The Lifehacker Total Security Guide 
Spotify And Its Rivals: Subscription Music Services In Australia Compared 
The Stupid Things You Do On Facebook (And How To Fix Them) 
How To Kill Time Productively On Your Phone 
An Entire Overseas Trip On One Prepaid Travel Card 
Top 10 Pervasive Tech Myths That Are Only Wasting Your Time Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): The hideBad Firefox extension instantly saves and closes your current browsing session and opens your default homepage with the stroke of a key. Let’s see, why might someone want to use this? Well, since the holidays are around the corner, let’s say you’re doing a little online shopping and that special someone walks in on you. Hit the shortcut, hide the session, and they’ll never be the wiser. Now just replace shopping with porn surfing and special someone with anyone and we’ve probably painted a more realistic picture of how hideBad will likely be used. Restored sessions can be password protected, and on activation hideBad can also clear your history and other incriminating tidbits. Naughty! hideBad is free, works wherever Firefox does. Use in conjunction with Stealther and you’ve got the ultimate porn mode for Firefox.
hideBad [Firefox Add-ons]Google says “Haere Mai” to New Zealand today with the launch of Google Maps NZ. The official Google blog said the company has offered ‘basic mapping’ to NZ for some time, but Maps is now offering a localised and customised site which includes full local business search capabilities, plus the Local Business Centre, so that any Kiwi business can get a free listing.Good news for our Kiwi friends, and to those of us still longing to visit NZ. One day, I will make the Lord of the Rings pilgrimage! :)
Keyboard grottiness is something which most geeks need to deal with, especially if you’re undisciplined (like me) and eat and drink while at the computer. The 43 Folders blog today talked about the so-crazy-it-just-might-work solution of putting your keyboard through the dishwasher. Because it should ideally be left for a few days to thoroughly dry out, it sounded like a good thing to try when you’re about to head out for your Christmas holiday. So is it time to say goodbye to the Great Coffee Stain of 2007? I have to admit I’m tempted. My little “Quiet Key” could use a bath. Do you dare put your fave keyboard through the dishwasher?The Great Keyboard Bath of 2007 [43 Folders]
The Cool Tools weblog features some neat-looking, refastenable cable ties for getting all those wires under your desk under control. The Millepede Cable Ties are basically reusable zip ties, and they sound strong! Cool Tools reader David Perry writes: The holding strength is amazing. I use them for all my wiring harness applications, but I’ve also connected multiple ties (the larger burly ones) to fasten down car-top luggage.
Car-top luggage! I’m partial to velcro cable ties myself, but I wouldn’t mind a package of these in my stocking. A set of 100 will set you back 25 bucks.
Millepede Cable Ties [Cool Tools]I often grumble about the amount of junk mail that pours through my letter box and wish I could nuke it like I do the spam that comes through my email inbox. The waste of paper is just obscene. I glare especially hard at junk mail delivery people when I see them shoving their junk mail into mail boxes with “no junk mail” stickers on them. I thought there was nothing to be done about junk mail – but I was wrong!The Australian Catalogue Association has a code of conduct saying members and their deliverers will not deliver materials to addresses displaying a “No Advertising Material” sign. This appears to be a voluntary code of conduct, but there’s a fairly long list of companies signed up to abide by it. The signees also agree not to litter or deliver when the mailbox is overflowing!You can contact the Distribution Standards Board to add your address to the “do not deliver” list. They’ll also provide you with a free reflective No Advertising Material sticker. Mail a stamped, self addressed envelope to:DSB Sticker, PO Box 7735, St Kilda Rd, Melbourne Vic 8004.Note that this won’t stop all unsolicited mail – newspapers are exempted, along with political pamphlets.The DSB also provides a hotline for consumers to report illegal or irresponsible distribution practices. It is 1800 676 136.I am signing up today!Thanks for the tip, Mary!
With the push towards “flexible workplaces” employers seem to be cottoning on to the fact that people have different body clocks and work rhythms, so they hit their peak productivity times at different points of the day. If you can adjust your work cycles to accommodate this, you can see some great results, says the New York Times Shifting Careers blog:
“Find your rhythm and schedule around it…Meeting people for lunch always derails me, yet for a while, I regularly met people for lunch. Then I got smart and instituted a fairly strong no lunch policy. Friends and colleagues teased me at first when I announced this. But they soon got used to my new approach, warming up to the idea of afternoon coffees. This works for me right now, but I’m sure I’ll find a new way of working six months from now. I’ll then tinker with my schedule again. Observe your schedule and notice the patterns you follow on your productive days. Then build a schedule around those patterns.”
This ties in with another tip she makes: avoid unnecessary meetings. I’ve had lunch meetings away from my home office every day this week and it really cut into my productive work time. Worse, by the time I was back at my desk I was well and truly into my mid-afternoon brain slump. I’ll be more strict with my scheduling from now on!
5 Time-Management Tricks [New York Times, via Web Worker Daily]
Our friends at the Lifehacker mothership have launched a slight redesign today, with a new site header, and Pacific time post timestamps. We hope you like it, but don’t forget to come back to us here at Lifehacker AU. :)
Almost all of the software and services we recommend here at Lifehacker are free, but sometimes something’s SO good you fork over cash for it. The question is, which apps and services made you open your wallet in 2007? I bought Leopard, Windows Vista, TextExpander, a Mozy account, Parallels Desktop (AND VMWare Fusion) and UltraMon (at readers’ recommendation), plus a few others I’m sure I’m forgetting. What about you? Give up the goods in the comments. (Here’s last year’s thread on this.)
Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Store and manage music with all those extra gigabytes in your Gmail account with previously mentioned Gmail File Space extension, now known simply as Gspace. Just install the extension, upload some music, and then enter Player mode. From there you can create playlists from the music you’ve uploaded and play them in the embedded flash player. It’s a bit of a hassle setting Flash to play files from Gmail (you have to change your Global Flash settings), but if you jump through the hoops it’s pretty cool to be able to store music and build playlists from your Gmail account.
Gspace [via Victor Martin Garcia]DIY web site Instructables thinks your thumbs are too precious to sit in the path of your clumsy hammer, detailing how to repurpose an old mouse pad as a nail holder. It’s a pretty simple idea (in essence, the mouse pad just holds the nail for you, though I think I’d double over the mouse pad to ensure a better hold of the nail), but if you aren’t a wiz with the hammer, it might save you a black and blue fingernail or two.
Nail Cushion version DIY [Instructables]
