Backblaze Offers Hassle-Free Unlimited Online Backup [Featured Download]
Windows/Mac OS X: Backup service Backblaze aims to take the hassle out of online backup by backing up only the data you need and ignoring unnecessary files like operating system files, applications, and temporary files. That way you don't have to get specific with Backblaze about everything you want to back up or exclude (though you can if you want)—it just backs up everything and excludes the data that's not useful in backup form. The service does continuous backup, so files are always (hopefully) up to date, but you can switch to scheduled backups if you prefer. Like other popular backup tools, Backblaze does unlimited backup for a price: $5/month (similar to MozyHome) or $50/year (like Carbonite). A free trial of Backblaze is available if you'd like to try it out before committing. The app is available in Windows form to anyone; you'll need to sign up for an invite if you want to try it on your Mac.
Tim Ferriss' "Trial By Fire" TV Pilot Debuts Tomorrow Night [Television]
Set your TiVos, folks: Author of The 4 Hour Workweek and Lifehacker guest author Tim Ferriss debuts the pilot episode of his new TV show, "Trial By Fire," on The History Channel tomorrow night. Hit the play button above to get a taste (and hear them call him a "lifehacker"!). Ferriss explains what it's all about:
The concept is simple: I have one week to attempt to learn what is usually learned over 5-20 years. I either crash and burn — or survive by the skin of my teeth — in a final test (trial by fire) each time. If it's made into a series, which depends entirely on viewership numbers on Thursday night, I'll deconstruct a new complex skill each week. It will show you exactly how I approach learning, and no fake TV drama will be required to make the stakes real.
The pilot airs tomorrow night at 11PM ET/PT on The History Channel (though do double-check your local listings), and here's what you'll see.
This episode was shot in HD in Tokyo and the mountains of Nikko, where I rolled the dice on Japanese horseback archery, or yabusame: full gallop, no hands, no safety gear, with wooden poles lining the track on either side of the horse. Please don't do this at home. I had access to the best in the world, and you'll get to see some never-before-seen footage of a rare and brutal samurai sport few non-Japanese have ever attempted.
Like Tim said, this is a pilot that hasn't been turned into a series yet, so only your eyeballs will determine whether the show continues. Planning on watching? Tell us what you think about the teaser clip in the comments.
Google Contacts Syncs Your Google Address Book with Thunderbird [Featured Thunderbird Extension]
Thunderbird only: Thunderbird extension Google Contacts automatically syncs contacts between your Google and Thunderbird address books. The sync is bi-directional, and the extension is smart enough to detect Gmail accounts you've already set up in Thunderbird, so setup is a breeze. Beyond that, there's not much to it—Google Contacts does exactly what it sets out to do. We detailed how to sync Gmail contacts with Thunderbird using GCalDaemon—a command line tool that syncs Google Calendar and Contacts—a while back, but now that you can easily sync any desktop calendar with Google Calendar and sync Google Contacts with extensions like this one, it's easier than ever to keep your Google data synchronized. Thanks Pranesh!
Beer Can and Liquor Bottle Holiday Ornaments [Featured DIY Holiday Project]
Beer-lover and do-it-yourselfer fotoFluke recycled his cans, bottles, caps, and coasters into fabulous (and funny) holiday decorations, one of which won him an award at an office contest. Here you see a toy soldier constructed from beer cans, a mini-keg, paper coasters, with a bottle cap as the nose. Check out three more after the jump: Santa's drunken sleigh ride, three wise men liquor bottles, and Absolut angels.
The Santa's drunken sleigh ride decoration won fotoFluke's office Christmas decoration content "by a landslide." He says:
I had a lot of fun making this as I had to drink all of the beer before I started. Eight Bud nip cans as the Reindeer, a Foster's oil can as the sleigh and a playmobil made up as Santa.
The photo's notes also reveal that the antlers are cut from a Bass six pack. Hopefully Santa avoided getting pulled over on his trip around the tree. Not sure he'd pass the sobriety test.
FotoFluke explains the three wise men ornament:
Jim Beam, Johnnie Walker, and Jack Daniels presenting gifts of water, Advil and Alka-Seltzer for the hungover. Made for a homemade Christmas tree ornament contest at work. The problem with hanging this one was getting the balance just right, other than that it was light enough.
Finally, the Absolut angels tree ornament added wings to mini Absolut vodka bottles.
Nifty way to recycle and show off your choice of spirits, fotoFluke! Don't forget to submit your DIY holiday projects—inebriated or not—to the Lifehacker DIY Holiday Flickr group.
FoxReplace Adds Find and Replace to Firefox [Featured Firefox Extension]
Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Firefox extension FoxReplace adds find-and-replace functionality to web pages. If you do a lot of writing in web forms—whether it's for work, your personal blog, or just your Gmail account—the option to do automatic find and replace is a godsend. You can choose to match by case and replace all matching text, whole words only, or use regular expressions if you're really savvy. The extension boasts way more features than you're likely to use (including finding and replacing text on an HTML level), though to be honest I'd be happier with a similar extension that worked only with textareas and had a Find Next option before replacing (right now it replaces all instances). FoxReplace is a free download, works wherever Firefox does.
Ask MetaFilter Roundup [Hive Mind]
- What's a good answer when a job interviewer asks what salary you're looking for?
- How do you deal with a boss that brushes you off when you offer a better solution to a problem when their solution has rather large and obvious holes in it?
- What warm winter clothing do you recommend for a woman who likes nature photography and hiking?
- I got an Xbox 360. It's awesome. I can do so much stuff! Now what?
- Is there a product that will make gloves more grippy?
Amazon Mobile Looks Up Any Product You Snap a Picture Of [Featured IPhone Download]
iPhone/iPod touch only: Amazon released a new mobile application for the iPhone and iPod touch today, ensuring that you can now get your online shopping fix no matter where you are. Not only does the Amazon app provide an excellent interface to search, buy, or add items to your wishlists, but if you're an iPhone user, the application's Amazon Remembers feature identifies any product you take a picture of—sort of like previously mentioned SnapTell. When you snap a pic, the app uploads the picture to Amazon, which looks for a match among its products. If it finds one (it can take anywhere between a couple minutes and 24 hours), it'll send you an email and update the Amazon Remembers tab. So far it's worked like a charm with all of the products I tested. I expected that my iPhone book might throw it for a loop, considering it has a picture of an iPhone on it, but even it was correctly identified within a few minutes.
If you give it a go, let's hear how it works out for you in the comments.
Watch YouTube Videos While Working Other Tasks [YouTube]
YouTube is full of videos that don't require singled-minded attention, but trying to keep a YouTube page visible in the background for passive watching isn't easy. Digital Inspiration's Amit Agarwal suggests two methods, though, that work great for browsing other sites or doing actual, you know, work, while keeping a video cornered and always on top. The first requires re-working a video link to its full-screen version and bookmarking it to load in Firefox's sidebar—something we've covered before with many other apps. The other method creates a mini-browser window that always stays on top using an AutoHotKey-coded app. Hit the link below for details on each idea, which should make burning through your favorite webisodes easier while still plucking away on your busy work.
Have You Ever Edited Wikipedia? [Reader Poll]
CNET reports that Wikipedia has received $890,000 in funding specifically aimed at creating an easier to use interface for readers with a low level of tech knowledge. Wikipedia's goal is "to identify the most common barriers to entry for first-time writers, and then work to systematically reduce or eliminate them." It's an excellent idea, considering the obvious fact that there are presumably countless potential contributors with a lot of knowledge but a low level of tech skill. Still, since most of our readers are a tech-savvy bunch, it got us wondering:
It's not clear when the new and improved interface will reach public eyes, but all the new code will remain open source for those of us who've set up ou own personal Wikipedia using MediaWiki's software. Until then, check out our previous guide to contributing to Wikipedia.
Toucan Syncs and Backs Up Your Files [Featured Windows Download]
Windows only: Portable application Toucan backs up and syncs your data between two locations (like your hard drive and your USB drive). Weighing in at just over 4.10MB installed, Toucan offers several advanced backup and syncing settings, like incremental backup with compression (supporting 7-Zip format), portable drive variables, scripts and advanced rulesets. Similar to SyncBackSE but smaller and portable, Toucan is a nice option for making sure you've got everything on your thumb drive. Toucan is a free download for Windows only.
Windows 7 Beta 1 Coming January 2009 [Windows 7]
Web site Windows 7 Center reports that Microsoft's forthcoming update to Vista, Windows 7, will release its first official beta on January 13, 2009—exciting news for anybody dying to test drive Windows 7's awesome new features. On the other hand, if you're not eager to upgrade, you can still enjoy some of Windows 7's best features right now.
Apple Has Always Recommended Antivirus Apps [Antivirus]
Despite a widely reported claim that Apple had recently changed a support document to recommend its users run multiple antivirus utilities, Gizmodo reveals that the antivirus recommendation is not new. Still—even if the recommendation predates dinosaurs—68% of you have never once run antivirus on your Mac in the first place. UPDATE: The kicker: Apple has now removed the article in question altogether.
What's Inside Vista SP2 [Windows Vista]
The All About Microsoft blog posts a seriously complete list of what's going to be included in Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista, expected to be out in April 2009. Major items include the Vista Feature Pack for Wireless for easier/better connections, built-in Blu-Ray writing, and reduced resources required for sidebar gadgets. Nothing majorly huge, so it's worth looking at Windows 7 features you can get in Vista.
SkyDrive Upgrade Goes Live with 25GB of Space [Online Storage]
Windows Live, intended to be a landing page for social activity and Microsoft's cloud-connected apps, is rolling out a host of redesigns and upgrades today, but none so exciting (to our eyes, anyways) as the anticipated jump of the SkyDrive online storage service to 25GB capacity. As the Digital Inspiration blog points out, SkyDrive seems to be a central part of the Redmond giant's web ambitions, so it's not likely to go away or shrink. Aside from the raw upload/download capabilities, having a SkyDrive account gives you a few other cool abilities, which we'll detail below.
No-sign-up-needed sharing: If you've used most any Microsoft service, you know their features are often linked to a drive to get more people signed into their apps and networks. Not so with SkyDrive, which offers a nice little checkbox for sending sharing links to any email address without requiring a Live sign-in.
Lots of tools for photos: Tag yourself or friends Facebook-style in your photos, launch elegant pic-on-black-background slideshows from folders of pictures (your own or shared) that works on any browser (but supposedly better with Silverlight installed), order prints, and SkyDrive's thumbnails are nicely big and clear. Here's how photos are handled in SkyDrive's file browser:
Grab entire folders as single .zip files: This simple, helpful compression feature isn't entirely common amongst file-sharing/storage services. You can also drop photos right into your Live Photo Gallery, if that's how your roll.
Easy sharing and updates on contacts' files: Windows Live allows you to keep updated with what your friends on Live, Facebook, and LinkedIn are up to, and SkyDrive is no different. Your main SkyDrive page will let you know if any of your contacts have opened up a file for public sharing, and you can organize contacts into categories for easy group sharing—so everyone, for example, in "Project Team" can be sent your latest report at once, with one click.
Mount SkyDrive on your desktop with Gladinet: As we detailed earlier this week, Gladinet's free Cloud Desktop beta allows you mount and access SkyDrive (and Picasa, Google Docs, and Amazon's S3) as if it were a plain network folder. Drag-and-drop access to 25GB of go-anywhere cloud space is surely a nifty thing.
Still lacking—50MB file size limit: Amongst SkyDrive's online storage peers, 50MB isn't quite eye-opening, especially for a service that wants to be the hub of a burgeoning online network. Still, for photos, documents, and even most zipped-up MP3 albums, it's decent enough.
SkyDrive requires a sign-up with Windows Live for storing and sharing files. What do you think of the newly-expanded SkyDrive? Share your review in the comments.
Photology Helps You Search Your Photos Using Intuitive Filters [Windows Featured Download]
Windows only: Photology steps away from tag based searching and allows you to search through your pictures with a variety of filters. There are filter functions for colors, dates, times of day, photo orientation, exposure, text of captions/file names/folders, and even filters for things like plants, sky, faces, beaches, flowers, snow, sunset and water. The simpler filters like the color picker are a bit more accurate than the more advanced ones like clouds. In the screenshot above I had searched for the color blue and snow. Photology kicked out a ton of blue skied and snowy wallpapers I had saved earlier in the holiday season but it also returned a picture of Wonder Woman standing on a cloud. In the defense of Photology clouds and snowbanks are quite similar. Filters can be stacked, so if you need to find a picture from October, predominantly yellow, and taken in the morning you can use all three filters. In addition to helping you search through your photos, Photology has tools for photo adjustments like color correction, red eye removal, cropping, etc. You can also upload your pictures from the application to a site hosted by Enoetic, the parent company of Photology. Pictures will be stored there for 7 days to share with friends. For a more permanent upload, you can also use Photology to upload to Flickr. Photology is freeware, Windows only, requires .Net 3.0+ framework. Thanks GisellaPot!
.TEL Contact Domain Available for Registrations [Domain Names]
A new top-level-domain, .TEL, is due to be available for registration today that lets individuals and companies companies, and later individuals, create a web home for contact information. Phone numbers, email addresses, social network pages, and other relevant info are stored at the domain-name level rather than on static pages, so updating your .tel information can be a quick, universal way to change any of those digits. For those without personal web sites, it could be a nice way to build a simple web presence, as you can also set up search-able key words for your domain. Those with their own sites, or presence on a lot of social sites, can simply point to a .tel address, rather than try and keep your contact data up on every single page. Wondering what your .tel would look like? Try it out on Telnic's .tel simulator. Update: Actually, only owners of trademarks can apply in today's "Sunrise" registration; the general public gets their .tel availability during the "Landrush" on Feb. 3, 2009, and for cheaper during general sale on March 24. Sorry for the confusion.
Favorites Search Adds Easy Bookmark Recall to Internet Explorer [Featured Windows Download]
Windows only: Internet Explorer add-on Favorites Search is a small, handy button for your toolbar that adds a pop-out pane to quickly search your bookmarks. That's nothing that Firefox, Google Chrome, or any Windows user who's installed Windows Search 4.0 or set up Vista for Favorites indexing can't do, but if you're dedicated (or locked) into using IE 7 and just need some in-browser search functionality, DzSoft's lightweight add-on is worth a try. Make sure you add its button to your main toolbar (right-click it and hit "Customize Command Bar") for quicker click-and-type functionality. Favorites Search is a free download for Windows systems with Internet Explorer 5.0 and above. Hit the via link below for four other small, unique-function add-ons for Internet Explorer.
You received this email because you are subscribed to the real_time feed for http://feeds.gawker.com/lifehacker/full. To change your subscription settings, please log into RSSFWD.
No comments:
Post a Comment