Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Friday, September 12, 2008

Buy Online at the Holidays for HDTV Deals [HDTV]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/389666223/buy-online-at-the-holidays-for-hdtv-deals

The New York Times' Bits blog takes a look at surveys and pricing trends for LCD and plasma HD television models. The short version? If you wait until the holidays and buy online, waiting for a no-shipping-or-taxes deal to come along, you could save yourself more than 20 percent off the cost of screens anywhere up to 60 inches. Confused by all the jargon and numbers of big-screen buying? Check out our short and sweet HDTV guide. Photo by DeclanTM.

For the Best TV Prices, Stay Online [New York Times]

Duplicate Cleaner Ferrets Out File Dupes [Featured Windows Download]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/389666221/duplicate-cleaner-ferrets-out-file-dupes

Windows only: Hunt down multiple copies of the same file with Duplicate Cleaner, a lightweight and quick duplicate file finder. Add multiple paths to Duplicate Cleaner's search, handy for de-duping a media collection that spans multiple drives. Filter your duplicate search by file type, content, size, and date of creation. Additionally Duplicate Cleaner offers support for MP3 metadata, including artist, title, and album, a fantastic feature for weeding out a large music collection. For additional tips and tricks for cleaning up your duplicate files check out how else you can de-duplicate your data with free tools. Duplicate Cleaner is a free download for Windows only.

Duplicate Cleaner [via Freeware Genius]

Opera Beta Offers Email "Low Bandwidth Mode" [Beta Beat]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/389890077/opera-beta-offers-email-low-bandwidth-mode

A new beta of the Opera web browser is now available for download by willing testers and adds a "low bandwidth mode" email feature for when you're on skinny pipes (or just trying to save a few bytes), along with enhanced browser data sync between remote computers, email client improvements, and a better RSS feed preview. Let's take a look.

Perhaps the most interesting addition to Opera 9.6 is a low bandwidth mail mode. The Opera 9.6 Beta 1 changelog details how low bandwidth mode functions:

Low Bandwidth Mode is a setting on mail accounts that makes Opera Mail use as little bandwidth as possible.

For IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol), this means that Opera will only synchronise new messages and it will not fetch message attachments unless requested

For POP (Post Office Protocol), Opera will not fetch more than the first 100 lines of a message unless requested

Whether you're concerned about bandwidth caps or you just want a better performance out of the mail client, low bandwidth mode fits the bill.

Opera Link, Opera's browser data syncing feature, now includes custom search engines and the typed history from your address bar (it already syncs bookmarks, speed dial, personal bar, and notes). With Opera Link, if you typed in an address at home but didn't think to bookmark it before leaving for work, you can get to it at the office. Opera 9.6 also offers a better R! SS feed preview, as seen in the header screenshot at the top of this post. The new layout lets you give a potential RSS feed a more in-depth look before actually subscribing.

Other email tweaks include a Follow/Ignore threads feature to keep an eye on or banish an email thread, and a "Go to thread" option to quickly switch from a flat view to a threaded view for a particular message. For an overview of more Opera features—or if you haven't given it an in-depth look before—check out our Opera 9.5 screenshot tour.

Opera 9.6 Beta 1 [via Download.com]

iSearch a Better Way to Find People Online [People Search]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/389899173/isearch-a-better-way-to-find-people-online

New addition to the people search engine scene iSearch is a powerful tool for hunting down anyone online that offers better results than plain old Google in some cases. Search by name and location, screen name, phone number, school or company, and iSearch returns results from social networks as well as regular old web pages. My test searches for my co-bloggers were very detailed, and displayed many personal facts right within the results page. As with most people search engines, folks who don't have as much of an online presence don't show up as much (or just have multiple results from the same old company or school web page). For more on finding that someone, check out our full feature on how to track down anyone online.

iSearch [via Webware]

Back Up Your Files to Google Docs Automatically [Backup]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/389950762/back-up-your-files-to-google-docs-automatically

Right now there's no easy way to sync your office documents back and forth to Google Docs (uh, hello Google?!), but if you're comfortable at the command line, developer site Webmonkey details how to automatically back up your files to Google Docs using a Python script. The universal Google data backup and sync app is a long time in coming—someone build it, please!

Gmail Labs Adds Three New Reply Features [Gmail]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/390015748/gmail-labs-adds-three-new-reply-features

Gmail Labs has rolled out three new features to beef up the popular email client's Reply feature. How can you improve something as simple as Reply, you ask? Well, in at least three ways: Quote selected text, Default 'Reply to all,' and Vacation time. First, the simple Quote selected text feature generates a reply with the currently selected text. Just select the text you want to quote and then hit 'r' (the keyboard shortcut for Reply). This one seems like the most buggy, and the Official Gmail Blog admits it doesn't work in Chrome or Safari yet. (I even had a little trouble getting it to work in Firefox.) The other worked much better.

The next one is simple: Default 'Reply to all' does exactly what it sounds like: replaces the Reply button in the top right of emails with Reply to all by default. The idea behind it:

When we're working on features for Gmail, the email etiquette on the team is to reply all so everyone involved is kept in the loop. Mark was an intern here this past summer who got frustrated when he'd reply to an email only to realize that he forgot to reply all and had to resend the message. Thus, this Labs feature, which makes reply all your default selection.

It doesn't change the keyboard shortcuts, so 'r' still does a single reply and 'a' will reply to all.

Finally, the Vacation time feature adds something tremendous to the vacation auto-responder: It allows you to schedule your vacation so you don't have to do it manually when your vacation starts—and you don't forget to turn it off once you get b! ack. It' s simple, smart, and fills a need. Doesn't get much better than that.

New in Labs: Reply add-ons [Official Gmail Blog]

Monitor Your Monthly Bandwidth with Your Router [Bandwidth]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/389962223/monitor-your-monthly-bandwidth-with-your-router

In the face of internet service providers like Comcast instituting bandwidth-capping, the Simple Help weblog details how to use a router running the open-source DD-WRT firmware to monitor your bandwidth. It's actually very simple to do, requiring no work on your part aside from installing DD-WRT on your router. DD-WRT automatically tracks bandwidth, so from there it's a matter of knowing where to look. If you're running the user-friendly Tomato firmware (we also showed you how to install Tomato), you can easily access your daily, weekly, or monthly bandwidth as well.

Like DD-WRT, Tomato automatically tracks bandwidth usage for you, so all you need to know is where to look. Just log into the Tomato interface, and then click on the Monthly link under Bandwidth in the sidebar (or, if you're using a default configuration, just follow this link). You'll get a simple table displaying your bandwidth stats for the month. Tomato also displays bandwidth use by week, day, and even in real-time if you're interested.

I've used DD-WRT and Tomato exclusively over the past few years, so I'm not really sure what the status is for bandwidth monitoring on most default router firmware. If your router supports bandwidth monitoring, let's hear about it in the comments.

How to use the DD-WRT firmware to monitor your bandwidth [Simple Help]