You don’t have to mod your classic Xbox to run the best free media centre application around anymore: Dedicated developers have ported the Xbox Media Centre (XBMC) software to the Mac, and its killer features will convince you to abandon Front Row forever. The latest XBMC on OS X beta dropped last week, and it’s as stable and useful as ever. Dubbed the “throw out your Xbox” release, XBMC for Mac 0.5 beta 1 adds the key feature that finally puts your media centre Mac under the TV where it belongs: remote control support. Let’s take a look at how you can (and why you want to) replace Front Row with XBMC on your Mac.
The most common complaint we get from Lifehacker readers in Windows IT lockdown is that the majority of our tips require installing third-party applications—which you can’t do if you don’t have the right permissions on your PC. If you don’t have the rights to install software on your company-issued computer, there are still lots of ways you can make Windows a more productive place to work. Let’s take a look at how you can maximise your computer productivity with keyboard shortcuts, desktop tweaks, search tricks and more—without installing a thing.
It may be the year 2008, but a whole lot of sucktacular software still rears its ugly head on PCs everywhere, even when better-behaved options are freely available. Whether it’s molasses-slow bloatware, shameless adware, anemic default apps, or “Your trial period has expired!” nagware, it’s time to replace stinky Windows software with its superior (but lesser-known) alternative. Last week we asked what software you should never install on your PC, and over 200 comments later, you compiled quite a list. Today we’re going to take a walk down the Crapware Hall of Shame, point and laugh at the worst offenders, and highlight some better choices. Photo by chelseagirl.
Microsoft Outlook is the company-issued email client at your place of employment, so like it or not, it’s up to you to figure out how to manage your inbox, calendar, and task list every day using it. To make things worse, if you’re in IT lockdown without administrator rights to your PC, you can’t install special add-ons or software to help your cause. Luckily there are install-free ways to customise Outlook, add keyboard shortcuts, and get your inbox down to zero messages painlessly with a few tweaks to your setup.
Managing the daily onslaught of incoming email with filing systems, keyboard shortcuts, and batch processing will only get you so far. When a flurry of new email snows you in within an hour of every inbox sweep, it’s time to dig in and get to the source of your email traffic. You’ve accumulated a sizable email archive over the years, and a new breed of analysis tool can extract meaningful statistics from that data to help you conquer email overload. Who sent you the most email messages last year? What hour of the day do you receive the most new messages? Which of all the mailing lists you’re on are the most active? A new command line tool called Mail Trends works with Gmail over IMAP and can give you all that information and more.
If you’re sick of Firefox 2 eating up over a gigabyte of memory only to freeze up and crash, it may be time to move onto Firefox 3. The new version of our favourite browser has seen its fifth and final beta release, and Mozilla says its for testing purposes only. However, the Firefox 3 beta is leaner, meaner, faster, and just plain better than Firefox 2—and don’t tell Daddy Mozilla, but even at this early stage, we’ve found it to be stable enough for full-time use. There are a few ways you can start using Firefox 3 without blowing your browser setup to hell or losing your most important extensions. Here’s how.
It’s that dreaded time of the year again, when that teetering pile of W-2 and 1099 forms haunt your dreams, and the perennial question gnaws at you: “Should I do my taxes myself, or hire an accountant?” A poll here on Lifehacker last month shows that most of you complete your income tax returns using software like TurboTax. In the past few years, I’ve gone back and forth between using an expensive human accountant and TurboTax.com to file my tax return. This year I decided to do both and see which solution saved me the most money and heartache. Read on to see who comes out victorious in the battle of the human tax accountant versus TurboTax.com.
Nothing sucks worse than getting to the office in the morning and realizing you left the most recent copy of an important file—whether it’s your to-do list or a PowerPoint presentation—on your home computer. No matter where you are and what computer you’re using, you always want the most updated set of documents and files you’ve got without having to carry ‘em around on a thumb drive. Luckily, several free solutions can automatically sync folders between computers—even over the internet, through office firewalls—no matter what operating system you use. Whether you want work files edited at home to magically appear on your PC at the office, or the family room Mac to have a copy of the latest batch of digital photos downloaded onto the computer in the den, three free applications can help.
More devices in your living room have Ethernet ports than ever before, but you can’t plug them into the network if your router’s in the other room. When your Wi-Fi access point is in the home office but your TiVo, Xbox, and media centre are screaming for network love under your TV in the living room, you want a wireless bridge (also known as an Ethernet converter). A wireless bridge catches your home network’s Wi-Fi signal and provides ports where you can plug in wired devices near it. Let’s take a look at how to wire up your living room using a wireless bridge.
Even if you do all your banking online, there’s still one ugly time of year when you’ve got to deal with a pile of financial paperwork, and that’s tax time. If your accountant accepts forms via email, or you just want to save tax documents on your computer, you want a quick and easy way to do it. While most scanner workflows require several steps to digitise documents, the Fujitsu ScanSnap transforms paper into PDF with a single button press. No one wants to spend more time than they have to on receipts, 1099′s and W-2′s. Let’s take a look at how to instantly capture tax-related and other important paperwork to your hard drive on April 15th and throughout the year with the ScanSnap.
