Friday 16 December 2011

Give the Gift of DIY with These Kits for the Maker in Your Life [Gift Guide 2011]

Give the Gift of DIY with These Kits for the Maker in Your LifeWe've culled together all sorts of great gifts for the tech-lovers in your life, but this is Lifehacker, and we've got a strong dose of the DIY ethos pumping through our veins. So to finish off our gift guides for 2011, here are ten of the best DIY kits from Make's Ultimate Gift Guide—perfect for the do-it-yourself lover in your life.

Give the Gift of DIY with These Kits for the Maker in Your Life

This is one of the most satisfying kits I've ever built, and the Sumovore it creates will be eligible for official RoboGames Mini-Sumo competitions, in which robots vie to push each other out of the ring. This is not a project for beginners, but thanks to clear documentation and well-organized components, anyone with moderate soldering skills and sufficient patience shouldn't have much trouble. It ships with analog "discrete brain" circuitry, but "brainboard" kits let you add popular microcontrollers.

Give the Gift of DIY with These Kits for the Maker in Your Life

The littleBits kit is like Lego for basic circuits. Each "bit" is a small circuit board that enables a single electronics component or electronic function, like a potentiometer, light sensor, LED, or motor. The bits snap together magnetically with edge connectors that are color-coded to indicate their general role within a circuit; for example magenta means input, green means output, and blue means power. The magnets are oriented so that you cannot connect the bits the wrong way, and three spring-loaded contacts in each connector carry voltage, signal, and ground from bit to bit. This clever design makes experimenting with series circuits easy and "wireless."

Give the Gift of DIY with These Kits for the Maker in Your Life

The world of Arduino microcontrollers can be a challenge to break into — but not if you're equipped with this kit, which includes all of the hardware you need to work through each of the experiments in Getting Started with Arduino, the popular introductory book by Arduino project co-founder Massimo Banzi. To make it even easier, all of the components are solder-free, except for the DC plug and battery pack — just plug, play, and learn. Not only does the book go over all of the Arduino's features, it also gives a good overview of basic electronics. After completing this kit, I found myself ready to take on all sorts of physical computing projects.

Give the Gift of DIY with These Kits for the Maker in Your Life

This unique, rugged R/C trainer is assembled by bending carbon fiber rods, binding with Kevlar thread, and then covering with polyester fabric. The build takes an evening or two; add a radio, servos, and batteries, and enjoy a remarkably good airplane for beginners and experienced pilots. Plus, it folds flat, so you can take it anywhere!

Give the Gift of DIY with These Kits for the Maker in Your Life

This fully functional alarm clock lets you practice defusing simulated explosives. When the red button is pressed, the clock starts a scary countdown like bombs in Hollywood movies. There are four wires across the top of the clock, and you have ten seconds to choose the correct wire to cut. Programmed with the Arduino IDE, so hack away! Fake explosives not included.

Give the Gift of DIY with These Kits for the Maker in Your Life

I've built my share of catapults (see MAKE Volume 28, "Gravity Catapult"), and this floating-arm kit has thoroughly impressed me. The parts come pre-cut in solid ash, and you clip off tabs to remove them, just like the plastic models I built as a kid. A file will help clean up the tabs. It's put together with wood glue, so use one with good tack or you'll do a lot of waiting. The instructions call for two clamps, but you'd be much better off with eight or more. Spring clamps provide suitable force and won't mark up your wood parts. After all your satisfying work, you end up with an impressive 34-inch trebuchet, capable of hurling a small, dense projectile a respectable 200 feet!

Give the Gift of DIY with These Kits for the Maker in Your Life

Spike Your Juice is a simple introduction to home fermentation. The kit comes with enough yeast packets for six batches, an airlock with rubber stopper, and clear instructions. To brew a batch of alcoholic juice, add one yeast pack to a 64oz bottle of juice (such as grape or cranberry), shake, stopper with the water-filled airlock valve, and wait 48 hours. The yeast will digest the sugar, producing alcohol and carbonation. Tasty, fizzy, and tipsy fun!

Give the Gift of DIY with These Kits for the Maker in Your Life

Bacon is enjoying the limelight these days, showing up in everything from chocolate to donuts! If you really want to hop on this fat fad, brine your own. It takes a week, but is incredibly simple and delicious. This kit's recipe book covers bacon, Canadian bacon, and pancetta. Note to the truly dedicated: invest in a smoker. My oven-roasted bacon was tasty, but I gave half of my pork belly to a neighbor, and his hickory-smoked slices really sizzled.

Give the Gift of DIY with These Kits for the Maker in Your Life

Analog voltage-controlled oscillators (AVOs) make a variety of intriguing hums, beeps, buzzes, and loops, controlled by buttons, knobs, and sensors. These are fantastic group projects because once the soldering irons are all put down, you get an excellent payoff: you can have an impromptu concert. Bleep Labs, run by Austin, Texas, circuit bender and kit maker John-Michael Reed, produces a few AVO kits that I've built and had fun with. The Thingamagoop 2 features a square wave amplitude modulator and triangle wave pulse width modulator, packed into a lovely silkscreened metal enclosure. The Thingamagoop's signature component is an LED on a bendable wire antenna called the LEDacle, which looks cool and, more importantly, interfaces with the light sensor hidden in the eye, making for a huge range of possible sounds. I found the build to be rather challenging. It took me a couple of hours to make, with one or two tricky steps. One thing I appreciated was that unlike other Bleep Labs kits, you don't need anything but the kit itself to make cool music — there's no need to plug into anything. When I finally finished my Thingamagoop, I turned it on and watched as my kids snatched it out of my hands and ran off with it. While the Thingamagoop is obviously kid-friendly, it offers some cool features for mom and dad to explore further. For instance, I'm intrigued that you can reprogram its ATmega328 chip using an Arduino.

Give the Gift of DIY with These Kits for the Maker in Your Life

I was looking for something to do with the kids. They raved about how much fun the rocket launching was at Maker Faire, so I brought some of that fun home with this kit, which is based on Rick Schertle's project from MAKE Volume 15. The kit is an easy build, one or two hours total, and the rockets go amazingly high — so high I could barely see them anymore. I guess that's high enough! The kit includes Rick's article, all the electronics, and the PVC parts cut to length. All you need to supply are a few common tools, glue, paper, tape, and an air compressor or bicycle pump.

Make's Ultimate Gift Guide | Make

Build Your Own Garage Door Indicator Light [DIY]

Build Your Own Garage Door Indicator LightA very useful function of my home automation system is that there's a little light inside my house, on a light switch, that tells me whether or not my garage door is open. This is useful because the light is on the second floor and the garage door is on the ground floor, and not having to walk down two flights of stairs every night before bed is rather handy. Instructables user Steve Moseley shows you how to make this without having a home automation system.

The short of it is that you need an LED for displaying your garage door's status, a switch that detects whether or not the door's open, and enough materials to mount both in place. If you wanted to get fancy, you could add some sort of wireless system so you can have this switch in any part of the house as well, though the instructables doesn't cover that.

Garage Door Open Indicator Light | Instructables

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Ask and Answer Questions About Taking Pets to the Vet [Help Yourself]

Ask and Answer Questions About Taking Pets to the VetEvery day we're on the lookout for ways to make your work easier and your life better, but Lifehacker readers are smart, insightful folks with all kinds of expertise to share, and we want to give everyone regular access to that exceptional hive mind. Help Yourself is a daily thread where readers can ask and answer questions about tech, productivity, life hacks, and whatever else you need help with.

Pets are wonderful companions, and they can help you relieve stress. But a sick pet can be scary and stressful; and even just taking Fido to the vet for a check-up can cause anxiety. Veteranarians are there to help your furry friends, and you can help yourself today by asking and answering questions about veterinarians. From selecting the right vet for your pet, to getting your dog or cat to the office without stress, let's hear those questions in the comments.

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What Are the Benefits of Using Optical vs. RCA Audio Outputs? [Ask The Commenters Roundup]

Okay, beer drinkers out there... What's your favorite winter/Christmas time beer?I am wondering about the benefits of using an optical port for audio vs. RCA ports or a 3.5mm jack.Is there a site with side-by-side comparisons for Android tablets that's current for the holiday season?Anyone got a use for a PowerPC Mac running Tiger? I was thinking of using it as a home server or HTPC but early research suggests it may not be that easy to do.Any suggestions for simple holiday cocktails for a party? I want it to be festive, but plan to stick to a few ingredients rather than stock a full bar.Can you use the Thunderbolt port on a Apple Thunderbolt Display to hook a mini-displayport to DVI adapter up to a non-thunderbolt monitor?I've always lived in a very hot region of India. I'll be going to United States next year, and I believe that's it very cold there, at-least in most places. So, my concern is, how do I keep myself warm there, 'cause I've always lived in a warm place and not used the such a climate.Is there a calendar/email client combo for windows that has the feature I love in Mail/iCal where I can create an iCal event by hovering over dates or words (Saturday) in an email?My laptop is going to totally die in about a year. I'm going to college next year, and I'm looking at going into computer science. Strictly from a programming standpoint, and ignoring boot camp, what's the difference between a mac and a PC?What is a good, modern file system that's Mac-Win-nix compatible? I'm thinking that when I get a new computer, I'll make a partition to share across 3 OSs with iTunes and Steam files.Related Stories

Add a Magnet to Your Hammer to More Easily Grab Nails from Bags [Clever Uses]

Add a Magnet to Your Hammer to More Easily Grab Nails from BagsRegardless of how you store your nails, it's likely you've poked yourself at least once when grabbing one out of a bag or off a table. To prevent this, home improvement show host Ron Hazelton suggests placing a magnet in the handle for an easy way to grab nails without using your hands.

All you need to do is drill a shallow hole in the bottom of your hammer, drip a little hot glue in, and place a magnet inside the hole. This way, you can stop dipping your fingers blindly into a bag of pointed nails and let the magnet do the work. Check out the video on Ron Hazelton's website for more details.

How to Turn Your Hammer Handle into a Nail Pick Up | Ron Hazelton

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Control Windows Media Center with Your Voice [Video]

Control Windows Media Center with Your Voice If you use Windows Media Center on your home theater PC you can configure it to run via voice commands using macros for Windows7's built-in Windows Speech Recognition software. The only additional cost is for a decent microphone if you don't already have one.

Gadget weblog Inspect My Gadget uses Windows Speech Recognition macros to create voice tags that link with keyboard shortcuts. If you say "stop TV" it will send the keystroke Ctrl+S. The AutoHotKey script used to make the system work waits for a predefined button press before listening for a command so that music or video dialogue cannot trigger a command. The button press also lowers the volume so that the system can recognize the user's voice from anywhere in the room. Finally, the author installed an arcade button in his recliner to trigger the voice command so no keyboards or mice are needed.

If you're interested in voice control this would be an interesting weekend project. Because the system associates audio tags with keyboard shortcuts you could also figure out a way to control XBMC using this method.

How-To: Voice control Windows Media Center | Inspect My Gadget

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Thursday 15 December 2011

Five Best Mobile Price Comparison Apps [Hive Five]

Five Best Mobile Price Comparison Apps If you're headed to your local big box store to shop for holiday gifts or anything else you need, don't leave your smartphone behind—with the right apps, you can check the products you're looking at in the store to see if you're getting the best price there, whether you should head to the store next door, or wait until you get home to shop online. Here are five of the best mobile apps for comparing prices while you shop, based on your nominations.

Earlier in the week, we asked you which apps you turn to when you're shopping to make sure you're getting a good deal. You responded, and now we're back to take a look at the top five.

Five Best Mobile Price Comparison Apps

Clearly one of your first stops if you want to know if a product is cheaper online than it is in your local store is Amazon. That's why the company built Amazon Price Check. Just scan an product's barcode, take a photo of it, speak the name of the product, or enter in its name to see if the same product is available at Amazon at the same or a better price. Amazon is obviously betting that you'll find a better price online and that you'll order right from your phone, but they're sweetening the pot with an extra 5% discount to people who use the app and then make a purchase. Amazon Price Check is US Only.

Five Best Mobile Price Comparison Apps

Google Shopper is a mobile portal to all of Google's shopping options, including Google's local offers, daily deals, and more importantly, product search and comparison shopping via Google Shopping. Simple scan the barcode of a product, speak its name aloud, or even scan the covers of books, magazines, and other media to search Google's database for the product. If the same product is available at one of Google's partner retailers, you'll see how much it costs, along with ratings and reviews, specs, and more. The best part of Google Shopper is that it combines prices from local retailers with online prices to make sure you get the best deal.

Five Best Mobile Price Comparison Apps

Before Google and Amazon got really deep into the mobile price comparison game, ShopSavvy was making lists of must-install apps for any mobile OS. ShopSavvy is still a great tool, and allows you to scan the barcode of a product to search for it online, see prices at other brick-and-mortar and online retailers, and even load up your ShopSavvy "wallet" with cash so you can quickly purchase directly through the app. ShopSavvy even includes estimated shipping prices from the retailers listed so you can deal in final prices, not base prices. Finally, the ShopSavvy app gives you a window to a large community of people using the app, rating products and retailers, and letting you know whether the item you're thinking about buying is any good before you buy.

Five Best Mobile Price Comparison Apps

RedLaser started life as a simple app to help you scan barcodes, and evolved into a remarkably robust utility that does more than just Google search what it decodes. These days, RedLaser lets you scan barcodes quickly to compare prices in brick-and-mortar stores and online, and research products. RedLaser's product scanning doesn't just tell you if a brick-and-mortar store has the same product at a lower price, it tells you if that store is near you, how far away it is, and whether the item is in stock. If you're shopping for electronics and video games, scanning the product will get you ratings and reviews (even of the video games), and if you're scanning books, you can see if the book is in a nearby library.

Five Best Mobile Price Comparison Apps

PriceGrabber, one of the web's most trusted names in comparison shopping, also has one of the more essential mobile shopping apps available. PriceGrabber's focus is on online merchants instead of brick-and-mortar stores, but it can definitely tell you if a product is available online for less than you're ready to pay in your local department store. The service has millions of products in its database and thosuands of online retailes, so if your primary concern is whether or not you can get a better bargain online, it's worth installing.

Now that you've seen the top five, it's time to put them to an all-out vote.


All of these apps are free, so there's technically nothing stopping you from installing them all instead of waiting for a winner, and seeing which one is the best for you. Some of them overlap, but they're all useful tools if you're looking to make sure you don't overspend when you're shopping online or in-store.

Did your favorite app not get enough nominations to make the cut? Do you have something to say in defense of one of the contenders? Let's hear it in the comments below.

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Stop Being So Damn Productive [Productivity]

Stop Being So Damn ProductiveIf productivity is a simple measure of output, more output is a simple matter of doing more work, right? Well, yeah, but developer and writer Swizec Teller argues that a lot of us are far too concerned with productivity—and that there's a better way.

Image via Wikipedia Alan Turing-Bletchley

Productivity is a big thing in my part of the universe. Everyone thinks they've cracked the secret for turning time into gold. Modern day alchemists, the lot of us.

This gives us a pervasive culture of 20-somethings busting their backs to squeeze every last ounce of productivity out of their day. Sleep, sex, health and culture be damned! If you condense your whole working life into five years of a startup you'll be rich didn't you know? Then everything will be all right!

Stop Being So Damn Productive

I have this deeply seated hunch that it won't be all right. You'll never be a 20-something again. Ever seen a top athlete when they hit 35? They can barely walk. If they're lucky they get to train a bunch of 20-somethings, but more often than not they just sort of wither away and nobody hears of them again.

You're doing that to your brain.

But with mental tasks productivity doesn't increase linearly with time worked. Every hour spent working hard is a tax on the next hour you want to spend working hard. And so on until you can spend hours, even days, working without achieving.

Remember the quote "You speak a lot, but you don't say much"? Same goes for working a lot.

Image via Wikipedia William Fettes Douglas - The Alchemist

A couple weeks ago an article titled If you're busy, you're doing something wrong floated around the internets. It was about a study comparing the crème de la crème of violinists at an elite school in Germany with those that are just the crème.

Think of it like comparing Senna and Schumacher. Newton and Feyman. Even Turing and Torvalds.

The study found that despite putting in the same amount of measurable work (hours spent) those at the very top report being significantly less busy than those who are merely near the top. They also report having heaps of free time and generally having a rather easygoing lifestyle.

And yet, they significantly outperform those who are constantly busy and under pressure.

With this in mind I started looking for ways of fighting being busy. The first thing I noticed was that under crunch time I tend to do a little bit of everything every day. Two hours on this project, three hours of school and so on.

Makes me feel super productive! Moving forward on every project every day. How much better than that can you get?

But the reality is that context switching presented significant overhead and while I felt productive, I was actually just wearing myself out and producing ever worse amounts of crap.

So for the past few weeks I've only been working on a single project every day. Some days are reserved for school, some are reserved for freelancing and so on. This way I can go about my weeks in a pretty relaxed manner, even managing to have a decent social life, while still getting everything done!

It's amazing. I heartily suggest you try it.

But this is all just talk. I don't have anything other than anecdotal evidence to support my findings, so next week I am starting a four week one-man study trying to find the link between mental agility and being busy. I want cold hard numbers supporting this hypothesis.

If you want to help with the study to get a better sample, I'm all ears for volunteers.

Stop being so fucking productive | Swizec

Swizec Teller is a geek with a hat: a hacker, entrepreneur, and writer who wants to create a single button app.

Switch Your Scrolling Preference on the Fly with the Option Key [Video]

Switch Your Scrolling Preference on the Fly with the Option Key When you click in the well of a scrollbar in Mac OS X, one of two things occurs, depending on your preference: you either jump to the location you clicked or you scroll up/down one entire page length. In general you'll choose the scrolling option you prefer, but sometimes you'll want to switch things up. Fortunately, all you have to do to reverse your scrolling preference temporarily is hold down the option key.

Check out the video above for a demo.

This shortcut can be hard to understand when described, so take a few seconds and try it out for yourself, using this window as a testing ground. Try clicking in the scrollbar well (the empty space that the bar travels inside of) in the window and see how the bar scrolls. Now do the same thing while holding down the option key. You should notice the behavior is a little bit different. The OS X default is to scroll one page at a time when you click in the well, but you can also set this to jump to the specific location where you click. Sometimes it's useful to be able to use both and now the option key will let you do that.

Want to do a lot more with the option key on your Mac? Check out this post.

Five unexpected uses for the Option key | MacWorld

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How Much Sleep Do You Actually Require (and Why)? [Ask The Readers]

How Much Sleep Do You Actually Require (and Why)?Supposedly all humans are supposed to get about eight hours of sleep per night, but the notion that we're entirely the same is a little silly. Some people need more sleep than others, and improving the quality of your sleep is often far more important than the amount of time. The Hindustan Times points to new research coming out of the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich that has found a gene responsible for allowing some people to operate on only four hours of sleep per night, and a brain chemical called Orexin-A is suspected of being the only thing we really need to feel awake during the day. As more findings come to light, it seems sleep isn't as straightforward as resting for a finite period of time. We'd like to know how much sleep you feel you need each day, and how you arrived at that number.

Personally, the eight hour rule applies to me. While the quality of sleep definitely plays the biggest role, I find that I'm rarely tired if I get a full eight hours, eat well, and exercise. Generally I can function well on less sleep, and sometimes even no sleep, but I tend to become overly sensitive to everything (both good and bad), which is not a good thing when your job involves a significant amount of feedback from many sources at all times of the day. So I try to sleep as well as I can for as long as I can because it definitely makes a difference for me, but I'd gladly welcome the opportunity to cut that time in half if there were no downsides. How long do you sleep, and why do you think that number works for you?

Photo by yeowatzup.

Why even 4 hours of sleep is enough | Hindustan times

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How Do I Deal With a Negative Performance Review? [Ask Lifehacker]

How Do I Deal With a Negative Performance Review? Dear Lifehacker,
I just got my annual performance review at work and let's just say it didn't go very well. Some of it was positive, but a lot of it took me by surprise, and now I'm worried for my job. How do I handle a not-so-great evaluation? I disagree with my boss, but he made some good points and seems to want me to improve. How can I make sure this doesn't happen again?
Signed,
Sinking Feeling

Photo remixed from an original by Andrey Popov/Shutterstock.

Dear Sinking Feeling,
A negative performance evaluation is definitely cause for concern, but it's nothing to get too worked up over unless your manager has specified that they're going to take some kind of action against you as a result. Consider it a very loud and clear warning that your job performance isn't up to snuff, one that you're going to take seriously if you want to stay at this job. Here are some ways you can turn this challenge into an opportunity.

How Do I Deal With a Negative Performance Review?

Before you put too much time and energy into making this situation better, you have to ask yourself whether the real issue at hand here is personal—as in it stems from some fundamental difficulty you and your boss have working together, as in you don't get along or you never see eye to eye—or it's professional, as in there is some area where you're professionally lacking that your boss thinks is essential to your job or responsibilities.

If the matter is personal, there may not be very much you can do about it. If you and your boss butt heads over personal matters, or just don't like each other, there isn't much either of you can really do to fix that problem and become friendly or congenial, especially if its escalated to the point where your boss is willing to air out those personal grievances in your performance evaluation.

If the matter is professional, you have more options. The fact that you were taken by surprise with the evaluation is the first sign of trouble. You should never walk into a performance evaluation and be surprised by what you're hearing, especially if it's negative. Ideally, your boss will give you feedback on your performance over the course of your employment, and you'll know well in advance of a review if you haven't been meeting his or her expectations. Since that's not the case, that's the first thing we need to fix, then you can move on to more specific ways you can improve your job performance.

Photo by snow0810.

How Do I Deal With a Negative Performance Review?

At the end of the performance review, you probably had to sign a statement saying you understood what was said, and since the review was negative, it's possible you were even put on a performance plan or some kind of improvement plan where you have a specific period of time to get better before your boss does another mini-review to see if you're on the right track. For some people, this kind of performance plan spells doom all by itself, but if you like your job and you really want to improve, now's the best time to take this seriously. Make sure you don't just walk away from your performance review with some food for thought.

Let your boss know that you're serious about improving your performance, that you're honestly surprised by the review, and you don't want to be caught blindsided again. It may sound painful, but a good way to get regular feedback from your boss on how you're doing is to nag them for a one-on-one meeting on a regular basis. Depending on how closely you work with your boss, that meeting can be every two weeks, or weekly if necessary. The important thing is that you find a way to get regular feedback from your boss not just on your improvement, but on how things are going in general and what work is coming down the line. Meeting with your boss regularly may also help clear up some of your personal disagreements as well, and offers you an opportunity to talk to your boss about what they think is important about your role, where you have to improve, and get direction on your priorities and how they think you can do better. Ultimately, those clues are going to be the biggest help to you.

Photo by bpsusf.

How Do I Deal With a Negative Performance Review?

When you meet with your boss, you do want to take some time to just chat about how things are going, but you also want to come prepared with specific examples of how you're handling things differently than before, and you want to put them in front of your boss to make sure they agree that you're improving on the areas they dinged you on in your review. Now would be a great time to start keeping a work diary to document your successes and activities, and to embrace a weekly review to help you reflect on how the past week went, prep yourself for the next week, and document anything that needs to go down on paper.

Don't stop with your boss when it comes to feedback though. Reach out to your customers, whether they're internal groups that you work with or people outside the organization, to find out how well you're serving their interests, get their feedback on your strengths and weaknesses, and where you can help them. Being proactive can go a long way towards taking you from a dispensable, so-so employee to an irreplaceable one that everyone loves working with.

Finally, talk to your trusted colleagues about what they think. Get their feedback on your role, whether you're suited for it, and what they've been hearing as well. You should take all of this with a grain of salt: don't get too caught up in what other people think, but use them as a litmus test for the overall atmosphere. If several coworkers say the same thing, you know there may be something to it.

Photo by Brian Turner.

How Do I Deal With a Negative Performance Review?

Once you've established a regular method to get feedback from your boss, and you've reached out to others to get their thoughts and opinions, it's time to put yourself on a performance plan. Even if your review didn't end with one, or your boss didn't even offer to help you improve your performance, if you want to keep your job you should do something for yourself.

Take note of the things your boss expressed concern with in your review. If you're constantly late to work, check out check out our tips on how to fix chronic lateness and reboot your morning routine so you get to the office sooner. If that doesn't work for you, maybe a schedule adjustment is in order so you work later and get to work at a time that works better for you. If your boss's problem is your skill with a specific tool or skill required to do your job, it might be time to take a few classes or sign up for additional training if it's available. See if your company offers reimbursement for job-related courses, other perks or benefits you can explore, or if your department has budget for training—even asking about it after a bad review shows that you're serious about improving, and if all you need to do is brush up to get a better review next time, a training class is well worth the time you'll put into it.

When you know what you can do to improve the things that you need to work on, all you have to do is put yourself on a timetable. Let your boss know that you're working on fixing the problems that came up in the review, and let them know you want to follow up with them in a certain number of weeks or months to discuss how things are going. If your review said you'll be re-evaluated in 60 days, you know you need to show demonstrable progress before then, so make that your goal. If your review was open-ended, give yourself 30, 60, and 90-day goals to get started. Whatever timetable you choose, make sure you make it challenging enough that you actually have to work to get there.

Photo by bpsusf.

How Do I Deal With a Negative Performance Review?

Unfortunately, putting time, energy, effort, communication, training, and personal-development into turning a negative performance review around still may not work. Depending on how touchy your company is about reviews and office politics, even one bad review can effectively spell the end of your job at that company. At one company I used to work for, a bad review was a somewhat coded message for "you have 6 months to find another job, during which we'll look the other way if you spend half your day job hunting and doing the bare minimum here." In other cases, even employees who really turned around couldn't get past their manager's negative perception of them once they got a bad review.

If you spend a lot of time and energy honestly trying to improve yourself and you don't think your manager is buying it, or if you just don't see the situation improving, it may be time to take your newfound skills, brushed-up productivity techniques, and rebooted mornings to a company that will appreciate you, or at least offer you a fresh start. Just make sure you leave the baggage behind—you don't want to start a new job with the ghosts of the old one following you through the door.

Photo by lculig/Shutterstock.

Have you ever had a negative performance review? Did you turn things around or leave the company? Share your experiences in the comments below.

Daily App Deals: Get SoundHound ∞ for Android for Only 10¢ in Today's App Deals [Deals]

Daily App Deals: Get SoundHound â?? for Android for Only 10¢ in Today's App DealsThe Daily App Deals post is a round-up of the best app discounts of the day, as well as some notable mentions for ones that are on sale.

Daily App Deals: Get SoundHound 8 for Android for Only 10¢ in Today's App DealsSoundHound 8 (Android Market) Previously $4.99, now 10¢ . SoundHound 8 for Android identifies songs for you instantly, whether you are listening to them through speakers, singing them yourself, or even humming a tune. You can also get song lyrics and song previews as each tune plays. Get it for 10¢.

iOS

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iOS

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Coffee Break for Mac Reminds You to Take a Break at Pre-Scheduled Times [Mac Downloads]

Coffee Break for Mac Reminds You to Take a Break at Pre-Scheduled Times Mac: We've discussed how important it is to take breaks and get up from the computer now and again, and we love apps that help you do it. Coffee Break for Mac is one of those apps, but instead of just remind you every so often to take a break, you can schedule the breaks on your own time and when it's break time, the app will darken your computer screen for the duration of your break so you can't just ignore it.

Once installed, tell Coffee Break when you want to be reminded to take a break, and for how long. You can set up to five breaks over the course of the day, and enable or disable them individually. Then, tell Coffee Break how long each of those breaks will be. When the timer goes off, Coffee Break will alert you that it's break time, and the app will then slowly darken your display so you have to stop using it. You can tweak how much the app dims your screen, but the default is around 90%. Then, when the break is over, your screen will return to normal, and Coffee Break runs in the background quietly, sitting in your menubar.

You an use Coffee Break as a way to dim your screen over your entire break so you don't use your system, or just long enough that you feel compelled to actually take your break and not ignore the fact that you meant to get up and walk around. Windows users looking for similar apps can try previously mentioned Workrave or Breaker, another app we love. On the Mac however, you're stuck with telling the built-in clock to announce the time on the hour, or an app like Awareness, which offers a different take on reminding you to take breaks. Coffee Break is available in the Mac App Store for $2.99.

Do you use a utility to remind you to get up from the computer every once in a while, or do you just set a timer? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Coffee Break | iLifeTouch via TUAW

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Lifehacker Faceoff: The Best Digital Digests for iPad and iPhone [Lifehacker Faceoff]

Lifehacker Faceoff: The Best Digital Digests for iPad and iPhone Thumbing through the newspaper over your morning coffee and a few minutes of chitchat at the water cooler used to be all it took to stay up-to-date on your world. Now we're faced with a constant flow of information from the internet that often feels overwhelming. The crop of iOS apps dedicated to bringing you a curated, customizable, and attractive stream of content is one way to combat the information overload. Much more than simple RSS readers, these digital digest apps cull stories from across the web and your social networks and wrap them into an iPad friendly and design-forward package. Here's a look at the best options.

(If you just want to hear which we liked best, go ahead and jump down to the end.)

Lifehacker Faceoff: The Best Digital Digests for iPad and iPhone Flipboard (iTunes) is the most well-known of the digital digests, and it was considered one of the iPad's first killer apps. Flipboard pioneered the mixing of social networks and news outlets using a slick visual design; it was even named on of the The 50 Best Inventions of 2010 by Time Magazine.

Flipboard has a great user-interface and visual design. It turns your iPad into a gorgeous glossy magazine filled with pictures of your friend's babies and professional photojournalists' best work. Images fill the iPad's screen and the type is crisp and clean. This eye-candy appeal makes the app a real virtual-page turner that will have you saying "just one more flip" until way past your bedtime.

Lifehacker Faceoff: The Best Digital Digests for iPad and iPhone

If the strength of the Flipboard's visuals are its biggest draw, it's the way the app merges your social feeds into the stream of traditional content that keeps you coming back. Flipboard's presentation of tweets as pull-quotes scattered among the headlines and images of the stories linked to by your contacts is a welcome improvement on Twitter's linear stream.

Flipboard focuses on your social networks when building your digital digest, but it also allows you to add in sections of traditional web content feeds. These feeds are generated through Twitter streams, and as a result you are often presented with only the first paragraph of a story and have to click-through to the source site to complete the reading. The sudden change from Flipbord's clean design to the uneven quality of the outgoing link is often jarring.

Besides causing the uneven presentation, the source of a story also limits the way you are able to share that story; if you want to share a story from Twitter you can only tweet about it. Likewise with Facebook stories; there is no simple way of tweeting a link that originated in Facebook.

Flipboard was the first digital digest on the scene and it is one of the most visually appealing UIs on the iPad. The app engages you with your social networks in a new and very enjoyable way, and it deserves a spot on everyone's iPad. However, the limits to sharing the content feel awkward and dated and the limited sources for outside content focus Flipboard more on your social networks and less on news stories.

Lifehacker Faceoff: The Best Digital Digests for iPad and iPhoneLike Flipboard, Zite (iTunes) merges your Twitter feed with curated web content, and it allows you to add in your Google Reader feeds for more material. The app's hook is that it learns your reading habits using algorithms developed by the University of British Columbia's Laboratory for Computational Intelligence and suggests articles that you will like . Zite monitors which articles you read and how long you spend on each type of article so the learning process is more transparent than using manual thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons (though those are available).

Zite's presentation is a midpoint between Flipboard's design-nerd look and Google Reader's utilitarian layout, and the app is intuitive and beautiful. There is rarely the confusion of UI elements that the other digital digest apps can exhibit. Once you've added content categories flipping through the stories feels natural.

Zite's user interface is second only to the AI-driven recommendations as the app's best feature. Whatever voodoo is going on behind the scenes is impressive, and after just a day or two of using the app you will be presented with compelling articles that you didn't know you wanted to read. A simple customization panel slides out from the right side and allows you to further tune the app's selections.

Once Zite has shown you some great blog-post or news story there are numerous ways to share the story. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are represented, as well as popular web services like Instapaper, Read It Later, Evernote, and Delicious.

One glaring omission from Zite's stable of sources is Facebook, and it doesn't showcase the tweets of your Twitter connections the way that Flipboard does. This makes the app more of a news-aggregater and less of a way to interact with your social networks. Zite was acquired by CNN earlier this year, and while they news network hasn't made any changes to the app some think this loss of Independence will hurt Zite down the road.

If you want to see all your friends tweets and Facebook updates in your digital digest, Zite is not be the best choice. The great recommendation algorithm makes ii the best at providing you with always interesting content, and there are numerous ways to share this content. Zite is my most used app on the iPad, and it is the first thing I open when I have a little time to kill on the couch.

Lifehacker Faceoff: The Best Digital Digests for iPad and iPhoneEditions (iTunes), AOL's entry into the digital digest space, takes the virtual news magazine concept a step further with its presentation and by making it possible to read the app "cover to cover." Editions only updates its content once per day; once you select which topics you would like the app downloads all the articles chosen by its algorithms, indexes them, and makes them available for off-line reading. When you have completed the 100-or-so pages of the edition you are done until the next day (or you manually refresh).

Edition's strongest feature is the off-line reading capabilities, and for someone who is often without a data connection but still wants to have tailored content available throughout the day, like subway commuters, it is perfect. You can customize the app's color pallet and create a black-list for sources you don't want Editions to pull from.

The sharing options in Editions are better than Flipboard, and while not as comprehensive as Zite's options all the major services are covered. The app also has some fun extras like a weather report on the cover and a horoscope feature at the "end" of each edition.

Lifehacker Faceoff: The Best Digital Digests for iPad and iPhone

Editions' user interface feels a little like Jekyll and Hyde. Visually the app is close to Zite and Flipboard's design, but the UI feels sluggish and often stutters and flickers when navigating. Articles you select are opened as a web page in the app's internal browser, and you get a jolt when the app transitions from the clean design of its pages to the often cluttered design of the source's web page (complete with ads).

The sluggishness and uneven presentation can be jarring, but more jarring is the app's large and interactive ads. It is too easy to trigger an advertisement while trying to navigate past it, and this can result in videos or 3D animations playing. When you consider all the ads you also see while reading the content, Editions is easily the most ad-dense of the digital digests.

The developers did a commendable job of making the app feel like you are reading a digital magazine. This makes the slowness of the UI and the frequency of advertisements breaking up the reading experience more glaring than they might otherwise be. The variety of ways to share articles and the offline reading feature can make up for a lot of the app's shortcomings, and it is worth trying out if you have a Wi-Fi iPad and spend time reading without a Wi-Fi network.

Lifehacker Faceoff: The Best Digital Digests for iPad and iPhoneLivestand (iTunes) is Yahoo's horse in the digital digest race, and like AOL Editions it uses a network of content providers to populate your reading list. While it lacks the quantity of sources that the other options offer, Livestand has an attractive presentation and lots of options to tailor the available content just the way you want it.

Livestand presents articles in a simple way that is not jarring or distracting, and it is the most visually consistent of the digital digest apps. Instead being unsure if you will see the story you select reformatted or if you'll be taken to the source's web page, Livestand always smoothly transitions to an attractively formatted article that matches the style of the app. This seems like a small thing, but it makes the whole reading experience feel more natural and seamless.

Livestand doesn't have a single fault that makes it hard to recommend, but a combination of smaller issues make it feel unpolished. Though the app has over 100 content partners, its selection of sources doesn't have the breadth of Zite or Flipboard, and Livestand feels much more limited in the viewpoints it presents. The app's performance isn't as choppy and distracting as Editions, but it also doesn't have the snap of Flipboard. Sharing articles is limited to email and Facebook, and you must use a landscape orientation when using the app where the competing apps are more flexible.

While there were no terrible problems with Livestand, there were enough little issues that the app seems cumbersome and unfinished. The article layouts look great, even better than Flipboard in a lot of cases, but the limited content and poor sharing options put it at the bottom of the list. The app was only released in November, and with some updates the app could be a serious contender.

Lifehacker Faceoff: The Best Digital Digests for iPad and iPhoneThe new kid on the block, Currents (iTunes), is Google's long awaited Digital Digest app, and it launched with a deep catalog of content providers and some nice features. Currents links to your Google account and is available across iOS and Android devices.

The feature that separates Currents from the pack is a well organized Trending Topics section with video support. Trending Topics is broken up into tabs; the "Stories" tab is a scrolling feed of popular topics in eight different categories. Once you select a topic you are shown all the sources reporting on that topic, and this is a nice way to get some different perspectives on one story. The "User Generated" tab has pages of YouTube videos related to the topic to flip through. Currents is the only digital digest to include video content and it is such a natural feature for tablet computers that I am surprised it is not more common in the digital digets.

Currents also allows you to read content offline. Read items are synced to your Google account; a nice touch if you do your reading on multiple devices.

The attractive user interface has some rough edges, and it feels clunky to use. Often images for a topic appear overly-enlarged and pixelated, and the mass of images that appear on top of topic pages are a chaotic jumble. Sometimes you navigate with up-and-down scrolling and other times with left-and-right scrolling, and this causes a low-level confusion that persists while you flip through the app.

Lifehacker Faceoff: The Best Digital Digests for iPad and iPhone

There are plenty of ways to share content you find, but oddly Google+ posting is missing. You can +1 a story, but there is no way to share it with your circles from the iOS app. I also ran into some bugs when sharing articles with some sources where the actual link would not appear in the email or tweet.

The relevancy of Currents' recommendations and user generated content is often way off base; a lot of topics will recommend other stories that are only tangentially related at best. The accuracy of these recommendations should improve as the app matures, but right now they can be more distracting that useful.

Google's addition of video and the leveraging of their search and aggregation technology set Currents apart from the crowd. The app is just a few days old however, and there are some improvements and fixes that need to be made before it is a real challenger to Flipboard's attractive interface and Zite's content delivery and sharing.

Predictably, the choice boils down to your personal preference, and what you are looking to get out of this style of app. Flipboard is the best alternative way to stay up to date on your Twitter and Facebook feeds, but it's limited sharing options and smaller pool of content sources mean it isn't the best choice if you want to read more articles than tweets.

The app I choose to give precious iPad dock space too is Zite. It is currently the best bet if you want a practically endless stream of articles delivered to you plus the best tools to share content with your friends. Add in the ability to specify RSS feeds to add to your digest and Zite's uncanny learning abilities and the app is easy to recommend to any iPad user.

Wednesday 14 December 2011

Today's Lifehacker Workout: Start the Week Right with a 30-Minute Workout [Video]

Today's Lifehacker Workout: Start the Week Right with a 30-Minute Workout Happy Monday, everyone! Time to get moving with our group exercise plan, The Lifehacker Workout. All you need is 30 minutes, 3 times a week to keep fit. Here's the plan for today.

The video above shows you how to do today's workout: 20 minutes of walking or jogging plus 10 minutes of strength exercises (5 push ups, 10 crunches, 15 squats; repeat). There are video instructions in the playlist above, but you can skip through those 3 to fast forward to the 10-minute looped video showing the core exercise reps (great to exercise along with).

Whether you're just joining us or have been doing the workout all along, you're welcome to come join our end-of-year group challenge and log your workouts on Fleetly.

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Everything You Need to Know About Giving and Receiving Gift Cards [Shopping]

Everything You Need to Know About Giving and Receiving Gift CardsGift cards are a great way to get someone a present without having to choose the actual gift, but they come with a few stipulations you might not be aware of. We'll look at the best practices for giving cards as well as what to do if you've received one you can't use.

Photo by Arvind Grover.

Everything You Need to Know About Giving and Receiving Gift CardsWhile you'll always be able to purchase gift cards directly from a retailer, gift card exchange sites have risen up as fast as gift cards. You can often find big discounts on cards by checking these sites first. Gift exchange sites allow you to purchase or sell your gift cards, so if you've received one you cannot or won't use, they're a great way to offload the card and not let the card go to waste. Let's start by taking a look at how the selling process works.

Selling Unwanted Gift Cards
These sites work in one of two ways if you're selling a card. Some, like Card Hub, allow you to set a price and allow someone to purchase directly from you, like eBay or Craigslist, while others will outright buy a card from you for a specific amount of cash based on demand. You can either mail your card in or give them the number on the back of the card. Based on our tests of a $60 Apple gift card, here are the sites we found offered the best price, although your results may vary based on the gift card you're selling.

Plastic Jungle: $55.44/Amazon Gift Card or $52.80 PayPal/CashCardpool: $52.80 by mailing it in/$49.80 by sending them the codeGiftCards: $42.00Gift Card Castle: $52.80/cash or $53.33 PayPal

As you can see, $52.80 is the most common offer. Each of the services base their payout rate on percentages. If you're okay with receiving an Amazon gift card in return, the Plastic Jungle offer is the best. The services seem to base percentage paid out on how many cards they have or demand, so you're going to get a different result depending on what you're trying to sell and when. For instance, a Chili's gift card for the same amount paid out a bit less, ($48 at both Cardpool and Plastic Jungle), so it might be worth shopping around a little before selling.

Purchasing Gift Cards Second Hand
You can, of course, also purchase cards from these resellers. The same principles as selling apply here, with the cards ranging in discounts on each site. The more specific the store and the higher the card's value, the better the savings are. Regal Entertainment, for instance, averaged about 15 percent savings at the same sites we checked above, while a store like Target or Nordstrom only offered savings of 2 percent.

For selection and overall experience, Cardpool seems to have the most variety in stores, with Plastic Jungle coming in next. GiftCards and GiftCard Castle don't have a lot, but they're worth checking when you make the rounds. If you're looking to check them all at once, including auctions on eBay, Gift Card Granny and Card Hub aggregate many of the deals in one place.

Obviously you want to pick a gift card to a store the person you're gifting to might shop at, but be sure to also consider their physical location if they're not in the same state. Check Google Maps with their address and a store's location to make sure they won't have to drive three hours just to use the card. The safer option is to purchase cards for outlets that have a good online store.

Everything You Need to Know About Giving and Receiving Gift CardsSince August of last year, rules protect you from wasting your gift card. You have at least five years to use the card, but the value can start depreciating after one year, so be careful if you're holding off on using the card right away. The card itself has all of the terms of use on the back, so take a close look if you plan on storing it and not using it right away.

If you purchase a card from a reseller that comes in an odd amount, MSNBC recommends taking the card into the retailer and having them break the card's total up into round number chunks before you give it away. If there's an awkward amount leftover, you can either use the remainder for yourself or add a couple dollars to the difference to round the total out.

If you've received a gift card for a company that has gone out of business, the FTC recommends calling the company or a competitor to see who might still accept the card.

If you struggle to remember to use your cards, you might also consider our previously mentioned tips of setting reminders in your calendar, keeping the cards in your wallet, and keeping track of the usage with services like Evernote. A card's value can start depreciating after a year, so it's important to use it quickly. Photo by Nate Grigg.

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Android Market Now Lets You Filter User Reviews by Device, Star Rating, and Version Number [Android Market]

Android Market Now Lets You Filter User Reviews by Device, Star Rating, and Version NumberThe Android Market web interface just got an update that brings extra filtering powers to the user reviews section, letting you filter by the device of the reviewer, the star rating they gave, and the version of the app they used.

User reviews can be extremely helpful in deciding whether to download an app, but when half of them say the app is awesome and half are having trouble, sometimes it would be nice to filter some reviews out to get more detail about who's having problems. Now, the Android Market lets you do just that. Say you have an HTC Thunderbolt (also known as the HTC Mecha, as shown above), and an app isn't working on your device—you can filter the reviews and view only those written by Thunderbolt users (or Thunderbolt users who gave the app one star) and see if others are having problems too. Right now it only lets you filter by devices you own, which is kind of strange and annoying, but isn't likely to be a problem for most people. Hit the link below to read more, or head over to the Market to check it out for yourself.

Kick-Ass! Web Android Market Now Allows App User Review Filtering By Device Model, Latest Version, And Specific Star Rating | Android Police

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Build a Paper Towel Holder from an Old Wire Coat Hanger [Macgyver Tips]

Build a Paper Towel Holder from an Old Wire Coat Hanger It may not look good enough for the kitchen, but if you have a workbench or garage that can get a little messy and a few paper towels are in order, this easy trick to transform an old wire coat hanger into a paper towel holder may fit the bill. The only thing you need is the coat hanger, a roll of paper towels, and a set of pliers or multi-tool you can use to bend the hanger.

Build a Paper Towel Holder from an Old Wire Coat Hanger Perhaps the best thing about this hack is that it costs no money, and you can use an old wire hanger you have lying around, that's headed for the trash, or that you might get from a dry cleaner. Just snip the bottom of the hanger, bend it into a square shape with strong corners, and make the cut ends into a pair of hooks that can attach to one another. Then, just unhook the holder, slide on the paper towels, then close the hooks so the roll doesn't fall off. The result is a paper towel holder that's great for a corner of the garage, a workshop, or anywhere else paper towels are needed but form matters less than function.

It's not the prettiest solution, but if your hands are covered in grease and you need a few paper towels without dirtying the whole roll, it gets the job done. Have you tried this in the past? Have a better solution? Share your tips in the comments below.

Paper Towel Hanger | Instructables

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