Lifehacks Archives
Get football scores, phone numbers and word definitions via text.
If you're like me you often find yourself walking around and need some random bit of information. Maybe it's the number for a restaurant to make a reservation or the score of the Monday Night Football game. Well, wonder no longer, there's a better way than calling that friend of yours who's always around a computer and asking them. There are two text message services that will answer your questions for you. The best part is, they'll do it for free (assuming you've got free text messages or some large number of prepaid).
I've been meaning to write about this for a while since it's one of those things where everyone around ooohs and aaaahs whenever I do it. Now, my faithful reader, it's time for me to impart my wisdom onto you, so you may impress your friends with your mobile savvy. So here's the deal:
4INFO
Also known as 44636, 4INFO is the best way to get your sports fix while you're on the go. Just text a team, say "Chicago Bears" to 4INFO (44636) and they'll get right back to you with the score of the game (or the time if it hasn't been played yet). Want to know all the scores? That's easy too, just text "NFL" (obviously you don't need the quotes). Other good ones are "NCAAF" (NCAA football), "NCAAB" (NCAA basketball), plus the obvious ones like "NBA" and "MLB." Plus, and I didn't know this until I visited their site, you can get fantasy football stats this way too? Want to know how many yards Kyle Orton threw for in this afternoon's game against the Packers? (Not many.) Just text "Kyle Orton" to 4INFO and they'll return text you with the answer. There are lots of other uses for 4INFO, you can get a list on their FAQ or just text "help" to 44636 and they'll return text you with the lowdown. (Another one I just noticed is "pu" for "pickup line.") Anyway, poke around, I'm sure you'll find lots of other cool uses. Or, you could try . . .
GOOGL
Also known as 46645, this is Google's SMS search. I use it primarily to find phone numbers and addresses for things around New York City (which 4INFO can do as well). Want to make a reservation at Balthazar but don't have the phone number? Just text "Balthazar New York City" to GOOGL and they'll get back to you with the address and phone number. On top of the basic local lookup, GOOGL has weather (text "weather" and your zip code), movies (text "movies" and your zip code) as well as other goodies. My personal favorite feature, however, is the basic questions. Having an argument at a bar about how old Shaun Alexander of the Seatlle Seahawks is? (This question may come from personal experience.) All you have to do is text "how old is shaun alexander?" to GOOGL and they'll get back to you with his age (he was born in 1977). Similarly, GOOGL also has a defintion feature. Just text "define" and your word to 46645 and Google will tell you the definition. Great for those impromptu street Scrabble battles . . . I guess.
Well, that concludes today's lesson. I hope you will find these text message services as useful as I have. And, as always, if you've got any suggestions or know of any other cool related stuff, drop a comment.
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Two cool Google-related discoveries made today.
I discovered two cool Google things today.
1. When I went to download the new version of Adium (the spectacular free OS X IM client). I could remember the address so I went for a quick Google search. The site turned up at the top of the results, as expected, but check out what the listing looked like:
Notice anything weird there? For some strange reason listed directly under the link to the homepage are links to other parts of the site. They're not additional listings, as you'll notice, but instead just appear as a sort-of nav right below the listing. Seems pretty cool to me, anyone got any ideas what's going on here?
Then . . .
2. (This one comes via Creativebits.) Just the other day I was telling a coworker that you can't set up Gmail to send from any email address other than your @gmail.com address. Well, turns out I was wrong.
All you've got to do is go to "Settings" followed by "Accounts" where you'll see "Add Another Email Address." At that point it's as easy as inputting your additional address which Google verifies by sending you an email with a link to click. Once you've done that all you've got to do is choose the appropriate email in the newly added "from" field. Nice.
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A short look at the little tricks/tips and apps I use on my Apple on a regular basis.
Today as I was filing away my mail with the help of
Mail Act-On, I decided it would be worthwhile to list out all the productivity apps/plugins/tricks I employ on a regular basis on my Mac (both at work and home).
Quicksilver
If you're using an Apple and you're not using
Quicksilver, then I'm sorry. It's amazing. I've said it before and I'll say it again. It puts every program at my fingertips and opens up parts of apps that I never would have used (bookmarks in Firefox for example). It's more than just a launcher, it's the hub of everything I do on my computer. For the lowdown on setting up and using Quicksilver to the best of its ability check out
Dan Dickinson's great tutorial and
this entry from The Apple Blog titled "Quicksilver Changes Everything".
Mail Act-On
This was a recent addition thanks to a
tip from Merlin Mann over at 43 Folders. Essentially what
Mail Act-On does is allow you to set up rules that are invoked by keystrokes. I have different keys set up to move messages to different important folders, which is a hell of a lot easier than dragging and dropping every one.
TextEdit
I'm not sure you can count this one, but I always have an open text document where I keep all my notes and save them at the end of the day. It's easy to use, takes up no space and a snap to backup to my server and read online. Who said .txt was useless? (Not me, for the record.)
iCal Subscriptions
I'm subscribed to a calendar that gives me all the US Holidays as well as the Chicago Bears season schedule. They refresh automatically and beat the hell out of writing all those dates in yourself. Apple
has a ton of calendars to subscribe to and there are lots of other sites as well. Also, check out
Upcoming.org which is an event sharing site that provides you with an iCal file of events you've marked.
I'm sure there's more, but that should be enough to chew on this Monday morning.
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Ever wish you could easily skip through those automated customer service telephone menus?
I ran across this
list of shortcuts to automated phone systems (via
Jon Udell) and thought it was too good not to post. How many times have we all been stuck on a phone wading through number after number trying to speak to a customer service rep. What's even worse is those ones where you speak your problem because it's almost like you're being laughed at. It's like the customer service people are in the background saying, "we know you want to talk to us, now not only do you have to navigate a maze, but you have to do it by talking to an obnoxious computer voice . . . MWAHAHAHAHA." Seriously, it's awful.
What really gets me though, is the listing for Compaq, which, unfortunately, offers no tips. I can't tell you how many times I sat on the phone, heart rate increasing by the minute, trying to get on the phone with a Compaq customer service rep. Only to have them tell me they didn't know what was wrong with my computer, or, my personal favorite, that although I had purchased an extended warranty good for three years, they did not have it on record.
Damn you Compaq! Damn you to hell!
[Deep breath.]
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Hello all, just wanted to let you know about this cool little thing I discovered in Firefox last night. If everyone already knows about this then please ignore this post.
Anyway, have you ever tried typing words into the address bar? Well, give it a try. Type your name. Or better yet, type my name. That's right, just type "noah brier" right into the address bar (you don't need the quotes). You know what happens?
You end up right back at my homepage.
It appears that the address bar is programmed to handle non-addresses by doing an "I'm feeling lucky" Google search. So whatever you type in will show you the first Google return on the search term.
It's so cool and easy. Why didn't I know about this?
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For whatever reason I've been talking to a lot of people lately about how I handle the massive amount of information online. The problem so many people run into is that there is so much out there they find themselves overwhelmed, a situation that's been dubbed information overload. Often people respond to this by shutting down and not reading anything, or choosing a few sites to read a day.
I, on the other hand, have taken the opposite approach. I have over 300 feeds now coming into my RSS reader and I don't find it overwhelming at all. I would actually guess that myy feed number grows about 15 a month. So how do I handle it?
Well, for me it's all about accepting the fact that I can't read everything. It's impossible. There's just too much information out there for me to possibly wade through it all. So what I've done is create a list of trusted media outlets (NYTimes, WaPo, Guardian, etc.) and a lot of blogs, del.icio.us feeds, etc. that aggregate other information for me. I am trusting these secondary sources (blogs, etc.) to provide me with what I've missed from my mainstream sources (as well as what the mainstream media has missed, additional commentary and other goodies). I truly believe that if something is that important to read, it's going to get to me somehow. Essentially I've embraced the overload. I say BRING IT ON! Why not?
When things get bad and I do feel overwhelmed you know what I do? I don't read it. I'll have 15 tabs open in Firefox with stuff I've been meaning to read for two weeks (all saved by Session Saver) and I'll just get rid of them all. If I missed something I deal with it. I can't get caught up in the past, there's too much out there. I often find that I'll even end up coming back to one of these articles later via a link from someone else.
In a Lifehacker interview, Danny O'Brien, the so-called "father of lifehacks" explained it this way:
One way of dealing with all this “stuff� is to realise its unimportance. For every person I found talking about how to deal with their million-item todo list, there was someone else who said “I just delete everything every few months�, or “Top tip: get off the internet and go down the pub�.
So just remember, it's not you AGAINST the information, it's out there for you to use. Embrace it.
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Since writing my entry about
getting things done, I've been thinking a lot about so-called "lifehacks." Essentially lifehacks are little things you do that make life easier. Arienna over at
Blogaholics commented on my original entry,
specifically focusing on blogging as a lifehack. This got me thinking a little more about some specific things I do (or have done), to simplify my life. I decided it was worth writing some of these down, as they might help someone else. So without any further ado, we present ten official NoahBrier.com lifehacks (in no specific order and with one bonus):
1. Copy all your numbers from your phone and email it to a GMail account. Now, not only are all my numbers backed up in case your phone gets lost, but they're also completely searchable from any computer.
2. Keep daily notes/thoughts in text files. I tend to split these up into three categories: notes, thoughts and quotes. Text files are easy to manage and completely searchable.
3. Use del.icio.us to keep track of your bookmarks. That way you can access them from anywhere and they're searchable (and tagable).
4. When using tags on sites like del.icio.us and Flickr, remember the tags are for your use. This means that you should tag them with whatever makes sense for your life. Tags are a tool to help you organize your thoughts. Don't worry about using multiple tags, or having too many tags. If it's going to help you organize/retrieve that information, just do it.
5. If you use iCal (which I do at work), set your mobile phone email address as one of your emails (figure out your address here). That way, if you want to send yourself a text message reminder about an activity you can. (I imagine this works with other calendar programs as well.)
6. The combination of Firefox, Bloglines and Tabbrowser Preferences extension make browsing RSS a snap. Simply go through your feeds, click on the links you want to read further and let them load in the background. That way you can go through all your feeds, find the interesting nuggets (that you don't just want to read in Bloglines) and save them for later. Makes having a lot of feeds much more manageable.
7. If you use Firefox, get yourself Spellbound, it spell checks any text box. It's much easier than using the spell checker in most web-based email services.
8. If you listen to a lot of MP3s, download the Musicbrainz tagger (or Mac equivalent). It takes a bit to figure out how to use, but once you get it going it will fix all the tags on your MP3s fairly automatically.
9. If you play a lot of Minesweeper, use both mouse buttons to clear surrounding squares once you've identified all the mines in an area. It's a simple trick, but one that a lot of people don't know about.
10. If you like to read a lot of stuff online and find yourself running out of time, try printing the extra stuff out, stapling it together and reading it other places. Just throw it in your bag and wait for some free time.
Bonus: Get yourself some velcro shoes. They're coming back in style and they save you all that wasted tie time.
I'm sure I'll come up with more, but until then how about adding your own to the list. Just add a comment.
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Lifehacker is probably my new favorite blog in
Denton's empire (dethroning
Gizmodo which I just have some trouble keeping up with sometimes.) Lifehacker is all about ways to make your online life a little easier. As they say:
Computers make us more productive. Yeah, right. Lifehacker recommends the downloads, web sites and shortcuts that actually save time. Don't live to geek; geek to live.
Anyway, I'm a big fan of the site, but I especially like their "How I get stuff done" survey. It asks regular people what tools they use and tips they have for being more effective. You can see all the entires in the
"Reader Surveys" section of the site.
While I'm on the topic of blogs that help you get things done, check out 43 Folders. Merlin Mann, the author, describes the site like this:
43 Folders will be my new parking lot for some of the ideas that excite me. Nerdy stuff like OSX tricks, productivity hints, and the rapidly growing field of mental overclocking that Danny O’Brien has called “Lifehacks.â€? You’re also going to have to endure frequent references to David Allen’s Getting Things Done systemâ€â€and, believe me, if you keep finding that the water of your life has somehow run onto the floor, GTD may be just the drinking glass you need to get things back together.
Hope you finds some worthwhile tips, and if you do, let me know. I'm always down for some increased productivity.
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Hi, I'm 