Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Friday, August 15, 2008

Baja BBQ

Source: http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2008/08/baja-bbq.html

"The Baja BBQ firepack is a charcoal packaging that lights instantly and burns away in the grille, making the barbeque experience simple, clean and chemical free. Made from 100% recycled biodegradable paper pulp, the package contains 2lbs of natural lump charcoal and features an integrated chimney that creates perfect hot coals without the aid of chemicals or light fluid."

It's good to see the package being used as the product and innovation that looks at stripping away and not adding, that is sustainable but well designed.

More pictures after the jump.

Paper Torn with a Document Shredder Can Be Reconstructed

Source: http://www.labnol.org/software/reconstruct-documents-torn-with-paper-shredder/4202/

paper-shred

You may feeling safe after tearing all those “secret” documents into tiny strips of paper using the shredding machine in the Office but wait, there’s a Windows software that can recreate the originals even from those torn noodle-like pieces.

Called Unshredder, this software analyses all the torn pieces of paper and reconstructs the original document without requiring human intervention.

shredder

Of course you’ll first need to scan those pieces into the computer using a scanner machine but this is anytime more efficient method than asking an employee. Pic: Flickr.

Paper Torn with a Document Shredder Can Be Reconstructed - Digital Inspiration

Make Your Desktop Icons Smaller or Larger with the Mouse Wheel

Source: http://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/make-desktop-icons-smaller-larger-with-mouse/4209/

When you right-click on the Windows desktop, there’s an option to change the default size of desktop icons - you could either choose medium, large or the default "Classic" size.

desktop icons size

Now if you are looking for something extra and don’t want to limit yourself to these three default sizes, try this trick:

Left-click anywhere on the desktop, hold the ‘Control’ key and move the scroll wheel on the mouse - the desktop icons will grow smaller or larger depending upon the direction of your scroll.

Uncheck the "Auto Arrange" option for some more interesting results. Now I use this on a Windows Vista desktop ~~but the trick should probably work on XP systems as well~~ (sorry, its a Vista specific feature).

Also see: Access Desktop Icons from your Web Browser

Make Your Desktop Icons Smaller or Larger with the Mouse Wheel - Digital Inspiration

Send an Anonymous Email Message With Note2Email

Source: http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/send-anonymous-email-messages-online/4240/

anonymous-email Note2Email is a simple web form that you may use for sending email messages anonymously to just about anyone - no need to create any account.

Your IP address is not passed in the message header so your identity remain hidden and the email recipient will never know who exactly sent that message and from where.

Other than sending anonymous emails, this service will also come handy if you are sitting on a public terminal and want to quickly send yourself an email without logging into your own web account for security reasons.

You may send unlimited number of emails with Note2Email but one at a time. Obviously there’s potential for misuse so you can ask them to blacklist your email address so that people can’t send you messages anonymously.

Send an Anonymous Email Message With Note2Email - Digital Inspiration

Interact with Websites via Easy to Remember Email Addresses

Source: http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/interact-with-websites-via-easy-email-addresses/4230/

You know how easy it is to interact with websites through email. For instance, you can upload photos to Flickr, publish blogs on Tumblr, add tasks to your To Do list in Remember The Milk, upload files to Google Docs, save notes in Evernote, send videos to YouTube, convert documents .. and so much more with a simple email message.

Each of these services provide you with a secret (and often impossible to remember) email address that you are not supposed to share because anything sent to that address will instantly get published / uploaded on to your account.

emails

Since it is fairly hard for anyone to remember these addresses, the alias feature of Gmail can come quite handy here. Lets see how using Flickr as an example.

Setup a Gmail account (say labnol@gmail.com) and create a new filter. In the To: field, type labnol+flickr@gmail.com and then put your secret Flickr email address in the "Forward it to:" field. Save.

gmail-filter

Now any picture attachment that is addressed to labnol+flickr@gmail.com will get published on Flickr. You can create similar aliases for other services like labnol+youtube@gmail.com for YouTube, labnol+gdocs@gmail.com for Google Docs, and so on.

So your single Gmail account acts as a central hub and redirects messages to the relevant service based on the alias used in the address. And since these email aliases are so logical, you will probably have no trouble remembering them even if your email address book isn’t around.

Also see: Create Email Polls using Gmail

Interact with Websites via Easy to Remember Email Addresses - Digital Inspiration