Geek News and Musings

Remains of the Day: Voicemail Has Become Passé Edition [For What It's Worth]

Has voicemail become a pain? Share your thoughts, then learn to program the iPhone from Stanford, Twitter about it from Gmail, then jailbreak that iPhone running the 3.0 software in today’s leftovers.

Photo by kleinman.

• You’ve Got Voice Mail, but Do You Care?
  And as soon as we all have Google Voice transcribing our voicemail, we won’t need to worry about it. Isn’t the future simultaneously fascinating and frightening? [NYT]
  
• iPhone 3.0 Beta Jailbroken, QuickPWN Up For Download
  Summer’s still a ways away, but those wacky iPhone dev team hackers have already made quick work of iPhone 3.0. [Gizmodo]
• Time Warner Monthly Data Caps Spread Beyond Texas
  Unlucky internetters all over the country are staring down the barrel of bandwidth caps from Time Warner. Eck. [Gizmodo]
• Twitter Gadget for Gmail
  Integrate a really nice Twitter interface directly into your Gmail account for easy switching between your constant emailing and tweeting: *Hits send.* Twitter: “I just sent an email. ZOMG.” [via Steve Rubel]
• New Version of Opera Mobile to Support Google Gears
  The next version of Opera Mobile gets serious about offline mobile browsing, announces support for Gears. [PC World]
• Stanford to publish free iPhone course on iTunes U
  Ever wished you could program an iPhone app and attend Stanford? Your very specific dreams are (sort of) coming true! [AppleInsider]
• Despite Funky HTML Encoding, Boxee Still Plays Hulu Video Just Fine
  Hulu tries to break Boxee support, it doesn’t work. It’s the kind of familiar song that can put the most troubled insomniac to sleep. [Gizmodo]

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.

YouTube EDU Launches, So Go Learn Something

YouTube EDU launched today, an educational hub “volunteer project sparked by a group of employees who wanted to find a better way to collect and highlight all the great educational content being uploaded to YouTube by colleges and universities” according to a short blurb on the YouTube blog. The official announcement is apparently tomorrow.

The site is aggregating videos from dozens of colleges and universities, ranging from lectures to student films to athletic events. Some of this stuff is solid gold (the Stanford and MIT lectures are really good). Other content, not so interesting.

Just a couple of days ago we covered Academic Earth, a site that aggregates useful educational content (”Hulu for education”). Both of these sites are great ways to spread learning.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

YouTube EDU Launches, So Go Learn Something

YouTube EDU launched today, an educational hub “volunteer project sparked by a group of employees who wanted to find a better way to collect and highlight all the great educational content being uploaded to YouTube by colleges and universities” according to a short blurb on the YouTube blog. The official announcement is apparently tomorrow.

The site is aggregating videos from dozens of colleges and universities, ranging from lectures to student films to athletic events. Some of this stuff is solid gold (the Stanford and MIT lectures are really good). Other content, not so interesting.

Just a couple of days ago we covered Academic Earth, a site that aggregates useful educational content (”Hulu for education”). Both of these sites are great ways to spread learning.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Zimride: A Carpooling Startup That Actually Makes Money

Zimride - a startup with a tagline that reads “A Carpool Community” - sounds exactly like the sort of benevolent Web 2.0 service that will never make a cent. As it turns out, since launching in 2007 and winning fbFund last summer, the company has managed to carve out a nice niche for itself that saves its users money, helps the environment, and actually manages to generate revenue. And, unlike some of its carpooling competitors, it has also managed to avoid getting sued by Canada.

Zimride offers an application on Facebook Platform, inviting users on the same network to meet eachother and share a car trip. Users can also visit the service on its website at Zimride.com and find trusted users through Facebook Connect. After entering their current location and their destination, Zimride will generate a list of potential matches arranged by how far out of the way each one wants to travel. Users can also post a destination they’d like to travel to some time down the line, and receive alerts through Email when a match pops up.

The service is offered for free for up to 50 members per school or company network, but once it crosses that threshold Zimride seeks out the network owner and asks them to pay a subscription fee if it wants to continue allowing its students or employees to use the service. While this sounds a bit risky (Zimride stands a chance at pissing off students if their school decides not to join), COO John Zimmer says that institutions have generally been very receptive to the idea.

The company works with transporation departments and student governments at universities and large companies, and charges universities $9500 a year for the service (they can pay month-to-month). So far, the company has managed to sign up 20 instutitions, including Stanford which has seen over 14,00 new users share 300 rides in three weeks. And aside from earning money as a carpooling company (which is impressive in itself), Zimride is also notable for being a Facebook application that generates revenue through something other than advertising.

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

Academic Earth Aggregates Lectures from MIT, Harvard, Yale, and Others [Education]

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. It’s incredible.

The site clearly takes its cues from Hulu and iTunes on its design, but it’s ten times better than either, because it’s open. The videos can be embedded anywhere or downloaded and enjoyed wherever you want to take them. It’s easy to use, has tons of great content, and it doesn’t cost a dime.

We’ve highlighted these free courses before individually, like MIT’s OpenCourseWare or Stanford’s Engineering Everywhere, and we rounded up even more of them when we showed you how to get a free college education online, but Academic Earth takes the idea to an even better place. We love it.