Windows only: One of our favourite PC cleansers CCleaner (which stands for "Crap Cleaner") saw an upgrade this week. Since the last time we mentioned CCleaner several new versions have come out; this week's added support for the Firefox 3 beta plus performance improvements and bug fixes. CCleaner scans your PC for unnecessary temporary and log files, cookies, memory dumps, and more and wipes them out at the press of the "Run Cleaner" button. You might be surprised at how much disk space it can recover—in fact, it managed to clear out 1.6GB of crap from my PC. See screenshot evidence after the jump.

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Need a phone line to receive a one-time fax or voicemails on a particular project, auction, or job search? Free service K7 hands out 10-digit Seattle-area phone numbers that can answer calls with customised voicemail greetings or accept faxes. You can access both the audio files and fax documents through your sign-up account, and the only restrictions are a 20-message/fax limit (the site starts deleting the oldest after that) and an account wipe out after 30 days of inactivity. Other than that, you've got a free bin to keep your personal numbers private and still get at your messages.

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The gHacks blog sniffs out some installation files for Windows XP Service Pack 3 hosted on Microsoft's Windows Update servers, as official notice of the update seems to be running a bit late. Downloads for 32-bit systems in many languages are available at the link below. The full download is about 300 MB, but anyone who's been keeping up on their bug fixes and update since SP3 will likely have a lighter package to carry. We'll update here when the official downloads are pushed to Windows Update.

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The Digital Inspiration blog points out a feature of Box.net's free web storage service that makes sending large files through email links super-easy. If you're signed up and already have your free 1 GB of space, simply enable the Gmail or Outlook services (the latter will also work with Mozilla Thunderbird), and right-clicking on files or folders will set up a message that shares the files with any recipients. As Digital Inspiration puts it, it's similar to the RapidShare sharing method, but a lot less painful for the recipients.

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Personal trainer Dan Boyle says that you can boost your morning energy and make it a better day in general just by doing a few push-ups. He says:

When you get up, right after you eat your breakfast, do this push up routine:

1. Muster up some will, get down and pump out as many push ups as you can do.
2. Wait 30 seconds
3. Pump out more push ups (again as many as you can do)
4. Wait 30 seconds
5. Pump out more pushups (again as many as you can do and don't hold back... really push it!)

When you are done and you stand up, whatever the tired, sluggish, or "get out of my face" morning feeling you might have felt will have been replaced with an "I am the shiznit!!!" feeling.

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The Consumerist lists 10 ways to really save money, which include one of my tried and true standbys, rolling your credit card debt over to a new provider which offers you a 6 month interest free period. Of course, the aim should be to pay it off before the honeymoon period elapses and you revert to the full interest rate.
(Don't make the mistake I once made of keeping the old card 'just in case' - of course I ended up with two credit cards in debt.)
Of course, the only real way to save money is to spend less than you earn and start putting money into savings. But the list has a few suggestions for doing that too, including paying your credit card off in full every month to avoid credit charges, and the old standbys - making your own coffee and lunch instead of buying them.
Got any other tips for getting the most out of your money? Share in comments please.

10 ways to save real money [The Consumerist]

For any old school Nintendo fans in the audience: PC Authority has published a walkthrough for running Nintendo Classic games on a PC. The article steps you through how to set up the Project64 emulator on your PC. You'll also need to grab the games - so you'll need to download some N64 ROMs.
You'll be able to buff the screen resolution to get a nicer looking game than you would have gotten from the original console, but unless you have a joystick or analogue controller, you'll be playing with the keyboard, which seems, well, kinda wrong.

Thanks for the tip, William!

Walkthrough: How to play Nintendo Classics on your PC [PC Authority]

I was recently introduced to the CaringBridge website when a colleague became ill and was hospitalised. It's a pretty cool site where you can create a free, personalised journal which serves as a hub for the ill person (or their family) to post photos and updates on their progress, and where friends can leave messages of support.
There are two levels of privacy available - one lets anyone view your CaringBridge site as long as they know your chosen CaringBridge site name, or you can choose to only show your site to people who have registered with the site.
Once you sign up you can browse the patient's online journal, and subscribe to be notified by email when their journal is updated.
I've really appreciated being able to receive email updates to hear how my friend is going, and I can imagine that for people who are facing serious illness, CaringBridge would be a nice and unobtrusive tool for keeping wellwishers updated and receiving messages of support.
My one slight niggle was that it does nag you for donations to keep the site running, but I suppose it's fair enough - funding has to come from somewhere.

US-centric: The food experts at Health magazine have scoured the menus at popular restaurant chains in search of the healthiest foods on the menu, rounding up several healthy menu options at otherwise unhealthy chains. For example, next time you... Read More »

US-centric: Web site Shop It To Me scours the internet for sales on brands you love and sends an email digest of the latest deals. When you sign up, you tell the site exactly what to watch for. You... Read More »

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Weblog Daily Gyan points out a simple about:config tweak that disables the installation delay for new Firefox extensions. As you may know, Firefox tries to protect you from malicious attacks by setting up a delay before allowing you to install a new extension. But if you're confident in your browsing habits and you want to avoid the wait, just enter about:config in your address bar, then paste security.dialog_enable_delay into the filter box. Double-click that preference and change the value to 0. If you're aware of the risk but still don't feel like waiting every time you install a new extension, this is a nice time-saver.

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Anyone who's tried saving a Word document as a web page knows you get way more than you bargained for in the HTML and CSS department in the result. The Productivity Portfolio blog offers two alternatives when you want to zip a .DOC to a .HTML file in a jiffy without all the cruft: Using the online Word HTML Cleaner at Textism (files up to 20K only), or sending yourself the document via Gmail and hitting the "View as HTML" link. Handy.

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Online collaboration service PalBee integrates video conferencing and whiteboard sharing so you can meet up with co-workers over the internet. PalBee supports one free hour at a time for up to five collaborators, and it can record the session as its happening for later review—the results of which can be embedded on any web page (similar to the video above). Naturally, since PalBee is web-based, it works on all platforms as long as you've got a webcam. PalBee is currently completely free to use, though pay plans are likely to emerge.

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It may be the year 2008, but a whole lot of sucktacular software still rears its ugly head on PCs everywhere, even when better-behaved options are freely available. Whether it's molasses-slow bloatware, shameless adware, anemic default apps, or "Your trial period has expired!" nagware, it's time to replace stinky Windows software with its superior (but lesser-known) alternative. Last week we asked what software you should never install on your PC, and over 200 comments later, you compiled quite a list. Today we're going to take a walk down the Crapware Hall of Shame, point and laugh at the worst offenders, and highlight some better choices. Photo by chelseagirl.

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Next time you agree to meet someone for coffee or lunch "sometime soon" head over to collaborative scheduling webapp Presdo. In Presdo's single entry box enter the event, your cohorts' names, and a time (vague times like "afternoon" or "next week" work too)—like "Powwow with Adam, Kevin, and Tamar next week". Presdo will create an event where you can enter a description, pick a location and shoot off an invitation email to whomever is joining you. You can suggest times and dates, and your invitees can choose which ones work for them. Check out Presdo's two main screens in action.

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Linux only: Any Linux user clutching a mouse with more than the standard two buttons and a scroll wheel doesn't have it easy trying to match the same kind of configuration options given by the manufacturer's setup software, which is almost always Windows or Mac-only. The Flow of Consciousness blog walks through installing btnx, a program that can assign nearly any mouse click to a huge variety of actions. Got a Logitech with left and right buttons? Feel free to set them to switch workspaces or even rotate a four-sided desktop cube. The tutorial requires a fair bit of command line work, as the package isn't available in most respositories, but the Ubuntu-related instructions can be adapted to most any distribution. btnx is a free download for Linux systems only.

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Windows only: If you still have trouble getting to the functions you need in Office 2007's Ribbon interface, give Microsoft's new experimental Search Commands add-in a try. Search Commands adds a tab and search box to the ribbon that finds buttons as you type into it. After the jump, see a screenshot of Search Commands in action.

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Most any savvy computer user is probably pretty handy with a free compression and archiving tool (like, say, 7-Zip), but not everyone they send files to will be. The Confessions of a Freeware Junkie blog points out that IExpress.exe, a built-in utility you simply type into the "Run" menu in Windows XP or "Start Search" in Vista, can create self-extracting archives to be emailed to anyone using Windows. Just choose "Extract files only" while clicking through the wizard interface, choose the files to be zipped up, and the end user only has to double-click to get them. IExpress also works as an easy way to convert batch files into executables. Need more info on IExpress? Check out Microsoft's help page on the tool.

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