If you've ever had suspicions that someone may be reading your email but you've never seen proof, weblog MakeUseOf details how to set up an "electronic tripwire" in your email account to keep you aware of email break-ins. The trick uses a web utility called OneStatFree to track file requests, and depends on the email snoop reading this email. Since OneStatFree will let you know if anyone tries downloading the file (and will log the time, IP address, and approximate location of the snoop), you'll know the snoop was there even if the he tries covering his tracks by marking the message as unread. If you're even slightly suspicious that someone's reading your email, the first thing you should do is change your password, but if you're still not feeling safe, this is a decent trick for finding out for sure.

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National Public Radio's All Things Considered takes a look at David Allen's Getting Things Done philosophy, offering an overview of what makes GTD so appealing to the tech crowd. While the cult of GTD likely isn't new to anyone around these parts, the segment offers a nice introduction for people who might not be familiar to GTD but are interested in learning a bit more.

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Firefox only: Somewhere between web-based email and a standalone desktop client there's Simple Mail, a Firefox extension that embeds an email client right inside a Firefox tab. Manage all your messages in Simple Mail, which can notify you of new incoming messages at a rate you define for any number of POP or IMAP email accounts. Simple Mail lists your messages in a familiar three-paned view where you can read, compose, and send messages, as well as maintain an address book. I had trouble getting Simple Mail to work with Gmail and IMAP in Firefox 3 on the Mac, but all went well in Firefox 2/Windows, so Mac users, proceed with caution. Simple Mail is missing features you'd expect in a full-blown client—in fact, I couldn't get it to see the folders on Gmail's IMAP server. However, it does give you that desktop feel without having to run or switch to a separate application. Simple Mail is a free download for Firefox only. Thanks, Masa!

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Dustin Wax over at Lifehack.org has a thought provoking article on how to apply GTD principles to having a weekly relationship review with your partner.
Though I do *not* suggest treating your relationship like a work challenge (no-one wants to feel like a project on someone's to do list!) he suggests approaching it as a regular meeting with your partner to go over plans and processes and see what need work. This can help nip problems or disagreements in the bud, and help you be ready to respond to any unexpected challenges life throws your way.
This is a time to gather and process the household's in box (it could be bills, shopping lists and so forth). And, importantly, it's a time to share thoughts and come up with a game plan together. Dustin suggests the following list of topics to cover off:

1. What went wrong over the past week?
2. What did you particularly enjoy that you’d like to do more of? (meals, activities, TV shows, trips out, etc.)
3. How are you each handling your respective household duties?
4. What is coming up that you need to be prepared for?
5. What kind of help do you need from your partner?
6. What issues in the house have been occupying your thoughts lately? (problems with kids, repairs needed, messiness)
7. What’s going on at work, or coming up at work, that could affect your family life?

Pick a time and place which will be comfortable for both of you. And remember to keep it constructive - there's no point whinging if you aren't working towards fixing whatever the problem is. Got any other ideas for relationship GTD? Share in comments please.

How to improve your relationship with a weekly review [Lifehack.org]

Previously mentioned document sharing application Scribd has updated its embeddable document reader to iPaper, a fast, efficient tool for embedding any document, from PDFs to PowerPoint to Word documents. We're seeing more and more web-based PDF viewers, like the recently posted PdfMeNot, which is a great thing for anyone who's sick of wrangling with offline PDF viewers when all they want is a quick look at a document. iPaper offers a much more functional experience than PdfMeNot, so hit the jump for a look.

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He already showed us how to declutter the web using Greasemonkey, and now Lifehacker tipster Paul Fenwick has turned his attention to how to hack the best seat on an airplane. You probably already like to use the check-in kiosk at the airport to try to get a better seat. Paul has some ideas on what the best seat is, and how to get it - whether you're travelling solo or in a couple.

"The "ideal" seat is one where you have either your preference of aisle or window, nobody sitting next to you, and near an exit so you can get on and off relatively quickly. My super-ideal seat is an aisle with an empty seat on my right, since I can then use that seat (or its tray) as a mouse-mat."

Paul suggests you need to avoid the trap of selecting a seat in an empty row of seats, and instead suggests going for a window or aisle seat where there's already a person on the other end of the row. It's then unlikely that anyone will chose to sit between the two of you, and you'll have an empty seat next to you.

And for couples?

"The trick is to find an empty segment, and to take both the desirable seats, leaving an empty one in the middle. With luck (if your flight isn't too full), you end up sitting together, but in much more comfort. If you're unlucky, there'll be some poor soul stuck between you, although they'll usually eagerly agree to swap for an aisle or window seat, so your failure condition is the same as what you would have had if you sat together to begin with."

Thanks for the tip, Paul! Got any other optimal airplane seating hacks? Share in comments please!

Optimise your aircraft seat [PJF's Pages]

The Prime Minister is inviting 1,000 experts to attend the Australia 2020 Summit in April to discuss the direction we want our country to go in. Blogger Jim Rettew decided that "working stiffs, tradies and bloggers" probably have better ideas for this country than the appointed experts so he set up a Wiki to collect ideas from "the rest of the 20,699,000 people in Oz".

Jim hopes to present the top 50 ideas (as voted on by visitors to the site) at the Summit. There's a petition on the site which he'll use to try to cadge an invite to present the ideas at the Summit.

Jim also emailed me today to say he's created a YouTube video of Kevin Rudd breakdancing to help promote the Wiki. I've been too scared to check it out, but it's there if you're curious.

If you use Google Calendar, chances are you've ignored the little "Print" button on the left side of the tabs at the top. It just pops a print dialog box, right? Wrong! Hit that Print link to customize the look and feel of your calendar on paper: enlarge or reduce the font size, opt to go black and white only, switch between portrait and landscape orientation, and when you hit Print, your browser doesn't send the page to your printer. Instead, you get a PDF document fit to print, save, or email. Handy!

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Well it wasn't a very exciting fight for those of us who were sticking with DVD to see what happened, but the media is now trumpeting that Blu-ray has won the format war, with the news that Toshiba is quitting production of HD-DVD players and recorders.
That won't mean much if you'd stuck with DVD to see how the battle went down, but if you're an early adopter, Gizmodo has kindly put together a guide to what to do next. Their top (cynical!) tip is to offload your HD-DVD gear pronto, before the rest of the world figures out that it's a dud. Nice.

A Consumer's Cheat Sheet to HD-DVD's Death and Blu-ray's Victory [Gizmodo]

Windows/Linux only: Free, open source application WorldFlashReader speeds up your reading skills by flashing words in quick succession on a large display window. The result is—or at least is supposed to be—that you can both read more quickly and comprehend more at that speed. Similar to previously mentioned webapps Zap Reader and Spreeder, WorldFlashReader offers some features that make the desktop version worth a try, like keyboard shortcuts and estimates of time left to read the current text at that speed. WorldFlashReader can also open web pages, text files, or grab content directly from your clipboard.

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Career advisor Penelope Trunk says that when you're in that job interview and faced with the question "What's your salary range?" don't name a number.

If you request a salary higher than the range for the job, the interviewer will tell you you're high, and you've just lost money. If you request a salary lower than the range, the interviewer will say nothing, and you've just lost money. [...] You want the interviewer to tell you the range for the position, because then you can focus on getting to the high end of that range.

If your interviewer's not forthcoming about what they plan to pay and persists asking you to name a number, Trunk runs down several ways to fend off the question, like focusing on the position's requirements, the current job market, and the employer's budget. If they're going to make you an offer, they'll have to include salary with it.

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If you're an index card junkie but you end up with a bottomless pile of cards before you have a chance to process your tasks, weblog LifeClever suggests ditching traditional index cards in favor of color-coded shorty flash cards. Then tasks can be easily distinguished using red, yellow, and green cards thusly:

• Tasks to process immediately on returning to my desk.
• Tasks to process before the end of the work day.
• Tasks to leave for my Weekly Review.

If your most important tasks often get lost in the sea of your other to-dos, the colour-coded flash card method is a smart solution.

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iPhone user Steve Rubel has three bookmarklets he uses to make browsing on his phone easier: one that looks up terms in Wikipedia quickly, another which strips images from pages for faster loading, and one that bookmarks pages to read later on. (For more search bookmarklets, check out Springlets.) What are your must-have iPhone bookmarklets for surfing on the go? Let us know in the comments.

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• What's the best way to watch movies from my computer on my TV?
• What's the best standing desk?
• How can I stop receiving mail at my apartment for the previous tenants?
• Any tips for an indoor apartment garden?

These days, every gaming system in your living room better be able to do more than just play video games if it's going to earn its place next to your TV. The Xbox 360 makes for an excellent Media Center extender, and the original Xbox is the king of homebrew video-game-cum-media-boxes, but when it comes to expanding your home theatre beyond gaming, the Wii has always been a bit light on functionality. The best thing it's got going for it is the excellent Opera web browser, but web browsing with the Wii remote is still a bit clunky. Luckily, using that very same browser, you can turn your Wii into a full-fledged media centre with the freeware Windows application Orb. Here's how.

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Mozilla's baptised its Thunderbird revitalisation effort "Mozilla Messaging" and announces the new features due out in T-bird 3.0 by the end of the year: official calendar integration (a la Lightning) and improved search. If we have our way, a better address book will be on the new features list, too. What do you think can be improved in Thunderbird? What features do you think would help the old bird make a comeback? Reveal your Thunderbird wishlist in the comments.

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As you might have seen in our comments, our readers love them some Pivot Tables, an aggregation tool that can show your spreadsheet data any way you tell it to. If you've felt left off of the data-wrangling bandwagon, the Productivity Portfolio blog has a guide walkthrough explaining the benefits and features of the tables and setting up a simple voting analysis table for an example. Better yet, the post includes a printable PDF for your do-this-when-I-get-home convenience. For more Excel 2007 knowledge, try out PP's equally helpful guide to AutoFilter.

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Outlook user Adam Wright describes how he automatically filters incoming messages and uses flags to create a to-do list folder alongside his inbox.

Outlook's "Follow Up" folder (normally two folders below the "Inbox" folder) only shows emails with a follow-up flag assigned to it. By using follow-up flags, I can now use my "Follow Up" folder as my todo list (notice I changed the name of my "Follow Up" folder to "To Do").

We like to separate our email from our to-do's around here, but that's not everyone's cup of tea. Adam's method could easily be used in any mail client that supports flags or tags (like Thunderbird), too.

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Windows only: RapidShare and similar file-sharing sites let you send and grab big files for free, but with a few somewhat annoying timers and other restrictions in place. RapGet, a free download for Windows systems, doesn't short those timers or otherwise hack the system (like a few tips we've previously posted), but does keep an eye on your downloads for you and automatically grab them when they're ready. The program also works with megaupload.com, slil.ru, and many other file-sharing sites, and runs as a stand-alone app inside a folder you can place anywhere—including, presumably, a thumb drive. RapGet is a free download for Windows systems only.

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The Google Operating System points out an overlooked but seriously worthy iGoogle gadget that can display entire up-to-date web pages inside a tab on Google's start page service. You might have seen this trick deep inside our Show Us Your iGoogle gallery, but it deserves its own spotlight here. You'll want to create a new tab for each web page you want to embed, and make sure that tab is selected before clicking the "Add to Google" link on creator Michael Bolin's page. Best of all, dynamic web apps seem to work fine inside the tabs, giving you access to Gmail, Google Reader, Remember the Milk, or any other of your favourites, right from your point of browser entry. Got your own embedded page timesavers on your start page, Google or otherwise? Share your sites in the comments.

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Fresh herbs are better for most kinds of cooking, but scarily expensive in those little plastic tubs at the grocery store. Luckily, growing them yourself doesn't require a warm climate or a multitude of gardening tools. The re-nest living blog offers a guided tutorial to setting up a one-pot, multi-herb garden for a windowsill. The most important factors:

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Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): Multi-protocol instant messaging client Pidgin can do a lot of things, especially through built-in plug-ins, but has yet to integrate internet calling service Skype into its offerings. Enter the Skype API Plugin, an early attempt at getting Skype's instant messaging features working in Pidgin (or Adium for OS X users). The good news: It's relatively easy to install and actually works. The bad news: Voice calls can't be made from Pidgin, and you have to keep the Skype application running in the background (which you might do anyways to make and receive calls). The plug-in also imports every out-call and phone contact in your Skype account as a contact, so heavy Skype users might keep this plug-in disabled by default. All in all, however, it helps reduce the number of contact windows on a desktop and provides a promising early look at (hopefully) tighter integration. The Skype API plug-in is a free download for Windows, Mac and Linux systems.

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Getting nutrition information from labels and fact sheets is a good start to any diet plan, but getting a handle on those abstract numbers isn't always easy. Foodsel, a free food analysis web site, offers a visual take on a wide variety of store-bought and fast foods. Using the site, one can see, for instance, that a Wendy's Homestyle Chicken Fillet Sandwich has nearly the fat content of one-third of a stick of butter, can check out a circle chart of its fat, protein, and starch content, and note that it should power an hour and 10 minutes of rock climbing (the stats pictured above are for a 12-inch Pizza Hut pizza). Foods can be searched for through a basic text box, by manufacturer, and by categories of nutrients—helpful if you were looking for, say, foods high in polyunsaturated fat and protein. For more nutri-data geekery, check out aCalorieCounter and NutritionData. Thanks Raymond!

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