Rollup keyboards can be a fantastic, portable solution to travel with your laptop. They're often cheapy novelty products or they're expensive. But the Hack a Day blog turned up an example of a DIY roll up keyboad which was made from a normal keyboard. Considering you can pick up a decent keyboard for around $20 this could be a good solution if you're confident in your ability to take a apart a keyboard using a screwdriver - and gluing keys on the transparent membrane you find inside.

Make your own Roll-Up Keyboard [Instructables via Hack a Day]

Calibrate your monitors for consistent tone and colour with web site Screen Check. The site displays two bars, one white-to-black for adjusting tone and the other covers the red/green/blue spectrum for adjusting colour. Just follow the Screen Check instructions and by the end you should have a reasonably well calibrated monitor. My Dell comes with a very similar built-in calibration tool, but if your monitor doesn't, Screen Check is worth a look.

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Windows only: Freeware application DVRMSToolbox analyses Media Center-recorded files and marks the start and end point of commercials so you can quickly skip over commercials and go straight to the content. Similar to previously mentioned Lifextender in its commercial skipping capabilities, DVRMSToolbox keeps your files in tact and marks the commercials instead of deleting them entirely (like Lifextender does) so there's less chance of an inadvertant cut. In addition, DVRMSToolbox can convert DVR-MS files (the default recording type of Media Center) to MPEG or WMV files for portability to other devices and other useful features. For a simple guide to getting started with DVRMSToolbox's commercial detection, check out CyberNet's introduction. This Media Center favourite is freeware, Windows only.

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If you're sick of Windows taskbar popup balloons prompting you about unused icons on your desktop, fear not—you can shut those down easily. The How To Geek explains that when you uncheck the "Run Desktop cleanup wizard every 60 days" box in your desktop items dialogue, you're good to go with one less irritating popup stealing your attention. Remember, using the free TweakUI you can disable all taskbar balloon popups indefinitely.

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Everything-iPod web site iLounge walks through several setups for integrating your iPhone with your car, from the barebones budget setup to the pricier "optimal" solution. Each setup comes with its own assortment of pros and cons, and the solution that works best for you will likely depend on a combination of your budget and your car stereo. In the end, though, you should end up with a very workable solution for integrating your iPhone's music and phone capabilities with your car. Got a tighter integration? Let's hear about it in the comments.

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Blogger Scott Young suggests getting your personal education organised with a to-learn list. Young differentiates his to-learn list from a to-do list, claiming that to-learn lists can help you better organise your personal development by, for example, splitting up your interests.

If your self-education isn't organised, it is easy to pick your favourite subjects even if 90% of the book's material is old. Keeping a to-learn list allows you to explore subjects that are on the fringe of your current understanding.

Do you keep a to-learn list separate from your general to-dos? Let's hear how you keep track of and organize your personal education (and what's on your to-learn list) in the comments.

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Firefox with Greasemonkey only: Last week we introduced you to the Gmail Multiple HTML Signatures user script, which associates above-the-reply rich signatures to all your addresses in Gmail. Back then the script required hand-editing to get it working, but the author just updated it to make setting up your signatures a snap. Once the script is installed, go to a Compose or Reply page to choose your From: address, and create or edit your signature for it. You've still got to manually enter the HTML, but not in the source of the user script itself. (Nice work, Jerome.) The Gmail Multiple HTML Signatures user script is a free download and may make its way into the next revision of Better Gmail.

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Before you start looking for a replacement or shell out for repairs next time a gadget stops working, check the item for a recall like weblog Wise Bread did with its recently busted DVD player.

I Googled the maker (Toshiba) and the model number (SD-3980SU2), and immediately came up with an information page about a recall. One 5-minute phone call later, and I am expecting a new, 2008 model of the DVD player to arrive within a couple of weeks.

Sounds like an obvious winner. I've never ridden the recall train, but if you've had similar experiences, let's hear about them in the comments.

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You're an on-the-go worker, and the one thing you always carry with you? Your trusty laptop, of course. Sure, you've reached a point where you're pretty good at getting things done away from your desk, but you still haven't reached laptop zen—that point at which your laptop does gymnastics for you and is a seamless extension of your productivity. Today we're taking a look at some of the best laptop hacks for notebook enthusiasts, from getting internet access anywhere and keeping your files in sync to adding an anti-theft layer of security to your laptop.

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Windows only: File encryption utility PixelCryptor doesn't use a textual password to encrypt your files, it uses a digital image. Lock up your PixelCryptor file package like a drum and set an image as the key. The more complex the image, the more secure your encrypted folder. Then, on another PC with PixelCryptor installed (or available on a thumb drive), unlock the folder contents only with the image you used to encrypt it. PixelCryptor isn't open source (so perhaps not as well-developed or supported), but it looks like a viable alternative to our beloved TrueCrypt. PixelCryptor is freeware for Windows only.

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The San Diego Union Tribute reports that wristwatch sales declined 25 per cent between 2003 and 2005, supposedly because people use their mobile phones to tell the time—which seems extreme, but maybe we're old-fashioned. We want to know:

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Even though I used my mobile to tell time, as an alarm, to do quick calculations, take pictures, and check email, it hasn't completely replaced my watch or camera or laptop for that matter. What about you?

BusinesssWeek gets a communication coach to analyse Steve Jobs' latest Macworld keynote speech and pull out 10 tips that us mere mortals can apply to our own presentations. One strategy in particular seems to be what makes Jobs' product introductions stand out from the typical "gee whiz" events:

Sell the benefit. While most presenters promote product features, Jobs sells benefits. When introducing iTunes movie rentals, Jobs said, "We think there is a better way to deliver movie content to our customers ... most of us watch movies once, maybe a few times. And renting is a great way to do it. It's less expensive, doesn't take up space on our hard drive..." Your listeners are always asking themselves, "What's in it for me?" Answer the question. Don't make them guess.

Sage advice, and also worth noting for the next time you have to pitch a software purchase to your boss. Hit the link for nine more bits of Jobs-ian advice.Photo by Roberto Garcia.

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The How-To Geek gives us yet another handy command prompt trick that saves you some mouse-hunting and clicking to synchronise a Windows clock to a more accurate internet time server. Given how quick it runs, it might not be a bad addition to the automated "Startup" folder, or to a folder of quick shortcuts (like I've created on my desktop). To quickly sync your clock, open a command prompt as an administrator and type the following command:

w32tm /resync

Quick and simple, works in Vista and XP, and definitely helpful when a dying battery clock starts leaving you a few minutes behind every day. For a background application that does much the same, check out DS Clock.

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Windows Vista only: Like its XP-oriented predecessor nLite, vLite is a pre-installation utility that lets you decide which programs and components of Windows Vista are included when you go for a fresh install, allowing you to remove some of Vista's more resource-heavy pieces and make custom DVDs or CDs to install that same slim Vista later. What's more, vLite seems to allow you to pre-answer the typical setup questions, so you can install Vista unattended (and, it seems, without a Product Key handy). It's not a tool for beginners, as many of the changes can't be undone once the OS is in place, but for those who find themselves re-installing Vista frequently, it's certainly a useful utility. vLite is a free download for Windows Vista only. Thanks Jeremy!

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The New York Times' Shifting Careers blog posts a good primer on the kinds of interviews that aren't meant to get you a job—at least, not right away. Setting up an "informational interview" with someone in an industry you're looking at is a way of finding out more about a job or career path from an inside perspective. Workplace writer Marci Alboher recommends a number of questions to ask, including:

1. Can you tell me how you got to this position?
2. What do you like most about what you do, and what would you change if you could?
3. How do people break into this field?
4. What are the types of jobs that exist where you work and in the industry in general?

As an important end note, make sure to follow up on any return requests you get from your interviewee, and be sure to keep the whole thing reasonably short.

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Being a procrastinator isn't a job-destroying trait—unless you're unable to actually buckle down and get the work done when you need to. The Dumb Little Man blog offers advice for when you're down to the wire and need to defeat your own worst tendencies, including this:

You may want to ask a family member (preferably someone such as a parent or spouse that you respect enough to do what they say) to set a deadline for you. If even this doesn't help, you'll need to get serious. Have that same family member give you a deadline and impose some sort of consequence if you don't meet it. With your reality TV on the line, you should have a much easier time getting to work.

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Most guides and tutorials for Ubuntu newcomers can help you get commercial DVDs playing on your system, but only through a series of terminal commands that install new repositories or through the use of Automatix or other automated tools that can sometimes mess up your system's dependencies. How-to site Tech-Recipes.com has been on a bit of a Linux streak lately and ferrets out a two-command, no-repository solution for installing DVD playback. Enter these in your terminal:

sudo apt-get install totem-xine libxine1-ffmpeg libdvdread3
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh

That, from a quick test, should be it. It must be mentioned here that the DVD decrypting tool you're installing is not licensed and definitely not supported by Ubuntu, so it's up to you whether it's kosher to install or not.

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