Monthly Archives: October 2009

Google Docs Viewer Bookmarklet Makes PDFs Less Freeze-y [Bookmarklet]

Posted on October 7, 2009
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Clicking a PDF and waiting, waiting, waiting for it to load, or possibly crash your browser, is an inescapable web annoyance of bad-stand-up-comedy proportions. Unless you convert all of a page’s PDF links to open with Google Doc’s streamlined viewer.

Joen Asmussen coded the one-click bookmarklet converter because he himself was tired of waiting to see whether Adobe or another PDF plug-in would bring up a document, or force him to use his browser’s session restore feature.

It’s just as simple to use as any bookmarklet: drag it into your browser’s bookmarks or bookmark toolbar, click it on a page with any PDF links, and they’ll be converted to show you the document in Google’s own online document viewer, which then offers download and printing links. As Philipp at Blogoscoped notes, this would be a great candidate for a simple Greasemonkey script. Any takers?






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Tackle Out of Bounds Interview Questions by Rephrasing Them [Job Search]

Posted on October 6, 2009
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It’s one thing to successfully navigate through the minefield of standard interview questions, but what if a prospective employer intentionally or inadvertently tosses an out-of-bounds question your way. Yahoo Jobs offers three ways to handle the illegal questions.

Photo by Incase Designs.

If you’re faced with questions concerning your age, religion, disability, family situation, or another off-limits topic, Yahoo says to avoid answering the question and instead “answer the intent behind the question.” When doing so, it’s best to tactfully rephrase the question into a legal one before answering.

To answer the intent behind the question, try to figure out what the interviewer REALLY wants to know. For example, if the interviewer asks if you are a U.S. citizen (which is an illegal question), a smart answer would be, “If you mean to ask if I am legally authorized to work for you, the answer is yes.”

Of course, since the question is an illegal one, you can always be direct and refuse to answer, indicating that you are within your rights to do so—but then, if you're looking for a job you may not want to come off as hostile, especially if it seemed like an honest mistake. The post also explains that you can just go ahead and answer the question, but that "you should only answer the question if you truly are comfortable providing the information."

Browse the post for other advice on how to handle illegal questions, then prepare yourself more fully for that interview by knowing the answers to key questions before your job interview and what questions to ask during it.






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Turn a Credit or Membership Card into a Media Player Stand [DIY]

Posted on October 5, 2009
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You’re sitting on the airplane, you want to watch some music videos on your iPhone, smart phone, Zune, or other media device, alas you’re stuck holding it the whole time. Unless of course you use this handy hack.

We highly recommend against using your Platinum Visa for this trick, but if you have old hotel key cards, perks cards, or other non-essential plastic cards floating around in your wallet you can quickly turn them into a little portable stand for your iPhone or other small media player—this hack would work just as well for the Android and HTC Touch Pro we've got floating around the Lifehacker office.

All you need to do to turn your plastic card into a stand is make two bends. One bend about three quarters of an inch from the end of the card to create the “lip” for your player to rest on and another bend about in the middle of the card to create the “easel” back to keep it propped up.

If you need step by step instructions, check out the full tutorial at the link below. If you’re all about having a collapsible media player stand in your pocket but you’d like someone else to do the heavy lifting and create it for you, check out the previously mentioned GoGoStand.






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Build a Wallclock that Displays Time in Plain English [DIY]

Posted on October 4, 2009
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Tech-loving sister-site Gizmodo stumbled upon a magnificently novel and modern clock, which cost a mere $1,500. They also, fortunately, found a tutorial on making one yourself for a fraction of the price.

The premise of both the original item and the remake is a clock that displays the time in plain English instead of numerals. When it’s 5:15, the word clock lights up letters to say “IT IS QUARTER AFTER FIVE”. Perhaps not the clock for everyone, but if you love things with a modern bent, it’s quite the brag piece.

Instructables user drj113 made an excellent tutorial documenting the process he went through to build his own clock. You’re not going to be able to do it with duct tape and cardboard, but if you’re interested in learning more about electronics and creating your own circuit boards, this is the task to tackle. Check out the full tutorial at the link below to see an animation of the clock in action.






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Host Your Domain Email at Gmail (Without Forwarding)

Posted on October 3, 2009
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Google Apps for Your DomainIf you already own a domain name like yourname.com, you want to use your personalized email address–but you don’t want to advertise to the world you’re forwarding to and sending those messages from Gmail. While you can manage multiple email accounts inside Gmail by using forwarding, the POP fetcher, and different reply-to addresses, there’s an easier way–especially for groups like your family or small business. Google Apps Standard Edition (formerly known as “Google Apps for Your Domain”) can host your personal email at Gmail, but without tying you to a gmail.com address for free. Obviously you’ll need a domain to use this service, which will cost something to register. When you sign up for a Google Apps account, you’ll have to set your domain name’s email MX record to point to Google’s servers (you’ll get instructions on how to do that when you sign up). Once that’s done, you’ve got Gmail behind your personalized domain name. The Google Apps Standard Edition includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Sites (for simple web pages).

There are two main advantages to using Google Apps (for your domain). 1.) You can easily create other users at your domain. If my email is gina@example.com, and I’m the domain administrator, I can set up addresses for my co-workers or softball team members too and make jack@example.com and jill@example.com accounts. Then everyone at my domain can collaborate on documents and a shared calendar easily. 2.) If you decide you don’t like Gmail anymore? Just point your MX record to another host and you’re done. Your email address never changes, like it would if you wanted to bail on your you@gmail.com address. Back when it used to be called “Google Apps for Your Domain”, I explained more in detail how it works over at Lifehacker with some screenshots, then later at a post at HarvardBusiness.org. Check ‘em out:

How to Make Your Small Business Look Big [HarvardBusiness.org]
Ask Lifehacker: What Does Google Apps for Your Domain Actually Do? [Lifehacker]

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Two-Minute Video Makes a Lot of Sense of Google Wave [Google Wave]

Posted on October 2, 2009
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If you’re still struggling to understand how you might use Google Wave despite our in-depth first look, this quick video offers an excellent explanation of just one use case for how Wave can outshine email as a collaboration tool.

If you’re one of the eager Wavers, whether you’ve got an invite or not, let’s hear what you’re looking forward to using Wave for in the comments.






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Vista Services Optimizer Updates to Support Windows 7 Tweaking [Downloads]

Posted on October 2, 2009
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Windows Vista/7: If you liked the ease of use and wizard-driven tweaking found in Vista Services Optimizer and miss it now that you’ve upgraded to Windows 7, you’ll definitely want to check out the new Windows 7-friendly version.

We first shared Vista Service Optimizer with you earlier this year, when it was Vista-only. Since then it has been updated to support Windows 7.

It still has great time-saving features like automating customization, the ability to create profiles for various tweaks—some tweaks you'd only want applied when you're trying to max out system resources for gaming, for example—and a rescue center which will undo changes made by Vista Optimizer and other applications that tweak your Windows services.

Vista Services Optimizer is free, open source, portable, and available for both Windows Vista and Windows 7.






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Get Quick Access to Windows 7′s Jump Lists From the Keyboard [Windows 7]

Posted on October 1, 2009
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When we showed you how to master Windows 7′s new Jump Lists feature, there was one extremely useful tip that we left out: you can also access them from your keyboard.

The Into Windows blog points out a built-in shortcut key in Windows 7 that opens up the Jump Lists for the first 9 taskbar icons—just like you can use Win+1, Win+2, etc to cycle between open windows on the taskbar or launch an application, you can use the Win+Alt+1 shortcut key combination to open up the Jump List for the icon in that position in the taskbar.

In the example screenshot, using Win+Alt+4 opened the Jump List menu for Microsoft Outlook, since it's sitting at the fourth position on the taskbar—or you could have used Win+Alt+1 to open up the Jump List for Windows Explorer. It's an excellent way to more quickly access one of the best underhyped features in Windows 7 and access recently used items more easily.






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Chrome’s Pin Tab Feature Shrinks Tabs to Favicons Only [Google Chrome]

Posted on October 1, 2009
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Google Chrome's Pin Tab feature shrinks any tab down to only a web site's favicon to save precious tab bar real estate—no extension required.

In August we detailed how to set up space-saving, icon-only tabs in Firefox so you’ve always got quick access to your most-used webapps (like Gmail and Google Reader) without wasting a lot of tab bar real estate. The FaviconizeTab Firefox extension is the secret sauce to that setup, allowing you to shrink any tab down to just the site’s favicon (the small icon image already in the tab); in the most recent dev channel releases of Chrome, you get the same functionality without needing to install anything. Here’s how it works:

Either you can right-click the tab you want to shrink and click on Pin Tab, or, if you’ve already pinned a tab, you can just drag new tabs over to the left of the window and they’ll shrink automatically. Pinned tabs aren’t permanent, but it would be really nice to have the option to choose whether or not pinned tabs will stick around between sessions.

The Pin Tab feature’s not brand new (it’s been around since at least earlier in September), but it’s a pretty nice one that slipped by our notice. Thanks Bennett and Santhosh!






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Extension Manager Makes Chrome Add-Ons Less Annoying [Extensions]

Posted on October 1, 2009
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If you’re running the Development (“dev”) builds of Google Chrome and have already jumped in with a few extensions, like Xmarks’ bookmark syncer, recent builds give you a more convenient way to monitor and remove those add-ons.

Type extensions into a new tab, and you’ll see something similar to the screen above. Reloading and uninstalling extensions that aren’t quite helpful is certainly useful, but the buttons on the right-hand side could be a bit better explained. This is, of course, an early version of a tool stuffed into a development channel release, so we’ll expect the look and feel to get a bit more polished in the “stable” channel.

Intrigued and want into the add-on manager? Change your Chrome settings to use the dev channel, and tell us what you’d like to see in a blue-sky Chrome add-ons manager in the comments. [via Download Squad]






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