Hoga-Boga

Oh sweet mother of WinMo computing, HTC looks to have a new one up their sleeves with this, the HTC Athena (X7500). It's apparently not their rumored UMPC, rather, this pup is said to run Windows Mobile Pocket PC "Pro edition" (whatever that is) so that's a 3.5-inch QVGA touch-screen with stylus and detachable QWERTY -- yes, detachable when you need to keep things light. The unofficial specs being passed around indicate that this handheld is destined for Europe: UMTS 2100 with tri-band GSM/GPRS radio (what, no EDGE or HSDPA?), 802.11b/g WiFi, 256MB ROM / 64MB RAM, 2 megapixel camera, SD expansion, and USB 1.1 interface. All running on a 400MHz Samsung processor. Still, doesn't this seem a bit light for all the device's bulk? Read on for more pics and clues from this mystery device.

[Thanks, Yoda M.]

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(Via Engadget Mobile.)

Deets were slim when we first got wind of this HTC Vox phone, a purported GSM counterpart to the HTC Libra, but now The Boy Genius Report has managed to track down some more juicy details, including the first "live" pic of the phone. As rumored, the Vox -- officially titled the S710 -- goes with a messaging-friendly setup, running Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone instead of the Pocket PC featured by some of its QWERTY-sliding companions in the HTC lineup. Contrary to initial reports, the phone is supposed to feature 128MB of ROM and 64MB of RAM, and with a 2.4-inch QVGA screen, Bluetooth, 802.11b/g WiFi, a 2 megapixel camera and a microSD slot, the phone is by no means a total slacker on specs. Of course, the most interesting part of the device is that numeric keypad on the face of the phone, with a semi-automatic sliding QWERTY keyboard tucked behind, but at 0.7-inches thick, it looks like HTC managed to keep things relatively slim, despite the extra keys. What's still up in the air is whether or not the phone will sport 3G data -- the spec sheets list quad-band EDGE as the tops, but that tacked-on smartphone screen up above reads "UMTS operator," so at least there's hope.
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(Via Engadget Mobile.)

The Daily Cup of Tech help site describes how to recover lost network passwords - like email, FTP, or HTTP - by using the free network sniffer and decryption program, Cain and Abel.
As the article author says, this tool could be used for good or evil. Stick with good, eh? Like when you're setting up Mom's new computer and she has no idea what her POP email password is. Check out the article for detailed instructions with screenshots. — Gina Trapani
Recovering Your Lost Passwords [Daily Cup of Tech]
(Via Lifehacker.)

Windows only: PortableApps Suite 1.0 stocks your USB drive, portable hard drive, or any other drive with a full complement of software, ready to run wherever you plug in.
This new version of the suite (which we've loved on in the past) includes the latest portable versions of Firefox, GAIM, OpenOffice, and other open-source gems. The suite also comes with PortableApps Backup for--you guessed it--making backups.
The Standard Edition of the suite requires about 260MB; there's also a 105MB Lite version that substitutes AbiWord for OpenOffice. Whichever version of this app-tacular bundle you download, you're going to love it. PortableApps Suite 1.0 is free; it requires Windows. — Rick Broida
PortableApps Suite 1.0

(Via Lifehacker.)

Windows only: Convert nearly any video format to nearly any other video format with the aptly named Any Video Converter.
The program supports just about every video format known to man, including AVI, DivX, FLV, RM, and VOB. It also comes with output profiles for devices like the iPod and PSP, though you can easily create a custom profile with the audio and video specs of your choosing.
AVC couldn't be much easier to use, and it supports batch conversions--always a nice perk. You'll definitely want to add this utility to your video arsenal (though don't overlook Videora Converter, arguably a better choice for converting videos for mobile devices). Any Video Converter is free for Windows. — Rick Broida
Any Video Converter [Any-DVD-Converter.com]
(Via Lifehacker.)

Tech writer David Pogue took photos with 5, 8 and 13 megapixel digital cameras, had them printed and blown up to 16 x 24 inches poster size, and asked passersby to pick out which ones came from the higher res camera:

Dozens of people stopped to take the test; a little crowd gathered. About 95 percent of the volunteers gave up, announcing that there was no possible way to tell the difference, even when mashing their faces right up against the prints. A handful of them attempted guesses--but were wrong. Only one person correctly ranked the prints in megapixel order, although (a) she was a photography professor, and (b) I believe she just got lucky.

Kinda crazy, but good to know when you're picking up a new camera for the holidays. — Gina Trapani
The Truth About Digital Cameras [Pogue's Posts]

(Via Lifehacker.)

We all know that there's a lot of smarties in the Google factory, and I do believe that the Google TechTalks have something to do with that.
According to Anders Bylund of Ars Technica, Google TechTalks are "regularly scheduled presentations offered by Googlers or our guests on a wide variety of subjects." And when they say wide variety, they're not kidding: I found presentations ranging from the video above titled "Human Computation" to "Zero Configuration networking with Bonjour." Go ahead, give 'em a go and get edumacated. — Wendy Boswell
Google TechTalks [Google Video via Ars Technica]

(Via Lifehacker.)

The Download Squad weblog posts 5 rules for keeping an empty inbox. A couple highlights:

1. If you don't need to read it now, it shouldn't be in your inbox.
   
2. If you've already responded to it, it shouldn't be in your inbox.
   

It's a great list, and one that should be at least somewhat familiar for any hardcore GTDer. The post has a focus on Gmail, but the ideas are applicable to any inbox. Empty inbox zen is a goal we're constantlystrivingfor around these parts, but it's always helpful to get a new perspective/reminder of where you might want to tighten up the screws a bit. Got your own inbox zero rules? Let's hear 'em in the comments. — Adam Pash
Five simple rules for keeping an empty inbox [Download Sqad]
(Via Lifehacker.)

by Stewart Rutledge
You'd think almost 3 gigabytes would be more than enough space to store your email, but for the last two weeks my Gmail account has hovered ominously above 95% of the allowed storage quota. When it finally peaked at 98% (2725 MB of 2780 MB), I had to do something.
However, forwarding all those messages by hand or downloading 2.7 gigabytes of mail were out of the question. I simply had to start hitting that delete button. Using a few effective filters that helped determine what I could safely delete, I took my Gmail account from 98% of quota down to 67% of quota without losing one important message. Here's how I did it.

1. Start big and narrow down.

The trick that worked best was to first delete stuff that I absolutely knew I would never miss and then narrow down my deletions to stuff more on the borderline. It's both safer and faster.

2. Add labels to certain senders to avoid losing important emails.

I've got about ten people whose emails I know that I want to keep about 99% of the time. It's mostly family and business contacts, but you know your "in group."

Create a filter that only shows messages that are from that certain group of people. You can use Gmail's advanced search operators to do so using the "or" (|) operator. For example, From: john | paul | ringo | george returns all emails from either John, Paul, Ringo or George. Set your filter to label those messages with a good, safe name. I used "nodelete."
Now you can exclude all messages in this label from your upcoming search and destroy missions.

3. Eliminate heinous offenders.

Although the has:attachment search operator yields a good list of space-hogging messages, it does not give you the option to sort by file size. So, with 2.7GB of email to sort through, it's pretty worthless.
But, you can search by file type and narrow down file sizes a bit that way. I used the following search phrases:
filename:wmv -label:nodelete
filename:mov -label:nodelete
filename:mp3 -label:nodelete (this one was pretty weak since MP3 is common in text)
filename:doc -label:nodelete
filename:pdf -label:nodelete


For each of those phrases, I just had to go through and actually use my brain to decide what to delete. This is the most time-consuming step, but it's not that hard. And, it's cathartic. Remember that if you press shift while selecting two messages, Gmail will select all messages in between. That's useful for big chunks of messages to go.
I lowered my Gmail usage by about 20% by using these first three steps, and that might be good enough for you. But, after this, if you want more, you can fine tune your deletions using the next few steps.

4. Delete stupid forwards.

I already have a filter to label all Fw:, Fwd:, Forward:, etc. emails with a Forwards label, and, in most cases, I have it set to automatically archive them. But, if you don't have one, create such a filter by simply specifying the common forward subject lines listed above. Then, use this search string:
label:forward -label:nodelete
...and start deleting manually.
If you've already looked for filename:_____ offenders, you probably won't achieve much with this step, but it's good to get rid of some crap anyway.

5. Delete emails from people that send you nothing but junk.

There is this one guy that literally sends every forward he gets to everyone in his address book. It's an amazing thing to watch day in and day out, and I have a Gmail filter set to automatically archive anything that ever comes from his email address with a forward subject line and label it with his cursed name.
In my cleanup, I just deleted all of his forwards without thinking twice. If you have such a friend(s), do the same to him or her or them. This applies to commercial emails as well.

6. Carefully delete emails from those people in your nodelete label.

You might even want to skip this step if you're satisfied, but, if you're really a clean freak, repeat steps 1-4 and leave out the -label:nodelete protection. Usually, people in your nodelete label won't send you a lot of junk (that's why you're friends), so this step can be really fast to clean up.

7. Empty trash and delete spam.

Gmail does not do this automatically, so don't forget to throw out the trash when you're done and go ahead and empty your spam while you're at it (even though spam doesn't affect your quota). This also gives you one last chance to give your deletions a glance to see if you deleted anything you didn't mean to delete.
A lot of you might say that I'm a promiscuous emailer/storer, and that's a fair charge. But, using these methods, we can all continue in our promiscuity without offending the god of Gmail (quotas).

In the future I might set up some storage Gmail accounts as readers previously suggested, but I'm hoping that following these steps about once a year will keep me behind Gmail's consistent storage increases.
Got any great search strings or filters for cleaning out your email archive? Let's hear 'em in the comments.
Stewart Rutledge is in his final year of law school at the University of Mississippi.

(Via Lifehacker.)

Windows/Mac/Unix (Firefox): The FaviconizeTab extension reduces the width of specified tabs to only its favicon to save space in the tab bar.
Set those tabs you always have open to just their icon - like Gmail, Lifehacker, or Google Reader - to make room for other tabs's titles that you actually need to read. Once the extension is installed, right-click to Faviconize it. FaviconizeTab will also remember which tabs you've iconized next time you launch the 'fox if you have Firefox set up to restore your previous session. FaviconizeTab is a free download, works wherever Firefox does. — Gina Trapani
FaviconizeTab [Mozilla Add-ons via LifeDev]

(Via Lifehacker.)

Blogger Ilya Hevnikov has posted a really nice tutorial for triple-booting Windows XP, Windows Vista, and the Linux distro du jour, Ubuntu, on one hard drive.
A couple of months ago, I wrote a similar article for triple-booting the same three operating systems, but this tutorial is more current and, frankly, better than my original tutorial. Among other things, when all's said and done, you can boot any of the 3 OSes from a single boot screen (something I was unable to do with Vista's new bootloader). This undertaking is not for the faint of heart, but it is a great way to try out a different OS or two without abandoning what you're comfortable with. — Adam Pash
How To Triple Boot (XP, Vista, Ubuntu) With Single Boot Screen [Hevkinov.com]

(Via Lifehacker.)

Many fans of the form factor proposed by HTC's upcoming Libra (pictured) -- numeric keypad when closed, QWERTY when open -- probably felt a little snubbed when it seemed like CDMA customers would be the only folks lucky enough to put one in their pockets; we know we did. The latest intelligence coming off the wires suggests that we can all finally rest easy, though, with a device being called "Vox" taking the torch for the GSM side. Details are slim, but it sounds like Vox won't have the 3G capability of its EV-DO rev. A equipped Libra cousin, merely topping out with EDGE instead. HTC will apparently be positioning the Vox as a messaging-friendly phone (a laLG VX9900) rather than a full fledged PDA -- and with a meager 96MB of internal storage to its name, it shows. Look for it to drop shortly after the Libra in the first half of 2007.
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(Via Engadget Mobile.)

If you’ve got $356 burning in your pocket, you can always spend them on this ultra advanced LEGO toy called Mindstorms NXT. It’s pretty far from ordinary LEGO, just to give you an idea I’m going to give you some highlights from the specification: 3xservo motors, sound sensor, visual sensor, touch sensor, light sensor, bluetooth wireless communication, USB full speed port (12 Mbit/s), 100 x 64 pixel LCD graphical display, loudspeaker - 8 kHz sound quality and a sound channel with 8-bit resolution and 2-16 KHz sample rate. Pretty cool (and expensive) toy, ey?


LEGO Mindstorms NXT [firebox.com]

(Via Fosfor Gadgets.)