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 Ever wondered how you’d look with a moustache or beard? The Schick Manscaping web site lets you upload a digital pic and try out a variety of facial furniture. A quick test suggests that a Fu Manchu mo doesn’t suit me, though it’s hard to tell if the manic fake eyes added by the app are the main reason. Although is hardly a productivity tool, it is a useful reminder that it’s Movember, when men across Australia grow sponsored moustaches to raise money for men’s health issues. Find someone you know on there and sponsor them pronto! Schick Manscaping
If you fall into the category of people who prefer dealing with staff when you hit the airport, it looks like you’re out of luck. A new survey from airline IT specialist SITA suggests that check-in kiosks — already the default option for the major Australian airlines — will continue to flourish. The press release boasts:
Nearly 49% of airports believe that self-service could become the primary means for passenger check-in in two to five years and only 27% stated that they would not have self-service as their primary channel in the check-in area.
For myself, I’d rather check-in online and skip as much of the process as possible, but that does rather presume you have access to a printer. Failing that, I’d rather use a kiosk than stand in a queue, presuming there’s enough of them around (Australian airports are relatively generous in this department compared to some in the US). What’s your preferred check-in approach? Tell us in the comments.
Getting home or car insurance online is pretty standard these days, but more specialised insurance categories can be harder work. If you’re self-employed and work as a contractor in many fields (including IT), professional indemnity insurance is a key requirement. Comparison site BizCover generates custom quotes based on your business size and activity, and will sell you the insurance directly if you find a deal that suits. Indemnity insurance is hardly glamorous, but better to hunt it down online than suffer from an unexpected lawsuit later. BizCover
Windows only: For ripping CDs or changing the format of your digital music collection, try downloading open-source BonkEnc. It supports a number of popular encoding formats, including LAME for MP3 and the eponymous Bonk audio, and by installing WinAmp’s decoding libraries you can convert files from any format supported by the popular player. It will interface with CDDB to make sure album and track information is included in the output files when ripping CDs, assuming you’re online, and will even create playlists from discs and folders. It supports all sorts of advanced options to optimise encoding quality in a small, light package — and is another option to rescue your music from Windows Media Player. BonkEnc is a free download for Windows. Thanks, nicholassimon!
BonkEncThe Google Reader Blog offers up one enthusiast’s handy technique for using RSS feeds to keep track of recipe ideas. Ann Verbin, a dedicated reader of cooking blogs, using Google Reader’s stars to identify recipe ideas she likes, then tags them with meal categories and key ingredients so she can easily find new meal ideas. She also uses “cooked” and “cooked-good” tags While you could just star items and then use Reader’s general search, the discipline of tagging helps find ideas “when you don’t have anything too specific in mind”, Verbin writes.
Earlier today we featured the first release candidate of Songbird, an open-source, cross-platform media player cut from the same cloth as Firefox. Songbird has been in development forever, but now the exciting media player is finally approaching its 1.0 release, and we were eager to sink our teeth into it. Keep reading for a closer look at Songbird—including where it soars and where it sucks.
While mathletes, scientists, coders, and statisticians will appreciate Windows 7′s built-in calculator’s programmer, statistics, and scientific modes, everyday people will love figuring out things like hourly wages and mortgage payments without a spreadsheet. Yes, it may seem ridiculous to give more than a few lines of attention to something as minor as a calculator, but until you’ve seen the built-in calculator in the Windows 7 Preview, you’ve haven’t known pure calculator bliss. This default calculator goes above and beyond the brick on your desk by including unit conversions, date calculations, and a neat new set of “templates” that let you do things like figure out gas mileage, hourly wages, mortgage payments, leases, and more. Check out some of the calculator goodness in the Windows 7 Preview.
Last month, we told you how eBay Australia was introducing limits on the postage that could be charged in a number of product categories, including books, CDs and DVDs. While the limits remain, eBay has slightly increased the maximum amount you can charge for flat-rate postage, raising the limit for books from $6 to $8, and DVDs from $8 to $10 (though this only applies to box sets, it seems). CDs are still limited to $5. Note that if you have a bulky item, your best bet is to list it with “calculated postage”, which should reflect the final cost more precisely. eBay
Windows only: If you can’t always get online to read your feeds, and would prefer to browse more than just post headlines, check out GreatNews. The default browsing view opens up feeds in a two-column, full-post view that’s more reminiscent of newspaper site layouts than long lists of post headlines. I had no trouble importing my collection of subscriptions from Mac’s NetNewsWire using an OPML file, though it took a long time — even though the product’s site declares “GreatNews is extremely fast. Even with hundreds of rss feed subscriptions.” For Bloglines users, GreatNews will actually synchronise with your the online feed reader — so that you don’t end up reading the same posts twice, and can keep reading even if you aren’t connected to the web. Other helpful features include labels for articles, great search functionality and the ability to watch particular sites and keywords to make relevant articles stand out and harder to miss. Any GreatNews users out there willing to share their experiences, good and bad? GreatNews is a free download for Windows. Thanks, CharityAethalides!
GreatNews: The Intelligent RSS ReaderThe Wall Street Journal walks through its own Budgeting 101 course, examining what makes a budget so hard to stick to and how to create realistic budgets that actually fit your fluctuating spending habits. Think about your life for a moment. Do you make the exact same purchases every single month? Of course not. What you buy differs from one month to the next. Yet many people use the “average cost per month” approach to budgeting, so that in any given month they can spend an average of $150 on clothes, and an average of $100 on a vacation, and an average of $300 on eating out, and so on.
