That is a lot of websites. And with the explosion of free and easy-to-use web services, how’s a person to know which ones are most useful?
For this purpose, I turn to my favorite blog, Lifehacker.com. Run by a software programmer and a small team of contributing editors, Lifehacker is an award-winning blog devoted to online and offline productivity. Lifehacker reviews fascinatingly named web services—like Hulu, Remember the Milk, Jott, and Sandy—explaining their benefits and providing easy walkthroughs. Lifehacker’s clarity and ease of use has made it one of Technorati’s top-linked blogs on the web.
A sampling of stories on Lifehacker.com:
- Use Facebook as a Marketing Tool
- Repair Your Own Books
- Track web site stats with Google Analytics
- Zoomii Browses Amazon Books Shelf by Shelf
- Top 10 Computer Annoyances and How to Fix them
- Rent Books Netflix-Style with BookSwim
- Five Best Note-Taking Tools (yes, pencil and paper made the list!)
- VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 2 Now Available
VM-what? Okay, so Lifehacker isn’t for everyone. It is for people who like finding clever ways to do things better, faster, or cheaper. It’s especially for those who get stoked about hacking their wireless router’s firmware with a Linux-based OS to boost their sign—oops! Sorry.
Lifehacker has made my life better, or at least more productive. The blog keeps me up to date on the newest and most useful web services, like Syncplicity, a simple way to my work files updated on my home computer—no emailing, DVD-Rs, thumb drives, or external hard drives required. Or like Jott, which will email me a text transcript of the voicemail I leave when I call from a cellphone. With 1 trillion pages to choose from and web services becoming increasingly powerful, Lifehacker’s insight is invaluable.
As a product of Web 2.0, Lifehacker is free and requires no registration. Just point your favorite browser to Lifehacker.com and enjoy a more productive life! Technophiles will appreciate Lifehacker's many RSS feed options: all stories or top stories, full text with ads or just ledes sans ads. Luddites, fear not. The wisdom of Lifehacker is also available in print. Gina Trapani, editor of Lifehacker, just published a book of life hacks called Upgrade Your Life (Wiley, 2008), available in bookstores and, naturally, online.
This article was originally published in the fall 2008 issue of The Endsheet, the newsletter of the Publishers Association of the West.
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