Sick of answering those telemarketing calls that always seem to arrive just as you're expecting something more important? Want a little less mail to sort through? The World Privacy Forum web site has a helpful roundup of the best ways to opt out of marketing materials online and off, stop data brokers from snooping through your life and avoid being pinned down by browser cookies. A few of these tips have been covered before on this site, but there are a few unique tips, and the page makes for a good all-in-one bookmark for protecting your data and cleaning out the marketing clutter.

AU - The Australian Do Not Call register can be found here.

Linux only: Keep your recent documents, frequent contacts and favourite file locations close at hand with Gimmie, a panel utility for GNOME-based Linux clients. Gimmie fits a lot of handy stuff into four buttons, including Pidgin integration, a Windows-like list of frequently used programs and quick network browsing, and promises more web and office document functionality in the future. The newest version runs on the release candidate for Ubuntu's Gutsy Gibbon (7.10), but Feisty Fawn (7.04) users can install it from the repositories by entering into terminal:

sudo apt-get install gimmie

Quick: What's the difference between putting your PC in Hibernate or Standby mode? Yeah, we weren't sure either. Luckily the Productivity Portfolio weblog schools us on the finer details of Windows XP power schemes. Using Standby:

Your machine recovers quickly as your data is stored in RAM. The slower part is waking up the peripherals. Although your machine is in "standby" the power has been cut to items such as your hard drive and monitor. You're running your machine in a very low power mode, but it is still on. This mode can be useful if you're on a notebook and need to conserve your battery while you step away.

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via Kwoff - Senator On-line claims to be Australia's first internet-based political party, and says if its gets a candidate elected to the Senate, all Australians will be able to view and vote on every bill which goes through the Senate. SOL senators will vote in line with the majority ruling of the people's vote. I'd like to be able to vote online (if the technology was unriggable and not a "hanging chad" disaster like the voting machines in the last American election) and being able to scrutinise the political process online would be great. But what if you don't have internet access? I'd like SOL's ideas better if they offered a plan to ensure internet access for all Australians.

DivX has started showing off their prototype "Apple TV killer"  - a low cost networked media player device with 720p output. The Ubergizmo blog got a look at the device and wrote it up:

"DivX made a technology choice that is completely opposite to Apple’s. The Apple TV is basically an entry-level computer without an OS. It has a CPU, a GPU, and a hard drive, these are generic components found in all recent computers. However, AppleTV still need to be connected to a bigger computer (to talk to iTunes).

By leveraging the fact that their device is connected to a computer, DivX shows that the same basic functionality can be built at a much cheaper price, because instead of using general-purpose hardware, it uses only stream-decoding hardware that is a lot cheaper to make."

DivX is claiming the device could retail at $US99 within a year - that's a third of the price of an Apple TV. Will be interesting to see if any hardware manufacturers decide to take a punt on it. Mind you - as Apple is no doubt finding in Australia with its Apple TV - without easy access to content, the media player itself is pretty redundant.

DivX’s Apple TV, but smarter [via PVRblog]

  A while back Adam wrote a post on how to become an online power shopper. At that time, reader Danielle commented on the lack of good online stores here in Australia.

"As an American living in Australia, it kills me that hardly any stores even show their products online, much less give you the ability to purchase them. What is the deal?"

From my experience of buying online in Australia, the UK and the US, I have to agree with Danielle. While we have a decent range of PC and computing related online stores who understand how to present products and offer a fairly user friendly buying experience, I can't name an non-IT related Australian online store I regularly go to. I love the idea of online grocery shopping but tried several and gave up because the ordering process took so long. I regularly buy from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk but haven't found a decent local online bookstore.

But I don't want to just whinge. I want to find the stores which have good websites  - preferably offering online shopping, but even if they're showing off their products online to entice you to come to their shop, that's something. While I like to purchase online, I also like to use the net as a browsing tool for items I'd prefer to buy in person - so stores with online catalogues would be a plus too.

I thought Lifehacker readers might share my interest in online shopping, so thought I'd throw the question to you - what are the good online shopping sites? Which stores have decent websites showing their products, even if they don't sell online? Of course, given how well the Aussie dollar is performing against the greenback, buying online from overseas is less expensive than it was - even if postage can be a killer. So if you have any favourite overseas sites you shop at, let us know about them too. Leave your tips in comments please!

Skype VoIP services will be offered to MySpace IM users under a new deal between MySpace and Skype's owner, eBay.

The Age wrote up the deal which will see MySpaceIM offer free voice chats between MySpace and Skype users, and let MySpace users link their profiles and photos to their Skype accounts.

The MySpaceIM with Skype software will be available for download in November. The Age reported that "In addition to free PC-to-PC communications, it will support Skype's fee-based services like SkypeOut (for calls to landlines), SkypeIn (a local phone number allowing users to receive calls from landlines or mobile phones), voicemail and call forwarding."

The story says MySpace has around 25,000 local users for its IM application - a figure I have to admit struck me (a MySpace newbie) as quite high. Have you used MySpaceIM, or would the new Skype features tempt you do so? Let us know in comments.

The iPhone-less among us can still get some Google Maps love with the recent Google Maps Mobile release. The updated version for Symbian devices is faster and less prone to connectivity prompts than the previous, and some smartphone users even get GPS abilities with GMaps. No GPS for me, but I still grabbed some screenshots after installing the new Google Maps on my Nokia 6682. Update: Our mistake; the version pictured is NOT the new release.

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Windows Vista only: Vista's thumbnail taskbar preview feature is attractive, but unless you've got superhuman vision, the very small thumbnails aren't all that useful. Freeware application Thumbnail Sizer manually adjusts the size of the thumbnail so you can super-size those previews for a much closer look at the window contents via a simple width and height slider. With some simple tweaking, your taskbar previews can be large enough for you to even be able to read text in the preview, which means you'll be able to understand what window you're seeing at a glance. While you're at it, you might want to enlarge your Alt-Tab thumbnails, too. XP users, you can add Vista-like taskbar previews with freeware application Visual Tooltip.

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• How can I kill my introversion before it kills my relationships?
• How do I make my two computers and two iPods love each other?

DIY web site Instructables details how to make a free iPod touch dock with the MP3 player's slick packaging. As any iPod aficionado knows, iPods used to come bundled with docks. Now it seems only the iPod shuffle and iPhone get the privilege of free dockdom, which is why we've seen tonnes of DIY docks. Well, now we can add this DIY iPod touch dock to that list. Luckily its box is a fairly attractive starting point.

Google Maps Mobile is now available on Symbian smartphones in addition to the already supported Windows Mobile and Palm OS. Even better, GMaps Mobile supports GPS on Nokia's N95 (as well as these other phones).

We all know how to use Google for quick spelling lookups, but weblog Google Operating System suggests you can use the same method for quick URL "spell checks" when the address you're trying isn't working. The "similar addresses" suggestion you see in the screenshot doesn't always show up, but I found that when it doesn't you'll still often receive the classic "Did you mean" correction—both of which should work to find the correct address.

Windows only: Quickly upload any file directly from Windows Explorer via your right-click menu with freeware application RightLoad. After you've installed and set up your FTP server, uploading any file to your FTP is as simple as right-clicking the file(s), choosing the server, and selecting the directory you want to upload the file(s) into; RightLoad takes care of the rest. Once the files are uploaded, this brilliant little utility generates links to the files or markup for linking to or embedding the file you've uploaded so it's easy to share the link with a friend or add it to a web site. It can even automatically create thumbnails for images or rename duplicate files. RightLoad is freeware, Windows only.

The holiday travel season is just around the bend, meaning if you're planning to fly the friendly skies this Thanksgiving or Chrismukkah, you've either already bought your tickets or you're about to. But instead of following the time-honoured holiday tradition of spending an arm and a leg on pricey tickets or frantically running through the airline terminal to catch your flight this year, follow these simple steps to ensure your trip is as inexpensive and relaxing as it is streamlined.

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Conventional wisdom says that buying a home is a sound investment, and renting is throwing money out the window every month. But finance blogger Millionaire Mommy Next Door says that renting resulted in significant savings over buying a home:

I calculated the total cost of living in our [purchased] home. Due to our sweat equity, our mortgage balance was very low ... but once I added property taxes, insurance, maintenance and, especially, lost opportunity costs (home equity not available to earn money), it became very clear that our shelter "need" was costing us too much in life energy.

Keep your textbooks in good condition to sell them back post-semester with a good cover—made of duct tape! It's not just for wallets any more. Ditch the brown paper bags and fabric covers for a strong (and stylish, at least in this circle) book cover using wikiHow's simple instructions. (Bonus points for using camouflage tape.)

New version 2.0 of Mac typing timesaver TextExpander is now available, with snippet groups, per-application settings, .Mac synchronisation, and speedier performance.

Tech site the How-To Geek puts Microsoft Outlook 2007's To-Do Bar through the paces, demonstrating how to create, categorise, complete, organise, and flag tasks using it. I haven't used Outlook on a daily basis since my escape to the freelance life, but most people with office jobs live in it. Are you using Outlook's To-Do manager to GTD? What do you love or hate about it? Let us know in the comments.

The next version of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard will be released in 10 days for $158 ($249 for a family pack o' licenses). You already know what's coming in Leopard: Time Machine backup, iChat improvements, a shiny (but not all that useful) Desktop and Dock, the final release of Boot Camp, and a much-improved, iTunes-like Finder. But what's the feature that will get you to fork over your hard-earned cash?

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