What Are The Hourly Rates For IT Contractors? 
What Do You Do With Your Gadgets When You Move Overseas? 
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 Windows only: iTunesControl, a free iTunes add-on, adds two killer features that make open-source player AmaroK so appealing—namely, seriously customisable universal keyboard shortcuts and a pop-up on-screen display with album art and song information. Some of this functionality is offered in other add-ons (see Adam’s list of 23 great ones for examples), but iTunesControl is a preferred choice for those who really like to control their music. You can assign play/forward/back-type commands to nearly any key, including Function-switched keys for laptop users, and have the display pop-up anywhere on the screen, in any font/color/line combination you’d like. Better still, iTunesControl can be anchored to iTunes itself, starting and stopping whenever you launch the music app. iTunes Control is a free download for Windows systems with iTunes 4.6 or later only. iTunes Control [via Crave/CNET]
The How-To Geek blog points out a tucked-away trick in Windows Vista that lets you restart Windows Explorer—the file browsing and desktop display aspect of Windows—without hastily killing its process and potentially borking your session. The trick:Open the Start menu. Hold down the Control and Shift keys, and right-click on a blank space in the Start menu. Choose “Exit Explorer.” Open the Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc), navigate to File->Run, enter “explorer” and hit OK.
Why would you ever want to restart Explorer, you might ask? To try out new system modifications, for one, or try and rescue your desktop from crashing. In any case, the Geek’s method gives Explorer a chance to properly close down and protect against any strange occurrences down the road. Hit the link for details on the “Classic” method of performing this trick. Hidden Trick to Close Windows Explorer in Vista [The How-To Geek]
Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Browsing tracker 8aweek is strikingly similar to previously mentioned extension RescueTime, but with two notable differences. First, it focuses only on your web habits, leaving out the desktop app measurement of RescueTime that might not have mattered to those who know their procrastination lies in the wilds of HTML Land. Secondly, 8aweek’s preferences are set at the program’s site, allowing you to impose a timer on your own list of “Restricted” sites on any browser you use. I’m not a huge fan of browser toolbars, like the one 8aweek throws on to give you quick access to your stats, but you could bypass them with a few links to your 8aweek account. For those looking for a simple cross-system procrastination buster, 8aweek could be an apt solution. 8aweek is a free download, works wherever Firefox does. 8aweek [via TechCrunch]
Want to ensure your system presents a secure front to the Internet, but don’t want to keep an app updater program like File Hippo running? Software security company F-Secure offers a free online tool that checks your browser and the majority of Windows’ web-related services and programs, with no software download required. The tool only works with Internet Explorer, and (obviously) can’t upgrade your apps over its connection, but does point you to the web sites where you can grab your upgrades. Best of all, there’s no sign-up or registration required, and a few minutes can keep you one step ahead of the next zero-day vulnerability. F-Secure Health Check [via Geeks are Sexy]
