop down to your taskbar—it might show up first on your screen, but it should take care of itself fairly soon. It will automatically look for your phone on the Wi-Fi network, and if it finds it, syncs up whatever you set up to sync. You can set it to sync when you're sure you'll have your system on, or fiddle with the Properties of your scheduled task and set it to run every few hours, but only if your computer has been idle. Dig around the "Settings" tab of your launching task—you can basically command doubleTwist to start up and auto-sync whenever you'd like.
If you're fine having doubleTwist stay open in the background until you decide to close it down, you can skip this step. Otherwise, it's a pretty quick hack, with two methods:
In the Task Scheduler app, with the Task Scheduler Library selected in the left-hand pane, click on your doubleTwist automation task and then head to the Triggers tab below. Double-click your timed trigger. Near the bottom of this "Edit Trigger" window, you can check a box to "Stop task if it runs longer than: X," with X being a drop-down box. The shortest option is 30 minutes, and that's a decent amount of time to ensure even a big doubleTwist sync happens.
To ensure doubleSync goes away when you want it to, you'll need to create a batch script that kills it off. Don't worry! It's two lines in a Notepad file.
Open Notepad. Type in the following lines:
@echo off
TASKKILL /IM DoubleTwist.Desktop.exe
Head to the File menu and hit "Save As." Use quote marks to save the file as "killdoubletwist.bat" or something similar, and stash it someplace safe.
Now you're simply going to run through the Task Scheduler process again, just as described above, and set this batch file to be triggered a few minutes after each time the doubleTwist launch task runs—5 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever you'd like.
Now you've got your phone and main system set up to keep each other updated on playlists, photos, and videos. If you've got an improvement for our system, do tell us about it in the comments. Send an email to Kevin Purdy, the author of this post, at kevin@lifehacker.com.Remains of the Day: Google's Ebook Store Coming "by the End of the Year" [For What Its Worth]
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Stream Any Video to Your Apple TV, No Pre-Conversion Required [Video]
AirPlay is great if your video collection is in the right format, otherwise you can only stream Apple-approved videos from your iOS device to your Apple TV. Here's how to circumvent that limitation and how to get the best results.
AirPlay is Apple's great new media streaming technology that lets you stream your music, video, and photos from your iOS device to your Apple TV. Air Video is an iOS app that lets you stream any video from your Mac or PC to your iOS device, converting it on-the-fly if necessary. Wouldn't it be great if you could combine these two things? Then you could stream any video in any format from your computer to your iPad to your Apple TV. Because AirPlay's APIs aren't yet available, Air Video's developer says he can't add this functionality to the application. Fortunately, if you want to jailbreak your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you can install a little hack that'll let you stream anything from Air Video directly to your Apple TV.
This is very easy to do. Here are the steps:
First, you need an iOS device running iOS 4.2 or greater. You'll need to jailbreak your device, and the currently redsn0w is the jailbreak method of choice for iOS 4.2. (Here's how to do it.)Once you're jailbroken, you need to jump into Cydia—that's the package manager that should now be installed on your device—and download AidVideoEnabler. You don't need to add any special repositories. You should be able to just search for it, download, and install.Reboot your device.That's all you need to do to make this work. It doesn't work perfectly, however, so let's take a quick look at how you can get the best experience.
First things first, the bit rates don't matter here—the iPad we used could handle the highest setting in Air Video so as long as the computer converting and serving the video can keep up, feel free to tell Air Video it's okay if it wants to stream at the highest possible bit rate. For reference, that's 2560kbps and you can set it in "Global Settings." The only thing you really need to worry about is when you start streaming to your Apple TV. We found that if you don't let Air Video get a pretty decent head start of at least a few minutes, streaming will fail. If you let it convert for a little bit before you get started, however, it works like a charm.
That's it! Enjoy streaming all your videos!
Send an email to Adam Dachis, the author of this post, at adachis@lifehacker.com.Saturday, December 4, 2010
XBMC Dharma RC2 Brings Enhanced Add-On Support, Automatic Updating [Video]
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DIY Breath Charger Charges USB Devices While You Breathe [DIY]
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AX Provides a Better One-Keystroke Solution for Typing Special Characters [Video]
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Needle Is a Smart and Efficient Research Assistant [Video]
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BBC's iPlayer Will Be Available Internationally Soon, First As An iPad App ['Ipad]
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"4G" Coverage Compared on Speed and Price [Mobile Broadband]
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FindTheBest Compares Almost Anything Online to Find Your Best Option [Video]
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Friday, December 3, 2010
From the Tips Box: Chrome File Browsing, iTunes Clutter, and Old Cellphones [From The Tips Box]
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Right Click to Link to a YouTube Video at a Specific Time [Video]
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Start the Pot Boiling in This Week's Open Thread [Open Thread]
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MacPromo Bundle Brings 10 Time-Saving Apps to Your Mac for $50 [Dealhacker]
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Chrome to Windows Phone 7 Pushes Links to Windows Phone 7 from Chrome [Downloads]
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Corkboard.me is a Simple, Shareable Sticky Notes Webapp [Video]
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