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This Week's Best Posts
Posted by Lifehacker US Edition at 11:00 AM on March 22, 2008
Here's a digest of our most popular posts this week:
- Download Music from Your Friends' iTunes Libraries Over the Internet with Mojo
"Windows/Mac only: Share any song in your iTunes library and download any song from your friends' iTunes libraries over the internet with freeware application Mojo." - FairUse DVD Ripper Free for a Limited Time
"Windows only: Grab a free copy of the normally-$20 DVD ripper FairUse Wizard 2, which converts DVDs to video files playable by a slew of devices." - Avoid These 8 Worst Foods in America
"The New York Times reviews a book called Eat This, Not That!, a nutrition guide full of images of foods you shouldn't eat and their healthier substitutes." - Top 10 DIY Laptop Stands
"When your hot laptop needs ventilation and your wrists need a break from a flat keyboard, you can drop 50 bucks on a fancy commercial laptop stand--or you can build one of your own." - Battle of the Free Windows Software Firewalls
"Yesterday when we asked you what your favourite Windows firewall software is, we got back tonnes of responses, from ZoneAlarm to Sygate from free to commercial. Now we want to narrow down the choices to the best." - Wire Your Living Room Over Wi-Fi with a Bridge
"More devices in your living room have Ethernet ports than ever before, but you can't plug them into the network if your router's in the other room." - Run Windows Apps Seamlessly Inside Linux
"You love working inside your Linux desktop, but at the most inconvenient times you've got to reboot into Windows--whether to open a tricky Office file, try out a Windows application, or even just play a quick game." - The Coolest Cubicle Contest Final Showdown and Monster Roundup
"You've been with us for parts one, two, and three of this year's Coolest Cubicle Contest, and now the time has arrived--time for the final vote-off to determine which creative cubicle jockey will hit their commute tomorrow $500 richer (in Amazon bucks)." - Windows Vista Service Pack 1
"Windows Vista only: As we mentioned earlier today, Microsoft is releasing/has released Windows Vista Service Pack 1 to Windows Update today." - Aggregate Your Online Social Life with FriendFeed
"A recently launched, much-hyped webapp called FriendFeed aims to simplify your online life by pulling all of the content you create into one centralised service."
If you ever find yourself needing to review the contents of a Microsoft Word 2007 document (DOCX) but you're sitting at a computer without a Word installation or any other comparable word processor, weblog Digital Inspiration details how to read the document with nothing but Internet Explorer. In a nutshell, the method involves changing the doc's file extension to ZIP, unzipping it, and then finding a document.xml file inside the unzipped archive. From there, you can open that XML file in IE (or virtually any text editor, for that matter). As the post mentions, your document will lack any formatting, but it will allow you to read the content, which is essentially what matters anyway.
If you're the type who strives for perfection in everything you do, weblog Lifehack.org suggests that you might benefit a great deal from recognising when you've taken a project to "good enough." 
Yahoo Green covers several low-cost methods of reducing your water use at home intended to save you money and save your planet. The quality of the tips vary, but the article includes a lot of tips that anyone can implement for free. For example, to minimise appliance water consumption, the article suggests:
Upload and share files up to 5GB for free with web site File Dropper. The site is missing at least one very important feature—namely that you can't see the upload progress, which is a very big deal when uploading large files—but it's also the largest upload limit we've seen from a free file sharing service in a while. If large files aren't all that important to you, check out the very cool, previously mentioned 
The results are in from 
The Zen Habits blog pulls together suggestions from its readers on how to travel very, very light to make vacations less stressful and more adventurous. The compiled backpack list includes travel documents, deodorant, two each of shorts, T-shirts and underwear, and only a camera to tinker with, amongst other warm-weather necessities. But we turn now to you, dear reader, to ask: What bare necessities would you pack if you had to shove an entire vacation into a backpack? What gadgets and tools can you not stand to live without, and what items have you found unnecessary? Offer up some minimalist wisdom in the comments, and get inspired by your fellow readers if you're making a trip this weekend. Photo by 
Olympic gold-medal-winner Ryan Lochte trains a lot harder than you or I do when he's in the pool, but anyone who uses swimming as part of their fitness routine can pick up a few tips from him, whether on stroke technique or general training suggestions. Among them is a suggestion to create artificial "races" you're aiming to win, or personal records you have to break. From Locthe's advice:
The cross-OS possibilities keep expanding, as the Ubuntu Unleashed blog points out how you can get 
Windows and Mac: Free auction analyser Auction Inquisitor is like having a paranoid uncle who checks anything you're looking to buy online, searching through publicly available information in a way you probably never take the time to do. After copying the URL for an auction and pasting it into Auction Inquisitor, the app runs through the seller's history, feedback, return policy, shipping price, and at least 21 other items, looking for signs of something slippery going down. Some of its "results" require you to do a little analysis of your own, but it's a good tool to have if you're even one percent unsure about something you're looking to spend your hard-earned cash on. Auction Inquisitor is a free download for Windows and Mac systems.
