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Make Google Reader Widescreen-Friendly

Gina Trapani — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:51:16 GMT

Firefox with Greasemonkey: The Google Reader for Wider Screens Greasemonkey script uses all the horizontal space available in GReader for better viewing on wide monitors. Install the script to take advantage of a wide browser window and scroll up and down less than you have to. The Google Reader for wider screens user script is a free download for Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension installed. Thanks, Andy!

Best Video Feeds?

Gina Trapani — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 22:00:00 GMT

We love bringing you good video clips that show off hacks or give clever advice or different perspectives; Check out our weekend watching tag for a few we've posted so far. But what are your favorite sources of lifehacker-y video out there? I've been keeping tabs on Authors@Google, Boing Boing TV, TED Talks, and O'Reilly video. Any others worth adding to our subscription list? Shout out your favorite internet video feeds in the comments.

FeedMySearch Turns Google Search Results into RSS Feeds

Kevin Purdy — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:00:00 GMT

We're pretty dedicated users of the email-based Google Alerts at Lifehacker HQ, but certain search terms have just far too many results to not turn into a kind of voluntary spam. FeedMySearch, a free Google-tweaking utility, turns new results from Google's many search areas—web, news, blogs, images, and more—into an RSS feed you can incorporate however you'd like. Some of these results, like Google News, have RSS feeds built in, but FeedMySearch's web search feeds are full-fledged with embedded video and pictures, and the site makes it easy to embed the feeds in your favorite start pages or bookmarking tools. FeedMySearch is free to use, no sign-up required.

AideRSS Add-On Filters Feeds by Popularity in Google Reader

Kevin Purdy — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:09:00 GMT

Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): AideRSS, an RSS feed popularity filter that Adam had a few bones to pick with, has released a free Firefox extension that integrates its popularity rankings into Google Reader. AideRSS says it uses the number of comments, Google backlinks, bookmarks on social sites like Digg, reddit, and del.icio.us, and more data to determine a PostRank, which it plugs next to each feed item and offers as a drop-down filter. While it's obviously going to bias your reading against fresher posts that haven't had time to make their mark, it might be helpful to anyone trying to cut down on RSS clutter. For their next version, let's hope for an options dialogue to remove that PostRank number from every single post, as the filtering bar may be more useful to most users. AideRSS is a free download, works wherever Firefox does.

Mininova Adds Remote BitTorrent Downloads

Adam Pash — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Popular BitTorrent tracker Mininova has unveiled a new bookmarking feature that makes it easy to start a BitTorrent download on your home computer from anywhere. The new feature works by creating a personal RSS feed of all of your bookmarks. Since most popular BitTorrent clients support subscribing to an RSS feed of torrents, that means that each time you bookmark a torrent on Mininova, your BitTorrent client will automatically start downloading it. All you have to do is subscribe to your personal feed and get bookmarking. This is a very clever feature, but if you'd prefer even more control of your BitTorrent downloads when you're away from your main PC, check out how to remote control uTorrent or Transmission over the internet.

Portable NFReader Manages Your Feeds On the Go

Jason Fitzpatrick — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Windows only: Portable application NFReader is a no-frills feed reader that fits on your thumb drive. Even though it eschews a wide feature set in favor of a tiny footprint and minimalist interface, NFReader has the basics covered. Import your subscription list via OPML files or manually add feeds in the reader. View individual articles in either basic text or HTML format. If you're looking for an absolutely spartan feedreader without any clutter or feature bloat, NFReader's for you. If not, check out Lifehacker readers' choices of top five feed readers. NFReader is a free download for Windows only.

Filter Amazon's Deep-Discount Feed to Find the Deals you Want [Saving Money]

Kevin Purdy — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:09:00 GMT

The Simple Dollar personal finance blog posts a great idea for anyone looking for a deal on a particular item or group of goods who doesn't want to be tempted by other deep discounts at a place like Amazon's Gold Box section. Using an RSS-filtering tool like Feed Sifter (or any keyword-search tool, like previously mentioned Feed Rinse), you can get pinged only when the specific item you really can buy shows up at an affordable price. For local deals, try setting up Craigslist feeds using boolean operators.

Filter Amazon's Deep-Discount Feed to Find the Deals you Want

Kevin Purdy — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:09:00 GMT

Access Usenet When Your ISP Blocks It [How To]

Kevin Purdy — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Wired's How-To Wiki offers a timely compilation of ways to get into Usenet, that old-school newsgroup collection often teeming with downloads and advice, now that it looks like major ISPs will block access partially or entirely. Google Groups, for instance, will get you into a semi-mirrored version of Usenet without any of the sketchier alt groups included. For full-scale access, free tools like UsenetTools and DMoz are suggested, along with a few full-access tools with monthly subscriptions. If you're new to the old net, check out easy guides on downloading and sharing files, and tell us what you still get out of Usenet in the comments.

Access Usenet When Your ISP Blocks It

Kevin Purdy — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Feedly Turns Google Reader into a Social Start Page [Featured Firefox Extension]

Kevin Purdy — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:30:00 GMT

Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Create a start page with a wider view of your Google Reader feeds and social contacts with Feedly, a free Firefox extension. The add-on's main service is spinning your Google Reader feeds into a more magazine-like spread, letting you browse over multiple categories, glimpse post pictures, and have all your read items sync back to Reader. The navigation bar also creates tabs for the Twitter friends you're following, and offers serious customization for layout, item sharing, and other features. The extension adds a distractingly orange button to your navigation bar, but you can simply bookmark its chrome pages if you want to nix it. Feedly is a free download, works wherever Firefox does.

Feedly Turns Google Reader into a Social Start Page

Kevin Purdy — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:30:00 GMT

RSS Bandit Syncs RSS Feeds Between Desktop and Google Reader [Featured Windows Download]

Adam Pash — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:30:00 GMT

Windows only: Free, open source application RSS Bandit is desktop RSS newsreader that syncs directly with Google Reader. There are a lot of reasons for and against picking desktop over web-based newsreaders, so if you're addicted to Google Reader but also want the speed and better offline capabilities of a desktop reader, the new version of RSS Bandit brings you the best of both worlds. When you're on your computer, you've got the responsiveness of a desktop reader. When you're on a public computer or at work, you can go back to the web-based comfort and speed of Google Reader.

RSS Bandit, along with other popular desktop readers like FeedDemon and NetNewsWire, also syncs with web site Newsgator for online access, but the step up to Google Reader sync for RSS Bandit is a huge improvement. RSS Bandit is free, Windows only, requires .NET 3.5. To get the Google Reader Sync functionality, you need to make sure to download the latest alpha release.

RSS Bandit Syncs RSS Feeds Between Desktop and Google Reader

Adam Pash — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:30:00 GMT

Colorize Feed Items in Google Reader [Featured Greasemonkey User Script]

Gina Trapani — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

All platforms running Firefox with Greasemonkey: Add a little color to your RSS feeds with the Google Reader Colorful List view script. This Greasemonkey user script turns each feed item a different color which depends upon the feed name, offering a fun way to visually ID feeds from the same source in a folder's list view, as shown. Of course, if you read your feeds one source at a time instead of interleaving them, they'll all appear to be the same uniform color. The Google Reader Colorful List View is a free download that requires Firefox and the Greasemonkey extension.

Colorize Feed Items in Google Reader

Gina Trapani — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

All platforms running Firefox with Greasemonkey: Add a little color to your RSS feeds with the Google Reader Colorful List view script. This Greasemonkey user script turns each feed item a different color which depends upon the feed name, offering a fun way to visually ID feeds from the same source in a folder's list view, as shown. Of course, if you read your feeds one source at a time instead of interleaving them, they'll all appear to be the same uniform color. The Google Reader Colorful List View is a free download which requires Firefox and the Greasemonkey extension.

Top 10 Apps Worth Installing Adobe AIR For [Lifehacker Top 10]

Kevin Purdy — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Adobe AIR, a downloadable platform for running web-friendly apps on any operating system, is still pretty fresh on the market, but it already has a healthy number of applications in development or near completion. While many of them are simply desktop translations of web interfaces that were easy to use already, a handful of AIR apps truly make work and play easier, or just more interesting. Let's take a look at 10 applications that make it worth the effort of downloading and installing Adobe AIR.

Note: Not every AIR app we've tested works nicely with the Linux alpha of AIR, so we've noted where at least one Linux system (Ubuntu 8.04) had problems running the app.

10. Pandora

(Windows/Mac only) The officially sanctioned desktop client for Pandora has awkwardly-placed ads and not a lot more features than the web client. Avoid a permanently-open tab and get right-click access to your favorite streams and artists with the Pandora desktop AIR client.

...

Top 10 Apps Worth Installing Adobe AIR For

Kevin Purdy — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Note: Not every AIR app we've tested works nicely with the Linux alpha of AIR, so we've noted where at least one Linux system (Ubuntu 8.04) had problems running the app.

10. Pandora

Search Your Read Items in Google Reader [Google Reader]

Adam Pash — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:00:00 GMT

All-things-Google weblog Google Operating System details how to set up a read-items search in Google Reader. By default Reader searches all of your items, read and unread, and the results are sorted by date and not relevancy. If you subscribe to a lot of feeds, you may end up with a lot of unread items in your results when you know you've already read what you're looking for. By subscribing to your own read items feed, as detailed in the Google Operating System post, you can quickly and easily search only your read items. Not bad, though more sorting options for search results (like relevancy) would be better. You can also improve your search results by getting to know Google Reader's supported search operators.

Search Your Read Items in Google Reader

Adam Pash — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Feedbooks Creates PDFs from RSS Feeds

Kevin Purdy — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Need some fresh e-reading material for your commute, but all out of e-books? Feedbooks, a free RSS aggregator, takes in RSS feeds and spits out compiled PDFs in formats for pretty much any e-reader under the sun, including the Kindle, or you can create custom PDFs (with a free registration) for standard screens. The PDFs even come with a table of contents, and the site offers up a few free e-books of its own. Not every feed works all the time, including this here site's full feed this morning, but those that do come out looking surprisingly nice. Feedbooks is free to use, but a free registration gives you a few more conversion options.

Feedbook Creates PDFs from RSS Feeds [Ebooks]

Kevin Purdy — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Need some fresh e-reading material for your commute, but all out of e-books? Feedbook, a free RSS aggregator, takes in RSS feeds and spits out compiled PDFs in formats for pretty much any e-reader under the sun, including the Kindle, or you can create custom PDFs (with a free registration) for standard screens. The PDFs even come with a table of contents, and the site offers up a few free e-books of its own. Not every feed works all the time, including this here site's full feed this morning, but those that do come out looking surprisingly nice. Feedbook is free to use, but a free registration gives you a few more conversion options.

Feedbook Creates PDFs from RSS Feeds

Kevin Purdy — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Disable All Balloon Notifications in Vista [How To]

Kevin Purdy — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:03:00 GMT

If you're a Windows Vista user tired of seeing lower-right-corner reminders about security, system updates, or other occasionally annoying speech balloon announcements, the How-To Geek has got a cure-all fix. It shouldn't be undertaken by anybody who isn't sure if they can live without system or application system tray pop-ups, but if you're set on having a distraction-free desktop, you can head to this registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

and change the EnableBalloonTips value to 0. If you'd rather not spend the time searching that out, the Geek has a double-click registry fix for download at the link below.

Disable All Balloon Notifications in Vista

Kevin Purdy — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:03:00 GMT

If you're a Windows Vista user tired of seeing lower-right-corner reminders about security, system updates, or other occasionally annoying speech balloon announcements, the How-To Geek has got a cure-all fix. It shouldn't be undertaken by anybody who isn't sure they can't live without system or application system tray pop-ups, but if you're set on having a distraction-free desktop, you can head to this registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

and change the EnableBalloonTips value to 0. If you'd rather not spend the time searching that out, the Geek has a double-click registry fix for download at the link below.

Feedky Monitors Multiple Video Sites for Search Terms [Feeds]

Kevin Purdy — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Free video-monitoring site Feedky lets you keep an eye on all the major video-sharing sites for any keyword you're interested in popping up. Simply enter your search terms and you'll get either an RSS feed, or a simple web page, that updates when those words appear in the tags on YouTube, MetaCafe, Daily Motion, Flickr, Blip.tv, and other streaming video sites. The site's free to use without registration, but signing up gives you a bit more freedom to edit and organize the tags you're watching.

Feedky Monitors Multiple Video Sites for Search Terms

Kevin Purdy — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Free video-monitoring site Feedky lets you keep an eye on all the major video-sharing sites for any key word you're interested in popping up. Simply enter your search terms and you'll get either an RSS feed, or a simple web page, that updates when those words appear in the tags on YouTube, MetaCafe, Daily Motion, Flickr, Blip.tv, and other streaming video sites. The site's free to use without registration, but signing up gives you a bit more freedom to edit and organize the tags you're watching.

Get a Ninja in Your Google Reader [Easter Egg]

Gina Trapani — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Feeling sentimental for your classic NES? In Google Reader, hit the Konami Code key sequence: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A to get a shrugging ninja in your sidebar. For more squee-worthy easter eggs in applications you love, check out our top 10 software easter eggs.

Get a Ninja in Your Google Reader

Gina Trapani — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

IM Feeds Instant Messages RSS Updates [Feeds]

Jason Fitzpatrick — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Web service IM Feeds notifies you via instant messenger if an RSS feed has updated—like a package tracking feed, a special friend's blog, or news site you're tracking closely. To sign up, send an instant message with the word "join" to the IM Feeds bot on one of the four services that it currently supports—AIM (imfeeds), MSN Messenger (msn@imfeeds.com), Yahoo Messenger (imfeeds), or Google Talk (imfeeds@gmail.com). Then, choose your login name to manage your feed notifications and you're on your way. IM Feeds updates at a fixed five-minute interval to keep your feeds fresh.