Readers offer their best tips for getting push notifications for Voice on the iPhone, showing and hiding file extensions with a few clicks, and uses for your refrigerator's vegetable drawer.
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About the Tips Box: Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasons—maybe they're a bit too niche, maybe we couldn't find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn't fit it in—the tip didn't make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favorites for your buffet-style consumption. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments, share it here, or email it to tips at lifehacker.com.
Another Google Voice Push Notification Method for the iPhone
Tim tells us how he manages push notifications on his iPhone with GV Connect:
I know SMS on the iPhone isn't anything new, but I've added a few tweaks that make the experience almost indecipherable from the native SMS app. There is an app in the store that promises all this. However, it falls far short of that promise.
- Set up google Voice account.
- Download GV connect and configure to work with Google Voice account.
- Enable text forwarding in Google Voice settings.
- Download previously mentioned Boxcar.
- Create new service named gv and set it to open URL:
gvconnect://- Create filter in Gmail with the following settings: Matches:
from:(@txt.voice.google.com), Do this: Skip Inbox, Mark as read, Forward to[email protected](whereabc123.xxis your Boxcar address).Now when a new SMS message is sent to your Google Voice account, Voice will forward a copy to Gmail. Gmail will archive the message and forward it to Boxcar. Boxcar will present a push notification badge on your iPhone. When you click view it will launch GV connect the same way the apple's native SMS app does. Again this is a kludge and GV Connect will ultimately have their own push notifications, but until then this works pretty well.
Show and Hide File Extensions with a Single Click
Haxxy shares a few .reg files that will make toggling file extensions a cinch:
I love keeping my file extensions nice and hidden, and so do many of us. The one terribly annoying thing about this is that it is such a pain to change a file extension, since it doesn't show up in "Rename" mode. I hate having to go into the Folder Options to change the "show file extensions" back and forth all the time, so I made these .reg files that do it with a single click. Just hit F5 or click Back and Forward afterward to give Windows a chance to refresh the file names.
You can download the Show File Extensions file here, and the Hide File Extensions file here.
Don't worry, they're safe. You can verify that with a text editor.
Works in 7, Vista, and XP.
Put Your Most Wanted Fridge Items in the Vegetable Drawers
iService tells us an easy way to keep from forgetting what's in the vegetable crisper:
I don't know about you guys, but without a window into my fridge's crisper, I completely forget about everything that goes in there. Many a half-used head of lettuce, or scissored Italian parsley has turned brown and countless cucumbers have turned into disgusting puddles of water in my vegetable crisper... until now.
Like any other discovery, it happened completely accidentally. This summer, I was stocking the fridge with beer but I was completely out of room so I opened the crisper. It was empty and then it dawned on me, I'm never going to forget beer! So I stocked the drawer with beer and since then I've repeated the process countless times. The beer has never gone bad because unlike a celery heart with a pair of stalks missing, beer is unforgettable.
I hope this sparks an "aha moment" for someone else out there, it may just save you from having to soap up a smelly veggie drawer.
Obviously, if you're not a beer drinker, this tip works for pretty much any item that you're unlikely to forget is in your fridge.
Use a Separate Google Calendar to Run Tasker
Tinyboss shares another way to use Android automation tool Tasker:
If you use Tasker to automate your Android phone, try making a separate Google calendar called "Phone Control" or similar. Then in Tasker, you can tie all sorts of actions to particular events in your phone control calendar. It's usually easier to set up repeated events in Google than in Tasker, and this way you have the best of both. Combine it with Voice Quick Add, and you can actually tell your phone "silence phone tonight at 2am" and have it happen just like that.