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Default stylsheets to learn web design
2008-01-31 05:09:00
While browsing through some info on official css specs and best practices, I came across a cool feature on the W3C homepage. They have a tool that lets you view four sites with eight different core stylesheets. You can also view the pages without styling, or you can take a look at just the style source. If you are just learning css, this is a great way to take a look at a stylesheet that is definitely well formed and made in a web-friendly and compliant way. You can also use them to give your page a pretty good look right away, which you can tweak and tune as you like, or as you learn more and more. Take a look at W3C core css styles on theW3C homepage
More About: Web Design , Design , Learn

Correcting bad habits
2008-01-31 02:31:00
Bad habits surround each and every one of us, and correcting them takes a lot of effort and patience, so I thought I’d give you all my piece of mind on the subject. First of all, everyone has them. For some people this may be drugs or homicidal tendencies, but even if you don’t smoke, drink or gamble, you may have a lot. Coke drinking for me is one thing, “forgetting” to put the dishes in the dishwasher is another. In other words, to practice the art of breaking bad habits you don’t need to have extreme ones. Why we have bad habits Bad habits in my experience are formed by two major factors. One is laziness, and the other one is “muscle memory”. Muscle memory is a term I learned when I started playing guitar. If you learn something incorrectly and it forms a habit, you will find it very difficult to control it. If you try to play it correctly, your muscles will not let you, you will play the faulty note for example. If you really try you wi...
More About: Habits , Bad Habits , Habit , Rect

Password Generator 2008 - Get it free quickly!
2008-01-29 02:36:00
Giveawayoftheday is offering Password Generator 2008 for free for another 6 hours, so hurry up and grab a copy if you want to have some security. Usernames and passwords are the place where internet security could really be improved. One commenter sparked a post, Information security on the internet, and something I probably left out, or at least didn’t mention specifically, is that the source of most attacks is the inability of users act normally and safely. When you’re at the ATM, you don’t read your PIN number out loud as you type it, but on the net many do the internet equivalent of it. Don’t use a birth date as a code for example, seeing that most of the users are below 50 and above 12 I can break any password in about 40 goes. Also, don’t use your name, or any meaningful word, since those again are breakable. You are up to about 5000 variations then, but for code breaker software, that’s about 10 seconds. If you want to be safe, use a passw...
More About: Free

Redesign Holiday
2008-01-28 17:59:00
Sorry for missing a load of updates recently but I’ve been busy redesigning, which you can see for yourself right now. I am still in the process, I want to re-layout the tags to actually make them useful, get the sidebar organized and put everythingin place so I can bring you all productivity news and tricks again.For a few days the sidebar may change, labels may be removed and jumble around again, and other minor changes may take place, but all articles will remain in place, so feel free to roam about the older posts until then. Hack your day will be fully back by February 1st, but I will be posting until then, just not 3-4 a day like I wanted. I welcome all suggestions so if you have any layout ideas, design ideas, or just any general thoughts please do share them in the comments section.
More About: Holiday , Redesign

Info tooltips for music files
2008-01-26 15:55:00
I found a cool little application that ads a lot of information right in the file manager to your songs. If you hover over a file, you will be able to see info like artist, length, title, album, and so on, anything you would see in an ID3 tag. Personally I don’t have much use for this, since I store all my music by album, I hate directories with various artists, I’m a bit weird like that. I know that many people don’t really care and especially if you rip tracks often, you may have “untitled song 1.mp3″. This is all ok, until you do some reorganizing and find that nothing is where it used to be. This little tooltip will come in handy, you will be able to identify each one, without having to actually listen to them. In addition the app displays tooltips for text files (txt, ini, bat, etc.), shortcuts and executables. The shortcut tooltip is especially appealing to me, I won’t have to go through the right-click menu, properties routine all the time....
More About: Music , Info , Files

Build your home media center
2008-01-26 02:23:00
I have quite a lot of DVD’s here at home, and I always wanted to have a system where I can just choose one from a menu, and off it goes. I know, my laziness has reached a new high, but if I don1t have to get up while changing movies, I can concentrate on life’s finer details, like drinking my ice tea, or writing you guys a Hack Your Day productivity post. Seriously though, wouldn’t it be great if you could watch all your DVD content with only a remote? Daily Cup of Tech has a pretty good description of how to do this, although for me the method is a bit wanting. You basically rip all your DVD’s onto a home network, and you can watch each movie from there. I for one buy DVD’s exactly because the quality is awesome, I get directors comments (how geeky am I?)
More About: Media , Media Center , Home , Center , Build

Create quick searches in Firefox
2008-01-25 16:45:00
I actually new about this awesome productivity tip for Firefox , but I forgot about it for some time. Make Use Of’s recent article on 7 powerful shortcuts made me see the light again though, so let me share one of Firefox’s best shortcuts.  It allows you to bookmark search fields, so instead of going to Wikipedia and doing a search, you can just type “wiki astronauts” right in the address bar to search for the term astronauts. It works with any search field, be it YouTube, Flickr, or search engines. All you need to do is go to right-click on the search field here on Hack Your Day for example and choose “add a keyword for this search”. You will be presented with the usual bookmark window, you can name it and give it a keyword. It will be saved in your bookmarks, so you may want to create a Search sub folder there. Once saved, you can search Hack Your Day right from the address bar. If the keyword you gave was “hyd” you can just type &ld...
More About: Quick , Create

Customizing your send to menu
2008-01-25 04:51:00
There is a feature in Windows which isn’t too known called the send-to menu. Right-click any file and you’ll see it there, with options to send the file to a mail recipient, fax it and so on. I find these options terribly useless, with possibly the exception of send to compressed archive, but since I use a separate tool for that it becomes redundant. There is a way to modify that menu and put shortcuts in to whatever you want, let’s take a look at how to do it. Windows XP users, open up the run box and simply enter “sendto” and you’re there. Windows Vista users need to type “%APPDATA%MicrosoftWindowsSend To&rd quo; into the same place. Vista stores all this in the folder “UsersUserAppdaraMicrosoftSenTo&rdq uo; and the %APPDATA% string will whisk you away to that folder with your current user. Once there you can create and delete shortcuts as usual, and you will be able to access them from the right-click menu. I use this heavily in...
More About: Menu

How not to design web pages
2008-01-25 00:53:00
Ok, I know I’ve seen a couple of posts about this before, but let me just ad my piece of mind to the mix. The internet is a very different medium to all the others, and techniques that work elsewhere completely break down. I don’t pretend to be a designer, but I’ve been on the net long enough to know what irritates me, and most people, so here’s a list of things I hate about some web designs. Sound This seems to be the most hated amongst equals. This is a plea to all webmasters/webdesigners out there. Do not put autostarting music anywhere, ever. Not even if you’re a band, not even if you think you have the best music in the world, just don’t. I’d even like it better if games loaded, but the music and sound had to be turned on at the beginning. Do I go to your home with a ghetto-blaster on my shoulder, sneak up to you, turn the volume to the max and let it scream into your ear? No I don’t. Seriously though, this is very annoying, I re...
More About: Design , Pages , Ages

Hide files inside an image
2008-01-24 15:00:00
I just read a really cool trick on Sizlopedia I didn’t know about, how to hide any file inside a picture file. This could come in handy if you have some naughty secrets on your hard drive, or if you just have some sensitive data. Apparently it’s very hard to trace and find these files, but I guess if someone really wants to it’s still not impossible. You will need Winrar to pull it off, so if you don’t have it, follow the link to download the trial (which you can actually use beyond the expiry date). First of all, you need to put the file you want to hide and the image in the same folder. Select both files and create a rar file out of them. This is easiest if you select both files right click on one of them, and select the add to rar archive option. Now you will have to open the command promt. This is found in the Start Menu, under accessories. You will need to navigate to the folder where the files are. You can go to the parent folder using “cd..&rdquo...
More About: Inside , Image , Files , Hide

Productivity Store - Clipboard roundup
2008-01-24 00:00:00
Some love ‘em, some hate ‘em, some use them constantly all day, and some would never touch one, the trusty clipboard is the target of much debate. I’ll agree, this debate is not too heated, and virtually non existent, but the fact remains, clipboards are love it, hate it things. I personally don’t really use a clipboard, but I used to when I was at school. You can take your stuff anywhere quickly, notes don’t fly all over the place, and if you have a storage compartments, you can keep other notes filed, with some accessories as well. Clipboard s are best for people who frequently take notes on the go, or have to quickly get between places where they take notes. Students, doctors, mechanics could all use one, but even CEO’s can be seen clipping away. Here are a few to get you excited if you’re already clipboard fans, or to get your started if you haven’t really used one before. The folding medical clipboard is just so cool. You can fold ...
More About: Roundup , Productivity , Store

Social 2.0 ring
2008-01-23 20:00:00
Since it’s gadget Wednesday I have found you guys a most awesome one. I’m not really into the socialization craze the internet has brought, but this little ring is an awesome idea. Just wear it as a normal ring (it looks pretty good), and when you shake hands with someone their identity information gets transfered to your ring. Imagine sitting in a meeting and shaking hands with 20 new faces, will you remember all the names and stop to take down everyone’s phone number? Numbers, emails, addresses, pictures can all be transfered with the ring, which will apparently have some sort of led display built in. Another awesome concept is the ring’s base, which is essentially an information viewer. You take off the ring, place it in the business card like base and you can turn it, controlling the view with it. I just love this design meets function build, apart from looking great it’s also very usable, and a great idea. The downside is that it will only perform ...
More About: Social , Ring

Re-learn to do lists
2008-01-23 15:00:00
Hdbizblog shared some cool tips today about how to go about writing to-do lists. As Stephen says, you shouldn’t just aimlessly jot down your list, David Allen himself advises against this, since then you are trying to complete all five stages of GTD in one go. He suggest thinking of a few contexts and when you’re writing your to do list you should immediately write items to the relevant context. This way you will know what to do in a specific situation, and you may be able to shave off a few minutes here and there, maybe even amounting to an hour a day! Read the full to do list post on Hdbizblog
More About: Lists , Learn

Information safety on the internet
2008-01-23 02:00:00
One recent comment spawned a though in my head about internet privacy, and how bloated a topic it is in my opinion. There are some people obsessed with privacy, and hypes about spam, phishing and so on (while absolutely true) only further this feeling in most people. I am one of those who couldn’t care less about their privacy let me tell you why. First of all, a EULA does not guarantee anything. It adds safety, but what true guarantee do you get? What if the company does sell your data. They could get a fine, prison, or a close down, who knows, but your data is sold, it can not be unsold. Second of all, I get a bit alarmed at what people might be trying to hide when they get so paranoid about their safety. Sure, if you work for a big company I understand, corporate secrets could leak and so on, but if you’re doing it for yourself? You could also have big plans for your blogs or great ideas, but if you really want to protect something, write it on paper. It always sound...
More About: Internet , Information , Safety , The Internet

Using ice cubes for plant watering productivity
2008-01-22 20:00:00
Tim from Stuff for Getting Things done wrote about a great technique for watering your plants. If you have a very sensitive plant like a bonsai, you know that you can’t just pour a glass of water on it and be done with watering. Especially if you don’t really have time for this, a technique using ice is a great way to water plants slowly. All you need to do is place ice on the dirt, and as it melts, it will water the plant gradually, so it can actually absorb the water as it gets it, not after it has been standing in it for a day. This is great because it also sort of simulates the way rain waters a plant. I would actually put the ice in a cup with holes in the bottom, I somehow have a problem with putting something that has such a low temperature near to a sensitive plant, but I have no idea about gardening so don’t take my word on that. Read the original article on Stuff for Getting Things Done
More About: Productivity , Plant

Productivity Shop - Notebook roundup
2008-01-22 15:22:00
Let me introduce you to a new Hack Your Day feature, the Hack Your Day Productivity Shop . This is simply an Amazon based store where you can get all the productivity goodies you will ever want. Notebook s, Moleskines, pens, GTD books, gadgets, you name it. Take a look at the shop by visiting this Productivity Store direct link, or by clicking on the title of the store in the sidebar, or a specific item in the sidebar. To start off the store, let me show you some cool notebooks I found, and remember, I will be adding and reviewing more products daily, so be sure to check back often. If you want to be a true productivity ninja you need to buy stuff for it that you like (ie: looks good), and that also works. Bringing the two together is quite hard, but here are a few notebooks for you to try. This is a simple, stylish refillable notebook. The thing I like most about refillable is that they are very durable, they protect your notebook from dog ears, tears and whatnot, and can also fit a ...
More About: Roundup

Meebo - messenger anywhere
2008-01-22 15:00:00
Doesn’t that title sound like a bad science fiction movie? Anyway, Meebo is a very popular messenger that runs right from your browser, without the need to run a separate application such as Live Mess enger or Trillian. The great thing about Meebo is that it’s not just a disposable messenger. You don’t just log in, log out and that’s it, thee are tons of features that you can use, from customization, to actual organization! For example, you can create a Meebo Login, which will log you in to all you separate accounts at once. This is great if you keep in touch with a few people from Yahoo, a few from AIM, ICQ and so on. Overall it supports six networks, MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, Gtalk and Jabber. You can sign in to any one of these from the home page, but to sign in to more than one, you’ll need the Meebo ID. it’s free and quick, after joining you can add any amount of accounts you want, you can even connect to more than one account in the same network...

Just Say Hi - A resource for fun
2008-01-22 02:00:00
As part of Funday Monday, I found a cool website dealing out all sorts of fun and games for your amusement. If productivity is not an option, let’s slack with style and play games like “how many colors can you name in 5 minutes” or “how many countries can you name in 5 minutes”. For internet and tech geeks there are also HTML element, CSS property naming tests, blog spelling mistake tests, and a lot more. There are also some great quizzes ranging from the normal “how addicted to apple are you” or “how many germs live on your keyboard” to the weird and morbid (also great) “how many five year olds could you take on in a fight” or “what are your chances of surviving a zombie apocalypse”. In addition, they also have some fun blogging tools, like a customizable countdown timer, blog bumper stickers, backlink displayers and a few others.  All in all it’s a great place to spend 10 minutes free time and chi...
More About: Resource , Say Hi

Integrating services into Todoist
2008-01-21 20:31:00
Todoist is a free onine to-do list and task manager that has one of the cleanest and easiest to use interfaces I’ve ever seen. It’s power comes from its simplicity and intuitiveness and also because it allows a multitude of services to integrate with it. Launchy, Gmail, Widgets, Mobile access and a host of others. I will be doing a full review of Todoist sometime in the future, for now, let’s focus on how you can use it with Launchy to add tasks right from your desktop and how you can create a task from an email with one click. (more…)
More About: Services

Del.icio.us 2.0 arriving this week?
2008-01-21 18:00:00
According to the delicious blog, the long awaited del.icio.us 2.0 may be arriving this week. “We know we haven’t updated the blog in a looong time but the team has been heads down working on the next version of Delicious. We’ll have an update to share with you guys next week.” While this may mean that they are giving us a time estimate, it could also mean that they already have the interface and underlying system ready, and will be releasing it soon. Let’s keep our fingers crossed! From the official delicious blog, via TechCrunch
More About: Week

Learn to be more productive while having fun with Photoshop
2008-01-21 16:00:00
Gina Trapani from Lifehacker found some great Photoshop tutorial videos that are not only helpful to those who are just starting off with Photoshop, but they are as funny as hell as well. The screencaster is called Donnie Hoyle and does an amazing job of mixing comedy with something productive, showing that the to do actually mix. Even if you don’t learn anything, it’s still a blast to watch! Take a look at Laughingsquad for the original you suck at Photoshop videos - found via Lifehacker
More About: Learn

Moleskine pack for you productivity nuts
2008-01-20 18:04:00
I recently mentioned my utter obsession with office-ware (notebooks, pens, notepads, index card) and I just found quite a cool Moleskine pack and I decided to try and get one, I hope Amazon ships these to the EU. Nevertheless, those of you in the US can get your hands on a large and small plain Moleskine notebook for near half the price, $26 instead of $45. I got my own single one for about $20, so I guess this is quite the deal. Head one over and get the Moleskine two-pack to maximize your productivity. By the way, giving a small and large one is a great idea, since you can have one for home use, and one for when you’re on the go, enjoy!
More About: Productivity , Nuts , Pack

Adjust Google Calendar duration quickly
2008-01-20 17:51:00
I just noticed a nifty shortcut in Google Calendar which allows you to quickly set the duration of an event when entering it. If you don’t just click somewhere and type, but click and drag to the duration you want, you can still enter the details, and the event will be created with the duration you dragged it to be. Since I hardly ever have a one hour event I find this method really productive and simple, better than setting them one by one anyway.
More About: Google Calendar , Adjust

Productivity features in Office apps
2008-01-20 06:41:00
There’s a feature in Office applications that I’ve seen many times, but never really bothered to try. Stuff for Getting Things Done points out some of the much overlooked “look up” function. As the blog points out, it basically gives you access to a dictionary, a thesaurus, an encyclopedia, and even stock quotes and company profiles. All you need to do is highlight the word and hit the lookup option in the right click menu. Read more on Stuff for Getting Things Done
More About: Features , Productivity

100th post - the celebration of productivity
2008-01-19 22:50:00
Wow, it’s only been two months and I’m having a blast writing this blog. I hope you guys are also enjoying my posts, nevertheless, they will just be getting better and better. My short term goals include updating much more often, which has started about yesterday, I look to add about 4 posts per day, although since I am alone for the moment, this may vary sometimes. I am doing posts in advance, so even if I need to be away for a few days, you’ll get your daily productivity from Hack Your Day. In the long run I want to get some guest writers signed on so we can update the blog more often and I am also thinking of creating a much more identifiable look for Hack Your Day. A logo would be nice for example, I need to brainwash all my visitors so you keep coming back! I want to thank some people for their help, advice and for being so nice. Martin, Karl, Mark and Aibek, you were all the best, and your help is much appreciated, I hope I can gradually give it back to you a...
More About: Post , Productivity , Celebration

Listen to Pandora anywhere
2008-01-19 21:24:00
About a year or so ago I found a great service called Pandora . basically it’s an internet radio service, but instead of listening to stations, you can create your own. Just type in an artist or a song you like, and you can listen to similar music all day if you want. I found that it works very well, I got to know many a new bands thanks to Pandora and I was happy as can be, until one fateful day when Pandora closed its doors to non-US listeners. This was not their choice, they had to do it, and I was really sorry to see them go. What’s really stupid behind the whole thing is that I actually went out and bought at least two CD’s because of Pandora after listening for about a month. The letter shown for us unlucky people is actually very nice and eases my tensions at least, the end “We share your disappointment” is particularly a good move. There have been ways of listening for non-US people using proxies, but now there’s a global Pandora site, all ...
More About: Listen

Helipad review
2008-01-19 15:50:00
If you’re on the lookout for note taking apps, Helipad is a great one to try. It has a somewhat weird interface, but this is not at all a negative comment on my part, I quite like it. To me it looks more like a content management system, but in reality, it’s a powerful text note keeper, nothing more, nothing less. It features tags, addons, themes, nice viewing options, and all in all, an efficient, productive way to manage your notes. Editing is very much like creating a Wiki, which might deter some folks at first, but the syntax is very simple and there is a guide available on site, let’s look deeper. Creating and editing When you create a note, you are faced with four tabs, one to go back to your notes, one to edit, one to preview and one to share. You need to use a Wiki-like syntax to create your notes, but don’t be afraid, this is not at all hard, you can enable an editing guide just over the editing field. Using “*” for bullet points, “...
More About: Review

Two productivity addons for Thunderbird
2008-01-10 17:31:00
Thunderbird is one of the best email clients on the market, and best of all, it’s totally free. Created by the same guys that bring you Firefox, Thunderbird can grab your POP or IMAP mail, you can tag your stuff, set up advanced filters easily, create intuitive folder structures and the list never seems to end. I have been looking for some productivity enhancing addons for Thunderbird so I can write emails quicker and organize myself easily. I would like to introduce you to three great addons, Notary, Quicktext and Minimize to Tray. I also want to show you how I manage my sort term tasks and phone call notes quickly without the need for any to-do list. It enables me to speak freely, think straight and come back to the tasks later on. (more…)
More About: Productivity , Thunderbird , Hunde

Xobni - The Oulook inbox manager
2008-01-10 12:27:00
Xobni is an awesome new Outlook addon that I desperately want to try. Take a look at the video from Lifehacker and I think you’ll be just as excited. The essence of it is an analytics engine which not only brings you great statistics, but helps you navigate through Outlook much faster. I just love the activity bar, which shows you what time of day a contact sends you emails. This can help you productively send people emails when you know they’re going to get them right away. It has tons of other features helping you in organization as well and I really want to show them to you, but it’s a closed beta. If I refer two people though I can get in faster, so could I ask you guys to help me? Just click on this badge and sign up for a beta test and I can bring you the info faster. Thank you all in advance.
More About: Manager , Inbox

Re-download recent Gmail messages using POP
2008-01-10 11:49:00
While as far as I know it’s not possible to re-download specific messages, at least not in any productive way, I recently found myself in a position when I needed just that. Luckily the messages I needed were in the last few days and there is a way to re-download Gmail messages that are less than 30 days old. All you need to do is go to your account settings in your email client and change you username to “recent:username@gmail.com”. Sure enough, when I clicked on Send & Receive I was downloading 207 messages, but at least I have those I want. It’s not perfect, but this may be of some help to someone. Alternatively you could forward all those emails you need to yourself and then download through POP, but you do loose some info along the way and it can get pretty tedious and boring. Thanks to Technofriends for the info
More About: Download , Messages , Recent , Mess