We're quitting early this pre-Memorial Day Friday to preheat the grill and stock up on hamburger buns, but before we go, get a load of this week's most popular posts:

• Top 10 Firefox 3 Features
  "The newest version of our favourite open source web browser, Mozilla Firefox 3, offers dozens of new features and fixes, but only a handful will make the most dramatic difference in your everyday browsing."
• Learn to Play an Instrument Online
  "Chances are at one point or another, you've either purchased an instrument or considered doing so with the intention of learning to play it; most of us, however, never get around the learning part."
• Five Extensions You Won't Need with Firefox 3
  "Now that Mozilla's locked down Firefox 3's feature set, it's clear the new browser iteration will render some extensions obsolete. Firefox 3 will include functionality out-of-the-box that you could only get with add-ons before."
• Firefox 3 On Track To Be Speediest Browser
  "It's official: while Firefox 3 boasts some great new features like a smart address bar and better bookmarks manager, the best reason to upgrade will be for the performance improvements."
• Best Free Ways to Protect Your Private Files
  "When you're saving sensitive files on your computer meant for your eyes only, make sure you've got the right tools on hand to keep them private."
• How to Turn $450 a Month into $1 Million
  "If you started investing $448 a month at 30 years old, Yahoo Finance says that a reasonable 8% return would put your savings over the million dollar mark in 35 years. The problem, of course, is finding that extra $450."
• Control Your PC with Your Voice
  "You've been talking to (or screaming at) your Windows PC for years, but unless you were willing to shell out hundreds of dollars on pricey software, chances are it wasn't listening to a word you were saying."
• Set Firefox 3 to Launch Gmail for mailto Links
  "In Firefox 3, you won't need any special toolbars, third-party apps, Greasemonkey scripts, or extensions to get Firefox to use webapps to open certain types of links."
• Best Application Launchers
  "Your Start menu and Applications folder are growing larger and harder to navigate every day, but with a solid application launcher at your side, you'll never notice."
• Fedora 9 Puts Your Desktop on a USB Drive
  "This week's release of the Fedora 9 Linux distribution makes putting a full-fledged desktop on a portable USB thumb drive a three-click affair."

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Wrap your Friday with a quick recap of our most popular posts this week:

• Get Vista's Best Features in XP
  "Despite the fact that most of you prefer XP to Vista and would rather Microsoft extended XP's shelf-life, several new and improved features available in Vista would be great to have in XP."
• Top 10 Things You Forgot Your Mac Can Do
  "Macs may be more expensive, and Mac users more elitist (ahem), but blind Apple loyalty aside, there are a number of neat features bundled into your Mac that make it super useful and fun."
• XBMC Turns Your Mac into the Ultimate Media Center
  "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."
• Slim Down Your Wallet with Your Phone
  "Blogger Albert Alberts loves a slim wallet, and after reading over some of our wallet-slimming tips, he realised he had a powerful wallet-slimming tool in his pocket all the time: his iPhone."
• Handle a Traffic Stop and Avoid Your Ticket
  "Car and Driver magazine knows a thing or two about getting pulled over, so they asked seven state troopers from across the country what they want and don't want from you, the driver, during a routine traffic stop."
• DExposE2 Like Mac Expose but Better
  "Windows only: Freeware application DExposE2 is a clone of Mac OS X's Expose feature for Windows XP and Vista."
• How to Cram All Your Travel Gear in One Bag
  "Now that most of the major airlines have begun charging an extra fee for checking a second bag, National Public Radio's All Things Considered tackles the art of one-bag packing, interviewing Doug Dyment, owner of previously mentioned OneBag.com."
• Do You Still Use Browser Bookmarks?
  "In the age of social bookmarking and blogs, old fashioned browser bookmarks (or 'Favorites,' as Internet Explorer refers to them) are teetering on the edge of obsolete."
• Hive Five: Best RSS Newsreaders
  "On Tuesday you nominated your favourite RSS newsreaders, and over 400 comments later, we're back with your top five choices."
• Sync Your iPhone Wirelessly in Linux
  "Apple may open up its iPhone and iPod touch devices to third-party apps next month, but the chances that Linux users will get invited to the party are slim at best."

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Too busy for Lifehacker this week? We forgive you. Have a recap of this week's most popular posts:

• Turn Your Point-and-Shoot into a Super-Camera
  "If you're using a consumer grade point-and-shoot Canon digital camera, you've got hardware in hand that can support advanced features way beyond what shipped in the box."
• Make Windows More Productive Without Installing a Thing
  "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."
• Best Online File Sharing Services
  "Whether you're trying to share megabytes worth of music with a friend or send an important document to a coworker, nothing outshines a fast, easy-to-use file-sharing service."
• Determine If Your ISP is Throttling Your BitTorrent Traffic
  "Web application Glasnost simulates BitTorrent downloads on your computer to determine whether or not your internet service provider (ISP) is throttling your BitTorrent transfers."
• Top 10 Tools to Get Blogging Done
  "Writing your blog should be a fun way to stretch your mind and stay connected to trends, friends, and the greater world, not another computer task that takes far too long to get done."
• How Wil Wheaton Gets Things Done
  "In 1988, if you'd told my Star Trek-loving 12-year-old self that someday I'd get to meet Wil Wheaton—and that he'd know my name—my preteen head would have exploded."
• How to Buy a Digital Camera and Ignore Expensive Hype
  "Wired's How-To Wiki takes a group-edited look at the digital camera market and how a newcomer (or, more likely at this point, a buyer replacing their first, outdated model) can parse all the features and statistics to come out with a reasonable bargain."
• Creative Ways to Reuse "Disposable" Items
  "We asked earlier this week what disposable items you had found clever re-uses for, and the answers are in. Not surprisingly, some of you have some pretty crafty uses for household goods that usually end up at the curb."
• Get 91% Off Microsoft Office Ultimate
  "A Microsoft student promotion that slashes 91% off a copy of Office Ultimate applies to anyone with a .edu email address—and most universities offer .edu addresses to their alumni for free."
• Slipstream Service Pack 3 into Your Windows XP Installation CD
  "Next time you wipe your PC's hard drive clean and reinstall Windows with that old installation disc, you don't want to connect your fresh, unpatched and vulnerable system to the internet only to download 176 new updates from Microsoft."

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Before you finish your weekly review, clear off your desk, and pack up the old briefcase for the weekend, get a load of this week's most popular posts.

• Superior Alternatives to Crappy Windows Software
  "It may be the year 2008, but a whole lot of sucktacular software still rears its ugly head on PC's everywhere, even when better-behaved options are freely available."
• Top 10 Memory Hacks
  "Writing things down, on paper or on-screen, is the best way to make sure you remember important info and tasks, but sometimes you've got to rely on your plain old brain to keep essential data sorted and handy."
• Do You Run Antivirus Software?
  "From the looks of our recent thread on software you should never install, several Lifehacker readers have given up on running antivirus software."
• CCleaner 2.0 Decrapifies Your PC
  "Windows only: One of our favourite PC cleansers CCleaner (which stands for "Crap Cleaner") saw an upgrade this week."
• Field Guide to Windows XP SP3
  "Windows XP Service Pack 3 officially hit Microsoft servers this morning, and although it won't be available through Windows Update today, it should be sometime soon."
• Get Firefox's Best Features in Internet Explorer
  "You already know that Firefox is a superior web browser, but you still have to use Internet Explorer on a daily basis."
• Best Text Editors
  "From managing our to-do lists and writing code to jotting ideas and keeping a grocery list, nothing beats a solid plain text editor."
• Hardy Heron Makes Linux Worth Another Look
  "If you've flirted with the idea of switching your desktop operating system to Linux but never took the leap, the time is now. This week's release of Hardy Heron, an Ubuntu release that will be supported until 2011, offers a freer, more productive space for work and play than ever before."
• Have Your Mac and Windows Too with Boot Camp
  "You can have both a Mac and a PC on a single computer, using Apple's new Boot Camp software."

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It's Friday and we're in love—with stopping this productivity madness and enjoying the weekend! Before you do, get a load of our most popular posts this week.

• Easy Ways to Go Green with Your Computer
  "Not everyone can afford to install solar panels or get a new Prius this Earth Day, but there is one place you can go green without spending an arm and a leg or radically changing your lifestyle: your computer."
• Top 10 Amazon Power Shopper Tools
  "You already love the one-stop convenience of shopping online at Amazon.com, but chances are you're not getting everything you can out of this feature-packed shopping engine."
• Tweak Microsoft Outlook to Empty Your Inbox Faster
  "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."
• Slim Down, Back Up, and Organise Your Wallet
  "If that big ol' bump on your butt is giving you back problems, it's time to reorganise your wallet."
• Do You Delete or Archive More Gmail Messages?
  "Ever since they launched it without a Delete button, the folks at Google have been trying to convince Gmail users to archive their mail instead of trash it."
• RegToy Tweaks Your PC Every Which Way
  "Free PC tweaking utility RegToy exposes all sorts of Windows settings that you'd normally have to dig into the registry to get to."
• SuperMemo Helps You Remember Everything Before You Forget
  "Windows only: Remember everything you've learned using spaced repetition with SuperMemo."
• Best Contact Management Applications
  "Your contact list is growing larger every day, and so are the number of email addresses, instant messaging handles, and phone numbers your contacts use."
• Control and Grab Your Torrents From Anywhere with TorrentFlux
  "If you've got a Windows or Linux computer you keep on most of the time, a home server, or even hosted space, you can take control of your downloads remotely with TorrentFlux."

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Happy weekend, people! Go have some fun this weekend. But first, treat yourself to some of our most popular posts of the week:

• Turn Your iPod Touch into an iPhone
  "Today I'm going to show you how to make VoIP phone calls from your iPod touch or iPhone using a freeware application called SIP-VoIP."
• Five Best DVD Ripping Tools
  "Even those in-the-know find it difficult to keep up with the best tools to rip DVDs, especially in the face of increased copy protection."
• Battle of the Notepad Alternatives
  "If you've done any more than cursory text editing using Windows' built-in Notepad application, you know that Notepad is at best sorely lacking in the features department and at worst downright buggy."
• Top 10 Email Productivity Boosters
  "The first message one could consider email was sent more than 30 years ago, and that's probably when people began associating angst and uncertainty with the words 'Inbox' and 'unread messages.'"
• Free Alternatives to the MacHeist Bundle
  "I'm rounding up no-cost alternatives to the current MacHeist bundle (minus the three games) that will give you most if not all of the functionality of their shareware counterparts for a grand total of $0."
• DIY Two Dollar Laptop Stand
  "Build a lightweight, sturdy laptop stand for a measly two bucks using a couple of twisted wire easels he picked up from the local dollar store and a few common household items."
• Analyse Your Email Usage with Mail Trends
  "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."
• Stitch Photos Into Panoramas with Free Software
  "You can get decent photos out of a standard, consumer-grade digital camera, but a little post-processing can turn them into fantastic wide-angle landscapes."

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While you were off actually being productive this week, we were only writing about it. Have a recap of this week's most popular posts:

• Top 10 Ways to Trick Out Your Desktop
  "For something that you look at every day of your working life, your computer desktop doesn't get as much attention as it deserves."
• The Complete Field Guide to Testing Firefox 3
  "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."
• Consolidate Multiple Email Addresses with Gmail
  "Gmail is not only an email host, it's an email client, which can fetch mail from any number of external services and consolidate it all right there in your Gmail inbox."
• Features Specific to the Mac (or PC)?
  "What can you do in Windows by default you can't do on the Mac?" (Editor: THE most civilized Mac vs PC debate on the web is right here, folks.)
• Battle of the Designer Notebooks
  "Productivity enthusiasts love their overpriced designer notebooks, and being office supply fetishists ourselves, we've featured quite a few here."
• Five Best GTD Applications
  "We put out our call for the best applications that help you practice the Getting Things Done productivity system, and from a mighty list of viable contenders, we've taken your votes and determined the five most popular of the bunch."
• Create Distraction-Free, Customised Webapps with Prism
  "With the help of a few utilities, web applications in Prism can be just as convenient to launch and use as your standard-installation desktop programs."

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If you were too busy being productive instead of reading Lifehacker this month, have a quick rundown of March's most popular posts:

• Top 10 Software Easter Eggs
  "Sure we like our chocolate bunny ears, but around these parts the best easter eggs aren't painted pink and stuffed with jelly beans—they're the undocumented and unexpected fun features hidden deep inside various software apps."
• Turn Your PC into a DVD Ripping Monster
  "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."
• Protect Your Privacy When Downloading
  "Whether you're downloading copyrighted material or not, no one likes to have their activities online monitored."
• Download Music from Your Friends' iTunes Libraries Over the Internet with Mojo
  "Windows/Mac only: Share any song in your iTunes library and download any song from your friends' iTunes libraries over the internet with freeware application Mojo."
• Top 10 Ways to Get Cables Under Control
  "When you finally decide it's time to do something about that rat's nest of cables that's spreading like kudzu, you don't have to spend a lot of time and money to get it under control."
• Get Back to Your Mac Without Paying for It
  "When Leopard was released, one of the most enticing new features was Back to My Mac, a tool that made it possible to access your home computer remotely—including remote control of your desktop and access to your files—no matter where you are."
• Caught Downloading Copyrighted Material—Now What?
  "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."
• Run Windows Apps Seamlessly Inside Linux
  "You love working inside your Linux desktop, but at the most inconvenient times you've got to reboot into Windows—whether to open a tricky Office file, try out a Windows application, or even just play a quick game."
• First Look at Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" Beta
  "Every six months when a new version of Ubuntu Linux gets released, long-time users and curious toe-dippers ask the same questions: 'What's new?'; 'Is it worth upgrading?'; and, 'Will my wireless card finally work with this version?'"

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This week's most popular posts include:

• Top 10 Software Easter Eggs
  "Sure we like our chocolate bunny ears, but around these parts the best easter eggs aren't painted pink and stuffed with jelly beans—they're the undocumented and unexpected fun features hidden deep inside various software apps."
• Turn Your PC into a DVD Ripping Monster
  "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."
• Caught Downloading Copyrighted Material—Now What?
  "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."
• Protect Your Privacy When Downloading
  "Whether you're downloading copyrighted material or not, no one likes to have their activities online monitored."
• First Look at Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" Beta
  "Every six months when a new version of Ubuntu Linux gets released, long-time users and curious toe-dippers ask the same questions: 'What's new?'; 'Is it worth upgrading?'; and, 'Will my wireless card finally work with this version?'"
• Free Ways to Synchronise Folders Between Computers
  "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."
• Reuse Another Computer's Windows XP Disc?
  "I have a Dell-branded Windows XP installation disc that came with one PC, and I was wondering—can I use it to format and install XP on another PC?"
• Jailbreak Any iPhone or iPod Touch in 45 Seconds
  "By downloading and running one simple application, you could be up and running with a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch in just under a minute."

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Here's a digest of our most popular posts this week:

• Download Music from Your Friends' iTunes Libraries Over the Internet with Mojo
  "Windows/Mac only: Share any song in your iTunes library and download any song from your friends' iTunes libraries over the internet with freeware application Mojo."
• FairUse DVD Ripper Free for a Limited Time
  "Windows only: Grab a free copy of the normally-$20 DVD ripper FairUse Wizard 2, which converts DVDs to video files playable by a slew of devices."
• Avoid These 8 Worst Foods in America
  "The New York Times reviews a book called Eat This, Not That!, a nutrition guide full of images of foods you shouldn't eat and their healthier substitutes."
• Top 10 DIY Laptop Stands
  "When your hot laptop needs ventilation and your wrists need a break from a flat keyboard, you can drop 50 bucks on a fancy commercial laptop stand--or you can build one of your own."
• Battle of the Free Windows Software Firewalls
  "Yesterday when we asked you what your favourite Windows firewall software is, we got back tonnes of responses, from ZoneAlarm to Sygate from free to commercial. Now we want to narrow down the choices to the best."
• Wire Your Living Room Over Wi-Fi with a Bridge
  "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."
• Run Windows Apps Seamlessly Inside Linux
  "You love working inside your Linux desktop, but at the most inconvenient times you've got to reboot into Windows--whether to open a tricky Office file, try out a Windows application, or even just play a quick game."
• The Coolest Cubicle Contest Final Showdown and Monster Roundup
  "You've been with us for parts one, two, and three of this year's Coolest Cubicle Contest, and now the time has arrived--time for the final vote-off to determine which creative cubicle jockey will hit their commute tomorrow $500 richer (in Amazon bucks)."
• Windows Vista Service Pack 1
  "Windows Vista only: As we mentioned earlier today, Microsoft is releasing/has released Windows Vista Service Pack 1 to Windows Update today."
• Aggregate Your Online Social Life with FriendFeed
  "A recently launched, much-hyped webapp called FriendFeed aims to simplify your online life by pulling all of the content you create into one centralised service."

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