Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Monday, January 05, 2009

Stanza Turns Your iPhone into a Kindle [Featured IPhone Download]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/a6nK_Z0xnyU/stanza-turns-your-iphone-into-a-kindle

iPhone/iPod touch only: If recession budgeting meant choosing an iPhone/iPod touch over a Kindle when the dust cleared this holiday season, you're in luck: Stanza is a free and fantastic ebook reader for your iPhone.

The free application comes pre-loaded with several sources for downloading free or public domain books (including the entire Project Gutenberg library), so you can easily download books like The Art of War, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, or Walden in just a few seconds without spending a dime.

However, if you want to get new books, Stanza also comes with a bookstore with which you can purchase popular new titles as well. Prices range from $8 to $15 based on the books I browsed. The reader itself is fully customizable, so if you don't like the standard black text on white background look, you can just as easily pick something that suits you. Stanza is a free download for the iPhone or iPod touch.

If you can't imagine reading from your iPhone or iPod touch in public, consider turning your iPhone into a Moleskine book so it still appears to onlookers like you're reading dead-tree style.

Stanza [iTunes App Store via Wired]

New Year's Deal: Get 24 Months of Hosting + Domain for $11 [Deals]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/zl8KjHtPP0g/new-years-deal-get-24-months-of-hosting-%252B-domain-for-11

DreamHost is running a New Year's promotion right now. 95% off a 2 year hosting agreement which works out to $10.47.

QuickOnlineTips posted a promotion code earlier today that gives you a steep 95% discount off the 24 month package from DreamHost. Use the promotional code 202 when prompted for a promo code during checkout. For $10.47 you get unlimited transfers, bandwidth, a free domain registration and all the perks that come with a full account like unlimited MySQL databases, email accounts, and domain hosting. DreamHost also has a plug and play web control panel for quickly adding in popular components like WordPress. Disclosure: after reading about the affiliate program it would appear that QuickOnlineTips benefits directly from people using their promotional code. I'm perfectly comfortable with that for web hosting that costs $0.44 a month. If you're wondering what kind of experiences other Lifehacker readers have had with DreamHost, read over the comments on Call for Help: Reliable and Affordable Web Hosting? If you're wondering how to take advantage of a cheap web host, check out the Top 10 Way to put Your Remote Server to Good Use.

Dreamhost 95% Off New Year Hosting Sale [QuickOnlineTips]

DivFix++ Repairs Your AVI Files [Featured Download]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/sFfuPODKnDE/divfix%252B%252B-repairs-your-avi-files

DivFix++ is a cross-platform .AVI repair program that rebuilds the index file within the .AVI container to restore your movie to a functional state.

DivFix++ can be downloaded pre-compiled for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. The interface and operation is straight forward. Tell it where you want the repaired file to be saved, drag and drop some files to be repaired into the Source Files pane of the program and let it loose. Repair time was fairly quick on my mid-level machine and the resource utilization was lower than I expected. The program required no installation, just a simple unzipping, but beyond that I can't vouch for it's portability. DivX++ is cross platform and open source.

DivFix++ [via gHacks]

YackTrack Keeps an Eye on Comments [Tracking]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/c8ApdLREi_c/yacktrack-keeps-an-eye-on-comments

YackTrack is a comment tracking service. If you've ever wondered who is talking about a blog post or news article you can enter the URL and see who is talking about it and where.

YackTrack currently tracks comments on Blogger/Blogspot, Digg, Disqus, FriendFeed, Google Blog Search, Google Reader, IntenseDebate, Mixx, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati, TypePad/MoveableType and WordPress blogs. Additionally there is a "Chatter" function that lets you search for key words instead of single URLs. On the time saving side of things it's possible to set up a bookmarklet to help you search YackTrack and you can turn a search term into an RSS feed to plug it into your favorite reader and stay abreast of new comments.

YackTrack [via Download Squad]

Productivity Meter Tracks Your Computer Usage [Featured Windows Download]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/cWz6dY4_xHM/productivity-meter-tracks-your-computer-usage

Windows only: Productivity Meter is a time tracking tool from Fruitful Time, makers of the task manager we reviewed earlier this year.

Once installed the software sits in the background and keeps tabs on your activity. Productivity Meter tracks the active versus idle time, how your active time is split among applications, which applications were used the most, and which websites you browsed and for how long. You can review the stats for the last day, week, month or a user defined block of time. One of the most useful features is the ability to tag programs, windows, and domains. It would be entirely useless to many users—myself included— if the program simply told you when you'd been using a web browser and time spent on certain domains. I use a web browser for nearly all the work I do on my computer. By using the tag function I can tell Productivity Meter which domains I access for certain tasks and jobs. It's tracking for how much time I spend doing Lifehacker related work became significantly more accurate when I tagged all the domains I use. Another concern was that with a triple monitor setup and a huge number of windows open at any given time it wouldn't accurately track what I was really focusing my time and attention on. After testing it for the better part of a day it does a fantastic job tracking what I'm actually working on. The program is free for personal use, with the small caveat that after 30 days the ability to generate time cards is removed. If you don't need to generate time cards to show a boss or client how your time was spent on a give project it shouldn't matter much. All the graph! s and in formation in the main dashboard is available even after the 30 days window. Productivity Meter is freeware, Windows only.