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 Mac OS X only: New task manager Things, now in alpha testing, is a promising new option for Mac users looking to get organised on the desktop. Structurally, Things categorises tasks in a very Getting THINGS Done way (get it?), with an inbox, projects, and “next” (or Next Actions) view, as well as support for contacts to whom you may delegate tasks and tags (which you can use for context.) After the jump, check out some screenshots of the alpha version of Things.
US-centric: Still living in an age of analog, over-the-air broadcasts and don’t plan to switch to digital before the 2009 upgrade? Request a $40 coupon from the government to cover most of the cost of the converter box. [via]
The iPhone certainly didn’t invent the mobile browser, but it does seem to be the mobile device that’s bringing mobile browsing to the mainstream. The benefits of mobile browsing are obvious: You can access the web from practically anywhere and at any time—assuming you carry your phone with you wherever you go. Mobile browsing has always had a couple of obstacles, though, namely that carriers’ data plans have often been very expensive and most (pre-iPhone) mobile browsers have traditionally been unwieldy. Again, those obstacles are slowly breaking down, so now that many of you are sporting shiny new post-holiday phones, we’re wondering:
Popular barebones media player foobar2000 has updated its interface and added several other features in the latest release. Not sure about foobar2k? Marvel at the beauty of foobar2k customizations by your fellow readers. [via]
When it comes to the Google search box, you already know the tricks: like searching for exact phrases in quotes like "so say we all" or searching a single site using site:lifehacker.com gmail. But there are many more oblique, clever, and lesser-known search recipes and operators that work from that unassuming little text box. Dozens of Google search guides detail the tips you already know, but today we’re skipping the obvious and highlighting our favorite obscure Google web search tricks.
Productivity blogger Merlin Mann recaps his January “Fresh Starts and Modest Changes” podcasts and posts in an attempt to make New Year’s resolution season less unrealistic and more doable. The point, as ever, is that change is not to be found in the play-acting and sense of personal revolution that the resolution — good-natured as its intention may be — demands of us. The real cipher is to just get into the habit of noticing the small things that might bring about outsized improvements in our lives.
We linked several of Merlin’s posts on the topic last year when they originally ran, but they’re worth another read if you’re already rubbing your bottom after falling off the resolution wagon. What small changes are you making in your life in ’08? Let us know in the comments.
Beginning the Year with Fresh Starts [43 Folders]Photo-project site Photojojo offers a simple guide to creating a cheap fisheye lens—the kind that give great skateboarding and sports shots their all-encompassing look—for a digital SLR camera. The only ingredients are a pair of far-sighted glasses (the thicker the lenses, the better) and black electrical tape. You won’t have an easily swap-able attachment or a professional wide-angle lens, but you capture some pretty unique angles, as shown in the related Flickr set. Point-and-shoot enthusiasts can get similar results with an $11 wide angle lens.
The DIY Fisheye Lens — Using Nothin’ But a Pair of Old Glasses and Some Tape [via TipNut.com]Web-alerts.com, a free web service that forwards RSS updates to your mobile phone by SMS message, offers a helpful way to stay on top of important-but-infrequently-updated web sites. Type in a site’s URL or feed address, then your mobile phone number, and you’re on your way to mobile updates. You can also preview your feed messages and have only updates with certain keywords sent along. We’ve previously highlighted a similar RSS-to-SMS solution that utilized Gmail and a feed-by-email service, but Web-alerts.com seems to do the same thing without the go-between.
Web-alerts.com [via The Boy Genius Report]If you’ve got both a weight loss goal for the new year, don’t spend money (or gift cards) and time obsessing over the latest and greatest diet book. That’s according to the New York Times’ personal health columnist, who offers a helpful reminder that if you cut your calorie intake below your maintenance level, you will slowly but surely lose weight: My advice here is to save your money, toss out (or donate to a soup kitchen) the leftover high-calorie holiday fare, gradually reduce your portion sizes and return to your exercise routine (or adopt one if you spent too much of ’07 on your sofa).
Also simple but still relevant, the Times says, is the “gold standard” meal, stacked with vegetables, fruits and whole grains, with a small bit of protein. For a helping hand achieving your goal, check out Gina’s compilation of weight loss hacks.
No Gimmicks: Eat Less and Exercise More [New York Times]It can seem like almost everything you look at on the web has an RSS feed to subscribe to—until you find the web site that’s both vitally important and entirely feed-less. Enter Dapper, a free, advanced web app that walks users through a process of creating a feed for sites, or even just portions of sites, that lack one. We’ve previously mentioned tools like FeedYes that promise a similar function, but Dapper offers a lot more customisation, letting you choose which sections of a site should be delivered to your reader, a custom iCalendar or iGoogle page, and many more options. Combine Dapper with a tool like Yahoo Pipes, and you’ve got a direct line to any update on the web.
Dapper [via Download Squad]
