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 with Greasemonkey (All platforms): YouTube Buffer Video prevents clips on YouTube from auto-playing, letting you buffer entire videos and prevent annoying snags when bandwidth is tight.
There’s already a Greasemonkey script for this problem, YouTube Alternate Video Player, included in our Better YouTube Firefox extension, that replaces YouTube’s JavaScript player with FlowPlayer to prevent auto-playing. This script, however, does it natively and, perhaps, without any third-party drag on loading. I did encounter one or two clips out of a dozen tested that still managed to start playing when a link was clicked, and, at least in my browser, mousing over the video with Buffer Video enabled blacks it out. But if you’re looking for a lightweight way to get better control over your streaming, this script is just about right. YouTube Buffer Video is a free download, requires Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension/scripting engine to run. Youtube Buffer Video [via Download Squad]
Citing a supposed inside source, the Googling Google blog says it’s plausible that a free Mac OS X version of Picasa, one of our favourite photo organizers, could drop next week. The post notes that two other statements by Google—about Picasa launching “later this year” and “larger presentations” at Macworld—point to exactly this kind of launch, and, for all the comments we’ve seen around here whenever Picasa is mentioned, it would certainly rank as an attention-getter at a conference where Steve Jobs won’t be making a big splash.
When you’re deciding what film to rent or download tonight, hit up the TasteKid movie suggestion engine. Plug in a movie that you like and TasteKid generates a list of suggestions based on your movie tastes, as well as supplemental suggestions based on the frequency of other movies people are searching for. Between the two it’s hard to not find an answer to “What should I watch?” To put it to the test, I entered a relatively obscure movie, Things to do in Denver When You’re Dead. TasteKid suggested three movies it thought I might enjoy: Grosse Pointe Blank, Sin City, and Pulp Fiction. While I’ve already seen all three, Taste Kid was dead on—I thoroughly enjoyed watching them.
TasteKid [via MakeUseOf]Gmail’s latest Labs experiment adds an option to send SMS text messages to contacts from the Google Chat sidebar, at no cost and with replies arriving as new chat lines. Like other Labs, you’ll have to enable it by heading to the Labs icon in your Gmail settings and enabling “Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat,” although the feature is apparently being rolled out gradually to users. Once enabled, you can type and choose a contact from the Chat sidebar and select “Send SMS” from the options that pop up to the right of their name, or select “Video & more” from the options dialog on a chat window. Enter a phone number, type your chat, and Google tells the recipient that they can reply like any other text. Gmail’s definitely making a play to become your all-in-one contact and messaging centre, and free text messaging is a powerful tool to getting there. If you’ve tried out Gchat-powered texting, tell us your experiences in the comments. Screen via Gizmodo. Sending SMS from Gmail [Gmail Help Centre via Google Operating System]
Ever wonder how long it would take a dedicated soul to bust into your email, home network, or other password-protected places? Enter your character counts into Hackosis’ Brute Force Calculator, which crunches how long it would take a typical PC to get through. Don’t want to share your password stats? Get the count offline with a spreadsheet from Mandylion Labs, and then get to locking down your email. [via]
Windows only: When it comes to getting deep into a Windows system and tweaking the stuff you can’t get to from the Control Panel, the free tools provided by Nirsoft and Sysinternals are hard to beat. Windows System Control Centre is a free, no-install app that provides a convenient front-end for running every app released by those groups. The app requires that you keep each group of utilities in the same directory, but the majority of them are portable and USB-friendly. System Control Centre requires that you download the apps in question, but it also links to a few standard high-level Windows tools for all-in-one fix-it work. System Control Centre is a free download for Windows systems only. Update: austin316gb points out two links to download all the Sysinternals and Nirsoft apps in short order.
Windows System Control Center [via gHacks]Don’t duck the opportunity — keep your weekend productive by catching up with these tips from the past week on Lifehacker:Get registered for linux.conf.au before the early-bird discount disappears. Don’t you deserve a geeky break in Tasmania? Download a few Flickr videos with Orbit Downloader. Don’t you need permanent copies of your friends’ most embarrassing video moments? Rig up a reward label for your mobile to keep it safe if it gets stolen. Don’t you deserve peace of mind? Strip the DRM from your iTunes library without wasting CDs. Don’t you deserve to listen to music you’ve actually paid for? Set up some online gift groups with Blankless and start preparing for Christmas. Don’t you deserve some half-decent presents?
Decoder runs through a useful tip for anyone regularly finding themselves navigating the same IVR prompts (on a calling card, for instance): using the pause function found on most Nokia models, you can type ahead through the relevant menus. Combine that with a speed dial key and you’ve got one-key convenience. As the video demonstrates, you may need multiple pauses depending on the length of the voice prompts, and some trial and error will probably be involved. For most Nokia phones, pause is accessed by pressing the star key three times; if you’ve got similar shortcuts for other manufacturers, share them in the comments. Nokia tip: Save time, bypass customer service menus with the pause key [Decoder]
Most people get lazy and just multiply by 1000 (rather than 1024) when converting between kilobytes and megabytes in their heads, but as files get larger, that gets less accurate. BigPond’s customer support site includes a handy ready reckoner that converts between bytes, kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes. Although not particularly unique, it’s a useful bookmark if you find yourself flummoxed by the mathematics of file size. BigPond Byte Calculator
Following our post earlier this week on sticking a reward-if-found label to your mobile, several commenters suggested an alternative that’s potentially less aesthetically intrusive: setting your phone’s wallpaper to display the same information. That’s also a neat idea, though with two caveats: not all mobiles display wallpaper while they’re locked, and an external label, while uglier, is also more likely to get noticed. For maximum peace-of-mind if you’re a phone-losing klutz, you could always implement both.
