Mac OS X only: Store your passwords, serial numbers, and web site login information in Pastor, a personal encrypted database. Much like my beloved KeePass (available for Mac as KeePassX), Pastor stores a title, username, password, URL, and notes for each entry and locks the entire database with one master password. Pastor's interface is a simple, no-nonsense single window. Unlike KeePassX, you can't organise your entries in folders, but it does include a handy password generator that tailors suggestions to rules (like alphanumeric only, mixed case, must include symbols, etc). Juicy screengrabs await, after the jump.

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Windows/Mac/Linux (Thunderbird): Harness the to-do-managing power of Remember the Milk from inside your mail reader with an alpha extension for Thunderbird. Once installed and authenticated with your RTM account, the task manager provided by the Lightning extension will have bi-directional access to your tasks, which you can add, delete, modify, and prioritise from inside your mail manager. Hit the video above to see a few of the things you can do with the extension, and hit the via link below for step-by-step installation instructions. Remember the Milk Provider extension is a free download, but requires a free Mozilla Add-Ons account to download, needs the Lightning calendar extension, and works wherever Thunderbird does.

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Windows only: Rename large sets of files without batch scripting or endless clicking with WildRename, a free Windows utility. If you've been putting off organising and renaming a vast collection of MP3s, pictures, or videos, you can stop procrastinating, as WildRename makes it easy to strip characters off the end of files, add or remove dashes, spaces, and other naming quirks, and correct capitalisation universally. That's actually just the feature set for beginners—if you're into regular expressions and advanced rule sets, so is WildRename. Thankfully, you can mess around with simulation modes to see how accurate your results would be if you really pulled the trigger. For avid downloaders and those inheriting folders full of disorganised files, WildRename is a must. WildRename is a free download for Windows systems only.

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VirtualBox makes virtual installations of Windows and other operating systems easier than you'd think in Linux (as mentioned in our second look at Ubuntu 8.04, "Hardy Heron"), but the key missing feature from its free, open-source edition is USB support. Your iPod need not feel shunned from Linux land any longer, however, as the Ubuntu Unleashed blog offers step-by-step instructions on installing and configuring VirtualBox with support for plug-in devices. It's specific to the newest Ubuntu and a little bit more than the "five easy steps" promised, but it should only take a few minutes to unlock the bridge between your system-in-a-system and all your gadgets.

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Dear Lifehacker,
While I was surfing the web the other day I saw this incredible photograph which I stupidly didn't save to my computer. (No, it wasn't that kind of photograph.) Still, now I'm regretting not saving my own copy, because the picture is no longer available online. But if I viewed it in my browser, that means I did actually download it, right? If it's saved on my hard drive somewhere, how and where do I find it?
Signed,
Desperately Seeking Offline Photo

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Something about the simplicity of this make your own leather-bound notebook project really appeals to me. Firstly, it's aimed at beginning level DIYers. Secondly, when you fill it up you can add more pages or remove the old pages and add new ones to start the book afresh.
Note that it's a soft leather cover, not a hardback. It can fit between 50 and 250 pages.
The ArmorGeek tutorial includes a list of the leatherworking tools and materials you'll need , and a downloadable pattern.
Suitably customised, this looks like it could make a wonderful gift as well. Nice!

Softback Leather Book [ArmorGeek via MAKE]

Automation is a great way to aid productivity and get things done more quickly. The Stepcase Lifehack blog (which seems to be what Lifehack.org has changed its name to) has a great twist on this in a post today suggesting ways to capitalise on our tendency to inaction or laziness by automating things we want to get done.

For example - setting up a direct debit of 10% of your salary which goes automatically into a high yield savings account. It's much more likely you'll just get used to saving that money, than if you had to manually move the money (oh wait, I spent it) each month. The other suggestions included setting your alarm clock to wake you earlier in the morning, and setting up a regular online grocery order.
Have you found any 'set and forget' ways to get things done? Please share in comments.

Fight Downhill Battles: Let Laziness and Inertia Make You More Productive [Stepcase Lifehack]

Exercise can protect against everything from heart attacks and cancer to depression and erectile dysfunction, but the New York Times focuses on how working out also helps with ailments you're already suffering from—even those that make exercise difficult.

Perhaps the most immediate benefits are reaped by people with joint and neuromuscular disorders. Without exercise, those at risk of osteoarthritis become crippled by stiff, deteriorated joints. But exercise that increases strength and aerobic capacity can reduce pain, depression and anxiety and improve function, balance and quality of life.

The key, of course, is knowing what kind of workouts counter your ailment. If you've used exercise to address health issues in the past, let's hear what worked best for you in the comments.

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The Official Gmail blog points out a small new feature update in Gmail that allows you to edit contact information on-the-fly directly from your chat list. In short, when you hover your mouse over a contact in chat (or an email), the name in the pop-up details window is now editable. Since the chat pane is really the quickest way to search and access your contacts, it's a great way to quickly add meaningful names to your contacts—especially since Gmail's contact management tools are still a little unwieldy. Small improvements like that could go a long way in boosting Gmail's status as a top 5 contact management tool.

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Web site Boolify makes advanced web searches easy through a simple drag-and-drop interface. Intended as an educational tool, Boolify teaches users how to create boolean searches in Google using operators like OR and NOT (-) to get very specific search results. Boolean searching isn't new by any means, but if you've never gotten the hang of it or you just prefer a more visual approach, Boolify is worth a look. If you're way past this, then our top 10 obscure Google search tricks may be more up your alley.

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Blogger Ron Brinkmann doesn't want to buy an overpriced laptop stand or build his own DIY laptop stand. Instead, he takes the cheap and easy route and uses a $6 hot water bottle as a water-cooled laptop stand. Brinkmann says:

Yup, buy a hot water bottle, fill it up with tap-water (room-temperature is fine) and insert strategically between laptop and lap. It's comfy, acts as a nice heat-sink, and as a bonus it probably blocks a fair bit of the dangerous 'electronic rays' that are shooting out of the bottom of the computer straight at your important bits.

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The previously mentioned PC Decrapifier utility, which cleans pre-installed bloatware that ships with new Windows laptops, sees an update today and detects more applications than ever, like Norton 360, the Microsoft Office 2007 Trial and Activation Assistant, and Symantic LiveUpdate. [via]

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• What is the most beautiful place on Earth?
• Getting up early in the morning never seems to get easier. Any tips?
• What are some simple tricks I can use to improve my car's MPG?
• Where's a good, verbose online thesaurus for wandering through words?
• How high exactly can one get on life?
• Does anybody ever regret switching to a Mac?

Men's Health magazine online offers four free workout videos that you can download, drag into iTunes, and sync directly to your iPod. The routines range in intensity from the at-home muscle plan—which suggests a circuit of exercises you can do at home—to more gym-focused workouts like the "Ultimate Strength-Boosting" workout. The videos are short and serve more as reminders for how to correctly do the exercises rather than 30-minute as-you-go walkthroughs. For even more free iPod video workouts, check out previously mentioned iPod Gym. The Men's Health videos require a free registration with the site (or quickly stopping the page load before it hides the direct video links).

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Writing things down, on paper or on-screen, is the best way to make sure you remember important info and tasks, but sometimes you've got to rely on your plain old brain to keep essential data sorted and handy. Whether it's a client's name, a password or combination you want stored only in your head, or answers for an upcoming test, there are plenty of techniques and tools to help you lock in important stuff and pull it out when needed. After the jump, we round up some memorable memory-boosting hacks. Photo by furryscaly.

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Make it seem like you're sending email when you're really playing hooky with Outlook's built-in "defer delivery" rule. Tech blogger Dennis O'Reilly runs down how to set up Outlook to delay sending messages for a certain amount of time (like half an hour) automatically. You can also set individual messages to be sent on certain days at certain times in Outlook—good for scheduling future messages ahead of time.

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FLVto is a web app with three buttons, one input box, and one simple-but-great function of converting YouTube and other Flash-based videos to MP3 audio files. We've shared a reader-submitted download-and-convert method, but FLVto makes the process pretty foolproof. Paste a YouTube or other video link (or upload an FLV file), hit "OK," then wait for your download prompt. The sound quality is only as good as the video's (as in mono sound, 60 kbps on one sample download), but with more videos going up in higher-resolution, stereo-sound formats, that could improve—assuming this app stays up and running. FLVto is free to use and doesn't require a sign-up.

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Mac OS X only: Back in the non-Stacks days of Tiger, you could add a folder to the Dock and expand it into a hierarchical menu. Now with Stacks you can't easily navigate subfolders from a folder on the Dock, but small utility AppMenuBoy aims to change that—for your Applications folder, that is. Start up AppMenuBoy and expand your Applications folder into a Tiger-style hierarchical menu, as shown after the jump.

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Sticking to to-do lists with specific next actions can help you get things done, but we can all get lost along the way, whether in the wide-open playground of a browser or some other time sink. Productivity blogger Andre Kibbe suggests fighting a procrastination jones with a little self-awareness and a "Crutch Activities" checklist kept close at hand.

Instead of cursing yourself each time you find that you've spent 90 minutes in your inbox when you meant to check email for 10 minutes, add "Checking email" to your Crutch Activities checklist. Review and update the checklist regularly, and develop protocols, like batching, for controlling these impulses.

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