JONAS brand new episode 13 – “Detention” part 1/3 twitter.com / twitter.com twitter.com / twitter.com twitter.com / twitter.com Credit: www.dd365media.com
JONAS brand new episode 13 – “Detention” part 2/3 twitter.com / twitter.com twitter.com / twitter.com twitter.com / twitter.com Credit: www.dd365media.com
Email has become the default form of communication for many of us—as evidenced by overflowing inboxes despite our best attempts to wrangle them—but actual voice communication still has it’s place. So we’re wondering:
When do you pick up the phone rather than sending another email?
Photo by Atilla1000 (come back soon!).
We do almost everything over email and chat around Lifehacker HQ, and text communication has plenty of benefits, to be sure. You can always go over an email or chat transcript to verify what you discussed, what decisions were made, and so on. That’s not really the case for phone conversations unless you record all your phone calls, and even then they’re not easily searchable.
On the other hand, phone calls can be quick, easy, and more effortless, especially if you just need a quick answer to a hard-to-articulate-in-text question that would require a lot of typing. So we want to hear when you email, when you pick up the phone to call, when you switch over to instant messenger, or when and why you choose whatever form of communication when you want to reach out and touch someone. Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.
After Microsoft stated a week ago that it would look into reports of Windows 7 causing premature battery degradation, we’ve been staying up late at night with our frazzled lithium ion cells, reading them stories about Battery Heaven and generally trying to keep an upbeat tone around the Engadget HQ. Well, it turns out not everything is rosy in batteryville, but Microsoft says Windows 7 isn’t the one to blame. According to the company’s testing, the new tool, which reports when a battery is down to 40% of its designed capacity and suggests replacement, hasn’t reported a single false positive. Additionally, the tool uses read-only data from the battery, and is in fact incapable of tweaking the battery’s life span or internal data — it merely reports the data it receives, and stacks the theoretical design capacity up against the current full charge capacity. Microsoft attributes the reports of the tool dooming batteries to an early grave to the mere fact that many people might not have noticed the degradation already taking place in their batteries — most batteries start to degrade noticeably within a year. Of course, not everybody’s going to just take Microsoft’s word for it, and Microsoft itself will continue to look into the issue, but for now this sounds like a bit of a non-issue. The part about Windows 7 being less conservative with power use is a whole ‘nother issue, of course.
Microsoft says Windows 7 battery ‘issue’ isn’t one originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Ed. note: If you don’t use a full-fledged media box but wished you could have a remote to control Windows’ built-in media center (à la the Apple Remote with Front Row), here’s a tweak that’ll let other remotes control Windows Media Center.
Reader hjuliao discovered an easy tweak to make Windows accept other IR codes (like the Zune remote) without third party software:
Are you jealous of the Apple remote? Wish you can have such a small remote for Windows? Well there is one. The remote control for the Zune works just fine in Windows 7 media center. As long as you have the media center IR receiver all you have to do is change the IR Id on the registry.
By default Windows is listening on channel 1; the Zune remote is channel 8. This is also the same channel for the Xbox 360 multimedia remote. You can set the value to 8 but this mean that the regular MCE remote would not work. So what you want to do is set the ID to 0, this would make Windows listen to all the IR ID’s.
Open the registry. Scroll down to
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\HidIr\Remotes\745a17a0-74d3-11d0-b6fe-00a0c90f57daFind the
REG_DWORDnamedCodeSetNum0and change the value to Zero. Reboot the PC and enjoy.I have only tried this under Windows 7; however I don’t see it not working in any other version of Windows. I love it especially for when I use Hulu or Boxee. Please note that the Xbox 360 media remote will work as well, since it shares the same channel as the Zune remote.
No one at Lifehacker HQ has the necessary equipment in one place to test this one out, but it does seem to be a valid tweak. Try it out and let us know how it works for you in the comments. Thanks hjuliao!
Reverend Fred Phelps’s Westboro Baptist Church plans to picket Twitter’s San Francisco offices tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. PST. The Kansas-based church is picketing because it believes that “the people who run Twitter … don’t use their position & voice to warn a generation of rebels of the consequences of their rebellion.”
The church knows how to get attention. It has been hit with a tsunami of criticism for picketing military funerals and waving signs that say things like “God Hates Fags” while claiming that America deserves its military losses because of its sins. Westboro even runs a website at www.godhatesfags.com. Members will also be protesting several Jewish organizations — including the Anti-Defamation League — in the hours leading up to its visit to Twitter.
The church members will be tweeting about the Twitter HQ picketing rally as it happens. Don’t be too quick to point out the irony on that. The Westboro schedule says: “Now that should get interesting, WBC member(s) Tweeting as they picket outside Twitter, Inc. Won’t a black hole or something open in the space/time vortex?”
Remember: The church is neither protesting Twitter itself nor decrying it as a tool of human communication. Rather, it’s picketing the HQ because the bigwigs at the company aren’t using their places of power and influence to spread the word about the sins Westboro believes people commit and their expected consequences.
Presumably picketing Twitter will also get them some web and social media exposure. The old “all press is good press” idiom doesn’t apply in this case, though; the exposure they’re seeking will probably just draw more ire and lead to more marginalization.
[via ReadWriteWeb]
[img credit: harbor88]
Tags: protest, twitter, westboro baptist church
Ed note: We love AutoHotkey around Lifehacker HQ due to its powerful Windows tweaking skills, so we were thrilled when Reader Scott Rippey wrote in with this extremely smart script for managing your AHK scripts.
I’m ashamed to say that this is my first contribution to Lifehacker. I say “ashamed” because I’ve been taking and taking, and I haven’t given anything in return! So I thought it was high-time I contributed my most helpful AutoHotKey script. I call it “AutoInclude”.
There are 2 problems that it solves: first, as an avid reader of Lifehacker, and a huge user of AHK, I come across dozens of GREAT scripts that I want to incorporate into my own “main script”, but it can be quite a hassle combining them all into a single AHK file. Take a look at all these scripts:
Second, I use AHK on my Work PC, my laptop, and my Media Center — and I have different AHK needs for each of these locations, but I still want some AHK code to be shared across the board.
My AutoInclude script scans a list of folders for *.ahk, and creates a temporary AHK file that “#Include“s them all, and then executes the temporary file. It allows me to keep all my scripts VERY organized, allows me to determine which scripts are appropriate for each computer, and lets me edit my scripts very easily! Finally, I put all my AutoHotKey scripts into a Live-Mesh-Synchronized folder and share it across all my PC’s.
On each PC, I modify the top of the file to only include the folders that apply to that system (such as All, XP, and Tablet, versus All, Dual Monitor, and Work) and I comment out the rest:
Finally, when I run the script, I only have a single AHK process running! I love it.
The only thing that is tricky is the fact that “#Include“ing a bunch of files can cause possible issues if the script needs an “Auto-Execute” section. The solution is as follows:
If a script needs to auto-execute, then the first line of the file should be the comment “; Auto-Execute”, followed by the auto-execute code as usual, and there MUST be a “Return” before any other code or hot-keys. The AutoInclude script will put a label in front of the “#Include” statement, and will call a GoSub to that label, thereby auto-executing it!
Take a look at the auto-generated script:
You can download my AutoHotkey AutoInclude script here.
Thanks Scott! Want to get your feet wet with AHK? Take a look at our beginner’s guide to turning any action into a keyboard shortcut with AutoHotkey.
iPhone/Palm Pre: Apple and/or AT&T don’t want the Google Voice service to have its own iPhone app, and we think that stinks. Google is finally releasing the next best thing: a mobile site that basically replicates a dedicated Google Voice app.
The big advantage of Google’s new Voice app (which is already showing up for Voice users at Lifehacker HQ) is the direct contact access. Rather than having to store secondary numbers or use the somewhat old-school-looking Voice mobile site to pull up your contacts, Google Voice’s new webapp provides super-quick, as-you-type access to your Google Contacts. The interface is similar to what you see when you visit Voice in a full browser, with the same mobile look and feel as Gmail, Reader, and other products have recently received.
When you dial, it’s not the familiar experience of having Google Voice call you, then call the other person—it’s a direct dial to that person, probably using those same secondary numbers Google seems to have stockpiles of.
You’ll want to make sure your phone’s contacts are synced up with Google if you’re keen on using Google’s Voice app. It’s a free service, and requires a Google Voice account (which we hear they’re giving out more regularly).
If you’re already seeing the new Google Voice app in your iPhone or Pre browser, tell us what you think in the comments.
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We certainly love cheap around Lifehacker HQ, and this hack is about as cheap as it gets: instead of buying a drawer organizer, you could just cut up that old Lucky Charms box and let it organize your office supplies instead.
Blogger Patricia Zapata, who does a lot of recycling projects, cooked up this repurposing hack with a cereal box and some craft paper to cover the outside pictures (it doesn’t need to be that pretty, but the least you could do is hide that giant picture of Tony the Tiger). She even used some of the cardboard to create a divider, with which she could separate smaller objects (pens, paper clips) from larger ones (scissors, tape, stationary). It fit perfectly in her IKEA drawer, though you might have to make some adjustments—keep in mind there are many sized cereal boxes out there. Got any other cheap drawer-organizing tips? Share them in the comments!
MOUNTAIN VIEW—Ars is on-site at the Google HQ for an Android-related press event that kicks off at 10:00am PT (click here to see when the event happens in your timezone). Though it hasn’t been officially confirmed, it’s all but certain that Google will launch a Google-branded phone, named Nexus One. We’re providing news, analysis, and pictures live and in real-time, so join us in the chat below. A replay of the chat will be available after the event is over.
Check out our photo gallery of the Nexus One.
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