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How To Kill Time Productively On Your Phone Windows only: So you keep typing ls at the Windows command line instead of dir? Miss grep, wget, and tar on your PC? The open source UnixUtils project offers ports of “the most important” GNU command line utilities, including those listed as well as over 100 others. Usually we recommend using the Unix emulator Cygwin to get *nix command line goodness in Windows, but UnixUtils doesn’t depend on the whole Cygwin layer to run—they’re tried and true Windows executables. UnixUtils is a free download for Windows only. Thanks, Vijay! UnixUtils [SourceForge]
Online storage web site Box.net keeps rolling out new features, but opening up stored files to online collaboration adds a whole bunch o’ new potential uses at once. Any file you store at Box.net can now be shared with collaborators (who, it must be said, must also have Box.net accounts) and manipulated through any of the sites’ web service partners. That means you and your friends could all crop and edit your weekend getaway pictures in Picnik, or edit a trip diary in Zoho, and so forth. Added to desktop mounting and free iCal publishing, Box.net is vying to become almost as handy when you’re away from your computer as your trusted thumb drive—maybe even more so. Announcing Box.net Collaboration Beta [Box.net blog via ReadWriteWeb]
Windows only: FileTypesMan, a free Windows utility, aims to provide more information and customisation than Windows’ standard “Folder Options” dialog, and it mostly succeeds. For one thing, you can resize the window displaying all of your systems’ files, which, in itself, makes it a little easier to see than the utilities in some copies of Windows. Secondly, you can edit more than just the application assignments, as you have access to default icons, and print reports in HTML detailing your changes or file assignments. For setting up a new system with a lot of apps competing for file rights, it could be a good thumb drive tool. FileTypeMan is a free download for Windows systems only. FileTypesMan [via gHacks]
Songerize is a dead-simple interface for quickly playing streaming music, and it’s destined to become a quick-fix addiction for music fans. Type in a song name, then the artist you think performs it, and hit “Play.” If Songerize can find the song, it plays it in an embedded Flash device. If not, try another song. Described as the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button for the more full-featured streaming music search site SeeqPod, Songerize is the perfect tool for clarifying misheard lyrics, quickly playing a song for a friend, or just listening to music one track at a time. Songerize found 8 of 10 songs I threw at it this morning, and I mixed it about halfway between big radio hits and indie hip-hop and rock. Nifty. To get even more out of SeeqPod, download-wise, check out Songbeat. Songerize [via MakeUseOf.com]
Long-time Firefox users will remember moments when, usually after a browser crash, they’ve been unable to restart Firefox, receiving an error message akin to “Firefox cannot use the profile “X” because it is in use.” The CyberNet tech blog notes that you can delete a file or two named “parent.lock,” “.parentlock,” or, in the case of Linux, both “Lock” and “.parentlock,” in your Firefox profile folder to solve the problem without having to restart the system. The CyberNet article has the goods on where to find your profile and which files to delete on which systems, and saves many of us a frustrating restart (or five). Helpful Tip: Firefox Profile in Use [CyberNet]
Windows only: If you’re trying to pull the most performance from a just passable amount of system memory, or if you’re just one of those types who feels memory is always going to waste, Instant Memory Cleaner is your obsessive enabler. The free application sits in the system tray and does its job, forcing unnecessary pages to close in “virtual memory”—the fake kind that’s actually written to the hard drive—and otherwise acting like a stern shepherd for your wayward memory. The program’s maker states that it works better in Windows XP than Vista, and better still if you tweak your system’s paging file (described on the download page). The app also provides a handy summary of system memory once you click on it, and while I can’t specifically vouch for its memory management improvements, it does seem to know when the system is getting busy. Instant Memory Cleaner is a free download for Windows XP and Vista systems only. Instant Memory Cleaner [via Download Squad]
Two years ago on Lifehacker, you learned how to clean your PC of the dust bunnies living within.
