Water—it helps maintain energy, it can break a sugary soda habit, but glass after glass of the plain stuff can leave you longing for something with more kick. The Wise Bread blog offers up a few not-so-common suggestions for adding a little kick to your H20 without spending or stressing:

Ginger - If you like spices, ginger is a great way to add a "zing" to your water. If it is added to boiling water it is also a great way to clear your throat and sinuses during a cold.
Citrus - My husband's family members often freeze a small citrus fruit called kalamansi in ice cube trays and then put the ice cubes in water for flavour. The same can be done with other citrus fruits and the water produced would be infused with vitamin C.
Herbs - Mint, lemongrass, and parsley are great for adding aroma and a hint of green to your water. If you want to release the flavour you can crush the plants a little bit before putting them into your water.

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US-centric: If you're on the go so much that you rarely have time for more than some quick fast-food fare, web site Health.com rounds up five of the healthiest fast-food chains around. Before you get too excited, a lot of the restaurants on the list are regional, so they're not available to everyone. Also, keep in mind that just because a restaurant is relatively healthy, that doesn't mean that everything they serve is healthy (let's just say Jared didn't drop weight by inhaling two Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki subs every day). With that in mind, Health.com's five healthiest fast-food choices, as judged by these rules, are:

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A new Australian study of Blackberry users has found that the cult PDA makes people more productive by blurring the lines between work and home, but that angry spouses are hitting back at the device.
The joint study between the UNSW Australia School of Business and the University of Sydney found that the device with its always-on email delivery enabled users to work "harder, faster and more frequently," researcher Judith McCormack told the Fin Review today.
The downside they found was that organisations were having to replace Blackberries more often than other equipment - as a result of family members growing frustrated with the device.
"One organisation said they go through a lot of handsets, suggesting that they are actually damaged, flushed down the toilet or thrown at the wall more frequently than one would expect."
Either that, or they read Gina's guide to email management and didn't want always on email disturbing their work anymore. :)

Windows only: Last week we highlighted how to mute your Mac on a schedule, and this week weblog Inspect My Gadget details how to set up similar functionality in Windows. The post suggests a few tools that might do the job, then settles on adding a scheduled task to Windows to mute your computer using a freeware utility called Mute. It requires a minimum of setup but works perfectly, which is always nice. Like the idea of all that automation? Check out how you can get more from Windows Scheduled Tasks.

Thanks to the readers who wrote in yesterday to let us know that our comments were borked. We've been having some CMS versus server pain but our techie team has been working hard to get things upgraded, stable and happy and it's looking good now. (Thanks Kaan!)

Reader Sheila considers herself a power user but wants to extend her tech skills to programming. She writes in:

The more I hear about people automating things with scripts and programs they write themselves, the more it seems that being able to write code is a good skill to have—at any job. I'm not a programmer, but I'm interested in maybe becoming one. What's the best language for someone who's savvy but still very much a beginner to learn?

We've got our own opinions on this, but first we want to hear from you. All the coders out there: where should an aspiring programmer start? Help us point Sheila in the right direction in the comments.

Windows only: If you're serious about keeping your workspace portable, previously mentioned tools like the Portable Apps Suite or MojoPac are the go-to resources for Windows users. However, if your thumb drive is already scrimping for space, and you just want a few super-lightweight apps that can handle most general office tasks, from word processing and spreadsheets to email and file sharing, the Tiny USB Office might be for you. Weighing in at under 2.5 megabytes, this lightweight suite of office apps is a no-brainer to throw on any old USB stick for a little productivity on the go. Tiny USB Office is freeware, Windows only.

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When you just can't seem to hunt down that file you know you've got stowed away somewhere on your Mac, it's time to break out the Spotlight big guns—advanced search operators, that is. Macworld runs down advanced Spotlight operators which will be familiar to power Google searchers. Here's a sampling:

• Enclose phrases in quotes, like "time machine"
  
• Use AND, OR, and NOT to narrow or widen your search, like java NOT coffee or invoice OR bonus
  
• Search by document attributes using operators like author:authorname, kind:pdf (for PDF files), and date:today

What's your favourite Spotlight operator? Give it up in the comments.

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Find and buy items from your cell phone with the new Amazon TextBuyIt feature. It works like this: Say you're out shopping and you see a book you want to buy. You figure you could save a few bucks getting it at Amazon, so you send a text message to 'AMAZON' (262966) with the title, author, or even the ISBN code of the book. Amazon sends a text back to you with search results. You pick the result that best matches your search, and an Amazon robot voice calls you with details and asks for purchase confirmation. The first time you try TextBuyIt, you'll have to link your phone with your account, but from there on Amazon wants to make it easy to find and buy products wherever you are—and hopefully you'll save some money, too. TextBuyIt is surprisingly easy to use, but if you give it a try, let's hear your thoughts in the comments.

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Find out how to say a word you're unfamiliar with at web site Forvo. Aiming to one day have "all the words in the world pronounced"—including words in 23 languages—Forvo relies on users to generate both words in demand and the proper pronunciations of those words. So you could, for example, check out the pronunciation of different cities, and if you can't find the city whose pronunciation you're uncertain of, just head to the add a word page and put in a request for the word you want. Alternately, you can head to the pronounce page to record pronunciations of words you know. Forvo has a simple aim, but it's a great idea for harnessing a bit of social web power.

Windows only: Freeware utility IdleBackup automatically backs up your files while you're not using your computer. Choose the folder you want to back up and the destination—whether it's a thumb drive, network drive, or big external drive—and the amount of time that your computer should be idle before the backup runs. Hide IdleBackup to the system tray, and it will back up your data quietly in the background while you're at lunch, in a meeting, or sleeping soundly. IdleBackup performs incremental backups, so it only copies files that have changed since the last time. After the jump, see a full screenshot of IdleBackup in action.

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Video DIYer extraordinaire Kipkay details 5 smart tips for the budding videographer in the video above. Some are better than others, but the tip that stands out for the cord organiser in me is the last, in which Kipkay details how he saves plastic bread clips and repurposes them as labels for his cords. It's a very quick and simple tip, but the result is a great method for keeping your cords organised on-the-cheap—sort of like the power plug ID labels with a DIY flair.

Have you thought about tackling some of the niftier crafts projects we've posted at Lifehacker, but the thought of picking up a needle and thread brings phantom stabbing pains to your fingers? Instructables posts a pretty handy guide to the basics of putting thread through a needle and working with it, including a guide to what kind of equipment you'll need and an explanation of the most common terms used in how-to guides. It goes a little beyond the scope of, say, sewing a button back on, but it could help you down the path toward paint chip wallets, T-shirt laptop cases, and other DIY goodies. Hit the link to get your thread on.

On Tuesday we asked for your favourite instant messaging applications, and over 550 comments later, we've culled it down to the most popular five. From web-based chat to desktop clients to tools that combine IM, email, and social networking, your nominations spanned a wide range of instant messaging applications. Let's take a closer look at the five most voted-for apps, and face them off against each other in a final showdown to crown the ultimate favourite.

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Readers are submitting their best life hack for a chance to win an autographed copy of our new book, Upgrade Your Life. Here's our latest winner.
Reader Jill carries her life on a thumb drive and if she loses it, she wants to make it as easy on the person who finds it as possible to return the drive. Jill writes in:

I've been messing around with a way to mark my thumb drive so it will (maybe) be returned if I lose it. Chances are, I won't actually "lose" it; I will leave it at the house of a friend or at work. But I want to get it back—ASAP—without having to call all over the universe to find it. Of course, the drive is encrypted so i don't need to worry about data falling into the wrong hands. I only worry about having to rebuild EVERYTHING because I carry my life on my thumb drive.

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Does watching TV news or checking business news sites give you cold sweats as you ponder how your investments are doing? Are you logging into your financial site every day but still feel your money slipping away? Just ignore your money, J.D. at Get Rich Slowly says—stocks pay off in the long term, not day-to-day, and worrying about it is the easiest way to make a money-losing mistake:

In Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes, the authors note that it's dangerous to watch your investments every day. When you pay close attention, you tend to become emotionally invested in even small movements. You lose sight of the long-term and make decisions based on short-term events. Peek in every month or so, but don't constantly check your investments.

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Windows only: Easy Microsoft Word Properties is a helpful tool for anyone who uses Word documents' details listings—Author, Subject, Title, and the like—to keep their work organised or incorporate Word files into databases and spreadsheets. Install and run the application, point it to a folder and tell it which files to search for. In the next tab, all the standard properties of the documents returned can be edited in batch fashion, no right-clicking required. If nothing else, editing the "key words" line can be helpful in guiding along Windows and other search tools. Easy Microsoft Word Properties is a free download for Windows systems only.

Being stuck in a meeting that has little to do with your actual work can feel like a waste of time—but don't zone out out of habit. The Corporate Hack blog suggests that even if your meeting isn't, well, enthralling stuff, taking detailed notes on what was said, who's going to tackle the issues brought up, and other topics can score you serious points with the boss, whether or not you're the designated note-taker. It also helps prevent your mind from wandering in a way that's obvious from a glance, and if there's really nothing to note, you can always (surreptitiously) plan out your own action list for after the meeting. How do you put a pen and paper to good use during your round-table time? Share your secret tactics in the comments.