Hack the Day

Any mobile geek has more than once craved to have access to online maps from their phone. You know, when you’re stuck in traffic and looking for directions to the nearest Sushi restaurant or to that old vintage clothes shop you saw online yesterday. Yes, the iPhone has Google Maps integration, but it won’t help you much without GPS and with the limited set of features.

Undoubtedly the best mobile maps application around is Mobile GMaps. Free as in beer, it was the first mobile application of its kind, and the several years of age and sustained development turned it into the best and most feature-rich mobile maps piece of software. Read the rest of this entry »

Remember I promised I’d show you how to do your basic computer stuff from within Quicksilver? Well, it took me a while but I finally pulled myself together and wrote this tutorial - a beginner’s guide on doing all kinds of nice and useful stuff with Quicksilver.

What is Quicksilver, you ask? I dare you ask this again after reading my articles on Application Launchers - the ultimate geek Power Tools

Read the rest of this entry »

Given the major heat wave in Europe these weeks, an extra list of doctor-approved things to do(or not) in hot days is a welcome addition to my previous “heat survival tips“. I hope it’ll help at least a bit to cool you guys off.

• Avoid prolonged exposure to sun between 11 AM - 6 PM.
• Shut the sun-exposed windows and cover them with both curtains and window blinds. Keep them shut for as long as the outside temperature is higher than the inside. Let the cool air flow in the early morning or late night, while the outside temperature is lower.
• Reduce to minimum running electrical apparel - it tends to overheat and, what’s worse, to heat the surrounding air even more. Same goes for the light-bulbs - replace the incandescent ones with fluorescent ones as they greatly reduce the generated heat.

Read the rest of this entry »

Disabling the Trash Can

Sometimes the Trash really stands in your way - for instance, if you have a small capacity USB drive, a memory card or a Windows partition. You want stuff deleted from the Finder to be immediately erased instead of moved into the Trash Can.

To do this you need the Terminal (if you’re a beginner, see our terminal tutorials first). You’ll first need to change directories to the USB drive location - all drives addresses are to be found in the /Volumes directory. Once in the right location, you just need to remove and recreate the Trash folder - see below how:


cd /Volumes/YOURUSBDRIVE
rm -rf .Trashes
touch .Trashes


Easy, right? From now on, whenever you delete something on the drive, OS X will alert you that it will be deleted immediately.

How to view hidden files and folders in Finder?

Still in Terminal, type “defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles ON” (no quotes). Press Enter.
Next, restart the Finder process - type “killall Finder“.

From now on, in Finder you’ll see all hidden files and folders. Warning, it won’t be very pretty.

To reverse, repeat the same steps but with the first command “defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles OFF”.

(via applepedia)

Right-clicking with only the trackpad

All new switchers learn pretty soon that in order to right-click on OS X, they need: a. a two-button mouse or b. to press Ctrl while clicking.

Well, Apple laptop owners have a third less-documented choice(I didn’t know about it until recently): tapping the trackpad with two fingers.

If it doesn’t already work for you, then you must enable it: in System Preferences, open the Keyboard & Mouse item and make sure to check the “Tap trackpad using two fingers for secondary click” check box.
(via Ron Miller)

Ever since I bought my sweet white Mac Book, it’s existence has been threatened by a minor yet annoying little thing: the startup sound.

While the startup chime doesn’t bother me a bit, it drives my girlfriend mad, and her threats of throwing the damn thing away have been getting more and more frequent. As any Mac Book user out there knows, there’s no way to change the chime sound or disable it from within the system. Even plugging earphones before booting up fails, and if you don’t want to hear the annoying chime each morning, you’d have to carefully(or automatically) switch off the sound before shutting the computer off.

But all these worries are now gone, as today was my lucky day - randomly browsing macosxhints made me discover the little free application that’s bound to save my laptop’s life.

StartupSound.prefPane 1.1-BETA comes form Arcana Research Japan, is free and available at this link (direct download link here). Being a beta version makes it possibly unstable, but so far it worked out great on my Intel Mac Book.

Your computer productivity is directly influenced by the ease with which you are able to launch applications or find, organize and retrieve your internet downloads. A cluttered desktop only makes you lose time and focus trying to find the things you look for among the zillions of icons.

You might remember my article on turning your desktop into a productivity tool which is one of the most popular articles on this blog so far. At the time I wrote it, I was finding it strange that no other productivity blogs had tackled this subject yet. Boy was I wrong - the subject of organizing one’s desktop proves to be a favorite topic of discussion for a lot of productivity-oriented blogs and bloggers. Talk about insufficient research -

Since the subject of the perfect “productive” desktop is far from being closed, I decided to give you the

Top links list for a more Productive Desktop

- introducing you to the best ideas around the web about setting up your computer desktop for improved productivity.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hack the Day is probably the only blog never to have talked about the iPhone. I decided to change this now that the iPhone has launched. Everyone is claiming that it will make their lives more complete and more productive, two justified reasons to pay the price.

But is the iPhone the ultimate productivity tool, as some have been hoping? I take a look into how this device will impact your working style (disclaimer - I wasn’t lucky enough to be born in the iPhone country, so all information below is based on blog reviews and Apple’s documents) and what applications to use for your organizing and productivity purposes.

Read the rest of this entry »

I know, I know: I promised to make this a bi-weekly column and, so far, I only wrote one article in the series for the past two weeks. But, please, indulge me a bit: last week was a busy one for me - I wrote an article as a guest blogger for none other than Zen Habits, I had a lot of work to do for my day job, and above all I had to take a trip to Paris, France for some personal and administrative purposes.

But now I’m back and gettin’ serious. So, here’s my best links of the week selection:

• CNN’s article on How David Allen mastered getting things done - an amazing insight on the daily life of the GTD inventor. If you loved the book, take a look on this article as well to see who’s the man behind the system.
• How to be great at networking - How to Work the Room - you know it too well, success comes mostly by social means. Being the right person at the right time is also a matter of knowing the right contact. So take a look on this list, it might change your life!
• How to brainstorm domain names gives you a basic view on how to pick the names for your online business. I have a lot more to add on the subject, but I’ll come back someday with a detailed article…
• Innovation is a 4 hour process - how to check if an idea is good, bad or great? Give it a try for 4 hours, the time to get your feet wet.
• Gina Trapani from Lifehacker - Separate your email from your to-do’s practical advice on productivity; this time, about the importance of separating your systems
• Planning a startup? Here’s Crash Course In Startup Assumptions and Lessons Learned - never hurts to hear a fresh opinion on a startup, right?
• This week’s personal favorite? Life Learning Today’s Break These Rules for Success! - change the rules, think outside the box, stop bending to social conventions

Old habits die hard, and as much as the continuous progress wants us to change we still fight these artificial urges. We are builders, makers, do-it-yourselfers; or, at least, the heirs of some. My grandfather used to do by himself all kinds of stuff around house - masonry, carpentry, agriculture and much more - he had built his own bed, sofas, fireplace; even his own motorcycle, from the spare parts of two different models bought in the junkyard.

Me, I’m not a builder, but I do love getting things done once in a while, especially when I get to save a few bucks. Call me cheap, but I really don’t see the point on spending 30 bucks for a laptop sleeve I can make on my own for less than 1$. For less than 10 cents even.

Read the rest of this entry »

One day (this Monday) I felt like jinxed - plenty of unfortunate coincidences, one after the other, tens of minor ingredients adding up to the classic recipe for a bad day. I was angry, furious. I know, sh*t happens, but I hate it when it happens all at once. Maybe Karma has something to do with it or it could be just God’s way to show us he still exists.

Then I remembered an article I had read over here: people who smile get happier, even against their will. Our brain is so used to associating the feeling with the gesture that it actually works both ways.

Angry as I was, I forced myself to smile. And, against all odds, it worked: I instantly felt better. Like magic.

So, yes, here’s the magic tip - whenever you feel down, just SMILE! Doesn’t matter what you’re thinking of. Just smile.

That’s it. The single best happiness tip.

Enjoy