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pReaders offer their best tips for updating Remember the Milk with Gmail's canned responses, avoiding mouse jumps while typing with touchpads, and repelling mosquitoes with Listerine./p pemDon't like the gallery layout? Click a href="http://lifehacker.com/5409695/from-the-tips-box-gmail-remember-the-milk-touchpad-tricks-and-repelling-mosquitoes/"here/a to view everything on one page./em/p pemAbout the Tips Box:/em Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips in our inbox, but for various reasonsmdash;maybe they're a bit too niche, maybe we couldn't find a good way to present it, or maybe we just couldn't fit it inmdash;the tip didn't make the front page. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favorites for your buffet-style consumption. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments or email it to tips at lifehacker.com./p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_rtmcanned.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Easily Send Tasks to Remember the Milk/h3 pa href="http://lifehacker.com/comment/16896189/"Tote/a shares a tip that uses Gmail Labs' canned responses to send tasks to Remember the Milk:/p blockquote pUse Gmail's canned responses to easily create tasks from email in RTM. If you get an email that you want to turn into a task forward it to your RTM inbox address and use a canned response to direct specify the task. Put the email contents between the 'mdash;-' and '-end-' to add it to the notes. Canned response:br List:br Priority:br Due:br Repeat:br Estimate:br Tags:br Location:br mdash;-/p p-end-/p /blockquote pbr clear="all"/p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_3256847824_c82248e425.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Wear Gloves to Stop Touchpad Annoyances/h3 pemPhoto by a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ieatwaffles/3256847824/"Nessa Land/a./em/p pa href="http://lifehacker.com/comment/16917259/"Miguel/a tells us how he keeps his mouse from jumping on laptops:/p blockquote pIf you're writing on a laptop, and you constantly find your palm brushing against the touchpad, thereby making your insertion point dance around, put on some thin knit gloves. It will keep incidental contact from registering on the touchpad. If that makes your fingers too thick for typing, or if you still want to be able to use the touchpad, just cut off the fingers./p /blockquote pbr clear="all"/p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_megavideo.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Bypass Megavideo's Time Limitation/h3 pLuka shows us how to watch more videos on Megavideo:/p blockquote pI suspect that most of you use or have used Megavideo, an excellent video [sharing] service, however as most of [you] would know it does have an annoying time-limit on its videos to force payment out of you./p pSo the first thing you could use is this site a href="http://megastreaming.org/"http://megastreaming.org//a all you need to do is type in the URL of your video in the provided space and it will generate a link without the time limit./p pIllitmux is a handy Firefox plug-in that does the same thing as the previous website, basically what they have is a load of gold accounts and when [you] press the button they just stream you the video via the gold account. Here is the link a href="http://www.illimitux.net/index.php"Illitmux/a/p /blockquote pLuka's original blog post can be found a href="http://www.cubebird.org/2009/10/how-to-bypass-megavideo-timelimit.html"here/a.br br clear="all"/p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_2404835357_85348fb8b2.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Use Listerine to Keep Mosquitoes at Bay/h3 pemPhoto by a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/vox_efx/2404835357/"Vox Efx/a./em/p pa href="http://lifehacker.com/comment/16949945"guanoguck/a informs us of a household object that keeps mosquitoes away:/p blockquote pMosquito Spray... I was at a deck party awhile back, and the bugs were having a ball biting everyone. A man at the party sprayed the lawn and deck floor with Listerine, and the little demons disappeared. The next year I filled a 4-ounce spray bottle and used it around my seat whenever I saw mosquitoes. And voila! That worked as well. It worked at a picnic where we sprayed the area around the food table, the children's swing area, and the standing water nearby. During the summer, I don't leave home without it./p /blockquote pIf you're spraying Listerine in the air around you, just be careful not to get it in your eyes. You can, however, open your mouth for a nice minty pick-me-up, though.br br clear="all"/p br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=1724da3194dcb73f18138934f1e91a80p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=1724da3194dcb73f18138934f1e91a80p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/sESHGP7t5U76qsi9tuBu5YpgsJM/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/sESHGP7t5U76qsi9tuBu5YpgsJM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/sESHGP7t5U76qsi9tuBu5YpgsJM/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/sESHGP7t5U76qsi9tuBu5YpgsJM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=XEuLlEGbxnU:HsF3BUE4HYQ:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=XEuLlEGbxnU:HsF3BUE4HYQ:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=XEuLlEGbxnU:HsF3BUE4HYQ:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=XEuLlEGbxnU:HsF3BUE4HYQ:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=XEuLlEGbxnU:HsF3BUE4HYQ:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=XEuLlEGbxnU:HsF3BUE4HYQ:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/XEuLlEGbxnU" height="1" width="1"/

This Week's Most Popular Posts [Highlights]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_500x_boxee_splash.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" /This week we rounded up the best online backup tools and explained how you're backing up wrong, detailed how to build an excellent Boxee-based media center, and cured your various aches and pains with some simple home remedies./p ul lia href="http://lifehacker.com/5405041"Five Best Online Backup Tools/abr emLocal backup is a useful and necessary part of securing your data against catastrophe, but with the advent of broadband and inexpensive online storage, you've got little reason to not back up critical files to the cloud as well./em/li lia href="http://lifehacker.com/5405775"You're Backing Up Your Data the Wrong Way/abr emTime and time again, people tell me that they've bought an external hard drive to back up their pictures, music, and documents. Great, right? Sadly, that's not always the case./em/li lia href="http://lifehacker.com/5406563"Build a Cheap But Powerful Boxee Media Center/abr emAdam thinks XBMC is the best media center around, but I roll with Boxee for its awesome streaming web content. Here's how I turned a relatively cheap yet powerful home theater PC into a DIY Boxee Box for my HDTV./em/li lia href="http://lifehacker.com/5405197"Pingtest Assesses the Quality of Your Internet Connection/abr emYou'll find an abundance of tools to test your internet connection speed but what if you want to test the quality and reliability of the connection? Pingtest gives you feedback on your connection./em/li lia href="http://lifehacker.com/5404375"Increase the Quality of Cheap Vodka with a Water Filter/abr emSave yourself some money and improve the quality of a bottle of cheap vodka with a little at-home filtration./em/li lia href="http://lifehacker.com/5404642"Top 10 Homemade Remedies for What Ails You/abr emFeeling under the weather? Thinkingmdash;as you look around your officemdash;that you might be soon? Hone your home remedy skill set with a look at 10 of our favorite DIY cures for illnesses and your body's annoyances./em/li lia href="http://lifehacker.com/5407645"Office 2010 Professional Beta Available for Download/abr emWindows: Wanna give Office 2010's online document syncing, Windows 7 taskbar integration, and killer quick steps a go? Microsoft has thrown open the doors on a free beta of Office 2010 Professionalmdash;for those who can wait out the download./em/li lia href="http://lifehacker.com/5404899"The Treehaus Workspace/abr emYou won't find a law that says a workspace has to be in a gray fabric-covered box or a white-walled room. Today's workspace proves that with the beautiful, airy openness of a childhood tree house./em/li lia href="http://lifehacker.com/5404522"Make a Moss Terrarium for Low-Maintenance Greenery/abr emIf you want some greenery in your home or office but you're not too keen on, or skilled at, tending a high-maintenance plant, a moss terrarium is a hassle-free bit of greenery you practically have to try to kill.br/em/li lia href="http://lifehacker.com/5405561"Make Better, Less Messy Bacon in a Waffle Iron/abr emYou love bacon, but cooking it in a pan is tough to time and leaves you with scalding-hot grease to dispose of. The microwave? Please. Food science miracle worker Alton Brown shows how a waffle iron makes the best bacon./em/li /ul br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=8ed8efa5ba3d2d7b5089201e3659a213p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=8ed8efa5ba3d2d7b5089201e3659a213p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/HwQLmnhtCmRDkM_4nNJp8m7u8wc/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/HwQLmnhtCmRDkM_4nNJp8m7u8wc/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/HwQLmnhtCmRDkM_4nNJp8m7u8wc/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/HwQLmnhtCmRDkM_4nNJp8m7u8wc/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=7jaGtD1IEHE:Y0OFyUa0jhg:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=7jaGtD1IEHE:Y0OFyUa0jhg:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=7jaGtD1IEHE:Y0OFyUa0jhg:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=7jaGtD1IEHE:Y0OFyUa0jhg:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=7jaGtD1IEHE:Y0OFyUa0jhg:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=7jaGtD1IEHE:Y0OFyUa0jhg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/7jaGtD1IEHE" height="1" width="1"/

PTS Desktop Live Makes Performance Benchmarking Simple [Downloads]

pa rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/2009-11-20_180426.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_2009-11-20_180426.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //aLinux Live: If you want to put your computer through the paces and get some feedback and benchmarks, you'll be hard pressed to find a tool more packed with tests than the Phoronix Test Suite Live CD./p pPTS Desktop Live is an Ubuntu Live CD with the Phoronix benchmarking suite preconfigured and installed. Reboot your machine with the CD in your drivemdash;or on a USB drivemdash;and you'll boot into the test suite with access to 52 tests and 10 profiles. The profiles are set up to help you stress test and benchmark based on what you'll be using the machine for./p pThe desktop interface and suite is set up so that even users unfamiliar with Linux can jump right in and start testing without having to do any special modifying or downloading of additional files. You can save your benchmark results or share the results online with the Phoronix Global benchmark sharing system./p pHave a favorite benchmarking tool or Live CD packed with goodies? Let's hear about it in the comments./p div class="related"a href="http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/?k=pts_desktop_live"Phoronix Test Suite/a [via a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/benchmark-your-system-with-pts-desktop-live-linux/"MakeUseOf/a]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=ab2f697dfdf029dbb8e3107da0c75fd4p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=ab2f697dfdf029dbb8e3107da0c75fd4p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/76H3WXoqiLPTCGzNoVLloujciwE/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/76H3WXoqiLPTCGzNoVLloujciwE/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/76H3WXoqiLPTCGzNoVLloujciwE/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/76H3WXoqiLPTCGzNoVLloujciwE/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=mnKPSPPH-dA:i8scgMhNFKY:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=mnKPSPPH-dA:i8scgMhNFKY:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=mnKPSPPH-dA:i8scgMhNFKY:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=mnKPSPPH-dA:i8scgMhNFKY:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=mnKPSPPH-dA:i8scgMhNFKY:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=mnKPSPPH-dA:i8scgMhNFKY:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/mnKPSPPH-dA" height="1" width="1"/

Twitter/Facebook Client Brizzly Open for Sign-Ups [Social Networks]

Windows Surface Scanner Finds Bad Hard Drive Sectors [Downloads]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_dtidata.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" /Windows: When your computer starts acting hinky and spitting out error messages, it's hard to know exactly where to begin to diagnose the problem. Windows Surface Scanner gives you a place to start./p pThis free utility takes a look at your hard drives and ferrets out any physical errors it finds, so you know what might be causing random crashes or system flakiness. Windows Surface Scanner won't fix damaged sector problemsmdash;it simply diagnoses them. Once you've figured out the issue, you can use the native Windows check disk tool to make repairs./p pOne important thing to note about this tool: If you start getting a lot of sector errors, stop scanning right away. Keep testing, and you might damage the hard drive you're searching./p pWe've recommended our a href="http://lifehacker.com/397792/five-best-windows-maintenance-tools"five best Windows maintenance tools/a, but what other diagnostic tools do you use to troubleshoot your computer when you feel there's something wrong deep inside? Let us know in the comments./p div class="related"a href="http://www.dtidata.com/windowssurfacescanner/"Windows Surface Scanner/a [Via a href="http://www.freewaregenius.com/2009/11/18/windows-surface-scanner-check-for-bad-sectors-on-your-hard-disk/"freewaregenius/a]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=14102f65f16020a2ae59407e98e3cc35p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=14102f65f16020a2ae59407e98e3cc35p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/qjQhUbqYnJXqxXBPqYUVOL0ljNg/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/qjQhUbqYnJXqxXBPqYUVOL0ljNg/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/qjQhUbqYnJXqxXBPqYUVOL0ljNg/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/qjQhUbqYnJXqxXBPqYUVOL0ljNg/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=sNU3q-J918A:vM1EuiozbWM:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=sNU3q-J918A:vM1EuiozbWM:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=sNU3q-J918A:vM1EuiozbWM:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=sNU3q-J918A:vM1EuiozbWM:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=sNU3q-J918A:vM1EuiozbWM:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=sNU3q-J918A:vM1EuiozbWM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/sNU3q-J918A" height="1" width="1"/

MinimizeToTray Revived Puts Firefox in Your System Tray [Downloads]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_sshot-2009-11-20-13-57-34.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" /Windows only: Firefox extension MinimizeToTray Revived is a replacement for the a href="http://lifehacker.com/144672/minimize-firefox-to-system-tray"popular MinimizeToTray extension/a (which has since been abandoned and doesn't support Firefox 3 or later). The simple extension puts Firefox in your system tray with a click of your mouse or a keystroke./p pOnce you've installed the extension, Firefox will start minimizing directly to the system tray, though there are lots of choices in the options panel for how you would like to minimize the windowmdash;you can choose to minimize automatically, replace the close button with minimize, or even use a toolbar button instead. If you want to put Firefox in the system tray, it's definitely worth a look. MinimizeToTray Revived is a free download, works for Firefox on Windows./p div class="related"a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12581"MinimizeToTray Revived/a [Mozilla Add-ons via a href="http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/5771/minimize-firefox-to-the-system-tray-the-easy-way/"How-To Geek/a]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=9f8e0d11cf8d62dc622d51444ec5cacbp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=9f8e0d11cf8d62dc622d51444ec5cacbp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Jr7xlhH24tj-tLgIPr7EdmNujCY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Jr7xlhH24tj-tLgIPr7EdmNujCY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Jr7xlhH24tj-tLgIPr7EdmNujCY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Jr7xlhH24tj-tLgIPr7EdmNujCY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=Wh7F6Mrcuwo:mVgpnIyw-Qw:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=Wh7F6Mrcuwo:mVgpnIyw-Qw:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=Wh7F6Mrcuwo:mVgpnIyw-Qw:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=Wh7F6Mrcuwo:mVgpnIyw-Qw:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=Wh7F6Mrcuwo:mVgpnIyw-Qw:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=Wh7F6Mrcuwo:mVgpnIyw-Qw:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/Wh7F6Mrcuwo" height="1" width="1"/

Hand Out Your Invites in the Google Wave Invitation Donation Thread [Google Wave]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_500x_500x_wave-invites.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" /In our continuing efforts to help as many of our readers get a chance to play around with Google Wave as possible, we're back again with our weekly Google Wave invitation donation thread. Note: Read the entire post carefully before commenting./p pIf you've got Wave invitations you're willing to donate, post a comment below, saying something like: "I've got 10 Wave invites; who wants one?" In that case, the first ten people to emreply/em to that comment providing that generous soul with a means to invite you get invitations./p pspan style="color: red; font-weight: bold;"Here's the important part:/span/p pstrongspan style="color: red;"Do not start a thread unless you have invitations to hand out./span/strong These threads get unwieldy very quickly if we don't follow some ground rules. Despite that, we really want to help give our readers a chance to try Wave, so we're giving it a go anyway. Please, please only start a thread if you've got invitations. Don't just post your email address thirty times hoping someone will grab it. If you want an invitation, reply to someone who's offering one. Finally, it takes our interns hours to admin comments every day, and these threads wreak havoc on their efforts, so strongspan style="color: red;"if you don't already have an approved commenter account, please don't comment on this thread/span./strong/p pMake sense? Good luck, and thanks to everyone who's donating invitations. If you do happen to secure an invitation, be sure to check out ia href="http://completewaveguide.com/"The Complete Guide to Google Wave/a/i, Gina and Adam's a href="http://lifehacker.com/5395376/the-complete-guide-to-google-wave-is-a-comprehensive-book-on-wave"comprehensive book on Wave/a./p pemNote: If you're posting comments but they aren't showing up on the post, that means you are not an approved commenter. How can you become an approved commenter? a href="http://lifehacker.com/commentfaq/"Read our comment FAQ/a. In the meantime, please don't post any more comments on this thread asking for invitations if you're not an approved commenter./em/p br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=95ba53180460cd341db11d21a997c032p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=95ba53180460cd341db11d21a997c032p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9z3i1356UgsYGOBACYvdmjju6Xc/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9z3i1356UgsYGOBACYvdmjju6Xc/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9z3i1356UgsYGOBACYvdmjju6Xc/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9z3i1356UgsYGOBACYvdmjju6Xc/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=Mx4FqFJvl9I:Rk7aWQj6UZQ:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=Mx4FqFJvl9I:Rk7aWQj6UZQ:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=Mx4FqFJvl9I:Rk7aWQj6UZQ:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=Mx4FqFJvl9I:Rk7aWQj6UZQ:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=Mx4FqFJvl9I:Rk7aWQj6UZQ:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=Mx4FqFJvl9I:Rk7aWQj6UZQ:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/Mx4FqFJvl9I" height="1" width="1"/

Wallpaper Roundup: Turkey Time and Pumpkin Pie [Wallpaper Roundup]

pTurkeys are being purchased, pie recipes dusted off, and the folding chairs are being dragged out from the basement. It's that time of year againmdash;celebrate Thanksgiving with some fresh wallpaper for your computer./p pWe've rounded up some Thanksgiving and fall-themed wallpapers for you to browse through. If you have a great resource for holiday wallpapers or a few wallpaper-size pictures of your own to share, leave a comment with a link to the pictures and everyone can enjoy them. In the mean time, grab a new wallpaper from our gallery to put yourself in the Thanksgiving spirit./p pemNote:/em The "Full Size" link directly under the picture only shows you the full size of the sample image we uploaded for this gallery. You need to click on the name of the particular wallpaper in the right hand column to access the full range of sizes at the source site or click on "Direct Link to Largest Available Image" to jump right to the biggest size availablemdash;if the site allows linking./p pemNot keen on the gallery layout? See all the larger images on one page a href="http://lifehacker.com/5409514/wallpaper-roundup-turkey-time-and-pumpkin-pie/"here/a./em/p pa rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/2009-11-20_143036.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_2009-11-20_143036.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //a/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"a href="http://dkdesignstudio.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/happy-thanksgiving-wallpaper-from-dk-design-studio/"Happy Thanksgiving by DK Design Studio/a/h3 pa href="http://www.dkdesignstudio.com/dk_design_studio_thanks.jpg"Direct Link to Largest Available Size/a.br br clear="all" br a rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/2009-11-20_143149.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_2009-11-20_143149.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //a/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"a href="http://dkdesignstudio.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/thanksgiving-wallpaper/"Thanksgiving by DK Design Studio/a/h3 pa href="http://www.dkdesignstudio.com/thanksgiving.jpg"Direct Link to Largest Available Image/a.br br clear="all" br a rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/3063723732_4679f1d4b1_b.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_3063723732_4679f1d4b1_b.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //a/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/3063723732/"Give Thanks! by Kevin Dooley/a/h3 pa href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3167/3063723732_a2788e3bc7_o.jpg"Direct Link to Largest Available Image/a.br br clear="all" br a rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/3019214167_2a95c79cc5_b.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_3019214167_2a95c79cc5_b.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //a/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/amandagillispie/3019214167/"Penguin Harvest = Bokeh Thanksgiving! by Amanda SG/a/h3 pa href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3275/3019214167_33c255bc92_o.jpg"Direct Link to Largest Available Image/a.br br clear="all" br a rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/300341082_ee635e4143_b.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_300341082_ee635e4143_b.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //a/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/idletype/300341082/"Gourd Harvest by Idle Type/a/h3 pa href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/104/300341082_ee635e4143_o.jpg"Direct Link to Largest Available Image/a.br br clear="all" br a rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/51554212_5ce0d4ac55_b.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_51554212_5ce0d4ac55_b.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //a/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/idletype/51554212/in/set-72157594347663338/"Fall Colors by Idle Type/a/h3 pa href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/31/51554212_5ce0d4ac55_o_d.jpg"Direct Link to Largest Available Image/a.br br clear="all" br a rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/2009-11-20_144727.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_2009-11-20_144727.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //a/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"a href="http://www.thebloccreative.com/blog/freebie-november-desktop-wallpaper/"Horn-o-Plenty by Brooke Condolra/a/h3 pDirect Link not available, visit the main page by clicking on the site name above for additional sizes.br br clear="all" br a rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/2009-11-20_145304.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_2009-11-20_145304.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //a/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"a href="http://cruciald.com/blog/2009/11/thanksgiving-09-wallpaper/"Thanksgiving 09 by Crucial Design/a/h3 pa href="http://cruciald.com/images/tg091920x1200.jpg"Direct Link to Largest Available Image/a.br br clear="all" br a rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/2009-11-20_145410.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_2009-11-20_145410.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //a/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"a href="http://cruciald.com/blog/2008/11/thanksgiving-wallpaper/"Thanksgiving 08 by Cruciald Design/a/h3 pa href="http://cruciald.com/images/tgwall1920x1200.jpg"Direct Link to Largest Available Image/a.br br clear="all" br a rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/2009-11-20_145750.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_2009-11-20_145750.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //a/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"a href="http://www.pushmepullyoudesign.com/"Turkey by Push Me Pull You Designs/a/h3 pa href="http://www.pushmepullyoudesign.com/images/wallpaper/turkey_wallpaper.gif"Direct Link to Largest Available Image/a.br br clear="all" br a rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/corn-harvest_size_1024x640.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_corn-harvest_size_1024x640.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //a/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"a href="http://mi9.com/show/1131/16567/1/corn-harvest.html"Corn Harvest by mi9/a/h3 pa href="http://mi9.com/datawallpapers/data/15/1131/1226309949/corn-harvest_1920x1200.jpg"Direct Link to Largest Available Image/a.br br clear="all" br a rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/thanksgiving-side-dishes_size_1024x640.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_thanksgiving-side-dishes_size_1024x640.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //a/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"a href="http://mi9.com/show/1131/16561/1/thanksgiving-side-dishes.html"Thanksgiving Sides by mi9/a/h3 pa href="http://mi9.com/datawallpapers/data/15/1131/1226304630/thanksgiving-side-dishes_1920x1200.jpg"Direct Link to Largest Available Image/a.br br clear="all"/p br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=f54bc97630779136b87b29aeb68fdc43p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=f54bc97630779136b87b29aeb68fdc43p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/P4hR63kxMzH7wOMtLBeVf-gx6wE/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/P4hR63kxMzH7wOMtLBeVf-gx6wE/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/P4hR63kxMzH7wOMtLBeVf-gx6wE/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/P4hR63kxMzH7wOMtLBeVf-gx6wE/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=kibD2hxFKfU:_oEWnQwlRno:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=kibD2hxFKfU:_oEWnQwlRno:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=kibD2hxFKfU:_oEWnQwlRno:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=kibD2hxFKfU:_oEWnQwlRno:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=kibD2hxFKfU:_oEWnQwlRno:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=kibD2hxFKfU:_oEWnQwlRno:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/kibD2hxFKfU" height="1" width="1"/

Give Wireless Charging Mats a Natural Wood Look [DIY Creations]

pobject width="500" height="375" class="left gawkerVideo embeddedVideo videoObject_0"param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7656383amp;server=vimeo.comamp;show_title=1amp;show_byline=1amp;show_portrait=0amp;color=amp;fullscreen=1" param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7656383amp;server=vimeo.comamp;show_title=1amp;show_byline=1amp;show_portrait=0amp;color=amp;fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="500" height="375" class="left gawkerVideo"/objecta rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/7656383.jpg"/a Wireless charging mats are a clever way to charge your gadgets without cords or power bricks, but a big black mat can easily stick out in any room. Instructables shows you how to make a more stylish wooden induction charger./p pInstructables user jvalal has been working on altering the aesthetics of his a href="http://gizmodo.com/5376793/powermat-charger-has-no-f-wires"all-black power mat induction charger/a. First he removed the electronic guts from the unit, then mounted them into a routed-out piece of wood. He intentionally made the mat longer than he needed to, allowing space for his wallet and keys at the end of the night./p pjvalal writes that the hardest part of the creation was getting the wood thin enough to make a positive lock on the charging coils below the surfacemdash; without going through the wood. The piece was finished off with felt feet, although we think a few coats of linseed oil would help keep the wood conditioned over time. Simply wipe on (preferably before the electronics are secured in place) and buff off the extra./p pAre you into wireless charging? Or will you be sticking to your wall warts for a little longer? Sound off in the comments./p div class="related"a href="http://www.instructables.com/id/Wood-Induction-Charger/"Wood Induction Charger/a [Instructables via a href="%20http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/11/how-to_custom_wooden_case_for_wirel.html"Make/a]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=dd39e3e12e5881bdb122d2b1e4fd2b7dp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=dd39e3e12e5881bdb122d2b1e4fd2b7dp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/q6YyerA8areiHVCMbrjJgGL5ans/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/q6YyerA8areiHVCMbrjJgGL5ans/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/q6YyerA8areiHVCMbrjJgGL5ans/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/q6YyerA8areiHVCMbrjJgGL5ans/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=KUpTBWsB-ug:o8FZT6bpmYo:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=KUpTBWsB-ug:o8FZT6bpmYo:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=KUpTBWsB-ug:o8FZT6bpmYo:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=KUpTBWsB-ug:o8FZT6bpmYo:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=KUpTBWsB-ug:o8FZT6bpmYo:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=KUpTBWsB-ug:o8FZT6bpmYo:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/KUpTBWsB-ug" height="1" width="1"/

YouTube Will Soon Block Access From Set-Top Devices [Media Center]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/youtube_pulldown.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /It won't affect your PS3, Wii, TiVo, or other licensed YouTube partners, but Google's streaming video service will start a href="http://digital.limberis.com/2009/11/wheres-youtube-on-popcorn-hour.html"blocking API access to TV-connected devices/a as of Dec. 2. The COO of set-top box maker a href="http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/index.php"Popcorn Hour/a writes that the firm tried to negotiate with YouTube to retain the service, but YouTube/Google seems to be standing firmmdash;just as the site starts to a href="http://lifehacker.com/5403916/youtube-rolling-out-1080p-hd-video-next-week"transition to 1080p video/a. TV-oriented apps will certainly find work-aroundsmdash;Boxee, for example, uses a Mozilla-based browser to stream otherwise blocked Hulu videosmdash;but it's not a promising vision of the media center landscape. [a href="http://digital.limberis.com/2009/11/wheres-youtube-on-popcorn-hour.html"Connected and Digital Media/a via a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/20/youtube-pulls-a-hulu-yanking-api-access-from-popcorn-hour-ot/"Engadget/a]/p br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=f94281a96da3e5950768dd21662a03fdp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=f94281a96da3e5950768dd21662a03fdp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/tiwvCuqGkhoUFy3LRv7kDH2SEBo/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/tiwvCuqGkhoUFy3LRv7kDH2SEBo/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/tiwvCuqGkhoUFy3LRv7kDH2SEBo/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/tiwvCuqGkhoUFy3LRv7kDH2SEBo/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=b7WYujDnzj4:4hOYMGWYNW4:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=b7WYujDnzj4:4hOYMGWYNW4:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=b7WYujDnzj4:4hOYMGWYNW4:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=b7WYujDnzj4:4hOYMGWYNW4:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=b7WYujDnzj4:4hOYMGWYNW4:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=b7WYujDnzj4:4hOYMGWYNW4:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/b7WYujDnzj4" height="1" width="1"/

TorrentFetcher Searches for Torrents from Your Desktop [Downloads]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_torrentfetcher.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" /Windows only: Most people use torrent sites like Mininova or The Pirate Bay to search for torrents online, but free program TorrentFetcher lets you search straight from a desktop program and quickly start the transfer in your BitTorrent client of choice./p pTorrent sites offer a lot of information about the torrents they have available, but sometimes you just don't want to navigate to the site and look at all the annoying ads, or maybe you just want something a little simpler. TorrentFetcher is an easy solution, offering desktop search of btjunkie.org so you don't even have to open your browser./p pWhile the program doesn't offer some of the really advanced information that web sites might, it is a quick, easy alternative that does offer some advanced options. Like most torrent sites, you can search by the usual predetermined categories such as Music, Movies, or Software and you can choose how many results show up in the window (up to 1,000). It even has green and red color coding for good and bad quality torrents, respectively. There is also an option to decide whether you want them to automatically start after downloadingmdash;that way, all you have to do is search, double-click on the torrent you want, and it will automatically open up in your default BitTorrent client./p pTorrentFetcher is a free download, Windows only./p div class="related"a href="http://www.zinious.com/products/TorrentFetcher/"TorrentFetcher/a [via a href="http://www.ghacks.net/2009/11/20/desktop-torrents-search-engine-torrent-fetcher/"gHacks/a]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=492391bda44f4ce10692679403eb95afp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=492391bda44f4ce10692679403eb95afp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nB0Ytv8YzWF_DSaAyWLbJz9Yxjs/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nB0Ytv8YzWF_DSaAyWLbJz9Yxjs/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nB0Ytv8YzWF_DSaAyWLbJz9Yxjs/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nB0Ytv8YzWF_DSaAyWLbJz9Yxjs/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=BM2lprLV5MM:cOmZE30KiLg:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=BM2lprLV5MM:cOmZE30KiLg:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=BM2lprLV5MM:cOmZE30KiLg:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=BM2lprLV5MM:cOmZE30KiLg:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=BM2lprLV5MM:cOmZE30KiLg:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=BM2lprLV5MM:cOmZE30KiLg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/BM2lprLV5MM" height="1" width="1"/

The 40/30/30 Rule Preps You for The Game of Life [Motivation]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/risk__.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /When you've placed yourself where you need to be, kept at something past your initial doubts, and taken a risk at failing, you're running at 100 percent. Weblog The Simple Dollar suggests thinking of challenges that waymdash;40/30/30mdash;to stay motivated./p pemPhoto by a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/martinhoward/2970820216/"martinhoward/a./em/p pFinancial blogger Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar breaks it down:/p blockquote pWhat is the 40-30-30 rule? Simply put, it's an argument that when you prepare for anything in life, only 40% of the preparation is physical â€“ the rest is mental. Thirty percent of preparation is technical skill and experience, and the second thirty percent is the willingness to take risks./p /blockquote pTrent's quick essay on how those ratios come into play, both day-to-day and on personal or career projects, launches off a a href="http://the99percent.com/tips/6103/the-40-30-30-rule-why-risk-is-worth-it"post at The 99 Percent blog/a, and is worth reading if you find yourself not exactly hitting your marks at getting up, getting into something, and sticking with it when it doesn't quite seem practical./p pWe always take these sorts of broad self-help guidelines with a grain of salt, but often they are helpful in examining how we approach work and life, which in itself can be a very helpful exercise. So how about you: Does risk stress you out and make you emmore/em anxious or do you find it motivating? What are some of your best tips for prepping for the challenges life throws at you? Talk about it in the comments./p div class="related"a href="http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2009/11/19/the-403030-rule/"The 40/30/30 Rule/a [Via a href="http://the99percent.com/tips/6103/the-40-30-30-rule-why-risk-is-worth-it"99%/a]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=ae42694e838b5f2abe59d85f2a786631p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=ae42694e838b5f2abe59d85f2a786631p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/8L_J_ICdv2j5vtGf9BK6tyVlrh4/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/8L_J_ICdv2j5vtGf9BK6tyVlrh4/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/8L_J_ICdv2j5vtGf9BK6tyVlrh4/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/8L_J_ICdv2j5vtGf9BK6tyVlrh4/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=ksxpliXbbLU:kt0wAn7n3D8:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=ksxpliXbbLU:kt0wAn7n3D8:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=ksxpliXbbLU:kt0wAn7n3D8:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=ksxpliXbbLU:kt0wAn7n3D8:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=ksxpliXbbLU:kt0wAn7n3D8:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=ksxpliXbbLU:kt0wAn7n3D8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/ksxpliXbbLU" height="1" width="1"/

Use an Over-Under Wrap to Keep Your Headphones Kink-Free [Headphones]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_2009-11-20_140330.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" /Headphones have a magic way of tangling themselves in inexplicably complicated knots. Many techniques for keeping headphones tangle-free work but they badly kink and over tighten them in the process. Use an over-under wrap for easy and cord-friendly storage./p pOver at a href="http://www.hackcollege.com/"HackCollege/a they tested out a bunch of different cord-wrapping techniques with the goal of finding a technique that was easy to use, didn't impart kinks or curls to the headphone cord, stress the headphone jack, or require any fancy undoing to return the headphones to their natural state. They ended up using an over-under wrap held in place with a simple twist tie. Watch the video below to see it in actionmdash;you can jump to around the 1 minute mark to skip the intro and get right into the technique./p pobject width="500" height="308" class="left gawkerVideo embeddedVideo videoObject_0"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/kcND46YrB1ohl=enfs=1fmt=22" param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kcND46YrB1ohl=enfs=1fmt=22" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="500" height="308" class="left gawkerVideo"/objectimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/kcnd46yrb1o.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" style="display: none;"//p pHave another cord-wrapping technique or tool that you think is a better solution? (We've always liked the a href="http://lifehacker.com/152499/keep-headphone-wires-from-getting-tangled"devil horns method/a.) Let's hear about it in the comments./p div class="related"a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcND46YrB1ofeature=player_embedded"Ultimate Earbud Wrapping Technique/a [via a href="http://www.instructables.com/id/Ultimate-Cord-Wrapping-Technique/"Instructables/a]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=8f5693c5506b54a237508dc933c172a9p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=8f5693c5506b54a237508dc933c172a9p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/qwyIrIop7cUgVDERkfGv2JJs1zU/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/qwyIrIop7cUgVDERkfGv2JJs1zU/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/qwyIrIop7cUgVDERkfGv2JJs1zU/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/qwyIrIop7cUgVDERkfGv2JJs1zU/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=6oavdpnoCXY:p0GlWcc01Q0:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=6oavdpnoCXY:p0GlWcc01Q0:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=6oavdpnoCXY:p0GlWcc01Q0:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=6oavdpnoCXY:p0GlWcc01Q0:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=6oavdpnoCXY:p0GlWcc01Q0:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=6oavdpnoCXY:p0GlWcc01Q0:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/6oavdpnoCXY" height="1" width="1"/

Treat Yourself with a Healthy Dose of Open Thread [Open Thread]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/puppy.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /You may have every corner of your work life streamlined, but that doesn't mean you don't still need a quick break from work after a long week. Take a little breather in our open thread./p piPhoto by a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajawin/4117069513/"lepiaf.geo/a/i./p pThe open thread is your weekly opportunity to strike up conversations with your fellow readers on any topic that tickles your fancy, whether or not it has anything to do with Lifehacker. All you need is a commenter account to join, and if you don't have one already, getting one's a a href="http://lifehacker.com/commentfaq/"piece of cake/a. Happy Friday!/p pobject width="500" height="308" class="left gawkerVideo embeddedVideo videoObject_0"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/UPcGE-Z716Qhl=enfs=1fmt=22" param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/UPcGE-Z716Qhl=enfs=1fmt=22" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="500" height="308" class="left gawkerVideo"/objectimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/upcge-z716q_01.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" style="display: none;"//p br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=551e253bf9ca7ace9617ae874124dfdap=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=551e253bf9ca7ace9617ae874124dfdap=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9Egz3iG_5UNRC5iddZi909huSrQ/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9Egz3iG_5UNRC5iddZi909huSrQ/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9Egz3iG_5UNRC5iddZi909huSrQ/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9Egz3iG_5UNRC5iddZi909huSrQ/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=tE5a7UZEWF8:SxmtrONpSu8:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=tE5a7UZEWF8:SxmtrONpSu8:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=tE5a7UZEWF8:SxmtrONpSu8:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=tE5a7UZEWF8:SxmtrONpSu8:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=tE5a7UZEWF8:SxmtrONpSu8:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=tE5a7UZEWF8:SxmtrONpSu8:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/tE5a7UZEWF8" height="1" width="1"/

The Complete Guide to Google Wave Preview Edition PDF Available for Download [Announcements]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/cwg.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /The preview edition of Gina and Adam's new book, a href="http://completewaveguide.com/"iThe Complete Guide to Google Wave/i/a, is a href="http://completewaveguide.com/#Buy_the_Book"now available/a in PDF form for your offline, ebook-reading pleasure./p pGoogle Wave is a young tool that's not terribly easy to understand for a lot of folks, but at least a couple of your Lifehacker editors are completely nuts for Wave and its potential. The DRM-free, 102-page personalized PDF of iThe Complete Guide to Google Wave/i is available for six bucks, but keep in mind that the content of our book will emalways/em be available for free at any time at a href="http://completewaveguide.com/"http://completewaveguide.com//a./p pThe preview edition is just the start. We plan to release the first edition of the guide in early 2010 as both a PDF and a softcover print book, with new editions to follow throughout the year as Wave evolves./p pFor a quick look at why we're so excited about Wave, check out a href="http://smarterware.org/3853/my-google-wave-web-2-0-expo-keynote-video"Gina's keynote speech/a at the Web 2.0 Expo this week in NYC, and follow a href="http://twitter.com/gwaveguide"@gwaveguide/a on Twitter for a regular stream of useful Wave tips and for updates on the book. If you do decide to purchase the PDF, you have our sincerest thanks for supporting our little project, but as I said, it's always freely available a href="http://completewaveguide.com/"on the web site/a. Beyond that, we're all ears for suggestions on how we can improve the guide in the comments./p div class="related"a href="http://completewaveguide.com/#Buy_the_Book"The Complete Guide to Google Wave Preview PDF/a/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=763e2dea9cde7ff84ddb21b59e3f67d9p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=763e2dea9cde7ff84ddb21b59e3f67d9p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EqHd0vG4xSXAiZvGMvIEIN7uLFg/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EqHd0vG4xSXAiZvGMvIEIN7uLFg/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EqHd0vG4xSXAiZvGMvIEIN7uLFg/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/EqHd0vG4xSXAiZvGMvIEIN7uLFg/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=-VxVW6Bzrcg:kMppEvHROKQ:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=-VxVW6Bzrcg:kMppEvHROKQ:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=-VxVW6Bzrcg:kMppEvHROKQ:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=-VxVW6Bzrcg:kMppEvHROKQ:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=-VxVW6Bzrcg:kMppEvHROKQ:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=-VxVW6Bzrcg:kMppEvHROKQ:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/-VxVW6Bzrcg" height="1" width="1"/

Use a Paring Knife to Sharpen Your Vegetable Peeler [Kitchen]

pobject width='400' height='300'param name='movie' value='http://www.cbs.com/e/rZCNdlp5cFdeysIXRkTuIYD8tKkkLbhc/chow/1/' param name='allowFullScreen' value='true' param name='allowScriptAccess' value='always' param name='FlashVars' value='config=http://search.chow.com/config/canPlayer' embed width='400' height='300' src='http://www.cbs.com/e/rZCNdlp5cFdeysIXRkTuIYD8tKkkLbhc/chow/1/' allowfullscreen='true' allowscriptaccess='always' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' flashvars='config=http://search.chow.com/config/canPlayer'/object It's important to a href="http://lifehacker.com/183226/knife-sharpening-101"keep your knives sharp/a for a safe and efficient kitchen, but it's easy to neglect the other bladed tools, like your vegetable peeler. Food weblog Chow shows how to keep a sharpener's edge with a paring knife./p pBy running the tip of a paring knife along each blade of your peeler, the metal-on-metal action will restore some of your blade's edge. Most don't even notice their peelers starting to dull, but once you give this tip a try you'll dig how much less resistance you'll have as you take on potato after potato, carrot after carrot, this holiday season./p pThe same trick can be applied to any metal grater or blade in your kitchen. If you have the patience, try sharpening up your box grater or cheese slicer. Hit up discount stores, as you can usually find paring knives right around the dollar mark, and you won't mind if they get roughed up a bit./p pDo you have another tip for keeping non-knife edges sharp in the kitchen? Let us know in the comments./p div class="related"a href="http://www.chow.com/videos/show/all/11862/how-do-you-sharpen-a-vegetable-peeler"How Do You Sharpen A Vegetable Peeler?/a [Chow]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=01ca0f12f4848444e30b5ca5e18e4486p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=01ca0f12f4848444e30b5ca5e18e4486p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Gc6Y1YmU26XcSFLkwGh0AKJy3Ks/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Gc6Y1YmU26XcSFLkwGh0AKJy3Ks/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Gc6Y1YmU26XcSFLkwGh0AKJy3Ks/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Gc6Y1YmU26XcSFLkwGh0AKJy3Ks/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=akDqsBg6oqs:Gfl0dyV5mtA:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=akDqsBg6oqs:Gfl0dyV5mtA:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=akDqsBg6oqs:Gfl0dyV5mtA:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=akDqsBg6oqs:Gfl0dyV5mtA:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=akDqsBg6oqs:Gfl0dyV5mtA:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=akDqsBg6oqs:Gfl0dyV5mtA:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/akDqsBg6oqs" height="1" width="1"/

ShopSavvy Prices and Locates Better Deals [Downloads]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/shopsavvy_iphone.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /Android/iPhone: ShopSavvy proved itself a href="http://lifehacker.com/5109282/pac+man-tops-most-downloaded-android-apps-list"one of the most popular Android apps out of the gate/a, and it's easy to see why. Now on iPhones, the app lets you scan item barcodes, see who has it for less, and locate them./p pBeyond the simple price comparisons via barcode scanning, ShopSavvy saves a history of items you've looked at, and can send price alerts when items drop below the prices you've already seen and given a casual "Meh" to. It locates the stores nearby that have your items for less, and allows you to save items you've scanned to wish lists. In other words, it harnesses all the cool things about the iPhone into a single app for smarter shopping./p pHere's a demonstration of the app in action on an iPhone 3GS./p pobject width="500" height="308" class="left gawkerVideo embeddedVideo videoObject_0"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_tTeCmvtHo0hl=enfs=1fmt=22" param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_tTeCmvtHo0hl=enfs=1fmt=22" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="500" height="308" class="left gawkerVideo"/objectimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/_ttecmvtho0.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" style="display: none;"//p pShopSavvy is a free download, now for iPhone and Android models./p div class="related"a href="http://www.biggu.com/apps/shopsavvy-iphone/"ShopSavvy iPhone/a [Big in Japan]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=74127cc241e7c14e94781bda37716744p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=74127cc241e7c14e94781bda37716744p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Uook42AGPmwKglC-u2Qy0q_kI5Q/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Uook42AGPmwKglC-u2Qy0q_kI5Q/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Uook42AGPmwKglC-u2Qy0q_kI5Q/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Uook42AGPmwKglC-u2Qy0q_kI5Q/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=5RiLJVvFNIQ:zfxVsufCoi0:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=5RiLJVvFNIQ:zfxVsufCoi0:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=5RiLJVvFNIQ:zfxVsufCoi0:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=5RiLJVvFNIQ:zfxVsufCoi0:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=5RiLJVvFNIQ:zfxVsufCoi0:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=5RiLJVvFNIQ:zfxVsufCoi0:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/5RiLJVvFNIQ" height="1" width="1"/

Lock in a Fixed Schedule to Keep Work-Life Balance [Time Management]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/fixed_schedule.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /Being attached at the hip to your smartphone doesn't mean you're productive, just attached. The I Will Teach You To Be Rich blog showcases how three workers put a real fence around their work time and ended up more free./p pWriter Ramit Sethi's first example, Jim Collins, might be familiar to those read up on productivity techniques as the author of a href="http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Companies-Leap-Others/dp/0066620996/ref=nosim/gizmodo-20"emGood to Great/em/a, and enthusiast of dividing up your time into percentages. His second case, a href="http://www.reallifee.com/"Elizabeth Grace Saunders/a, seems a more familiar case: a copywriter who couldn't stop answering emails and working late hours. Her solution?/p blockquote pSaunders adopted a 40-hour a week schedule. This new structure had two immediate impacts. First, she found herself focusing only on the most important tasks. With only a few hours to spare on business development, for example, she couldn't justify wasting time with the small, ineffectual website tweaks and exploratory e-mails that used to keep her up late into the night. Instead she focused on the core activities that produced results, such as sales calls or the development of new products. The focus generated by this constraint ended up generating more results than her previous schedule, which was more expansive, but also more scattered./p pThe second impact was her discovery that she could teach her clients how to treat her./p /blockquote pThe full post offers a lot of good links to explore, as well as more (hopefully) inspirational takes on firewalling your work time. Have you implemented your own actual, realistic deadlines and prospered from it? Tell us about it in the comments./p div class="related"a href="http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/time-management-how-an-mit-postdoc-writes-3-books-a-phd-defense-and-6-peer-reviewed-papers-and-finishes-by-530pm/"Time management: How an MIT postdoc writes 3 books, a PhD defense, and 6+ peer-reviewed papers - and finishes by 5:30pm/a [I Will Teach You To Be Rich]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=1e3ff63ea21514be4ef1282cce85ad24p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=1e3ff63ea21514be4ef1282cce85ad24p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/rYUY9KA4u4whd3i7PdS3mSUkxYw/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/rYUY9KA4u4whd3i7PdS3mSUkxYw/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/rYUY9KA4u4whd3i7PdS3mSUkxYw/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/rYUY9KA4u4whd3i7PdS3mSUkxYw/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=mzMnP1iNtKs:WDGc0ThoTP0:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=mzMnP1iNtKs:WDGc0ThoTP0:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=mzMnP1iNtKs:WDGc0ThoTP0:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=mzMnP1iNtKs:WDGc0ThoTP0:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=mzMnP1iNtKs:WDGc0ThoTP0:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=mzMnP1iNtKs:WDGc0ThoTP0:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/mzMnP1iNtKs" height="1" width="1"/

KidsEatFor Helps Keep Your Dinner Bill Low [Food]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_2009-11-20_011922.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" /Pare down the bill for your next meal out by picking a restaurant where kids get special treatment with the help of web site KidsEatFor./p pWe've shared a resource with you before for a href="http://lifehacker.com/5272380/save-cash-by-feeding-the-kids-for-free"finding places that offer free meals to kids/a, but KidsEatFor is definitely a more sophisticated tool for finding free places to feed your band of french-fry grubbers. Plug in your zip code and it spits back a calendar with listings for every day of the week. Restaurants are flagged as locations where kids eat free or cheap and you can click on the bottom of each column for additional listings for each day when available./p pIf you search for your locale and the results are sparse, search for the nearest big city. Most likely kids-eat-free policies are throughout an entire restaurant chain and a quick phone call will confirm if the local spot participates. Have a money-saving or other kid-related hack? Let's hear it in the comments./p div class="related"a href="http://www.kidseatfor.com/"KidsEatFor/a [via a href="%20http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/kidseatfor-locate-restaurant-where-kids-eat-free/"MakeUseOf/a]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=4a26b16f627bd49e135db8d159b964a1p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=4a26b16f627bd49e135db8d159b964a1p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/hSBnnjtKt3T7Nj85612odKYU-N8/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/hSBnnjtKt3T7Nj85612odKYU-N8/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/hSBnnjtKt3T7Nj85612odKYU-N8/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/hSBnnjtKt3T7Nj85612odKYU-N8/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=7UruLXMgO-I:liDN9sdR69Q:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=7UruLXMgO-I:liDN9sdR69Q:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=7UruLXMgO-I:liDN9sdR69Q:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=7UruLXMgO-I:liDN9sdR69Q:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=7UruLXMgO-I:liDN9sdR69Q:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=7UruLXMgO-I:liDN9sdR69Q:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/7UruLXMgO-I" height="1" width="1"/

Fix Unread Gmail Favicons in Better Gmail 2 and Greasemonkey [Updates]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/unread_message_count.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /Firefox: Gmail recently made a few tweaks to its message count API, leaving tools like the favicon message indicators by a href="http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/39432"Eric Bogs/a and a href="http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/24430"Peter Wooley/a, along with Gina's own a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6076"Better Gmail 2 Firefox extension/a, broken. Now they're fixed./p pBogs and Wooley, whose clever user scripts cleverly show your unread message count in your Gmail or Google Apps mail's browser tab icon, both updated their code to adapt to Gmail's API changes. Gina, whose Better Gmail 2 extension utilizes Bogs' and Wooley's scripts, has re-rolled those changes into her extension./p pThose with Better Gmail 2 already installed should see update notices soon. If you're seeing only installation errors instead, hit the link for a direct (but non-updating) link. If you're rocking just Greasemonkey and one of these two scripts, head to one of their UserScripts.org pages and click "Install" to update your browser./p div class="related"a href="http://smarterware.org/3859/better-gmail-2s-favicon-unread-count-fixed?utm_source=feedburnerutm_medium=feedutm_campaign=Feed%3A+Smarterware+%28Smarterware%29utm_content=Google+Reader"Better Gmail 2's Favicon Unread Count Fixed/a [Smarterware]br a href="http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/39432"Gmail Unread Message Count in Favicon for Greasemonkey/abr a href="http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/24430"Gmail Favicon Alerts 3 for Greasemonkey/a [UserScripts.org]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=5ed1326b5262a4db4f8cc270e9f15e7ep=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=5ed1326b5262a4db4f8cc270e9f15e7ep=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/eYC-QqZ-BmfhljMYk_NeNb6rPpo/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/eYC-QqZ-BmfhljMYk_NeNb6rPpo/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/eYC-QqZ-BmfhljMYk_NeNb6rPpo/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/eYC-QqZ-BmfhljMYk_NeNb6rPpo/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=0yimiohCMN8:lfAmNhLt420:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=0yimiohCMN8:lfAmNhLt420:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=0yimiohCMN8:lfAmNhLt420:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=0yimiohCMN8:lfAmNhLt420:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=0yimiohCMN8:lfAmNhLt420:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=0yimiohCMN8:lfAmNhLt420:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/0yimiohCMN8" height="1" width="1"/

Office 2010 Mobile Available for Beta Download [Downloads]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/office_mobile_2010.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /Windows Mobile 6.5: If you're rocking a fairly new Windows Mobile phone, Microsoft offers a beta build of its portable Office applications until April 2010. That means free viewing and editing of Excel, Word, Powerpoint, OneNote, and other documents./p pThe app seems to require a touch interface, along with the 6.5 system, so it's not exactly meant to flood the mobile masses. Still, for those willing to put up with an occasional bug and goods you know will expire, it's a nice little upgrade. Launch the Marketplace app to grab the Office Beta, or read up on it at the link./p div class="related"a href="http://marketplace.windowsphone.com/details.aspx?appSKU=a226f64c-d514-4d91-85df-a512bc37c1cdretURL=/search.aspx%3Fkeywords%3DOffice%2520Mobile"Windows Office Mobile Beta/a [Windows Marketplace]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=56dcdcaac147154f0462f33441d00b11p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=56dcdcaac147154f0462f33441d00b11p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/TjedEPesvJ_bC1Za0nYkqy052fM/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/TjedEPesvJ_bC1Za0nYkqy052fM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/TjedEPesvJ_bC1Za0nYkqy052fM/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/TjedEPesvJ_bC1Za0nYkqy052fM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=cxwookoY48I:TSK2iTzpTpY:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=cxwookoY48I:TSK2iTzpTpY:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=cxwookoY48I:TSK2iTzpTpY:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=cxwookoY48I:TSK2iTzpTpY:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=cxwookoY48I:TSK2iTzpTpY:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=cxwookoY48I:TSK2iTzpTpY:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/cxwookoY48I" height="1" width="1"/

Use Windows 7 Themes in Vista or XP [Themes]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/win7_themes.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /Microsoft put far more work into the look and themes of Windows 7 than its previous operating systems. Pull down that design work into your non-7-system with Digital Inspiration's simple work-arounds./p pYou can't just grab the files from Windows 7's themes gallery and set them as your own. You can, however, use tools like a href="http://www.7-zip.org/"7-Zip/a and a href="http://www.johnsadventures.com/software/backgroundswitcher/"John's Background Switcher/a to pull out each theme pack's files, install them, set them to rotate (ema la/em Windows 7), and even get the sounds, cursors, and other elements running./p pIt's a bit more work than "Click to install," but it's also a new source of themes, wallpapers, and other modifications that are more than compatible./p div class="related"a href="http://www.labnol.org/software/windows-7-themes-for-xp-and-vista/11205/"Download and Install Windows 7 Themes on your XP or Windows Vista Computer/a [Digital Inspiration]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=1d71ae989126b62ddd3112b37efa0ab1p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=1d71ae989126b62ddd3112b37efa0ab1p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/S1_umxGTqiumAU0EEGwnG-K6keg/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/S1_umxGTqiumAU0EEGwnG-K6keg/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/S1_umxGTqiumAU0EEGwnG-K6keg/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/S1_umxGTqiumAU0EEGwnG-K6keg/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=pDT9MEEiXns:FfLH77lWzME:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=pDT9MEEiXns:FfLH77lWzME:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=pDT9MEEiXns:FfLH77lWzME:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=pDT9MEEiXns:FfLH77lWzME:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=pDT9MEEiXns:FfLH77lWzME:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=pDT9MEEiXns:FfLH77lWzME:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/pDT9MEEiXns" height="1" width="1"/

Chrome OS Virtual Machine Build Ready for Your Testing [Downloads]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/chrome0s.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /If you're aching to try out Chrome OS after a href="http://lifehacker.com/5408594/first-glimpse-at-google-chrome-os"taking a glimpse earlier today/a, friendly power user a href="http://twitter.com/tweakt"Mark Renouf/a has compiled a VMware image of Chrome OS for testing out in your virtual machine environment./p pWhile Chrome OS is far from ready for the regular user, lots of us are aching to play around a little with Google's young operating system. This virtual machine-friendly build looks like a good way to do just that, and you can grab it via BitTorrent now. From The Pirate Bay page:/p blockquote pThis is a ChromeOS image converted to VMware .vmdk file./p pIt was built from instructions provided on the ChromiumOS developers site:/p phttp://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/building-chromium-os/build-instructions/p pBuilt from sources retreived on 11/19/2009, following the announcement of the opening of the ChromeOS source code./p pShared user password (for sudo, etc is 'chromeos')/p /blockquote pIf you give it a download and try it out, let's hear how it worked for you (and share any images you manage to grab) in the comments./p pemUpdate: Alternately, you can download a VMware build a href="http://gdgt.com/google/chrome-os/download/"directly from web site gdgt/a as well, "no strings attached" (as long as you don't consider creating an account at gdgt and giving them your email address "strings")./em/p div class="related"a href="http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5170843/chromeos-image-999.999.32309.211410-a1.vmdk.bz2"ChromeOS/a [The Pirate Bay via a href="http://twitter.com/ironicsans/status/5873184777"ironicsans/a]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=2bcf1508f08495dce07bb887e454c82ep=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=2bcf1508f08495dce07bb887e454c82ep=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/4tNKX64q7Xv95rrzVq-2yc0LdKA/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/4tNKX64q7Xv95rrzVq-2yc0LdKA/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/4tNKX64q7Xv95rrzVq-2yc0LdKA/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/4tNKX64q7Xv95rrzVq-2yc0LdKA/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=e0PialDFvs8:bPkziy6O_Dk:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=e0PialDFvs8:bPkziy6O_Dk:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=e0PialDFvs8:bPkziy6O_Dk:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=e0PialDFvs8:bPkziy6O_Dk:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=e0PialDFvs8:bPkziy6O_Dk:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=e0PialDFvs8:bPkziy6O_Dk:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/e0PialDFvs8" height="1" width="1"/

Best Screencasting Tool? [Hive Five Call For Contenders]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/2009-11-19_162310.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /With the rise of broadband not only do we share pictures of our screens but full out video. This week we want to hear about your favorite tool for screencasting your virtual workspace./p pemPhoto by a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/timdorr/2736773665/"Tim Dorr/a./em/p pEarlier this year we had a Hive Five focused on a href="http://lifehacker.com/5218155/five-best-screen-capture-tools"screen capture tools/a to find out your favorite tools for capturing static images. Now we're interested in finding out how you record screencasts on your computer to share things that aren't easily communicated with a simple screenshot./p pHive Five nominations take place in the comments, where you post your favorite tool for the job. We get hundreds of comments, so to make your nomination clear, please include it at the top of your comment like so: strongVOTE: Screencasting Tool/strong. Please don't include your vote in a reply to another commenter. Instead, make your vote and reply separate comments. If you don't follow this format, we may not count your vote. To prevent tampering with the results, votes from first-time commenters may not be counted. After you've made your nomination, let us know what makes it stand out from the competition./p pemAbout the Hive Five:/em The Hive Five feature series asks readers to answer the most frequently asked question we get: "Which tool is the best?" Once a week we'll put out a call for contenders looking for the best solution to a certain problem, then YOU tell us your favorite tools to get the job done. Every weekend, we'll report back with the top five recommendations and give you a chance to vote on which is best. For an example, check out last week's a href="http://lifehacker.com/5405041/five-best-online-backup-tools"Five Best Online Backup Tools/a./p br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=2ab91b0b691fc14b6eca99636a29638ap=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=2ab91b0b691fc14b6eca99636a29638ap=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Icuhn7w0coF76K1R_C4UnqAYSfM/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Icuhn7w0coF76K1R_C4UnqAYSfM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Icuhn7w0coF76K1R_C4UnqAYSfM/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Icuhn7w0coF76K1R_C4UnqAYSfM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=EXRvq5-aRdc:q7czBtcypMM:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=EXRvq5-aRdc:q7czBtcypMM:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=EXRvq5-aRdc:q7czBtcypMM:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=EXRvq5-aRdc:q7czBtcypMM:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=EXRvq5-aRdc:q7czBtcypMM:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=EXRvq5-aRdc:q7czBtcypMM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/EXRvq5-aRdc" height="1" width="1"/

Remains of the Day: Doughnuts Into Cranberry Jelly Edition [For What It's Worth]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/hack_thanksgiving.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /YouTube starts hitting 1080p resolution, courts start respecting work email privacy a bit, and cheap food gets the gourmet makeover./p ul lia href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/11/19/youtube-1080p-roll-out-begins/"YouTube 1080p roll-out begins/abr emIf you're shooting something new, feel free to go as big as your storage card allows. If you've already waited out a giant upload, it might be available in pore-defining HD soon. [Download Squad]/em/li lia href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125859862658454923.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular"Some Courts Raise Bar on Reading Employee Email/abr emDon't feel free to tell your friends how you really feel about your workplace just yet. Consider, however, whether your firm has clearly defined how and when they monitor your emailmdash;it might mean everything in court. [WSJ.com]/em/li lia href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2009/11/gimp-to-be-removed-lucid.html"GIMP To Be Removed From Lucid; F-Spot Has Challengers/abr emIt's big, it's fairly complicated, and most users just want to make simple edits to photos, so it's being dropped from future editions of Ubuntu in favor of apps like F-Spot. [OMG! UBUNTU!]/em/li lia href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/gmail_users_better-connected_more_likely_to_tweet.php"Gmail Users Better-Connected, More Likely to Tweet than Members of other Webmail Services/abr emA social media firm determines that AOL email users are the most likely to be Facebook members, Gmail-ers to be on Twitter, and Yahoo Mail senders on MySpace. Discuss amongst yourselves. [ReadWriteWeb]/em/li lia href="http://psinsider.e-mpire.com/index.php?categoryid=17m_articles_articleid=1447"Sony In Talks With Mozilla?/abr emTo bring Firefox to the PS3, of coursemdash;not the other, possibly more fun vice-versa situation. Still, an intriguing rumor, especially if it involves streaming content. [PSInsider]/em/li lia href="http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Serve_Fast_Food_on_Thanksgiving"Serve Fast Food on Thanksgiving/abr emThe creative food hacker behind a href="http://fancyfastfood.com"FancyFastFood/a (which we've a href="http://lifehacker.com/5311879/fancyfastfoodcom-gives-fast-food-meals-a-gourmet-makeover"previously admired/a) shows Wired's How-To Wiki how to put together a Thanksgiving plate from assorted food that's terrible for you. [Wired How-To Wiki]/em/li /ul br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=dd14e72693b125bb6f46987ecb99a777p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=dd14e72693b125bb6f46987ecb99a777p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/i4wT8sh-kDYXa-iqDig-GzrFEGQ/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/i4wT8sh-kDYXa-iqDig-GzrFEGQ/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/i4wT8sh-kDYXa-iqDig-GzrFEGQ/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/i4wT8sh-kDYXa-iqDig-GzrFEGQ/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=SzAqMiFFg0c:1gAgPwgG5lw:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=SzAqMiFFg0c:1gAgPwgG5lw:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=SzAqMiFFg0c:1gAgPwgG5lw:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=SzAqMiFFg0c:1gAgPwgG5lw:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=SzAqMiFFg0c:1gAgPwgG5lw:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=SzAqMiFFg0c:1gAgPwgG5lw:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/SzAqMiFFg0c" height="1" width="1"/

YouTube Adds Machine-Generated Automatic Captions [YouTube]

pobject width="500" height="308" class="left gawkerVideo embeddedVideo videoObject_0"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/kTvHIDKLFqchl=enfs=1fmt=22" param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kTvHIDKLFqchl=enfs=1fmt=22" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="500" height="308" class="left gawkerVideo"/objectYouTube clips have previously allowed for captioning, but it was a system that was a little buggy and only worked from YouTube's site. That's all changed with the advent of machine-generated captions and auto-timing./p pGoogle's automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology has been paired up with YouTube's caption system to create automatic captions for the majority of the videos that are uploaded (at the rate of 20 hours of footage every minute). It should cover the needs of your caption viewing needs, although they'll continue to streamline and improve this technology as things progress./p pIf you don't want to leave the captioning of your video to the hands of the YouTube caption system, they've also added an auto-timing function, which allows you to a href="http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=100077"upload a simple text file/a to be read. The text will sync up with your video without any timing breaks or coding added to the file. The previous system of captioning was mainly user generated and required a little professional know how when it comes to coding and video editingmdash;thus, most videos were caption-less, making them inaccessible to those with hearing impairments./p pFor those who aren't in need of captions, there's still an added bonus for you. With the advent of all the new text in association with what's on screen, it will make videos easier to search for and find, even if you don't know the title./p div class="related"a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/automatic-captions-in-youtube.html"Automatic Captions in YouTube/a [The Official Google Blog]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=9f0af567d82c45cb9d35252d2f2e2130p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=9f0af567d82c45cb9d35252d2f2e2130p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/T4DRzvK6Y_vAf6GnhbzKWDFWic4/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/T4DRzvK6Y_vAf6GnhbzKWDFWic4/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/T4DRzvK6Y_vAf6GnhbzKWDFWic4/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/T4DRzvK6Y_vAf6GnhbzKWDFWic4/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=2g5byQN6C1E:5RL70j0AaiA:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=2g5byQN6C1E:5RL70j0AaiA:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=2g5byQN6C1E:5RL70j0AaiA:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=2g5byQN6C1E:5RL70j0AaiA:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=2g5byQN6C1E:5RL70j0AaiA:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=2g5byQN6C1E:5RL70j0AaiA:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/2g5byQN6C1E" height="1" width="1"/

LockThis! Password Protects Your Open Programs [Downloads]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/lockthis_02.png" class="left image340" width="340" /Windows only: If you've ever wanted to keep a program safe from prying eyes but don't want to close it, free utility LockThis! will let you easily protect any open program, so that un-minimizing it requires a password./p pLockThis! is extremely easy to usemdash;to lock an application, all you need to do is press Ctrl while minimizing the window that you want protected. It will ask you for your admin password (which by default is LockThis! but can be changed from the admin window), and then keep the window minimized until you want it open again./p pYou can use your admin password for all protected programs, set a separate password for all programs, or specify the password on a per-program basis as you minimize them. It's up to you. It runs in the system tray, staying out of your way except to prompt for passwordsmdash;even if you try to open the admin window or exit LockThis!, it will prompt you for your admin password so no one can just shut it off./p pLockThis! is a free download, Windows only./p div class="related"a href="http://duriosoft.info/products/lockthis.html"LockThis!/a [via a href="http://www.nirmaltv.com/2009/11/19/password-protect-any-program-or-file-with-lockthis/?utm_source=feedburnerutm_medium=feedutm_campaign=Feed:+LifeRocks20+(Life+Rocks+2.0)"Life Rocks 2.0/a]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=328ff87c667aeb0a545c120e3e44e05cp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=328ff87c667aeb0a545c120e3e44e05cp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Byutm9SZ2j-BBEfsoabQXypFg5c/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Byutm9SZ2j-BBEfsoabQXypFg5c/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Byutm9SZ2j-BBEfsoabQXypFg5c/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Byutm9SZ2j-BBEfsoabQXypFg5c/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=qNeqlVvdWhU:eM0ElnC6hBM:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=qNeqlVvdWhU:eM0ElnC6hBM:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=qNeqlVvdWhU:eM0ElnC6hBM:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=qNeqlVvdWhU:eM0ElnC6hBM:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=qNeqlVvdWhU:eM0ElnC6hBM:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=qNeqlVvdWhU:eM0ElnC6hBM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/qNeqlVvdWhU" height="1" width="1"/

Sisimizi Organizes Your Game Catalog [Downloads]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_callofduty_take_3.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" /Windows: Gaming is fun. Organizing all your personal video games isn't. Sisimizi takes the hassle out of managing your collection so you can get back to raiding villages and killing zombies./p pSisimizi Game Catalog is a free, open-source database application that supports classic and recent video game consoles. It retrieves game info from the internet, imports from other databases or formats, and even keeps track of games you've loaned out to friends. Sisimizi groups games by platform, year, or genre, and you can even tote it around on a thumb drive or USB stick./p pDo apps like this help you manage your towering piles of video games or do you have a better method for keeping track of them all? Share your ideas in the comments. Sisimizi is a free download for Windows systems only./p div class="related"a href="http://www.sisimizi.org/"Sisimizi/a/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=bdd3f440c57e5acf3c19c5e59cb272e0p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=bdd3f440c57e5acf3c19c5e59cb272e0p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jAziJlyYzJoM_CPcke7BUiq49AU/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jAziJlyYzJoM_CPcke7BUiq49AU/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jAziJlyYzJoM_CPcke7BUiq49AU/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/jAziJlyYzJoM_CPcke7BUiq49AU/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=wElUDr1-Lsk:jobvzigZ8rs:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=wElUDr1-Lsk:jobvzigZ8rs:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=wElUDr1-Lsk:jobvzigZ8rs:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=wElUDr1-Lsk:jobvzigZ8rs:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=wElUDr1-Lsk:jobvzigZ8rs:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=wElUDr1-Lsk:jobvzigZ8rs:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/wElUDr1-Lsk" height="1" width="1"/

Shape Collage Online Makes Great Photo Collages in Your Browser [Photos]

pa rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/shapecollage-gbi1k27g.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_shapecollage-gbi1k27g.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //aWeb application Shape Collage quickly turns your online photos into embeddable photo collages with nothing more than a few clicks. It's a interesting way to showcase your pictures online without a lot of work./p pMaking your own collage requires simply adding URLs to the individual photos, or in the case of sites like Flickr, simply adding in the URL that contains the photomdash;Shape Collage will do the rest, grabbing your photos from your Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, or even a public Facebook page, and adding them into a collage of your choosing. Once the collage is generated, which just takes a few seconds, you'll be presented with an embeddable widget with each photo hyperlinked to the original image./p pShape Collage Online is free to use, though readers should note that you shouldn't use the online tool for private photos, since the collages are hosted on the Shape Collage serversmdash;instead, you can just download the a href="http://lifehacker.com/5156027/shape-collage-is-a-seriously-fun-photo-collage-application"previously mentioned Shape Collage desktop application/a for any platform, and generate collages in image format./p div class="related"a href="http://www.shapecollage.com/online/"Shape Collage Online/a [Shape Collage]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=66045f6bb360fb41876c53686fe89f55p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=66045f6bb360fb41876c53686fe89f55p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/YPofj_n0NbAl4Nesrk4dioUGkQ4/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/YPofj_n0NbAl4Nesrk4dioUGkQ4/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/YPofj_n0NbAl4Nesrk4dioUGkQ4/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/YPofj_n0NbAl4Nesrk4dioUGkQ4/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=nIbK67Wapz0:_vOK-zdc1sI:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=nIbK67Wapz0:_vOK-zdc1sI:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=nIbK67Wapz0:_vOK-zdc1sI:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=nIbK67Wapz0:_vOK-zdc1sI:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=nIbK67Wapz0:_vOK-zdc1sI:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=nIbK67Wapz0:_vOK-zdc1sI:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/nIbK67Wapz0" height="1" width="1"/

First Glimpse at Google Chrome OS [Chrome Os]

pa rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/chrome_splash.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_chrome_splash.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //aGoogle offered up everything but a finished Chrome OS today, releasing its source code and explaining how it's different than other operating systems. Here are the features, functions, and screenshots you'll want to know about./p pWant the short version, sketched out on a notepad, uploaded as a video, and narrated with a carefree tenor? Here's Google's explanation:/p pobject width="500" height="308" class="left gawkerVideo embeddedVideo videoObject_0"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0QRO3gKj3qwhl=enfs=1fmt=22" param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0QRO3gKj3qwhl=enfs=1fmt=22" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="500" height="308" class="left gawkerVideo"/objectimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/0qro3gkj3qw.jpg" style="display: none;" class="embeddedVideoThumbnail videoThumbnail_0"/p pWant the much more in-depth, screenshot-by-screenshot rundown of what was (not really) revealed? Check out a href="http://gizmodo.com/5408514/google-chrome-first-official-screenshots-%5Bupdating-live%5D"Gizmodo's live-blogged announcement/a./p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"When, on what, and how much?/h3 pGoogle released Chrome OS' source code today, but one of Chrome's lead engineers, Idan Avraham, said a finished Chrome OS arrives "about a year from today." They took pains to note that Google itself won't be offering Chrome OS as a download to install on any system you have. They're developing Chrome OS for machines with "specific reference hardware," as their machines will boot directly from those machines and skip a lot of the hardware checking steps that standard operating systems run through./p pThe developers didn't offer pricing hints or targets from hardware partners. They did say, however, that they intend to "push" manufacturers to release netbooks with larger keyboards and mousepads, and crisper resolutions, and devices will be released "in the price ranges people see today."/p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_final_startup.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"How fast is it?/h3 pFrom a single boot-up shown on a livecast, and some live demonstration, pretty darned fast. The lead developer cited a seven-second boot-up to a universal sign-on screen on an eeePC, and then to the desktop after another four seconds. It does this by working on specialized firmware, written for hardware Chrome OS' developers work with, and relying on a Google Chrome browser written specifically for the Chrome OS. It's also written exclusively to run on solid-state, or non-hard-disk, drives, with a minimal amount of locally-stored data./p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"What makes it different?/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/final_chrome_camera.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /For you, the user, nothing entirely whole-cloth new. But a whole lot of interesting bits:/p ul listrongUtilizing multi-core CPUs and graphics chips for Chrome:/strong Your web browsing, video playing, and other activities inside Chrome OS' main browser will get a boost from hardware normally reserved for gaming and traditional applications./li listrongChrome (browser) on Chrome (OS) will be faster:/strong Faster than how it runs on your Windows, Mac, or Linux computer, anyways, because it's been re-tooled for this OS./li listrongThere are no "traditional" applications:/strong "Every application," according to Chrome's project head, "is a web application. There are no conventional applications. (Whatever you use), it's a webapp, it's a link, it's a URL."/li listrongAnyone can log in and use any Chrome OS netbook:/strong Since Chrome OS will presumably be tied to your Google account, you could easily jump on a friend's netbook and log in for your own email, documents, and other stuff./li listrongemEverything/em you use is online:/strong You probably guessed thatmdash;Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar, and other apps have had offline abilities for some time. But even the small notepad application in Chrome, and your particular Wi-Fi and system settings, are backed up to your Google account as well. You'll be able to store data offline using a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5"HTML 5/a's capabilitiesmdash;but, then, you can do that with Firefox or Safari as well./li /ul pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/final_excel.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" //p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"So, it's a Google OS for people obsessed with Google?/h3 pNot emexactly/em. Avraham demonstrated the OS' ability to assign specific webapps to different files and links by clicking an .xls (Microsoft Excel) file, which then opened in Microsoft's online Office suite./p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Will it ever arrive on laptops or desktops?/h3 pEventually, assuming it gains any foothold in the market. Chrome's developers said their primary focus for the year, and the immediate future, would be netbooks, and that laptops and desktop releases would follow, without offering any specific time frame./p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Will it print?/h3 pOh, rightmdash;Avraham said "you will be able to print," but said the OS would take a "more innovative approach" to supporting printers. More to come./p hr So, how does Google Chrome OS strike you? Is it something you'd want on a netbook, or were you expecting something more? Share what you saw, and see coming, in the comments. br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=054e8d3bb542a270060575e36c80c31fp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=054e8d3bb542a270060575e36c80c31fp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/SOGTfZBcovbmNMbwKxnuAyqAe1Q/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/SOGTfZBcovbmNMbwKxnuAyqAe1Q/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/SOGTfZBcovbmNMbwKxnuAyqAe1Q/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/SOGTfZBcovbmNMbwKxnuAyqAe1Q/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=4jdV9stjlcw:YrkEiia5-rQ:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=4jdV9stjlcw:YrkEiia5-rQ:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=4jdV9stjlcw:YrkEiia5-rQ:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=4jdV9stjlcw:YrkEiia5-rQ:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=4jdV9stjlcw:YrkEiia5-rQ:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=4jdV9stjlcw:YrkEiia5-rQ:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/4jdV9stjlcw" height="1" width="1"/

Before and After: The Loft Workstation [Featured Workspace]

pa rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/img_3345.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_img_3345.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //aIt's bad enough having a super messy workspace, but when your workspace is lofted above the rest of your living space and all your cable clutter and your ugly desk become an eyesore something must be done./p pLifehacker reader aloftindenver lives, shockingly enough, in a a loft in Denver. They've been cataloging their adventures in furnishing the loftmdash;largely by creating their own designs and furnituremdash;at their blog a href="http://aloftindenver.com/"A Loft In Denver/a. While we'd highly recommend reading over the entire blog, especially if you're into loft living and modern design, what really caught our eye is the amazingly sleek workspace they built from scratch./p pThe problem, as you can see in the above picture, was their workspace was in an area of the loft that was itself elevated above the rest of the space. Not only did they have a messy workspace with some out of control cables but the entire workspace was even uglier when viewed from below in the living space./p pRather than enclose the space and hide the cable clutter, which would decrease the openness of the loft, they opted to build an awesome workstation from scratch that maintains the airiness of the loft while hiding nearly all the cables. Besides the visible, but neatly displayed, cord for the monitors all the other cables are routed in a single bundle up behind the monitors on the wall and across the room tucked into the lip of one of the support beams. The cables go into a closet at the back of the office where the computers themselves are stored./p pAll you see sitting at the desk is the monitors mounted to the backstop, the open desk, and the keyboard tray. It's definitely as "cordless" as a workspace that relies on actual cords can be./p pCheck out the pictures below to peek at the before and after of the workspace. If you want to read more about the construction of the workspace and see step-by-step pictures of the workspace in progress, you can see all the workspace-related entries on their blog a href="http://aloftindenver.com/tag/desk/"here/a./p p a href="http://lifehacker.com/5408359/before-and-after-the-loft-workstation" img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/smallish_img_3350.jpg" alt=" " title=" " align="left" hspace="2" vspace="2" / /a a href="http://lifehacker.com/5408359/before-and-after-the-loft-workstation" img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/smallish_img_3975.jpg" alt=" " title=" " align="left" hspace="2" vspace="2" / /a a href="http://lifehacker.com/5408359/before-and-after-the-loft-workstation" img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/smallish_img_3981.jpg" alt=" " title=" " align="left" hspace="2" vspace="2" / /a br clear="both" / a href="http://lifehacker.com/5408359/before-and-after-the-loft-workstation" img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/smallish_img_3984.jpg" alt=" " title=" " align="left" hspace="2" vspace="2" / /a a href="http://lifehacker.com/5408359/before-and-after-the-loft-workstation" img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/smallish_img_3987.jpg" alt=" " title=" " align="left" hspace="2" vspace="2" / /a a href="http://lifehacker.com/5408359/before-and-after-the-loft-workstation" img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/smallish_img_3993.jpg" alt=" " title=" " align="left" hspace="2" vspace="2" / /a br clear="both" / a href="http://lifehacker.com/5408359/before-and-after-the-loft-workstation" img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/smallish_img_3995.jpg" alt=" " title=" " align="left" hspace="2" vspace="2" / /a br br clear="all"/p pIf you have a workspace of your own to show off, throw the pictures on your Flickr account and add it to the a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/lifehacker-workspace-showandtell/"Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool/a. Include some details about your setup and why it works for you, and you just might see it featured on the front page of Lifehacker./p div class="related"a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/aloftindenver/sets/72157622827143048/"Before and After: The Loft Workstation/a [Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=3c5e93bbb62c9162ce9f17066aa00e88p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=3c5e93bbb62c9162ce9f17066aa00e88p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Kl3ddlsOFGNTkA-QZzv273e8sHI/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Kl3ddlsOFGNTkA-QZzv273e8sHI/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Kl3ddlsOFGNTkA-QZzv273e8sHI/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Kl3ddlsOFGNTkA-QZzv273e8sHI/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=oCUocKWJ4GU:Oa0v6Ko2YH0:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=oCUocKWJ4GU:Oa0v6Ko2YH0:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=oCUocKWJ4GU:Oa0v6Ko2YH0:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=oCUocKWJ4GU:Oa0v6Ko2YH0:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=oCUocKWJ4GU:Oa0v6Ko2YH0:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=oCUocKWJ4GU:Oa0v6Ko2YH0:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/oCUocKWJ4GU" height="1" width="1"/

DIY Cameraphone Zoom and Lighting Lens [DIY]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_fx1q6dkg1bbc52y.medium.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" /If the iPhone's zoom just isn't doing it for you, and you prefer a higher-quality optical zoom to lesser digital zoom apps, DIY web site Instructables details how to make a contraption that'll help you achieve just the frame you're looking for./p pWhile this particular how-to is built for an iPhone, the idea can be easily used (or adjusted) for any phone with a camera. For this project, you'll need a jar lid, a suction cup, and some old camera lensesmdash;generally, if you're a camera buff, you may have some scrapped cameras around that you can steal these from. If you want to add a light source, too, you'll need a few more electrical supplies. The project also requires a bit of drilling and soldering, but nothing seasoned DIY vets like yourselves can't handle. Hit the link for the step-by-step guide./p div class="related"a href="http://www.instructables.com/id/iPhone-Magnifying-Camera-Mod/"iPhone Magnifying Camera Mod/a [Instructables]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=b4e474e282ada382d876e536c492e2dbp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=b4e474e282ada382d876e536c492e2dbp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Rc8qUsDUSkSx5h0JW-WqAYAwiqc/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Rc8qUsDUSkSx5h0JW-WqAYAwiqc/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Rc8qUsDUSkSx5h0JW-WqAYAwiqc/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Rc8qUsDUSkSx5h0JW-WqAYAwiqc/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=BYBPJL0SSxU:RG6eia6avYk:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=BYBPJL0SSxU:RG6eia6avYk:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=BYBPJL0SSxU:RG6eia6avYk:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=BYBPJL0SSxU:RG6eia6avYk:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=BYBPJL0SSxU:RG6eia6avYk:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=BYBPJL0SSxU:RG6eia6avYk:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/BYBPJL0SSxU" height="1" width="1"/

CheckPlaces Cleans Up Your Dead or Duplicate Bookmarks [Downloads]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/checkplaces2.png" class="left image340" width="340" /Firefox only: If your bookmarks bar has gotten out of control with dead links, duplicates, and empty folders, Firefox extension CheckPlaces will check all your bookmarks and even clean them up for you, automatically deleting anything unnecessary./p pThe extension is extremely configurable, so you can choose what you want it to check formdash;if you have duplicate bookmarks on purpose, for example, you can have it just check for dead links and empty folders. You can also choose to individually exclude specific bookmarks from the check, if, for example, you think you may have unwanted duplicates but want it to ignore duplicates you made on purpose. It can even load favicons for websites you may have imported, but haven't visited yet./p pAfter you select your options and run the check, a window will appear summarizing any issues you may have. From this window, you can look in each category (failed pages, duplicates, empty folders, etc.) and pick which bookmarks you want to delete, or just delete all bookmarks in that category. You can also choose to exclude certain bookmarks on this list from future checks, so you don't have to worry about singling them out anymore./p pCheckPlaces is a free download and works in Firefox on any platform./p div class="related"a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10897"CheckPlaces/a [Mozilla Add-Ons]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=e2fcc713eb201301b551865396bf15a2p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=e2fcc713eb201301b551865396bf15a2p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/YsVj0p4LKn5PUC00jwEs42R7Ty0/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/YsVj0p4LKn5PUC00jwEs42R7Ty0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/YsVj0p4LKn5PUC00jwEs42R7Ty0/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/YsVj0p4LKn5PUC00jwEs42R7Ty0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=xmEh27SXqwk:FPTaXYJ7qIc:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=xmEh27SXqwk:FPTaXYJ7qIc:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=xmEh27SXqwk:FPTaXYJ7qIc:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=xmEh27SXqwk:FPTaXYJ7qIc:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=xmEh27SXqwk:FPTaXYJ7qIc:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=xmEh27SXqwk:FPTaXYJ7qIc:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/xmEh27SXqwk" height="1" width="1"/

Creatively Display Your Cables When Hiding's Not an Option [Cable Management]

pa rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/111809cabledrawings1_rect540.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_111809cabledrawings1_rect540.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //a We've talked time and time again about a href="http://lifehacker.com/364054/top-10-ways-to-get-cables-under-control"new and different ways to hide the unsightly cable nests/a lurking in your home. Instead of squirreling them away, artist Maisie Maud Broadhead cleverly decorates with them in plain sight./p pRunning cables through walls, attics, and ceilings isn't anyone's idea of a good time, and if you've got some artistic flair, turns out you can create some fun, aesthetically pleasing wall designs. You can use wall clips to hold things up, which you can find at a relatively inexpensive pricemdash;like a href="http://cableorganizer.com/richco/adhesive-kwik-klips.html"these/a ($20 for a pack of 100)./p pA cable-made picture frame, lamp, or even an entire fireplace could potentially work, with design-on-a-dime results. The idea is perfect for those who rent their living space and don't always have the option of where outlets and furniture can be placed to accommodate cabling./p pHave a creative cable or wire solution? Sound off in the comments./p div class="related"a href="http://www.maisiebroadhead.com/cable_drawings.php"Cable Drawings/a [Maisie Maud Broadhead via a href="http://www.unplggd.com/unplggd/inspiration/maisie-maud-broadheads-cable-art-101834"Unplggd/a]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=8fb57b1ac002932fa668c1bd8d7e6a45p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=8fb57b1ac002932fa668c1bd8d7e6a45p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/k5HISgE6L2I8YtIfSpQteuLK8cY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/k5HISgE6L2I8YtIfSpQteuLK8cY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/k5HISgE6L2I8YtIfSpQteuLK8cY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/k5HISgE6L2I8YtIfSpQteuLK8cY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=uZu_SzTDUHo:9NnhGFZvYRM:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=uZu_SzTDUHo:9NnhGFZvYRM:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=uZu_SzTDUHo:9NnhGFZvYRM:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=uZu_SzTDUHo:9NnhGFZvYRM:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=uZu_SzTDUHo:9NnhGFZvYRM:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=uZu_SzTDUHo:9NnhGFZvYRM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/uZu_SzTDUHo" height="1" width="1"/

Gadget and Gear Deals of the Day [Dealhacker]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/2009-11-19_125239.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /Buy three 24" monitors get one free? Buy a 1TB hard drive and get a free HDD dock? Buy a media player and get a free 640GB matched hard drive? We've got these awesome combos and more inside./p pbr clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Computer Gear!/h3 ul lia href="http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/185652"Lenovo IdeaCentre Q700 Desktop PC for $349.00 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $499 - use coupon code: bUSP30151A/b)/li lia href="http://dealzon.com/deals/dell-inspiron-15-6-inch-dual-core-4gb-320gb-laptop-free-next-biz-day-shipping"15.6" Dell Inspiron 15 4GB/320GB Laptop for $479 + Free 1-day Shipping/a (Regular Price: $958.00 - use coupon code b1R$ZL9Q7CFG69V/b)/li lia href="http://dealzon.com/deals/dell-inspiron-15-6-inch-dual-core-3gb-250gb-laptop-free-next-biz-day-shipping"15.6" Dell Inspiron 15 3GB/250GB Laptop for $399 + Free 1-day Shipping/a (Regular Price: $743 - use coupon code b40M?6?W03KFH93/b)/li lia href="http://dealzon.com/deals/dell-inspiron-11z-11-6-inch-led-ulv-laptop"11.6" Dell Inspiron 11z LED ULV Laptop for $415 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $449 - use coupon code b$9532Z?LL5DB9$/b)/li lia href="http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/hp-pavilion-ms200-all-in-one-pc/15289.aspx"18.5" HP MS214 All-in-One Desktop PC for $550.99 with free shipping/a (Regular Price: $599.99 - use coupon code bSVMY65443/b)/li lia href="http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/Coupon-Lenovo-ThinkPad-SL500-15-4-Inch-Notebook/11708.aspx"15.4" Lenovo ThinkPad SL500 Laptop for $426.55 with free shipping/a (Regular Price: $685 - use coupon code: bUSPLAPTOPS/b)br/li lia href="http://dealzon.com/deals/thinkpad-t400-14-1-inch-core-2-duo-laptop"14" ThinkPad T400 Laptop for $637 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $1,215 - use coupon code bUSPTSAVINGS/b)/li lia href="http://www.techdealdigger.com/pr/cheap-lenovo-thinkpad-t400-141-laptop-with-core-2-duo-p8600-2gb-ddr3-sdram-160gb-hdd-deals/2546"14.1" Lenovo T400 Laptop for $670.65 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $1,255 - use coupon code bUSPTSAVINGS/b)/li lia href="http://dealzon.com/deals/lenovo-ideapad-u350-13-3-inch-1-3ghz-pentium-su2700-led-laptop-w-hdmi-out"13.3" Lenovo Ideapad U350 CULV LED Laptop for $449 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $749 - use coupon code bUSPU3527U/b)/li lia href="http://dealzon.com/deals/buy-3-get-1-free-10-coupon-samsung-2494sw-24-inch-1080p-lcd-monitors"Four 24" Samsung 2494SW 1080p LCD Monitors for $702 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $1,040 - use coupon code bH?1TXKHKCWNN3J/b)/li lia href="http://www.techdealdigger.com/pr/cheap-cavalry-caum3702t0b-2tb-external-hard-drive-deals/2547"2TB Cavalry CAUM3702T0B External HD for $159.99 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $225 - use a href="http://ak.buy.com/buy_assets/retail/pdfs/09Q4/1116-1123dk-bk_10cavalry.pdf"this form/a)/li lia href="http://www.techdealdigger.com/pr/cheap-western-digital-1tb-green-power-hard-drive-wd10eads-deals/1181"1TB Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB 3.5" HD with Dock for $84.99 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $124)/li lia href="http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/185640"Western Digital WD TV Mini Media Player plus Passport Elite 320GB Portable Hard Drive for $99.98 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $129)/li /ul h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Not Computer Gear!/h3 ul lia href="http://dealzon.com/deals/toshiba-regza-52xv645u-52-inch-1080p-lcd-hdtv-bdx2000-bluray-player"52" Toshiba REGZA 52XV645U LCD HDTV with BDX2000 Blu-ray Player forbr $1,199.98 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $1,389 - use coupon codebr bBHS109/b)/li lia href="http://dealzon.com/deals/toshiba-regza-46sv670u-46-inch-1080p-120hz-led-backlit-lcd-hdtv-w-local-dimming-clearscan-240"46" Toshiba REGZA 46SV670U 1080p LED-LCD HDTV $1,349 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $1,549)/li lia href="http://www.techdealdigger.com/pr/cheap-panasonic-viera-tc-p42g15-42-inch-1080p-600hz-plasma-tv-deals/2524"42" Panasonic VIERA TC-P42G15 1080p 600Hz Plasma TV, Plus Panasonic DMP-BD60 Blu-ray Player $921.17 with Free Shipping, after coupon at Sixth Ave Electronics/a (Regular Price: $1055 - use coupon code bBONUSBUY/b)/li lia href="http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/Sceptre-37-inch-LCD-HDTV-X370BV-HD/13222.aspx"37" Sceptre X370BV-HD LCD HDTV for $379.99 with $19.99 shipping/a (Regular Price: $699.99)/li lia href="http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/Samsung-BD-P4600-1080p-Blu-ray-Disc-Player/12515.aspx"Samsung BD-P4600 Slot-loading Blu-ray Player for $264 with free shipping/a (Regular Price: $499.99)/li lia href="http://www.gamerhotline.com/sling-media-sb300-100-slingbox-pro-hd-slinglink-turbo-4-port/"Sling Media SB300-100 Slingbox PRO-HD + SlingLink Turbo 4 Port for $299.99 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $422 - use coupon code bEMCMMMV37/b)/li lia href="http://www.techdealdigger.com/pr/cheap-onkyo-tx-sr607-72-channel-av-surround-home-theater-receiver-deals/1492"Onkyo TX-SR607 7.2-Channel Home Theater Receiver for $379.99 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $419)/li lia href="http://www.techdealdigger.com/pr/cheap-polk-audio-monitor-70-3-way-speaker-black-deals/2177"Polk Audio Monitor 70 3-Way Speaker for $169.99 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $200 - use coupon code bEMCMMMV33/b)/li lia href="http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/185709"TiVo Series 3 HD XL 150-Hour High Def Dual Tuner Digital Video Recorder (DVR) for $419.97 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $599)/li lia href="http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/185642"3-Pack SanDisk Extreme III 8GB CompactFlash Cards for $69.95 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $149 - use a href="http://www.adorama.com/pdfs/rebates/sandiskextreme_010210.pdf"this form/a)/li lia href="http://dealzon.com/deals/fujifilm-finepix-s200exr-12mp-digital-camera"Fujifilm FinePix S200EXR 12MP 14x Zoom Digital Camera for $430 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $490 - use a href='http://64.225.152.254/rebates/S200EXR-123109.pdf'this form/a)/li lia href="http://www.gamerhotline.com/monster-beats-by-dr-dre-studio-high-definition-headphones/"Monster Beats by Dr. Dre Studio High-Definition Headphones for $249.99 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $300)/li lia href="http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/Nokia-N97-Unlocked-3G-Touchscreen-Phone-Black/12861.aspx"Nokia N97 Unlocked 3G Touchscreen Mobile Phone for $449.99 with free shipping/a (Regular Price: $699.99 - use coupon code bH?1TXKHKCWNN3J/b and use a href="http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/rebates/A3291237.pdf"this form/a)/li lia href="http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/microsoft-zune-hd-16gb-platinum/14170.aspx"Microsoft Zune HD 16GB MP3 Video Player for $197.99 with free shipping/a (Regular Price: $219.99 - use coupon code bMSSTORE10%OFF/b)/li lia href="http://www.gamerhotline.com/viewsonic-hd-moviebook-vpd400-portable-video-player/"Viewsonic HD MovieBook VPD400 Portable Video Player for $119.99 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $130)/li lia href="http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/185647"Apple iPod Nano 8GB MP3 Player (4th Generation) for $109.97/a (Regular Price: $149)/li lia href="http://dealzon.com/deals/fujifilm-finepix-s200exr-12mp-digital-camera"Fujifilm FinePix S200EXR 12MP 14x Zoom Digital Camera for $430 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $490 - use a href='http://64.225.152.254/rebates/S200EXR-123109.pdf'this form/a)/li lia href="http://dealzon.com/deals/samsung-dualview-tl220-12-2mp-digital-camera-black-blue"Samsung DualView TL220 12MP Digital Camera for $224 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $250 - use coupon code bEMCMMMX49/b)/li lia href="http://dealzon.com/deals/skullcandy-1gb-mp3-watch-macgyver-with-black-smokin-buds-black"Skullcandy MacGyver 1GB MP3 USB Watch Earbuds for $35 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $80 - use coupon code bEMCMMMX54/b)/li lia href="http://dealzon.com/deals/oxo-1066736-simply-tear-paper-towel-holder"OXO Simply Tear Paper Towel Holder for $19 + Free Shipping/a (Regular Price: $30 - use coupon code bEMCMMMX28/b)/li /ul h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Free Stuff!/h3 ul lia href="http://www.cheapcollegegamers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3708"Buddha-Lounge 6 Track Sampler (MP3) for $0/a (download a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B002X4FM5E/ref=nosim/mmbevigaotst-20"here/a)/li lia href="http://www.cheapcollegegamers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3708"X5 Free Classical Sampler - Classical Christmas (MP3) for $0/a (download a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B002SUOWYU/ref=nosim/mmbevigaotst-20"here/a)/li lia href="http://www.cheapcollegegamers.com/forum/showthread.php?p=4992"Cinnastix from Dominos Pizza for $0/a (use code bCINNASTIX/b)/li lia href="http://www.cheapstingybargains.com/forums/freebies/30691-redbox-rental-code-through-11-19-meijer.html"Redbox Rental Code through 11/19 from Meijer for $0/a (use coupon code:bcode 7CMEJR9/b and a href="http://www.redbox.com/Locations/KioskSearch.aspx"this form/a)/li lia href="http://www.cheapstingybargains.com/forums/freebies/30686-free-movie-registered-divx-product-owners.html"Movie for Registered DivX Product Owners for $0/a (use a href="http://moviepromo.divx.com/"this form/a)/li lia href="http://dealzon.com/deals/get-free-bookmarks-of-popular-us-historical-figures-mailed-to-you"Historical Figures Bookmarks from Federal Reserve for $0/a (order a href="http://www.newyorkfed.org/publications/result.cfm?nav=emo"here/a)/li lia href="http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/forza-hyundai-download-pack-genesis-coupe/16647.aspx"Hyundai Genesis Coupe Car Pack for Forza Motorsport 3 game for $0/a/li /ul pemThanks a href="http://dealzon.com/"Dealzon/a, a href="http://Slickdeals.net"Slickdeals/a, a href="http://Fatwallet.com"Fatwallet/a, a href="http://www.techdealdigger.com/"TechDealDigger/a, a href="http://www.techbargains.com/"TechBargains/a, a href="http://www.cheapstingybargains.com/"CheapStingyBargains/a, a href="http://www.cheapcollegegamers.com/"CheapCollegeGamers/a, and a href="http://www.gamerhotline.com/"GamerHotline/a!/em/p br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=c9a2ebf076bad7d546b775a9f15ef37fp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=c9a2ebf076bad7d546b775a9f15ef37fp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/2O451WnxEQfr4GVaB06V9P98KjI/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/2O451WnxEQfr4GVaB06V9P98KjI/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/2O451WnxEQfr4GVaB06V9P98KjI/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/2O451WnxEQfr4GVaB06V9P98KjI/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=cwED9K9YbRg:Xl70icqE4jE:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=cwED9K9YbRg:Xl70icqE4jE:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=cwED9K9YbRg:Xl70icqE4jE:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=cwED9K9YbRg:Xl70icqE4jE:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=cwED9K9YbRg:Xl70icqE4jE:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=cwED9K9YbRg:Xl70icqE4jE:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/cwED9K9YbRg" height="1" width="1"/

Google Navigation is a Total GPS Replacement—As Long As You're Connected [GPS]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_google_nav_splash.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" /My wife bought me a Garmin GPS for Christmas last year. After showing her a href="http://lifehacker.com/5402207/get-google-maps-navigation-on-your-g1"Google Navigation on my G1/a, she asked if her gift is obsolete. Sorry to say but, for anything but long-distance treks, Google's Navigation is good enough./p pI've been using Google Maps Navigation on an HTC G1, which is not the higher-powered, bigger-screened Droid it was designed for. That said, Navigation has delivered that "I'm living in the future" feeling that makes you start mentally marking down the margin you paid for your gadgets. It combines a slew of services Google has recently refinedmdash;overhead maps and street-level images, voice recognition, local searches with plain English queries, and traffic data from real driversmdash;and presents them in an interface that's surprisingly inviting and useful, given Google's tendency for the Hey It Works school of design. More than anything, though, it's free, the data it serves up is free, and it'll always remain up to date for free./p pThat's not to say that my Garmin, a Nuvi 350 model bought for about $100, doesn't do its primary job, and do it well once it's working. But Google's free offering has made my phone the go-to gadget for navigating across the city or on same-day car trips. For long drives across regions without great cellular coverage, you might still want a stand-alone GPS unit. Navigation downloads all the map data over your phone's data connection, while most GPS devices store gigabytes worth of map data locally./p pemUpdate:/em A Google rep wrote to us, stating that while Navigation requires a data connection to plot its routes, search, and make detours and re-routes. But, once you've been driving a while, "as long as you don't stray from the route, you will continue to get voice guidance even without a data connection."/p pAssuming Google intends to make Navigation available on any future Android phone, and maybe iPhones as well, GPS navigation devices are going to have to develop features that add cleverness and value to compete for the crowd that's just looking for the local Marriott./p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Using Google Maps Navigation/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/google_navigation1.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /From the video tour Google offered up with the Droid launch, it's easy to assume that Navigation offers a turn-by-turn experience inside its Street View imagesmdash;kind of like driving through a first-person shooter game with a thick blue line. It's disappointing when you realize it doesn't do live turn-by-turn in Street View; instead it only gives you the handy view when you click to see an upcoming turn or intersection. Still, Navigation's driving view is just as good as a GPS unit's, and at times even a little better./p pThe big advantages Google pushes have to do with local information. Inside the app itself, that means putting Google's "Layers" on top of your standard three-quarter view of the streets. You can have live traffic indicators overlaid on your streets, see your maps in satellite pictures, or have nearby restaurants, gas stations, banks, ATMs, and hotels show up. While you're navigating, you can also tap the voice search button and find something nearby that you're looking for. High-end GPS models likely offer similar voice-activated search, but likely not at the speed and with the range of results Google provides./p pWhat really impressed me, though, was the actual turn-by-turn experience. The map automatically zooms in and out as your speed fluctuates, giving you a tight, precise view of where you're supposed to turn when you're slowing down for an off-ramp or intersection, but pulling back when you're cruising the highway and looking for the bigger road changes. The digital voice reading your directions is ever-so-slightly distorted compared to others I've heard, but you can understand it without problems. If you can't live without your digitized British female tour guides, well, I understand./p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/navigation_multitask.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /Data pulling, road refreshes, and GPS location awareness were definitely at par with my stand-alone unit, even on an EDGE connection, beneath a city's taller buildings. This will vary from city to city, and from phone to phone, of coursemdash;but I'd consider using a hacked G1 in Buffalo, NY a fairly good test of both location and lag-ridden hardware. Since Navigation runs as a background process, you can take phone calls over your speaker or through a Bluetooth headset, and Navigation will cut in (on your audio only) when it's time to make a turn. You can also switch out of Navigation's view to perform other tasks, if you feel like callously endangering the lives of everybody on the road around you with certain distraction and delayed response time./p pNavigation does warn you about that distraction danger, by the way, when you first launch it, but only that one time. Whether that's an advantage over GPS units' regular reminders depends on your point of view. Actually, let's go ahead and assume you like fewer nag screens./p pIf you're driving somewhere without EDGE or 3G data coverage on your carrier, Maps Navigation will eventually run out of maps to show you. There might be local maps packs to pull down in the future, and wireless data coverage might eventually bridge its gaps over the last mile. If rural coverage is a non-starter for you, you weren't likely to buy a smartphone anyways. Otherwise, Navigation probably does everything your stand-alone GPS unit does./p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Using a GPS device/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/nuvi_350.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /The GPS device I'd been using for the better part of a year, a Garmin Nuvi 350, is far from the top of the line. Most readers will be familiar with how one works, even if they haven't owned one, so I'll just say what's different and unique./p pThe obvious advantages are that you're not draining, or at least continually charging, your main cellphone's battery, and that a GPS unit can dish out directions almost anywhere, without any need for a wireless data connection. Depending on your phone, the screen on a GPS unit may be bigger, and, on my Nuvi, at least, the "Night Mode" that pops on at a dynamic sunset time is certainly very helpful. GPS units also come with all the hardware they need to mount to your window or dashboard, and for those afraid of their own distractions, don't ping you when new email or text messages come in./p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"The chart/h3 pEnough jibber-jabber from one geeky tester. Here's the head-on comparison between my GPS and my hacked G1 Navigation system. Click to enlarge, unless you've got Superman eyes./p pa rel="lytebox" href="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/navigation_gps_comparison.jpg"img src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_navigation_gps_comparison.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" //a/p pFor an alternate take on Google Maps Navigation by the (admittedly more GPS-savvy) Gizmodo crew, read Wilson Rothman's a href="http://gizmodo.com/5393935/google-navigator-for-android-review-good-for-free-but-far-from-perfect"Maps Navigation feature review/a./p hr I have far from the perfect phone or GPS unit to make my judgments in the ideal realm, but I also consider myself a regular old consumer (as opposed to a latest-and-greatest gadget guy). Could you abandon your stand-alone GPS unit, or take it off your wish list, for Google's Navigation? Give us your take in the comments. br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=7c0e94e5e76734ae85dd953942fcddfap=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=7c0e94e5e76734ae85dd953942fcddfap=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/7ie27lYMfmQaxf_gNGYeKmpLXmQ/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/7ie27lYMfmQaxf_gNGYeKmpLXmQ/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/7ie27lYMfmQaxf_gNGYeKmpLXmQ/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/7ie27lYMfmQaxf_gNGYeKmpLXmQ/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=pZeWpkAIUfI:cscV4qKBV4U:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=pZeWpkAIUfI:cscV4qKBV4U:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=pZeWpkAIUfI:cscV4qKBV4U:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=pZeWpkAIUfI:cscV4qKBV4U:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=pZeWpkAIUfI:cscV4qKBV4U:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=pZeWpkAIUfI:cscV4qKBV4U:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/pZeWpkAIUfI" height="1" width="1"/

ECOBOT Tracks Your Carbon Footprint [Downloads]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/ecobot.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /Mac: Wondering what kind of impact your power and fuel consumption have on the environment? ECOBOT helps you figure it out./p pECOBOT is a free, open-source application that calculates how much fuel, paper, and power you use during the course of a day to help keep you aware of how you can reduce your carbon footprint. The app tracks wireless networks you access to learn how much you're traveling, and logs how much paper you use whenever you use your printer. ECOBOT also automatically calculates how much energy your computer uses, and you can manually add other appliances like video games and televisions./p pECOBOT runs on Adobe AIR but, strangely enough, can only be used on a Mac right now. Developers say a PC version will probably be developed "soon."/p pGot a favorite tip for keeping your energy consumption in check? Let's hear it in the comments./p div class="related"a href="http://ecobot.taxi.ca/"ECOBOT/a/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=c3a2107d36defb1475014a6a97d4d5ebp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=c3a2107d36defb1475014a6a97d4d5ebp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VhqnZ-lApzO4Mw_JskTgjYEe7fE/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VhqnZ-lApzO4Mw_JskTgjYEe7fE/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VhqnZ-lApzO4Mw_JskTgjYEe7fE/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/VhqnZ-lApzO4Mw_JskTgjYEe7fE/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=wTIql4QjtuA:lt2lPnwT8cM:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=wTIql4QjtuA:lt2lPnwT8cM:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=wTIql4QjtuA:lt2lPnwT8cM:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=wTIql4QjtuA:lt2lPnwT8cM:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=wTIql4QjtuA:lt2lPnwT8cM:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=wTIql4QjtuA:lt2lPnwT8cM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/wTIql4QjtuA" height="1" width="1"/

Bypass Reduced Functionality Without Acitvating Windows [Annoyances]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_rearm-1.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" /If you've installed Windows 7 (or Vista) but still don't have a product key, you'll eventually end up with an activation nag screen and "reduced functionality" until you get a proper key. Still not ready to buy? Temporarily bypass the problem instead./p pTech weblog UneasySilence details how to use the a href="http://lifehacker.com/5341666/run-windows-7-for-120-days-without-activation"previously mentioned rearm trick/a to extend your trial period so you can access your installation the same way you had been previously. It's easy to rearm before your trial has expired, but the extra bonus in their post comes in their details for getting to a command prompt (in which you can enter the codeslmgr -rearm/code command) once you're stuck in reduced functionality mode./p blockquote ul liOn the Windows Activation, click on Access your computer with reduced functionality option./li liOnce the Internet Explorer loads, click on File on [the] menu bar and then select Open on the pull-down menu./li liOn the Open dialog window, type in C:\Windows\Explorer.exe and then click OK./li liClick OK button on "IE needs to open a new window to open this webpage" confirmation prompt./li liClick Run button on "File Download â€“ Security Warning" dialog prompt./li liClick on Run button on "File Download â€“ Security Warning" warning dialog related to unknown and not verified publisher./li liUser shell will load, and the desktop, taskbar, start menu and etc will be restored./li /ul /blockquote pOnce the shell loads, you can fire up the command prompt and continue with the same old rearm trick we've covered before. Keep in mind that while this trick is a nice workaround if you want or need to extend your activation period and access your data for a bit longer, it'll only work for a couple of rearmings (120 days). If you've been using the old rearm trick in your Windows 7 installation, let's hear how it's working for you in the comments./p div class="related"a href="http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2009/11/14575/"Quick and Dirty Trick: Bypass Windows Vistas and Windows 7's Reduced Functionality Mode and Get Your Data/a [UneasySilence]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=4f39ba8f163e3923c16739740dff6aa7p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=4f39ba8f163e3923c16739740dff6aa7p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nQ6HLWy0j93zqClX4bHdtbOqPMU/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nQ6HLWy0j93zqClX4bHdtbOqPMU/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nQ6HLWy0j93zqClX4bHdtbOqPMU/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/nQ6HLWy0j93zqClX4bHdtbOqPMU/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=4iZKzH_9nvY:CROinlA-hPM:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=4iZKzH_9nvY:CROinlA-hPM:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=4iZKzH_9nvY:CROinlA-hPM:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=4iZKzH_9nvY:CROinlA-hPM:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=4iZKzH_9nvY:CROinlA-hPM:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=4iZKzH_9nvY:CROinlA-hPM:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/4iZKzH_9nvY" height="1" width="1"/

Camino 2.0 Adds New Features to Speedy Mac-Centric Browser [Downloads]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/17/2009/11/500x_camino.jpg" class="left image500" width="500" /Mac OS X: Camino, the lightweight, Mac-centered, standards-compliant browser, has seen a 2.0 release filled with features fans are going to dig. Selective ad and Flash blocking, OS X keychain integration, Growl support, and much more are now baked in./p pCamino's got a lot to recommend it, especially if you're mainly concerned with having a solid browser on your OS X desktop that isn't Safari. Selective site "annoyance blocking" in itself makes it worth the download for those who hate to see pop-ups or jittery Flash ads on sites you can't help but visit, and the a href="http://caminobrowser.org/features/"list of other features/a makes it seem like a worthy contender. You can even a href="http://caminobrowser.org/documentation/firefox/"bring over your Firefox profile/a with a few changes./p pCamino 2.0 is a free download for Mac OS X 10.4 and later. Tell us if you're thinking of making the switch, or just happy to see a new version of your favorite, in the comments./p div class="related"a href="http://caminobrowser.org/"Camino./a [via a href="http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/pinkerton/archives/020307.html"Mozilla Feedhouse/a]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=67b2b8c058777e7d21cee1d3ed198bddp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=67b2b8c058777e7d21cee1d3ed198bddp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/aILXpviuCvVZJCMMZzqv8oxu1ts/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/aILXpviuCvVZJCMMZzqv8oxu1ts/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/aILXpviuCvVZJCMMZzqv8oxu1ts/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/aILXpviuCvVZJCMMZzqv8oxu1ts/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=fu-XIweCGl8:G8qy0vuHGhA:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=fu-XIweCGl8:G8qy0vuHGhA:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=fu-XIweCGl8:G8qy0vuHGhA:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=fu-XIweCGl8:G8qy0vuHGhA:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=fu-XIweCGl8:G8qy0vuHGhA:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=fu-XIweCGl8:G8qy0vuHGhA:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/fu-XIweCGl8" height="1" width="1"/

How to Make Your Fireplace More Efficient [Home Improvement]

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2009/11/2009-11-19_092855.jpg" class="left image340" width="340" /Fireplaces are lovely and cozy to sit around but not to great for actually heating your home. Increase the efficiency of your fireplace with these tips and get some of that wasted heat back./p pemPhoto by a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cornelluniversitylibrary/3678955540/"Cornell University Library/a./em/p pThe problem with most fireplace design is that a significant amount of heat is pulled right up the chimney and then the problem is compounded by a strong updraft pulling heated air from the room along with it. Tweaking a fireplace to be more efficient involves combating both of those problems. At Mother Earth News they put together a list of ways you can cut down on heat loss and increase the heat retained in your living space./p pSome of the solutions are fairly inexpensive like installing a fire throwback:/p blockquote pA fireback is simply a heavy sheet of metal (traditionally cast iron) behind the fire. In addition to protecting masonry in the back of the fireplace, a fireback reflects heat into the room (instead of all the heat going up the chimney). Estimated cost: $75 to $350./p /blockquote pAdding glass doors to a fireplace is another simple, although pricier fix. The most efficient but expensive fix is to install an insert into your fireplace essentially turning it into a miniature wood stove./p pFor more information on these techniques and more, including links to suppliers and additional sources, check out the full article at the link below. If you've done anything improve the efficiency of your fireplace, let's hear about it in the comments./p div class="related"a href="http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/Improve-Your-Fireplace-Efficiency.aspx"How to Make Your Fireplace More Efficient/a [Mother Earth News]/div br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=7637b6cc297a39a1463f3480d27a2754p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=7637b6cc297a39a1463f3480d27a2754p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://a.rfihub.com/eus.gif?eui=2225"/ pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/gTkuDS1s_-18zrslH5V4DVvTQYs/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/gTkuDS1s_-18zrslH5V4DVvTQYs/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/gTkuDS1s_-18zrslH5V4DVvTQYs/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/gTkuDS1s_-18zrslH5V4DVvTQYs/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=kxP8eWb5oW0:Xm3VLym3nzc:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=kxP8eWb5oW0:Xm3VLym3nzc:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=kxP8eWb5oW0:Xm3VLym3nzc:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=kxP8eWb5oW0:Xm3VLym3nzc:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?a=kxP8eWb5oW0:Xm3VLym3nzc:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/lifehacker/full?i=kxP8eWb5oW0:Xm3VLym3nzc:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/kxP8eWb5oW0" height="1" width="1"/