Macworld says that iWork '08's Numbers changes the spreadsheet paradigm. Mac guy Merlin Mann says Numbers is like the Excel librarian who ditches her hornrims, opens a button and shakes out her hair. We decided to give Numbers a test drive ourselves to see if it really deserves all the praise. In fact, while Numbers isn't a revelation, it does for spreadsheets what the iPod did for MP3 players. Numbers adds polish, ease-of-use and some beautiful "duh, of COURSE it should work that way!" features to spreadsheets. Here's our short list of the most impressive Numbers features that set it well apart from Excel, with screenshots:

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Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Stop the office embarrassment caused by audio randomly screaming at you by using this Firefox extension: Stop Autoplay prevents audio from automatically playing when you enter a web site. Similar to the way Flashblock handles Flash, Stop Autoplay gives you a choice of playing the audio or keeping it blocked. If you have audio blocked, you will see a small play button where you can re-enable it. Stop Autoplay works on mp3, wma, wmv, avi and mpg and has earned itself a permanent home in my extension list. Windows users might also want to check out FlashMute, which lets you specifically lower the sounds emanating from your browser.

Nobody likes a Negative Nancy—that is, the person that puts a negative spin on everything and makes sure you know about it. Well, what if Negative Nancy is you? Steve Pavlina has some excellent advice about how to change your behaviour and stop complaining.

Perhaps the most important step in quitting the habit of complaining is to disconnect the undesirable behaviour from your identity. A common mistake chronic complainers make is to self-identify with the negative thoughts running through their minds.

Windows only: Freeware application Absolute Uninstaller aims to replace the default Windows Add/Remove Programs dialog, similar to Revo Uninstaller and MyUninstaller. Like Revo, Absolute Uninstaller removes the files normally left behind even after you run the regular uninstall. Absolute Uninstaller sets itself apart by letting you bulk remove applications, meaning you can check off every application you want to uninstall and then uninstall them all at once (though you still have to click through confirmation screens). You can also sort applications by install date and see at a glance which applications are newly installed. Absolute Uninstaller is freeware, Windows only.

Mozilla preps Firefox Campus Edition, which is pre-bundled with student-centric extensions like Zotero, FoxyTunes and StumbleUpon. What extensions would you give to our young academics?

On the road to productivity, your "buddies" are merely speedbumps. Tx, David!

Website FabricLink's Carpet Stain Index offers individual step-by-step instructions for removing stains from your carpet caused by everything from beer and chewing gum to coffee and rust. The detailed guides for each stain type use household products you've probably got on hand (we're talking hand dish soap, ammonia and hydrogen peroxide), so you should be able to find what you need to fix any nasty spill without heading to the store while the stain sets in. Photo by xctmx.

DIY site Instructables details how to create a toilet-top sink that conserves water by pumping the water headed to the reservoir for your next flush through the sink beforehand. Once again, that's water heading to the reservoir, not water leaving the toilet. Apparently toilet-top sinks aren't uncommon in Japan, and after you get over the idea that any water associated with your toilet is gross (which, let's be honest, is an instinct that can't have hurt), this is a brilliant idea for conserving water.

Yahoo Audio Search streams 30 second preview clips of songs in their audio search with links to download (read: buy) the song where available. The preview is a smart and natural addition to any audio search, but it's the first we've seen from a popular search box. Beyond that, clicking the download locations link provides a great table detailing not only where you can buy the song, but also the price, format, supported platform and whether the song can be burned to CD or copied.
Yahoo lyrics was already a great leap in song search, and it looks like they're continuing to establish themselves as the only worthwhile audio/music search currently available.

The once wildly popular BitTorrent site SuprNova is re-launching today, courtesy of another crazy popular BitTorrent site, The Pirate Bay.

Google has seen the customer service light and is promising full credit card refunds to anyone who ever purchased a soon-to-be defunct Google Video in addition to the lame Google Checkout credit they already handed out.

The popular non-Google web-based word processor Zoho Writer now supports an offline mode with Google Gears. By default, Zoho Writer downloads 15 documents for offline viewing, but you can specify more if you want. Yes, that's offline viewing, not editing, though Zoho says that offline editing will be available in the next few weeks. Just think, if only Google had a web-based word processor that could take advantage of Gears. Oh wait...

MySpace is claiming that local registrations have more than doubled since they launched their Australian site two weeks ago.

Australian signups to MySpace increased from 3000 users a day to 7000 since the launch of the local site, MySpace Australia director of marketing and content Rebekah Horne told the Australian newspaper today.

Confusingly for this MySpace newbie, the local site isn't located at www.myspace.com.au - in fact it doesn't even rate a redirect from that URL. Australians visiting www.myspace.com are automatically sent to the local site.

Perhaps even more frightening was the news that the MySpace video site managed to attract 4 million more visitors than YouTube earlier this month, according to Score Media Metrix.

Localisation boosts users of MySpace [The Australian]

I made a discovery today which early adopters of 64-bit Vista probably already knew about if they were using IE7. My excuse is I usually use Firefox, so it was a new problem to me. :)

It turns out that Adobe haven't put out a Flash plugin for 64-bit computing yet - so IE7 couldn't display videos for me.

Anyway, in case it helps anyone else, here's the problem and workaround!

I'm running Vista in 64-bit mode, and when I started using IE7, I couldn't get videos to display. Upon visiting the Adobe site to see if I needed to upgrade my Flash player, I found the culprit:

"Flash Player is not supported for playback in a 64-bit browser. However, you can run Flash Player in a 32-bit browser running on a 64-bit operating system."

After pausing for a moment to boggle at the fact that a plugin as ubiquitous as Flash isn't available for a 64-bit browser yet...

I consulted some friends (and friendly search engines) and while I could find a few workarounds for Adobe's lack of 64-bit browser support for Safari/Linux users, I didn't see anything helpful for IE/Vista.

Fortunately, a friend came to the rescue with a very easy solution. Turns out that Vista ships with both the 64-bit IE7 and 32-bit IE7. So I didn't even need to uninstall/reinstall anything - opening the Start bar showed me both versions of IE, so I just deleted the 64-bit version (which is pretty useless without Flash, I think) leaving the 32-bit version of IE as my default.

Thanks Darren!

Google has announced a new feature of Google Maps that enables users to easily embed maps directly into web pages.

Google Maps users can now add a map to their website just by copying and pasting a snippet of HTML. It's now about as easy as embedding YouTube videos - you no longer need an API key or knowledge of Java Script to put a Google Map on your site.

The "Link to this page" button on the top right hand corner of the Google Maps screen lets you choose the size of the map (small, medium, large or custom), and generates HTML for you to copy and paste into your website or blog.

The embedded map will be fully interactive, like the Google Maps API, so users can drag and click or zoom in on a location, and view it in map, satellite, and hybrid modes, all within your own website or blog.

One small niggle was that the custom size doesn't allow you to automatically keep the aspect ratio when entering a custom size - you need to specify both height and width manually.

View Larger Map

Bayard Randal was using the open source online forum software application phpBB3, and decided to create a hack to allow users to easily embed YouTube videos in their forum posts.

Click the link to see his walkthrough.

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Used well, IM chat can be a real time saver and let you get answers fast from co-workers anywhere in the world. But even Google, makers of Google Talk and GMail Chat, admits its staff are prone to the occasional IM stuffup, says Google's Christine Knight on the Google Australia blog.

Besides the easy-to-do accidental IM-ing disasters (“I pinged the wrong person!” is a common moan heard around the office), the instant, casual nature of instant messaging applications has brought with it a minefield of questions as to IM etiquette.

She offers a list of tips for using IM in the office "straight from the Australian Googlers' mouths".

To ping or not to ping [Official Google Australia Blog]

There are two types of PC users in the world - those who don't mind the deafening roar of their overclocked monster, and those who aspire to the quiet PC.
CNET Australia has a detailed guide on how to build the ultimate quiet PC. It goes through component choices, as well as offering alternatives to buying everything new if budget's a concern.
It also offers some maintenance tips to ensure that your PC stays as quiet as possible.
Build the ultimate quiet PC [via CNET Australia]

You may know Quicksilver as the universal command interface, data manipulation tool, and application launcher that you invoke from anywhere to do your wicked and powerful bidding. Although you can cut down on a lot of keystrokes and work using Quicksilver through its main interface, you can cut down repetitive Quicksilver actions even further by assigning triggers to common tasks. From installing applications and controlling iTunes to creating quick timers or opening common folders, the often unexplored Quicksilver triggers are a bullet train to productivity.

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Windows/Mac/Linux: Temporarily turn your computer into a home theatre with the GeeXboX live CD. All you need to do is drop the GeeXbox CD into your drive and restart. When you are done with GeeXbox, remove the CD, restart your computer and you will return to your existing operating system. Originally created just to play DivX videos, GeeXboX can now play virtually any file format you throw at it. GeeXbox has extremely low requirements and can be used to turn an old computer into a media center. Linux users who don't have the libdvdcss2 codec installed can boot into GeeXboX and watch DVDs without any setup. GeeXboX is a free download for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Student web application Notely keeps track of your to-do's, classes, lecture notes, bookmarks, and calendar in an attractive interface. Associate notes and tasks with classes, and even enter complicated mathematical formulas into your notes and upload related files. Notely also doesn't lock up your data; your calendar is available in iCal and you can export all your notes and lists into PDF, Word, text or CSV (Excel) files at any time, as well as RSS feeds. Notely also offers a mobile version for easy cell phone access and a Facebook application. For the student looking to get and stay organised this school year online, Notely looks like a great option.

More companies are monitoring email automatically, using systems that analyse outgoing messages for red flags, like foul language, customer data and competitors' names automatically.

It's not spam, it's bacn. A new email term was born this week — bacn, an intentionally vowel-less buzzword defined as:

Email you receive that isn't spam... And isn't personal mail. It's the middle class of email. It's notifications of a new post to your Facebook wall or a new follower on Twitter. It's the Google alert for your name and the newsletter from your favorite company.

While techies don't need yet another buzzword, bacn's definitely a growing issue. As it is I route bacn to a "when I have time" label in Gmail, and often I never get the time. How about you? How much bacn do you get—and what do you do about it?

Listen to your iTunes library from any web browser using Anywhere.FM, a slick webapp that hosts and streams your music with its web-based player. The Anywhere.FM beta is almost too good to be true right now, with free unlimited uploads and listens (but the service may charge in the future). Download a free Anywhere.FM iTunes uploader application that will detect your library and upload all your songs to Anywhere.FM for you.

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Reader Aaron keeps his computer on for easy remote access and for nightly scheduled tasks (like backups and defrags), but didn't want to waste the energy an always-on computer would. So he hacked together a network setup that uses power-saving settings and Wake on LAN technology to get both energy efficiency AND constant availability. He estimates this new setup saves him almost $200 a year in energy bills and reduces his carbon emissions by 234lbs (!!). Here's how he did it:

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Windows only: Duplicate file cleanup utility DoubleKiller scans folders for identical files so you can delete or move them off your PC's hard drive to free up space. Like Easy Duplicate Finder, DoubleKiller can scan more than one folder at a time, and compare binary files' checksums. Exclude certain file types and set your own criteria for how files are determined to be the same (based on name, size, date and/or CRC.) DoubleKiller did a great job de-duping my music collection, much better than xiTunes' built-in "Show Duplicates" feature. DoubleKiller is a free download for Windows only. Thanks, shankar!

You can download the entire contents of Wikipedia and run your own sped-up version locally. The Software Engineering Laboratory walks you through the process of downloading and setting up your own Wikipedia. The tutorial even includes building a customized JavaScript search capability. Don't bank on getting this done in an afternoon —the entire contents of Wikipedia are approximately 2.9 gigabytes. If you've got a broadband connection, it will take anywhere between 6 and 10 hours to download the contents. The process uses only open source software and requires a decent knowledge of scripting.

The power hungry Pentium III Linux computer you have running in the closet is a perfect candidate for a virtual machine conversion. Fortunately, it is possible to convert that computer into a virtual machine and ditch the energy hog. The Windley's Technometria weblog runs down the surprisingly easy (yet lengthy) process of converting a physical computer into a VMWare virtual machine.

I could have just rebuilt the whole machine from scratch on a new virtual machine, but that takes a lot of time and the old build isn't that out of date (one year) and works fine. So, I set out to discover how to transfer a physical machine to a virtual machine.

Mac users can virtualise and dual-boot the same partition — have your cake and eat it too!

Mac only: Freeware app WeatherDock is a lightweight application that provides one-click access to your local weather through the menubar or dock, updating the weather every 30 minutes. With an extremely light memory footprint and an unobtrusive interface, I'll take WeatherDock over a Dashboard weather widget any day. WeatherDock is a free download for Mac only.

Consumer Reports' crash test videos let you watch crash tests on several makes and models tested using the (American) Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crash test. Hearing that a car scores acceptable or poor on a crash test is one thing, but actually seeing a dummy's head flopping around is another thing entirely. The videos are available for/applicable to vehicles as old as 1995, but most of the cars tested are newer than 2000. Looks like a good resource to check out before you buy your next car.