Lifehacker Australia

Twitter/Facebook Client Brizzly Open For Sign-Ups

Kevin Purdy — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +1100

Brizzly, the web-based social-media manager that ranked as one of our readers’ favourite Twitter clients, has dropped the invite code requirement and is available for anyone to log into. It’s still technically in “beta”, but mostly to keep up the fairly rapid pace of feature development. [via TechCrunch]

Windows Surface Scanner Finds Bad Hard-Drive Sectors

Lisa Hoover — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:30:00 +1100

Windows: When your computer starts acting hinky and spitting out error messages, it’s hard to know exactly where to begin to diagnose the problem. Windows Surface Scanner gives you a place to start. (more…)

MinimizeToTray Revived Puts Firefox In Your System Tray

The How-To Geek — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +1100

Windows only: Firefox extension MinimizeToTray Revived puts Firefox in your system tray, and replaces the popular MinimizeToTray extension that has been abandoned and doesn’t support Firefox 3 or later. (more…)

Give Wireless Charging Mats A Natural Wood Look

Sarah Rae Trover — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:30:00 +1100

Wireless charging mats are a clever way to charge your gadgets without cords or power bricks, but a big black mat can easily stick out in any room. Instructables shows you how to make a more stylish wooden induction charger. (more…)

YouTube Will Soon Block Access From Set-Top Devices

Kevin Purdy — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:20:00 +1100

It won’t affect your PS3, Wii, TiVo or other licensed YouTube partners, but Google’s streaming video service will start blocking access to TV-connected devices as of December 2. (more…)

TorrentFetcher Searches For Torrents From Your Desktop

Whitson Gordon — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:00:00 +1100

Windows only: Most people use torrent sites like Mininova or The Pirate Bay to search for torrents online, but free program TorrentFetcher lets you search straight from a desktop program and quickly start the transfer in your BitTorrent client of your choice. (more…)

The 40/30/30 Rule Preps You For The Game Of Life

Lisa Hoover — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:40:00 +1100

When you’ve placed yourself physically where you need to be, kept at something past your initial doubts and taken a risk at failing, you’re running at 100 per cent. Thinking of challenges that way — 40/30/30 — is a great motivational tool. (more…)

Use An Over-Under Wrap To Keep Your Headphones Kink-Free

Jason Fitzpatrick — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:00:00 +1100

Headphones have a magic way of tangling themselves in inexplicably complicated knots. Many techniques for keeping headphones tangle-free work but they badly kink and over-tighten them in the process. Use an over-under wrap for easy and cord-friendly storage. (more…)

The Complete Guide To Google Wave Preview Available Now

Adam Pash — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:00:00 +1100

The preview edition of Gina and Adam’s new book, The Complete Guide to Google Wave, is now available in PDF form for your offline, ebook-reading pleasure. (more…)

Use A Paring Knife To Sharpen Your Vegetable Peeler

Sarah Rae Trover — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:30:00 +1100

It’s important to keep your knives sharp for a safe and efficient kitchen, but it’s easy to neglect the other bladed tools, like your vegetable peeler. Food weblog Chow shows us how to keep a sharpener’s edge with a paring knife. (more…)

Lock In A Fixed Schedule To Keep Work-Life Balance

Kevin Purdy — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:00:00 +1100

Being attached at the hip to your smartphone doesn’t mean you’re productive, just attached. The I Will Teach You To Be Rich blog showcases how three workers put a real fence around their work time and ended up more free. (more…)

Fix Unread Gmail Favicons In Better Gmail 2 And Greasemonkey

Kevin Purdy — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:30:00 +1100

Firefox with Greasemonkey: Gmail recently made a few tweaks to its message count API, leaving tools like the favicon message indictors by Eric Bogs and Peter Wooley, along with Gina’s own Better Gmail 2 Firefox extension, broken. Now they’re fixed. (more…)

Office 2010 Mobile Available For Beta Download

Kevin Purdy — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +1100

Windows Mobile 6.5: If you’re rocking a fairly new Windows Mobile phone, Microsoft offers a beta build of its portable Office applications until April 2010. That means free viewing editing of Excel, Word, Powerpoint, OneNote and other documents. (more…)

Use Windows 7 Themes In Vista Or XP

Kevin Purdy — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:30:00 +1100

Microsoft put far more work into the look and themes of Windows 7 than its previous operating systems. Pull down that design work into your non-7 system with Digital Inspiration’s simple work-arounds. (more…)

Chrome OS Virtual Machine Build Ready For Your Testing

Adam Pash — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:28:40 +1100

If you’re aching to try out Chrome OS after taking a glimpse earlier today, friendly power user Mark Renouf has compiled a VMware image of Chrome OS for testing out in your virtual machine environment. (more…)

Fraudsters Hitting Self-Managed Super Funds

Angus Kidman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:00:25 +1100

Scams hitting Internet banking are pretty common (and quite easy to recognise), but online criminals will have a go at any potential source of income. The latest target? Self-managed superannuation funds. (more…)

Grey Market Phones Might Be A 000 Risk

Angus Kidman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:30:55 +1100

If you want a particular phone model (or colour) that hasn’t been released in Australia, then buying it as a “grey market” import can seem like an appealing way to solve the problem. But as well as not getting any local warranty support, you might run into trouble when it comes to making 000 emergency calls. (more…)

Restoring From Your Windows 7 Backup

Angus Kidman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:00:27 +1100

Having a sensible backup strategy is vitally important, but so is knowing how to restore your backup if things go wrong. Microsoft’s storage blog runs down how to make that happen in Windows 7. (more…)

Google Real Estate Adds Obvious Search Option

Angus Kidman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:30:37 +1100

Google Maps has already made one upgrade to its real estate search since introducing it in July, and now there’s another why-didn’t-they-do-that before? option: searching for property by adding the words “real estate” to a map search. (more…)

YouTube Adds Machine-Generated Automatic Captions

Sarah Rae Trover — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:00:00 +1100

YouTube clips have previously allowed for captioning, but it was a system that was a little buggy and only worked from YouTube’s site. That’s all changed with the advent of machine-generated captions and auto-timing. (more…)

Will Telstra’s T-Box Change The DVR Market?

Angus Kidman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:00:51 +1100

If you want a no-brainer TV recording device, you’ve got two choices right now in Australia: the Foxtel iQ or the TiVo. Now Telstra is throwing its hat into the ring with the planned release of its own device, branded the T-Box. (more…)

LockThis! Password Protects Your Open Programs

Whitson Gordon — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:00:00 +1100

Windows only: If you’ve ever wanted to keep a program safe from prying eyes but don’t want to close it, free utility LockThis! will let you easily protect any open program, so that un-minimising it requires a password. (more…)

Sisimizi Organises Your Video Game Collection

Lisa Hoover — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:30:00 +1100

Windows: Gaming is fun. Organising all your personal video games isn’t. Sisimizi takes the hassle out of managing your collection so you can get back to raiding villages and killing zombies. (more…)

Shape Collage Online Makes Great Photo Collages In Your Browser

The How-To Geek — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:00:00 +1100

Web application Shape Collage quickly turns your online photos into embeddable photo collages with nothing more than a few clicks. It’s an interesting way to showcase your pictures online without a lot of work. (more…)

First Glimpse At Google Chrome OS

Kevin Purdy — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:00:00 +1100

Google offered up everything but a finished Chrome OS today, releasing its source code and explaining how it’s different from other operating systems. Here are the features, functions and screenshots you’ll want to know about. (more…)