Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Conference.io Sets Up Upload-Friendly Chat Quickly [Collaboration]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/vYBfFt-JtSQ/conferenceio-sets-up-upload+friendly-chat-quickly

Quick, simple file-sharing service Drop.io enabled real-time chat streams on file drops earlier this month. As of this morning, they've made it far more simple to bring a bunch of friends or co-workers into a (very, very) Campfire-styled web chat room with conference.io. Two clicks to create a room, email the link, and you can review uploads, call in by phone, and, coming soon, log in through a third-party chat app.



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Google Adds Longer Snippets, Better Related Terms to Search when you type more than 3 keywords - http://ping.fm/a43kh

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Google Adds Longer Snippets, Better Related Terms to Search [Search]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/SJY0OpusiGU/google-adds-longer-snippets-better-related-terms-to-search

Keeping it short and simple often pays off in Google searches. Starting today, however, any queries three words or longer pay off with longer text snippets in the results, giving you more context for your terms.

It looks like Google will roll down to three or sometimes four lines to present more of your search terms in the sentences they pop up in, which we have to imagine is a pretty good thing for most anyone. Google's also touting an improved algorithm for the "Searches related to: your terms here" splice that often appears after the second or third item on a results page. No details, really, other than Google understanding more queries, more languages, and being "more relevant." Speaking of Google search, how do you force Google to understand a possibly confusing search in context? If you've got the Google-fu, educate the grasshoppers among us in the comments. Screenshots from Google.



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Academic Earth Aggregates Lectures from MIT, Harvard, Yale, and Others [Education]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/zDaMSaDW9eU/academic-earth-aggregates-lectures-from-mit-harvard-yale-and-others

Web site Academic Earth is like Hulu for academic lectures, pulling free lectures from Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale into one attractive, easy to navigate site. It's incredible.

The site clearly takes its cues from Hulu and iTunes on its design, but it's ten times better than either, because it's open. The videos can be embedded anywhere or downloaded and enjoyed wherever you want to take them. It's easy to use, has tons of great content, and it doesn't cost a dime.

We've highlighted these free courses before individually, like MIT's OpenCourseWare or Stanford's Engineering Everywhere, and we rounded up even more of them when we showed you how to get a free college education online, but Academic Earth takes the idea to an even better place. We love it.



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StillTasty Tells You How Long Your Food Will Last [Food]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/ZkWJEuvCihw/stilltasty-tells-you-how-long-your-food-will-last

Got a fridge full of food but not sure what's still edible and what you'd regret an hour after eating? Web site StillTasty saves money with useful advice on your foods' shelf-life and best storage practices.

The site offers several ways to determine the viability of your leftovers and dusty cabinet items, including a simple search, category browsing, and a forum where you can ask more specific questions. You may have been tossing leftovers left and right in those decadent days of 2007, but these days, every dollar counts—which makes StillTasty a nice little tool. We've covered similar ground before, but StillTasty is the best tool for the job we've seen. Thanks Anne!



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