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 Wikia Search, the open source search engine project founded by Wikipedian Jimmy Wales, is expected to go into public alpha on Monday. CNET reported that Jimmy Wales told mailing list subscribers about the plan on Christmas Eve.The project will have open source search algorithms and application program interfaces, in an attempt to offer an open and transparent search engine.I’ve been excited about this project since hearing Jimmy Wales speak about it on his Australian tour last year. You can get more information on it here.
Walk into any bookstore and you’re bound to see the “Self Help” section just bursting with titles boasting toothy-grinned gurus promising you happiness, riches, productivity, and enlightenment on their covers. I’ve got a love-hate relationship with self improvement books: most of the time I hate that I love them. I spent some time reading a relative’s copy of Joel Osteen’s Become a Better You this holiday season, and I feel weird admitting that I liked it, despite fundamental belief system differences with the guy. What self improvement books have you dug recently? You a Steven Covey/Tim Ferriss/David Allen/Brian Tracy fan? You working The Secret? You attend the church of Joel? Shout out your book recommendations in the comments.
So your router and Xbox 360 are on completely opposite sides of your home, running a long, ugly wire along the floor is out of the question, and you don’t feel like dropping $100 on an Xbox Wi-Fi adapter? If you’ve got a laptop with Wi-Fi, Instructables details how to use it as an Xbox 360 wireless adapter. In all its a really simple process involving sharing your laptop’s wireless internet connection with your Xbox through an ethernet cable. It’s not as good as a wired connection, but if you don’t regularly rely on the connection, it’s a good workaround. If you want a slightly more permanent solution, you can also build an Xbox Wi-Fi adapter on the cheap. Thanks Graham!
Use your laptop as an Xbox/Xbox 360 “wireless adapter” [Instructables]In his new book, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, author Brian Wansink argues that lesser obvious, small changes over time to our daily habits can lead to gradual weight loss. What kind of small changes? Reason Magazine reports:
Wansink recommends such tactics as using smaller plates (which make portions seem larger), keeping serving dishes in the kitchen (which discourages second helpings), replacing short, wide glasses with tall, thin ones (which make drinks seem bigger), keeping food scraps and bones on your plate (which reminds you how much you’ve eaten), and dividing snacks from big packages into smaller bags or plastic containers (which discourages you from devouring the entire package).
Love all these ideas, which won’t make you feel like you’re depriving yourself at all. What little ways are you helping yourself eat less? Let us know in the comments.
Secrets of Weight Loss Revealed! [Reason Magazine via 43 Folders]US-centric: Newly launched web site RedPlum is hoping to take coupon clipping into the twenty-first century by moving traditional clip-and-save coupons you’re used to finding in the newspaper or your mailbox to the point-and-click generation. RedPlum is run by a major paper coupon distributor, and though it’s not the first to take coupons to the internet by any means, it does offer features that could make coupon clipping much easier (for example, you’ll soon be able to give RedPlum your grocery list and they’ll return coupons matching your items). If you’re traditionally a clip-and-save coupon lover, RedPlum might revolutionize your money-saving. If you do all of your shopping online, here’s how to become an online power-shopper.
RedPlum [via NYT]Windows Mobile: Freeware skinning application Pointui makes the notoriously kludgy Windows Mobile interface more usable and accessible, and does so with great success. Most notably, the Pointui interface allows for fingertip navigation (à la the iPhone) rather than the traditional stylus (or fingernail) navigation that requires you to pinpoint with pixel precision. Not every aspect of WM is skinned, so you’ll be returned to WM ugliness from time to time, but where it’s skinned well (especially the system settings) it’s great. For a fuller look at what Pointui can do for your WM device, check out Gizmodo’s video tour and glowing review. If you’ve been down on Windows Mobile ever since you saw what navigation on the iPhone is like, skinning that phone with the freeware Pointui might be just what the doctor ordered.
Pointui [via Gizmodo]Last week we showed you how to install third party apps on your iPhone or iPod touch, and since then a new firmware preview has leaked its way to the ‘nets with saucy new features that—once released—may tempt you to abandon your jailbreak for the newly introduced features. Fact is, until the 1.1.3 firmware is successfully hacked by the resourceful iPhone hackers, you can still enjoy all of the features the update is bringing and more with your jailbroken iPhone. Today I’m taking a look at my 20 favorite (that’s right, 20) third-party iPhone and iPod touch apps.
Windows only: Free music downloading software Freemusiczilla listens to what’s playing in your web browser and makes it available for downloading as distinct mp3 files. We’ve featured individual music service downloading apps before, like Pandora’s Jar, but Freemusiczilla seems to sniff out nearly any Flash or AJAX-based music player, be it Last.fm, Pandora, iMeem, MySpace, or many more custom or streaming services. The program limits you to 10 mp3 downloads per day, presumably in waiting for a fully-enabled “premium” version, but gives you three minutes into each track to decide if you want to download or not.
Windows Vista only: Vista4Experts is an appropriately-named free application that lets a user turn on and off some of the things that make Windows Vista feel more like a neurotic babysitter than an operating system. If you know you can live without security center pop-ups, the frequent User Account Control question dialogs, Automatic Update notifications, and other features, it’s a great all-in-one power user tool. Each of the changes is reversible from the program (or so it claims), and some of the tweaks—such as changing the default behavior of the power button to “shut down” instead of “suspend”—are worthy indeed. Of course, some of the tweaks can make serious system changes, so hit “Perform Changes” only if you know you can live with the results. Vista4Experts is a free download for Vista systems only.
Vista4Experts [via Confessions of a Freeware Junkie]
