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Posted by Lifehacker US Edition at 2:00 PM on February 9, 2008
In case you missed any of the good stuff at Lifehacker last week, here's a recap:
- Top 10 DIY Home Projects
"Your home is your castle, and what better way to outfit the palace than with some do-it-yourself ingenuity." - Hack Your Metabolism
"Personal trainer and blogger Lauren proposes that you can bolster your metabolism by eating enough (not too little, like most people who diet), eating more frequently (5-6 small meals a day), and adding more protein and fiber to your diet." - Keep your pets flea-free this summer
"Flea prevention is so much easier - and cheaper - than the cure. Here's how to keep your pets blissfully flea-free this summer." - Save Money by Learning Target's Sale Secrets
"Turns out there's a number of ways to get huge discounts on items nobody may know are on sale at Target." - Build Yourself an Affordable Media Server
"Computer manufacturers may offer several new 'media servers' for sale, Popular Mechanics claims that it's not necessary to buy a brand new machine. Instead, use cheap (or salvaged) parts to build your own box, as media server hardware doesn't have to be top-notch." - Set Up Real-Time, Bulletproof Backup Drive Redundancy with RAID
"Hard drives fail, and they do it much more often than we'd like to think. Even if you've set up automated hard drive backups, you're not necessarily getting the best backup bang for your buck--especially if your operating system's main hard drive fails." - Reader Poll: Most Overrated Productivity Strategy?
"Here's your chance to knock us productivity hucksters off our pedestals and tell us which of these tips is more hyped than they should be." - Automate Repetitive Typing with Snippits
"Say goodbye to unrequited speedy-text love with Snippits, a free, open source utility that can insert text, activate program shortcuts, correct spelling, and even run bits of code, all at the touch of one button." - Watch Video Downloads on Your TiVo for Free
"Your TiVo can play more than just television it's recorded --it can also play video that you've downloaded to your computer from the internets, and it can do it without the pay-for TiVo Desktop Plus upgrade."
Impress your family, friends, and houseguests with a towel-folding technique you're likely to see on a cruise or in a hotel. Howto web site wikiHow runs down step-by-step instructions for folding a "towel monkey." You'll need matching hand and bath towels, along with a clothes hanger with clips (like a pants or skirt hanger). For more towel animals, see also how to 
Blogger Glen Stansberry says that ideas need a place and time to grow—like a virtual incubator. Capture your ideas as soon as you have them in a safe, consistent place, and prune and review them over time as you work towards putting them into action. The project incubator concept employs several GTD techniques and I can personally attest to its effectiveness: the seeds of most feature stories that appear here on Lifehacker get planted in our editorial idea incubator (a wiki), which I was just editing before finding this article. Where do you incubate your brilliant ideas? Tell us in the comments. 
Windows only: Newly released chat application Digsby consolidates instant messaging, email, text messaging, and social networking into one very slick chat application. As far as IM, Digsby covers all the major players, from AIM to Google Talk; it handles Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, or virtually any POP or IMAP account for email; and it supports updates of all the latest happenings on your Facebook or MySpace profile. As far as full-on consolidation of hot social web tools right now, the only thing really missing is Twitter integration. Currently Digsby is Windows only in private beta (use code 
Online storage web site Box.net keeps rolling out new features, but opening up stored files to online collaboration adds a whole bunch o' new potential uses at once. Any file you store at Box.net can now be shared with collaborators (who, it must be said, must also have Box.net accounts) and manipulated through any of the sites' 
Windows only: FileTypesMan, a free Windows utility, aims to provide more information and customisation than Windows' standard "Folder Options" dialog, and it mostly succeeds. For one thing, you can resize the window displaying all of your systems' files, which, in itself, makes it a little easier to see than the utilities in some copies of Windows. Secondly, you can edit more than just the application assignments, as you have access to default icons, and print reports in HTML detailing your changes or file assignments. For setting up a new system with a lot of apps competing for file rights, it could be a good thumb drive tool. FileTypeMan is a free download for Windows systems only.
Long-time Firefox users will remember moments when, usually after a browser crash, they've been unable to restart Firefox, receiving an error message akin to "Firefox cannot use the profile "X" because it is in use." The CyberNet tech blog notes that you can delete a file or two named "parent.lock," ".parentlock," or, in the case of Linux, both "Lock" and ".parentlock," in your Firefox profile folder to solve the problem without having to restart the system. The CyberNet article has the goods on where to find your profile and which files to delete on which systems, and saves many of us a frustrating restart (or five).
