Lifehacker: Geek to Live

by Gina Trapani

Just because you're away from your home computer - and all the beloved gigabytes of music you've collected over the years - doesn't mean you can't listen to your tunes.

You already know how to set up a home web server to get to your files from anywhere, but when it comes to music, a pure web server's not the best interface. Free, open source software called Jinzora puts a slick, web-based media player frontend on that web server. With Jinzora installed on your home server, you can browse your music library, create playlists on the fly and stream your music from home over the internet to another computer or handheld anywhere.

Here's how to set up Jinzora on your computer.

Obligatory warning: Running a web server on your home computer is a risky undertaking. This tutorial is for advanced users who feel comfortable editing textual configuration files and exposing port 80 on their home computer to the internet. As always, a strong firewall with explicit user-set rules is recommended. Still game? Carry on.

What you'll need

To get Jinzora running, all you need is a computer with your music stored on it and a sense of adventure. Jinzora runs on a web server with the PHP scripting language and MySQL database installed. In this example we'll use a Windows XP PC and the free Apache server to get it set up; however, this'll work with the IIS web server on Windows, and with Apache on Mac and Linux as well.

Preview and try Jinzora

To whet your appetite for what you get with Jinzora, check out a couple of screenshots, courtesy of the Jinzora folks. Here's the logged-in home screen (click to enlarge):

Here's the artist view, with images and tag data enabled. (Click to enlarge.)

And this is the album view. (Click to enlarge).

Give Jinzora a try for yourself at this sample installation to get a feel for the interface.

Install Jinzora

Jinzora takes a little setup to get going, but as you can see, the payoff is huge. Here's the step-by-step.

1. Install WAMP. WAMP is an easy-peasy, one-click, all-in-one PHP/MySQL/Apache installation for Windows. Download WAMP from here. Install WAMP in the default C:\wamp\ directory. (If you must install it elsewhere, make sure the folder you choose has no spaces or special characters in its name.) Check the Autostart option in the installation wizard, and if Windows Firewall prompts you, do Unblock WAMP so the server can run. When the installation is complete, visit http://localhost/ in your web browser to see the front page of your new web server. (Mac users, MAMP is your alternative to WAMP.)

2. Set your MySQL database server password. By default your database doesn't have a password assigned to it - and that's not very secure. From the homepage of your WAMP installation (http://localhost/), go to the link on the page on the left under Tools that reads "PHPmyadmin 2.7.0-pl2." From there click on the "Privileges" link. Check all users besides "root" and choose Delete. Then, click the edit button next to the root user, and change the password to something you'll remember and save. Once that's done, PHPmyadmin will no longer be able to access your database because it doesn't have your new password. We can remedy that easily.
   

   Open the C:\wamp\phpmyadmin\config.inc.php file in a text editor. Change the line that reads:

   $cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = '';

   to

   $cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = 'yournewpassword';

   Where yournewpassword is the password you just set up in PHPmyadmin. See more on changing your db password here.

3. Install Jinzora. Download the Jinzora .zip file from here. (Be sure to grab the stable version under Primary Products, not the beta.) Extract jz275.zip into your WAMP document directory, c:\wamp\www\, by default.
   
   Now you're ready to run through the Jinzora installation wizard. Visit http://localhost/jinzora2/ in your web browser. From here Jinzora will walk you through the 8-step installation process, asking you to set everything from the language and theme it should use to the directory that contains all your music. Each dropdown has a helpful rollover tip that explains the different options. For the most part you can accept the defaults and you'll be fine. Note that you WILL need the database password you set up in Step 2, to authorize Jinzora to access the data.
   
   One important thing: In step 6, if this is your first Jinzora install, be sure to set "Create database" equal to true so Jinzora can automatically create all the tables you'll need. Step 7 is where you'll import your music directory into Jinzora - and this one can take a bit of time, depending on how large your collection is. My collection of 12,000 files took about 40 minutes.

   Once the installation is complete, for security reasons (ie, so that no one else can relaunch it and change all your settings), delete (or to be safe, move) Jinzora's installation directory located in C:\wamp\www\jinzora2\install by default.

4. Visit your new jukebox. Check out your shiny new web-based media player at http://localhost/jinzora2/. From here you can log on, browse our music files, create playlists and stream music over the network. Jinzora basically creates .m3u playlists you can open in your remote machine's media player (like Winamp, foobar2000 or iTunes) and play your tunes over the wire.

Tips & Tricks

Once you've got your internet jukebox running inside your home network, you want to make it available to the outside world. If you're behind a router, here's how to open and forward port 80 to allow server access to computers on the outside. Sick of remembering an IP address? Here's how to assign a domain name to your home media server, like jukebox.ginatrapani.homeip.net. Finally, you can bypass all that BS and encrypt all your server access using a virtual private network with the excellent, free Hamachi..

If all this elbow grease just ain't your cup of tea, on Monday our very own Rick will review other music streaming options that involve less setup time. Thanks to Mark for turning me onto Jinzora.

How do you listen to your tunes over the internets? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, likes her tunes fresh off the internet from her home web server. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

The big question hesitant users have about web-based applications like Gmail is: "How do I get my data if I'm offline?" A beta, open source project called GCalDaemon attempts to answer to this question.

Two-way update and sync between your desktop and the web is the ultimate golden ticket; it gives you offline access, local backup and the rich desktop experience while dealing with data stored in the cloud. With GCalDaemon running, you can view and update your Google Calendar from any desktop calendar program - even if you're offline. Additionally, you can access your Gmail contacts list in a desktop email program or address book like Thunderbird or Outlook Express.

Get the lowdown on how to set up GCalDaemon after the jump.

Installing GCalDaemon

GCalDaemon is a cross-platform, Java-based server that syncs your Google Calendar data locally and makes it available to applications like Sunbird (Thunderbird with Lightning), Rainlendar and iCal. But GCalDaemon is a command line application, and like most good open source, cross-platform apps, the secret sauce to getting it set up lies in editing its text configuration file. Let's get started.

• Download and install GCalDaemon. If you don't have it already, you'll need the free Java runtime environment installed for GCalDaemon to work. To see whether or not you do, type java -version at the command line. No Java? Download it from here and install it. Then grab GCalDaemon and run its installer.
• Let GCalDaemon through your firewall. The Windows installer will offer the option to start up GCalDaemon when it completes. When you do so, if you've got Windows Firewall (or any other software firewall going on), you'll get a notification like this:
  
  Like I said, GCalDaemon's a server, so be sure to Unblock it from your outgoing firewall.
  
  When GCalDaemon initially starts up, it's not configured to do anything for you. You can stop it (in Windows) by hitting Ctrl+C in the command window. GCalDaemon can do a lot for you, but the services it offers has everything to do with how it's configured. So open up its configuration file in your favorite text editor. On Windows, that file is located in C:\Program Files\GCalDaemon\conf\gcal-daemon.cfg by default.
  
  The trickiest part of configuring GCalDaemon is dealing with your password.
• Encrypt your password. GCalDaemon needs your Google Account password to do its thing in the background without prompting you for it every time. However, storing it as plain text in a configuration file isn't very secure. So, GCalDaemon comes with a command line password encoder utility that you'll use to get the encoded version of your password for the configuration file. Here's how to run it, with sample results:
  
  Copy and paste the encoded version of your password into a temporary text file for use later on, while you're setting up GCalDaemon syncing options in the configuration file.

Read and write to your Google Calendar via Lightning, iCal or Rainlendar

Now, I don't have to give configuring GCalDaemon Lifehacker step-by-step treatment because the project already does it for you with detailed screenshots. Here's how to:

• Two-way sync Google Calendar with Sunbird. These instructions worked for me using Thunderbird with the Lightning extension, too.
• Two-way sync Google Calendar with Mac's iCal.
• Two way sync Google Calendar with Rainlendar for Windows/Linux.

Note that when I say "two-way sync," I mean you can update your calendar in Rainlendar/iCal/Sunbird and the changes get reflected online in Google Calendar within 10 minutes tops. Also, you can set up GCalDaemon to work in "sometimes-offline" mode for laptops that aren't permanently connected to the internets. Your data is available when you're offline, but you can still make changes that will sync when you get back on.

Also, you can sync multiple calendars at once with GCalDaemon. Here's a screenie of several Lifehacker calendars sync'ed up to my desktop with Thunderbird and Lightning. (Click to enlarge.)

That's not all GCalDaemon can do.

Get your Gmail Contacts list with a desktop address book

For those of you who POP your mail into Thunderbird, Outlook Express, or any other desktop mail client, you can access your Gmail Contact list within those programs' address books, too. GCalDaemon runs a local LDAP server (central contact store) which most modern address book apps can subscribe to (similar to IMAP for email messages.)

Again, GCalDaemon's own detailed, screenshot-laden documentation for setting up LDAP is available. Here's what the result looks like in Thunderbird:

But wait! That's not all!

GCalDaemon extras

GCalDaemon has more extra-crazy features up its sleeve which are beyond the scope of this article, like remote-controlling your computer via Gmail and converting RSS feeds into iCal so you can read your news in your calendar application. Neat!

How do you sync your web-based data? What do you think of GCalDaemon? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, thinks syncing should always be a two-way street. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

Web-based calendars have been around for ages, but one year ago Google Calendar came onto the scene and changed the game. Once upon a time Yahoo! Calendar had my heart, but today Y! Calendar looks frumpy and dated next to GCal's slick, dynamic interface, multiple calendar support, fun extras and collaborative features.

You can be a scheduling black belt with Google Calendar. Step into my office to learn a few lesser-obvious but super-useful GCal techniques.

Quickly capture events. While you're in GCal, press the q key to summon a single field to enter an event. Forget 17 fields for all the event details; GCal groks natural language like "tomorrow at 2PM."

To get that handy Quick Add box no matter what page you're on in Firefox, install the Quick Add extension. That will pop up the Quick Add box when you hit the Ctrl+; keyboard combination.

Also, you can quickly add events that someone Gmails you about with a link directly from an email with event details. Quicksilver users will like the QS GCal Quick Add plugin. Widget-lovers will like the Google Calendar Yahoo! Widget (yay for interoperability!).

Subscribe to shared calendars. When's Passover this year? What day does Cinco de Mayo land on? Browse Google Cal's list of shared public calendars to add sets of dates from the phases of the moon to religious and regional holidays. (In the Add Calendar area, choose the "Browse Calendars" tab.)

You can also create and share your calendars with co-workers and friends like your softball team's game schedule; for example, my "Lifehacker editor vacations" calendar is accessible to my personal GCal account.

Also, GCal supports any calendar available in iCal format, which is how I'm subscribed to the Padres' game schedule this summer. Web site iCal Share is a growing, user-submitted repository of television, sports and entertainment iCal calendars.

Turn GCal into your tickler file with event reminders. Students of the Getting Things Done productivity system are familiar with the tickler file - a holding pen for future and recurring actions and events. Google Calendar's reminder functionality can replace your dust-covered 43-folder accordion file. Set up a recurring event - like a birthday (once a year) or bill (once a month) and in the event options, set GCal to send you a reminder before or when the event happens. Once you get used to just-in-time information like this, you'll never forget that weekly meeting or family birthday or anniversary again.

HUGE BUMMER ALERT: Right now GCal only supports reminders for events on your primary calendar, not secondary or shared calendars. Hopefully GOOG will right this wrong post-haste.

Book Conference Room A. GCal can even help you schedule the use of inanimate objects, like the office projector or meeting space. Using GCal's Auto-accept invitations feature, any invite to the Conference Room A calendar that doesn't conflict with another meeting will automatically get entered. Cool!

Get your daily agenda. If you live out of your inbox, and not from a calendar, you'll love GCal's daily agenda to email feature. Get a simple list of the day's events emailed to you at 5AM each morning automatically. (Find the magic checkbox to turn that on in GCal Settings' Notifications tab.)

Don't want another message cluttering up your inbox? Here's how to incorporate your daily agenda into Gmail's sidebar.

See this week's weather forecast on your calendar. Wondering how to dress for the cook-out this weekend? See how the weather might affect this week's upcoming events by turning on the forecast right inside GCal. (To do so, in General Settings, enter your location and select whether you want to see the temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit.)

Invite your friends to events via GCal. Anyone else hate Evite? Yeah, me too. So it doesn't have that festive Evite feel, but it also doesn't have the overbearing ads, busy design and email harvesting, either. GCal can send and manage event invitations, and the recipients can comment on an an event, too, all community-like.

Get your schedule details via SMS. Thumb-happy text messaging fans will put GCal's SMS access to good use. Text next to GVENT (48368) to get the next event up on your schedule. day will get your day's agenda and nday will send back tomorrow's events. You can SMS new event details to add events, too, like in the Quick Add input field.

Secure your GCal access on the road. Like Gmail, Google Calendar offers secure SSL access, but not by default. Use this Secure Google Calendar Greasemonkey script to automatically encrypt access to your calendar data while you're on that open wifi network at the coffee shop.

Master GCal's keyboard shortcuts. The fastest way to black belt in most apps is navigating it right from your keyboard. Like Gmail, GCal comes with a healthy set of keyboard shortcuts. Check out this quick list from GCal help for a primer:

Further reading

Google Calendar enthusiasts should check out two other good articles:

• Rock Your Google Calendar in 18 Ways [Web Worker Daily]
• Google Calendar tips [Stopdesign]

What are your favorite GCal techniques? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, loves a good web-based calendar. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

Despite what Apple wants you to think, your Mac isn't invincible. While Macs may be less vulnerable to viruses and spyware than PC's, they're just as likely to get stolen or suffer from a hardware failure like a hard drive crash. When that happens, will it be a catastrophe, or just an inconvenience? It depends on whether or not - and how well - you back up your Mac.

You already know how to automatically back up your hard drive in Windows. Today we're going to cover three important approaches to Mac backup using completely free tools: versioned data backup, system cloning and off-site backup.

Background and disclaimer: Until Apple releases their new backup feature in the next version of OS X Leopard, dubbed Time Machine, the pool of backup tool choices are all third-party or command line Unix tools built into OS X. Most Mac GUI apps cost money, or offer a free version that's limited in features. After spending the last 3 weeks testing about 10 different backup apps, the sad reality is this: No free Mac backup tool is without its flaws, and none of them are the clear leader. If you're willing to pay for backup software, the consensus is that the reasonably-priced $28 SuperDuper! is your best bet. If you're a cheapie like me willing to make some compromises and go the free route, take comfort in my motto, which is "Hey, it's better than nothing."

---

Versioned data backup with SilverKeeper

Your data and important documents are the items on your hard drive that change most often, and represent irreplaceable hours of your life and work. These are the files you might want multiple copies of at different ages, in case of an accidental delete or edit. It sounds like OS X's upcoming Time Machine will handle versioned backup automatically for you, but in the meantime you can fake it manually with a regular file copying utility like LaCie's SilverKeeper.

For the price of an email address, download SilverKeeper. SilverKeeper is free, supports incremental backup, file exclusion, multiple backup profiles and schedules. SilverKeeper can be automated and wake up your Mac to do its thing in the middle of the night, and in general caused me less hassles than anything else.

Silverkeeper's operation is very intuitive. You select source and destination folders, set a schedule and go.

My local data backup destination is an external Firewire drive. There I set up 2 folders: one called "nightly" and one called "weekly." Every night my "nightly" backup profile runs at 4AM, and every Saturday night my "weekly" backup set runs at 2AM.

SilverKeeper can also back up data to another machine on your network. For example, you can mount a shared folder on another computer on your network, and point SilverKeeper there as the destination or source. (I back up my iTunes library to my PC this way.)

Gotchas: SilverKeeper does not preserve certain Mac-specific metadata, like Spotlight comments. Update: Reader Ingvo says, "SilverKeeper preserved my Spotlight comments. The only comments that were not preserved are those from the folder you select. The comments of all files and folders nested inside this folder are preserved. The reason is that Spotlight comments are actually a hidden file located at the same level of the folder." It does not email notifications of the backup status (though it does keep a log) and it doesn't support FTP to remote servers. Also, its scheduling feature only supports daily and weekly, not monthly backups.

Alternatives: If SilverKeeper isn't your cup of tea, the free iBackup also backs up particular folders on your Mac nicely, with some extra features, like naming a backup folder by date automatically.

Commercial Alternatives: Readers say that the ~$50 EMC Retrospect and $25 Deja Vu keeps track of file versions over time, eliminating the need for nightly/weekly/monthly folders.

---

Full system clone with the free version of SuperDuper!

If getting back up and running instantaneously after a hard drive crash is essential to you, you want a full copy of your entire Mac's hard drive, including the whole operating system, applications, system settings and data. The free version of SuperDuper! can clone your Mac's hard drive to an external, bootable disk, effectively making a copy your entire system, which you can plug into another Mac and start up instantly if your Mac dies. Download the limited, free version of SuperDuper! here.

Here's a screenie of SuperDuper! in the midst of replicating my system:

To boot up from your external disk, hold down the Option key while your Mac's starting up, and choose the external drive as the boot disk. Seriously - if you haven't tried this before, do it. It's really neat to see a Mac run from another drive so easily. (Or maybe that's just me.)

Gotchas: The free version of SuperDuper! does NOT support incremental backup, which means every clone copies your entire drive every time, making it quite a process for a large hard drive. Additionally, scheduling is disabled in the free version. If you try to set it up, you'll be prompted to buy a license.

Alternative: The free Carbon Copy Cloner also can copy your entire Mac system to a disk image. I didn't have a lot of luck with the current CCC beta (the automated job failed every night for me), but your mileage may vary.

---

Remote data backup with rsync

Hurricane Katrina victims can attest first hand to the value of storing a copy of your data somewhere very far away from your home or office. Off-site backup for your most important files ensures that in case of disaster or theft (of your computer AND backup drives), you'll still have copies of your stuff.

The Unix synchronization command, rsync, is a nice solution for off-site backup since the transfer happens encrypted over SSH, and it'll work with most web site hosts, or with the home-built SSH server you set up at your sister's in Florida. Check our previously-posted rsync primer for how to write an rsync script that will send your Mac's files to a remote server for backup. See also how one chap schedules rsync jobs to Dreamhost with iCal.

Alternatives: You can drag and drop your files into remote backup heaven right in Finder by mounting your SSH server with the free MacFUSE. If the command line's not your thing - and you don't have an off-site SSH server - check out the very reasonably-priced Amazon S3 storage in conjunction with JungleDisk.

---

Further Reading

Other people much more versed than I am in the ins and outs of Unix data storage as well as Mac OS X metadata specifics have done exhaustive backup tool comparisons you might be interested in. Here are a few worth eyeing:

• Mac Backup Software Harmful [plasticsfuture]
• The State of Backup and Cloning Tools under Mac OS X [plasticsfuture] Thanks, fideli!
• File copying/synchronization software and your metadata (and data!) [iNik]

How do you back up your Mac? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, sleeps more soundly with complete backups. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

You already know how to access shared files on the PCs on your home network from your Mac, but what about any old file server on the internet via SSH? Earlier this year, a few Google engineers released a new software package that enables Mac OS X to mount remote file systems using a variety of methods, including SSH.

This software, called MacFUSE, lets you drag and drop files to an SSH-connected folder right in Finder, as if it were a regular network drive. Because it's SSH, the file transfers are encrypted, and because it's implemented as a Mac network folder, you don't need other software like Fugu or Transmit to work with it: the remote drive is accessible like any local drive.

MacFUSE has progressed to the point where it's dead simple to set up. Here's how.

Momentary WTF: SSH stands for Secure Shell, and like FTP, it's a way to access another computer's files over the network. What makes SSH special (and preferable) is that the data transmission is encrypted, so it's more secure for files zooming over the easily-eavesdropped tubes of the internet. Every web host worth its salt offers SSH access, or you can set up your own home SSH server, too.

So, you've got yourself an SSH server to connect to and a Mac just waiting to mount it. (Oh stop that, you dirty bird.) Here's how to use MacFUSE to get them talking.

1. Install MacFUSE. Download MacFUSE from here. (As of writing, the most current installer version available is MacFUSE-Core-0.2.2.dmg.) Mount that disk image and run through the installer as usual, which requires a restart when you're done. Once MacFUSE is installed, you've laid the groundwork. Now onto enabling SSH.
2. Install SSHFS. Sshfs works with MacFuse to mount drives over SSH. Download sshfs from here. (As of writing, the current installer file is called sshfs-0.1.0.dmg.) Install it as usual.
3. Connect to your SSH server. Now's the fun part. Launch sshfs, and from its File menu, choose "Connect to SSH server..." Enter your server's address, your user name, and optionally the file path on the server, as shown.
   
   Then, provide your SSH server's password. (This has to be done every time - with no option to save into your Keychain, sadly):
   
   UPDATE: If you've got public/private keys set up for auto-authentication on your SSH server, you can bypass this prompt. Use the instructions for setting up those keys halfway down in this article. Thanks, geneshu!
4. Enjoy your new drive! If all goes well, the remote file system will be available as a network drive on your Desktop and in Finder. Here's a screenie of the "docs" folder on my web server mounted via sshfs:
   
   From there, you can open, edit, save, drag and drop to the mounted drive. Terminal users, you can access the SSH drive by cd'ing to /Volumes/servername/. (In the pictured example, it would be /Volumes/ginatrapani.org/

Caveats

As cool as MacFUSE + sshfs is, it's still very new software in development. (In fact, sshfs is listed as "unsupported" at the MacFUSE site.) And it's got its quirks. Unlike mounted Windows shares, you can't automatically mount your SSH drive on login (though you can add sshfs as a Login item.) Also, when I pointed file backup software to the SSH-mounted drive for automatic off-site backup, it choked. Finally, the disk usage and space available as reported in Finder for the SSH drive is completely inaccurate.

That said, for Mac users who work on remote servers a lot, MacFUSE + sshfs is fantastic way to access your files and do drag and drop off-site backups and file transmissions. MacFUSE will also support other types of remote file system mounts, like FTP, though those packages aren't yet available for download. Yet.

How do you get to remote folders on your Mac? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, loves networked drives with encrypted writes over the internet. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

"I don't have the time to keep it up."

"I don't have that much to say that often."

These are the reasons most people abandon their personal weblog or never start one. But we all come across interesting tidbits online every day that we want to remember and share - links, photos, videos, even that side-splitting IM session you had with your co-worker. A new blog format, called a "tumblelog," is a no-hassle, no-writing-required way to share those bits and maintain a personal site with the least possible commitment.

A new service called Tumblr can publish your tumblelog with minimal setup and for free. Let's take a closer look at how to publish a tumblelog with Tumblr.

What's a tumblelog?

The Wikipedia explains that a tumblelog is a variation on traditional blogging that favors very short, mixed media posts with little or no commentary. In essence it's a lightning-fast way to publish the stuff you run across on the web every day, and the layout includes large text, photos, links, and video frames. A really great example of a well-done tumblelog is projectionist.

Tumblr is a new service that publishes tumblelogs.

Six post types

The neatest thing about tumblelogs is that unlike regular blogging - which confronts you with a large, empty textarea to type your thoughts into - there are 6 distinct types of posts that have their own visual format: a "traditional" blog post, a photo, a quote, a single link, a conversational transcript, and a video.

When you create a new post inside Tumblr, choose which type it will be and enter it accordingly.

Each post type gets a different look and feel once it's published. For example, quotes are in large type that pop off the page:

Whereas dialogues are formatted much like an IM window:

Now, Tumblr does all that nice formatting for you, based on the post type you chose. For example, that conversation post was entered into Tumblr like this:

Cool, huh?

Problem is, we're still clicking around and typing into web forms. After you set up your tumblelog, you want to post to it in a flash and move on. That's where the Tumblr bookmarklet comes in.

The instant-post bookmarklet

What's most useful about the "Share on Tumblr" bookmarklet is that depending on the page you're on, it automatically detects what it is you want to publish - a quote, a video or a photo, say. So if you're on Google Video, the bookmarklet sets up a video post. On Flickr? A photo post. Check out what the bookmarklet looks like when I hit it while watching this goofy Richard Stallman video:

You can also change the post type using any of the tabs inside that window.

Less is more

Experienced bloggers looking for advanced, detailed CMS features in Tumblr will be disappointed. There are no comments, trackbacks or categories; there's no ability to change the timestamp on a post and no search capabilities. You can customize your tumblelog's template within Tumblr, and even map it to your own domain name, but you've got to have the CSS/HTML/DNS skillz to do so on your own. But the beauty of Tumblr is its simplicity; you spend no time futzing with CMS settings and very little time just posting stuff that's interesting to you.

Even without that boring CMS functionality, Tumblr does offer a couple of interesting, advanced features: like the ability to automatically suck in feeds from other sites, like Flickr or Twitter, as well as the ability to post photos and text directly from your cell phone.

Most of all, a tumblelog presents a fun editorial challenge: to say something with the least amount of words possible. The blogger becomes pure editor, just picking and choosing the most interesting tidbits on the web. I've also found that the better tumblelogs mix up post types for a nice visual layout.

More tumblelogs

Check out other tumblelogs in action at the Tumblr Radar. (Unforgivably shameless plug: I've been tumbling over at Scribbling.net.)

As you can see, I'm pretty enamored with the tumblelog format and loving Tumblr for making it happen. What's your take on tumbling? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, is crazy about tumblelogs. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

One of the best ways to keep up with information about the state of your computer is to embed it in your desktop as simple, plain text. Sure, Dashboard/Yahoo/Google/Vista widgets are big, colorful desktop toys, but they also can be distracting, space-hogging and stingy with vital information.

If you like to monitor your system using age-old command line tools like uptime and top, you want the free GeekTool on your Mac. Today we'll cover how to automatically embed command output, text files and even monitoring images - like web site traffic charts - onto your Mac desktop with GeekTool.

Note: Windows users, if any of this looks good to you, be sure to check out GeekTool's PC equivalent, Samurize.

What GeekTool does

In a nutshell, GeekTool embeds text command output, text files or images onto your Mac desktop automatically and constantly refreshes them at a rate you define. So instead of opening a command line and running top to see what process is slowing down your computer, GeekTool displays top output at all times, right on your desktop - without opening a Terminal window. Here's what a desktop running GeekTool might look like (click to enlarge):

(The eagle-eyed will notice that the system log in the screenshot details an unfortunate and ironic GeekTool crash I had while writing this piece!)

Desktop voyeurs will love this gallery of GeekTool enabled Mac desktops. There's something truly beautiful about plain text.

Let's dive into using GeekTool's subtle text background to keep on top of what's happening with your Mac.

Installation and configuration

Once installed, GeekTool is a System Preferences pane that appears in the "Other" Section (its icon is a pizza.) To configure a new GeekTool display area, choose Add Entry. Then from the dropdown menu, choose whether or not the item will be command output, a text file, or an image. From there you can enter the source and display properties. Click to enlarge this quick example of configuring a GeekTool pane to run ls:

Click and drag the highlighted area to set the right position for your command output. To set it onto the background and not on top of your regular apps, uncheck "Always on top."

You probably don't need a list of files on your desktop, so here are some handy ways to use GeekTool to see relevant information about your Mac.

System monitoring

With GeekTool you can monitor your Mac using default system logs and a couple of old school Unix commands.

Application events and errors. Keep an eye on your Mac's inner workings with the system log. To add the system log to your desktop, in Geek Tool, add a new entry of type "File," and set the source to /private/var/log/system.log.

Top CPU-hogging processes. The Unix top command displays a list of current running processes and their CPU and memory usage. To add top output to your desktop, add a new entry of type "Shell" and set the command to top -l1 -u -o cpu -S. Note: you can use your own set of top parameters, but do be sure to use the -l1 to get top to play nice with GeekTool.

System uptime. If you're the type who likes to crow about how long it's been since your Mac crashed, uptime's for you. uptime will show how long your machine's been running and what your system's load average is.

Image monitoring

GeekTool isn't limited to just plain text. Lots of system monitoring tools generate pretty graphs which GeekTool can also display on your desktop for an easy way to keep on top of what's happening. The image can live either online or on your Mac (if the latter, use the file:// protocol to enter the local file location). To display a graph, simply choose "Image" from the GeekTool entry type, and enter the URL.

For example, I can keep an eye on Lifehacker's traffic throughout the day using a Sitemeter graph embedded on the desktop with GeekTool:

Calendar and Todo.txt

GeekTool's not only for system monitoring; it can display any text file or command output, like your workday log, Todo.txt or plain text calendar. Here's an example of this in action (click to enlarge):

This setup requires that both remind and todo.sh are installed and available with their config and data files. The todo list and calendar are both displayed using their appropriate, respective shell commands.

Other GeekTool tweaks

Groups: You can organize your GeekTool panes into groups by specific purpose, too. Like, I've got a PIM group (for todo and calendar), a web site monitoring group (for keeping on top of Lifehacker traffic), and a system monitoring group, for top, uptime and the system log. At any given time, only one is active (usually PIM), but you can switch to another easily.

Pane appearance. One of the more challenging parts of GeekTool is getting the text legible on a busy desktop. Hit the Colors and Font and Text areas to change the text color, add a drop shadow and set a background color (I prefer transparent.)

How do you use GeekTool to keep on top of system information? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, will take plain text over widgets any day. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

You've put a lot of time into your iTunes library, meticulously creating just the right playlists, and rating every song you've got. Now you've decided to make the switch - from Windows to Mac (or back). Sadly, transferring your iTunes library along with your playlists and ratings isn't just a matter of moving the music files. Sure, the song-specific metadata like artist and album will be copied over in the files, but the data YOU assigned, the playlists and ratings? Those live inside iTunes' internal database files which can't be simply copied from PC to Mac.

Moving your song ratings and playlists from a PC to Mac isn't impossible, but it takes a little elbow grease. Here's how to get the job done.

Note: The best, Apple-endorsed way to move an iTunes library is to use iTunes 7's built-in backup and restore. This copies the contents of your library to CD's or DVD's, and nowhere else (WTF, Apple?).

However, if you're like me and you've got a 60 gigabyte library and you don't have time to stand around wasting burning dozens of discs, this way's for you. The method described here lets you copy the files directly from one computer to another and take your playlists and song ratings with you.

Warning: This method is NOT prescribed by Apple in any of their documentation, so before you start, BACK UP YOUR MUSIC LIBRARY. Just in case.

Ready to move iTunes? Let's do it.

On the source machine

To ensure that both machines keep the same folder structure, on the source library, in iTunes' Preferences pane, the Advanced tab, make sure that "Keep iTunes folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" are both checked.

Then, from the Advanced menu, choose "Consolidate Library." The consolidation process may take some time, depending on the speed of your machine and size of your library.

When that process completes, you're ready to export your library data. From iTunes' File menu, choose "Export Library..." and save the Library.xml file somewhere on the destination machine.

On the destination machine

Now it's time to prepare the Mac, your destination machine. First, create a new iTunes library. (iTunes will do this automatically if it's the first time you're launching it; if you want to store your new library somewhere other than the default, hold down the Option key (Shift on Windows) when starting iTunes to create a new library.)

Just like on the source machine, make sure that "Keep iTunes folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" are both checked inside iTunes' Preferences. Make a note of the folder where your new library's music files will live, and quit iTunes.

Now it's time to copy your music files from the source machine's music folder to the destination machine's music folder. You can do this over the network, or using an external drive. Just make sure the destination has all the same songs as the source.

Convert the Library.xml file from PC to Mac format

Now, the Library.xml file that you exported on the source contains all your music playlists and ratings, but it contains file paths specific to your PC. Macs and PC's deal with file paths differently; PC's use drive letters but Mac's do not. So in order to make it importable by your Mac, we have to find and replace the Windows paths throughout the file with Mac-friendly paths.

To do so, open the Library.xml file in a text editor. If you have a very large iTunes Library, like I do, this file could be several megabytes (19, in my case), so opening it might take more time than usual. If you can, use a machine with LOTS of memory.

Now, you'll notice that the Library.xml file from a PC will contain, along with a lot of other plain text XML markup, references to music locations in this format: file://localhost/F:/path/to/iTunes/. Using a simple find and replace, change those notations to the destination path using Mac format, for example, file://localhost/path/to/iTunes/. Here's what my find and replace looked like, from the PC's F: drive location to my Mac's external drive named "Media":

Notice the Mac path does NOT include a drive letter, but the PC does. Replace the /path/to/iTunes/ with the folder's where your new library lives. Save the edited file. (Depending on the speed of your machine and size of the Library.xml file, this may take a few minutes.)

Make sure you double-check that the source path was correctly replaced with the destination path; if this part isn't exactly right, you'll be screwed later on.

Import your Library

Now your new library is ready for all your hard-earned ratings and playlists. Launch iTunes on the destination machine. Even though you copied all the music to the right folder, iTunes doesn't see it. Yet.

From the File menu, choose "Import..." and select the Library.xml file you exported and edited from the source - then let 'er go. It will take some time, but iTunes will suck in all the playlists, and tracks with rating information into your new library.

When you're done, you'll notice that you have duplicates of standard-issue iTunes playlists, like the Top 25 Most Played, Music Videos, etc. You can delete those dupes. Also, that whole Determining Gapless playback process might take awhile in your new library, too.

One important note: This method successfully transfers all your song ratings and playlists, smart or otherwise. However, it does NOT transfer other metadata, like Last Played and Play Count. This, quite frankly, sucks sideways. (However, using iTunes' built-in backup and restore to 60 gazillion discs, Play Count IS transferred.) That said...

Congratulations! You've transferred your over-sized iTunes library from a PC to Mac. (This works the other way around too, just reverse the file path replacements.)

Have any questions, troubles or insights making the switch with iTunes? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, is happy to have her main iTunes library on the new Mac. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

You're not going to spend another tax season scrounging around for receipts and digging through your filing cabinet for the remains of dead trees, wondering if you're claiming everything you should. No siree! Next year, all your tax documents - heck, all your important paperwork - will be converted to PDF files and organized into search-based folders. Your receipts, ebooks, scanned newspaper articles, tax forms, gadget manuals and client contracts will be available at your fingertips whether or not you're by your filing cabinet.

And you can organize them using iTunes.

Wha?

Yes, I know iTunes isn't a document organizer, but it does a surprisingly good job at it anyway. Using iTunes' Smart Playlists and its PDF support, you can build a document library where PDF's are automatically sorted into keyword-based lists. Let's get started.

What you'll need to digitize your documents as PDF's

1. A scanner. Document scanners are small, sleek and super cheap these days - some as low as 50 bucks - so pick one up to digitize dead tree material like newspapers, magazines, or paper receipts. Your scanner software will most likely provide an option to output the scan to a PDF document. If you're going to digitize stacks of paper at once, you'll want one equipped an auto sheet feeder. (Hardware's not my forte, and the model you get depends on your needs and budget - but this thread has some recommendations from your fellow readers.)
2. A print-to-PDF program. Windows users should download the free CutePDF writer for the ability to print office documents, email messages, images and web pages to a PDF file. (Seriously, CutePDF is a must-have.) Mac users, printing to PDF is all built into to OS X, so you don't need to do a thing, except choose PDF from the print dialog.

Create a separate iTunes library for your documents

Strange bedfellows, your 1099's and those Beck MP3's, so you'll want to create a whole new "all business" iTunes library for your PDF's. To do so, hold down the Shift key when you launch iTunes (Option for Mac users), and hit the Create Library button from this dialog:

Give your document library a serious name - like "PDFDocuments."

Once you've got a new library set up, you can drag and drop PDF's onto it to add them. But before you do, a couple of tips for dealing with PDF's in iTunes:

• By default, when you add PDF's to your iTunes library, iTunes copies them into the folder where it keeps its data, leaving you with two copies of the document on your hard drive. It also creates artist and album subfolders, which don't apply to your PDF's (they'll all be "Unknown Artist" and "Unknown Album.") To keep your PDF where you originally stored it, in the iTunes Preferences pane, the Advanced tab, uncheck "Copy files to iTunes Music Folder when adding to library" and "Keep iTunes Music folder organized."
  
• Remove all the music-specific fields from the default listing, like Artist, Album, and Last Played by right-clicking on the column header and unchecking them:
  

Develop your tag vocabulary and create Smart Playlists

Once you've added a few PDF's to your iTunes library, you want to organize them into virtual folders - actual playlists. The advantage playlists have over folders is that one document can live in more than one playlist - so that 1099 form from 2006 can live in the taxes list, the 2006 list, the income list, and the 1099 list.

You could manually create playlists and drag and drop your PDF's into them. Even better, you can use Smart Playlists that dynamically populate based on keywords. For example, I renamed the PHP Manual PDF "PHP Manual (ebook code)" then created a Smart Playlist for ebooks, all PDF's where name contains the word "ebook":

But I've also got a "Code reference" Smart Playlist that matches all the PDF's with "code" in the name, and the PHP Manual is listed there, too.

Like all tagging systems, you'll have to develop a vocabulary that works for you and stick to it to make sure all your PDF's appear in the Smart Playlists they should. For example, for tax documents, I name them by year, purpose (income/deduction), and form number (1099, 1098, etc.) So it's easy to see all of 2006's 1099's, or all my income documents overall.

Add your playlists to folders

You can also group like sets of playlists into a folder. For example, my tax document playlists are all in a folder called "Taxes." If I click on the Taxes folder, I can see all the PDF's contained within the playlists in the Taxes folder. Convenient.

If you want, you can use any of iTunes' music metadata fields, like Artist, Album, Genre and year to slice and dice your PDF's, but to me that's taking the "shoving a square PDF file into a circular music file slot" too far. I stuck to adding keywords to the name of the document only. That way, if someday I want to use another program and all my PDF's have keywords in their title, they'll still be easily searchable. (Also, Spotlight, Vista's Saved Search folders and Google Desktop will all find PDF's with keywords in their title - but not other iTunes metadata fields.)

"But PDF's aren't music files": Why - and why not - iTunes

My three requirements for choosing a PDF organizer were: that it's free, cross-platform (at least Mac and Windows), and that it supports tagging (so that one PDF could be "filed" under several "folders.") iTunes fit the bill on all these counts.

However, there are serious drawbacks to using iTunes this way. There is no in-iTunes PDF viewing or previewing - no PDF reader at all, in fact. You'll need to use Adobe Reader, FoxIt or Mac's Preview to actually open the documents. Lastly, iTunes cannot search the contents of a PDF, which also hurts me deeply. (However, Google Desktop Search and Spotlight can.)

If these drawbacks are a no-go for you, there are alternatives. Mac users married to the O, S and X should check out the free Update: $34 Yep. Windows users who are willing to spend some cash, Rick recommends PaperPort (which goes for about $200 if you didn't get it with your scanner.) As far as I know, PaperPort does not support tagging. A similar application to PaperPort is previously-mentioned, free DocsVault.

Finally, Lifehacker readers have some fantastic input on how they're digitizing and organizing their paper documents. What's your favorite way to get the job done? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, is so totally going to have her paperwork in order in 2007. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

When it comes to heavy duty download jobs, Firefox's default Downloads manager just doesn't cut the mustard. If you often need closer control of multiple, large downloads, you need the DownThemAll! Firefox add-on. This extra-strength download manager can speed up, queue for later, and batch download sets of files from the web based on patterns you define in one click.

Today we'll use DownThemAll to grab all the MP3's from a web page as well as an entire set of Flickr photos in one click. Sound fun? Let's get this downloading party started.

Using filters: Download all the MP3's on a page

When you right click and choose DownThemAll from the context menu on a web page, dTa presents a list of possible downloads from that page - every single link that exists there, whether it's to another web page or a piece of media, like an image, video or MP3. The power in dTa is the Filters area, where you define a pattern that selects the files you want to download from the often long and crowded list.

So if you were at Lifehacker's sibling site, Idolator, which features MP3 downloads regularly, you might just want to suck down all the music from the front page in one click. Here's how to do so:

1. Define your filter. In DownThemAll's Preferences area, go to the Filters tab. There you'll see several pre-defined file filters (like Archives (zip, rar) and Videos (mpeg, avi, wmv.)) In the Extensions column, there's a regular expression which defines the file filter. Add one for MP3 files. The Caption can be "*.mp3" and the Filtered Extensions should be /\/[^\/\?]+\.mp3$/, as shown:
   
   Hit OK to save your new filter.
2. Select all the MP3's with your filter. Then, on the front page of Idolator or your favorite MP3 blog, right click and choose DownThemAll. Click on the MP3 filter checkbox to select only the music files linked on the page for download- just 12 out of 97, in this case - as shown:
   
   Be sure to select the destination directory on your hard drive as well in the Save files in: area.
3. Custom rename files. Another cool feature of dTa is the ability to set the downloaded filenames using different variables, like date and time and order number. In the Renaming mask dropdown, choose the pattern the downloaded file names should use. Hit the little paper clip note button to see the Renaming tags reference table, as shown:
   
4. Queue or start your download. From there, hit up the Start button to begin sucking down the tracks from the web. Alternately, if you don't want to use the bandwidth now, hit the Queue button (a kind of light download bookmarking tool) to set up the files in dTa for kicking off later on.

Advanced filtering: Download the original images from an entire Flickr set

Another interesting use of DownThemAll is to save all the images on a web page to your hard drive. This comes in especially handy if you want to grab a whole album or gallery of photos, like a Flickr set. The only problem is that when you're viewing a Flickr set page, you can only see the image thumbnails; but with a little help from our friend Greasemonkey, you can download the original, large images from Flickr in one click. Here's how.

1. Install the Link Original Image user script. Since DownThemAll only detects the links present on the current web page, you have to expose the links to the original Flickr images on a set page to download them. That's exactly what the Flickr - Link Original Image Greasemonkey user script does. Install that critter (provided you're running Greasemonkey) and voila! When you look at pages of Flickr photos, links to the original images will be present, as shown:
   
2. Filter original image links. Now, invoke the DownThemAll file selection box, and check off the Images filter, which will select all of the set original images (which are also, coincidentally, all named something_o.xx, and could be filtered that way.) Then start or queue your download. [via Vikingo's pub]

One-click access to dTa settings

Once you've got a set of dTa preferences set up that you want to reuse over and over again - say, if you want to download several Flickr sets on different pages - you want to use dTaOneClick!, also available on your right-click context menu. From the help:

dTaOneClick! will start downloading all the links/pictures of the current webpage that will match the filters used in the last dTa! session. Downloads will be saved in the last setted destination path and will be renamed using the last setted [sic] renaming mask.

The one thing you can't do with dTa that you can with my beloved command line wget is schedule regular, recurring downloads (like all the MP3's from Idolator every day at noon). However, DownThemAll's graphical interface and Firefox integration is a lot easier to deal with than command line parameters.

How do you use DownThemAll, or another download manager? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, loves a good list of completed downloads. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

The great thing about getting your email via IMAP is that all your messages and folders are synchronized between your computer and the server. The bad thing is your address book is not. Happily a Thunderbird extension called SyncKolab can save your address book to your email server over IMAP, so your contacts are available from any computer running Thunderbird.

SyncKolab is still in development and admittedly unstable, but it works well enough to give you anywhere-access to your contacts in Thunderbird. Here's how to get it set up.

What you'll need

• The free Thunderbird email client, set up to send and receive email via IMAP to your email host.
• The SyncKolab Thunderbird extension.

Full disclaimer: Like I said, SyncKolab is still very much in development, and getting it going requires some adventurousness as well as Thunderbird configuration editing. In other words, don't hate me if it doesn't work tomorrow.

Set up SyncKolab

Once you've installed SyncKolab in Thunderbird, create a folder on your IMAP server which you'll use to store your address book. I called mine "Contacts."

Then, configure SyncKolab by hitting up the extension's Options dialog. Here you'll name your Contacts sync configuration (mine's "gina-contacts-sync"), and choose the local address book you want to sync as well as the IMAP folder your contacts will get saved to on the server. Be sure to check off the "Sync Contacts" checkbox as well, as shown:

Save those options by hitting OK. Then, right-click the Thunderbird toolbar and choose "Customize..." From there, drag and drop the SyncKolab button to the toolbar for easy access. Click on it to sync for the first time.

Possible pitfall: When I set up SyncKolab on my Mac and PC and tried sync'ing for the first time, I got a "Mail account '' not found!" error. Here's what I meant when I said the extension was buggy. This error is fixable, though.

If you get this error, from Thunderbird's Options dialog (in the Tools menu), go to the Advanced section, and click on the Config Editor button on the General tab. Here, add a new string preference named SyncKolab.gina-sync-contacts.ContactFolderPath with the value imap://you@yourserver.com/Contacts where gina-sync-contacts is your SyncKolab configuration name and you@yourserver.com is your IMAP server settings, as shown.

Now, when you hit the SyncKolab button, you'll see a dialog pop up while your address book syncs to the server.

You'll need the SyncKolab extension installed and configured at every other machine you want access to your contacts from, also.

Note on calendar and contacts syncing: You'll notice that SyncKolab has options for synchronizing Calendar items and Tasks to your IMAP server as well, using the Lightening extension in development for Thunderbird. While I kinda-sorta got that working, things are still very unstable in this area, so proceed with caution.

Got any questions, tips or tricks on using SyncKolab? Let us know in the comments. Thanks to this Newsforge article for the SyncKolab heads up.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, still clings to IMAP in a webmail world. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

You've taken the leap into Windows Vista, but once in awhile, your heart yearns for the classic features and functionality of XP. Maybe you've got software that doesn't yet work in Vista, or maybe you just want to see how a web site looks in Internet Explorer 6. You could dual-boot XP and Vista, but switching between operating systems in that setup takes too much time.

Instead, quickly toggle between Windows versions with an XP virtual machine running inside Vista using the free Virtual PC 2007. Here's how.

What you'll need

1. A Windows XP setup disc with a license.
2. The free Virtual PC 2007 download.
3. About an hour, depending on how fast your computer is.

Now, lots of lifehackers say that other virtualization software, like VMWare or Parallels for Windows is better or faster than Virtual PC. That may well be true, but Virtual PC is free, which is just cheap enough for home use. Virtual PC is best suited for casual users who fancy an occasional foray into an older version of Windows.

This particular article is for running an XP virtual machine inside Vista, which is almost guaranteed to work reasonably well. Here's my logic: if your PC is beefed up enough to run Vista, it'll run XP just fine as a virtual machine.

Virtual PC can be used to run other operating systems inside Windows XP, also - but be warned: without a fast physical machine with lots of RAM, your virtual machine may be slow too.

Create a new XP Virtual Machine

Once you've got Virtual PC 2007 downloaded and installed and your XP disc at the ready, from Virtual PC's Action menu, choose "New Virtual Machine Wizard" and you're off. Within the VM Wizard, you'll set how much RAM to allocate to the XP virtual machine, and you'll also set up a new Virtual Hard Drive with a size you set that XP will use to store data.

The Virtual Machine Wizard, like most Windows wizards, is easy enough to work through, so I'll spare you the text. To see the details of what I entered for a new XP Pro install, check out the New Virtual Machine Wizard photo gallery.

Once your new VM is installed, insert your XP setup disc into your CD drive. Then, within Virtual PC, select the XP vm, and hit the Start button.

Install Windows XP

Now, you've got to install Windows XP onto your new virtual partition. If you've ever set up XP from scratch before, this'll be old hat. To see what it looks like in progress, check out the photo gallery.

You'll be prompted to format a "new partition," which is the virtual hard drive you set up earlier. Also, you'll be asked to set XP's date and time and other regional settings. The first time you click inside the XP VM, Virtual PC will attempt to "capture" your mouse pointer. Once it's inside the VM, you won't be able to move it out of the window without using a special key combination (Right-Alt, by default.) Here's the initial VPC prompt about mouse capturing:

This mouse pointer capturing business is really annoying, especially for someone used to using VNC to remote control computers. Happily using some extras for VPC, we can stop the Right-Alt madness. More on that later.

I completed XP setup in about an hour on my Acer laptop. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.

Run your XP virtual machine

Once setup completes, XP will "reboot" and start running inside a window on Vista. Here's what that looks like:

Now, there are tons of virtual machine settings and properties you can fiddle with to your heart's content. But before you do that, be sure to install the Virtual Machine Additions to your XP VM for a few must-have extras.

Install the Virtual Machine Additions

To get extra VPC features like sharing the mouse and folders between guest OS and host, start up your XP VM, and from the Action menu, choose "Install or Update Virtual Machine Additions" (the key command is Right-Alt-I). VPC will go through its paces and prompt you to reboot the XP VM. (Click to enlarge image.)

Once VM Additions are installed, you can move your mouse between your XP VM and Vista host without having to press Right-Alt to free the pointer. Additionally, you can share folders from the host PC to the VM. Check out the Settings area to do that, as pictured (click to enlarge):

While Virtual PC 2007 isn't the best virtualization software ever (I'm still drooling over Parallels desktop for Mac, with Coherence and Windows support), it's pretty damn good for free, and it may be just the thing you need for a little retro XP action, fast.

Got any VPC tips, tricks, questions, rants or raves? Share 'em in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, likes to switch back to XP once in awhile. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

You're at an open wireless hotspot, but you don't want to send your web browsing data over it in plain text. Or you want to visit a non-work-approved web page from the office computer without the IT team finding out.

Using a simple SSH command, you can encrypt all your web browsing traffic and redirect it through a trusted computer when you're on someone else's network. Today we'll set up a local proxy server that encrypts your online activity from your Mac, PC or Linux desktop. Here's how.

SS-wha? you ask. Proxy server? Huh? Don't let the intimidating words and acronyms scare you off. This IS an advanced technique, but I've got my pom-poms out, because you can totally do it.

Let's get crackin'.

What you'll need

• An SSH server to act as your proxy.
  "SSH server" sounds frightening, but it's just another computer off-site that allows you to login into it via SSH. Most web hosts allow SSH access to the server; or you can set one up at home with free software.
• An SSH client on the computer you're using.
  Mac and *nix machines have SSH built right in at the command line. Windows users can set up OpenSSH with Cygwin. Here's more on installing the free OpenSSH with Cygwin.

How proxies work

In a nutshell, what you're doing with a proxy is setting up a middle-person between you and the internet. Using the proxy, your browser hands off web page requests to the proxy server, which handles the request and fetches the page for you from the internet. The web site actually thinks the request is coming from the proxy server, not your computer, which is a good way to obscure your originating IP address.

Additionally, the connection between your computer and the proxy happens over SSH, an encrypted protocol. This prevents wifi sniffers at the coffee shop from seeing what you're doing online.

For the more visual readers in the house, a (quick and dirty) diagram:

Now let's get down to the nitty-gritty.

Start your SSH tunnel

You've got access to an SSH server and you want to start using it as your proxy. To do so, you're going to set up a "tunnel" which passes web traffic from your local machine to the proxy over SSH. The command to do so is:

ssh -ND 9999 you@example.com

Of course, you're going to replace the you with your username and example.com with your server domain name or IP address. What that command does is hand off requests to localhost, port 9999, to your server at example.com to handle.

When you execute that command, UPDATE: you'll get prompted to enter your password. Once you authenticate, nothing will happen. The -N tells ssh not to open an interactive prompt, so it will just hang there, waiting. That's exactly what you want.

Set Firefox to use SOCKS proxy

Once your proxy's up and running, configure Firefox to use it. From Firefox's Tools menu, choose Options, and from the Advanced section choose the Network tab. Next to "Configure how Firefox connects to the Internet" hit the "Settings" button and enter the SOCKS information, which is the server name (localhost) and the port you used (in the example above, 9999.)

Save those settings and hit up a web page. When it loads, it's actually coming from the proxy server over an encrypted connection. You're golden!

More tips on using a secure proxy

• To quickly start your proxy, set up a shortcut to a batch script that launches the SSH connection in a click.
• If there are only certain (NSFW) web sites you'd like to use your proxy for, the Foxy Proxy Firefox extension lets you switch between your proxy and direction connection on a per-site basis. [via Ubuntu blog]
• Alternately, you can set up a separate Firefox profile that uses your proxy for all web requests.
• Set your proxy server to resolve DNS requests instead of your computer; in Firefox's about:config area, set network.proxy.socks_remote_dns = true. [via codeblog]
• Will at Security.engine says:
  

  For those with slower connections, you can use the -C command line option to use SSH's compression (gzip).

This technique is as old as the hills and there are dozens of different ways and tools to get it set up. In fact, tons of Lifehacker readers have mentioned it in the comments of past posts already. What's your preferred method? Do share your proxy secrets in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, tunnels through a proxy whenever she thinks she's on a dodgy network. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

As a prolific netizen, you generate lots of web-based feeds: your Flickr photos, your del.icio.us bookmarks, your weblog posts and your Lifehacker comments, to name a few. Instead of going here, there and everywhere to see all the content you create on the web, combine it all into one master feed using with the newly-launched Yahoo! Pipes.

Sure, feed aggregators are a dime a dozen these days, but Yahoo! Pipes can filter and process feeds in lots of fun and useful ways, no programming required. Today we'll make a master feed of all your online activity using Pipes.

Fetch all your feeds

To get started, head over to Pipes and start a new one. If you haven't used Pipes yet, the interface takes some getting used to, but it's fun to work with once you get your head around it. Basically you drag and drop modules from the left-hand column onto the canvas, enter information, and then link those modules.

In order to get all your feeds, you're going to expand the "Sources" branch and drag and drop the Fetch module onto the canvas. Within Fetch, you'll enter each of your feed sources, one by one, as shown.

Click on the + sign to add more feeds. Here's what my fetch module looks like with the Lifehacker feed, my del.icio.us bookmarks, Flickr photos, and personal blog feed.

Filter and sort

Now, here's the fun part. Using Pipes, you can filter, sort, and otherwise munge all those feeds you just fetched. Pipes offers some fancypants Flickr, Yahoo! Search, Local and other ways to process feed items, but we're just going to use the simple Filter and Sort.

For example, I just want to include the feed items from Lifehacker that have my byline in them. So, I drag and drop the Filter module from the left hand side. Then, click and drag on the dot on the bottom of the Fetch module, and connect it to the top of the Filter module. This is how you "pipe" the data from the URLs to the Filter.

Finally, enter your Filter criteria. For me, it was "Block all the items where the link contains lifehacker.com and the body does not contain the word 'Trapani.'"

Lastly, you want to sort the items by date so the newest stuff is on top. Things get a little dicey here, since different feed formats use different date attributes (like dc:date or pubDate), but we'll press on. Drag and drop the Sort module onto the canvas. Connect the Filter output into the Sort input, and define your Sort rule. I used a "sort by pubDate descending."

Preview your output

The Debugger, located in the bottom panel of the Pipes maker, can show you the current output of any module by simply clicking on that module. Once your pipe is complete, connect the last one - in this case, the Sort module - to the Pipe Output module. Select the output module to view the results of your handiwork in the Debugger, like so:

When you're satisfied, save your Pipe, and grab the permalink for it to view the results, and subscribe to the feed or publish it on your site. Pipe results are also available as JSON, information only you programmer-types will find exciting.

Check out the completed Pipe used in this example. Feel free to clone and base your own pipe on it.

Caveats and possible improvements

Now, after spending just a little time working with Pipes, you'll realize just how beta it is, and how many more features you want. For example, one thing I wanted to do for my master feed is prepend the item source to each headline, like "From Flickr: My cat" for a photograph of my cat. But, after wrestling with the Foreach modules for a long time, I surrendered - it doesn't look like a simple operation like that is possible. Yet. (Already more than one person has asked for it in the developer forums.)

Update, 2/28/07: It can be done with the RegEx module!

However!

This pipe is an extremely simple example that only scratches the surface . While you can't do little things like appending a string to a headline, you can do big things like taking user input like zip code and turning it into a city and state, or doing dynamic searches in Flickr based on feed item content and matching them up with photos is possible. Pipes is powerful, and hopefully we'll see it expand, fill in the little holes and stabilize over time.

For more Pipes tips and tricks, check out the O'Reilly Radar's recent coverage:

• Yahoo! Pipes: Some Tips
• Yahoo! Pipes: Deconstructing a Pipe
• Yahoo! Pipes: The Modules For Building Pipes

Got questions or a good pipe to share? Hit us up in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, would like to give the Pipes developers many candy hearts. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

While I love the convenience and features of Gmail, I hate that all my messages live on Google's servers. Without a local copy, if I can't get online, or if Gmail has an outage, my email's inaccessible.

While it's possible to download your Gmail with a POP client like Thunderbird, constantly running a program just to backup your email consumes CPU cycles and memory.

Instead, today we'll set up a nightly automated Gmail backup using the command line program fetchmail, which will go out, grab your newest messages, save 'em to your hard drive and exit, all while you sleep soundly in the knowledge that you've got an offline copy of your important email.

Warning: This process involves scripting, Unix commands and configuration file changes, so if you're a command line newb, hold onto your hat, cuz this'll be an adventure. It's not difficult, but if the thought of the command line makes you want to run the other way, your best bet is to use a regular point and click POP email client to back up your Gmail.

You game? Let's get started.

What you'll need:

1. A Windows PC.
2. A Gmail account with POP access enabled. (How do I enable POP?)

Step 0. Install Cygwin.

Fetchmail was originally written for Unix, and while there are several Windows ports, I've found the easiest way to run *nix programs on Windows is using the free Unix emulator Cygwin. If you don't have Cygwin installed, check out my previously-posted introduction to Cygwin to get it set up.

Step 1. Install fetchmail and related programs.

Once you're up and running with Cygwin (and one step closer to command line heaven), you've got to add on a few packages to get fetchmail going; specifically, fetchmail (duh), exim and procmail. All three of these are unsurprisingly listed under the Mail category in Cygwin's package setup:

Make sure those puppies are checked off and finish the installation.

Step 2. Configure fetchmail.

Now we dive into the fetchmail configuration. Like most Unix programs, a plain text file with a peculiar filename (it starts with a dot and ends in an rc) sets all of fetchmail's options.

So, in your Cygwin home directory (which, by default, is C:/cygwin/home/yourusernamehere/, create a text file called .fetchmailrc.

Then, add the following text to .fetchmailrc:

poll pop.gmail.com with proto POP3 and options no dns
user 'you@gmail.com' there with password 'itsasecret' is 'YourWindowsUsername' here  options ssl

Replace 'you@gmail.com' with your Gmail address, 'itsasecret' with your Gmail password, and 'YourWindowsUsername' with, uh, your Windows/Cygwin username and save the file.

Fetchmail is picky about the permissions on its configuration file, so once you've saved it, set the correct permissions by running the chmod command at the Cygwin prompt, like so:

chmod 710 .fetchmailrc

Now you're ready to set the fetchmail wheels in motion.

Step 3. Run fetchmail.

To retrieve your Gmail for the first time, at the Cygwin prompt, run:

fetchmai -vk

(The v is for verbose so we can watch fetchmail work; the k is for "keep messages on the server.") If all goes well, fetchmail will grind away and download your Gmail messages.

If you run into a problem, fetchmail will do its best to describe what happened. Most likely it's an issue with your .fetchmailrc configuration file, so be sure you've got that down pat.

Step 4. Check out your downloaded mail.

So fetchmail has downloaded your messages. Great! Now where the heck are they? By default they're all stored in a single file located here:
c:/cygwin/var/spool/mail/YourWindowsUsername.
This is an mbox email file which lots of email programs, including Thunderbird, can open. (Coincidentally it's also a plain text file, so you can open it up with a text editor, but over time it will grow very large and choke most editors. So your best bet is to open it with an email program.)

For the purposes of backup, the mbox file format is perfect; if you're not reading your Gmail - just backing it up - you don't have to worry about opening the file on a regular basis. But, when Gmail is unavailable, in order to open your backed up mbox file with Thunderbird, copy it to T-bird's "Local Folders" location, and it will appear as a folder, with all of your messages within it.

Step 5. Automate it.

Once you've got fetchmail working, you want it to run all by itself in the wee hours of the night while you're not at your computer. To do so, set up a batch file and schedule it to run once or twice a day.

This batch file, which I've lovingly named gmailbackup.bat, logs into Cygwin, runs fetchmail, and copies the resulting mbox file to Thunderbird's Local Folders area. It looks like this (sans the line breaks):

c:/cygwin/bin/bash.exe --login -i -c "fetchmail -k; 
cp /var/spool/mail/Gina "/cygdrive/c/Users/Gina/pathto/Thunderbird/Profiles/xxxxxxx.default/Mail/Local Folders/Gina";"

Your T-bird profile directory will differ from mine, and you should replace 'Gina' with your username. Save the file with the .bat extension.

Now, using Windows Task Scheduler, set your new batch file to run once or twice a day, and voila! You've got automated, hassle-free Gmail backups.

Disclaimer: This is my first time out with fetchmail, and I've only been running this on my own PC for a couple of days now. If you need to school me on the inner workings of fetchmail - and most likely you do - go ahead in the comments. In fact, any CLI experts who have improvements or suggestions for this system are very welcome to jump in.

Update: Big thanks to stickystyle for tipping me off to fetchmail. Thanks to Linux.com's Shashank Sharma for the gentle introduction to fetchmail and mutt; and to blogger Michele Campeotto for some insight on Thunderbird and mbox.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, has come to terms with her backup obsession. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

Like its sibling Firefox, the beauty of the open source Thunderbird email client is its extensibility. Sure we love our web-based email like Gmail, but Thunderbird is the ultimate open source desktop email app. Its pluggable interface lets developers freely build extensions to make it ever more useful. And ever more useful do a few key extensions make it.

File messages in a flash, customize keyboard shortcuts, weed out duplicate messages automatically, supercharge the search field and more with these 8 must-have enhancements for Thunderbird.

1. Nostalgy
Quick folder navigation and message movement

Keyboard-lovers will appreciate the ability to Copy or Save a message or simply switch (Go) to any Thunderbird email folder quickly using the C, S and G keys and Nostalgy auto-complete. Type the name of your folder and a list of matching suggestions appears, or do it CLI-style and use the Tab key to cycle through folder name suggestions. You can also set Nostalgy rules for what messages should go into what folders, so when your Chase bank online statement comes in you can shuttle it into your Finances folder in one keystroke. Similar to previously-posted QuickFile, Nostalgy has one killer leg up: the ability to undo your last move.

2. QuickMove
Assign keyboard shortcuts to move messages to assigned folders

For those of us with only a few folders, TB Quick Move assigns keyboard shortcuts to the "Move this message to this folder" action. This one is a must-have for those of you working the Trusted Trio with Thunderbird.

3. GmailUI
Make T-bird's search box work like Gmail with from:, to:, and subject: operators.

Let's face it: Thunderbird 1.5's built-in search box really sucks. But with GmailUI installed, using the "Expression" search option, you can use advanced operators like from:, to: and subject: in your search terms. (Plus it adds a few keyboard shortcuts that match Gmail's.)

4. Remove Duplicate Messages
Detect duplicate messages and delete them in one fell swoop

If you're like me and POP downloaded messages from the same account more than once, this extension's for you. Weed out duplicate messages in a fast and simple interface. Remove Duplicates detected thousands of dupes from my archives in only a few seconds based on criteria I defined. My email archives are a lot cleaner and happier now.

5. Mail Redirect
Redirect or bounce messages out of Thunderbird to another address

Great for exporting messages out of Thunderbird to another address without forwarding, Mail Redirect preserves all the message headers and "bounces" them to a new email address. I used this one when moving an account to Gmail.

6. Quote Collapse
Collapse quoted sections of an email

Shorten your message's view by collapsing quoted blocks, even in plain text messages. Especially great for mailing list messages with lots of quoting.

7. Contacts Sidebar
Add your address book to a quick access side panel.

By default the address book is like the orphan child in Thunderbird, but with the Contacts Sidebar you can dock your address book for quick access and adding messages recipients. With the extension installed, hit F4 to bring up the Contacts Sidebar.

8. QuickText
Insert pre-defined text snippets into your messages easily.

The one extension I couldn't have possibly processed the daily avalanche of Lifehacker email without, QuickText is a text substitution app that auto-replaces email-specific variables, like sender name, into your snippets. If you deal with lots of repetitive email using Thunderbird, QuickText is essential. See more on how to power through repetitive email using QuickText.

Let's hear it, Thunderbird-loving lifehackers: what are your can't-live-without extensions? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, likes her email clients open source and extensible. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

Tagging has taken off on the web, but what about on your hard drive? On the heels of Mac OS X's file tagging and Smart Folders features, Windows Vista users can now tag their files and use those keywords to organize and search documents on their desktop.

Back in April, guest author Nick Santilli described how he uses metadata as a filing system on his Mac. Today, with Windows Vista, this method works on a PC as well. Let's take a look at the not-perfect-but-a-good-start file tagging and saved search features of Vista.

Tag your files in Vista

The Save As dialog for certain* file types in Vista includes a field to add tags to your new file:

Tags have to be separated by semi-colons (not commas), and tags with spaces are allowed without quotes. Tag existing files using their properties dialog (notice the neat suggest-a-tag action):

Or in the Details pane and the bottom of the file's Explorer window when the file is selected:

Great, right? Yes. Except:

* Not all filetypes can be tagged. Microsoft Office documents and JPG images can be tagged in Vista, but RTF (Rich Text), PNG and my beloved .txt files cannot be tagged. This limitation, in a word, blows.

But let's move on.

Saved searches based on metadata

Now that you can assign your own metadata in the form of tags (and ratings, and in the case of images, title, subject and comments) you can find files based on a keyword in a flash with Vista's new search capabilities.

Remember how many times you wanted to shoot the stupid little animated Windows XP search puppy while he panted and dug as search ground away and finally came up with nothing you actually needed? Yeah, forget about all that. Vista's search is really good. If not Google Desktop good, then at least Spotlight good, and you can save searches as folders, too.

In the upper right hand corner of every Explorer window there's a search box. Enter and refine your terms there to get the files you need. Vista's search supports advanced operators, too, like author:, kind: (as in kind:document) and finally, tag:.

So to find all the files you tagged "chapter" and "inprogress", your search would look like this:

See that "Save Search" button on the toolbar there? That you can use to make a virtual folder - which gets updated on the fly with search results. Using tags and saved searches, regardless of what folder you save a document in on your hard drive, you can track projects in progress, reference material or any other tag search you'd like.

Vista creates a "Searches" folder which contains all the searches you save by default, but you can also drag and drop a saved search to your desktop, say, for quick access to files you're working on right now.

Piling versus filing

Saved searches give you 2 things: the ability to "store" a file in more than one "folder," and the ability to dump a file in any folder and still be able to retrieve it. Us Gmail users are already sold on the idea - with labels, and Gmail's archive - and Vista's implementation, while it isn't as slick, is a great move in that direction on the desktop.

But it could be so much better...

That all said, Vista's search and tag features can most certainly improve. The inability to tag every type of file is a serious limitation for people who primarily work with files other than Office documents. Also, the inability to search Thunderbird email messages and Firefox's history and bookmarks, like Google Desktop can, is also a huge strike against Vista's search for Mozilla fans.

Do you think tagging on the web will move down to the desktop? Or is adding metadata and creating complex searches too much work? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, files less and piles more every day. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

After using Windows Vista for awhile, even the most begrudging upgrader will find that it's got a lot more features and options for the power user compared to Windows XP. After weeks of test-driving Windows Vista full-time, there are several tips and tweaks I wish I'd known before I started.

In the spirit of saving you the time when it's your turn, today I've got a selection of useful Vista pointers for power upgraders.

Installation

Dual-boot Vista: It's still early in Vista's life, and you should probably wait to pull the trigger for a seamless Vista transition. But, for those of you throwing caution to the wind: if you're concerned about incompatibilities - or you just want to dip your toes in Vista without fully committing - consider dual booting your current PC with Vista. Here's a rundown of how to dual boot Windows XP and Vista.

Currently you'll need the full installation (not the upgrade disks) to do this the way Microsoft intended, but big brother site Gizmodo just posted a tip on how to install a Vista upgrade on a blank hard drive..

Once you've got dual-booting set up, you can set your primary boot partition (the default OS at startup) right inside Vista.

Hardware drivers: Before you start your Vista installation, do try to have all your current drivers downloaded or on disk and easily accessible. Vista's pretty good at detecting devices and installing the drivers itself, but just in case you get stuck with an unrecognized device, here's a good place to find missing drivers for Vista.

System checks

Grade your PC's Vista capabilities: Once Vista's installed you want to see how your hardware stacks up against the new OS, and maybe identify where a little upgrade here or there could improve your PC's performance. Here's how to get your PC's "Windows Experience Index." (We don't like the name either.)

Get a system health report: Admins who want more details on their PC's health and status from head to toe should run a System Diagnostics report. There might be more information here than you ever wanted to know, but this thing comes in handy when there's something awry.

Useful tweaks

Speed it up with a flash drive: Perhaps one of my favorite performance-improving strategies, using Windows Vista's new ReadyBoost technology, you can speed up your PC on the fly by simply plugging in a USB drive (or iPod or Compact Flash card or any external drive) with some spare megabytage. Nifty.

Disable UAC: Roast me over the hot, user-specific coals if you want for this one, but Vista's annoying "Windows needs your permission to continue" dialogs are nothing short of a total nuisance during your PC's initial setup, especially since they appear every time you try to install software. Here's how to disable User Account Control to install your favorite proggies in peace. Should you turn it back on when you're done? Well sure. It is a big part of Vista's new security strategy. But you know what you're doing, so I trust you'll make the right decision either way.

Repartition your hard drive in Vista: Once Vista's installed, and you decide you want to store all your data or music on a separate partition, you can create that partition on the fly right inside Vista. Here's a step-by-step on expanding, shrinking and creating disk partitions with Vista.

Trick out the Windows Task Manager: Finally! As compared to XP, the Windows Task manager in Vista can actually give you useful information about running processes. Windows guy Chris Pirillo explains:

The Windows Task Manager gives you a lot more troubleshooting information in Vista. Flip to the Processes tab, and in the View menu, click "Select Columns" and add Description, Command Line, and Image Path Name. Moreover, when you right-click a process, you can select either "Go to Service(s)" or "Open File Location." These are all long overdue options.

Indeed.

Run DOS games: If Vista's inability to run your classic DOS game in fullscreen mode on Vista takes the air out of your tires, check out Hackszine's workaround using the free, open source DOSBox.

Customizations

Disable the Sidebar: I'm not saying you shouldn't try out the Sidebar, explore different gadgets, and see if it all works for you. I'm just saying if it doesn't? Here's how to disable it.

Set up Favorite folders: Stop unnecessarily exploring the file tree! Easy access to folders you use often is essential for quick Open and Save As dialog action and Windows Explorer usage. Here's how to set up your favorite locations in Vista.

Quick Launch bar keyboard shortcuts: The Quick Launch bar in Vista is the same thing as in XP - except it's got built-in keyboard shortcuts! Here's how to open your favorite apps and documents from the Quick Launch bar with a key combination.

Saved searches: Finally, the most powerful and interesting thing Windows Vista can do is save folders based on search criteria, ala iTune's Smart Playlists and Mac's Spotlight. This one will get more ink once we figure out how to use all of Vista's file metadata well, but in the meantime, here's how to save your searches in virtual folders on Vista.

What have been your favorite power user discoveries in Vista? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, enjoys a good operating system upgrade. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

You already know you can customize Firefox to the hilt, and the browser saves all the settings, bookmarks and extensions you've worked so hard to perfect. But your spouse's bookmarks, passwords and preferences differ from yours, and you both use the family computer logged in as the same user.

If you share a computer with family members or roommates, or if you simply browse for different reasons - like work, blogging, school research, or play - you may want to use different Firefox settings each time you sit down to surf. Luckily, the Firefox profile manager can manage multiple browsing personalities for a single user on the same desktop.

Most likely, right now when you launch Firefox it uses the default profile to load all your preferences, browser toolbars, extensions, bookmarks, history, cookies, configuration changes and tabs, and you use this same set of preferences every time you surf. Firefox's profile manager, however, lets you create and choose to use other browsing personalities. Check out how one blogger uses a distraction-free work-only Firefox profile to stay focused.

To get started setting up your multiple browser users, you'll start up the Firefox profile manager. To do so, from the command line, run Firefox with the --profilemanager argument. On Windows XP, that looks like this:

On the Mac, the command is:

/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin --profilemanager

The first time you run it, Firefox's profile manager will show only the default profile you've been using. There you can create, rename and delete alternate browsing personalities, like say, "work," "blogging," or "ball and chain," as shown.

By unchecking the "Don't ask at startup" checkbox, Firefox will ask you each time you start it which profile it should use. If that extra nag is too much to take, you can create Firefox shortcuts that zip right into the profile you want using the -P parameter. So firefox.exe -P default launches the 'fox using the default profile; and firefox.exe -P blogging starts up the blogging profile.

So if Buffy, Xander and Willow all use the same computer but have their own Firefox setups, you'd create 3 Firefox shortcuts named for each of them, like this:

Then, in the properties of each shortcut, add the appropriate -P profilename, like this:

Run two profiles at the same time (Advanced profile nerdery)

By default you can't run two different Firefox profiles at the same time - and chances are there aren't many instances when you'd want to. However, just in case you do, Update: you can add the -no-remote parameter to your shortcut (Firefox 2, only, thanks, Dereck!)

So you'd edit the shortcut in the screenshot above to read:

\path\to\firefox.exe -P buffy -no-remote

in Windows, you can set an environment variable which allows that. Create a plain text file called firefox-blogging.bat (more on batch scripts here) which reads something like this:

set MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -P blogging

(Substitute your profile name where it says "blogging.") Create a shortcut to that script.

Now, if Firefox is running your default profile, you can launch your secondary profile at the same time using your new shortcut.

It's pretty crazy to have two instances of Firefox, with totally different extensions and bookmarks going at once. Check it out:

Profile backup

Another fantastic Firefox profile helper is MozBackup, a much-recommended utility that can package up a Firefox (or Thunderbird) profile and back it up to a separate file for later restoration. Here's what MozBackup looks like when you've got multiple profiles set up:

Whenever you make major changes to a profile (like installing an extension that might not be up to snuff), first back up the profile with MozBackup. That way you can restore things to their previous, working state easily.

However, if you ever do corrupt your Firefox profile and can't get the 'fox to start (which happened to a desperate reader who emailed us), the profile manager is the way to go. Launch Firefox with the --profilemanager parameter and create a new profile to start off with a clean slate. 99% of Firefox issues can be solved by starting all over again with a new profile.

How do you use Firefox's profile manager? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, suffers from Multiple Browsing Personality Non-Disorder. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

 

by Gina Trapani
Photo by Robbie Gates used with permission

Remember those invisible ink kits from when you were a kid? You'd write a secret message that no one could see unless they had a black light or the decoder marker. The digital equivalent of invisible ink is steganography software, apps that embed files and data inside other files, hidden from everyone who doesn't know any better.

You don't have to be a trained spy plotting international espionage to put steganography to good use. With some free tools for both the Mac and PC, you can embed secret information in image, PDF, HTML and MP3 files for fun or profit.

Why stego?

Unlike encryption, which obscures data in such a way that it's obvious someone's keeping something from listeners-in (and therefore heightens interest in that info), stego techniques offer no hint to the outsider that there's any private data contained within the visible file. Like hiding your valuables from burglars in an empty cereal box in your kitchen cabinet, steganography keeps the existence of the secret item from everyone but those in the know.

In fact, right here in this Lifehacker logo image, there's a message hidden for you:

Here's how to go about decoding it.

Hide in Picture (Windows)

The free Hide in Picture (Windows only) embeds files into GIF or BMP images, and lets you set a password to retrieve the hidden file. The Hide in Picture interface is barebones, as you can see:

Use Hide in Picture to decode the message hidden in the image above. (Hint: the password is lhacker.)

Other free Windows tools offer more filetype support. wbStego can encode and decode files in PDF's, HTML files or bitmaps. mp3stego embeds text inside MP3 files (command line and GUI interface available.) Here are more Windows stego software options [via Webby's World]. Be warned: while all of these tools work, none of them will win awards for being good-looking.

Pict Encrypt (Mac)

Similarly, the free Pict Encrypt (Mac only, thanks, Mirko!) adds text to GIF, JPEG, TIFF, PNG and MacPICT images, locks it with a password, and saves the file with hidden data as a PICT file. Its interface is a simple, barebones wizard that leads you through the encrypt and decrypt process. One difference between Pict Encrypt and Hide in Picture is that you don't embed another file; you actually enter your secret text into the Pict Encrypt wizard, as shown.

Pict Encrypt's text editor is pretty low level; some text navigation keys like Cmd-right arrow don't work, so be prepared.

Command line - cat your gif and zip

Finally, for those of you comfortable on the command line, reader Jason H. writes in with a nifty stego trick using built-in tools. The premise of this technique is to append a .zip file to the end of a .gif file, resulting in a file which is readable by both .gif programs and .zip programs.

Jason explains why this works (with the help, he says, from a long-lost thread at Something Awful):

It works because .gif files keep all of their information in the headers, while .zip files keep them in the footer. Since that's the case, .gif viewers read from the front of the file, while .zip readers read from the end.

Here's how to combine your .gif and .zip. At the Windows prompt use this command:

copy /B source.gif+source.zip target.gif

Or in Linux/Mac:

cat somefile.zip >> somefile.gif

The problem with this method is that not all zip programs can extract the resulting file. When I tried, both 7-Zip and Windows built-in extraction failed, but WinRAR handled it just fine. Still, that's something the intended recipient should know.

For double super-duper security, password the zip file that you hide inside the image. WinRAR and 7-Zip both let you add passwords to a zip archive.

Uses for stego

So now that you know how to hide files in files, why would you do it? Here are a few uses for stego:

• You suspect someone's illegally distributing your copyrighted PDF's or images, so you add hidden copyright information in them using stego tools to double-check.
• You want to exchange information like passwords or sensitive images over an insecure transmission protocol, like email.
• You want to embed secret files available only to a select few in a public forum.
• You want to impress your friends and co-workers with your sneaky ways.

Got any tales of steganographical goodness? Let us know in the comments. Now, go forth and have fun with your new invisible ink, ya big sneak.

Thanks to Lifehacker contributor Jason Thomas for introducing us to the concept of stego and to Lifehacker guest editor Joe Anderson for his post rounding up stego tools.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, fancies herself a super-secret spy. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

You're instant messaging your wife from the office and you'd rather the IT guys weren't privy to the conversation. You're IM'ing a potential investor about your stealth startup at the coffee shop. These are just two scenarios when you might want to keep your instant messages from prying eyes.

Using free, open source IM software, you can obscure the contents of your instant message conversations as they travel over the wire. Read on for the details on how to encrypt your sensitive IM's with the excellent open source instant messenger client Gaim.

Here's how this IM encryption setup works: Gaim uses public/private key pairs to scramble each message that it sends to your recipient, whose installation of Gaim de-scrambles that message and displays it to you. All this happens in the background with no intervention (except clicking on the button with the lock icon on it).

Warning, though: This isn't foolproof security. While encrypted IM's are not sent in plain text as they travel across the AIM network (therefore not easily read by sniffers), even secure IM's can still be logged locally as plain text. What encryption does buy you is some level of obscurity on a public or corporate network and any servers your messages might travel over in between you and your recipient. It simply makes messages difficult to decipher by possible IM listeners-in.

Here's how to set it up.

1. Install Gaim.

We've raved about Gaim for instant messaging before: it's multi-protocol, tabbed, multi-operating system (Windows/Linux) and open source. To use Gaim encryption, you'll need the latest stable version which, as of writing, is 1.5. Make sure you skip the 2.0 beta; the encryption plugin won't work with it. Download Gaim here.

2. Install the Gaim Encryption plugin.

Grab the Gaim Encryption plugin here. Run the installation and restart Gaim to enable it. In the Preferences area of Gaim, go to the Plugins pane and check off Gaim Encryption, as shown.

Then, click on the Gaim Encryption Plugin item to configure it further, as shown:

There you can see all sorts of useful settings, like automatically encrypting convo's with other Gaim Encryption users, broadcasting your secure IM capability, and automatically accepting encryption keys.

Set your options and close the Preferences dialog. Now, once you start IM'ing someone, you can hit the red lock button to encrypt your conversation on a message by message basis. Here's what that looks like just before hitting send on an encrypted message:

If the recipient does NOT have the plugin installed, Gaim will send a message saying the text is encrypted:

Once your recipient installs the Gaim plugin and restarts the client, the two instances of Gaim will swap encryption keys so you can communicate. You'll get a Gaim prompt asking you to permanently save or temporarily accept your buddy's encryption key:

Once you and your buddy have swapped public keys and started sending each other encrypted messages, you're cooking with both burners. Two red locks enabled on the Gaim interface will indicate an encrypted conversation, as shown.

What's great about the Gaim Encryption plugin is that it's Gaim-specific, not protocol-specific. So you can encrypt your Yahoo! Messenger or Jabber convo's over Gaim using it as well. Also, it handles all the key generation and swapping for you with minimal intervention, instead of making you go out and get yourself a key (unlike encrypting your email with a public/private key, which involves a few more steps.)

All in all, while IM security using this method isn't foolproof, it's certainly an easy way to obscure those sensitive conversations you'd rather not be having in the digital equivalent of a crowded room - available to hear by everyone and anyone who wants to take the time to listen in.

A grateful tip o' the hat to web site Of Zen and Computing for mentioning Gaim Encryption.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, likes her IM's scrambled with a side of turkey bacon. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

Need to look up a phone number on your home computer from the office? Or control the headless media server you set up at your buddy's place across town? Or help Mom figure out how to use Flickr? You already know that Virtual Network Computing (VNC) remote controls computers over the internet. But VNC is not a secure protocol - and it won't work if the remote machine is behind a firewall you don't control.

However, pairing up VNC with Hamachi, a Virtual Private Network application, you can remote control any computer securely over your private network across any combination of operating systems. Today we'll cover how to drive a computer over the internet with the free, secure and cross-platform VNC and Hamachi, the chocolate and peanut butter of remote computing.

The last time I wrote about VNC, several of you asked, "But why not easier-to-set-up solutions like LogMeIn.com?" Well, mostly because VNC software is cross-platform and free (as in speech - no upsell). It works on the Mac, Linux and Windows - and it offers a level of granular control that you don't get with third party services in the middle. It does require some comfort with advanced networking concepts, though, and I hear LogMeIn (which owns Hamachi, coincidentally) is great, so don't let me stop you from going that route.

Ready to set up VNC with Hamachi? Here's how.

1. Create your Hamachi network.

We've already covered in detail how to create your own virtual private network with Hamachi. Both the controller computer and controllee computer must have Hamachi installed; and make sure each joins one single network. Mac users, the HamachiX desktop app is a point and click way to get on your new private network if you don't want to wrangle with the Terminal.

Once you're all set up, your computers will appear in a Hamachi network with their own Hamachi-specific IP addresses as shown on the right.

2. Assign a memorable name to your server.

Now that your computers are on your virtual network, you'll want to address the VNC server easily. While you can type in its full Hamachi IP address, instead you can give it a memorable name (like "home-mac" or "workpc") by adding its IP and name to your computer's hosts file. If the VNC server on your network had an IP address of 123.456.789.0 and you wanted to address it as "workpc," here's what you'd do:

Windows

• Using Notepad or some other text editor, open the file named "hosts", which is located in the following directory:
  • Windows XP/Vista = C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC
  • Windows 2K = C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC
  • Windows 98/ME = C:\WINDOWS
• Add the following on its own line in the hosts file, using the sites that apply to you:
  123.456.789.0 workpc
• Save and quit.

Mac OS/X

• In Finder, from the Go menu, choose "Go to folder."
• In the "Go to the folder" dialog, type "/etc/".
• From the /etc/ folder window, open the "hosts" file in a text editor.
• Add the following to the hosts file in its own line, using the site that applies to you:
  123.456.789.0 workpc
• Save and quit.

3. Set up the VNC server and client.

Here are instructions on how to set up a VNC server and client. The controllee computer will run the server and the controller computer will run the VNC viewer. Free VNC client and server software is available for Mac, PC and Linux.

4. Restrict access to only computers in your Hamachi private network.

In order to connect to the VNC server, the port it's running on (5900 by default) has to be opened up on your computer's software firewall. Additionally, when you're using Hamachi and its predefined IP addresses, for an extra layer of security you can restrict access to that port to only computers on your Hamachi network. Firewall configurations vary from product to product, but in Windows Firewall, you'd go to the exceptions tab to open the VNC server, as shown.

Click on the Edit button to specify the IP addresses allowed into the VNC server - that is, the Hamachi IP of your viewer computer.

Sadly - and surprisingly - Mac OS X's built-in firewall does NOT support IP ranges the way Windows Firewall does. If you're behind a wireless router, here's how to poke a hole in that firewall to access your VNC server.

6. Connect to the VNC server over the secure, encrypted, private Hamachi network.

When it comes time to connect, first make sure both the VNC server and viewer computers are on the Hamachi network. From the viewer computer, enter the name of the server in the VNC client and click Ok.

Here's a screengrab of a VNC connection to my Mac and Windows XP machine from Vista. Click to enlarge (warning: this one's pretty wide):

And that's that! You're remote controlling your computer over a secure, encrypted connection.

For more VNC love, check out how to email your Mom a Single-Click VNC server that will connect to your viewer automatically.

Also, remember that Hamachi makes any server connection a secure one. You can also use Hamachi to make secure connections to your personal web server, home FTP server, home wiki installation, shared Windows folders, or simply use it to stream a remote iTunes library across the internet, too.

What's your favorite remote control or VPN software? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, thinks Hamachi + VNC = the cat's pajamas. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

How do you organize and rewrite over 5,000 blog posts into book format? This was the question I had to answer this time last year, when I began writing Lifehacker the book. After blogging every day for months, I had plenty of material and a book deal - now I just had to write it.

On Wednesday, part I of How to turn your blog into a book covered the basics for blogging your book idea, getting an agent, and drafting your book proposal. Now you've got 300 pages due in a few months. Today's installment will cover how I organized my research using an excellent Mac program called DEVONthink Pro and got the Lifehacker book manuscript to done.

Getting organized

Like most big projects, a lot of thinking, planning and outlining has to happen up front when putting together your book.

By the time you enter the writing phase, you've already got a table of contents and a detailed outline (which you included with your book proposal.) Writing the book is a matter of plugging the bits and pieces of your research into the right slots in your outline. But how do you organize a sea of blog posts?

There are lots of options, but after posting about it back in February, I chose to use a powerful Mac research tool called DEVONthink Pro ($80). DT creates a database of web pages, plain notes and word processing documents which you can organize in an outline; it has powerful associative search capabilities (ie, "You're writing about email overload? Here's all the documents that have those words - or similar words - in them") and it was able to suck all 5,000 of Lifehacker's blog posts into its database immediately.

DEVONthink could be an entire article in and of itself, but to just give you an idea of how I used the tool to organize Lifehacker posts into my table of contents, I've put together a little photo gallery of screenshots. Click your way through them from here:

Getting motivated

Once your schedule is set, outline is complete and posts are organized into chapters, you sit down with your publisher's Word templates (blech, I know, but that's the reality) - and fill them in. Your big deadline won't be the entire book manuscript; your editor will break down the enormous task into small chapter deadlines. I had a chapter revision due every few weeks, and each of my 10 chapters went through 3 iterations (where an editor would add corrections and suggestions and requests and send it back to me to revise.) The writing and review phase is the most painful, time-consuming and difficult, especially if you have a dayjob, family and life. Writing Lifehacker the book and the web site at the same time was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my career. I had Lifehacker coming out of my ears, and no time for anything else.

During this dark crunch time is when your book's "developmental editor" plays a big role in keeping you on track, motivated and on schedule. Much like a personal trainer at the gym who hovers over you, counting reps, encouraging you, yelling at you, and reassuring you when you have a meltdown, your editor - if she's as good as mine was - will make your deadlines small, clear and urgent.

Having someone depending on you to hand in a chapter on time goes a long way to getting it done. It's one of the biggest benefits of not self-publishing your book. For me, anyway, the commitment to someone else helped me meet my deadlines and get my chapters in.

That's not to say I didn't clench my teeth, pull my hair out, make excuses, slip on a few deadlines, and on most days, do anything but the writing I was supposed to be doing. I'd find any small, trivial task that I could do just to avoid writing. My dryer's lint filter was never cleaner and my fingernails never so consistently trimmed as when I was in the midst of writing my book.

Getting done

But in life, as in writing, nothing feels as good as handing in your finished product and going outside for a little sunshine. The most effective technique I used to meet my book's deadline is Merlin Mann's dash with my trusty old kitchen timer. I'd set that thing for 60 minutes and just GO until the beeper went off. This book is literally the product of dozens of 60-minute dashes. Self-bribes work well too. Promises of ice cream "if I get 2 hours of writing in" or another re-run of Queer as Folk also went a long way. Any way you can trick yourself into typing a just a few more pages is a good thing.

This is how, over the course of 5 months, 300 pages of Lifehacker the book got written. If I had to do it over again I'd spend less time worrying, more time starting (and re-starting), and I also would have gotten more friends involved, reading early drafts and pep-talking me. Writing a book is a big, scary long term commitment, and you'll need all the help you can get to finish it off without wanting to lock yourself up in a little, padded room.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Now, go get started blogging your book.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, is thrilled she doesn't have to open Microsoft Word every day any more. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

There's a world of difference between being a blogger and a book author, but more writers are wearing both hats these days. It's not surprising that pro writers are becoming bloggers, but "amateur" bloggers getting book deals are turning heads online and off.

If you've got a book in you, a blog could be just the stepping stone you need toward your first deal. More than ever before, literary agents are paying attention to quality weblogs, and publishers are looking for someone with writing chops and a fresh take on a topic.

Lots of readers have asked me how Lifehacker the book came about. While there are countless ways to get yourself a book deal, this week I've got a behind-the-scenes look at how this particular weblog transformed into a book.

Back when I started writing Lifehacker.com in January of 2005, I had no designs on turning the web site into a book. Bloggers live and breathe hyperlinks, and weblog content seemed too ephemeral, short and off-the-cuff to warrant the permanence of print. However, 2 years later, Lifehacker the book is on shelves. Here's how it happened.

The blog

Lifehacker works as a book because it's a topic-based site with a central thesis: that you can re-engineer your personal workflow to be more efficient using technology. Your book's also going to have a central thesis (unless it's fiction), and all the material in it will center around that. Write your blog that way too. Note that your book won't have pages in it apologizing for not posting more, or ranting about how you're sad the Jets lost yesterday. Like your book, your blog-to-be-book should center around a statement, one that you believe in passionately and love to write about. And you should write about it, every day, without fail.

Also, your blog-to-be-book should take a unique spin on an established topic. Dozens of personal productivity books have been written, as have computer how-to books, but Lifehacker's a fusion of those two genres under a new term, "life hacks." If you're looking to gain readership for your weblog, take a fresh angle on your topic, one that readers won't easily forget, one they'll come back to over and over again, one that the media can ask you about and quote you on.

Finally, spend a little extra time to write your blog well. Writing isn't some God-given talent doled out to the bespectacled intelligentsia with golden fountain pens and brilliant ideas effortlessly flowing out of them. Writing well is a skill that takes practice and hard work to earn. Fact is, most blogs are terribly-written, so a little effort can go a long way towards differentiating yours.

So pick your topic, set up your blog, and post to it obsessively, every single day. Consider blogging every day practice and preparation for when you'll be writing your manuscript every day. While you're blogging, it may not seem like you're working towards a book deal, but you are: every post you do is a tiny bit of research you'll refer back to later during your manuscript production.

The agent

It wasn't until I'd posted to Lifehacker 12 times a day every weekday for 9 months that I got a career-changing email from David at LaunchBooks, a literary agent who wanted to know if I was interested in turning Lifehacker into a book. That's the power of a consistent blog that builds its readership over time: instead of my pitching a book to an agent, and agent came to me. Since that initial contact by David (who did become my agent), SIX other literary agents contacted me asking about a Lifehacker book. Six! I'm not telling you this to toot my own horn. I'm telling you to prove that there are lots of tech-savvy literary folks out there, watching and waiting and looking for good quality web sites that will make for a book deal. It's not crazy to think the next could be yours.

What does a book agent do, anyway? you ask. I wondered the same thing, until it came time to write up my book proposal and pitch it to publishing houses. I don't know anything about book proposals, or anyone at publishing houses. Thankfully, David does, and without him I wouldn't have gotten a deal.

Update: If you want to contact an agent about turning your book into a blog, check out David's tips for making a convincing pitch when you do.

The proposal

Your book proposal is a detailed document designed to convince a publishing house your book is worth printing. I confess that Lifehacker's 14-page proposal took me 3 months to write - mostly because it scared the living daylights out of me. A book proposal requires a LOT of very specific information, like your book's:

• Title
• Thesis
• Intended audience
• Marketing strategy
• Competing titles already out on the market
• Publishing details, like the number of pages, whether or not there will be images ("figures")
• The amount of time it will take to write
• Detailed table of contents

I also wrote a sample chapter to give possible publishers an idea of the book tone and format.

As a naive, newbie author I assumed that the publisher's first concern is whether or not the premise of the book is a good idea. But as a business, their first concern is whether or not the book will sell. In a utopian society, brilliant ideas automatically sell, but that's not reality. Your marketing strategy - and I say yours, because selling your book will be on you, not your publisher - is the most important part of the proposal. So that means you have to think about your book's market, intended audience, other titles your readers would buy and the need your book will fulfill.

When writing your book proposal, the advantage any blogger-to-be-author has is this: you've already created an audience. Because of Lifehacker.com, I was able to include web site statistics, reader testimonials and site awards in my book proposal, which convinced my publisher there was already interest in the topic. Not to mention the thousands of posts on the web site which gave them a clear idea of my tone and writing style.

It took me 3 months to finalize Lifehacker's proposal, and a little less than that for David to finalize the deal with Wiley & Sons, Lifehacker's publisher. Now all I had to do was turn the thousands of Lifehacker.com blog posts into book form. More on how I did that in part II, to be published on Friday.

In the meantime, any aspiring authors out there have questions on agents, proposals or setting up a blog-meant-to-be-a-book? Hit me up in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, is still pinching herself about her book. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

The advent of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) forever revolutionized personal computing. A windowed system with point and click icons made computers usable for anyone who couldn't deal with a black screen and a prompt waiting for arcane textual commands. But in recent years, this enormous interface change is coming full circle. Amongst power users - and more and more, regular Joe's - the command line is making a comeback in modern web and desktop applications.

But I don't use the command line, you say. Oh but you do! Let's take a closer look at this surprising "circle of life" right back to the trusty old command line with some examples of CLI in modern personal computing.

I define a command line interface as a single input box that can execute complex operations based on what you type there. The command line isn't only used by Unix beards, Terminal freaks and Cygwin experts; you use it every day, probably several times a day. Case in point: the Google search box.

The search box

One might argue that a search box isn't a command line, but it is a single input box and specialized text commands (like Google's advanced operators) can do complex math, convert currency, specify filetypes, sites and more in deep, nested commands. For example, this valid Google search returns music files of certain types with the word Nirvana in the link from certain pages all over the web:

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) "Nirvana"

Similarly, Google offers the same thing for your local computer with Google Desktop. Hit the Control key twice to summon the GDesktop search box and you can use all the advanced operators Google's web search product offers.

(Here's more on mastering Google Desktop search.)

Microsoft is taking a page from Google's playbook with Windows Vista.

In Vista, the Windows key summons the Start menu and puts your cursor in the search box. From there type any keyword to get instant access to what you need.

Firefox's Location bar

The other unlikely command line you may not know you have is Firefox's location bar. It ain't just for web site addresses, my friend. Adam and I have both raved about Firefox's Quick Search capability, which assigns keywords to URLs for quick access to web sites. How they work is difficult to describe in words, so I put together a short movie showing off my current favorites. Click on the image to check it out (popup window).

Here's how to set up Quick Searches in Firefox, and Adam's methods for taking them a step further.

Application launchers like Windows' Launchy - and what I'd argue is the truest next-generation CLI available, Quicksilver for the Mac - are also leading the charge towards a command line interface.

Why CLI

Why not just point and click? you ask. Well, for tasks you perform often, the CLI is inherently more efficient. The introduction to chapter 4 of Lifehacker the book reads:

The difference between taking the main roads across town instead of back roads may be that the main roads are easier--but take longer. However, if you drive across town every day, it's worth your time learning the back road shortcuts.

The GUI is the "main road" from point A to point B: it's obvious and easy to describe and intuit, but it takes longer. The CLI takes longer to learn, but will get you there in less time.

How much do you use the CLI in your day-to-day computing? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, loves a good, powerful text command. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

Ok goal-setters, we're three days into 2007 - is your New Year's resolve flagging? Lots of you set out to lose weight, save money, quit smoking, get organized, write more and spend less time on the internet this year. But if January 3rd is seeing you fall back into 2006-style bad habits, take heart: sometimes you just need a little help from your webapp friends.

Today there are more consumer-oriented web applications than ever before built to help you achieve your personal goals. (Well, except that one about spending less time on the internet.) Follow me for a rundown of the best online tools for making, tracking and sticking to new resolutions - in January or any other month of the year.

Fit Day (lose weight)

The free FitDay food diary and exercise log tracks everything you eat in a day and its calorie, carb and fat information (much of which is already available in its database). Set up custom foods you eat often with their nutritional information for quick entry, manage weight loss and fitness goals and run helpful reports on your progress. FitDay isn't the most "Web 2.0"-looking application, but it's a big help for anyone looking for a free online diet tracker. (Weight Watchers charges 10 bucks a month for what FitDay offers.) Lifehacker reader Leisureguy says he's having great success with it. The FitDay.com webapp is free to use, but they also offer PC desktop software for $20.

Wesabe (organize your finances and save money)

The newest kid on the block, Wesabe downloads, tracks and tags your bank account transactions, offers customized, user-generated tips for how you can save money on specific purchases and lets you track long-term financial goals. The community aspect and tagging features alone blow the bloated Quicken and Microsoft Money out of the water, though Wesabe isn't as featureful as those desktop apps and some users might balk at handing over their financial information to the site.

To get a sense of how Wesabe works, check out this short tour of the site. (Note: I didn't produce this video myself, the Wesabe folks did, so it's not a critical review, it's simply a demonstration of what can be done with the site.)

Joe's Goals (daily goal tracking)

You've decided to quit smoking, post to your blog, bring lunch to work or regulate your sleeping patterns every day. Track your progress with Joe's Goals, a Ben Franklin-esque daily points counter. Did you spend the whole day without biting your nails once? Give yourself a point in Joe's Goals. If not, subtract a point. Great for gamers who want to set up a little personal competition for self-improvement.

Backpack (get organized)

If getting your shi*t together is high on your resolution list and you live online, Backpack - a free-form notes, to-do and calendar webapp - is the place to do it. Backpack is slick and useful for organizing your 4th of July barbecue or stowing away research for your next car purchase. Backpack plans range from free to $14 a month. If you're only interested in managing your todo and other lists online, consider Backpack's younger sibling service, Ta-da Lists.

NaNoWriMo/ National Novel Writing Month (write that novel)

You got a book in you, but starting is the hardest part of getting it written? Clear your calendar from November 1st to November 30th, where thousands of brave souls gather online to pump out 50,000 words of their book in 30 days. I did NaNo myself back in 2003, and it was a huge sense of accomplishment, doing something I'd only talked about in a structured, communal dash. It's only January, so you've got plenty of time to think up your plot and get ready to write in November.

Coolrunning (run that marathon)

I'm no runner - in fact, I'm more of the sedentary, asthmatic geek type - but Coolrunning's Couch to 5K training program got me jogging farther and longer than I ever did. If you're interested in doing a 5k or a marathon, you can track your progress and log your miles in a running journal with Coolrunning, as well as access their training plans and community forums.

In fact, our very own Adam documented his journey to the Chicago marathon last year from his decision to go, challenges staying motivated, and then the payoff of the final race.

Finally, if New Year's resolutions aren't your thing (and they're not for 22% of you), you can still be a goal voyeur over at 43 Things, a community goal-setting and sharing site. Watch out, though - you might leave 43 Things with several more items on your resolutions list than when you arrived.

How are you using the newest crop of goal and personal organization oriented webapps to achieve your goals in '07? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, thinks every day is a good day for a new resolution. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

Lifehacker's second year online has been a fabulous success thanks to you, our loyal, sassy and smart readers. While it may seem that we editors are at the wheel of this bus, it's actually all your tips, comments and mouse clicks that drive what gets published here on the site.

The posts that resonate the most for our readers tell us a lot about what's been on your mind all year when it comes to software and productivity. In the spirit of the Google Zeitgeist, today I've got Lifehacker's top dozen most popular posts of 2006, according to our traffic logs.

1. Hack Attack: Turn your $60 router into a $600 router
Adam came back from O'Reilly's Maker Faire event so inspired, he installed Linux on his home wireless router and practically made it do backflips. Far and away our most popular post of 2006, check out how to unlock the hidden powers of your standard issue home wireless router with free software.

2. Geek to Live: Top Firefox 2 config tweaks
What do a bunch of web-browsing geeks do the day after a new version of Firefox comes out? Jump right into its configuration to make it work exactly how you want it to.

3. Windows Vista Beta: How to dual-boot Windows XP and Windows Vista
Get your paws on an early copy of Vista but don't want to commit your whole machine to it? Here's how to have your Vista and your XP, too.

4. Geek to Live: Automatically back up your hard drive
Backing up your data is one of those things... you know you should do it, but who remembers? Here's how to set it and forget it. (If you look at no other post on this list, look at this one. Resolve to keep your data safe and redundant in '07!!)

5. Hack Attack: Top 10 Ubuntu apps and tweaks
When you decide to take the leap to Linux and banish Microsoft and Apple from your computer desktop and go Ubuntu ("Linux for humans"), take a gander at Adam's favorite applications and mods to make it more workable.

6. Hack Attack: Build your own DVR
Adam builds his on TiVO on the cheap with his PC and a copy of SageTV, and lives to tell about it.

7. Geek to Live: How to format your hard drive and install Windows XP from scratch
As most PC users who install and uninstall a lot of software know, the "wipe clean and rebuild my PC" routine can be a yearly event. Here's how to format your hard drive and start from scratch with a fresh new Windows installation.

8. Hack Attack: Become a Gmail master
Adam drops science on how to bend Gmail to your keyboard shortcut-loving will. This one changed the way I deal with email forever.

9. Hack Attack: One-click DVD rips
Rip DVDs to your hard drive in one step with Adam's freely-available AutoHotkey Windows app.

10. Hack Attack: Automatically download your favorite TV shows
Subscribe to your favorite TV downloads with BitTorrent using Ted.

11. Hack Attack: The self-sustaining iPod
You know you can use your iPod as a hard drive, and you know you can install portable applications on an external drive. Well, here's how to turn your iPod into a stand-alone plugin jukebox that'll rock out on any computer.

12. Geek to Live: Lifehacker Pack
Google's got Google Pack, and Lifehacker's got Lifehacker Pack. Check out our picks for best free software everyone should have to make their computer just work.

Year-End Editor Productivity Report

We're on about productivity all day long every day here at Lifehacker, so I thought a little report back to our readers about editor output here at the site was in order. (Read: this is my excuse to be a huge data nerd and start plugging numbers into Excel.)

In 2006 (as of today), we've published 4,823 posts here on Lifehacker.com, averaging over 13 a day, split between Adam, Rick, Wendy, our dearly-departed Keith and myself. Adam takes the prize for most posts for the year (1,613 in total - the man's a machine!); I'm right behind him clocking in at 1,597 (writing that pesky book slowed me down) and Keith, Wendy and our newest editor Rick share the other third of the pie.

Speaking of pies, a chart:

Now, I promise to never subject you to this kind of meta navel-gazing ever again. At least, not until next December.

Thanks for making 2006 an amazing year here at Lifehacker. All of you are the reason why we're here, pinching ourselves about the privilege of your time and attention every day. We're looking forward to a kickass 2007.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, will milk this year-end list thing as much as she can. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Geek to Live will be off next week and will return in January 2007. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

2006 was another wild and wacky year in software and web development. While Google launched or acquired a new product every week, Intel Macs made the unholy marriage of Windows and OS X possible, Joe Schmoe's became the self-made video stars of the web on YouTube, Internet Explorer got tabs and Microsoft finally ponied up the new version of Windows they've been promising (well, kinda.)

Here it is December and you know what that means: time for a best-of-the-year list. After the jump, check out my picks for best new software and web applications that rocked our world in 2006.

In no particular order:

Parallels (Virtual machine, $79.00)

With Macs based on the Intel chip, the once-impossible has become a reality: a computer that runs both the Mac OS and Windows operating system. While Apple's Boot Camp was a nice thought, forget rebooting your Mac to switch from OS X to Windows. With Parallels you can have the best of both operating systems at your fingertips, either on separate desktops or running in Coherence mode. THIS is the reason any on-the-fence switchers with cash for spendy Apple hardware and an affinity for that one Windows app will make the jump to a shiny new Mac.

Google Reader (Web-based feed reader, free)

My longtime love affair with Bloglines ended this year with a switch to Google's new feed reader, and I've never looked back. If you're a Gmail user, using Reader will be second nature; I can't imagine going back to a feed reader without the one line post preview, keyboard shortcuts or tagging abilities GReader offers. For any power RSS subscribers (meaning, you keep up with more than a dozen feeds), Google Reader's for you. Note: The first version of Google Reader that launched in October of 2005 barely turned my head; it was Reader's major revision in September of this year that got it onto this list.

Windows Vista (Operating system, various editions and prices)

I risk losing any indie hacker cred I may have with this pick, but hear me out. While Vista hasn't been released for home users yet, the fact that Microsoft made early versions of the new OS available as a free download to willing testers rates really high in my book. Being one of those willing testers, I was impressed with what Vista has in store for PC users early next year. Do I think Microsoft, as a company, is old and slow? Yes. Am I excited to show my Mom how to create a saved search folder on her PC? Yes.

Google Calendar (Web-based calendar, free)

I was a loyal and dedicated Yahoo! Calendar user for years, patiently enduring its antiquated user interface and monstrous entry forms. But after trying the dynamic Google Calendar, with easy calendar subscriptions and sharing and smart input (ie "Dinner with Mark at 6PM"), I was sold. Unlike Google Reader, Calendar got it right from the start.

Hamachi (VPN, free)

With more and more folks running home servers or simply wanting to access their documents or stream their iTunes library across computers connected only via the loose strands of the internet, Hamachi's free Virtual Private Networking client is an absolute savior. While Hamachi is more for us geeks than Average Joe, I don't go on a business trip or walk down to the coffee shop without secure access to my home computer with Hamachi. Here's more on how to create your own virtual private network with Hamachi. Note: Not sure if Hamachi was born in 2006, but LogMeIn bought it this past year, when it came onto our radars.

Campfire (In-browser group chat, free and paid plans)

While researching this article I was shocked to realize that Campfire only came out this past year, because I can't - and don't want to - remember working without it. While group chat is a pretty specific need - mostly for folks who work in the "virtual office" - it's a godsend for any group of people who need to chat without wanting to wrangle with regular IM clients and services. Here's more on how we use Campfire here at Lifehacker.

OpenDNS (Domain resolution, free)

For anyone whose ISP is cranky about resolving web pages, OpenDNS' free, fast, and huge distributed database of domain names can seriously speed up your web browsing session. Plus OpenDNS automatically fixes common URL typos like lifehacker.cmo and uses community-policed phishing protection from PhishTank. Set this one up on your parents' computer when you're home for the holidays this month.

Foxmarks (Bookmarks synchronizer for Firefox, free)

Ok, so Foxmarks didn't launch in 2006, but we first mentioned in here on LH in the last weeks of December '05. However, at least 3 of the LH editors agree that Foxmarks is indispensable for seamless synchronization of your bookmarks from home to the office or from laptop to desktop or any number of computers. What's that you say about Google Sync? Foxmarks beats Google Sync when it comes to bookmarks.

HONORABLE MENTION:

Ubuntu Linux (Open source operating system, free)

Desktop Linux has been around for ages, but Ubuntu ("Linux for humans") made a splash in 2006 among the geek set, including our very own Adam, who showed us how to triple-boot Windows XP, Vista and Ubuntu. You Ubuntu users should also check out Adam's Top 10 Ubuntu apps and tweaks.

EveryStockPhoto (Stock photo search, free)

Sometimes it's slow and most of the time I'd love to see evidence of a bit more movement behind the scenes at EveryStockPhoto, but it's still one of my favorite places to find stock and Creative Commons-licensed images for use here on Lifehacker. With more and more folks publishing online and licensing their work for reuse, search engines like ESP are more important and necessary. Here are 6 ways to find reusable media.

Stikkit (Personal information manager)

The youngest and most immature application in the bunch, Stikkit (forgive me) stuck with me because of its input smarts and ability to organize unstructured data with flexibility and intelligence. Plus it's pretty and fun to use, and in my opinion, is one of the best of "Web 2.0."

Note: While Adam and Rick didn't necessarily agree with all my choices, I'd like to thank them for their help putting together this list.

Ok lifehackers, here's your chance to agree or disagree with me. What are your best of 2006 picks? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, just loves end of the year best-of lists. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

Apple's free digital music software iTunes has been through three major versions since Lifehacker launched, and each new release just gets better. At this point iTunes is much more than just a music manager. While no piece of software is perfect - and iTunes could certainly stand a few more revisions - more than once I've wished my file manager handled all the data on my hard drive as well as iTunes deals with my 80 gigs or so of MP3's.

We've posted boatloads of iTunes hacks, workarounds, features, screenshots and tips over the past 2 years. But today I'd like to highlight some of the lesser-known but super-useful iTunes features available in the latest version.

Manage separate music libraries. (since v. 7)

Want to separate your speed metal collection from your spouse's Broadway tunes fetish? How about your, ahem, grownup movies from your regular collection? Used to be that you had to maintain separate playlists, or log onto the same machine under different usernames to do so. But with iTunes 7, just hold down the Shift key (Option on the Mac) when you launch iTunes to create or choose a separate iTunes library. Get detailed instructions over at Lifehacker reader BostonMark's HOWTO: Manage multiple libraries in iTunes 7 post.

Incrementally back up your library to CD or DVD. (since v. 7)

Want to archive your digital music collection? iTunes 7 offers a handy "Back up to Disc" function (in the File menu) that will burn your entire library to CD or DVD. If your collection's larger than one CD or DVD, it will prompt you to insert more discs to complete the backup. You have the choice to just backup your iTunes Store purchases or your entire collection; also, you can backup only the new songs from your last backup (that's the incremental part.) Keep in mind backed up discs can't be played in a CD or DVD player; they're only meant to restore your library onto your computer.

See Apple's official backup HOWTO to get started backing up your library.

Automatically download album artwork from the iTunes Store. (since v. 7)

I've got a love/hate relationship with the iTunes Store - specifically, I love to hate it. I resisted signing up for an account (which requires your credit card number before you buy anything!) until iTunes version 7, which can automatically download album artwork for your tracks from the iTunes Store. Now, album artwork wasn't a big deal to me, until v. 7's Cover Flow view, which looks like a jukebox flipping album covers while it's playing.

To grab your album art, you must be signed into the iTunes Store (and it turns out you can register using a PayPal account). From the Advanced menu, choose "Get Album Artwork."

P.S. There are a few non-iTunes Store ways to download album art for your library. LH reader Craig recommends Corripo for Mac and Mambo for Windows, both free.

Display duplicate songs in your library. (since v. 4.7.1)

Perhaps one of the most useful iTunes features for pruning down your music collection that has all these duplicates from swapping external hard drives full of MP3's with friends merging libraries with similar songs, the duplicate song view helps you quickly delete double tracks. From the View menu, choose "Show Duplicates."

Now, Show Duplicates points out matches between songs with the same artist and title, not song length. So if you've got a live version of a track and the recorded version, Show Duplicates may report those as doubles, so be sure to check the song's length to make sure the tracks are indeed doubles before you delete.

Organize playlists into folders. (since v. 5)

As your playlist collection in iTunes blossoms out of control, you can start grouping them into folders that represent emotions, events, or times in your life - like "Rainy day music" or "College tunes." Playlist folders really come in handy when you want to hear songs from several playlists on shuffle; simply choose the folder name as the source in the Party Shuffle area.

Tweak your Party Shuffle. (since v. 5)

Speaking of shuffle, you can adjust the way the randomizing algorithm works in iTunes to your liking. Set iTunes to shuffle songs, albums or artists, and also tweak the likelihood that songs from the same artist will come up more often during a shuffle session. In iTunes preferences, under the Playback tab, use the Smart Shuffle slider and radio buttons to do so.

Dynamic, search criteria-based Smart Playlists. (since... always?)

By far the best feature in iTunes, Smart Playlists are dynamic lists of music based on search criteria you define. From the File menu, choose "New Smart Playlist..." then enter the rules you want the music in that playlist to follow. The possibilities are limitless, but two particularly useful Smart Playlists include:

• Not Recently Played. Make sure you don't keep hearing that same Bon Jovi tune twice in one week. Set the Last Played field to "Not in the last week." (This might be my favorite playlist ever.)
• Music only. Merlin breaks down how to keep Audiobooks, podcasts and other speechy-type items out of your music only playlist.
• Holiday playlists. Manage holiday songs of different genres, so that Nat King Cole and Run DMC don't play back to back at your fancy office holiday soiree.

You can even add a playlist to your rules; for example, your Not Recently Played Music Smart Playlist could include only songs from the Music only Smart Playlist that you haven't heard in a week. Be sure to hit the + sign to add additional rules. Your playlist can Match "all" or "any" of the rules you list for it.

See also blogger Andy Budd's Smart Playlist scheme.

Lastly, Lifehacker reader Shane adds song keywords (makeshift "tags") to the Grouping field of individual tracks in iTunes, then uses Smart Playlists to create lists sorted by this "tag." Clever.

Manage PDF files. (since v 4.7)

One of iTunes' lesser-known - and most unexpected - capabilities is PDF file support. The feature exists for album liner notes that apparently come with certain purchases from the iTunes Store, but it can be used for any type of PDF document. Drag and drop any PDF into iTunes, and it will appear the way a song or video does with a little booklet icon next to it as pictured. To create a Smart Playlist of just PDF's, set the Kind field to contain the word PDF. Here's more on organizing PDF's in iTunes. You can also use the "tagging" technique discussed above to slice and dice your PDF collection by keywords using Smart Playlists.

Using podcast subscriptions to automatically download free music and videos. (since v 4.9)

You may rarely use iTunes' podcast subscription feature to download episodes of amateur radio personalities blathering about their cats. What you can do with iTunes media feeds subscriptions is automatically download music and video to iTunes, like all the MP3's on del.icio.us tagged "mashup" (a personal favorite). Here's more on how to find and add media to your iTunes library with del.icio.us (or any site that offers a feed of music or video.)

What are your favorite iTunes tricks or tips? Do tell in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, is still waiting for a better, open source version of iTunes. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

Remember when you were sure your computer had all the hard drive space you'd ever need? Gigabytes sell for less than a buck a pop nowadays, but with video, music, photos and web clippings hogging up hard drives more and more each day, that "Low Disk Space" message may come a lot sooner than you ever expected. Where did all those gigabytes go?

If you need to free up space on your hard drive fast, your best bet is to start wiping out the big space-eaters right away. But don't waste time guessing who they are; there are easy ways to inventory what's clogging your hard drive. Free tools for Windows, Mac and Linux map your hard drive usage so you can get a birds-eye view of what's taking up most of your coveted hard drive space.

Windows disk visualizer: WinDirStat

The free, open-source utility WinDirStat displays your disk usage in a color-coded map that shows what file types and folders take up the most space on your hard drive.

Using WinDirStat, it's easy to identify the biggest space hogs on your disk. The utility provides a three-paned view: tree view (upper left), list view (upper right), and treemap view (bottom panel).

The treemap represents each file as a colored rectangle, the area of which is proportional to the file's size. The rectangles are arranged so that directories make up rectangles that contain all their files and subdirectories.

As shown in the tree map view below, if you select a folder in the folder tree, the area on the treemap is highlighted for easy visual reference of what's taking up what kind of space.

Similarly, if you select a file type from the list on the upper right hand panel, the areas on disk taken up by that type file - say, MP3's or AVI's - are highlighted within the tree map. Select files by folder name, file type, or colored rectangle, and delete or move them from within WinDirStat.

Mac/Windows/Linux disk usage visualizer: JDiskReport

Like WinDirStat, multi-platform freeware JDiskReport also provides graphical disk usage statistics using more common pie/line/bar charts, as shown (click to enlarge).

Since JDiskReport is Java-based (hence the J), you'll have to download and install Java in order to run it.

Update: Reader Randy writes in to say that AVG detects the PSW.Lineage.PQ Trojan when installing JDiskReport on his PC. I was able to confirm that AVG does issue this warning; however, no other virus scanner I tried did the same. While I suspect this is a false positive, to be safe, PC owners might want to stick with WinDirStat. Thanks, Randy!

Command line: du (disk usage)

Not so much into this whole graphical user interface thing? Command-line lovers can also use the du (disk usage) command to get an idea of what's taking up what. The -h parameter makes the file sizes human readable. From Cygwin on Windows, or the Mac Terminal, cd into your directory of interest and try:

$ du * -h

The output will look something like:

28M     FileFormatConverters.exe
28K     LH_Logo_Store_Image.jpg
32K     Lazy_Store_Image.jpg
5.3M    photos-for-flickr
52K     Travel form - small Word 03 - gtrapani.doc
28K     Travel form - small.docx
16K     emailnewgoogdocs.png

A few more du hints:

• To just see directory sizes, drop the star and just use du -h
• To sort the list of files by size, use du -h | sort -n
  du -k | sort -nr (Thanks for the correction, Dr. Drang!)

This article at Linux.com, Disk usage analysis and cleanup tools, also has more on du and other 'nix-based GUI tools.

Of course, if you keep getting that "low disk space" message, it might be time to pony up a few bucks and get yourself a new hard drive. Here's how to install a new internal hard drive on your computer. Lastly, to avoid regular disk cleanups, schedule a script to do it for you. The hard drive janitor script deletes files from any folder (like your downloads or temp folder) older than a certain number of days. I swear the janitor has recovered gigabytes of space without any intervention on my part over the year I've been using it.

How do you manage your used and unused bits and bytes? How do you decide what files get kicked off your hard drive platter island? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, likes her hard drives spacious and mostly free. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

It's already December! Where did this year go? Feels like just last week we were talking about New Year's resolutions. No doubt you've got shopping to do and travel plans to make and a few work deadlines this month already. But with only 31 days left in 2006, there are a few other items you want to cross off your list that'll make 2007 even easier.

Get your free credit report. Once a year in the U.S., everyone's entitled to a free credit report from the three major reporting agencies. Buyer, beware! Those free credit report commercials you see on TV usually send you to sites that try to sign you up for all sorts of pay-for services you don't need. The site you want is AnnualCreditReport.com. Also, keep in mind your credit report is different than your FICO score, which does cost a few bucks to get.

Make your last doctor/dentist appointments of the year. Lots of health plans have a coverage limit for each calendar year. So if you haven't gotten to the doctor or dentist yet? Make yourself a December appointment to use up your 2006 allocation.

Make your tax-deductible purchases and charitable donations. If you itemize your income tax deductions, now's the time for a trip to the office supplies store or even the (yay!) computer store.

Also, keep yourself from feeling selfish when you're calculating your charitable donations on your tax return on April 15th. Put a few dollars towards rebuilding New Orleans or stopping global poverty or helping to fight AIDS before 2006 is up. (As a matter of fact, today just happens to be World AIDS Day.)

You can even pack up all those unused gadgets, clothing and other doodads laying about the house and take 'em to the Goodwill or Salvation Army. Get yourself a receipt to claim the tax deduction for those, too.

Max out your 2006 retirement fund contribution. You actually have till April 15th to do this with an IRA, but now's not a bad time to start planning. Especially if you've got one of those great office jobs with an employer who matches your retirement plan contributions (free money!) be sure you're socking away all that you can into your account this year for your rocking chair years. No retirement fund yet? It's not too late to open one and max out your 2006 contribution - here's more on how to open a Roth IRA.

Review your data backup plan. You've got backup religion, right? Great. Remember that your file backups are only worth how much you can restore them in the event of a hard drive crash. Now's the time to review your existing backups, and make sure that your copies are complete and working. What's that you say? You don't back up all your computers? Get it set up now - here's how to automatically back up your hard drive.

Rotate and archive your files. December's a natural time to delve into your overstuffed filing cabinet and toss any paperwork you no longer need or rotate out old files into storage. If your tax returns from 1993 and paperwork from the 3 last cars you owned are still in your filing drawer, it's time to purge. Here's a guide to your extreme makeover, the filling cabinet edition.

If it's your computer desktop or hard drive that's cluttered with files from 2 years ago, get your "My Documents" folder organized and archive any non-working files. Here's more on how.

Any more 2006 to-do's I missed? Post 'em up in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, swears this year went by in a flash. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

Your spouse has contacts stored in Outlook at the office, and you've got some in Gmail and in your computer's address book at home. How do you coordinate your holiday card list? With Google Spreadsheets, that's how.

Those of us who are still old-fashioned enough to *gasp* send snail mail holiday cards that we might even *double gasp* write in ourselves with an actual pen can still use tech to get organized. Today I've got a quick rundown on how to use Google Spreadsheets to create and collaborate on a holiday card list, with a little extra mail-merging and label-printing thrown in for good measure.

Export your contacts

Wherever your contacts live - whether it be Gmail, Outlook, or Thunderbird - your address book surely supports an export function. Export your address list as a CSV (comma-delimited text file) file from each of your address sources. The raw CSV will require a little massaging to get it ready to go into Google Spreadsheets. Open it up in Excel using the Text Import. Be sure to set the delimiter as a comma, or else it'll be a mess.

Once your address book is open in Excel, get to cleaning things up. Trim down your list to just the people you want to drop a holiday card and remove any columns you don't need for snail mail, like email, notes, cell phone number, etc. Shoot for six fields across:

First name, Last name, Street Address, City, State, ZIP

Leave your CSV file open.

Drop your list into Google Spreadsheets

Point your clicker at this extremely simple and public Holiday Card List spreadsheet. Anyone signed in with a Google Account can view it, but you can only edit your own copy, so choose File -> Copy Spreadsheet from the menu to make your own writable copy.

I added in a few sample entries in this Google Spreadsheet for illustration purposes, so feel free to delete those before you get started.

Now comes the fun part, the part which makes me want to press each individual Google Spreadsheets developer lovingly to my bosom (in a very platonic, virtual, metaphorical way): select the cells in your local Excel spreadsheet, hit Ctrl-C to copy 'em to clipboard, and then paste them into your Google Spreadsheet, and boom, everything goes into individual cells the way you'd expect. It's magical.

Wash, rinse and repeat for all your exported address book CSV files until you've got all the names and addresses you need in your sheet. When you're done, hit the Google Spreadsheets Collaborate tab and invite your spouse to view and edit this sheet. This way she can do the same and add any other folks to the list.

You'll notice I put in a few extra columns after the address information: "Received 2005," "Sent 2006," "Received 2006." See, here you're going to track your holiday card comings and goings, so that next year? You don't have to go through this entire rigamarole again.

Once your holiday card list is finalized by the ball and chain and yourself and stored safely up in the Google cloud until next year, from the File menu choose Export > .xls and save that final spreadsheet to disk.

But Gina, you say. Couldn't I just work from a master Excel spreadsheet on my desktop the whole time? Why get Google involved at all?

Well, Grasshopper, with Google Spreadsheets you get collaboration between you and your other holiday card-sending compatriots, plus the ability to check off who sent you what when. So when a few unexpected's send your wife cards at the office, she can log on, add their name and addresses. Then, back home you can run off a fresh, last-minute "holy crap I forgot about these people" mailing.

Option 1: Print your own labels

Now that you've got your list set up, it's time to address some cards. To print out your own mailing labels, download a Word template, like this here 20 per sheet jobber (which, sadly, requires Internet Explorer to download. I know.)

Open up that bad boy in Word, and from the Tools menu, choose Mail Merge. From here it's just a matter of following along with the Office wizard. When it comes time to import your addresses, choose the .xls file you saved above. Be sure to hit "Map Fields" to tell Word what fields are what when you merge.

Obviously, you'll need to pick up a package of mailing labels to print these out on (this template works with Avery 8161 and 5161). Or you can be cheap like me and just print 'em out on paper and tape them to your cards. The bigger your mailing list, the more worth it the labels become.

Option 2: Make the USPS send those cards for you

Alternately, the US Postal Service offers a pretty neat option for the lazy and/or busy: upload your spreadsheet to their site, along with a photo (or choose one of theirs), and they print out custom holiday cards AND mail them for you. This one's perfect for busy parents who want to send out a recent snapshot of the kids with the least amount of fuss.

I haven't tried it myself, but my brother did it last year and he had nothing but good things to say. The cards come out well, the pricing is reasonable, and you suffer no paper cuts or printing crises. The service is called NetPost, and while the web site isn't the most intuitive thing in the world to navigate, it's worth sparing yourself from messing around with all those cards, envelopes, labels and stamps.

See also:

This article was inspired by Lifehacker reader Donn, who asked the readers how to deal with his card list. As usual there are a ton of great responses in that discussion, including:

• scornish's G Sheets usage much like we described here.
• rogerkaplan's advanced Excel and Word mail merge trickery that puts my simple spreadsheet to shame.
• andyjoe16 uses Gmail's notes field to sort out who gets a card and who doesn't.
• Ryan updates an Access database each year that he started for his wedding invitations.
• jackson swears by Plaxo and its Thunderbird plugin.

Thanks all for your fabulous ideas. How are you coordinating and collaborating online this holiday season? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, is slowly getting won over by the browser-based office suite. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani
Photo by roland

Next week here in the U.S. many of us will be heading home to see family, share a turkey feast, watch some football.... and help out our less technically-inclined relatives. The pumpkin pie might not even be on the table before you get that inevitable request: "Can you take a look at my computer? It's been really slow lately."

Last year we covered how to fix Mom and Dad's computer when you head home for the holidays. This year, we'll save you the trouble of chasing down half a dozen PC fix-it tools in the midst of your post-turkey coma. Instead we've put together everything you'll need to right your famliy's borked computer into one meaty Thanksgiving download.

Introducing Lifehacker's Thanksgiving PC Rescue Kit

After a large dose of turkey and tryptophan, the last thing you want to do is cruise around the interwebs downloading this, that and the other to get the folks' PC in order. So we've gone ahead and done the work for you. Right-click the following link and choose "Save As:"

Lifehacker's Thanksgiving PC Rescue Kit (17MB)

This zip file contains half a dozen free tools we recommend to scan and clean and protect a malware-laden PC. Either download right now and save to your thumb drive, or bookmark this page for next week's tech support session. The entire file is less than 17 megabytes, which will leave room on your USB drive for those Neil Diamond tracks Mom asked you to download for her.

Your essential programs for post-turkey family tech support are:

• Ad-Aware (adaware.exe)
  Scan and remove adware and other malicious programs from the PC.
• ClamWin (clamwin.exe)
  Uninstall naggy Norton and replace with the open source anti-virus program ClamWin.
• Spybot Search and Destroy (spybot-s&d.exe)
  Scan and remove spyware and other malicious programs from the PC.
• SpywareBlaster (spyware-blaster.exe)
  Prevent spyware from installing itself on the PC in the future.
• CCleaner (ccleaner.exe)
  Remove the "crap" from your computer - like temporary files, cookies, system logs and programs set to start up with your computer automatically (and slow it down.)

Install each program in the zip file, and be sure to update the scanner definitions file before you get to cleaning. Of course, a little Windows Update, software firewall and Firefox action might also help; see how to fix Mom and Dad's computer for more details.

Got any family tech support techniques to share? Please do in the comments. But most of all, have a great Thanksgiving!

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, is dreaming of turkey gravy. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Geek to Live and will be off next week giving thanks and making stuffing, but will be back on November 29th. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

Serious photographers might scoff at the cameraphone as a viable device for taking great photos, but for civilians, it's a perfect tool for documenting your life. Sure it doesn't have the features or the resolution that your regular digicam does, but your cameraphone is always on and in your pocket, so you're more likely to get images with it you never would otherwise.

While the general guidelines of good photography apply to every type of camera, a cameraphone does have specific features and flaws you should keep in mind when snapping. After two years of documenting scenes of my life with my phone, here are some lessons I've learned for getting better photos from your cameraphone.

Capture the unexpected.

Your buddy wears a funny t-shirt. You want to remember that web site address for later. That fruit plate is something you want to try putting together at home. You just have go get one of those bumper stickers for your brother-in-law. These are the types of things you will capture with a cameraphone that you might not with another camera - because you simply wouldn't have it on you. You will have your cameraphone on you at those moments you never expected to take a photo. Take advantage of them.

Sneak it in.

The main advantage to a cameraphone is the stealth factor. You can take photos with your cell phone a lot more inconspicuously than using a traditional camera, so you can get great, unique shots you don't see many places. Not to mention that your subjects will be a lot less stiff and self-conscious without a big-ass rig snapping a pic of them.

There are places where cameras aren't allowed or are frowned upon - like, say, the NYC subway after 9/11 - where your cameraphone is A-OK (or at least will go undetected.) You'll have your cameraphone in your pocket in places where you normally wouldn't take a camera - like, say, the public bathroom with the witty graffiti on the walls. Plus, your cameraphone is so small you can get it into places a regular camera wouldn't fit, like inside that hamster cage. (Note: the stealth factor doesn't mean you should photograph things and people without permission; don't break the law and do ask folks before you snap away. Here's a photo release form template for those of you who want to publish photos of strangers.)

Get close and personal.

A good rule of thumb with any type of photography is to get in as close to your subject as possible. This holds true even more so for cameraphones, which produce lower-quality pictures than full-on digicams. Especially for portraits, just remember - the closer you are, the more personal and detailed your shot will be.

Keep it steady.

The steadier you hold your cameraphone, the less likely you are to get blurry, streaky photos (especially at night.) Of course, blurry and streaky might be an effect you're looking for - do experiment! But a steady cameraphone will increase your chances of a sharper photo. Be sure to hold the phone still a few seconds after you hit the shutter to account for any delay, too. (More on that below.)

It's all about the light.

As with all photography, lighting makes a picture. The beauty of the cameraphone is that it's a simple, stripped down device, but that means you need to help it along a bit when you can. Especially for a low-res cameraphone, make sure your subject is well-lit, and pay attention to the angles and strength of the light, especially outside. With a bit of experimentation, I've gotten some good stuff in different lighting situations, from sunset to shadows to indoor and outdoor light, like this one, taken out the passenger side window of a cab on the highway at sunset.

Use night mode.

Some cameraphone models come with a "night mode" setting, which unsurprisingly, is for taking shots in low light and outside at night. If you've got night mode on your cameraphone, do use it: it'll mean the difference between a black frame and a priceless night time moment, like this one of the campfire at dusk.

Turn off the fake shutter sound.

Lots of cameraphones by default sound a well-meaning but irritating-as-hell "click-click!" sound when you take a picture. Turn off that thing straightaway - especially if you don't want to announce the fact that you're snapping away.

Turn off the zoom.

I admit it: I got all excited when I realized my Nokia camphone had a zoom. But it's a digital zoom, and we all know that digital zoom results in sucky pictures. Sadly I have several to prove it. "Paparazzi mode" results in incredibly grainy, terrible-looking photos that only work if you're going to size 'em down. You can get up close and personal with your cameraphone, and make sure you do. If you're trying to get that sign in the distance, either walk up to it or forget about it. Use "people zoom" over digital zoom at all times with your cameraphone.

Keep your lens clean.

No doubt your cameraphone lens has fingerprints or dust on it or worse after your teething baby nephew got ahold of it. Make sure your lens is clean as a whistle before you start shooting.

Make your photo about one object.

The Avec Mobile web site says it well:

Photos rarely do justice to a wide open, beautiful scenery. Camera phones are not at their best when used in landscape photography, so it is better to get close and focus on one object, and if there just happens to be some beautiful scenery in the background, you may have an excellent image in the palm of your hands.

Plan for shutter delay.

Like many consumer digital cameras, there's most likely a delay between the exact moment you press the shutter button and when your cameraphone captures the image. Plan for this: hit that button half a second in advance to get the exact moment you're looking for, and keep the phone steady for a few seconds after it's pressed, too. A little practice will help you perfect this.

Download and archive often.

A photo no one sees is a photo that should've never been taken. If you can email photos from your phone, it's dead simple to share photos that might otherwise languish on your memory card, unviewed. Here's more on emailing photos to Flickr.

If you sync up your phone to your computer, download and archive your cameraphone photos as much as possible. I use a Nokia software package called Lifeblog ($39.99, free trial available) to keep my photos organized by date, along with all the text messages I've sent and received. It makes a really neat personal mobile journal without requiring any extra work on my side. Here's a look at Lifeblog (click to enlarge):

Here are a few resources I've used to write this article and improve my camphone mojo:

• Easy ways to take better photos
• Take better photos with your camera phone [Avec Mobile]
• 13 Tips for Improving Camera Phone Photos [Digital Photography School]
• Better Photos From Your Camera Phone [PC World]

What are your favorite cameraphone techniques? Do share in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, has taken hundreds of cameraphone photos over the past two years. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

We Lifehacker editors have never been in the same room at once, yet we work together every weekday from 5 different cities across 2 time zones. If your team is distributed across vast distances like we are, you need to set up shop not with Aeron chairs and cubicle walls but with the right collaboration tools. Thanks to the wonders of the internets and a growing crop of mature webapps, this kind of "placeless office" is now possible.

We've covered tons of web services that help long-distance co-workers collaborate, and you've got to choose what works best for your team. That said, today I've got a rundown of the web-based software that runs Lifehacker's virtual headquarters.

Group chat meetings - Campfire

Once a week the four of us gather in a Campfire chat room to discuss our evil plans for internet domination. Campfire beats a group instant messenger chat a bunch of ways: there's no figuring out who uses AIM and who uses Yahoo! Messenger, no chance of our other IM buddies interrupting our interaction, there's an archive of transcripts sorted by day and participant stored in one central place, plus Campfire lets us communicate right inside our favorite desktop app, the web browser. Not to mention Campfire makes sharing links and broadcasting files a breeze without having to go "Did you get my AIM file transfer? No? It's not going through? Ok, try hitting Accept again... What client are you using?"

Internal knowledgebase - MediaWiki

The wiki is an acquired taste, and more than one person went "Huh?" when I introduced them to the internal Lifehacker wiki. Yet, it's been an indispensable way to collaborate on and track documentation. There are tons of wiki packages out there, but the software that powers the Wikipedia, MediaWiki, has my heart. In fact, the way I love MediaWiki is illegal in at least 7 states.

The installation is not for the faint of heart (not hard, either - here's how to set it up), but MediaWiki is free, supports file uploads, advanced wiki markup and RSS feeds. The Lifehacker internal wiki - which is behind a password and editable only by LH editors - is a godsend for internal info, like writing style guides, passwords, lists of tools and links, story research and brainstorming and production guidelines. We're not all in there every day editing the wiki, but whenever we suss out a new process or make a decision, it goes into the wiki. Sure comes in handy when six months after the fact, you think "What did we decide about X?" and there it is. For folks interested in trying out a wiki without having to install it yourself, check out PBWiki.

Email - Gmail

If your team members are in far-flung places, email will be your main method of daily communication. Plus your web site will probably generate a constant stream of cold-caller customer service email - which means Gmail's for you. We've already fawned over Gmail enough to make you want to yak because of its anywhere-accessibility and large storage capacity, but for business email in large doses especially, the search and tagging and archiving is absolutely essential.

Vacation and other scheduling - Google Calendar

Hand in hand with Gmail, Google Calendar's sharing feature helps us keep track of team member vacation days, conferences, meetings, trips and scheduled articles. Plus it can SMS me a reminder 15 minutes before the aforementioned Campfire chat so I'm always on time.

Social bookmarks - Wists / del.icio.us

When folks who work on Lifehacker or any of our sibling sites happen upon links of interest to the whole company, they bookmark 'em with a predetermined unique tag using social bookmarking services Wists or del.icio.us. Everyone else subscribes to that unique tag's feed to peruse at their leisure. Much like a low-overhead internal weblog, a unique tag feed of company bookmarks is a great way to keep up without the interruption of an IM or email.

Document collaboration - Writely, I mean, Google Docs

This is my least-used app on the list, but a few enterprising guest editors have submitted articles to me using then Writely, now Google Docs. The experience was much better than emailing file attachments back and forth with revisions. Docs tracks who makes what changes with comments, which made collaboration a lot simpler than over email. Approver's also a great solution for top-editing situations where the boss has to give a green light on a document.

We're also fans and users of Sitemeter for up-to-the-minute site traffic stats, Google Analytics for in-depth traffic analysis and MyBlogLog for click stats. Adam and I both switched from Bloglines to Google Reader to keep up with web site feeds. And at the other placeless office where I work, I also use Google Groups and Yahoo! Groups to communicate and collaborate and share files.

Overall, this is a short list, but that's by design. As with all productivity tools, choose only as many as you need, no more and no less, and stick with 'em to get the maximum benefits.

What are the webapps your team's adopted to collaborate online? Any other types of tools you'd like to recommend, or get a recommendation for? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks to Barb Dybwad for introducing me to the term "placeless office" and making me go, "Hey, I work there!"

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, works anywhere and nowhere. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

You've gotten into the habit of stowing away information into text files. But how do you make sure your todo.txt doesn't languish in the dark depths of your hard drive, untouched?

If you keep your daily worklog, grocery shopping list, todo's, project ideas or even your calendar in text files, you can embed that information right onto your Windows desktop automatically with free Windows system monitoring software, Samurize.

Among other things, Samurize displays a constantly-updated text file right on your computer desktop, no text editor or command shell required, for quick and easy visual reference.

Note: Back in the dog days of July, we dashed off a post on Samurize, but to the newbie, it's not the most intuitive piece of software. This article serves as a detailed tutorial on getting started with Samurize.

Check out a Windows desktop with Samurize configured to display several .txt files on it, as well as a short process list:

What's nice about plain text on the desktop is that it displays information without requiring a separate app. Unlike widget engines that put big old chunky eye candy everywhere, its plain Jane appearance isn't much of a distraction.

Here's how to get it set up.

1. Download Samurize from here and install. Confusingly, the Samurize site lists the app and a config download on the same page - be sure to download the second item on the page, "Serious Samurize 1.64."

2. Launch Samurize. The work area will consist of 3 panes: the far left shows your desktop "meters" in a list, the second is the workspace, which represents your desktop and the meter placement, and the third shows the details of a "meter," as shown (click to enlarge.)

All of this information is saved in a Samurize config file. Start with the provided Sample.ini config file and make a copy by choosing "Save As" from the File menu and naming it my-config.ini. Any time you make changes to your configuration, back up your current file and work on a copy.

3. Add your first text file meter. From the Meters menu, choose Add Text file.

You'll notice a selected area placed within your workspace. Choose which text file you want to appear on your desktop in the TextFile Properties pane on the left. There you can tweak appearance like font and color. Also, to add a header (like "My todo list", in the Display tab, enter your text then place the "%v" below it, like so (click to enlarge):

Rinse and repeat for all the text files you want to include on your desktop. Adjust the size and the placement in the workspace area. Name your meters on the far left to keep track of what's what, and be sure to save your config file as you work. Right-click the Samurize icon, and from the "Select config file" menu, choose the name of your config (like my-config.ini). This will activate your working config on your desktop. As you make changes to a config, save them, and then from the right-click menu, choose "Reload Config" to see the changes on your desktop.

If your desktop wallpaper makes the text output hard to read, try using a Drop Shadow. On the Display tab, check off "Shadow." The default shadow color is black (ugly!) but you can hit the Shadow Color button to choose something better (I like a light gray.)

5. For command-line lovers, Samurize can also display the output of text commands on your desktop, like a constantly updating process list. To do so, in your working config file, from the Meters menu choose Add > Console Program.

In the Source tab on the Meter Properties panel, type TASKLIST as the command (or any other that produces text output). Hit the "Test Command" button to see the output in your workspace.

You'll notice that the output is in columns, but the font isn't fixed width by default so all the columns are uneven. Scroll down the Display tab and click the "Select Font" button. Choose a fixed width font, like Terminal, to get all the columns lined up. (Thanks, BlogJones!)

If you don't want to display ALL your tasks (it can be a long list), narrow it down to just the processes using more than 10000KB, use the TASKLIST filter operator, like TASKLIST /FI "MEMUSAGE gt 10000".

We've barely scratched the surface of Samurize, which is actually a quite advanced system monitoring tool which has all kinds of features and functionality. Display the current weather, the distance your mouse has travelled, the temperature of your CPU, how many unread messages are in your POP account and more with Samurize and its growing library of plugins and meters.

More on plain text

• Why plain text? A primer for folks wondering what the big deal is.
• GeekTool: Mac users looking for similar functionality (at least the text file/command line output on the desktop part) should check out the free GeekTool.
• Quicklog your workday: Append a line to a text file without ever opening an editor.
• Todo.txt: Manage your task and project lists with this command line system for text file manipulation.
• Keep your calendar in plain text with Remind: How to manage your calendar in plain text files.

Are you a Samurize user? What are your favorite meters or scripts? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, loves her .txt right on the desktop. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

Everyone in your office jump when you hear that tired old Nokia ringtone? Most modern cell phones support custom ringtones that can embarrass alert you when it's your phone that's got an incoming call.

Google up "ringtones" and you'll get tons of sites that will charge you a few bucks per tone. Pshaw! With some free software and a few minutes, you can make as many custom ringtones as your heart desires out of any MP3 in your music collection without paying a dime. Here's how.

What you'll need

In order for your MP3 ringtone to work, you'll need:

• A cell phone that plays MP3's and supports custom tones (most modern phones do these days)
• A way to transfer the file to your phone (using a cord, Bluetooth or an email to your phone)
• Free sound-editing software, Audacity

Edit your MP3

You could simply transfer the entire MP3 to your phone, set it as your ringtone and be done with it. But most full-length songs are several minutes, and your phone only rings for about 20 seconds, which will mean a lot of wasted memory space for no good reason. Plus, you may want ONLY the Sweet Child o' Mine guitar solo halfway into the song to play as your tone, not the first twenty seconds of the track.

Here's where Audacity comes in. Using the free, open source, cross-platform sound editor, we'll trim your MP3 down to the exact 20 seconds you want and add any effects as well.

1. Download Audacity, install and fire it up.
2. Audacity can't edit MP3's out of the box, it needs what's called the LAME compression library first. Download the lame_enc.dll file here and put it somewhere permanent on your hard drive.
3. From Audacity's Edit menu, choose Preferences. On the File Formats tab, under "MP3 Export Setup," hit the Find Library button and browse to the dll you just downloaded, as shown (click to enlarge.)
   
4. Now the fun begins. Make a copy of your MP3 file and stow it in a temp folder somewhere other than where your music player will find it. Drag and drop it onto Audacity to open it. Using the Zoom and play buttons, find the 20 seconds of your song you want to be your ringtone. (It helps to zoom in so the time appears in 5 second increments.) Use the select tool to highlight the 20 second ring, and from the Edit menu, choose "Trim." Now you've got your ringtone. Click to enlarge the screenshot.
   
5. If you're feeling bold and creative, browse around Audacity's editing tools, especially the Effect menu. I like to add a "Fade In" effect to the first 7 seconds of my tone so that it doesn't blast full-volume right away, if I'm in a quieter place and I've forgotten to silence the ringer.
6. When you're done editing, from the File menu, choose "Export as MP3." Save it as, say, ringtone.mp3.
7. Now, transfer the tone to your phone, either by corded or Bluetooth connection to your computer, or by emailing it to your phone's address.
   
8. Once the file is on your phone, set it as your custom ringtone. How to do this will depend on your phone model; on Nokia phones running Symbian you can do it in the Profiles area. On my Sprint LG, it's in the Settings area, under Sounds, Ringers.

Choose your tone wisely

It's totally up to you what song to use as your ringtone. However, do imagine yourself in different life scenarios and what it will be like when your phone starts randomly playing White and Nerdy. Sure, the Halo theme probably seems like a great ringtone today, but when you're standing on line at the bank next week, will you cringe when it goes off? The answer to this question is a personal one, but it must be asked.

Personally I like songs and sounds that already sound a bit ringtone-y. In the examples above I used the first 20 seconds of the Postal Services' Such Great Heights. My new text message notification is the Jetson's doorbell. (Go ahead, make fun of me.) You can also use Audacity to record ANY sounds from your computer, so you could, in theory, record snippets of audio from, say, YouTube videos.

For folks who don't want to mess with Audacity, the Mobile17 web service can take any MP3, trim it, and email it or offer it for download directly from their site. Mobile17 used to cost a few clams per custom ringtone, but now it's free (not including data transfer costs.)

Do you think custom ringtones are the devil or a godsend? What's your favorite ringtone track? Let us know in the comments.

UPDATE: Our resident Law Geek Stewart Rutledge points out that this method is also outlined in the Wired article, Stop Paying for Ring Tones. Thanks, Stewart!

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, is a sucker for a good ringtone. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

So many software downloads, so little time. Who likes to download, launch and click through that installation wizard application after application? No one, that's who - especially when you've got a computer to get set up and running quick.

Luckily, an innovative new Windows utility called InstallPad automates downloads and software installation. Simply provide InstallPad with your favorite apps' URLs and it does all the footwork for you - while you spend your time doing something much more interesting.

Today I've got a few useful InstallPad application lists that will load up your PC in a flash with the most essential software in one shot.

To get started, first you have to - you guessed it - download the InstallPad software (free for personal use, Windows only, the free .NET 2.0 runtime required.)

Unzip and launch the InstallPad.exe file, and you'll see InstallPad's default list of downloads:

To download and install the items on the list, check off the ones you want and click the "Install Checked" button. InstallPad goes off and sucks the setup files down from the interwebs and completes the installation process for each (with the default settings, mind you), no intervention required. Neat, huh?

The default InstallPad software list is okay - but you can edit and customize your own application lists, too. Your custom list would come in handy in a variety of situations. Say:

• You want to rebuild your PC quickly and easily without installing each piece of software separately.
• You've been summonsed to do a family tech support session, and you want to load up the malware-infected PC with cleanup tools in one shot.
• You've been meaning to try a few of those free apps those Lifehacker editors have been flappin' their gums about but haven't had a chance to go through the whole download and install rigamarole.

To make your InstallPad life easier, I've put together a few pre-configured application lists you can download, open within InstallPad and launch in one click. One click, dozens of apps! Now that's a deal.

To use my download picklists, right-click the file (yes it's XML, ya big geek) and save it to your InstallPad directory. Then click the "Open an application list" link in InstallPad, choose your newly-saved file and go.

Lifehacker Pack

The Lifehacker Pack software list is our most complete list of essential apps (updated for November 2006!). Download the InstallPad Lifehacker Pack list, which includes:

• 7-Zip (multi-file format zip utility)
• Firefox (web browser extraordinaire)
• FoxIt Reader (lightweight PDF reader)
• Gaim (multi-protocol, tabbed instant messenger client)
• Google Desktop (desktop file search)
• Google Earth (maps, local search)
• iTunes (media player)
• Picasa (digital photo manager)
• QuickTime (media player)
• Thunderbird (email client)
• VLC (media player)

PC Rescue Pack

The PC Rescue Pack'll come in real handy in a few weeks at Thanksgiving when Mom and Dad ask you to fix their computer. Download the InstallPad PC Rescue Pack list, which includes:

• Ad-Aware (malware scanner and cleaner)
• CCleaner (system optimization)
• ClamWin (anti-virus)
• Spybot Search & Destroy (spyware scanner and cleaner)
• Spyware Blaster (spyware prevention)

Media Pack

Oh, you free-loading, BitTorrenting, DVD-ripping, MP3-sucking, podcasting, remixing, iPod-trading media whiz, you! Download the InstallPad Media Pack list, which includes:

• Audacity (sound editor)
• Azureus (BitTorrent client)
• Democracy (Internet TV player)
• iTunes (media player)
• Picasa (photo manager)
• QuickTime (media player)
• VLC (media player)

Of course you can mix and match your own InstallPad application list, too - either by using the InstallPad interface, or taking the masochist route and editing the XML file by hand. To use the GUI, right-click the InstallPad list to add, edit and remove listed applications. There are tons of useful options, too; you can set an installation to run silently, auto-check for newer software versions (this only works where the version number is included in the download URL), and even specify alternate mirrors. Check out the Application lists page for more on the XML file format and editing your application list using the InstallPad GUI. Also, InstallPad supports the file:// protocol, so the apps you install can be located on your very own hard drive or network drive as well.

Notes and caveats: some but not all installations support the "silent" operator, which makes it run without intervention. Also, many download sites prefer you don't (or don't let you) link directly to their mirrors. In these cases, I've placed the installation files on the Lifehacker server; however, as this article dates, it may mean those setup files go out of date, too.

For a similar Firefox extension that auto-loads your favorite extensions, see Adam's previously-posted Firefox extension packs article.

Got any InstallPad installation list suggestions? Let us know in the comments - or post your own download pick list there.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, likes her downloads fast, painless and automated. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

You're a power web surfer, so of course you use Firefox. But while the Firefox team has done a great job of creating an interface that accommodates most web surfers, you're not most surfers. There are bunch of unnecessary buttons, menus and doodads in the Firefox control area (the "chrome") that you don't need, taking up space you could be using to see and do more with your web pages and tabs.

Screen real estate is precious; let's make the most of it. Today we're going to make over the Firefox default chrome and consolidate only the stuff you need into as little space as possible so you can scroll less and see more while you surf.

BEFORE: Check out the default Firefox chrome layout, with tabs and the bookmarks toolbar turned on (click to enlarge).

Not bad, right? Still, there's a bunch of space there that could be utilized a lot more efficiently.

AFTER: Here's what our consolidated version will look like (click to enlarge).

With the same amount of information and features, the compacted version takes up 23% less vertical space (about 113px versus 145px on my setup), giving you more room to see your web pages and less reason to scroll. (Also, the consolidated version fits more tabs across than the default. See the previously-posted Top Firefox 2 tweaks article for more on that.)

Let's take a closer look at exactly what went where in our makeover. All the highlighted areas and buttons in this screenshot are either removed or utilized in our compact version:

Let's get started making the most of every pixel on your chrome.

Note: Many (but not all) of the chrome adjustments below involve editing your Firefox userChrome.css configuration file. Detailed information on how to do that is included in the How to edit userChrome.css section below.

Combine the menu and navigation bar

This tweak's the basis of our chrome reorganization. Right-click on a toolbar and choose "Customize..." from the context menu. On the "Customize Toolbar" dialog, check the "Use Small Icons" box. Now, behind the dialog, drag and drop items from the navigation toolbar onto the menu bar, one by one - your back, forward, stop and home buttons, the address bar, and the search bar. When there's nothing left, click the "Done" button. Now you'll have an empty navigation toolbar.

Right-click on it, and uncheck "Navigation toolbar," and it will disappear, pulling everything up a row.

Remove the Edit and Help menus

Now that the navigation area is up on the menu bar, you want to get rid of anything you don't need taking up horizontal space, because you want to see as much of the current web page address as possible.

If you've got all the Edit keyboard shortcuts memorized (Copy Ctrl-C, Paste Ctrl-V, Find Ctrl-F, Select All Ctrl-A), you don't need the Edit menu. And if you're a Firefox power user, chances are you never use the Help menu, either. To remove both of these menus, add the following to your userChrome.css [1]:

/* Remove the Edit and Help menus
   Id's for all toplevel menus:
   file-menu, edit-menu, view-menu, go-menu, bookmarks-menu, tools-menu, helpMenu */
#helpMenu, #edit-menu {    display: none !important; }

Using that same code and the menu id's in the comments (between the /* and */), you can hide any other menu you don't use.

If you don't like the idea of getting rid of menus, an alternative is to compress them all into one menu item with submenu's using the previously-mentioned TinyMenu extension.

Remove disabled back, forward and stop buttons

If there's no page to go back to, no page loading, or no page to go forward to, why do you need those buttons on your chrome? The following userChrome.css tweaks will remove those buttons only when they're not usable anyway (they dynamically appear when they can be used.)

 /* Remove Back button when there's nothing to go Back to */
#back-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }

/* Remove Forward button when there's nothing to go Forward to */
#forward-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; } 

 /* Remove Stop button when there's nothing to Stop */
#stop-button[disabled="true"] { display: none; }

I (and maybe you) also never use the Home button. It can be removed with this snippet in userChrome.css:

/* Remove Home button */
#home-button { display: none; } 

Remove the Go button

Always hit the Enter key to go to the web page address you just typed in? Get rid of the unnecessary Go button hogging up pixels at the end of the address bar within your userChrome.css:

#go-button-stack, .search-go-button-stack {
  display: none !important;
}

Note that you can also use an about:config tweak to turn off the Go button. (Set the browser.urlbar.hideGoButton config value to true).

Remove the search bar magnifying glass

Also always hit Enter when you type queries into the search box? Want to see more characters in the input field? Get rid of that pretty - but useless - magnifying glass. In userChrome.css:

/*Remove magnifying glass button from search box*/
.search-go-button-stack { display: none !important; } 

Remove the "throbber"

The "throbber" - or spinning dotted circle in the upper right hand corner of the 'fox - does a nice job of advertising the fact that Firefox is in the midst of fetching a page, but the bottom status bar includes a page loading progress meter which is a lot more informative. Since the throbber offers less of the same information we already get on the status bar, let's kick its redundant butt off our chrome island. In userChrome.css:

/* Eliminate the throbber and its annoying movement: */
#throbber-box { display: none !important; }

Organize your bookmarks into folders

If you've got a bunch of bookmarks on your toolbar that scroll off to the side into a menu, consider organizing them into folders with short names so you can fit more horizontally. I like putting all my bookmarklets into a "bkmklts" folder and then organizing the rest of my bookmarks by project (Lifehacker links go into an "lh" folder, for example), but your system is up to you. The shorter the names, the better - alternately, just use favicons to represent a bookmark.

---

How to edit userChrome.css

In order to modify certain aspects of Firefox's chrome, you have to edit a file called userChrome.css stored in your Firefox profile directory. This file is user-specific and can be easily copied from one Firefox installation to another. Here's where your userChrome.css file is located, depending on your operating system:

Windows XP/2000
C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\chrome\
where xxxxxxxx is a random string of 8 characters.

Windows 95/98/Me
C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\chrome\

Linux
~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/chrome/

Mac OS X
~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/chrome/

With Firefox closed, open your userChrome.css file and append whatever chunks of code listed in this article float your boat. Alternatively, right-click the link to this copy of userChrome.css that incorporates all of the changes made in this article. Back up your existing userChrome.css, place the downloaded version in your profile directory and launch Firefox to see the changes.

What are your favorite Firefox chrome adjustments? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, can't seem to stop writing about Firefox. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

by Gina Trapani

The Firefox homepage calls the web browser "fully customizable to your online life," and that's not just marketing claptrap. Beyond the extensive options available in its menus and dialogs, there's a lengthy set of advanced Firefox preferences that can customize the browser to your specific needs. Sure, your brother-in-law's not likely to edit Firefox's default configuration, but you? You're a power surfer and you want your web browser your way.

In honor of the Firefox 2.0 release yesterday, today we'll dive deep into the bowels of the fox's config with a handful of my favorite Firefox 2 (and older) tweaks.

How to modify Firefox's configuration (about:config)

All this "advanced config" talk got you worried? Fear not, my friend. Here's the deal: Firefox's configuration is a long list of keys and values. To view this list, type about:config into the Firefox address bar. Then, enter the name of the key you want to update in the "Filter" field. The list will narrow to only the entries that match your keyword as you type, as shown.

(The key, of course, is knowing the key. More on that below.) To modify the value of a key, double-click on the value field and update the entry. To see your changes, restart your browser. Easy as pie.

Got it? Good. Let's get to tweaking.

Session restore

Fx 2.0 only: As a blogger and web mail user, it breaks my heart to recount how many times I've composed a long post or email message, then accidentally closed the tab or browser and lost all my work. No more! With Firefox 2, set the browser.startup.page key to 3 to restore your browsing session - with form entries intact! - every time you start your browser or undo close tab after a wayward click. Note: By default, Firefox 2 automatically restores your session if your browser crashes - but this does it every time you restart your browser normally. Thanks for the tip, Arun!

• Key: browser.startup.page
• Modified Value: 3
• Default: 1 (open your specified homepages)

Update: Ryan points out that doing it this way is like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. To do it the normal person way, from the Tools menu choose Options, and in the Main area, select "Show my windows and tabs from last time" from the "When Firefox starts" dropdown. D'oh! Thanks Ryan!

Tab width before scrolling kicks in

Fx 2.0 only: The biggest interface changes in Firefox 2 involve tabbed browsing. Power surfers who open more than a dozen tabs will notice that Firefox 2 minimizes tabs to a certain width, then sets the excess to scroll off the tab bar with left and right arrows. As someone who often has more than a dozen tabs open, not being able to see them all made me crazy. One solution is to reduce the minimum tab width so that more tabs fit in the bar before the scroll kicks in. The default is 100 pixels; I found that 75 worked better for me - page titles were still readable, but more tabs could fit. Compare 100 width, which fits 7 tabs across at this size (click to enlarge):

To 75, which fits 10 across at this size (click to enlarge):

To disable tab scrolling entirely, set the value to 0.

• Key: browser.tabs.tabMinWidth
• Modified Value: 75 (fit in more tabs before overflow enables scroll)
• Alternate Modified Value: 0 (disable scroll entirely)
• Default: 100

Tab close buttons

Fx 2.0 only: Another tab interface change in Firefox 2 is the addition of a close button on each individual tab. I happen to love this, but some hate it, saying it causes them to accidentally close a tab when just trying to switch to it. If you're a hater, revert to the Firefox 1.5 behavior by changing the browser.tabs.closeButtons value to 3. This will not display close tabs on individual tabs, and turn on a single close tab button at the right end of the tab bar.

• Key: browser.tabs.closeButtons
• Modified Value: 3 (revert to Firefox 1.5 behavior)
• Alternate Modified Value: 2 (don't display any close tab buttons)
• Default: 1 (display close buttons on all tabs)

Fetch only what you click

Fx .6 and up: Firefox has this wacky little feature that downloads pages from links it thinks you may click on pages you view, like the top result on a page of Google results. This means you use up bandwidth and CPU cycles and store history for web pages you may not have ever viewed. Creepy, eh? To stop that madness, set the network.prefetch-next key to false.

• Key: network.prefetch-next
• Modified Value: false

Limit RAM usage

All versions: Goodness knows I've done a good amount of belly-aching about Firefox's voracious appetite for RAM. (It's consistently the most memory-intensive process on both my PC and Mac.) Happily a simple config tweak got Mem Use right back down to a more comfortable number. Along with the previous prefetch mod, set your browser.cache.disk.capacity browser.cache.memory.capacity to a value that fits your total RAM.

• Key: browser.cache.memory.capacity
• Modified Value: Depends on your system's total memory. According to Computerworld:
  

  For RAM sizes between 512BM and 1GB, start with 15000. For RAM sizes between 128MB and 512M, try 5000.

Turn off chrome tooltips

All versions: I have an irritating Firefox problem on my Mac. When I try to drag a bookmark into one of my bookmark toolbar folders, the tool tip gets in the way and prevents the drop from working. Argh! Like you, I already know what all the buttons on my browser chrome do, so the tool tips aren't necessary. To turn them off, set the browser.chrome.toolbar_tips key value to false. Bonus is, it solved my Mac's bookmark drag and drop problem.

• Key: browser.chrome.toolbar_tips
• Modified Value: false

Lastly, though 2.0's default value is a lot more reasonable than 1.5's, you can use about:config to put off that annoying Unresponsive Script dialog on Javascript-heavy web pages.

Update: From the comments, a few more good about:config tweaks:

• layout.spellcheckDefault = 2 turns on Firefox 2's spell-checking in input fields as well as textareas. (That means no more typos in Lifehacker post headlines!)
• browser.urlbar.hideGoButton=true turns off the rarely-used Go button at the end of the address bar, for more room to see long URLs. Thanks, sister-ray!

See the MozillaZine about:config wiki page for the exhaustive list of Firefox preferences keys, their possible values and effects.

What are your favorite Firefox about:config tweaks? Post 'em up in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, is a sucker for advanced settings. Her semi-weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Wednesday and Friday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.