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Today's most popular headlines are Carve Your Thanksgiving Turkey Like a Butcher (4,389 views today), 15 Ways to Fool Yourself into Saving Money (3,939) and Build a Solar Heater on the Cheap (2,620). Today's most discussed stories are Build a Solar Heater on the Cheap (16 comments), 15 Ways to Fool Yourself into Saving Money (11) and Eat Less at Thanksgiving by Eating Earlier (10).
Firefox with Greasemonkey and Google Gears: The Wikipedia Offline Greasemonkey script plugs Greasemonkey into Google Gears (the offline web access extension that works with Google Reader and other sites) to provide offline access and syncing with Wikipedia. Once you've installed the script, head to Wikipedia and enable Gears. Now, when browsing any page on Wikipedia, you'll notice a small frame that contains links to cache the current page or access other pages you've already cached. Even better, the author of the script provides a howto guide for taking virtually any web site offline with Gears and Greasemonkey, so anyone with some javascript chops should be able to start building Gears access for their favorite sites (here's hoping we see a lot more of these). The Wikipedia Offline script is free, requires Greasemonkey and Google Gears.
Windows only: Create custom folder bookmarks accessible from your keyboard in any Explorer window or save or open file dialog with freeware system tray application Dirkey. You can set any folder as a bookmark on-the-fly by pressing Ctrl-Alt-0..9, then quickly jump to any of your bookmarks by pressing Ctrl-0..9 for the corresponding bookmark (e.g., if you set a folder as a bookmark with Ctrl-Alt-1, you can access that folder any time by pressing Ctrl-1). Dirkey does the work of previously mentioned applications like FindeXer, PlacesBar Editor, and FinderStyle but offers the quickest access to both creating new bookmarks and jumping to your most frequently used folders. Dirkey is freeware, Windows only.
Web site Mac OS X Hints highlights a simple Terminal command that will tweak your Dock to add a "recent things" Stack capable of showing you recent apps, docs, servers, or favorite volumes and items. Just open Terminal and type (one line):
defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }'killall Dock and you should notice the new Stack in your Dock. If you want multiple recent Stacks, just run the command multiple times and right-click each Stack to set which recent Stack you want. While you're already customizing your Stacks in Leopard, the "recent things" Stack—particularly recent docs Stack—looks like an indispensable addition to your Dock.
We get a lot of questions at Download Squad. Where are the cookies? What did you do with the cookies? Why did you eat the cookies? And, so forth. Often we find questions have few simple answers, this one however was a cinch. It's also a good tip as Download Squad readers head off into the loving arms of family this holiday, no doubt to be bombarded with computer questions.
Dmitry T. writes, "I love the auto suggest feature [In Firefox's search box], but there doesn't seem to be a way to filter results, I have a kid and don't want certain words popping up on screen. I have Crawler parental control set up so he can't actually visit any objectionable sites but, I don't want objectionable search terms coming up. So is there a way to filter the auto-suggestion or disable that option for good?"
There sure is Dmitry, and it's easier than you might think. Just right-click on the search box itself, and un-check the option "Show Suggestions". After that, the little tyke can type anything he or she wants, and no suggestions will be offered; Offensive or otherwise.
Thanks Dmitry!
Find a good place to curl up and catch some shut-eye at the airport this holiday season with tips from web site Sleeping in Airports. For example:
When you're forced to stay over in an airport due to airline problems, make sure you are granted access to their lounge. This is especially recommended for the airports with uncomfortable chairs out in the main transit/departures lounge with the usual riff-raff.Designed for budget travelers looking to save a few bucks when traveling, Sleeping in Airports may be just what you need during that red-eye delay now that one of the busiest travel days of the year upon us.
Windows only: Resize any window on your desktop—including those windows that normally refuse to let you resize them—with freeware application ResizeEnable. Just run the system tray executable and any window—no matter how stubbornly it denied your resizing attempts in the past—should be resizable. Once resized, the contents of the window should automatically adjust to fit the new dimensions. While it's probably not an everyday application, the freeware, Windows-only RezizeEnable does what it says when you need it.
Google Docs lovers should check out the Vertical Spacing Greasemonkey user script for a much improved, more normal paragraph style in their Gdocs.
If the crown of family turkey-carver is weighing heavy on your head this Thanksgiving, the New York Times gets advice on how to carve the perfect turkey from New York butcher Ray Venezia. His trick: Take it off the table.
Instead of slicing the meat from the roast at the table, Mr. Venezia's carving protocol calls for the biggest pieces, the breasts and the thighs, to be removed whole, then boned and sliced on a cutting board. "Trying to carve from the carcass is like trying to cut it off a beach ball: it's all curved surfaces and it moves around under the knife," he said. "Give me a flat cutting board any time."
The article is also accompanied by both a step-by-step photo guide to turkey carving (above) as well as an excellent six and a half minute video. The carving goes in this order, cutting out pieces of meat in whole chunks:
Today's most popular headlines are Boost Your Wi-Fi Antenna for Less than a Dollar (5,962 views today), Firefox 3 Beta 1 Now Available (4,932) and Set Custom "Ringtones" for Your Email Inbox (3,095). Today's most discussed stories are Firefox 3 Beta 1 Now Available (26 comments), Boost Your Wi-Fi Antenna for Less than a Dollar (22) and Synchronize Your Computer's Time with DS Clock (11).
The CyberNet blog points to a tucked-away feature in Windows that could come in handy for graphic designers or others needing precision mouse control. MouseKeys, an option contained in the accessibility controls, moves the mouse with the numeric keypad and can be set to turn on and off with a hotkey. Our own Adam Pash's Mouser offers greater functionality and customization, but MouseKeys could be a useful tweak for when you rarely need brain-surgeon-like pointing power.
Like flossing, stretching and car waxing, socking away savings is easy to think positive about and much, much harder to act on. For help tricking yourself to be good, finance blog The Digerati Life offers 15 ways to defeat your inner spending machine. This one might be worth pondering while you're weighing those Black Friday rebate deals:
#8 Bank the savings you receive from coupons, sales and discountsWhat kind of mental hacks have you used to secretly store away cash? Share your tips in the comments.
Big sales can save you a bundle, so how about writing yourself a check each time you score some savings while shopping? If you were prepared to pay full price but discover a savings of 10%, bank the 10% you save into your savings account. This could be a painless strategy of building up your nest egg that you incorporate into your daily shopping habits.
Linux only: Give your home-brewed DVDs a polished finish with ManDVD, a free software package for GNOME and KDE-based systems. ManDVD may not have as many encoding and burning options as K3b, DeVeDe or other Linux DVD creators, but the front ends it creates look a good deal nicer. Grab frames or clips to create menus and video buttons, add custom text and tweak the layout to your heart's content. If you want to give your holiday videos a nice front-end (and make them a bit less confusing) for your relatives, ManDVD could fit the bill nicely.
ManDVD is a free download for Linux systems only; Ubuntu and Debian users can grab a self-installing package at the link below, while KDE-based systems and other distros can find their packages or source at the developer's site.
Online productivity suite Zoho has rolled out a mobile version of its Creator webapp , which can make both basic databases and help forge customized interfaces and applications to use them. As the somewhat (intentionally?) cheesy promotional video shows, It could be useful for adding to office or personal projects and websites on the go, or for pulling up and presenting information from a non-sensitive database. Like other Zoho applications, Creator is free to use but requires an account sign-up.
Health and Nutrition author Jennifer Ackerman writes in today's New York Times that planning your big Thanksgiving meal earlier in the day helps you eat less. That's because the body is better at recognizing it's full in the morning:
Not only does an ample morning meal provide energy for the day's labors, but it better satisfies our appetites, perhaps because the brain's satiety systems work best early in the day. People who take in more of their calories at breakfast -- whether in the form of proteins, carbohydrates or fat -- are likely to consume fewer calories overall than those who indulge in big meals later in the day.Ackerman also advises against eating any part of the big meal in front of the television. And if your meal does fall later in the day, eating a healthy breakfast also helps prevent ravenous consumption later—unless, of course, you're dead-set on doing so anyways.
The Public Speaking Blog never met a tip it couldn't share—or so it would seem from an extensive roundup of suggestions, dos and don'ts posted there. You might not want to sit down with the entire list before your moment at the mic, but a few of them are worth writing down somewhere, including this bit of speech-prep zen:
Present 70% of what you prepared. Keep the rest for emergency purposes, e.g. during Q&A or when you need to show off.One of the tips, of course, is to never stick too hard to such rules, and to adapt to a crowd's response. One more great tip? Don't kill your audience with PowerPoint. Photo by eschipul
Create a cheap and green solar heater for less than $10. All you need is foam board, lots of pennies, black spray paint, and plexiglass. The assembled product should be placed next to a window and can increase the room temperature by a minimum of 10 degrees (according to the video), depending on the amount of sunlight that reaches the heater. If you're looking for more ways to harness the power of the sun, check out the solar water heater we described in the summer.
Compare sales at numerous local grocers with GroceryGuide, a webapp that accesses sales from hundreds of supermarkets and chains around the nation. GroceryGuide shows price trends and fluctuations as well as recipes that can be made with each food item. Additionally, the site lists coupons that can be further applied to discounted items. While GroceryGuide is missing one of my favorite supermarkets on its list, it still has a decent representation of many chains throughout the country and does a good job locating bargains without the need to visit each individual shop's website to view the circulars.
Looking for a free easy to use solution for backing up your files to an external hard drive or network attached storage device? While we're big fans of the freeware version of SyncBack, sometimes you want something a bit simpler. And Cobian Backup fits the bill.
We can't decide if it's because Cobian lacks the bells and whistles that SyncBack has, or if it's just missing the complicated menus. Or maybe it's the fact that Cobian has extra-large icons that even your grandmother can read without her glasses on. Anyway, it takes just a few minute to create and schedule an automated daily backup of all your important data.
Like any good backup utility, Cobian lets you schedule full or incremental backups. In other words, you can copy either your entire directories every day, or just the files that have changed. If you go the incremental route, you can still set Cobian to create a full backup every X days.
Cobian Backup 8 runs on Windows 2000 - Vista. If you've got an older system you should probably upgrade. But Cobian 7 will work with Windows 95 and up.
The Firefox Asterisk Revealer bookmarklet reveals the contents of any password field (i.e., a field whose text is obscured by asterisks) in an alert box using a simple bit of javascript—particularly handy for those sites for which you've saved the password but long since forgotten what it is. The post itself just includes the javascript, but you can turn it into a bookmarklet by simply right-clicking your Bookmarks toolbar and selecting New Bookmark, and then pasting the javascript into the Location field.
Windows Mobile and Symbian phones only: Freeware application Palringo brings multi-client chat to your Windows Mobile device or Symbian smartphone. There once was a time when the go-to mobile IM client was a program called Agile Messenger, but ever since it went shareware there's been a gap for freeware IM on a lot of phones. With support for everything from AIM to Google Talk and its own mobile voice chat, it looks like Palringo is filling that gap with aplomb. Palringo is freeware, works on Symbian Series 60 phones and Windows Mobile 2003 and up.
Flickr has just launched the beta of Flickr Uploadr 3.0, available for both Windows and Mac users now. Flickr has a pretty great upload utility built into their web page (assuming Flash is working), so why use an external program? Well, if you want to upload a large group of pictures, Flickr Uploadr lets you select any number of photos, add titles/tags/descriptions, create sets, change the privacy settings and even alter the order, all before uploading to Flickr. That's very snazzy, and it can save a ton of time.
For our very informal, non exhaustive test, we selected 50 photos (640x480 images from PhotoBooth, not 50 photos from our digital camera), labeled them as a set, tagged a few images and then hit "upload." To our pleasure, uploading was significantly faster via the program than using the web interface. Approximately 3 megabytes of photographs were online in seemingly seconds, as opposed to the several minutes it would take to do the same job using the Flash utility on the Flickr site. Our photos weren't all included in part of the set - something we easily corrected on our Flickr page - but they were all correctly tagged and labeled.
Gadget weblog SlashGear highlights Desktop Folders for your walls, a design concept that brings the look and feel of your virtual desktop to your walls. The wall folders idea came from this German design site, but some reinforced vanilla folders and a little DIY ingenuity and this would be a fairly easy and fun project to pull off. Then again, if you have a hard time keeping your virtual desktop uncluttered, you probably don't want to extend the problem to your walls.
Windows only: Synchronize your computer's clock with numerous time servers around the world using freeware application DS Clock. On its first run, it will dock itself on the top right hand corner of your desktop, but you can customize its look and feel as well as its position quite easily. As an added bonus, DS Clock comes with a stopwatch so that you can track the time it takes to perform certain tasks online. Not bad. DS Clock is a freeware application for all flavors of Windows.
Quick, name the most annoying thing about your Facebook profile? The status message!
Trying to contort your status to fit the "is" from updates using the proper English language often proves extremely challenging. How many times have you ignored the "is" altogether and just inserted whatever you wanted, whether it made sense or not? Fear not, Facebook has listened to their users. Over 164,000 members in a Facebook group lobbied to get rid of the clunky "is" verb and succeeded. Currently the developer platform is the only code that has been updated with the change.
However, there's no word on when you'll see the "is" disappear from your user accounts.
Last year on Lifehacker, alum Rick Broida shared how you can employ SpamArrest to keep junk from hitting your cellphone's inbox.
Windows only: Lock down your PC and prevent unauthorized executable files from running with freeware application Trust-No-Exe. As the computer's administrator, you can set up a whitelist of clean executable files that you will allow to run and selectively block others. Once installed, Trust-No-Exe adds an entry to your Control Panel, from which you can tweak your whitelist and blacklist. If you're heading home to fix your mom and dad's computer for the seventh consecutive year, you might want to add this to your Thanksgiving rescue kit. It's not foolproof, but it could be a worthwhile deterrent. Trust-No-Exe is freeware, Windows only.
Yeah, we know this is just a rumor, but it has quickly bubbled to the top of the VoIP blogosphere, and the ramifications are looming large. Skype may be on eBay's auction block (no pun intended). Among the potential buyers for such a property are the usual suspects--Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and even Facebook if they could afford it. But the excitement about Google seems to be the most fervent. Here's why.
Google is a platform company. Their platform is all about monetizing other people's content. They do it by providing self-service solutions that capture revenue generated on the backs of other content producers. One of their clarion calls has always been--increase use to increase revenue. And nobody does this better than Google.
It was for this reason--increasing use--that eBay invested in Skype. But post-merger politics ruined the exciting possibilities. We never got widespread adoption of Skype on eBay because in order to promote Skype, eBay must also have allowed Skype's competitors (or at least refrain from blocking their use on the site). That was never going to work. The 1.0 mentality at eBay was just too pervasive, even with such a future-bright asset like Skype.
Google, on the other hand, opens just about everything up. So Google's idea of competing is to show the competition exactly what they're holding, source code and all. And that's the crux of it--if Google does get its hands on Skype, count on getting access to Skype you previously never dreamed of: full-blown APIs, web service models, the specs for the Skype signaling protocol, and yes, almost certainly, source code.
Custom ringtones on our phones have been making it easy to tell who's calling (and whether we want to answer) without looking at our phones for years now, so why aren't we doing the same thing with our incoming email? A frequently firing new-email alert can throw you off a productivity sweep with nothing more than a gentle ding. You rush to your inbox to open this new gift of an email just to find that... oh... it's another borderline offensive mass email chain from your cousin-in-law. Today I'll show you how to set up custom alerts with your favorite desktop email client to minimize email distraction without missing important messages.
This post was inspired by this excellent post at weblog Inspect My Gadget.
A lot of people turn off email notifications altogether to ensure they avoid the distraction of the constant, IM-like flow of new email, but that also means that when a really important message arrives, you may not get to it in the timely manner it requires. You can take advantage of custom alerts (i.e., custom ringtones for your email) to help firewall your attention so that only the messages that need to be brought to your attention are, and the emails you don't need to get to quickly aren't. Whether you're running Thunderbird, Outlook in Windows, or Mail.app on your Mac, each has the ability to perform custom alerts for incoming mail. First I'll show you the customized email alerts I use to give you a few ideas of where you can start, then I'll show you how to set it up in your client of choice.
By Groups: If you use your desktop email client to deal with both personal and work email, you may want to set up different alerts for each (or only alerts for the more important group). Likewise, if you're just using the client for personal email, you might want to set different notification sounds for friends and family.If you really want to use custom notifications to streamline your inbox and minimize distraction, I'd recommend setting custom alerts only for important emails—that means long threads discussing this YouTube video with your friends won't receive a notification at all, but that all-important email from your boss will set off a fire-alarm-esque alert.
Now that you've got a better idea how and when you might use custom alerts, here's how to set them up.
In contrast to Outlook and Mail.app, Thunderbird unfortunately doesn't come with a "Play Sound" option in its Message Filters dialog. Luckily a crafty extension developer has thrown together a Thunderbird extension called Mailbox Alert. After you've installed Mailbox Alert, you can create notification settings every time a new message arrives in any folder in Thunderbird. 
That means that all you have to do is set up the appropriate filters to either move or copy a message to a separate folder in Thunderbird when you receive new email, at which point you can set up an alert specific to that message by its folder. Alternately, if you're using Thunderbird as the ultimate Gmail IMAP client, you may already have filters set up in Gmail that you can use, in which case you'd only need to set up the customized alerts.
Remember that Thunderbird's address book supports groups, which means that if you want to create separate alerts by group, creating a filter that can copy new email into separate folders by contact groups is a cinch.
The original post on Inspect My Gadget already covered the basics of setting up custom alerts in Outlook, so I won't go into detail here. In a nutshell, you just head to Tools -> Rules and Alerts, create a new rule, and apply the ""Play a sound when I get messages from someone" template. Outlook makes it extremely easy to set up a lot of these custom alerts—by sender or distribution list—relatively quickly. 
Setting up custom email alerts with Mail.app is easy, due mostly to Mail's simple filtering setup, integration with Address Book, and large set of filter options. You can easily set up alerts by Address Book groups, sender, or any other criteria with very little work. Just open Mail's preferences, click the Rules tab, then start adding rules like the one you see above. Adam Pash is a senior editor for Lifehacker who doesn't think cell phones are the only devices that should get to use ringtones. His special feature Hack Attack appears every Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader.
The long-time VoIP phone service provider Packet8 just threw its hat into the cellular minute-stealing arena with its new service, MobileTalk. But before we can share about MobileTalk, it would be helpful to know what minute-stealing is. The idea is simple: use your phone's IP data service to transport costly long distance calls using Voice over IP instead of the traditional way--through the cell carrier's grossly expensive long distance interconnects.
MobileTalk is a software download that runs on a variety of phones. Like its contemporaries TalkPlus, Gizmo for Mobile, and Jajah, MobileTalk can be sent directly to your phone via a media message when you sign up for the service. Packet8 gets ten bucks when you sign up, ten bucks every month you stay signed up, and 2 - 6 cents per minute for every call you place. If you make a lot of calls across the pond, that *should* save you a fair amount of dough.
Of course, there's no value-add for existing Packet8 customers (like, say, a discount), and Packet8 still hasn't fixed the original set of problems with its service--for example, their soft phone (a PC program to let you make phone calls) still can't share a phone number with another Packet8 phone line. But if you make a ton of international calls on your wireless and you want the benefit of a single bill from your phone provider, MobileTalk is the way to go.
After taking apart a $30 "extender" Wi-Fi router antenna, one intrepid video blogger posted a guide to making the same thing with remarkably cheap stuff. If you're not afraid of a soldering gun or taking apart your router antenna, a small amount of copper wire, a drinking straw, a wood screw and black marker should get you (according to the video creator) roughly twice the range and power. The standard warnings about potentially damaging your hardware apply, so those skittish about soldering should check out Gina's Top 10 Wi-Fi Boosts, Tweaks and Apps. Thanks Colin!
Today's most popular headlines are Gmail Product Manager on IMAP and Greasemonkey (6,436 views today), Monitor Application Usage with RescueTime (2,810) and Shoot in Direct Sunlight (2,178). Today's most discussed stories are Shed Your Extra College Pounds? (26 comments), Monitor Application Usage with RescueTime (17) and Gmail Product Manager on IMAP and Greasemonkey (17).
One year ago, we created a Thanksgiving PC Rescue Kit so that you can give quick and easy tech support to the fam.
If you're both a Gmail junkie and Ubuntu user, you might have set up Thunderbird as your ultimate IMAP client. But non-Thunderbird users and those who prefer web emailing don't have to suffer through unnecessary clicks, thanks to a post at the CAL design NZ How-To Geek blog. By downloading and running a quick terminal command on a script file, you can have all email links on the web and elsewhere open up a Gmail composing window (assuming you're logged into Gmail). This trick should also work in any other Linux distro that lets you set preferred applications, and Windows and Mac users can still use Gmail notifier to get the same effect.
All platforms: Firefox 3, the next version of everyone's favorite cross-platform browser, has released a public beta for early adopters, web developers and other curious souls. New features include a Places Organizer for bookmarks and saved searches, a plug-in manager for the likes of Flash, Java and other helpers, and many more improvements and changes. Like any beta, there are still a few bugs to be smoothed out, and none of my extensions from Firefox 2 worked in this version. Still, it's an interesting look ahead at what browsing will look like in a few months. Firefox 3 Beta 1 is a free download for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Web-based chat application Meebo now lets you video conference with up to five other contacts from any instant messaging service through a team-up with TokBox. As with their regular video chat, you log in, open a chat window, hit the "rocket ship" icon and choose the "Group Video Chat" option. There's simultaneous text chatting in the same window, and the video quality looks to be about the same as the one-on-one setup. Not too shabby for a free, no-installation service.
Presentations, the slide show component of Google Docs, has been updated to allow slides to be given custom background images and colorized. While there's still no ability to save create constant self-made themes, it does bring Presentations one step closer to being a feasible alternative to desktop-based slide show creators. The update also makes it easier to select and move more than one slide at a time by Ctrl- or Shift-clicking and dragging slides around. Having been out for two months now, are you finding Presentations useful? Share your observations in the comments.
The How-To Geek blog highlights a feature in Outlook 2007 that's tucked away but can eliminate the hassle of having to forward email replies to bosses or interested parties later. The tweak:
Easily build your upcoming spring semester student schedules—complete with courses, lab work, and extra-curricular activities—with webapp CollegeRuled. The site requires an .edu address to register, but once you're in you can input data pertaining to coursework and activities with ease. The site also has a built-in "Assignment Pad" and discussion boards that are designed for students to collaborate with each other. Despite a few bugs I encountered when entering my courses, the application runs well and looks pretty good.
The Usingmac weblog highlights 13 simple Leopard tweaks you can perform by simply copying and pasting a little text into Terminal, from Dock tweaks to solidifying the menu bar (which we did with an app here). While you're tweaking Leopard, be sure to also check out how to make your hidden apps appear translucent in the Dock.
In this issue of Googleholic we cover:
About a month ago Meebo announced they had a new third party development platform. With it, developers can create multi user applications where users can connect to each other. Now the fun starts rolling out, starting with games.
With over 200 registered developers, Meebo has pushed out 20 multiplayer games and made them available for users to play through the online instant messaging platform. Some head to head challenging games include Backgammon, Checkers, Chess, Connect4, Sudoku wars and Texas Hold'em, making the online messaging location even more tempting to use and replace current standard IM's with.
Although gaming is just a start, the next round of Meebo platform categories include shopping, productivity, work applications, music and video.
The first real, official, and honest to-goodness beta release of Firefox 3 is out. You know, not like that little false alarm pre-beta version we told you about a few weeks ago.
Still, the main differences between this beta and that pre-release copy are that the Firefox team has spent a few more weeks hammering out bugs. The feature set is pretty much what we knew it would be.
Just because a product heralds itself as fat-free doesn't mean it's good for you, and Men's Health tackles 12 unhealthy foods consumers often mistake for nutritious. For example, the oft-assumed healthy granola bar you're eating with breakfast every day may not be as wholesome as you think.
The upside: Granola is made with whole oats, a nutritious food that's high in fiber.On the plus side, not all granola bars are unhealthy, and for each unhealthy food the article highlights, it also suggests a healthful alternative. In all, Men's Health gives the thumbs-down to:
The downside: The oats are basically glued together with ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup, honey, and barley malt—all of which quickly raise blood sugar.
Windows only: Freeware application miniMize creates thumbnail images of your minimized application on your desktop, providing an interesting and customizable alternative to the Windows taskbar. Similar to previously mentioned ThumbWin, miniMize boasts virtually all of the same features in addition to an arguably improved interface. Several of you who seemed to like ThumbWin reported experiencing a few crashes, so mimiMize might be the replacement you were looking for. If thumbnails on the desktop sound to you like clutter, miniMize won't be for you. If you like the idea of ditching your taskbar for minimized thumbnails, miniMize or ThumbWin should do the job. miniMize is freeware, Windows only.
The number one requested feature from Pandora users is the ability to Pandora-ize classical music, and well, it is here. For all you fans of the concerto, symphony, the sonata, and all the finer styles of music the world has to offer, Pandora has your audio fix ready to download into your ears in grand style.
As with all previous Pandora ideas, you can type in the name of your favorite composer to create a station. Hard to say at this point just how much classical music is available, because it takes a while to classify all that music using the near 400 point genome scale. You will simply need to check that out for yourself, and let us know how you like it.
Who said you need smoke, mirrors, lights, and fancy stage antics to get music that is sublime? Well, open Pandora's music box, and you'll see what is possible.
There are plenty of instant messaging applications available for Windows Mobile phones and PDAs. But ever since Agile Messenger went and started charging money for their excellent IM client, there's been a dearth of good free IM clients.
Palringo is stepping up to the plate with a full-featured freeware app for Windows Mobile and Symbian devices. Palringo supports several of the most popular instant messaging services, including MSN, Yahoo!, AOL, and Google Talk/Jabber.
Palringo sports a few unusual options like the ability to logon to the same service multiple times. So if you've got two AIM names, you can use both at the same time. You can also send voice clips, although Palringo doesn't support real time voice chat.
Oh, and one of our favorite things about Palringo is that it's got support for older Windows Mobile devices. Unlike many newer applications, it supports Windows Mobile 2003 and up.
[via Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine]
With Thanksgiving only a few days away, you'll likely be bombarded with requests to fix the family computer. Two years ago, we showed you how to restore mom and dad's computer to pristine shape.
Mac OS X only: The default behavior for the Home and End keys on the Mac can be very annoying—particularly for Windows-to-Mac switchers. Freeware application KeyFixer remaps your Home and End keys so they move the keyboard cursor to the beginning or end of a line, duplicating the behavior of the Home and End keys in Windows. (Cmd-Left/Right arrow perform the same function by default.) We covered a nitty gritty method for accomplishing this once before, but it requires manually editing system files and doesn't actually work for Firefox. Together, the two flavors of KeyFixer will fix the Home/End behavior both across your system and in Firefox, which means that's one major OS X annoyance you can cross off your list. KeyFixer is freeware, Mac OS X only.
A recent study at the University of Missouri-Columbia reaffirms that a sedentary life increases your risk of diseases like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity, but the study suggests that even if you get in the recommended 30 minutes of activity 5 days a week, sitting for the remaining 15 and a half hours of the day is still trouble. The solution? According to the article, just standing up more frequently throughout the day to type or do chores can do wonders for your health and double your metabolic rate. If you're interested in incorporating a healthy stand-up into your daily computing, consider an adjustable desk or the more extreme Treadputer.
Ever look up an address on Google Maps and find that the pushpin for that address is more than a bit off? Now you can edit where Google pinpoints addresses (provided you're logged into your Google account) by clicking the Edit link and dragging the pin to a more appropriate location. Moves over 200 meters will need to be moderated before they're applied, and you can see the original location or recently-moved markers at any time. My parents' house in Iowa has always been about a mile off the mark so I've been dying for something like this, but unfortunately it looks like not all locations are currently supported.
The UneasySilence weblog follows our guide to building a Hackintosh Mac from scratch to turn the $400 Eee PC laptop into the cheapest—albeit probably the slowest—Mac laptop on the block.
Windows and Mac only: Monitor your computer activity easily and efficiently with freeware application RescueTime. Just install the application and let it run in the background so that it can capture data for your online activity and application usage, then check the dashboard and view graphs and charts about your habits. Beyond the rich set of analytics provided, RescueTime also knows when you're away and will not collect any data during that time. If you really want to know how you're spending your time while you're "working," RescueTime is a solid choice. RescueTime is a freeware application for Windows and Mac, requires a free registration to download.
No, we aren't talking about Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We're talking about the Shredder chess engine. This AI likes to play chess, and it also likes to win.
Let's face it, most game AI work these days is not about making harder opponents, it is about making flawed opponents that play like humans. "Indistinguishable", if you will. But, as Shredder makes clear, it is easy for the computers to beat humans. That is why the computers should fight each other.
The Shredder engine is actually built to play against other computer chess engines. It does its job well and has won 12 World Computer Chess Champion titles since 1996. For this online version the AI has been dumbed down to make for a more interesting human vs computer challenge. It is still dirt hard though and you'll have to have some serious chess skills to get more than 10 moves into most games without being checkmated.
Like buying things online but don't feel like giving out your credit card number to a gazillion different web stores? For a few years now PayPal has been the big name in one-stop checkouts. Just sign up for a PayPal account, link up your bank account or credit card number, and send and receive payment for your eBay auctions and buy stuff from participating retailers.
But while most stores take credit cards, there's still plenty of shops out there that won't accept PayPal. So tomorrow PayPal is launching a new service that will let you shop at those stores too.
Basically, PayPal will generate a new virtual credit card number every time you want to buy something on a site that doesn't have a PayPal checkout button. The company is partnering with MasterCard Inc to provide the "Secure Card" service. And we're guessing the service will go a long way toward helping PayPal fend off newcomers in the online payment marketplace like a little company called Google.
Windows only: The Giveaway of the Day web site's offering the full-featured EverNote 2.2 desktop notes app—normally priced at $50—for free today. Grab the download at Giveaway of the Day, install it, and follow the instructions to activate the pay-for version for free. Only 12 more hours left on this one, so get it while the gettin's still good. Here's more on what you get with EverNote. Thanks, Amit!
Facebook users, there's a new Lifehacker page up, with some old school pictures posted like our original site design, our mascot's picture, and more.
Blogger Brett Kelly says you should stop wasting your callers' time and shorten your voicemail greeting to the bare essentials—no music, no cutesy stuff, no obvious information like "I'm not available to take your call right now." In the end, he recommends simply saying your name and phone number. While I'm just as cranky as he is about time-wasting greetings, that seems a bit too curt. What's in your voicemail greeting? Let us know in the comments. (If long greetings drive you nutso, there are ways to skip long greetings and get right to the beep.)
When you're just out of range of your Mom's neighbor's Wi-Fi signal this Thanksgiving, you might want to have the Wi-Fire Range Extender USB signal booster on hand. We haven't tried it ourselves, but a poster at the Cool Tools web site says:
I was in a remote Alabama campground and their little access point was perhaps a few hundred feet away. With the internal Wi-Fi adapter in my Thinkpad (it's Mac/PC compatible), no go. With the Wi-Fire aimed carefully I got a solid, workable signal. I just rotate it around until I get the best signal.The Wi-Fire Range Extender will set you back 80 bucks, and looks like a stocking stuffer that could make the geek in your life very happy.
If you've got a pile of tangled extension cords (or any kind of long cable) stuffed in your closet, save your toilet and paper towel cardboard tubes. The Unclutterer blog recommends wrapping the long cords and slipping the tube over them for easy, no-tangle storage. You can also use twisty ties, but the cardboard tube seems better suited to thicker cable, and from the looks of it, strings of holiday lights, too.
Today Apple pushed out Leopard's first update (hit Software Update to get it), and Macworld runs down the improvements.
Research that shows doing something out of your comfort zone—a new project, a more challenging job—triggers happy-making chemicals in your brain. Career adviser Penelope Trunk says you can apply this helpful info at the office, but:
What about at home? You watch TV, surf from your sofa, cook dinner but don't venture past pasta. Instead, use the same standards at home that you have at work: If you are not challenging yourself and learning to do new things at home, Burns' research suggests that satisfaction with your life will be elusive.No doubt a whole lot of us plop down on the couch after work to watch primetime TV or maybe play a little Halo, and that can get to be a drag after awhile. Variety is the spice of life. How do you spice up your life outside work? Let us know in the comments.
Your Mac's lack of a second mouse button means you have to Ctrl+click to get context menus and other "secondary click" options. Mac laptop users can stop reaching for the Ctrl key and secondary click by touching the trackpad with two fingers instead (then hitting the single mouse button.) In OS X's Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences pane, under Trackpad, check off "For secondary clicks, place two fingers on the trackpad then click the button." For more Mac tips, see weblog Hack the Day's roundup.
Today's most popular headlines are Hackintosh vs. Mac Pro vs. MacBook Pro Benchmarks (20,913 views today), Free EverNote Licenses Today Only (Normally $50) (9,381) and What's Your Google Disaster Plan? (4,241). Today's most discussed stories are Hackintosh vs. Mac Pro vs. MacBook Pro Benchmarks (79 comments), A Call (Ha!) to Shorten Your Voicemail Greeting (44) and What's Your Google Disaster Plan? (44).
Planning on shuffling off to the store this weekend to pick up your frozen turkey? Before you venture out, check out food blog startcooking.com's thorough guide to choosing, prepping, cooking, and carving your bird, whether you're a first-timer or Thanksgiving veteran. If you take nothing else away, write down the basics of this essential tip and keep it handy:
If you are using a regular meat thermometer, insert it about 2.5 inches into the deepest part of the turkey, without touching the bone. The internal temperature should reach 170 degrees F in the breast or 180 degrees F in the thigh and 165 degrees F in the center of the stuffing. The juices should run clear and the joints should be loose.Got any turkey tips (or horror-filled warning stories) to share? Let's hear them in the comments. Thanks Benjamin! Photo by LeeBrimelow.
An undocumented Gmail search operator, language: (or simply lang:), finds messages by the language they're written in. Give it a try in your inbox: lang:Portuguese and lang:Arabic both turn up several messages in the Lifehacker tips box. Sadly -lang:English doesn't seem to work, which would be perfect to create a filter for all messages not in English; but you can create filters to snag messages in particular languages you don't speak, for instance.
Before you start holiday cooking next week, get rid of the burnt-on splatters inside the microwave with a simple technique:
Clean the microwave by boiling a 50/50 mixture of water and vinegar until it steams up. Wipe clean.Vinegar's an all-around useful solution for cleaning; you can also fluff your blankets, de-mildew towels, and more with it.
Mac OS X Leopard only: Run quick calculations from Leopard's Spotlight search box. Enter your formula and the answer will appear as you type, similar to how it works in Firefox's Google search box. Google's implementation is a tad better; it can do metric conversion (try 24km in miles), but Spotlight's good for pure math.
The money blogger at Retire at 45 stopped worrying about paying bills on time using automatic transactions and overdraft protection. He writes:
My checkbook has been on financial autopilot for so long now, it's hard for me to imagine it any other way. I spend almost no time at all paying bills, timing my cash flow, or remembering due dates. This enables me to focus more time on my investments, my career, and my family.He uses his Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) as his checking account's overdraft protection—a controversial choice that works better for folks who don't overdraft that often, and who will pay back the HELOC right away when it's been hit. See also how I automate my finances.
All of us here at Lifehacker are sad to say goodbye to our fearless weekend editor, Wendy Boswell, who's escaping our clutches to concentrate on client work (and actually get a weekend or two off!). Wendy's an old-timer: She's been writing for us in some capacity for over two years now. We'll miss her upbeat (virtual) smile, search fu, and Simpsons references. Good luck, Wendy!
Thanks to this week's sponsors for dropping a few coins into the turkey fryer: Ask.com, AT&T, Bank of America, Belvedere Vodka, Canon, Current TV, Firefox, Ford Focus, HP, Logitech, Mio, MyRide.com, Nokia, SanDisk, Shure, Sonos, Sony Ericsson, Sprint, TiVo, Toshiba, Verizon, Vista, and Zune. You want a drumstick? Advertise on Lifehacker.
Editor: When photographer and reader Scott D. Feldstein offered to write a tutorial on how to put your digital SLR camera to good use this holiday season, we couldn't pass it up. Our new Canon's dial never budged from Auto mode—until now.
You ponied up for a digital SLR camera because you hated the shutter lag on your little point-and-shoot. The good news: Your photos have improved! The bad news? You know they could be even better—if only you dared to let go of the camera's "auto" mode. It's as if you've been creeping around the neighborhood in a new Mustang using only first gear. No more! It's time to take control, hit the highway, and learn what you can do in program mode.
In auto mode your camera makes just about all the decisions for you. Sure, you frame the subject and push the shutter release button, but you never have to think about things like exposure or whether you need to use a flash; the camera handles all of that for you. Most of the time it does a pretty good job, even if the results are a little less than artistic. Switching to program mode, however, allows your camera to make some decisions for you, but also puts three things in your control: the flash, the ISO value, and the white balance.
Let's start! Put the camera in program mode by turning the mode dial to "P" as pictured above.
Your new flash options are easy. The flash will never pop up and fire automatically, no matter how dark the scene is. Instead, you'll have to pop it up yourself if you want to use it. So when should you use it? Volumes could be written about that subject, but the main thing I want you to understand is this: Learning how your camera works lets you avoid using the flash in borderline light situations, but also lets you use it to enhance some well-lit scenarios. Here's what I mean.
Sometimes the best situations to use a flash are ones in which it will never fire automatically, such as this outdoor portrait of my gorgeous fiance.
The light from the flash eliminated shadows from her face while adding a pleasing catchlight to her eyes. To try this technique yourself, pop up the flash manually by pressing the flash button located on the left side of the flash/viewfinder hump as shown.
Conversely, one of the worst situations to use a flash, aesthetically speaking, is one in which it's virtually guaranteed to fire automatically: taking pictures of people in indoor light. The harsh and unflattering light from the flash may cause your subject to look like someone who has just risen from the dead, while their surroundings may become too dark to make out at all.
To avoid the flash in program mode, don't do anything. It will fire only when you invoke it manually by pressing its button, so just don't press it. But how do you take a picture in low-light situations if you don't use the flash? If you do nothing to compensate for the lack of flash, your photos may be dark and/or blurry. What can you do to avoid this? Plenty.
Shutter speed and aperture size are the two key factors that effect how much light gets inside the camera, but we won't be talking about them today. In program mode the camera is still choosing these settings for you. But no matter who is choosing the settings, sometimes shutter and aperture adjustments alone are not enough to pull off a flash-less shot in indoor light. By raising the ISO value, however, you can actually make your camera more sensitive to light, thus requiring less of it to make the correct exposure. Here's how you do it. (The acronym ISO doesn't mean anything even remotely photographic, by the way. It stands for International Standards Organization. Go figure.)
Press and hold the ISO button (1) while simultaneously rotating the command dial (2). You should see the ISO value changing in the LCD status screen (3).
For your indoor flash-less shot, try raising it to at least ISO 800. You can go to 1600 or even higher with some cameras, but there is a drawback: You may find "noise" or oddly colored speckles in the darker areas of your photo.
Is it worth it? That depends. Sometimes you don't want the look of the flash, sometimes it's intrusive, still other times it can't be used anyway—such as when your subject is too far away to be reached by it. In these cases you have to ask yourself: Is dealing with some noise better than not getting the shot? Using a flash in this birthday party shot would have killed the moment. Instead I went to ISO 800 and got the shot without a flash.
So you've taken control of the flash and dealt with a low-light situation by increasing the ISO setting. Now what? There is one other cool thing that program mode allows you to fiddle with: white balance.
You may never have thought much about it, but in addition to the fact that there is usually more light outside than inside, the color of the light also differs. Daylight tends to be bluer, whereas tungsten bulbs tend to be yellower. This is usually no problem, as your camera is pretty adept at compensating for these differences automatically. If, however, you notice your photos taking on a weird color cast, the camera isn't doing a good job and it's time to take matters into your own hands.
Press and hold the white balance button (1) while simultaneously rotating the command dial (2) as shown. You will see various icons in the LCD status screen (3) such as a light bulb, the sun, a cloud, and a fluorescent bulb.
I bet you can guess what kind of light each of these settings is for. Try the one that best describes your circumstances. Experiment! Many people especially like using the cloudy setting outdoors—even when it's not cloudy.
In addition to automatic and the various pre-set white balances, there is another setting you should know about: manual white balance. This one is a little harder to set, but it can really be worth it. You may want to consult your camera's manual for the exact method, but the general idea is that you choose the manual setting using the white balance selection process described above, then take a picture of something completely white. Many pros carry around white cards for just this purpose, but I find that any piece of white paper folded up and jammed into your camera bag works just fine. Whatever you choose, completely fill the frame with white so that no other color enters the picture at the edges. After setting the white balance with that shot, you can proceed to shoot as many pictures as you like in that environment and be sure that the colors will be accurate.
Congratulations! As Obi-wan famously said, you've taken your first step into a larger world. If it ever seems overwhelming, remember this: Auto mode is always there to fall back on. Besides, switching into program mode doesn't mean you have to do all of the things discussed here. If you simply want to adjust the ISO for changing light conditions, that's fine. You may not need to touch the flash or shift out of automatic white balance.
Speaking of white balance, don't forget to set it back to automatic when you're done messing around. There's nothing worse than happening upon a great subject and snapping away for five minutes, only to discover later that all your shots are a lovely shade of deep blue because your white balance was set for a completely different environment. You should also remember to lower the ISO value when you leave a low-light situation. Automatic white balance and a low ISO value are usually good settings to walk around with. After a while this will become second nature.
Next time we delve into more camera modes, as well as aperture size and shutter speed. Until then, happy shooting!
Scott D. Feldstein lives in Wisconsin with his two children and works in e-learning at Marquette University. He is also a part-time photographer, part-time teacher and full-time nerd.
Oprah Winfrey gets her life hacking on in the December issue of O Magazine, which includes Lifehacker's very own Trusted Trio email organization system! In a section entitled "24 Shortcuts: Do everything faster, better, easier," there's an "Organizing Email in a Snap" item (page 336) that lists our three-folder system for getting your email under control. Okay, so the term "life hack" never appears, but still! After the jump, check out a scan of the page.
Since this article was published, I've renamed the Action folder to Follow-up—because you should separate your to-do list from your email. But the concepts are the same. Hit the link to get details on the Trusted Trio.
If a four-hour workweek isn't a possibility for you (and it's not for most of us), CEO Michael Hyatt offers a few ways to achieve more realistic time-savings: 10 hours less work per week. He lists a few strategies he uses to cut down work time, like skipping unimportant meetings, stopping projects short that aren't worth finishing, and taking control of your own calendar by proactively scheduling when you're getting work done. There's no magic wand you can wave to lessen your workload, but these realistic practices anyone can start today. How do you reduce your work time (and increase your life time)? Let us know in the comments.
If your iPod earbuds fall out on the treadmill or trail, consider a pair of slip-proof headphones. Runner Michael Hyatt recommends the Sennheiser Sport Line Stereo Neckband Headphones, which wrap around the ear and then the back of the neck and don't fall off, even when he sweats. Haven't tried a pair of these myself, but they're a tempting purchase or gift for those of us out to go from the couch to 5K. Runners, how do you get your audio fix while you're running? Let us know in the comments.
Windows and Mac OS X: Task manager Sciral Consistency tracks to-do's that don't have hard and fast deadlines, but need to be done on a regular basis. Keep on top of when it's time to clean out the fish tank, balance your checkbook, get a haircut, an oil change, a teeth cleaning, or simply when too much time has passed since you called Mom with Consistency, which creates a time-based horizontal grid of days. You enter a task and the minimum and maximum amount of time that should pass between each time you do it, and Consistency marks which tasks need doing and which you've still got time on for a given day. Sciral Consistency is a free download (with limited use) for Windows and Mac OS; a license will set you back $25.
Your feedreader's soaring unread item count got you down? Subscribe to only the cream of the crop with our daily, trimmed-down top stories feed or once-weekly highlights feed. This week's best posts include:
So you never look at the contents of your Gmail Spam label, and you don't want to see the unread count pile up any more? In lieu of the Hide Spam-Count Greasemonkey user script (which doesn't quite yet work with the new Gmail upgrades), you can set up a filter using the in:spam criteria to automatically mark junk mail as read. For extra protection against false positives, add other criteria to your filter, like make sure the message doesn't include your name, school, or company. Note: when you set up the filter, Gmail will pop a message saying that in: and label: criteria don't work with filters, but in fact in:spam does seem to work in my test. Brilliant!
Ok, people, the pressure's on: the family's on their way to your house this Thursday, and they expect a pumpkin pie and turkey with all the trimmings. Luckily, Real Simple's put together a comprehensive Thanksgiving cheat sheet with a preparation timeline to help you get everything on the table, on time, at the same time, all Zen-like. Check out the sidebar for recipes, carving guides, and problem-solvers to help you figure out exactly how much and what kind of turkey you need. What's your best Thanksgiving life or time-saver? Tell us in the comments.
Blogger danah boyd's sick of dumb password retrieval security questions on web site registration forms, so she uses a pattern to create (and remember) her answers. boyd writes:
The basic structure is:Love this idea; the same type of patterning works for choosing memorable—but always different—passwords, too.[Snarky Bad Attitude Phrase] + [Core Noun Phrase] + [Unique Word]
Although these are not my actual phrases, let's map them for example:
Thus, when I'm asked the following question: What is your favorite sports team?
- Snarky Bad Attitude Phrase = StupidQuestion
- Unique Word = Booyah
My answer would be: StupidQuestion SportsTeam Booyah
Gmail's latest revamp didn't add a whole lot of obvious, showy features, but one new thing it does is change the URL of what you're looking at—whether it's a label, individual message, or search for messages. These permanent URLs (which are short and readable, not a long jumble of characters like the old version) have one obvious great use: bookmarks (including keyword bookmarks.) Weblog Google Blogoscoped suggests another we hadn't thought of:
You can now share searches with a friend, e.g. tell them "Check out the previous mail I sent you at http://mail.google.com/mail/#search/grab+coffee+at+starbucks ...". When someone tells you they never got your email, this could come in real handy.
Productivity blogger Brett Kelly says it's easy to completely drop the ball when you're trying to incorporate Getting Things Done into your life, and lists some specific ways he has failed at it. Like:
Do your weekly review when you're damn good and ready - Make sure to never even attempt to schedule a regular time for your weekly review. Friday afternoon, Saturday night, Wednesday during lunch. You're a busy person with a dynamic life - you clearly can't be expected to block out 1-2 hours per week!As someone who's found Weekly Review religion, and at times, lost it again, this one hit home. What's made you fall off the GTD wagon? Let us know in the comments.
A short NY Times piece published today tackles productivity problems in the modern workplace. To summarize, they are: multitasking (bad, work sequentially instead), email (check it less, process it more), and long, paralyzing to-do lists. One productivity expert actually recommends that companies should restrict internet access for their employees:
A compulsion to surf the Internet and check e-mail stirs up a "desire to be in the know, to not be left out, that ends up taking up a lot of our time"--at the expense of getting things done, Mr. Ellwood said. If he had his way, he would cut off Internet access--but not e-mail--for a vast majority of employees, and set up dedicated workstations for people to use when they really needed the Web for their work.Yikes! Obviously Mr. Ellwood doesn't read Lifehacker.
YouTube may be the most popular video sharing site on the web. But it's often panned for having some of the lowest-quality videos on the web as well. And when we say quality, we're not making value judgments about the videos of teenagers singing karaoke. What we mean is that YouTube tends to encode videos at low bitrates and low resolutions.
But YouTube co-founder Steven Chen says that will change soon. When you upload a video to YouTube, your original file in all its high-res glory is sitting on YouTube's server. But the site compresses that video into a Flash video file that can easily be watched from pretty much any computer with an internet connection.
Chen says YouTube is working on technology that will auto-detect a user's network speed and determine whether to stream a low quality or high quality version of the video. The new player could be up on the site within three months.
Consider this statement:
The most compelling games are those that incorporate a new concept that has not been done previously.
If you agree with this statement, you're going to love Time Raider, an experimental new game on Jay Is Games. In Time Raider you get three instances of yourself, all facing various obstacles. When you use one of the instances to interact with devices on their level, they have effects on other levels.
None of this is all that new, but where it gets interesting is that there is not a concept of lives or dying in this game. Instead, you simply rewind and try again.
The game is played in real time. So therefore, you must choose which of your men to control for that session, then move them to do things at specific times. Once you get stuck, you rewind and choose another man to move. Hopefully you are able to remove the obstacle the first man faced. However, here's where it gets really challenging. When you want to go back and control the first man again, you must do so for the whole time-line. In other words, you must replicate everything that man previously did to make the level progress forward.
The description sounds convoluted and frustrating, and while there certainly is a healthy level of frustration in the game, it's very fun to play and really draws you in with the time-line concept.
gpSPhone is a GameBoy Advance emulator for the iPhone and iPod Touch. To use it, of course, you'll need an iPhone that's been hacked to use third-party apps, but that's a small price to pay for quality time with such memorable Nintendo classics as Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga and Mega Man Battle Network. The emulator was co-developed by the guy that made gpSPhone's cousin, a classic NES emulator.
Once you have gpSPhone installed, assuming you're willing to jump through the hoops required to unlock your iPhone, you'll need to get your hands on some games. Since the iPhone doesn't have a GBA cartridge receptable (those short-sighted Apple engineers!), you'll need to grab ROMs instead. ROMs are firmware images of cartridge games that can be downloaded and copied to the iPhone for use with the emulator. Only watch it, distributing copyrighted games in this fashion is mostly illegal.
That said, there are quite a few home-brew games available as ROMs, like our new favorite, Qwak. Now, if only an Amiga emulator would show up on the iPhone so we can play Lemmings.
Look out PayDay loan proprietors!
The web has often been used to make a point (The Onion anyone?). But rarely has it been used as effectively as with the Predatory Lending Association.
This site has it all: Loan calculators, discussion boards, racial profiling tools, and a Google maps based "poor finder" that makes suggestions for where you should open up your next PayDay loan store. The site is extremely sarcastic and attempts to illustrate the cold, calculating, and corrupt business practices of predatory lenders, many of which exist simply to let people with lower incomes hock their next pay check and take the money to the Casino.
For those who aren't in the USA, PayDay loan stores offer short term loans with enormous fees based on your previous pay stub. They let you get your check early, but they'll charge you 10-30% to do it.
The site encourages people to sign up for their mailing list so they can notify you of future projects and whether or not PayDay lenders attempt to hack the site and take it down.
Less than three weeks after making its debut, Leopard, also known as OS X 10.5, has received it's first incremental update. 10.5.1, available via Apple's Software Update or via Apple's web site. The update addresses a number of issues, most notably in the areas of networking and Internet security.
Here's a quick run-down of some of our own problems in Leopard, that have been addressed in this update:
In this issue of Googleholic we cover:
Continue reading Googleholic for November 16th 2007
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We've been hearing bits and pieces of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales' big plans for a search engine for a while now. But it's never been entirely clear how this human-powered search engine would look. Would it be more like Google or Mahalo?
South African blogger Matthew Buckland raises a third option that we hadn't considered. It could look a lot like Facebook.
Last night Wales showed a few screenshots of his new search project to a South African audience. Buckland was in attendance, and he says some of the screenshots looked exactly like Facebook profile pages. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that your search results are going to take you to social networking style pages. Honestly, that doesn't even make much sense. If you're searching for information on Abraham Lincoln, you probably don't expect to find his MySpace page.
So these screenshots could just be showing the user profiles of Wikiasari editors. But considering how many people read and edit Wikipedia every day, we could easily see any sort of social networking component growing pretty big and fast. And without Facebook-style advertising.
Looking for a good replacement for the built-in contacts, calendar, and tasks applications on your Windows Mobile PDA or phone, but don't feel like shelling out $20 to $30? Handango's got you covered. Well, today anyway.
The mobile software store is offering up a free copy of Agendus for Windows Mobile today only. Agendus is a popular personal information manager that made a name for itself on PalmOS. Last year, Iambic decided to port the application to Windows Mobile.
While it may not have the name recognition of Agenda Fusion or Pocket Informant, Agendus does pack a bunch of features missing from Windows Mobile's default PIM suite. For example, you get more detailed week and month views, icons, and better integration of tasks, calendar, and contacts.
Usually a full license would set you back $25.
Continue reading What programs do you load after a clean Windows install? - Ask DLS
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Well here's an idea you don't see every day. Geekdom superhero Tim O'Reilly stopped by the shoomze-booth of social bookmarking site Mister Wong at the recent Web 2.0 Expo and the forward thinking gents at the booth snagged the empty water bottle he was seen swigging from. They decided that selling it would be a great way to raise money for a worthy cause and now it's up for sale on eBay. The proceeds will go toward Unicef's safe water campaign.
No, seriously.
Look, we laughed ourselves right under the desk at first too. Then -- and maybe it's the heady sense of philanthropy talking -- it began to sound like a halfway decent idea. After all, where's the harm in it, y'know? Unicef is a worthwhile cause that could surely benefit from a few extra dollars and maybe there's someone out there who's been longing for a bottle that's known to have rested gently on the lips of the The Tim.
Let's just hope there's no backwash in it.
MPlayer is probably the most powerful and versatile media player for Linux. Many popular Linux and Windows media players like SMPlayer and KMPlayer are built on MPlayer. And thanks to amitv_17 at the XDA-Developers forum, you can now run MPlayer on a Windows Mobile phone or PDA.
The first version of MPlayer for Windows Mobile is a bit rough around the edges. The GUI is pretty basic, and the CPU usage is pretty high. But the fact that MPlayer supports practically every audio and video format known to mankind kind of makes up for that.
This is the only Windows Mobile media player, for example that supports RealAudio and RealVideo files, unless you count Real Media's outdated RealPlayer for Windows Mobile. The WMA decoder isn't working, but there's support for H.264, Flac, MP4, M4a, OGG, MP3, and a slew of other formats.
The MPlayer port appears to work with Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices. Windows Mobile 2003SE and earlier users need not apply.
[via Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine]
Mac OS X Leopard only: One of the nice things about Stacks—or annoying things, depending on how you look at it—is that the topmost document icon appears on your Dock, instead of an indicator of which folder contains it. To solve this problem, the icon designer at Optica Optima's offering a set of icons for download that add a drawer-like image to your Stacks. The screenshot above displays the Downloads, Applications, and Documents folders as Stacks sporting the drawer icons. Pretty! To add the icons to your Stacks, just download and unzip the package, and move the appropriate icon to the folder. For more fun along the same lines, here's how to add custom icons for your Mac hard drives.
According to Mac web site TidBits (as well as my experience and tons of other anecdotal evidence), Spotlight in Leopard works great—in particular, it's light years faster than it was in Tiger. How's it working for you?
The recent Google Earth update introduced lots of new layers, but one extremely useful layer that passed under our radar (as it were) at first glance was the addition of a new weather layer. The layer includes radar information, current conditions, and forecasts pulled every 15 minutes from Weather.com and a cloud layer that updates hourly from the Naval Research Laboratory. So if you're already obsessed with Google Earth for its stargazing and live flight tracking features, now you've got one more use for the freeware, cross-platform atlas.
Windows only: Sick of your Windows screensaver coming on in the middle of watching a video or referring to what's on-screen? Tech site the How-To Geek set up a shortcut to temporarily disable the screensaver (without having to click your way to its settings by hand) using a small utility called FlipSS. Mac users, you can get this same functionality with Caffeine.
Today's most popular headlines are Build a Hackintosh Mac for Under $800 (82,678 views today), Tips on Keeping Healthy in Your Cubicle (4,233) and Monitor Drive Space with Vista-Style Icons (3,737). Today's most discussed stories are Build a Hackintosh Mac for Under $800 (89 comments), Rip Audio from a DVD to MP3 with Free DVD MP3 Ripper (16) and Monitor Drive Space with Vista-Style Icons (12).
Windows/Mac/Linux: Cross-platform, open source video application Miro is now available in a full-featured, bug-fixed 1.0 version. The program formerly known as Democracy Player plays almost any kind of video file, but its real value lies in its content fetching and organizing features. Miro can subscribe to video podcasts, grab from YouTube channel feeds or BitTorrents (letting you make your own season pass) and keep video libraries organized, among other features. Miro is a free download for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Online storage website Box.net has thrown open the doors and let all sorts of webapps in, giving users a handful of one-click actions and exports for their files. That means MP3s stored at Box.net can be sent to Myxer for ringtone conversion, documents can be opened in ThinkFree or Zoho or faxed through eFax, and the list runs to eight more services at this point, with more likely to come. Along with RSS file sharing and desktop mounting, the free 1GB of space offered to everyone is becoming a handy tool. Box.net requires a sign-up for its free service, as do all of the web services it currently links to.
Windows/Linux: Popular, free virtualization software VMWare has released a beta of its next Server platform, which allows users to run other operating systems inside their own. The 2.0 beta adds support for running on Windows Vista Business and Ultimate editions, Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10, and other systems, as well as a new browser-based interface and better support for USB devices. A somewhat-helpful PDF user guide is available at the download site, but I'm waiting for a handy step-by-step guide to come along before diving in too deep in Linux (I unfortunately have only Vista Home Premium at the moment). If you managed to get 2.0 up and running, share your experiences in the comments. VMWare Server 2.0 Beta is a free download for Windows and Linux systems.
Ars Technica's Open Ended blog posts a helpful guide for Linux users running Compiz Fusion who want to make drop-down menus, tooltips, and other items transparent without digging through a massive configuration menu. The instructions require having the compizconfig-settings-manager package installed, and those who want to tweak specific program windows (like Pidgin or Firefox) might have to spend some time with Compiz's window-matching documentation. But for those who just want a cool-looking 10 percent shade on their menus, this guide should suffice.
Windows XP/2000 only: Software firewall ZoneAlarm is offering free downloads of its basic firewall package with a spyware scanner/cleaner and a year of free updates until 5 p.m. PST today (although you'll get an email with a download link that's valid for a week after that). Program maker Check Point Software claims the free offering is made to coincide with Microsoft's monthly "Patch Tuesday" and the ensuing new vulnerabilities that hackers start working on. Regardless of the piggy-back marketing, ZoneAlarm is an easy-to-use port protector, and a little free spyware protection couldn't hurt either. ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware is a free download for Windows 2000 and XP only.
The Wall Street Journal added Digg buttons throughout its paid-subscription website yesterday, but any article that's been dugg will be freely viewable. Tech blog Digital Inspiration points out that by adding the feed from this search result to your reader, you can check out every story that gets even just one digg click. New WSJ owner Rupert Murdoch has said he plans to break down the pay wall entirely, but until then, this might be the next best way to browse the influential newspaper. UPDATE: Well, less than an hour later and I've got 50 hits on that feed. Those wanting more specific, less overwhelming WSJ content should modify that search above by changing the parameters to "Title, Description, and URL" and adding a subject like "oil" or "Microsoft" after "online.wsj.com."
Open source Mac utility Quicksilver isn't just an application launcher—it's a comprehensive keyboard interface. Launching applications and documents is just Quicksilver's gateway drug: The more you get used to doing things with Quicksilver, the more things you want to do with it. Out of the box Quicksilver comes with the barest essentials, but once you add the right plug-ins that interact with menus, apps, documents, and settings, you can accomplish more and more complex tasks from that familiar three-paned prompt. After the jump, check out top 10 favorite Quicksilver plug-ins, and how to set them up.
To install a Quicksilver plug-in, visit the Plug-ins pane and simply check off its name from the list. Some plug-ins have dependencies and required settings to work. However, even with "Install dependencies automatically" selected in Quicksilver's Plug-in Pane configuration, often you need to enable settings manually to get the most out of certain plug-ins. While Blacktree's Plug-in documentation is good, for some plug-ins, it's outdated or incomplete. In this list I've noted every single setting that has to be made to enable the actions described from scratch. You can also get more information about a plug-in by selecting it and clicking the info (i) button on the lower right hand side of the panel.
Before you start, make sure you're running the latest version B53 of Quicksilver, available for download here. The screenshots in this list may look different than your version of Quicksilver because I'm using the Bezel style interface. To turn on Bezel in your Quicksilver installation, in the Preferences area, under Appearance, choose it from the Command Interface drop-down.
Let's get to the plug-ins.
Dash off a quick note or even attach files to a new message using either the Apple Mail Module or the Gmail Module. To use, invoke Quicksilver, select a file or use . (period) to freehand type a text message in the first pane. Choose the "Email To... (Compose)" action, and choose a contact from your Address Book in the third pane. (The contact must have an email address associated with it.)
More details:
Prerequisites/Settings:
Forget the key combination to open the Spotlight search box, you can disable it completely. With Quicksilver's Spotlight Module plug-in installed, simply freehand type your query (use . to open up the textarea in the first pane) and choose "Spotlight in Window/Finder/Command" to execute your search. Note: the Spotlight Module's documentation page seems to be out of date; it doesn't include the "Spotlight in Command" option which I see on my Mac but doesn't work. Any readers who know how to get that one going, let us know in the comments.
Launch one of your Firefox bookmarks without even opening the 'fox using Quicksilver. With the Firefox Module installed (docs), invoke Quicksilver and type any word in the bookmark's title or its keyword (like if you've assigned Lifehacker the LH keyword, as shown.) Hit the "Open URL" action and Firefox will launch with your bookmark loaded. You can also fire off bookmarklets directly from Quicksilver without navigating through your bookmark folders. Obviously you need Firefox for this Module to work. Note: Although Firefox's History is listed in the Module's name and in the Catalog, even enabled, History entries for Firefox 2.0 and greater don't work.
Look up any word in the Mac dictionary using Quicksilver. With the Dictionary Module installed, invoke Quicksilver, hit period (.) to freehand enter your word (or paste it from clipboard), and from the Actions panel either choose "Define with dict.org" to get several definitions from online dictionaries, or choose "Look up in Dictionary" to open a window defining the word courtesy of Dictionary.app. Note: The Dictionary and Thesaurus actions don't work on Leopard with B53, for both Adam and myself, so use "Look up in Dictionary" or "Define with dict.org."
Prerequisites:
Control your iTunes library while you work from Quicksilver using the feature-rich iTunes Module (docs). Rate the current song, browse artists, albums, and playlists, control the volume, skip and pause songs, and more.
Available iTunes Module Actions: The iTunes Module adds the following actions to Quicksilver:
Customize the iTunes Module: With the iTunes Module installed, in Quicksilver Preferences, an iTunes area appears on the left-hand side. Go there to set iTunes Module options, like showing artwork, and notifying you of the track information when it starts to play.
Add a line to a text file (like "Hackintosh" to projects.txt, as shown), or edit a particular line in a text file with Quicksilver's Text Manipulations plug-in (docs) installed. To work with individual lines inside an existing .txt file, select the file in Quicksilver's first pane and hit the right arrow key to drill down to the line you want. Use the up and down arrows to select a line, then Tab to the Action pane for the "Change To..." to replace a line or "Prepend To..." to add text to the beginning of a line.
Note: If you don't see all the actions described even with Text Manipulation enabled, in Preferences, Actions, next to Text and Text Lines, select additional text manipulation actions (like "Change To..." and "Prepend Text..." to lines.)
You can also forget the Cmd+Shift+3/4 +(Space) key combination to take screenshots. Install the Screen Capture Module plug-in to make the following commands available in the first QS panel: "Capture Screen," "Capture Window," and "Capture Region." The advantage to using Quicksilver over OS X's built-in command is that QS will automatically reopen with the image file already selected, ready for a new action—like renaming or scaling.
Prerequisites: In Catalog, under Quicksilver, make sure Internal Commands is selected. Also in Catalog, under Application, make sure "Enabled advanced features" is selected. Both are required for Screen Capture Actions to appear in your menu.
Perhaps the least recognized and celebrated Quicksilver plug-in, the Shelf is a handy way to bookmark files, text snippets, and folders that you use frequently but that you don't want cluttering your Desktop or Dock. I used to keep files "in progress" stored on my Desktop, but the Shelf lets me keep a clear desktop and still refer to stuff I'm working on. Items on the Shelf last across Quicksilver sessions (unlike the Clipboard.) For example, for the last three days a text file called "top10.txt" was stored deep in my home directory's hierarchy, but it was at the top of my Quicksilver Shelf for easy access as I wrote this post.
What it adds: With the Shelf plug-in enabled and configured, you can select any file, folder, contact, or enter text freeform, and choose the "Put on Shelf" action. To see your Shelf, either invoke Quicksilver and choose "Shelf"->"Show Contents," or use the Opt+Cmd+S hotkey combination. Otherwise you can browse down into your Shelf's contents from the Quicksilver pane by typing Shelf in the first panel and hitting the forward slash (/) key.
Prerequisites: In the Catalog, in Modules, make sure "Shelf & Clipboard" is selected for the Shelf to work. When "Shelf & Clipboard" is selected in the Catalog, you can hit the "i" button (lower right) to expand an options sidebar, and check off either both Shelf and Clipboard contents.
Control your system with Quicksilver by installing the Extra Scripts plug-in (docs), which adds the following options to the first pane:
Resize and format images directly in Quicksilver using the Image Manipulations plug-in. Select the image (or images, using the comma trick) you want to format and save as a new file. Tab to the action pane and select "Scale Image..." From there you can simply enter a number that represents the new width in pixels, or you can specify width, height, format, and quality. From the Image Manipulation plug-in's Info panel, usage details:
Use the "scale image" action and give it text in the form: "SCALE_INFO [as FORMAT_INFO]" SCALE_INFO: "[fit] WIDTH [x HEIGHT]" FORMAT_INFO: "JPG/PNG/GIF/TIFF [low/med*/hi*] [prog(ressive)] [inter(laced)]"Examples:
"fit 640x480 as jpg high progressive" - creates an image that will fit within a 640x480 rectangle
"50% as interlaced png" - creates a png with dimensions half of the original
"x72 as gif" - makes a gif 72 pixels tall, with width to maintain the proportions
If you just want a .JPG from that .TIFF, you can also use the Image Manipulation plug-in's "Save Image in Format..." action. Both actions will re-save the file as a new filename (it doesn't overwrite the original) and will automatically invoke Quicksilver again, with the result selected for further action.
If you're new to Quicksilver, be sure to check out Adam's series of tutorials:
Also, Howard Melman's comprehensive Quicksilver User Guide (PDF) is a life-saving reference when you're having one of those QS WTF moments.
What's the first plug-in you install when you set up Quicksilver? Got any questions about the plug-ins on this list? You know what to do. The comments await.
Flickr is celebrating their 2 billionth uploaded photo, which—as luck would have it—was an attractive shot of a gum tree.
Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Keep track of your daily to-read list with the Read it Later Firefox extension. Similar to previously mentioned Readeroo—which integrates directly with Del.icio.us—Read it Later takes a slightly different approach, keeping your reading list local until you read it and decide whether or not you want to bookmark it. If you do, you have the option to bookmark on any number of popular bookmarking sites, from Del.icio.us to Digg. The drawback is that Read it Later doesn't currently sync across browsers, which would be a nice touch. Read it Later is free, works wherever Firefox does.
DIY web site Instructables covers the perennial favorite: Cleaning up cord clutter beneath your desk. We've covered the cordless workspace plenty in the past, but if you still haven't found a solution that fits your needs, this simple and cheap power strip basket could do wonders for your cable decluttering needs. The custom cut basket is particularly useful for retaining access to your power outlets without needing to unscrew the entire apparatus in order to unplug or plug in a new device.
It appears that Wal-Mart's $199 PC running a web-friendly Linux distro has sold out online. Luckily, even if you can't find one at your local store, you can still turn your old PC into a webapp monster with gOS yourself. [via]
Mac users: Web site Simplehelp steps through how to run Greasemonkey user scripts in Safari with free tools SIMBL (a patching tool for Cocoa apps) and GreaseKit (previously posted as Creammonkey). Unfortunately not every Greasemonkey script will work with GreaseKit (though the project appears to be striving toward that end), and my favorite Greasemonkey script, previously mentioned Gmail Macros, doesn't work with it yet, but most scripts should work. Hopefully in time Safari addicts can take advantage of all of the Greasemonkey user scripts that add so much to Firefox.
Mac OS X only: Copy songs from your iPod directly to your iTunes library with free, open source application Senuti. We've mentioned Senuti in the past, but this app keeps getting better. Aside from the fact that Senuti has updated to work with Leopard, it also has a greatly improved interface since we last featured it. But what's most useful is the new blue dot, which indicates whether or not the song is already in your iTunes library, making Senuti perfect for "borrowing" a song or two from a friend's iPod without introducing duplicates to your iTunes library. Senuti is freeware, Mac OS X only. Windows users, check out previously mentioned YamiPod.
Like the concept of Leopard's Time Machine but aren't running Leopard on your machine? The IMHO weblog steps through how to mimic the backup chops of Leopard using the rsync command line tool. By default rsync is Unix-only tool, but we've covered how to use rsync on Windows as well, so this method applies to pretty much everyone. And while you won't get the stylish graphical interface of Leopard's Time Machine, you will get incremental, full backups of your drive.
If you're preparing to whip up a bowl of mashed potatoes this Thanksgiving (and who isn't planning to make this holiday staple?), the New York Times explains how to make the perfect, classic mashed potato dish.
Starting with hot, dry potatoes and hot butter emerged as one of the two crucial steps toward mashed potato success. The other was using a good masher: in fact, technology trumped every other factor in my experiments.Check out the article for the details (the instructions are all on the second page), and if you've got your own tips for heaven-sent mashed potatoes, let's hear them in the comments.
Today's most popular headlines are Top 10 Quicksilver Plug-ins (9,659 views today), ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware Available Free Today Only (6,241) and Declutter with an Under-the-Desk Power Basket (2,980). Today's most discussed stories are ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware Available Free Today Only (24 comments), Top 10 Quicksilver Plug-ins (15) and Save a Link for Later with Read It Later (12).
Windows only: Food, hair, dust, skin cells—they all end up under your typing keys and pressed under your mouse. If you put off cleaning them out because that would require, well, turning off your computer, free Windows application ToddlerTrap is the end of your excuses. Launch the program and bust out the white paper, Post-It notes or whatever else you use to clean your keyboard or mouse, since your movements and key presses are blocked until you close the tiny window. As the name suggests, ToddlerTrap also prevents tykes from inadvertently resetting your screen resolution. ToddlerTrap is a free download for Windows systems, but requires a free registration key via sign-up. Mac users should check out similar application Keyboard Cleaner.
Between your iGoogle page, your MySpace or Facebook accounts, your Mac or Vista desktop and even your iPhone, your computing life has a lot of room for widgets. Clever Hippo, an app and widget search site, could make it easier to find add-ons for all those platforms and more. The site lets searchers vote widgets up or down, grab search-specific RSS feeds, and search from an iPhone-optimized version. If you can admit that you're a regular widget tweaker, you could save yourself some time by getting your fixes in one place.
Windows only: Thumb drive application packages like the Portable Apps Suite are great for taking your full-featured programs wherever you go, but those with smaller drives or working on slower computers might feel overwhelmed. Enter Floppy Office, a package smaller than 2MB that contains a rich text editor, POP/IMAP email client, PDF creator, spreadsheet program, and 10 more applications. All of them get the job done with minimal overhead, and most can be run without installation. Floppy Office is a free download that runs on Windows systems only. For more useful to-go tools, check out must-have portable apps.
Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped asked a question last week that's generated a fair bit of discussion there and elsewhere. The basic setup:
You try to log in to your Gmail to check this but can't get past the password box—it turns out someone kidnapped your account already and changed your password. The kidnapper can now freely roam in your Gmails, your Google docs, your AdSense pages, your Blogspot blog (if you have one) and so on. What do you do now?Commenters at Blogoscoped mostly agree that they'd trust Google to restore their account, but many worry about other passwords and the loss of archives kept online. What about you? Have you backed up your Google Apps data and done a security-minded sweep? What would your first actions be after you discovered your account was stolen or missing?
On Tuesday I detailed how how I built a Hackintosh Mac from start to finish on the cheap, but one obvious question remained unanswered: How does my Hackintosh stack up to the Apple-built competition? To find out, I put my Hackintosh, a Mac Pro, and a MacBook Pro through the paces. Here's what I learned.
First, it's worth noting that none of these setups is a perfect match for benchmarking comparisons. The Mac Pro is running dual 2.66 GHz processors versus the single 2.21 GHz Hackintosh and 2. GHz MacBook Pro processors. Likewise, the Hackintosh has a whopping 4GB of RAM versus a measly 1GB in the Mac Pro and 2GB in the MacBook Pro. Also, the Hackintosh and MacBook Pro are both running Leopard, while the Mac Pro is still running Tiger. These aren't necessarily the ideal test subjects, but they're the machines I have access to. That said, the results are still very interesting.
As you can see, the Hackintosh stood up to and even surpasses the Mac Pro on several tests, but on the threading test the dual processor Mac Pro blows away the Hackintosh and MacBook Pro alike. Surprisingly enough, the Hackintosh actually bests the Mac Pro's overall score. If you're interested, you can see the full score results for each computer on the Xbench comparison site:
To get a better idea of how some of the differences will actually affect your real world computing, I ran a few benchmarking tests of my own.
As you can see, the only place where the Mac Pro blows my Hackintosh out of the water is when it comes time for the processor-intensive work, particularly video encoding. If you do a lot of video work, a Mac Pro will definitely provide a significant boost. On the other hand, you could easily boost the Hackintosh's performance by buying a faster processor, which wouldn't require that much of an increase to the price of your build. Unfortunately I wasn't able to test the Hackintosh against a Mac with similar specs, which would be an interesting test. A comparably spec'd (and priced) iMac test would be very useful.
Alternatively, it's very clear that the Hackintosh bests my MacBook Pro in every test but the startup test. One thing to note is that my build still requires the install DVD in the drive to boot, which takes at least an extra eight seconds. This can be fixed (it just hasn't bothered me enough yet to work up the motivation, but I will update the howto when I do), but even after the boot update the Hackintosh will probably remain the slowest booter. Most of the time is eaten up at the first BIOS screen and could probably be sped up significantly with a few adjustments to the BIOS settings.
If you're like most Download Squad readers, you've probably got a few dozen windows open on your computer at any time. And when your system locks up, it's not always easy to tell exactly which process is the offender.
If you're using Windows, usually you have to do a Ctrl+Alt+Del, pull up Windows Task Manager, and search the processes bar for applications using an unusually large amount of memory. But there might be a simpler way.
Task Killer is a tiny little app that sits in your taskbar. It lets you pull up a list of open windows and/or open processes without using Windows Task Manager. A single right or left click on any running process is all it takes to kill it. While the installer file weighs in at just over 300KB, Task Killer does somewhat ironically take up over 2MB of RAM on our Vista machine.
[via Lifehacker]
Is it humanly possible for someone to put out more creative energy onto the internet than Ze Frank? This guy is a machine, which is not entirely surprising considering that for a year he did not blink once during his daily video podcast.
Anyway, Ze Frank fandom aside, he seems to have recently cranked out an addictive little time waster called MiniRacers. It's unclear how long it has been online, but one thing that is clear is that once you start playing with it, you're going to be stuck for awhile.
The game is somewhat reminiscent of the old classic Lunar Lander, where you'd have to carefully guide a ship to land safely on the moon. However in this case the point isn't so much a soft landing, as a race to a goal through frustrating and sometimes infuriating mazes.
Don't get too excited if you manage to post a high score, since the scores are reset at midnight every night. Of course, we didn't even come close to a high score, but that's probably more a comment about our abilities as players as it is a comment about the game.
