Nick Broughall, editor of Lifehacker's sibling site Gizmodo AU, had an organisational epiphany last week (clearly, he should have been spending more time here at Lifehacker) and decided to adopt Things and his iPhone as the centrepiece of a new getting-stuff-done approach. What's notable about Nick's conversion is that it came about after a seminar about how to get more efficient using a BlackBerry and Outlook, which proves yet again that technology is not really key to an organised life: it's making the decision to commit to a process and then sticking to it. Read the full post for how Nick's currently managing his working life; we might check back in a few weeks and see how well the system has stuck. How I Organised My Workload And Emptied My Inbox

Last week's discussion of chill mats for laptops prompted some excited discussion and raised some interesting ideas. One emailer suggested using two books for a cheap improvised alternative; another suggested mats were entirely unnecessary, which I suspect means they've never visited central Australia in the summer. But just how much difference do they make? Reader Carl did some testing of his own and got some interesting results, as he explains in an email:

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It's been noted that cramming more and more megapixels into consumer-grade digital cameras isn't really giving everybody better pictures. These days, in fact, cameras with more than seven or eight megapixels per picture are seeing more noise and grit because too much information is passing into too small a sensor. One New York Times writer explains the phenomenon using a cupcake analogy:

The mechanics of this can be understood by thinking of a digital camera sensor as a flat sheet of material pocked with millions (hence "mega") of cylindrical, cuplike pixels. In other words, picture the digital sensor as a tiny cupcake tin ... Larger pixels (cups, remember), with larger surface areas, capture more photons per second, which in electronics-speak means a stronger signal -- and in camera-speak means less noise and cleaner colors.

The article recommends those seeking better shots for less cash not worry about grabbing the latest MP-busting digicam and focus on getting a decent, lower-end DSLR. Got a high-megapixel camera and feeling a bit of buyer's remorse, or are you seeing better shots these days? Tell us in the comments. Photo by jslander.

You can tell that summer's rapidly approaching when accessories vendors start pushing "chill mats" -- laptop stands with built-in USB-powered fans designed to help air circulate and stop your machine overheating (the pictured one is a new Mac-specific model from Targus). While overheating can definitely be an issue, I've always found chill mats more hassle than they're worth. For one thing, they put the keyboard at the wrong angle for my liking; for another, they're too bulky to throw in my laptop carry bag. So my preferred methodology has been just keeping the home office as cool as feasible, but it's entirely possible that I'm missing out. If you're a chill mat fan -- or have another strategy for ensuring your laptop doesn't go into meltdown -- share your experiences in the comments.

USB 3.0 will be unveiled next Monday, and so far the new specs for the protocol look incredible, promising 25GB transfers in a mere 70 seconds. To put that in perspective, the same transfer would take 13.9 minutes with the current USB 2.0 protocol and 9.3 hours on USB 1.0. Looks like the future of wired syncs and backups is bright and blazing. [via Gizmodo]

Packing compactly is a useful skill, but for longer work-related trips, it's often hard to get away with just a small overnight bag. However much luggage you've got, a digital scale can help you avoid paying ludicrous excess baggage fees and/or totally trashing your spine.

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The Gadget Lab blog makes an aggressive list of tech toys you should cull from your life because you just don't need them anymore, like:

• Printers
• Scanners
• Built-In Optical Drives
• Fax Machines
• Landline Phones

I know I couldn't make it through the list without letting out a Milton'esque "But, but... that's my scanner!" Would it make sense for you to ditch your printer, scanner, and internal DVD burner? Sound off in the comments below. Photo by FXR.

Elmo Live (a super-robotic version of the infamous Tickle Me Elmo) has received masses of publicity and is expected to be a big Christmas seller. Digital Journal TV showed true hacking instinct by grabbing the all-singing, all-dancing Muppet and ripping his skin off to show the workings underneath; check it out in the video above. It's surely only a matter of time before people come up with more elaborate hacks to repurpose Elmo.(Warning: your kids might not like this much.) Digital Journal [via Tough Pigs]

When Google released a couple of gadgets for the Gmail sidebar and provided an open means of making more, long-time users of Remember the Milk might have guessed the task manager that tries to be everywhere would be all over it—and they were right. The Remember the Milk gadget lets you add, complete, edit, and postpone tasks, as well as single out a task list to show in the sidebar. It doesn't have the second-brain, star-equals-task power of RTM's Firefox extension, but it's a nice, unobtrusive way to add task management to your email/calendar/docs landing page. Hit the link below for instructions on installing RTM (which requires a free accont) in your Gmail sidebar.

The declining Australian dollar might be bad news if you're planning a US trip, but it turns out to be good news if you want to buy an iPod. Australia now ranks as the cheapest place on the globe to purchase a basic iPod, according to CommSec's quarterly iPod index, reports Susannah Moran at AustralianIT. That's a dramatic change from the previous quarter, when Australia ranked 14th for buying the then-entry-level model. iPods are generally hard to acquire at a discount (save for Apple's own occasional sales), so any opportunity to save money is helpful.