westXdesign Productivity, Leadership, & Technology

10Jan/120

25 Geeky Ideas, Household Tips, and Storage Ideas to Make Your Life Easier

Whether you are trying to keep track of which cords go to specific electronic items or looking for a better way to store leftover wrapping paper, the right idea can make it all a lot easier to deal with. The Daily Buzz blog has put together an awesome post full of ideas and suggestions that can help make your life easier and more streamlined.

25 clever ideas to make life easier [via Neatorama]

How To Enable AirPrint for iOS Printing From Any Mac or Windows PC
How to Optimize Mozilla Firefox for Maximum Privacy
HTG Explains: Are Mirrorless Cameras the Future of Digital Photography?


18Dec/110

Repair Rusty Dishwasher Racks with Sugru [Sugru]

At Lifehacker, we love Sugru. The silicone-based putty can be shaped by hand, bonds to many materials, is highly heat-resistant, and is waterproof when it cures. These properties make it excellent to use on dishwasher racks where the plastic coating has worn off and the metal underneath starts to rust. More »


2Nov/110

Extract Text from Images: 10 OCR Tool Compared

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is an amazing time saver when it works well and a huge time sink when it malfunctions. Check out this comparison of 10 OCR tools to find one best suited for your project.

Freeware Genius pitted 5 web-based OCR services and 5 desktop OCR apps against each other. All the services/apps are either free or have a trial/free for home use component. Their reviews include the license, system requirements, input file type, output filetype, dictionary languages, and a Pro/Con section highlighting the best and worst of each tool.

Hit up the link below to check out all the reviews plus some additional tips on improving your OCR scans.

How To Extract Text From Images: A Comparison of 10 Free OCR Tools [Freeware Genius]


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How to Rename Internet Explorer to Firefox/Chrome Downloader
How to Reset Your Forgotten Windows Password the Easy Way
The Painless Way to Ditch Your Old Windows XP for a More Secure Linux

20Oct/110

3 Ways Happiness Can Improve Health

most people doom their chances for success by starting with negative thoughts. They start with the fact that they don't like something about themselves. They fixate on it, and decide to be unhappy until they fix it.  Without happiness, you miss out on all of the happiness advantage: increased energy, improved self-efficacy, higher resilience, improved immune system and greater consistency.  Here are three ways to use happiness to improve your health and achieve your health goals.
20Oct/110

Make Your Thoughts Visible – basics of mind mapping

A major characteristic of creative geniuses is the tendency to extend widely and unusually their associative horizon. In the rest of us there is a tendency to constrain our associative horizon, in the spirit of linear and explanatory thinking, and to minimize imaginative connections, which is seen as carelessness and lack of discipline. Yet associations and imaginative connections are an essential power of creativity; they distinguish ideas that are truly original and innovative from those that are logical but inconsequential.

A mind map is a tool to help us deliberately and consciously extend our associations, so we can make the imaginative connections and unleash our creative powers. The guidelines for mind mapping are:

19Oct/110

Japanese Brainstorming Technique

This creative thinking technique originated in Japan and is called "Lotus Blossom." It is an excellent tool which enables you to approach problems thematically. Primary Topic:  Creativity

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12Oct/110

IT solutions…

strip for October / 11 / 2011

Evil Inc. by Brad Guigar - A Daily Webcomic

12Oct/110

Everything You Do Is Practice, Until It Isn't

In reality it doesn't come down to what you do, necessarily, but to your attitude about your actions. The one common thread in every success story is perseverance,
12Oct/110

The Five Levels of ISP Evil

Recently a number of ISPs have been caught improperly redirecting end-user traffic in order to generate affiliate payments, using a system from Paxfire. A class action lawsuit has been filed against Paxfire and one of the ISPs.

This is a serious allegation, but it’s the tip of the iceberg. I’m not sure if everyone understands the levels of sneakiness that service providers can engage in. So, while I’m no expert (as we are an ISP who doesn’t do these things), but as a broad overview, here is my quick guide to the five levels of ISP evil, and the various “opportunities to monetize customers” that we’ve passed on:

12Oct/110

Email Folders Might Actually Decrease Productivity; Just Search for Old Messages Instead

A study by IBM Research finds that just using the search function can be much faster than navigating through folders to find old messages.