Start Google Plus is a great extension for Chrome and Firefox that lets you update Twitter and Facebook from within Google+, also adding feeds from both social networks onto your main page. We mentioned it in our Facebook to Google+ migration guide, but felt it deserved to be highlighted on its own because it’s so useful. More »
Start Google Plus is a great extension for Chrome and Firefox that lets you update Twitter and Facebook from within Google+, also adding feeds from both social networks onto your main page. We mentioned it in our Facebook to Google+ migration guide, but felt it deserved to be highlighted on its own because it’s so useful. More »
We’ve talked about how ManageFlitter is useful for managing your Twitter account and raising the signal to noise ratio in your stream. The service now also automatically sends your public Google+ posts to Twitter, as long as you have the service connected to your Twitter account. More »
While this week many people are searching for Easter Eggs or the Afikoman, here are 10 hidden settings you can find in your Mac apps and OS X. These are all small changes you can make that make using the applications and the system slightly better.
First off, you’ll need to open up the Terminal application (/Applications > Utilities > Terminal), since these ‘Easter Eggs’ have to be run from the command line. Once you’ve got that open, you can copy and paste the commands below. Each command is one line only, and you should press Return after pasting in each command. To turn these off after, replace YES with NO (or vice-versa) and repeat the command.
Sometimes it’s useful to keep one of you Dashboard widgets around after you close Dashboard, so paste the following into Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES && killall DockTo use this ability, click and hold a widget and then close Dashboard using your keyboard hotkey (usually F4 on newer Macs).
The compose window in Twitter for Mac floats above all other windows at all times, which can get annoying. To stop it floating, paste this into Terminal, then restart Twitter for Mac.
defaults write com.twitter.twitter-mac NormalComposeWindowLevel -bool NOAnother one for Twitter for Mac, this allows you to press Esc to close the new tweet window. Once again, paste and then restart Twitter for Mac.
defaults write com.twitter.twitter-mac ESCClosesComposeWindow -bool YESThere are some files which the Finder keeps hidden, but you might want to be able to see them sometimes, such as .htaccess files for web developers. To show hidden files, paste this into Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES && killall FinderYour hidden files should now show up.
When an application crashes, you’ll see a dialog telling you the application quit unexpectedly. This can get annoying if it happens often, so you can disable that dialog using
defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType noneYou may need to restart your computer for changes to take effect. To turn this back on again, replace ‘none’ with ‘prompt’.
The QuickLook feature of Finder is great, but if you use it on a folder, you won’t see anything except a folder icon. Using this hidden setting, you’ll be able to see the contents of the folder when you use QuickLook.
defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 1 && killall FinderTo turn off, replace the ’1? with a ’0?.
It’s easy to get lost in your file system, so enable this to show the path of the current folder in the title bar of your Finder window. That should make it easier to remember where you are.
defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES && killall FinderYou’ll often see tips on how to change the arrow links in iTunes’ list view to go to your library instead of the store, but what about turning them off altogether? Paste this command and restart iTunes.
defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YESAnother troublesome floating window is the Help window which appears when you click Help in most applications. To stop it floating, use
defaults write com.apple.helpviewer NormalWindow -boolean yesIf you don’t like the default image shown behind the login screen, you can change it to any other image using the following command. Just add the path of the image after the word ‘path’.
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture -pathSecrets is a preference pane which allows you to control even more hidden settings in Mac applications using a friendly interface, rather than having to use Terminal. You can download it here, and once installed you’ll find it at the bottom of System Preferences.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):
Mac OS X only: Boxcar is one of the essential iOS apps, as it can notify you about far more than just a new SMS. Boxcar for Mac, just out in beta, does the same thing for your desktop, pinging in for new Google Voice, Twitter replies or DMs, Reddit posts, Github committs—just about anything, really. More »
Our Hive Five asks readers to identify five of the best tools for any job, then vote for the absolute best. Here’s a look back at the winners from each week in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Every week we pose a question to you, the computer savvy readers of Lifehacker. Tirelessly we search for the next “Which is best?” question and through the hive mind we distill down your thousands of nominations into a list of the top five candidates. You vote on the best of the best and we return the next week to declare a champion.
The following list showcases the winners in each of the categories we covered in the fourth quarter of 2009. If a particular category catches your eye and you’d like to see the other contenders, click on the name of the category to jump to the original Hive Five post, clicking on the name of the winner will take you directly to the winner’s web site.
TweetDeck boasts the ability to monitor multiple social-networking services, in this case Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace. You can fight Twitter spam with a built-in spam monitor, follow topics with saved searches, and preview shortened URLs from within TweetDeck. You can use TweetDeck to manage multiple Twitter accounts from one interface and thanks to web-based TweetDeck accounts you can back up and sync your TweetDeck profile across multiple machines.
SparkPeople is a comprehensive weight-loss web site. A free membership gives you access to a variety of nutritional information and calorie-tracking tools, weight-tracking tools, and the enormous SparkPeople community. Personal pages, like mini-blogs within the SparkPeople site, help you publish your progress and connect with other users who have similar goals. You’ll find no shortage of ways to track and analyze everything from the types of food you eat to the amount of weight you lift-and lose!-in the reports section of the site. SparkPeople is available in a scaled-down mobile version for use on your web-enabled phone or as an iPhone/iPod touch application.
Process Explorer is the free and portable offering from Microsoft. Process Explorer is like the standard task manager on steroids. You still get a list of processes, you still see charts of your usage, but both give you significantly more information and control over the information. Unlike the default manager, Process Explorer makes it easy to track down which file is being held by which program and get to the bottom of computer mysteries like why a certain DLL or DOC file simply cannot be deleted. It also shows which service is performing which function so you’ll never look at a long and repetitive list of Windows system executables that are indistinguishable from each other-every one will be associated with its function.
The Advanced Packaging Tool, a.k.a. APT, is a free tool built into most Linux distributions and many variants that handles the installation, removal, and updating of software packages. APT is a tool that went a long way toward making Linux a bit friendlier to the masses who aren't comfortable installing or compiling software packages on Linux, but it runs from the command line, so it's still not all that friendly to folks joining Linux from the Windows or Mac worlds. That's where Synaptic comes in. Synaptic is a graphical front end to APT that makes the tool wildly more user-friendly, and—yes—it handles checking for and updating software with aplomb. (Folks using Ubuntu, <a href="the most popular Linux distribution among Lifehacker readers, take note: Synaptic will be replaced by the Ubuntu Software Center—another APT-powered update tool—in April of 2010.)
PortableApps is the Grand Daddy of portable application sites. Between John Haller—the founder of the site—and the dozens of developers, packagers, translators, and the hundreds of people that participate in the forums, the sheer number of people working to polish the PortableApps suite has resulted in a very comprehensive package. The PortableApps suite includes basics like Firefox for browsing and Pidgin for instant messaging but also includes—in the full package—Open Office. You could download all the individual portable components separately of course, but what really ties everything together is the PortableApps menu system. Seen in the screenshot above, the menu system is clean, includes a backup utility, and makes organizing your portable apps and documents simple.
A long time coming, Windows finally enhanced the standard taskbar, creating a swanky dock system to call its own. Windows users trying out Windows 7 for the first time are in for an extra big treat-the change from the old taskbar system to the new dock is huge. You can drag and drop to pin shortcuts to the taskbar, Win+# (where the # is the numerical position of the pinned icon) launches the application, and icons also have jump lists associated with them—quick access to routine features and commands for that particular application. Hovering over the icon of a running application gives you a quick peek and the ability to jump to the application or close it. Microsoft was late to the dock party, but at least when they finally rolled it out, they remembered to decorate with streamers and bring a cake.
The free offering from AVG is one of the lightest, feature-wise, among the nominations in the anti-virus Hive Five. That said, if you’re looking for a basic antivirus application that will scan your computer, keep an eye out for spyware, and keep you from visiting malware and virus laden websites (via their LinkScanner protection), AVG is a solid free offering.
Once you install Dropbox, a folder, appropriately called "My Dropbox", is placed in the Documents area of your computer. Anything you put into this folder will be synced with your Dropbox account. You can sync files, share files by making the folder they are in public, and restore a previous version of your file—Dropbox keeps a change log going back 30 days. All your files are also accessible via the Dropbox web site, which is great for those times you're at a computer where you don't have Dropbox installed, but you still want to access a document. If you want to sync a folder without putting it directly inside the main My Dropbox folder, you can do that with a little elbow grease, too. Dropbox doesn’t have an unlimited option like the rest, but if all you want to back up is your most important documents, it certainly works as off-site backup, and it provides data redundancy on every computer you install it on.
CamStudio is a free and open-source offering for the screencasting market. You can record all or part of your screen, customize cursors and text annotations, adjust the quality of the video output, and save screencasts as AVI or SWF files. The interface is easy to understand, and you won’t be overwhelmed with extensive options. In a nutshell, it’s a free and effective tool for creating screencasts without a lot of bulk or expense.
Amazon's wishlist system used to only support items that Amazon or affiliates carried—which, while limited, still gave you access to a large stable of items. When they rolled out the Universal Wishlist and its accompanying Wishlist Button, however, you got the ease of use of the Amazon wishlist system plus the ability to add items to your list that Amazon.com doesn’t carry. Anything from any web site can now be added to your Amazon wishlists, both private and public, using the Wishlist Button. Creating and managing your Amazon wishlist is free.
OneNote is a note-taking and organization tool that many Lifehacker readers have called Microsoft's best product. It's versatile—it's made appearances here, in the best note-taking tools and journaling Hive Fives—and the outlining functionality is well integrated and easy to use. One of the strong points of outlining in OneNote is the way outlines support the same drag and drop rearranging found throughout OneNote. Almost every single element in a OneNote page can be dragged, dropped, or easily manipulated with a context menu—the screenshot above shows an element in the outline right before being dragged into a new slot. Note: If you’re curious about the GTD context in the screenshot, read our guide to getting things done with Microsoft OneNote.
CCleaner isn't strictly a startup management tool. Most people use it to clean out cookies and other undesirable elements and to tidy up the registry. A secondary but helpful tool in CCleaner: it also allows you to delete entries from the startup file—hence its inclusion here. It's a bit of a one trick pony, though; you can't alter, tweak, or insert entries. You can only delete them. Still, it gets the job done if the task you want isn't advanced tweaking, but just to get that annoying program to stop popping up every time you reboot.
The last quarter of 2009 was filled with all sorts of useful tools and software to help you get things done. If reading over the list gave you an idea for the next great Hive Five topic, drop us a line at tips at lifehacker.com. Make sure to include Hive Five Idea in the subject so your idea gets forwarded to gnomes at mission control.
A friend complained to me that after only two years, she had to replace her laptop’s battery because it wouldn’t hold a charge. I found myself telling her that she shouldn’t keep her notebook computer plugged in continuously, because it would kill the battery faster. Then I stopped myself: Was this just outdated geek lore rendered obsolete by modern batteries?
Yes and no. It depends, of course, on what kind of battery you have. Battery technology has come a long way over the years, and surely in 2009 you don’t have to worry about how long your laptop’s been plugged in. However, one major notebook manufacturer (which ships Lithium-ion batteries) thinks you should, and suggests adding a reminder to your calendar to deplete and recharge your battery once a month. To quote: “Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time.”
My friend, however, has a two-year-old Dell. Cursory Googling for her model didn’t turn up the equivalent of Apple’s definitive statement, only lots of opinions which ranged from “it’s a non-issue” to “yes, it kills batteries!” Dell.com’s battery recommendations page doesn’t say anything about not keeping your notebook plugged in. HP’s battery tips page doesn’t answer the question, either. I pored through my wife’s ASUS Eee PC user guide and didn’t find any warning about continuous charging. A non-mention might make you think it’s a non-problem, but if this is an issue for Apple notebook batteries, it is for PC notebooks with lithium-based batteries too. When I asked, my Twitter followers returned mixed replies, but many notebook users (both Mac and PC) DID report anecdotal battery problems when the machine was plugged in constantly.
Other folks more educated about the differences in battery types than I am dropped knowledge about which ones are problematic and which aren’t. Here’s what they had to say about their notebook batteries.
I asked: Is it true that keeping your laptop plugged in continuously degrades battery life? GOOG turns up conflicting reports, need authoritative source.
wilw said, “Anecdotally, I can tell you from personal experience that it does. I’ve replaced 2 MBP batteries for that reason.”
kevinmarks said, “it depends on the kind of battery you have in the laptop.”
howtogeek said, “A bunch of good info on the topic“
YourGoToGuy said, “No research. But my Dell battery just went dead after a couple of years for that reason.”
ethnicomm said, “guess it depends on if the battery has *memory* – I thought it was best to run it down to almost nil before recharging.”
cfarivar said, “if so I’m screwed!”
aloncarmel said, “asking the same. Apple answer about Mbp is that it doesn’t harm the batt. I dunno. I still drain it.”
CoreyHarris said, “I have always heard the same thing, But I don’t like to run off battery if I don’t need to.”
room214 said, “I have set my battery to only start charging when below 88% and stop at 99%. It should help increase the life of the battery.”
brandon_wirtz said, “depends on what kind of battery you have. Lead Acid (heavy short life like your car has) Nope. Just LI yes. Li polymer no.”
brandon_wirtz said, “Some Battery types get a memory, some don’t some only charge so many times some don’t”
brandon_wirtz said, “Also depends on if your laptop has a good Voltage regulator for charging. Faster charging laptop is more likely to wear battery”
bonsai said, “With modern LiPoly or Ni-MH batteries, it’s all about the charger rather than batt. chem. so it actually depends on the laptop.”
andrevr said, “Pretty sure that’s not the case anymore. Smart charging circuits and battery tech have kilt that one.”
andrevr said, “Here’s some real data for you to consider. My Air has spent ALOT of it’s life connected.”
FrankRamblings said, “absolutely true. I completely killed a thinkpad battery in 9 months that way. To the point where total batt life was 12 mins.”
scorpusmaximus said, “I’m no expert, but I agree with Ray Maxwell on the battery question. Charging and partial charges degrade them quicker.”
bwhalley said, “it does, for fact. if it’s a desktop that’s portable, only put the battery in when you need to move it.”
alexknight said, “This happens with Lithium Ion batteries. Apple has a kb article that explains you should drain your battery once a month.”
dariomartinezb said, “PLS, share your findings. I keep my laptops connected all the time… I’ve found batt life to be really short for some of them!”
GBendinelli said, “that was true for Nickel Cadmium batteries, but isn’t really true anymore. It’s good to deplete it 100% after every 25 charges.”
davidleary said, “depends on whether or not you Laptop manufacturer is in the Laptop Battery replacement business too”
jtimberman said, “Depends on the battery type. Apple’s info for Macs“
diesh said, “for lithium batteries this is a good heads-up from Apple.”
thompsonpaul said, “recommendation is to remove battery when under AC power for long periods.”
thompsonpaul said, “Yup, it’s true, at least for Lithium Ion, as stated in ASUS’s laptop usage guidelines. Will try to find you online src”
thompsonpaul said, “Worst condition is keeping charged batt @ elevated temperatures, which is case w/ running laptop batts. cli.gs/BrvPnY“
revtristy said, “It’s true for me. I kept my laptop plugged in most of the time and now my battery shuts off randomly when not plugged in. Sad!”
ChrisKubica said, “If u have a Mac, this app helps u see info re yer battery’s life. A pic“
chrisbarber86 said, “Yeah it does, ideally you need to either remove the battery, or charge it up full, run it down 99% flat, then charge again etc”
tchachra said, “I have a laptop at home on my desk always plugged in. Never had a battery issue. Mac’s and or PC’s.”
haselhurst said, “i believe this is true. my battery was fine, then left laptop plugged in continuously for 2 years, no buggered.”
Cocodmonkey said, “experience says yes.”
GitEmSteveDave said, “I pull the batteries out of mine occasionally.”
emilsit said, “My bet? Depends how smart your charger is (and what battery technology).”
gdarklighter said, “no. Modern power supplies are smart.”
biggsjm said, “According to Apple you need to cycle once a month. Run down to empty and then recharge.”
joshbrez said, “My first MBP battery ran down enough w/ it always plugged in for Apple to replace it for me”
UnreadZigmund said, “I’ve also researched this after buying a netbook but couldn’t see a consensus.”
sameersama said, “well as far as personal experience is concerned then it does mess up the battery.”
puneetsarda said, “yes it does My laptop’s battery life has fallen to 35-40mins”
robert_wheeler said, “from experience supporting many laptops yes leaving them plugged in degrades battery life but it can take months to happen”
jaskirat said, “No way. Using your laptop on battery all the time degrades battery!”
guscuddy said, “I’m no expert, but my last laptop battery died after a little over a year (and all of a sudden) because I kept it plugged in.”
emhs said, “At the Shack, we have a policy to not keep the battery in demo laptops. Not quite authoritative, but close.”
Update: This Bit About Batteries (see the “Calendar Life” section) explains details of Li-Ion battery life under different conditions. Thanks @ChrisKubica!
Of course, the best way to find out is to RTFM for your notebook and battery type to be sure,. My primary notebook is a MacBook Pro, and as per Apple’s suggestion, I don’t keep it plugged in continuously at my desk. (Because I’m on my second battery already, I’m paranoid and pull the plug a couple times a week.) Image courtesy of andrevr.
Windows/Mac/Linux/iPhone: TweetDeck, the Twitter client that helps cut through social noise, has unleashed a clever version of its popular multi-column app for iPhones, as well as made it easy to synchronize columns and work with multiple Twitter accounts.
The column synchronization is a smart move, considering many fans of TweetDeck’s increasingly popular desktop client are likely to try out the iPhone and iPod touch version and not want to have to add in all their columns again. The desktop versions don’t seem to synchronize all your actual app settings, though, so our previously posted migration tip is worth checking out.
As for the client updates themselves, well, TweetDeck as run on Adobe AIR hasn’t changed all that much, other than allowing for controlling multiple Twitter accounts, which power users will love and may migrate over for. The iPhone app does a great job of recreating the multi-column control of TweetDeck through sliding tabs, and offers most of the functionality for reading and posting that other popular apps like Seesmic and TwitterFon. Most importantly, it does what its desktop counterparts does—sifts and sorts through all kinds of noise to let you get at your replies, messages, and most relevant search terms quickly.
TweetDeck is a free download for iPhones and iPod touch models through the App Store, and via the Adobe AIR platform on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Click through the screenshots below for a bigger look at TweetDeck’s iPhone client and multi-account desktop integration.
TweetDeck’s main view. Click on a column to zoom in and scroll through, then hit the “Columns” button again to switch to the 10-feet-away view.
Composing a new tweet in TweetDeck, with options for TwitPic-powered photos (from camera or your saved photos), web links (which seem to be waiting for cut and paste to drop today to start working), and adding geo-location map URLs.
Adding a new column from the iPhone is pretty easy, and doing so with a TweetDeck account enabled syncs it to your desktop versions.
The multi-account manager in TweetDeck’s Adobe AIR client. I don’t have multiple Twitter accounts, but from other screenshots, it only takes one button click when composing or replying to decide which account your message comes from.
Synchronization of columns back to your TweetDeck account, so they show up on your iPhone and other desktops.
Twitter has become a nationwide phenomenon, and like any phenom, all the Twitter talk grows quickly tiresome. But despite what you may think, Twitter isn’t just for narcissists; it’s actually insanely useful.
So let's assume that you already know about the navel-gazing uses of Twitter—the aspects of Twitter that most people criticize when they complain about the site. Discounting Twitter altogether because you think it’s ridiculous that people tweet about what they had for breakfast is like claiming that email is useless because of forward chains. It’s a mistake, and you’d be missing out on a great tool if you let that put you off Twitter completely.
Twitter is as useful as you make it. In fact, Twitter does several very worthwhile things better than any other tool.
Search is hands down the most useful feature of Twitter—whether or not you actually participate by posting anything to the site. Consider, for example, a very trivial example: I live on the West coast, so when the American Idol results show ends every Wednesday on the East coast, it's only 7pm here. I could wait two hours, then suffer through another hour of the Wednesday night, up-with-people variety show, but I really just want to know who was voted off. News sites move too slowly, and at one point blogs had aimed to fill this instant-answers void, but guess what: When you want to find out who was voted off Idol as soon as the results are available, Twitter is the quickest and easiest way to get this answer. Try it sometime. Within seconds of the announcement on Idol, Twitter fills with hundreds of posts answering this question for me.
The real-time search applies to so much more. If the signal on my cell phone goes out, I check Twitter to see if there's some sort of AT&T outage in my area. If I want to know what people are saying about something important to me, I hit up Twitter. What you get is like a centralized, searchable, real-time comment-thread for everything. Yes, like all comment threads, you'll find a good amount of crap. But that doesn't render the entire thread worthless. Bookmark Twitter Search now and use it next time Google or your favorite blog search engine fails you.
Virtually every company has a Twitter account these days, which means if there’s a product you really care about, following them on Twitter is often the easiest way to stay up to date with the latest developments. But more often than not (in the context of Twitter, at least), the thing we care about most is ourselves. We’ve already shown you how to create an ego search to monitor what’s being said about you on the web, but now Twitter is another must-use tool for getting your ego fix.
Still, even if you’re not an ego-maniac, surely there’s something that you care about that you could monitor on Twitter. Do yourself a favor and download one of the free desktop Twitter clients to help you create persistent Twitter searches so you can keep track of whatever your want without always hitting up the main Twitter search page. We’d recommend checking out TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop.
We've been using newsreaders to subscribe to RSS feeds for years now, but newsreaders still haven't completely caught on with the world at large. It seems less manageable to us, but many people are perfectly happy using Twitter as a tool to keep up with the latest news—which is partly why CNN has over 1 million followers. Likewise, re-tweeting (the process of copying and re-posting someone else's tweet) spreads news like wildfire—so breaking news can reach you on Twitter a million times faster than through any of the old methods. (For what it's worth, here at Lifehacker we have our own Twitter feed that pushes out all of our top stories.)
This is closer to what people think about when they think Twitter. But, as I said above, Twitter communication doesn't have to be a cesspool of "what I ate this morning" and "just flushed the toilet." You can choose whose updates you want to be notified of and how you get those updates. Upshot: If you and your pals use Twitter well, it can be a fantastic communication tool. If not, of course it's useless—but that's not really Twitter's fault. Also, if privacy is a concern, you can always protect your updates.
Whether you want to add a new event to Google Calendar, a new to-do to Remember the Milk, or a new note to Evernote, you can do it all via Twitter. It took us a while to warm up to Twitter from a productivity angle, but this kind of integration made us admit that Twitter may yet boost your productivity, too.
Provided you have enough followers (with enough knowledge), Twitter is also a powerful place to ask questions and get answers. Before I started writing this post, for example, I asked my followers what they think Twitter’s best uses are—the answers to which helped inform this entire post.
TinyChat is a no-frills service for creating disposable chatrooms. Each chatroom gets a unique TinyURL for easy sharing, and nobody involved needs special software to join in.
TinyChat is from the same people who brought you the Twitter-friendly TinyPaste service we reviewed last year. TinyChat generates a basic chat room that supports IRC-esque commands like the ability to /msg people in the room and use /me to emote—similar to another disposable chat service we've reviewed, Stinto. Share the URL with friends and all they have to do is click the link and pick a nickname to join in. You can save the logs as text files, send them via email, create a TinyPaste text clipping, or save them to Twitter. Great for creating discussion space outside official chat rooms, or organizing people across different IM services.
 Visual Studio Team System helps teams of every size collaborate better for faster app development. Learn More at microsoft.com/defyallchallenges/team |