Announcing LIFE.hackaday

life-logoOver the years we’ve had a tons of tips sent in that were more along the lines of “lifehacks”. Simple little tips to make life better. While we would occasionally squeeze them into hackaday, many got left behind. Now we’ve created an entire site called LIFE.hackaday that we’re filling with all these great ideas. Finally, a place for all those docks people send us!

Occasionally, there might be something that we feel works for the “classic” hackaday and “LIFE.”, in which case, we may just mention it here. We hope that by creating another site, we can give people the “lifehacks” they want while keeping hackaday focused on hardware hacking.

We have some other tricks up our sleeve, but they aren’t quite ready to be revealed yet.

80 thoughts on “Announcing LIFE.hackaday

      1. except they usually post the same stuff as you in this topic within a day or so of you posting it – i’ve seen it many many times, as i check both sites regularly. Alsthough, recently the articles (not to mention the layout) of gawker sites in general have been lacking – what is up with an “article” that is less text than a tweet????

          1. Lately, LifeHacker has been getting pretty slack (from several authors) in terms of content. Maybe life.hackaday & the competition it brings to the table will improve things for everyone (especially readers).

            Maybe someone will just end up getting sued though…

      1. Not to be a Debbie Downer, but I find myself less inclined to read the entire entry, or even watch the attached video or visit the source link, since you’ve switched to the new summary format. Lengthening the teaser hasn’t made a difference, at least for me.

        I know I’m just one voice out of the multitudes here, and I do see the benefit of having more entries in one page, but I think that benefit is vastly overshadowed by the loss of interest from only seeing a teaser.

        1. I haven’t talked about it much because my hands are somewhat tied. However, I’d like to point out that we have had a “teaser” for about 5 years now. Ever seen the terms “after the break”?. This is obviously shorter, but it isn’t exactly new. Like I said, I’m always tweaking it, so we just have to see where it goes. This latest update is better than it was a week ago, and the addition of LIFE. gives me even more flexibility.

          1. I think it would work better, at least for me, if the teaser was an actual summary of the project rather than a truncated version of the whole post. If something in a very general description of the project catches my eye, I’ll open the full post to look at details or a video or something. If it just gets cut off mid sentence before I really know what the project is about, I just dismiss it and move on.

            The longer teaser does improve the odds that something catches my eye, but I think a summary specifically written for the spot could both be shorter and more eye catching.

          2. “after the break” seemed to work a lot better. I’m fine with a split, but a split mid-paragraph makes for a lot of annoying “where was I?” scanning around. I’m not terribly upset or anything… just a “can you fix that?” comment.

          3. Why are your hands tied? What’s going on?

            The original “after the break” articles on this site I had no issue with because they were written with the article break in the first place, whereas chopping off the end of all the articles on the site just fucks up the flow of using the site as you have to re-read the article to find out where the chop-off point was so you can carry on.

          4. Seems like most of the time, “after the break” actually was the end of the article, and the only thing after the “break” was a youtube video. My two cents: I prefer the old layout.

            On a related note, am I the only one bothered by the term “after the break” or “after the jump” when most of the time (on many sites, not just HaD) it just refers to “right now?” /rant.

          5. Everyone has hit on the point I was trying to make: Breaking randomly into the middle of a sentence breaks the reader’s flow. It makes my brain say “why bother?” and I move on to the next article instead of digging deeper into that one.

            As another reader pointed out, the old style “teaser” almost always just continued to a video and the comments, which seemed to be a more comfortable reading experience than this.

          6. I always wondered about the “after the break” as all I had to do was scroll down more, and the break never seemed to break at the bottom of my screen. I never see the front page, just the titles on the RSS feed. I rather follow them or I don’t.

            “Continued on page…” Has always been my biggest complaint about print media. The start of the articles are all at the front of the magazine with the last paragraph at the back behind all the ads that don’t have page numbers on them so you can’t find the page you’re looking for. Newspapers are the worst with the headlines on the front. You rather need a conference sized table to spread it all out on, or flip and fold for an hour.

            My second biggest complaint with print media has always been that it is a PayWall with tons of ads in it. Rather do the ads and make it free or charge me and don’t have any ads but not BOTH.

            Just saying, keep it simple. Too many tricks and you just push people away.

        2. +1

          Since the article truncation I find I don’t look forrward to new hacks appearing on this site anymore because they made the visitor experience worse.

          Bring back the full articles FFS.

  1. Please actually test the lifehacks before posting them. Lifehacker always posts crappy “life hacks” that don’t work. Perfect example is the Private browsing to get cheap airline tickets (apparently airlines increase the prices the second time you search) – a redditor offered a year of reddit gold to someone who could prove it. to my knowledge it’s yet to be claimed.

  2. Much as it pains me to say it, you’re struggling with hack-a-day, both to keep the content up to scratch and editorially — and now you want to diversify?! I think you’re mad. You’d be far better off putting the effort you’re expending on ‘life hacks’ into building on HaD…

    1. maybe you’re misunderstanding what is happening here. We’re moving content that isn’t “up to snuff” according to the hardware/electronics hackers elsewhere, allowing us to improve quality on hackaday.com. This should make everyone happy.

        1. it is a current trend. Look at theverge, pinterest, g+ etc. The “lifehack” crowd tends to want more articles to skim, so you have to compress them. The hackaday crowd is different. Are you seeing how LIFE. could be a good thing? By making a distinction in the content, I can hopefully start to focus the designs for the specific reader groups. Assuming everything goes well.

          1. Okay, I guess I hadn’t noticed the trend because I get most of my news via RSS. HAD is one of the few sites whose layout I (used to) enjoy so much I visit the actual site.

            At least you’re not going all Windows Metro like TheNextWeb and a couple of other sites, with huge text in random places, super skinny fonts and flat pastel colors everywhere.

          2. I can’t say that I love current design trends – designing to the Iphone 5 screen, rather than a computer monitor, strikes me as silly. However, it’s not bad enough that I won’t use the new site, so make of that what you will. What will be a recurring stumbling block is the “older/newer pages” links. Currently, the side of the screen with the relevant directions is reversed with regards to the main HaD site. Considering that HaD itself bucks the “trend” regarding placement of these links, you’ld think I’ld be overjoyed – but like most of your readers, I am an inflexible and curmudgeonly thing who trained themselves to do things “backwards” when at this site and now I’m getting confused by life.HaD. Since the lifehack site is still new, can this be changed?

      1. Only other thing would be a link back to the home page? Maybe the Life.Hackaday logo? I know how to use my browser’s back button, but it’s way up there and I am lazy

        1. Using subdomains to divide content on a website always seems like a good idea (blog.mysite.com, cv.mysite.com, contact.mysite.com etc). But it makes unifying services like search and navigation menus a real PITA.

          Typically using subdomains means that each subdomain is hosted using a separate instance of apache or IIS (meaning separate db’s, ip’s etc). Making more like concat.hackaday.com (someone else’s idea) is gonna prove tricky. Making two separate WordPress instances talk to the same database makes me shiver.

          LIFE. is a good idea, it gives a home to all the tips that Hackaday gets that don’t really fit in. Making more and more subdomains to act as categories is going to be a step backwards.

  3. Definitely a good idea!
    The user who complained about the Preview/Summary/Teaser is just a tad bit slow on the ticker with the brainbox I reckon. I find it works but hey that could just be me and all the other users who are not complaining. If it bothers them that much they can get a TLDR application or something but usually that’s for lazy persons.

    LIFE. seems to employ a grid system which is not a bad idea at all.
    A user mentioned a comment system but there is one there so am not sure what they were asking for either maybe they were focused on the teaser/summary and did not actually visit the article and see comment bit at the bottom, Meh! happens.

    Category option should be moved to some where at the top of the page though and the back to home option that someone suggested really is needed.

    Yup just mah tid bits yah.

  4. Personally, I dislike the term “life hacking.” I think it totally misses the mark a lot of the time. When following the definition somewhat strictly, very few ‘hacks’ that people brand life hacking are actually life hacking.
    Most really are more like 5 minute hacks, or quick fixes, or some sort of substitution of one thing for another, in order to get on with getting the job done. Its creative thinking for sure, but not really life hacking.
    My understanding is that life hacking is modifying daily use item or daily process to make it more efficient, easier, or more versatile.

    It seems that the intent with life.hackaday.come is to first find a place for all these cool ideas or neat tricks to ‘just get the job done’ that people come up with on the fly and with short notice. I think that is awesome. Sharing short bursts of ingenuity and creative problem solving under pressure can inspire us to think outside the box. But it is unlikely people would wish to recreate the ideas posted. But thats not really a bad thing. Secondly, I would hope you are actively trying to avoid looking like another lifehacker clone.

    So then, why not a DIFFERENT term/name. One that more accurately inflects the goal? like quickhacks, or picohacks, or something else? I’m never good at coming up with names X[

    1. I’m not sure if you’re referring to me but I’m far from the only person who doesn’t like the new teaser format. Congratulations if it doesn’t bother you, but there’s no need to insult others over a personal preference. And hey, since I’m obviously so lazy and stupid, maybe I will write a custom script that presents the page in the old layout in my browser.

  5. Add a crybabies flag to comments so other users can flag them. Then parse them all to crybabies.hackaday.com. I think those flagged comments in one place would be a great read while on the shitter.

  6. looked at it probably will not be going back.

    horrible layout, looks like a bad/horrible ripoff of lifehacker.com, articles that are 75 characters and nothing more might as well not even be posted. that isn’t an article that is a horrible observation about something someone else has done. and a whole bevy of other problems that are just annoying on websites.

    sorry rethink and relaunch if you want it to do better or actually attract people.

    1. Never visited lifehacker.com before, just did, saw “Type Two Letters in the Terminal and Get Back to Your Home Directory” , closed the tab.

      By the way, pretty please, do something about the new “legacy/real” hackaday website “update”.
      It looks like you’re trying to find a problem for solution…

      ps: to all who find this “crybaby” : bugger off, it’s annoying.

  7. which is exactly the porpuse of adding a subdomain life? could be live if all tested hacks could be really be done or created. I been testing some of ideas here, but sometimes I´m out out resources, I think it can be added a tag or ribbon over image that says “tested” and a number of persons who has made the proyect. I`m a web (hobbie) developer and I think with better ideas this site could be as favorite site like makezine or instructables.

  8. hmm. Looks like the comments are getting a reworking. Get nothing but name and time. no actual comment. Caleb, by chance are you tweeking the backend?

    Also, got the preview from the news letter, cant say it’s something ill be visiting every day, but seeing the universa mute makes me think it was a great idea and convinced me to put it in the View weekly tab of my bookmarks.

  9. I was going to suggest to put a button on the control bar, and I scrolled up to look at the bar, low and behold it’s already there, LOL. I suggest the search box and the categories are worthy of a place are the control bar as well. Personally I the home it too busy at the right more so now that lifehackady is now included.

  10. I really can’t stand the new “teaser” method. Honestly when I first saw the articles getting cut off mid sentence I thought there’d been an error with a theme update or something… it’s not just bad, it looks like a CSS bug or worse. Make the article shorter before the break if you need to but god, don’t just cut off mid-sentence like a mad word butcher…

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