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 iPhone/iPod touch only: Streaming media server Orb has released free and $US9.99 versions of an app that lets you watch videos, listen to music, check documents and even stream live or recorded TV to your iPhone or iPod touch. Like other combinations that use Orb’s Windows-only (for now) software at their core, connection speeds and lag vary depending on the two sides of the connection, but streaming video to my iPod touch was decent enough, if a tiny bit out of sync. The main difference between the free and paid versions is a big one—the free version picks three items from each category to stream, while the paid app gives you full access to anything you want to grab. That’s just about all there is to it, though you’ll want to head to the app’s settings to optimise streaming for 3G, or Wi-Fi connections. The OrbLive applications are free and $9.99, and both require an iPhone or iPod touch running at least the 2.0 firmware. Check out our Wii media centre guide for a closer look at the Orb software itself. OrbLive Free and OrbLive [iTunes App Store via Gizmodo]
The working week is over! But add some organising spice to your leisure time by following up these tips from the past week on Lifehacker:
Download the upgraded Xbox experience (if you haven’t already) Dig up strange people from your past with Pipl Find an environmentally sound way to dispose of your old tech Play with Google SearchWiki and see if it makes your search experience any better, and use Let Me Google That For You to reduce Google hassles from others Find somewhere new to hide your loose cash at homeGoogle’s SearchWiki technology is being rolled out to Google account holders today, letting you rank and comment on search results. It’s an interesting approach to search, although I’m not entirely sure how much difference it will make to most searchers’ day-to-day activities. Read on for a quick screenshot tour of its main features.
Fixing a bedside lamp next to your bed or on the bedhead doesn’t provide optimum light. IKEA Hacker details how Carter solved the problem by combining a Minde mirror and two Morker lamps to create an above-the-bed solution that incorporates a mirror, easy-to-reach switches and well-positioned lights. There’s a bit of work involved, but the end result is impressive, and the basic materials cost just $63. If you picked up a pre-framed mirror second hand, you could save money and some framing work as well.
IKEA HackerFoxtel has expanded its online TV guide from a week to 14 days, improving your odds of not missing a vital program if you go away on holidays. Foxtel iQ owners can also use the guide for remote scheduling of recordings, though for a prolonged absence a series link is probably still a better bet. While you can access the electronic program via your TV (which remains a seven-day listing), the online version offers the ability to search by title, channel or rating, as well as the extra week of information. Foxtel
Apologies to Lifehacker readers for the late appearance of the US stories today — I was on an inbound flight from LA and we got stuck on the tarmac while Quarantine cleared a sick passenger. Everything should be back to normal now.
A press release from Google promises that SearchWiki, a technology that lets you rank results to improve their relevance to you and offer comments on their usefulness, will roll out on Australian accounts today. As of this writing, it hasn’t shown up in my account, but there’ll be a review as soon as it does. In the meantime, if you’ve tried it out, share your thoughts in the comments.
Google Operating System points out that it’s getting harder to find the free version of Google Apps For Your Domain, which lets you use Gmail and other services with your own preferred Internet address. The free option is still there, but it requires some digging to locate, with most links pointing to the paid-for enhanced edition and the only reference to the ad-supported version being a brief link reading ‘Compare to standard edition’ two screens in. If all that seems too fiddly, you can access the free version directly at this link.
Free Google Apps, More Difficult to FindAfter one too many false alarms, system slowdowns and hopelessly phrased help screens, I decided to ditch my installation of Trend Micro Internet Security Pro and switch to CA’s Security Center. I knew that would involve much uninstalling, installing and rebooting. However, I forgot that in the brief (and offline) period when I’d dumped Trend and hadn’t installed CA, Vista would reactivate its built-in Defender software, creating many a potential conflict down the road if I didn’t banish it from my system start-up.
To disable Defender, run it from the main Start menu, click on Tools, select Options, scroll down and untick ‘Use Windows Defender’ under the administrator section. Click Save and fight your way through the UAC prompts. Double-check that it’s been exited from the task bar as well, and you should be good to go. If Microsoft pushes ahead with plans to provide free security software for Windows users, this process will likely get even more fiddly in the future — but running multiple security software packages is pretty much always a recipe for disaster.
Looking at aggregate data of 3,000 email accounts over a three month period, researchers at Northwestern University say that emails are responded to randomly, but the volume of sent mail follows predictable patterns. Namely, late at night on the weekends it’s much less likely you’ll receive any reply, for the obvious reasons — sleep and time off from work on weekends. The study suggests that the best time to contact someone when looking for a timely response, such as Monday morning, and can help network administrators plan for high-volume periods. Connectivity at home is better than it was when the data was recorded, but is it just me or do you actively avoid email outside of business hours as well?
