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The Lifehacker Total Security Guide 
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How To Kill Time Productively On Your Phone Windows only: File encryption utility PixelCryptor doesn’t use a textual password to encrypt your files, it uses a digital image. Lock up your PixelCryptor file package like a drum and set an image as the key. The more complex the image, the more secure your encrypted folder. Then, on another PC with PixelCryptor installed (or available on a thumb drive), unlock the folder contents only with the image you used to encrypt it. PixelCryptor isn’t open source (so perhaps not as well-developed or supported), but it looks like a viable alternative to our beloved TrueCrypt. PixelCryptor is freeware for Windows only.
PixelCryptor [Code Gazer via Tech[dot] Blog]The San Diego Union Tribute reports that wristwatch sales declined 25 per cent between 2003 and 2005, supposedly because people use their mobile phones to tell the time—which seems extreme, but maybe we’re old-fashioned. We want to know: Even though I used my mobile to tell time, as an alarm, to do quick calculations, take pictures, and check email, it hasn’t completely replaced my watch or camera or laptop for that matter. What about you? Cell phones taking on many roles, transforming market, generation [San Diego Union Tribune via Micro Persusasion]
BusinesssWeek gets a communication coach to analyse Steve Jobs’ latest Macworld keynote speech and pull out 10 tips that us mere mortals can apply to our own presentations. One strategy in particular seems to be what makes Jobs’ product introductions stand out from the typical “gee whiz” events: Sell the benefit. While most presenters promote product features, Jobs sells benefits. When introducing iTunes movie rentals, Jobs said, “We think there is a better way to deliver movie content to our customers … most of us watch movies once, maybe a few times. And renting is a great way to do it. It’s less expensive, doesn’t take up space on our hard drive…” Your listeners are always asking themselves, “What’s in it for me?” Answer the question. Don’t make them guess.
Sage advice, and also worth noting for the next time you have to pitch a software purchase to your boss. Hit the link for nine more bits of Jobs-ian advice.Photo by Roberto Garcia.
Deliver a Presentation like Steve Jobs [BusinessWeek via TheJobBored]The How-To Geek gives us yet another handy command prompt trick that saves you some mouse-hunting and clicking to synchronise a Windows clock to a more accurate internet time server. Given how quick it runs, it might not be a bad addition to the automated “Startup” folder, or to a folder of quick shortcuts (like I’ve created on my desktop). To quickly sync your clock, open a command prompt as an administrator and type the following command: w32tm /resync
Quick and simple, works in Vista and XP, and definitely helpful when a dying battery clock starts leaving you a few minutes behind every day. For a background application that does much the same, check out DS Clock.
Sync Your Clock With Internet Time Servers from the Vista Command Prompt [The How-To Geek] ]Windows Vista only: Like its XP-oriented predecessor nLite, vLite is a pre-installation utility that lets you decide which programs and components of Windows Vista are included when you go for a fresh install, allowing you to remove some of Vista’s more resource-heavy pieces and make custom DVDs or CDs to install that same slim Vista later. What’s more, vLite seems to allow you to pre-answer the typical setup questions, so you can install Vista unattended (and, it seems, without a Product Key handy). It’s not a tool for beginners, as many of the changes can’t be undone once the OS is in place, but for those who find themselves re-installing Vista frequently, it’s certainly a useful utility. vLite is a free download for Windows Vista only. Thanks Jeremy!
vLiteThe New York Times’ Shifting Careers blog posts a good primer on the kinds of interviews that aren’t meant to get you a job—at least, not right away. Setting up an “informational interview” with someone in an industry you’re looking at is a way of finding out more about a job or career path from an inside perspective. Workplace writer Marci Alboher recommends a number of questions to ask, including:Can you tell me how you got to this position? What do you like most about what you do, and what would you change if you could? How do people break into this field? What are the types of jobs that exist where you work and in the industry in general?
As an important end note, make sure to follow up on any return requests you get from your interviewee, and be sure to keep the whole thing reasonably short.
Mastering the Informational Interview [Shifting Careers/NYT]Being a procrastinator isn’t a job-destroying trait—unless you’re unable to actually buckle down and get the work done when you need to. The Dumb Little Man blog offers advice for when you’re down to the wire and need to defeat your own worst tendencies, including this: You may want to ask a family member (preferably someone such as a parent or spouse that you respect enough to do what they say) to set a deadline for you. If even this doesn’t help, you’ll need to get serious. Have that same family member give you a deadline and impose some sort of consequence if you don’t meet it. With your reality TV on the line, you should have a much easier time getting to work.
Most guides and tutorials for Ubuntu newcomers can help you get commercial DVDs playing on your system, but only through a series of terminal commands that install new repositories or through the use of Automatix or other automated tools that can sometimes mess up your system’s dependencies. How-to site Tech-Recipes.com has been on a bit of a Linux streak lately and ferrets out a two-command, no-repository solution for installing DVD playback. Enter these in your terminal: sudo apt-get install totem-xine libxine1-ffmpeg libdvdread3sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh
That, from a quick test, should be it. It must be mentioned here that the DVD decrypting tool you’re installing is not licensed and definitely not supported by Ubuntu, so it’s up to you whether it’s kosher to install or not.
Ubuntu: Enable DVD Playback [Tech-Recipes]
