The Lifehacker Total Security Guide 
Spotify And Its Rivals: Subscription Music Services In Australia Compared 
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Top 10 Pervasive Tech Myths That Are Only Wasting Your Time Internode has joined iiNet in making access to the ABC’s well-regarded iView service unmetered, making it possible to catch up on your preferred shows without worrying about chewing through your download limits. And it looks like other ISPs might soon be emulating this excellent idea: Andrew Colley at AustralianIT reports that the ABC is re-tendering its hosting requirements for the service and may switch from Akamai to Hostworks. Identifying the relevant Akamai traffic has been one of the main barriers to making the service not count in bandwidth caps. The report also suggests Primus Telecom will soon offer unmetered access.
Internode announcement | Hostworks in ABC iView trial [AustralianIT]Windows only: Free utility Open++ adds a new submenu to your right-click context menu with advanced options for adding virtually any function you could want. Rather than add a bunch of its own custom commands (though it does have a few handy defaults, like Copy Path), Open++ provides a versatile utility for adding your own functions. You can launch files, folders, or applications complete with special arguments, a user-defined working directory, custom icons, and even custom file associations (so the command only shows up when you right-click a certain file type). Open++ is a free download, Windows only. Open++ [via FreewareGenius] Open++ Download Page [Tucows]
Apple releases a slew of firmware updates for MacBooks and MacBook Pro notebooks purchased after the October ’08 launch, which include fixes and stability improvements. You can get ‘em through Software Update by downloading the one that applies to you manually. [via Macworld]
One under-the-radar feature that came along for the ride with the recently released Firefox 3.1 Beta was multi-touch support for the latest generation of MacBooks. If you’ve got a new MacBook, the latest beta release supports swiping, pinching, and twisting your way through Firefox history, tabs, and more. [via]
All platforms with Firefox: Just uploaded new version 0.5 of the Better GReader Firefox extension, which includes new features and fixes to all the stuff that Google’s recent Reader redesign broke. In this new version you’ll find Dustin’s popular Absolutely Compact skin, plus the Remove Unread Item Count, and Mark Until Current As Read scripts. The Minimalistic skin has been fixed (thanks Scott!) and the extension is now compatible with Firefox 3.1 Beta 2.
Firefox with Greasemonkey: The Google Reader Minimalistic Greasemonkey script streamlines Google’s popular newsreader by removing unncessary images and links while also shrinking the text. Once you’ve installed the script, just tap ‘w’ on your keyboard to toggle between the default view and the Google Reader Minimalistic view. Google Reader’s recent redesign may have been an improvement, but between the previously mentioned Absolutely Compact script and this one, it’s clear that users still want to fit more content on Google Reader. For a better idea of what you can expect, check out the before and after screenshots.
Previously highlighted Eye-Fi—the SD card that wirelessly uploads images to your computer or the internet—has teamed up with popular note-taking application Evernote, allowing users to upload digital camera photos directly to Evernote without plugging in their camera. With Evernote’s ability to recognise text in photos, it’s an obvious win[Press Release]
Google shares the top searches for 2008 in their annual Google Zeitgeist, offering such gems as: Fastest Rising Global search: Sarah Palin; Most Popular “What is…” search: What is love?; Social Networks: Facebook; and Comfort Food: Ice cream. The zeitgeist is the result of billions of search queries that ran through Google’s search box over ’08, providing a great snapshot of what occupied our minds over the past year. The Australia-only figures were released earlier this month. Share any gems you dig up from the zeitgeist in the comments.
when we get to write about great Linux-based tweaks or downloads, we get pretty excited—and, apparently, so do our readers and visitors linked in from across the web. Today we’re looking back at the Linux-related posts that got the most attention in 2008, so read on to see what you might have missed, and what the open-source crowd is down with. Photo by Ypsy.
According to a TechCrunch interview with Google’s vice president Marissa Mayer, Chrome will leave beta soon—though, frankly, the all-important “when” is conspicuously absent from the post. But I guess in a world where Gmail has remained in beta for going on five years, just knowing that Chrome has plans to leave beta sometime in the next year (maybe?) is good news.
