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Where You Find the Time to Spend Online
Posted by Gina Trapani at 11:30 PM on April 30, 2008
Where do people find the time to do things like edit the Wikipedia? They watch less television, says author Clay Shirky in a fantastic, brief talk at the recent Web 2.0 conference. Shirky makes a compelling case that people are just learning how to deal with the "cognitive surplus" of free time modern life affords us. We're waking up from the "collective bender" of mindlessly watching sitcoms and instead, we're choosing instead to spend our free time volunteering, interacting, and Web 2.0'ing online. Hit the play button to watch Shirky make his case for the full effect, or hit the link below to read the text transcript of his talk. Next time your TV-watching friends make fun of you for opting to blog instead, point 'em to this talk.
Windows only: Ever use an online translation service and wonder if you can get more accurate results elsewhere? Translate.Net, a free Windows translation aggregator, knows just how you feel. The desktop app puts your words or phrases through 17 different language translation engines and dictionaries, letting you scroll through and compare results. A total of 25 languages are supported, but the program remembers your recent translation directions to save you the time of scrolling to find the right pairing. A great tool for language learning, or just seeing how different one phrase can be interpreted. Translate.Net is a free download for Windows systems only, requires .NET Framework 2.0
The 
You don't have to be a programmer to appreciate the joys of plain text, and there's no better way to wrangle your text files than a solid text editor. Plain text files are appealing because they're searchable, lightweight, portable, and truly platform agnostic; plain text just makes life easier. With an abundance of excellent text editors available beyond your operating system's default, choosing the best program to manipulate and manage your plain text files isn't so easy. Luckily we've got you, our loyal readers. So for this week's Hive Five, we want to hear all about your favourite text editor. Hit the jump for details and to nominate your favourite.
If you're keen on keeping a desktop free from the clutter of a hundred open windows, weblog AppleDoes points out a simple OS X keyboard shortcut that will simultaneously open a file or application while closing the Finder window you launched it from. How? Just hold your option key. So if you're about to launch an application, for example, holding option and then double-clicking the app will open the app and automatically close the Finder window you opened it from. This trick also works from the keyboard—so Cmd-Opt-O will open your app or file and automatically close the Finder window. It's not groundbreaking, but it's a handy little shortcut to keep your virtual world just a touch neater.
We've all seen "urgent" emails from exiled princes telling us to act quickly and hand over our bank account or other sensitive information. Since we're savvy folks, we promptly hit the Delete button and move on with our lives. That said, not all phishing scams are so obvious, and sometimes a phishing email can be very convincing. The Official Google Blog highlights a few simple tips that will greatly diminish your chances of getting hooked by a phishing scam. For example, the post recommends always going directly to the site yourself rather than clicking on links in suspicious emails, which will ensure you're dealing with your the source and not some nefarious site set up to look like your bank. Some of the tips are old hat, but it's a good post to send on to friends and family who don't have that discerning eye for phishing that you do. Let's hear your tried-and-true anti-phishing methods in the comments.
Windows only: Freeware application AutoGK rips DVDs to hard drive-friendly DivX and Xvid formats for quick, easy, and high-quality backups. It does so by acting as an automating front-end to several other free ripping and encoding tools, which it automatically installs on your system. We've never featured AutoGK, but a lot of readers 
Career advisor Penelope Trunk offers a five-question quiz that calculates whether you're likely to get that job promotion. Like most of Trunk's delightfully unconventional tips, this promotion-o-meter's based not on whether or not you're the best candidate, but on the realities of office politics. Questions range from whether the boss likes you, if you're working on a high profile project, if you work a lot of hours (or at least create the impression that you do), and if you're at the top of the pay scale and experience for your current position. What's your score on the test? Let us know in the comments.
Windows XP Service Pack 3 
Technologist Alexander van Elsas says that the problems a lot of new services and web applications solve are specific to a certain kind of super-techie user. He writes:
The How-To Geek points us to a little-touted but largely useful feature included in Windows Vista's recent Service Pack 1 update—scheduled defragmenting of multiple hard drives. You can access Vista's defrag utility by typing 
There's nothing wrong with holding on to keepsakes of a life's great moments, but many marginal items often fall in with one's treasures, creating a good deal of hard-to-place mess. The Unclutterer blog highlights advice from an organisational expert on how to figure out what's really important to you and what to do with the rest. Her tips include at least one serious space-saver:
