Monday, October 16, 2006

Cleaning Out the Lifehacker Links

I've gotten to the point where I've got too many Lifehacker hacks bookmarked for semi-permanent reference, and it's time to clean them out. Here's some of the tips and tricks I found useful:

Integrate Google Reader with Gmail via Greasemonkey You can easily integrate Google Reader feeds into your Gmail with this simple Greasemonkey script from Google blogger Mihai Parparita.

Remove any ink stain Pop quiz, hotshot: your favorite shirt has got a ginormous Sharpie stain on the collar. What do you do? Why, you check out housekeeping guru Sarah Aguirre's guide to ink stain removal, that's what.

Weekend Project: Make your own Halloween costume Michaels, an extremely large arts and crafts store, has put together a DIY Halloween costume index of over 50 costumes.

Get free PDF calendars, graph paper, and more Web site PDF Pad lets you download printable calendars, graph paper, charts, storyboards, and more.

Free international phonecalls (via Iowa) with Futurephone Make free international phone calls sans Skype with Futurephone, a company that's just got to be bleeding money. The service doesn't run ads or ask for personal information.

Send the elevator directly to your floor In a hurry to get to the 17th floor on a crowded elevator? The iHacked web site says a simple (but impolite) key combination can make some elevators skip everyone else's floor and go straight to your own.

Geek to Live: From Bloglines to Google Reader by Gina Trapani Every day I trawl through almost 250 web site feeds in order to write Lifehacker, and for the past 2 years I've used Bloglines to do so. (not even the one I helped build) had all the features I needed to track what I'd read and what I hadn't across computers and operating systems. That is, until I gave Google Reader another whirl earlier this week. The just-rolled-out Reader upgrades turned the app into an even better product than the much older and more-established Bloglines, and so I've made the switch.

MacGyver Tip: Check your tire tread with a penny The QueerCents blog has a primer on how to winterize your car including this neat penny trick: Check Tire Tread.

Convert files with Media-Convert Media-Convert is a free online service that will convert audio, video, and text files for you, from and to virtually any kind of format.

Seventeen things every freelancer should know Veteran freelance illustrator Megan Jeffrey lists 17 things she's learned over the 17 years she's been self-employed.

Tweak Windows prefetch for a faster startup Windows tips site IntelliAdmin suggests some ways to speed up Windows startup. Alongside the usual defrag and spyware-cleaning suspects, there's an interesting section on disabling Windows' prefetch. UPDATE: Not so much. See comments.

Find a routers login and password Our tongue-wagging tech gossip pals at Valleywag sent us this web page chock-full of default usernames and passwords for hundreds of routers.

Gmail Tips and Tricks Monster Roundup The Cyber-Knowledge weblog has a pretty good roundup of cool ways you can take advantage of your Gmail account.

How to defeat writer's block Author Scott Berkun says writer's block is really fear of writing something crappy - and offers some tips for getting past the anxiety.

Live like you're in school (really) If your life seems like it's getting a bit...stale, try these tips from productivity blogger Allen; his premise is that we should model our lives on our childhood schooling structure.

How to insert images and other HTML into Gmail The Digital Inspiration weblog has a step-by-step for adding HTML to Gmail messages.

Use WHOIS to track spammers Tired of that spam in your Gmail? I found a great (and easy!) tutorial from unspamming evangelist Matt Schneider on how to track these nefarious spammers using WHOIS.

How to make sure that hot spot is legit The techie smarties over at Grafdom have written up an excellent set of ten ways you can protect yourself at hot spots.

Learn the "best card trick in the world" How to site Instructables has a nifty tutorial that will teach you to perform the "best card trick in the world.".

Pinpoint why you are disorganized Sometimes, no matter how many productivity systems or getting to done tips we implement into our lives, we are still disorganized. Organizational expert Vicki Norris believes that there are five underlying causes that might explain why.

Geek to Live: Rescue files with a boot CD by Gina Trapani Few moments in computing are as heartbreaking as when you turn on your trusty PC only to receive that bone-chilling message: "Boot sector corrupt. Config.sys missing.

Auto inline MP3 player Greasemonkey script A handy music player Greasemonkey script inserts a play button next to any MP3 file you happen upon on the web so you can listen before you download.

Best time to buy airline tickets Weblog Sound Money Tips has posted a handy gem for getting the best rates on airline tickets: buy your tickets on Wednesday.

The 15 minute Windows XP tune-up Got a slow movin' computer? Try the Windows XP 15 minute tune-up. Chances are, it's not a hardware problem that's making your system run so slowly, but a backup of old, clogged data.

How to take good nighttime photos Nighttime photography can be tricky, but computing blogger Andrew Malek has some excellent digital photography tips to make it simpler. Topics such as setting, preparation, and lighting are all...

Stealth internet browsing with workFRIENDLY Web site workFRIENDLY is a browser proxy that reformats the contents of any URL to look like a Microsoft Word document.

Geek to Live: The art of asking In order to find the answer you're looking for, you have to ask the right question. No, I didn't just pull that out of a fortune cookie. Asking good questions is an essential skill that takes mindfulness, strategy and practice. The bottom line is: few people will help a person who doesn't help herself.


Oh, and I googled another hack myself, to write this post:


Use Gmail to Convert Word Docs to HTML
If you have a MS Word doc that you want to convert to HTML, the last thing you’d ever use is the “Save as Web Page…” command in Word. Talk about terrible code! Instead, you can send the attachment to your Gmail account and use the “View as HTML” link. Once the page is displayed in your browser, go to “View Source” and copy the code. Most of it is very clean and quite useable.

So to convert bloglines summaries into useable code, I copied and pasted them into a Word document, selected it all again and changed my styles to normal:web (which cleans it up a bit), emailed it to the gmail account, viewed source. Then copied and pasted it into Blogger, cleaning it up only minimally. Much faster than copying and pasting text and links from each entry.

UPDATE: Which would've worked great except for the d*mn smart quotes. Fixed the links now.

No comments: