Medic and Mac enthusiast DrCris blogs at Applequack about how to streamline your interaction with Internet applications. One of the techniques she recommends involves using previously discussed Fluid (rather then the your main browser) for common online applications like Gmail:

Site specific browsers keep an independent window for the site of your choice. The advantage is that Fluid is independent to your usual browser, so if you get frequent crashes, it won't be affected.

Calculating the amount of carbon you need to offset for a flight can be complicated if your airline doesn't already offer a built-in facility to pay for this when you buy the ticket. Carbon Planet's Flight Emissions Calculator can help out, calculating the emissions involved in any sequence of flights and optionally letting you purchase a carbon credit for them. The airport entry system is a bit fiddly, but seems to cover most Australian cities with airports. The calculated impact in dollar terms also seems a tad high -- it's about ten times more than Qantas charges on its site for similar flights -- but it's still an interesting investigative tool. Thanks Martin!

Previously mentioned goal-setting application Lifetick has added an iPhone-application which allows basic access to your list of goals and tasks. Lifetick has also incorporated iCalendar support for integration with your preferred desktop calendar. Lifetick is free to test, costs $20 for a full annual subscription.

Windows/Mac: Cross-platform application Salling Media Sync synchronises music from your iTunes library to a number of popular mobile phones that don't begin with a little 'i.' The app syncs music by playlist or—if you're phone's got room for it—it can sync your entire library. The interface is clean and helpful, and the list of supported devices is large (though it currently supports mostly Nokia, Sony, and Sony Ericsson phones). Media Sync is available in both free and pay ($US22) versions, the difference supposedly limited to "faster sync" for the price tag. We don't have a supported phone at Lifehacker HQ, so if you give it a try let's hear how it works for you in the comments.

You download hundreds of files to your computer on a weekly—and sometimes daily—basis, a practice that can take forever and has the potential to turn your organised filesystem into a cluttered nightmare. Here's the five most popular tools our readers use to manage, organise, and speed up their downloads.

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If you're looking for the latest cool alternative tee, instead of checking Threadless, Busted Tees, and other specialty vendors, search them all at once at new T-shirt search engine PleaseDressMe. Simply search for a shirt by keywords (like fail whale or Obama), or browse by colour, price, or tag. Current tags range from things like "typography" to "american apparel," depending on what you're looking for. PleaseDressMe's selection is decent for now, but hopefully it will expand over time. What are your favourite online T-shirt vendors? Shout 'em out in the comments and help out PleaseDressMe with some ideas for expansion.

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Mac OS X only: Free iTunes add-on GimmeSomeTune automatically fetches missing album artwork, lyrics, and automatically embeds them in your music library. GimmeSomeTune runs in the background, and in addition to the metadata tools, it also supports scrobbling your music to Last.fm, universal hotkeys, iChat status updates, and even Apple Remote control. Apart from all that, GimmeSomeTune is also an excellent iTunes desktop remote, complete with a fully customisable song notification window. The donationware GimmeSomeTune is a must-have for the iTunes lover, Mac OS X only.

Windows only: Desktop application College Alarm Clock wakes you up on time for class (or an irregular work schedule) seven days a week. Set a custom alarm time on a per day basis, Sunday through Saturday, and set the sound to just a plain beep, or choose a song from your computer's digital music library. College Alarm Clock can skip any day of the week, and you can save an alarm schedule to easily switch between holiday break and the new semester of wakeup times. College Alarm Clock is a free download for Windows only.

Windows only: Encryption tool Rohos Mini Drive secures the files on your flash drive—but unlike our favourite encryption utility TrueCrypt, it creates partitions you can access even without administrative access on the computer in question (like a coffee shop workstation). Creating a drive is simple: Install Rohos Mini Drive on your primary workstation, plug in the USB drive you wish to secure and the wizard walks you through the rest. The only hiccup you may experience is if you have multiple USB drives plugged in when you run the wizard; just make sure you specify which drive if the auto detection picks your camera's SD card instead of your USB drive. Rohos Mini Drive has an autorun feature which can launch applications when it opens the partition, and a virtual keyboard for an added layer of security. The application uses AES 256 bit encryption and currently has a partition size limit of 1GB. Rohos Mini Drive is a free download for Windows only. Thanks, Pavv!

While the recent cut in interest rates is a welcome relief to mortgage holders, that hasn't stopped a flurry of newspaper coverage on how we still like to spend too much, save too little and whine about our super. But are things really that bad?
Long-term surveys of Australians by Quantum Market Research suggests that despite the apparently inexorable rise of consumerism, most of us are quite confident that we've got it right. As analyst David Chalke put it at a recent conference I attended in Canberra while discussing the viewpoint of "average Australians":

They are not going to hell in a credit-fuelled handbasket as they stuff their McMansions with plasma screens in their increasingly unhappy lives. We've actually got a lot smarter at managing money.