Naked DSL is finally here for those wishing to dump their monthly landline fee. APC magazine reports that iiNet has announced a $49.95 package which offers 2GB peak and 2GB off peak download allowance - with the sweetner of free local and national calls through iiNet's VoIP service. Calls to mobiles aren't free - they're charged at 29c per minute, with no call connection fee.

There's a full pricing table of the available home and business plans in the APC article, or you can check out the details at iiNet's website here.

iiNet's Naked DSL goes on sale; pricing revealed [APC]

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the state government's plan to offer free wi-fi for the Sydney CBD has been delayed.

The state government had promised free wi-fi by 2009 for the CBD, North Sydney, Parramatta, Penrith, Liverpool, Newcastle, Wollongong and Gosford. They're now saying the complexity of the project and the number of tenders is slowing things down.

Maybe they just need to get Adelaide-based ISP Internode on the case - they've been offering free municipal Wi-Fi in Adelaide and other regional areas for a fair while.

If you're preparing to whip up a bowl of mashed potatoes this Thanksgiving (and who isn't planning to make this holiday staple?), the New York Times explains how to make the perfect, classic mashed potato dish.

Starting with hot, dry potatoes and hot butter emerged as one of the two crucial steps toward mashed potato success. The other was using a good masher: in fact, technology trumped every other factor in my experiments.

AU - yes, Thanksgiving is an American holiday but anyone can enjoy good mashed potatoes. :)

This hack leapt out at me because it offers a very cheap way to solve the very annoying habit which iPod headphones have of falling out of your ears while jogging. Basically you use a leather punch on some cheapy ear plugs (the kind which are handed out free at gigs!) and then pop them over the ear bud of your headphones. Easy!

How to upgrade your Apple In-Ear headphones [Chaos Projects via Hack a day]

I suspect that having kids is a great way to learn about time and money management. The Simple Dollar blog has published a few tips for frugal parenting which offers both time and money saving tips.

A couple of time-saving tips stood out -  including finding activities which can be supervised by one parent while the other parent is freed up to do other work or have some downtime, and swapping babysitting with another family to ensure a night off from the kids every now and then.

Some of the money saving tips made my inner child groan (oh noes, home hair cuts!)  but the emphasis on finding simple, creative toys seems to offer more benefits than just saving money.

Likewise, this tip really stood out:

Involve the children in every possible activity that you do. Even if it creates a mess or eats up time. If you take out the trash, have them help bag it and tie the knots. If you cook supper, show them what you’re doing. If you do the dishes, or go to the store, or anything else, involve them in the process. As they grow older, they’ll naturally become more and more involved and you can become less and less involved - in other words, you’re teaching them how to be frugal adults who can do things for themselves.

So, for the parents out there, got any time or money saving tips to share? Leave them in comments please.

Eight tips from an ultra-frugal parent [The Simple Dollar, via Lifehack.org]

Like the concept of Leopard's Time Machine but aren't running Leopard on your machine? The IMHO weblog steps through how to mimic the backup chops of Leopard using the rsync command line tool. By default rsync is Unix-only tool, but we've covered how to use rsync on Windows as well, so this method applies to pretty much everyone. And while you won't get the stylish graphical interface of Leopard's Time Machine, you will get incremental, full backups of your drive.

A new version of the Activity Tracker gadget has been released for the iGoogle homepage. I've mentioned Activity Tracker before when I used it to conduct a time audit of the working week.Notable new features include the ability to expand and collapse your task list (see picture), the ability to drag and drop your tasks to rearrange them, and the ability to add notes to each activity log. You can also edit the activity logs. The full list of new features is here.

For the multi-tasking amongst us, the developer mentioned a cute way to track 2 tasks at once: Add Activity Tracker on another tab and you should be able to have 2 Activity Trackers running on 2 tabs.

Activity Tracker Version 1.0 with new advanced features [ScreeperZone]

Mac OS X only: Copy songs from your iPod directly to your iTunes library with free, open source application Senuti. We've mentioned Senuti in the past, but this app keeps getting better. Aside from the fact that Senuti has updated to work with Leopard, it also has a greatly improved interface since we last featured it. But what's most useful is the new blue dot, which indicates whether or not the song is already in your iTunes library, making Senuti perfect for "borrowing" a song or two from a friend's iPod without introducing duplicates to your iTunes library. Senuti is freeware, Mac OS X only. Windows users, check out previously mentioned YamiPod.

Mac users: Web site Simplehelp steps through how to run Greasemonkey user scripts in Safari with free tools SIMBL (a patching tool for Cocoa apps) and GreaseKit (previously posted as Creammonkey). Unfortunately not every Greasemonkey script will work with GreaseKit (though the project appears to be striving toward that end), and my favourite Greasemonkey script, previously mentioned Gmail Macros, doesn't work with it yet, but most scripts should work. Hopefully in time Safari addicts can take advantage of all of the Greasemonkey user scripts that add so much to Firefox.

DIY web site Instructables covers the perennial favorite: Cleaning up cord clutter beneath your desk. We've covered the cordless workspace plenty in the past, but if you still haven't found a solution that fits your needs, this simple and cheap power strip basket could do wonders for your cable decluttering needs. The custom cut basket is particularly useful for retaining access to your power outlets without needing to unscrew the entire apparatus in order to unplug or plug in a new device.

Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Keep track of your daily to-read list with the Read it Later Firefox extension. Similar to previously mentioned Readeroo—which integrates directly with Del.icio.us—Read it Later takes a slightly different approach, keeping your reading list local until you read it and decide whether or not you want to bookmark it. If you do, you have the option to bookmark on any number of popular bookmarking sites, from Del.icio.us to Digg. The drawback is that Read it Later doesn't currently sync across browsers, which would be a nice touch. Read it Later is free, works wherever Firefox does.

Open source Mac utility Quicksilver isn't just an application launcher—it's a comprehensive keyboard interface. Launching applications and documents is just Quicksilver's gateway drug: The more you get used to doing things with Quicksilver, the more things you want to do with it. Out of the box Quicksilver comes with the barest essentials, but once you add the right plug-ins that interact with menus, apps, documents, and settings, you can accomplish more and more complex tasks from that familiar three-paned prompt. After the jump, check out top 10 favourite Quicksilver plug-ins, and how to set them up.

Read More »

The Wall Street Journal added Digg buttons throughout its paid-subscription website yesterday, but any article that's been dugg will be freely viewable. Tech blog Digital Inspiration points out that by adding the feed from this search result to your reader, you can check out every story that gets even just one digg click. New WSJ owner Rupert Murdoch has said he plans to break down the pay wall entirely, but until then, this might be the next best way to browse the influential newspaper. UPDATE: Well, less than an hour later and I've got 50 hits on that feed. Those wanting more specific, less overwhelming WSJ content should modify that search above by changing the parameters to "Title, Description, and URL" and adding a subject like "oil" or "Microsoft" after "online.wsj.com."

Windows XP/2000 only: Software firewall ZoneAlarm is offering free downloads of its basic firewall package with a spyware scanner/cleaner and a year of free updates until 5 p.m. PST today (although you'll get an email with a download link that's valid for a week after that). Program maker Check Point Software claims the free offering is made to coincide with Microsoft's monthly "Patch Tuesday" and the ensuing new vulnerabilities that hackers start working on. Regardless of the piggy-back marketing, ZoneAlarm is an easy-to-use port protector, and a little free spyware protection couldn't hurt either. ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware is a free download for Windows 2000 and XP only.

Ars Technica's Open Ended blog posts a helpful guide for Linux users running Compiz Fusion who want to make drop-down menus, tooltips, and other items transparent without digging through a massive configuration menu. The instructions requires having the compizconfig-settings-manager package installed, and those who want to tweak specific program windows (like Pidgin or Firefox) might have to spend some time with Compiz's window-matching documentation. But for those who just want a cool-looking 10 percent shade on their menus, this guide should suffice.

Windows/Linux: Popular, free virtualization software VMWare has released a beta of its next Server platform, which allows users to run other operating systems inside their own. The 2.0 beta adds support for running on Windows Vista Business and Ultimate editions, Ubuntu 7.04 and 7.10, and other systems, as well as a new browser-based interface and better support for USB devices. A somewhat-helpful PDF user guide is available at the download site, but I'm waiting for a handy step-by-step guide to come along before diving in too deep in Linux (I unfortunately have only Vista Home Premium at the moment). If you managed to get 2.0 up and running, share your experiences in the comments. VMWare Server 2.0 Beta is a free download for Windows and Linux systems.

Online storage website Box.net has thrown open the doors and let all sorts of webapps in, giving users a handful of one-click actions and exports for their files. That means MP3s stored at Box.net can be sent to Myxer for ringtone conversion, documents can be opened in ThinkFree or Zoho or faxed through eFax, and the list runs to eight more services at this point, with more likely to come. Along with RSS file sharing and desktop mounting, the free 1GB of space offered to everyone is becoming a handy tool. Box.net requires a sign-up for its free service, as do all of the web services it currently links to.

Windows/Mac/Linux: Cross-platform, open source video application Miro is now available in a full-featured, bug-fixed 1.0 version. The program formerly known as Democracy Player plays almost any kind of video file, but its real value lies in its content fetching and organising features. Miro can subscribe to video podcasts, grab from YouTube channel feeds or BitTorrents (letting you make your own season pass) and keep video libraries organised, among other features. Miro is a free download for Windows, Mac and Linux.