Interesting Drug

Are you SURE you want to remove that?:

“NEW DELHI (Reuters) - An Indian businessman born with two penises wants one of them removed surgically as he wants to marry and lead a normal sexual life, a newspaper report said Saturday.”

Google launches free, kick-ass word-processor:

“Cory Doctorow:

Google has re-lauched Writely, the online word-processor they recently bought, in public beta. Writely does everything Word does, for free — and saves its output as PDFs and even RSS feeds (subscribe to a word-processor doc!). It features collaborative editing — multiple editors on the same doc at once — and can be used as the editor for writing your blog, saving out to a post instead of a file on your machine. This is a great-looking program for people who have always-on Internet, and for so long as you don’t worry about the NSA demanding that Google turn over its Writely files as part of some ’security’ procedure. Also: if I were a Google China user, I’d have some doubts about this, given that Google has shown that when it comes to China, keeping the government happy is more important than delivering the best product it can.

Link

(via Vertical Hold)

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Bill Watterson’s RAREST!:

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Google Analytics now open to everyone:

“

Google Analytics has thrown aside the velvet rope and opened up their service to the world at large…or at least, anyone who wants to track their website stats:

I’m happy to tell you that we’ve just removed the wait to receive a Google Analytics account. Now anyone with a website can instantly create one for free by simply by visiting google.com/analytics or by clicking on the ‘Analytics’ tab within AdWords. After you create an account, we suggest reading the Installation Guide to get it set up quickly and correctly.

W00t! We’ve blogged about stats packages here at Lifehacker central before, and Google Analytics certainly is a good one. What’s your experience been with Google Analytics? Thoughts to comments or to tips at lifehacker.com.— Wendy Boswell

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How to use the function keys:

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Are those function keys basically occupying dead space on your keyboard? Tech guru Kim Komando (yep, that’s her real name) tells us what they’re useful for in Windows:

• F1 - Help
• F2 - Renames selected file
• F3 - Opens the file search box
• F4 - Opens the address bar in Windows Explorer
• F5 - Refreshes the screen in Windows Explorer
• F6 - Navigates between different sections of a Windows Explorer window
• F8 - Opens the start-up menu when booting Windows
• F11 - Opens full screen mode in Windows Explorer

These are also useful in other programs, but each one has different fuctions depending on which application you might be using. I know that when I’m in Dreamweaver, Flash, or Fireworks, the F12 key will bring up a browser preview of whatever I’m working on. How about you - are you a function keys fanatic? Thoughts to comments or to tips at lifehacker.com. — Wendy Boswell

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FAQ: How to smoke out that recalled battery:

“Dell is recalling millions of notebook batteries that could cause a fire. Here’s the worst that can happen and what you can do.”

Overseer of Domain Names Renews Contract:

“Icann has won a contract renewal with the Department of Commerce, despite complaints that the relationship politicizes what should be a neutral global computer network.”

[Cool] Bounce the ping-pong ball as many times as you can. Bet you cant get 20:

“(Some Guy)“

NZ mourns death of Maori queen:

“A week of mourning begins in New Zealand to mark the death of the revered Maori queen, Dame Te Ata.”

Astronomers see three new planets:

“Xena, Ceres and Charon would become planets under a new definition from the International Astronomical Union.”

[Asinine] Todays ridiculous face tattoo brought to you by a just-arrested Alabama parolee:

“The Smoking Gun“

A new way to test your bandwidth:

“Blog: Applications that test bandwidth speeds have been around for years, but Speedtest.net takes the concept a step further.The site…”

The 7 Ways That People Search the Web:

“SpaceAdmiral writes ‘After the recent release of AOL search logs, Paul Boutin used the site splunkd.com to analyse the logs. His analysis groups searchers into seven categories: The Pornhound, the Manhunter, the Shopper, the Obsessive, the Omnivore, the Newbie, and the Basketcase. My favorite example search is in the Basketcase category: ‘i hurt when i think too much i love roadtrips i hate my weight i fear being alone for the rest of my life.'’

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Learn to draw online:

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Web site Drawspace.com has a huge collection of tutorials designed to take you from beginning doodler to expert drawer.

Obviously we’re not all born to be artists (I could draw you a mean still life of fruit, but it would take me several days), but if you’ve got an inkling for artistic expression, the list of tutorials at Drawspace looks like a good place to get started. I know we’ve got several readers who do a lot of drawing and design, so if you’ve got any other resources you’d like to suggest, let’s hear ‘em in the comments or at tips at lifehacker.com. — Adam Pash

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What, Exactly, Is a Planet?:

“An international conclave of astronomers meets to decide whether or not Pluto is actually a planet. And if it is, what does that make Xena? And just what qualifies as a planet, anyway?”

NASA Loses Original Moon Landing Footage…:

“The original film of man’s first steps on the Moon has been lost.

The footage of Neil Armstrong’s historic moment is one of the most important artefacts of the 20th century.

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The Observer lists 15 web sites that changed the world, including Google, Wikipedia, Blogger, and Amazon:

“The Observer lists 15 web sites that changed the world, including Google, Wikipedia, Blogger, and Amazon. (thx, dylan)”

How to stop an unwanted mouse click action:

“I just discovered this by accident. I accidentally clicked on the red close button at the top of my Safari window. Realizing this in mid-click, I kept the mouse button held down, and moved the pointer off the close button. Upon releasing the mouse, the window did not close. This also works for the minimize and zoom buttons, and as far as I can tell it also works for any OS X window.

Granted, you have to have quick reflexes to realize your mistake in mid-mouseclick, but I thought I’d share nonetheless.

[robg adds: I was going to reply to the submitter that this was standard OS X behavior and not really hintable, but then I though about the number of users who are new to the platform who may not know about this. In the Mac OS, mouse events are sent on mouse up, not mouse down — in other words, everything happens when you release the mouse button, not when you press it down. Like any good rule, of course, there are some annoying exceptions to this: iTunes’ lis…

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Wallpaper/video game mashups:

“Cory Doctorow:

Jeremiah sez, ‘I recently did a mash-up of some vintage 1950s-70s wallpaper samples and some 1980s video games (Gauntlet II, Pitfall, and Frogger).’ These are good and subtle — I love this Frogger design.

Link

(Thanks, Jeremiah!)

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Does the cable modem really need to be unplugged for 30 seconds? (Urban Myth or Truth?):

“Does the cable modem really need to be unplugged for 30 seconds? (Urban Myth or Truth?)

I need help researching the validity of what I suspect is just an urban myth. Basically it has to do with when you have a cable modem that isnt connecting to the internet and the cable company tech support instructs you to reset the modem by unplugging the power and leaving it unplugged for 30 (sometimes longer) seconds.

I think common sense would dictate that a fraction of a second after you pull the power plug form the device, it would turn off completley. There would be absolutely no difference between a split second later vs 30 seconds vs 2 years! The device will totally reset as soon as you plug it in again. Some people I spoke to argue that it takes time for power to drain out of all the circuits but that doesnt really make sense to me since electricity moves at superfast speeds…close to the speed of light.

What I think happened is that during the course of fixing a cable modem one day, someone ended up fixing it for some completley other reason which happened to coincide with it having been unplugged for 30 seconds and then ended up attributing that to the success of whatever they did.

Is there any creedence to this idea of leaving it unplugged for a set amount of time?”

Clockwork Orange Trading Cards:

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Plane Crash Video Ubersite:

“Mark Frauenfelder:
steve ryan says:

As a result of constant, semi-religious immersion in the works of J. G. Ballard and the early acquisition of a pilot’s license, I have been fascinated, nay, obsessed with plane crashes for many years. Iowa hotelier/pilot Jay Honeck has built one of the freshest and best plane crash video repositories on the Web. Pilots worldwide vie to send him unusual and awful aviation accident vids.

Some people — like the notorious Crashman and his Crash Groupies — now take this questionable obsession to the next level and make music vids out of the oddly hypnotic crashes. Examples:

YOU’RE GONNA MISS ME and HEAD OVER HEELS.

Link

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