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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 A recent survey shows that one in seven people have suffered the same fate as Kevin Federline and been dumped via text message, Reuters reports today. The survey said 15 percent of the 2,194 people questioned had been dumped by text or email, although a quarter of those in the most tech-savvy 18 to 24-year-old age group would choose the traditional method—a letter.
Sounds like a high number to me, so it begs the question: Of course it’s easier to not look the dumpee in the eye and better than just stopping communication completely, but next time you’re considering giving your sweetheart the old heave-ho, do choose the message delivery medium wisely.
Lovers turn to text message to say it’s over� [Reuters.com]Windows only: Freeware application BootVis analyses your Windows startup, tracking the programs that automatically run and the drivers Windows loads, to show you what processes are slowing down your startup. To use it, just run the app and select one of the options from the Trace menu. BootVis will restart you computer, track your startup, and analyse the results. You can even ask BootVis to optimise your boot time, but I’d suggest hunting down your worst-offending startup apps and disabling them with msconfig if you don’t absolutely need them. Originally a Microsoft software, this abandoned freeware, Windows XP only tool is the perfect tool for troubleshooting a slow-to-boot system.
BootVis [Major Geeks via Inspect My Gadget]Bill Gates pens an article for BBC News on skills you need to succeed, saying that “a solid working knowledge of productivity software… has become a basic foundation for success in virtually any career.” Can’t argue with you there, Bill.
Windows Vista early adopters only: If you’ve been chomping at the bit to get your Vista PC more stable and efficient, you can get your paws on the release candidate of Service Pack 1, now available to the public for download. This is the release candidate, not the final release, so only brave, impatient testers should apply. Occasional Lifehacker guest poster Brad Isaac says: I have been testing it today and I think it’s worth doing… The benefits I’ve seen so far are an increase in speed, decrease in CPU cycling and my laptop seems to run cooler.
The SP1 RC is a free download for Vista users from Microsoft; if you install this now you’ll still have to install the final release when it drops. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 RC Public Availability Program [MIcrosoft via Achieve-IT!]
Google is launching a Wikipedia competitor called Knols (or Knol—the Google Blog post pluralizes, but the screenshot shows only singular) into private beta, which will feature user-generated articles by single authors that are rated by readers. Each article is called a “knol” (which, according to Google, stands for a unit of knowledge). Currently authors can write knols by invitation only, and topics aren’t limited to just one author. Instead, Knols readers will rate articles with the idea that the best, most informative articles will rise to the top.
The fact is that Wikipedia articles have reached the number one spot in tonnes of topic searches on Google, so it’s no surprise that Google would want to capitalise on some of those pageviews for themselves. But with the introduction of revenue and having placed the responsibility for content directly in the hands of just one author per article, Knols is a decidedly different from Wikipedia, but the aim for Google seems obvious: to capture an authoritative place in search results for reference content that currently belongs to Wikipedia. While the general public can’t currently browse Knols, we’re still curious: How do you feel about Knols? Are you happy to bow down to your Google overlords, or does the Wikipedia-competitor rub you the wrong way? Competition almost always means good things for users, but let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.
Encouraging people to contribute knowledge [Official Google Blog]Apple has introduced a simple and free way to create and sync your own custom ringtones to the iPhone using GarageBand (i.e., Mac only). The first thing you’ll need to do, if you haven’t already, is download and install the latest update of GarageBand from Software Update (at the time of this writing, that’s version 4.1.1). Once you’ve installed and restarted your computer, turning any song on your computer to a ringtone is a breeze. Here’s how it works.If you’re using a song from your iTunes library, just open GarageBand, open iTunes, and simply drag and drop the song from iTunes to a new track in GarageBand. Now click the Cycle Region button pictured above, which will activate the region loop tool.
Now adjust the length of the region to the section of the song you want to export to iTunes as a ringtone (40 seconds long or less), again as pictured above. Finally, when you’ve got everything set the way you want it, just go to the menu bar and click Share -> Send Ringtone to iTunes. GarageBand will automatically convert the song to the proper format and sync it to your iTunes library as a Ringtone.Simple, no? Likewise, if you prefer to create ringtones of your own music, just build your own tracks in GarageBand and repeat steps two through four. Unfortunately Apple hasn’t provided a similar tool for Windows users yet, and I imagine that won’t happen for some time, if at all. But if you’re a Mac owner, creating custom ringtones for your iPhone just became dead simple.
How to create custom ringtones in GarageBand 4.1.1 [Apple via TUAW]Google is launching a Wikipedia competitor called Knols into private beta, which will feature user-generated articles by single authors that are rated by readers.
While Linux is pretty efficient with a computer’s resources out of the box, there are still ways you can make it run leaner and meaner on your desktop. Using a little bit of know-how, a willingness to run a few terminal commands and a mind for efficiency, you can get every last bit of power from your Linux box, or get more life from an older system. Read on for a roundup of ways to slim down and speed up Linux that any level of user can implement.
This morning we’re thrilled to announce that our guest editor Kevin Purdy‘s agreed to stick around permanently! As Lifehacker’s newest Associate Editor, Kevin will continue to post up the best productivity and software news in the wee hours of the morning from the East coast while us West-coasties are still hitting the snooze button on our alarm clocks, plus cover Linux desktop news and tweaks. Yippee! Welcome aboard, Kevin!
