The Fiery Source » Life Hacks

NeighborGoods is a Community Lending and Borrowing Network

Bob — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:04:09 +0000

Free web service NeighborGoods is a website that lets you lend items out to your local community, and of course connects you with others who have items you may need. The website is somewhat like Craigslist, well perhaps better organized. As a matter of fact the system is well organized with calendars, transaction histories, reminders and private messages to keep you on top of where your stuff is and whats going on.

You can put any of your items up to be borrowed, rented, or purchased as well as request items from your neighborhood that you’d like to borrow, buy or rent. Signing up is free at NeighborGoods, and you have options to connect with your friends. Once your account is created options are available to create rules such as, lend items to friends for free but rent out to other. Your home address is private unless you put it out there.

Not a bad idea if your lawn mower breaks down and the kitty is low on cash, or it may just be a way to create some extra cash off the items you seldom use. Check out the link for more information.

NeighborGoods

via [lifehacker and Laughing Squid]]

How to Build a Space Saving Vertical Garden

Bob — Fri, 21 May 2010 04:35:44 +0000

Vertical gardens are a space-efficient means of producing all those favorite veggies you love so much, especially if you live in the city where space is a premium. DIY site Instructables has a handy guide on how-to create one of these wonderful eye pleasing gardens together.

There are plenty of ways to set up a garden at your home, my wife Sharon a normal garden out back near the fence and loads of hanging baskets and pots are all over the place. She has about any type of container you can think of with some sort of plant growing in it. She does use the fence as well to grow her beans and a few other variety of vegetables. I must say that sinking your teeth into some organically home grown veggies is a plus around my house. It’s not all that hard to build a garden, just takes a little bit of your time.

Anyway on with the project. You will need some tools for the vertical garden such as a hammer, drill, saw and a screwdriver. Then their are some materials needed like a few pieces of wood, jute cloth, plastic and a handful of screws to assemble all this together.

Basically whats involved here is a frame needs to be built and filled with soil and some water. For a step by step block of instructions, check out the article below.

Have a garden you want to talk about, or maybe you have a creative way of producing those homegrown veggies, tell us about it in the comments.

Vertical Garden [Instructables]

Best Bookmarking Management Tools

Bob — Tue, 18 May 2010 22:36:18 +0000

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to save, share, organize, search, and manage their bookmarks of websites. The resources themselves aren’t shared, only the bookmarks that reference them. Most of the time these bookmarks are made public, or they can be saved privately, sharing the bookmarks only with specified people, groups, or certain networks. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags.

Bookmarking your favorite websites is a simply process with most browsers, but after some time you end up with a large pile of Bookmarks. Then there’s the possibility you may even lose that data due to some unforeseen incident. The following tools listed below will help you organize your bookmarks and avoid losing them. Above photo compliments of stock.xchng

Xmarks

Xmarks was formally known as Foxmarks, and it’s an incredible bookmark tool. This bookmarking tool does it all like syncs bookmarks, shares bookmarks, you can even sync profiles, and depending on the which browser you are using will even sync your tabs and password. I use this one to keep my laptops and desktops in sync, no mater which one I use there all the same. Great Tool to have in your arsenal.

Diigo

Diigo puts a twist on their bookmarking tool; besides just saving the URL of a website, you can also annotate your bookmarks, highlight, add sticky notes, archive, and share both your bookmarks and archived research with whom ever you please. Create a private or public group for your company, class, and teams. Diigo can be accessed through their website, via the Diigo toolbar for Firefox, Internet Explorer, and the Diigo Chrome extension.

Delicious

Delicious is one of my favorites and it gets well used around here. The social bookmarking service is one of the most popular bookmarking tools and is set-up by default to make your bookmarks public unless you check the “private” box. Delicious is focused on sharing bookmarks, and is a solid choice for those new to social bookmarking and those looking for more than just a place to store their bookmarks. The ability to easily share bookmarks with friends and the general public are great features of Delicious that really set it apart from other social bookmark tools.

Google Bookmarks

Another popular bookmarking service I heavily use. By defualt Google Bookmarks is a private bookmarking tool with a handful of public features added on for those who want them. You can save bookmarks in Google Bookmarks by using the Google Toolbar, it lets you save the title, URL or location of the web page, label (also known as tags or keywords), and a area to describe the page you want to save.

Like most other Bookmarking services Google Bookmarks has a search bar where you may search your bookmarks or the web for the tags that you may be looking for. Bookmarks can be organized into private, semi-private, or public lists for research or sharing with friends or the public. Naturally, You can access your Google Bookmarks from any browser by logging into your Google account.

Friendfeed

Friendfeed is another popular a bookmarking tool, although many wouldn’t call it that. What makes this one nice is that it combines your feeds from various websites into one location just like any other bookmarking service. Friendfeed also allows you to insert links directly into your single feed, and each item has its own comment thread.

Friendfeed is simple to use. Sharing is a big plus here, you can allow your friends to comment on the things you share. Read and share however you wish — from your email, your phone or even from Facebook. You can also publish your FriendFeed to your website or blog, or to services such as Twitter.

via lifehacker

How to: Overclock and Amplify a Linksys Wi-Fi Router

Bob — Thu, 13 May 2010 04:51:54 +0000

The Linksys WRT54GL WI-fI router is a dream to upgrade, it’s capable of running third-party firmware and boosting up its signal. Over at Instructable a user shows how to go all out on the router with extended antennas, fan-cooled overclocking, and the DD-WRT interface.

This hack is really meant for the person who likes to tinker with electronics and not afraid to open the blue box or install heatsinks. Author NostalgicStone gives you ample warnings before jumping into this hack, and for very good reason: there are risks involved. Not to mention there is the PC fan running on top of the router for additional cooling, if you have to keep it in plain view it can be an ugly sight. That’s right you guessed it, this hack is meant for that person who lacks Wi-Fi in particular areas of the house, or maybe a small motel where you need a larger signal footprint.

Check out the link for the full step by step guide. Please share any similar router upgrades you’ve performed or have seen in the comments.

[Check out the Guide here over at Instructables] via Lifehacker

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