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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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