Lifehacker Book Contest Winner

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Nerdcycle Mounted Monitor Exercise Bike

7:00AM April 6, 2008 | Gina Trapani

Here’s our final winner in the reader contest to win an autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life. Thanks to everyone who submitted! Reader Martin is determined to not let the exercise bike next to his computer desk just sit there and gather dust. Instead, he wants to cycle while he surfs, and decided to start building his “Nerdcycle” by mounting an extra monitor to the stationary bike. Martin writes in:

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Label a Flash Drive with Your Name and Number

2:32AM April 4, 2008 | Gina Trapani

Readers are submitting their best life hack for a chance to win an autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life. Here’s our latest winner. Reader Jill carries her life on a thumb drive and if she loses it, she wants to make it as easy on the person who finds it as possible to return the drive. Jill writes in: I’ve been messing around with a way to mark my thumb drive so it will (maybe) be returned if I lose it. Chances are, I won’t actually “lose” it; I will leave it at the house of a friend or at work. But I want to get it back—ASAP—without having to call all over the universe to find it. Of course, the drive is encrypted so i don’t need to worry about data falling into the wrong hands. I only worry about having to rebuild EVERYTHING because I carry my life on my thumb drive.

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Record YouTube Music Videos to MP3

8:00AM April 3, 2008 | Gina Trapani

Readers are submitting their best life hack for a chance to win an autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life. Here’s our latest winner. Reader Matt grabs songs from YouTube videos the way we used to hit the cassette deck record button while listening to the radio back in the 80′s. Well, not really. Matt does it by downloading the YouTube clip .FLV file and converting it to MP3. After the jump, get the steps and tools you need to do it yourself.

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Instantly Set a Screensaver Away Message

10:55AM April 2, 2008 | Gina Trapani

Readers are submitting their best life hack for a chance to win an autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life. Here’s our latest winner. When reader Jim steps away from his PC at the office, he likes to let everyone know where he is—and he uses his screensaver to do just that. But digging through the settings every time he has to change the status message is tedious, so Jim streamlines the process with a handy script that he invokes with a simple key combination. After the jump, download Jim’s fabulous script and learn how to set it up for yourself.

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Darken Windows to Reduce Eye Strain

8:00AM April 1, 2008 | Gina Trapani

Readers are submitting their best life hack for a chance to win an autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life. Here’s our latest winner. Reader David says that staring at the glowing box all day long is hard on his peepers, so he takes matters into his own hands. He writes in:

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Customize Your Own Firefox Sidebar Web Page

10:00AM March 29, 2008 | Gina Trapani

Readers are submitting their best life hack for a chance to win an autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life. Here’s our latest winner. Reader Zalary put some HTML skills to work to turn the Firefox sidebar into a one-stop shop of frequently used utilities. Zalary says:

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Neuter the Caps Lock Key with Handicapslock

10:00AM March 28, 2008 | Gina Trapani

Readers are submitting their best life hack for a chance to win an autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life. Here’s our latest winner. Reader Jeadly got sick of hitting the Caps Lock key without meaning to, and uses a custom utility to stop the madness without disabling it completely. Jeadly writes: I’ve written an AutoHotkey script that handicaps the Caps Lock key. I suppose I should call it “Handicapslock.” With my script running, the Caps Lock key doesn’t lock “on” unless you double tap it, so its behaviour is more like the Shift key.

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Copy and Paste Without Switching Windows

8:00AM March 27, 2008 | Gina Trapani

Readers are submitting their best life hack for a chance to win an autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life. Here’s our latest winner. Reader CK uses neat automation trick when there’s heavy-duty copy and pasting to be done: I have one very simple AutoHotkey script which I use when I need to do some massive copying and pasting work, which simplifies the task into just one keystroke: Win+C.

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Download Shared iTunes Over the Internet with Windows Mojo and Hamachi

6:00AM March 25, 2008 | Gina Trapani

Throughout this week, readers are submitting their best life hack for a chance to win an autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life. Last Wednesday Adam showed you how to download music from shared iTunes libraries over the internet using third-party app Mojo, but PC users were disappointed to find the Windows Mojo beta only works on local networks. But reader Dexter put two and two together, and shares his Windows iTunes library over the internet with Mojo and the free VPN client, Hamachi.

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Embed Your To-Do List Onto Your Desktop

8:00AM March 21, 2008 | Gina Trapani

For the next week and a half, readers are submitting their best life hack for a chance to win an autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life. Reader Denis wanted to embed a to-do list on his Windows desktop, and came up with a no-install solution:

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