Windows only: If you have a U3-enabled flash drive, you might want to skip extra load time and the disk space the software chews up, and the U3 removal tool can help you do just that. U3 is a software bundle stored on a protected partition on a flash drive that emulates a CD-ROM when it’s plugged into a Windows machine. While some people like the pre-packaged software and the sometimes expensive software add-ons, many people prefer to assemble their own suite of portable apps without restriction. The removal tool banishes U3 from your drive, reclaims about 6MB of space, and gives you a significant speed increase in load time. After removing the U3 software from a test flash drive, I found that the load time went from between 10-15 seconds, to around 2 seconds. U3 Removal Tool [via Everything USB]
Windows only: Attribute Changer, a free right-click utility, gives you total control over everything reported by a file to your system. Right-click one or many files and choose “Change Attributes,” and you can enable or disable read-only status, hiding, indexing, and even NTFS compression. You can change the file’s date of creation, modification and last access, and tweak a photo’s time of taking. Great for those files that get erroneously labelled as made on Jan. 1, 1969, and always get lost in searches, or fixing date issues with a photo collection. Attribute Changer is a free download for Windows systems only. Attribute Changer [Romain Petges via gHacks]
A lot of the discussion around here about accessing online television focuses on US options like Hulu, but many people (your Lifehacker editor included) would prefer to catch UK programming. Blogger Charlie rounds up the options for catching UK shows in Australia, from free-to-air to P2P. The solutions offered for accessing online services like the BBC’s iPlayer aren’t entirely free, but if you haven’t got proxy-based methods to work, this is another option to consider. Thanks Chris A!
How To Watch UK TV [Charlie don't surf]Large swathes of Flickr are filled with this week’s uploads of last week’s party, so it’s great to see rarer public photo archives also becoming available on the service. The NSW State Library has launched its own Flickr stream featuring photos of historical firsts such as the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and early transport and technology developments. The initial 100 images will be supplemented with others in the future. State Library of New South Wales’ photostream
Manic traffic, expensive petrol and the perceived idiocy of other drivers can often make a stint in the car seem like torture. At the BBC News Magazine, driving expert Tom Vanderbilt offers ten tips to reduce the stress of driving. Some of them are UK-specific (there’s no option for cyclists not to wear helmets in Australia, for example), but there’s still good advice in here, including the ever-notable assertion that changing lanes rarely helps you get to your destination much faster. Got any other tactics to make driving less of a hassle? Steer them into the comments. 10 ways to rediscover the joy of motoring [BBC New Magazine]
Qantas is tweaking the way that frequent flyer points can be earned via credit cards. The changes vary hugely from provider to provider, so if you routinely make use of credit card points to top up your flyer totals, check out the link for details how you might be affected. (My provider is offering the opportunity of automatically transferring all points to the program, which is an improvement on what I used to get.) For more on getting value from Qantas’ recently-changed program, check out our guide to using points for maximum effectiveness.
QantasGoogle has revamped its Blog Search interface, taking a few design cues from Google News by clustering related posts together and offering sorted categories. The current search is English only, but Google is promising (as ever) to expand coverage in the future. It’d be good to see an Australia-specific version of the search (a feature Google News already has). Google Blog Search via [Official Google Blog]
If you’re looking to buy a house, it’s always good to know what it (and others in the neighbourhood) sold for last time. Traditionally, that’s required paying a commercial provider for information, but Home Price History inverts that approach by providing a web application where you can store and share the results of your own real estate search. Currently, there’s around 4000 properties listed on the site: not yet enough to make it possible to abandon all other sources of information, but a useful extra resource. For another approach to neighbourhood investigation, check out previously mentioned StreetAdvisor.
Home Price HistoryMicrosoft CEO Steve Ballmer announces that within a month, MS will release a new operating system he described as “Windows Cloud”—for webapp developers working on “cloud computing” apps like Zoho Suite and, um, Gmail (except not those). Computerworld reports: The operating system, which will likely have a different name, is intended for developers writing cloud-computing applications, said Ballmer, who spoke to an auditorium of IT managers at a Microsoft-sponsored conference in London.
The Windows Cloud OS is a separate project from the upcoming Windows 7. Sheesh, this fall is shaping up to be a real tech humdinger, what with Google making browsers and Microsoft making light operating systems especially for webapps. Would you be interested in running “Windows Cloud,” or is a light XP (or, ahem, Linux) install with Firefox or Chrome good enough for you? Tell us what you think in the comments. Photo by allyaubry. Microsoft will soon release ‘Windows Cloud’ OS, Ballmer says [Computerworld via Download Squad]
Windows only: AnVir Task Manager Free is a Windows Task Manager replacement boasting an enormous feature set. This utility can manage startup applications, running applications, processes, services, and oh-so-much more. When you select a running process in the top pane, the bottom pane provides a wealth of information about the process, from a brief description of what it does to the network connections it’s making and DLLs it’s using. One of my favourite unusual features is the Check with AntiViruses on VirusTotal right-click option—which streamlines my favourite method of determining if a file really has a virus. You can find tons of Task Manager replacements out in the wild, but AnVir still manages to stand out. If you want even more functionality, this free download is also available in a Pro version with a kitchen sink full of features.
AnVir Task Manager Free [via Download Squad]
