Saturday, November 8, 2008

Free ISO Creator Makes Disk Images Fast And Painless

10:10AM Lifehacker US Edition | Windows only: Create ISO-format disk images quickly and easily with Free ISO Creator. After downloading and installing the software, all you have to do is click Add File(s) or Add Folder to choose the data you want included in the image, select a name and location for the ISO file with “Save ISO As…” and click Convert. You can even create a bootable disk image by clicking Options and selecting the appropriate IMG file. Now you can burn the image to disk with ISO Recorder or mount the image as a virtual drive in Windows with the Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel, Clonedrive or Daemon Tools. Free ISO Creator is a free download for Windows. Free ISO Creator [via Download Squad] More »

GDataCopier Syncs Google Docs to Your Desktop

9:35AM Lifehacker US Edition | Windows/Mac/Linux: Looking for a quick way to upload and download files from a Google Docs account? If you’re familiar with command line tools, check out GDataCopier. Once I installed a new version of Python (2.5 or higher required) and the GData API for Python, it was just a matter of running gdata-cp.py and I had every document in my Google Docs account backed up to a folder on my desktop. It would also work great for uploading a batch of documents to Google Docs. And of course you can set it up with a crontab to schedule regular backups. Looking for alternatives to futzing in a terminal window? Windows users can use DocSyncer or sync between OpenOffice.org and Google Docs with OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs. GDataCopier is a free download for Windows, Mac and Linux, requires Python to run. Thanks, TerrenceMarburger! GDataCopier More »

You’re Stretching Wrong Before Workouts

9:00AM Adam Pash | We all know that you’re supposed to get in a good, long stretch before a workout, right? Unfortunately most of our commonly held beliefs regarding stretching are dead wrong, according to the New York Times—at least in the way you may be doing it. Researchers believe that some of the more entrenched elements of many athletes’ warm-up regimens are not only a waste of time but actually bad for you. The old presumption that holding a stretch for 20 to 30 seconds—known as static stretching—primes muscles for a workout is dead wrong. It actually weakens them. More »

Test Drive TraceMonkey Nightly Builds In Portable Firefox

7:45AM Gina Trapani | Our in-house portable Firefox guru Asian Angel has posted a thorough how-to for those of you hot to use the lightening-fast TraceMonkey JavaScript engine nightly builds without disturbing your full-on Firefox installation. Here’s how to run the newest Firefox TraceMonkey nightly build as a portable version. More »

IcoFX Creates And Edits Icons For Free

7:30AM Lifehacker US Edition | Windows only: If you’re looking to create or edit custom icons, try IcoFX. With support for multiple resolutions and transparency, you can create slick, resizable icons for applications you develop or just to help you quickly find oft-used folders. And you can export icons into Windows or Mac format. The software offers some basic image editing tools, but you can also import images from other programs like Photoshop or Illustrator. IcoFX will preserve transparency and even do the resizing and colour mapping. The Tools menu offers both batch processing for handling multiple icons, and a resource editor to change the icons for binary files. The software offers a little more power than drag-and-drop icon creator ToYcon. Too lazy to create your own icons? Try searching ICONlook Thanks, celldrifter! IcoFX More »

DateInTray Adds A Small, Quick Calendar To Your System Tray

7:00AM Adam Pash | Windows only: Free application DateInTray adds a small, unobtrusive calendar icon to your system tray displaying the current date. Clicking the icon displays a small pop-up calendar. If you liked the calendar integration of previously mentioned Analogue Clock but don’t want to expand your taskbar to enjoy it, DateInTrayis a perfect utility. And if you’re the type to avoid extra system tray utilities to avoid bloat, DateInTray’s minuscule 500-700KB of RAM usage should please even the most miserly of systems. DateInTray is freeware, Windows only. Thanks Doug! DateInTray More »

Find And Download Higher Resolution Videos On YouTube

6:31AM Lifehacker US Edition | Tech blogger Amit Agarwal has a great tip for using Google to search YouTube only for videos offered in higher resolution: Go to Google.com, type your search phrase and append the following parameters to your search query: site:youtube.com “watch in normal quality watch in high quality” Once you’ve found something you’re looking for available in better quality, copy the YouTube URL and swing by KeepVid (or have the bookmarklet handy). Paste in the URL and click the Download button. KeepVid will offer you both the lower-resolution FLV and the higher-resolution MP4 — download the latter to save to your phone for reference . Search High Resolution Videos on YouTube [Digital Inspiration] More »

Make Windows Networking Suck Less?

5:30AM Gina Trapani | Frustrated reader Dave says he hates Windows networking. He writes in: Windows Networking is a huge pain in the arse. It defeats its entire purpose: easily moving files around. I don’t think I’ve ever set up a network easily, without a lot of trial and error and thrashing about various wizard screens. Windows Networking often requests a USB flash drive to copy/paste Networking settings, policies, and password on a router or other machines. What if your router has no USB port? You’re stuck keying in a bunch of stuff and praying it works. I hate how network places spontaneously disappear from My Network Places. I’m often forced to re-add network places, especially FTP servers. More »

Three Extensions To Trick Out Your Firefox Tabs And Location Bar

5:00AM Gina Trapani | Reader RJ writes in with his/her perfect combination of extensions and user styles that make working with tabs easier: TabMix Plus, Locationbar² and Stylish (with a custom style). RJ explains: More »

How To Protect Your Wi-Fi Network From The WPA Hack

4:00AM Adam Pash | WEP Wi-Fi security has been known as an easy-to-crack security protocol for a while now, which is why it was superseded by the more secure Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) standard. But now a PhD candidate studying encryption has found an exploit in the WPA standard that would allow a hacker to “send bogus data to an unsuspecting WiFi client,” completely compromising your Wi-Fi security and opening your network to all sorts of hacking. Lucky for you, it’s not terribly difficult to protect yourself against the new exploit. More »