A restaurant in Nuremberg, Germany has replaced waiters with hi-tech tracks that whiz food down to the customers, and you order your food by computer. While you’re waiting for your food, you can browse the net or send a SMS.
The part I particularly like though is the fact you don’t have to leave a tip!
Like a lot of other people right now, I am going through a bit of a love affair with Friendfeed and I am reading what I can find on the service. Now that Friendfeed has opened up their API to developers, we are starting to see the first of the third-party services appearing. My favourite one is Imified’s IM updating bot.
We’re going to look at some useful keyboard shortcuts and commands that will help you personalize the MS-DOS Command Prompt Window without using the mouse.
You will also learn about hotkeys for executing DOS commands more quickly. The keyboard shortcuts are known to work in Windows Vista and XP command prompt.
photo credit: mindcaster
A story I wrote for Make Use Of. Learn the most important keyboard shortcuts, the ones I use on a daily basis to whizz my way around the Fox.
An article I wrote for Make Use Of. If you didn’t know already, there are many shortcuts for Google Reader. This article describes some of those shortcuts.
A while earlier, I did what I should have done ages ago. I cleaned up my Pidgin contact list - which was a big deal for me because I had over 75 people on it and I knocked it down to around 40. It made me realise how easy it is to accumulate contacts and how important it is to prune these contact lists on a regular basis, especially if you use a multi-protocol client such as Pidgin or Trillian - more networks, more contacts, more clutter.
One of my pet obsessions at the moment, besides Pidgin and chat bots, are keyboard shortcuts. Not only does it make me faster and more efficient at computer tasks but a lot of browser & toolbar features can be disabled because there are keyboard equivalents. One prime example is Stumbleupon.
If you have the Stumbleupon toolbar installed, there is a feature in the options which allows you to set up keyboard shortcuts. Shortcuts are already pre-programmed but you can do what I did and re-program them to the way you want them :
Just one more thing about Pidgin before I move onto other subjects for a while. I really like the buddy pounce feature where you can be notified when someone comes back online again. Unlike normal notification systems on IM programs, this buddy pounce program is tailor-made for one specific contact only and ignores everyone else. Which is perfect if you are waiting for a specific person to make an appearance online and you don’t want to sit there all day staring at your computer screen, drumming your fingers impatiently, muttering “come on, come on….”
As well as writing for tech blogs, I also try to write fiction. I’ve submitted a few pieces to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery magazine and Strand Magazine in the past. I specialise in crime, mystery, childrens stories and the occasional spot of science-fiction. But I haven’t had anything published yet for the following reasons :
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