Geek News and Musings

Twitter Confirms And Details New “Discovery Engine”

We’ve been getting a lot of tips today and yesterday about the limited roll-out of a new Twitter homepage design, which gives the search functionality a more prominent place along with some additional features.

We couldn’t see it ourselves on our accounts, but now co-founder Biz Stone has confirmed the changes in a blog post, calling the new feature a ‘discovery engine’. (see it here on the Flickr account of Adam Jackson)

With the redesign, the search box has moved to the right sidebar of the interface (only for a small subset of users at this point), where Stone claims it’s a more ‘natural part of the Twitter experience’. I agree, and it shows that the company realizes very well that real-time search is a killer feature they should be nurturing and monitoring very closely. When you do a search, the results no longer appear on a separate page but remain on the homepage, and by default it only crawls the tweets from the accounts you’re following.

You can also save search queries and revisit the results at a later time. Since the searches you save stay on your homepage, this feature makes it a lot easier for people to keep track of conversations around a given topic (e.g. a brand, event or person) and also sort of makes the plethora of third-party monitoring tools obsolete for basic queries. We’ll have to see how this will affect the applications that are currently centered around monitoring Twitter conversations (take for instance, the Yahoo Sideline desktop app we covered yesterday), but it’s clear that the more emphasis Twitter puts on that, the less relevant they become.

Twitter is also going to display popular trending topics below the search box, which will in turn make it easier for people to discover what the Twitterverse is talking about the most at any given time. Stone reminds us Trends is in beta, but like he says, it has potential.

Meanwhile, a lot of people are still reporting missing tweets and direct messages, a problem that’s been lingering for several weeks now.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Top 10 Tools for a Free Online Education [Lifehacker Top 10]

It’s easy to forget these days that the internet started out as a place for academics and researchers to trade data and knowledge. Recapture the web’s brain-expanding potential with these free resources for educating yourself online.

Photo by Sailor Coruscant.

10. Teach yourself programming

Coding, whether on the web or on the desktop, is one of those skills you’ll almost never regret having. Coincidentally, the web is full of people willing to teach, and show off, programming skills. Whether you’re looking to knock out a modest Firefox extension or tackle your first programming language, there's no requirement to run out and buy the thickest book you can find at Barnes & Noble. Google Code University, for instance, hosts a whole CSE program’s worth of straight-up coding lessons in its bowels. We’ve pointed out a lot of other programming resources found around the web, so you should be able to get started in almost any project. As for the random, unexpected, seemingly inscrutable bugs, well … welcome to the fold.

9. Get a Personal MBA

“MBA programs don’t have a monopoly on advanced business knowledge: you can teach yourself everything you need to know to succeed in life and at work.” The Personal MBA site occasionally updates its list of dozens of helpful business books, designed to teach both the nuts-and-bolts money stuff and the kind of thinking one needs to get ahead in sales, marketing, or wherever your interests lie. A business school can offer networking, mentoring, and other perks, but nobody can teach you enthusiasm and business savvy—except yourself.

8. Learn to actually use Ubuntu

Too often, newcomers to Ubuntu, the seriously popular Linux distribution, find that their questions about any problem great or small is answered with a curt “Search the forums,” or “Just Google it.” From experience, that’s like telling someone there’s maple sap somewhere in that forest, so here’s a nail and get moving. With a brand-new installation sitting on your computer, few resources are as straight-forward and comprehensive as the Ubuntu Guide, which is packed with common stuff like installing VLC and getting VLC playback, but spans across topics including Samba and remote printing configuration. Author Keir Thomas also offered Lifehacker readers a little preview of his Ubuntu Kung Fu in two excerpts that tweak one’s system into a faster, more efficient data flinger.

7. Get started on a new language

Nobody’s pretending you can talk like a local without some immersion experience. But there’s a lot of resources on the web for honing an already-sharpened second language, or at least picking up some of the vocab and nuances. Learn10 gives you 10 vocabulary builders delivered every day by email, through iGoogle, through an iPhone page, or most any other way you’d like. One Minute Languages podcasts its lessons and lets newcomers stream from the archives. And Mango Languages has about 100 lessons, shown to you in PowerPoint style with interstitial quizzes, to move you through any language without cracking a book. Not that books are bad, of course, but this is stuff you can crack out during a coffee break.

6. Trade your skills, find an instructor

As Ramit Sethi put it in our interview, many people don’t realize the value of the skills they do have, whether it’s something as simple as higher-level English or software lessons for those in need. A site like TeachMate capitalizes on the inherent disparities in our interests, letting someone willing to teach a bit of, for example, Russian language get cooking lessons in return. If a site like TeachMate doesn’t quite reach you, try Craigslist, which, especially in a recession, is brimming with people looking to trade skills instead of cash.

5. Academic Earth and YouTube EDU

We have to guess that having a giant, searchable database of free academic lectures was just too good an idea for two different web firms to pass up. Academic Earth has been described as a Hulu-like aggregator for lots of major universities’ content, and offers the slicker and more navigable front-end for them, as well as allowing embedding and sharing with no restrictions. YouTube EDU might have a broader reach, and the player and format might be a bit more familiar to most. Both sites offer both individual lectures and full course series, and are definitely worth checking out.

4. Teach yourself all kinds of photography

Sites like Photojojo and Digital Photography School are oft-linked resources around Lifehacker, and for good reason. They let the uber-technical shooters run wild in forums and discussion groups, but focus the majority of their front-page posts on things that beginning DSLR shooters and moderate consumer-cam photographers can grasp and mix into their daily camera work. Of course, we’ve compiled and sought out our own digital photography advice at Lifehacker, including photographer Scott Feldstein’s guide to mastering your DSLR camera (Part 1 and Part 2), and our compilation of David Pogue’s best photography tricks, plus ours. Then there’s the simple pleasures of posting on Flickr, seeking out Photo by Marcin Wichary.

3. Get an unofficial liberal arts major

Whole-mind learning doesn't end the day you declare a major and start sending out resumes. A huge number of universities offer up some of their most unique and fascinating resources for free online, posting up databases, image galleries, and all kinds of stuff you wish you had time to dig through during your undergrad years. Learn everything you ever wanted to about Picasso at Texas A & M's Picasso Project. Indulge your inner geo-geek with super hi-res images from Hirise at the University of Arizona. Tour the world’s spaces in 3D with The World Wide Panorama at UC Berkeley. Wendy Boswell discovered those resources and way more in her discovery of the .edu underground, and you can find a lot more down there, too.

2. Learn an instrument

If being dropped off at the music store/mall/piano teacher’s house wasn’t a memorable part of your childhood, you might dig the digital age’s equivalents a lot more. Guitar players, in particular, have a lot of places to turn for video, audio, and graphical teaching tools. Adam rounded a lot of them up in his guide to learning to play an instrument online. If you want to build a foundation for learning any instrument, though, Ricci Adams’ Musictheory.net has Flash-based tutorials that offer a gentle tour through keys, time signatures, modalities, and the other ins and outs of notes and chords.

1. Learn from actual college courses online

A huge number of colleges, universities, and other degree-granting universities are going all open-source these days—giving away the actual guts of their courses, while retaining their revenue stream by awarding degrees only to those who pay. In this day and age, though, programming, marketing, design, and other self-taught skills are pretty valuable, however you came by them. Whether you're looking to break into a field or just augment your skill set, dig into our guide to getting a free college education online, which we then updated a bit with Education Portal’s list of ten universities with the best free online courses. Just think about it—at home, with your coffee and comfortable chair, you're far more awake than the average co-ed who totally should have hit the hay a bit earlier last night.

Where do you turn when you have to teach yourself something? What skills or topics would you like to see more coverage of on Lifehacker, or just anywhere on the web? Help us plan a curriculum in the comments.

This Week’s Most Popular Posts [Highlights]

Time for a look back at all the productivity goodies you loved this week on Lifehacker.

If you missed too many posts over the course of the week, your Lifehacker eyes may be bigger than your productivity stomach. Consider giving our top stories feed a try, or get really specific with your own customized feed. Here are this week’s best posts:

• Top 10 Tiny & Awesome Windows Utilities
  It’s the little things that make a Windows system great-like utilities that use less than 10MB of memory to make your life easier. Here are 10 apps that pack a lot of greatness into very little space.
• Five Best Web Browsers
  It’s probably the most important and debated piece of software on the modern computer. See how your fellow readers get around the net, and vote for your favorite web browser, in this week’s Hive Five.
• Turn an Old Laptop into a Wall-Mounted Computer
  Why settle for a digital picture frame when, in the same wall space, you could mount an entirely functional computer/slideshow player/TV tuner? Lifehacker reader Justin took an old Sony Vaio laptop he wasn’t using and turned it into a wall-mounted computer.
• First Look at Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackalope” Beta
  The name’s ridiculous, but “Jaunty Jackalope,” the next release of the popular Linux distribution Ubuntu, is seriously focused on the user experience.
• Ramit Sethi on Getting Rich and Automating Your Money
  Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich and the same-named blog, answered a few questions recently about managing and automating money.
• 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.
• Killer Typography Tools and Free Font Downloads
  Whether you’re putting together a resume, flyer, or web page, everyone needs to find and compare fonts some time. Here are some tools that can help you find the perfect font.
• Switch to a Two-Week Grocery Cycle to Waste Less Food
  The Green Cheapskate Blog cites studies showing that the American grocery shopper wastes 25 percent of their purchased food-if not more. Switch to an every-other-week shopping regimen, and you might start throwing less money away.
• 101 Recession-Busting Free Sites and Downloads
  PC World just published my (Adam’s) big old compendium of great free web sites and downloads. They’re calling it 101 Great Free Sites and Downloads You’ve Probably Never Heard Of, but you’re Lifehacker readers, so you’ve seen most of them at some time or another here.
• Create Edible Gummy Shot Glasses
  Trying to figure out what to serve your skittles-infused vodka in? Why, a flavored gummy shot glass, of course. ShesParticular at tinkering haven Instructables uploaded a ridiculously simple tutorial on making your own gummy shot glasses.
• Make Your Home Dust-Proof
  Cut down on the time you spend dusting and make the air in your home healthier with a few simple tips.

101 Recession-Busting Free Sites and Downloads [Free]

PC World just published my (Adam’s) big old compendium of great free web sites and downloads. They’re calling it 101 Great Free Sites and Downloads You’ve Probably Never Heard Of, but you’re Lifehacker readers, so you’ve seen most of them at some time or another here. If you give it a look, let’s hear which favorites you love best (or not so much) in the comments. [PC World]

Fizy Finds and Plays MP3s on the Web Quickly [Music]

Free music search engine and player Fizy doesn’t do playlists, offer downloads, or fancy looks. What it does have is more than 75 billion MP3s in its index (supposedly), and a really fast search function.

For those moments when you’re just looking to dig up a certain song and play it for friends or your nagging memory, Fizy is just about perfect. If there’s a video to be found on YouTube or other sites, you can pop it open to play alongside the song, or close it down without skipping a beat. It’s small, simple, fast, and it covers a lot of MP3s floating around on the web. For a more robust interface to queue up and play the web’s MP3s, try Adam’s own Mixtape.me. Fizy is free to use, no sign-up required.