How To Find And Get Involved With A Hackerspace 
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) Mozilla has launched a contest to encourage developers building add-ons for Firefox 3. There are two main categories — one for new add-ons built to use some of the new features in Firefox 3, as well as one for the existing add-ons which will be ported to the final release of Firefox 3.Prizes include travel and accommodation to a Mozilla Developer Day of the winner’s choice, anywhere in the world, and various bits of evelopment gear, including a Macbook Air.Entries close at 11:59pm Pacific Time on July 4th, 2008, and will be judged by a panel of (unnamed) experts.
[via Wired]
According to Wired, most US airlines assumed—for whatever insane reasons—that the price of oil would drop this year. They were wrong, of course, and as a result roundtrip tickets have increased by as much as $50 apiece. To help battle the rising cost of flying, Wired suggests several tips for keeping the price of tickets as low as possible, like: Never buy tickets between Friday and Monday morning. Why? Airlines file fare increases on Thursday evenings and watch over the weekend to see if all of their competitors match the price bumps. If they don’t, the carriers roll back prices by Monday afternoon.
Rumours that Microsoft would release Windows XP Service Pack 3 this week aren’t true; but if you’re feeling adventurous, the folks in Redmond did make the second release candidate of XP SP3 available for download today. [via]
Save your most important text messages for posterity with web site Treasuremytext. The site setup is simple: After signing up for an account, you just forward the messages you want to save to the Treasuremytext number that fits your region (for the US, that’s 203.434.0893). Treasuremytext will archive the SMS message and even give you options for organising your saved texts. As more important communications take place over SMS, SMS apps will inevitably need to improve text management and desktop backup. In the meantime, Treasuremytext fills the gap nicely. As a bonus for iPhone users (whose SMS app does not offer forwarding), there’s a Treasuremytext iPhone app that runs on jailbroken iPhones.
AU – looks like we fit under the “UK and rest of world” banner so the number is +44 7781 486 064 (yep, that’s a UK number, so beware the overseas SMS charges!
Treasuremytext [via eHub]Two years ago on Lifehacker, you learned how to install software without screwing up your computer in a virtual layer, set up your personal Wikipedia, and learned how to deal with internet meanies.
Windows Vista only: Freeware Windows Media Centre plug-in Yougle integrates community video from the likes of YouTube and community images from sites like Flickr and ICanHasCheezburger with Windows Media Centre. Once installed, Yougle provides access to all of those wonderful videos, pictures, and even audio from the comfort of your couch. If this looks familiar, the plug-in is a Vista version of a previously mentioned and no-longer-developed Windows MCE plug-in. Yet another great plug-in for making your Media Centre life better. Yougle is freeware, Windows Vista only, requires a registration at the download site.
Having problems ever since making the upgrade to Windows Vista Service Pack 1? Still can’t get the thing installed without a crash? Microsoft is offering free email and online chat support for upgrade-related problems through March 18, 2009. [via]
Commercial DVDs are far too expensive to let scratches turn your video into a glorified coaster, but most people still don’t back up their DVD collection. Once upon a time, the four to eight gigabyte footprint of a DVD on your hard drive was prohibitively large. But since the price of a gigabyte has plummeted, ripping your entire DVD collection to your computer is not just possible, it’s prudent—and it’s easy. Let’s take a look at the best ways to back up and play any DVD rip on your home computer, along with how to burn a DVD rip back to a playable DVD.
Reader Liza is in a pickle and is looking for advice. She writes in: I recently followed Lifehacker’s guide to BitTorrent and set my laptop up with the uTorrent program. Using a combination of PizzaTorrent and uTorrent, I downloaded several movies and albums, perhaps 30 in all. Yesterday I received a letter in the mail from Cablevision (my ISP) saying that Paramount/Dreamworks had filed a complaint with them regarding my illegal download of one of their films.
