The Online Tech Tips Blog digs into Vista's Start Search box—which earned an honorable mention in our recent Hive Five app launcher roundup—and details how to make it even more convenient by adding quick searching of Wikipedia, Google, or nearly any other site with a search interface. We've shown you how to perform super-quick "I'm feeling lucky" searches from Start Search, but this tutorial digs into opening up a whole results page. If your Vista lacks a Group Policy Editor, the How-To Geek has a registry-editing solution that should work just as well.

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If you've set up IMAP access to Gmail in Outlook, you may have noticed that using flags in Outlook and stars in Gmail creates a duplicate set of tasks in your sidebar. The How-To Geek shows you how to fix that distraction, using a little creative filtering. The trick can be extended to multiple email accounts, and whether you bring Gmail into your All Mail folder or not. Hit the link for the Geek's helpful run-through.

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Looking to grab more work from a client you've done freelance work for? The FreelanceSwitch blog suggests asking them to set aside 10 minutes to discuss what aspects of their business you could contribute to, beyond the scope of what you've already done. Blogger Yuwanda Black says:

I recently snagged more work from one client by finding out that he had a lot of blogging work he needed done. These weren't for any of his clients, but for his own sites. But, he just didn't have time to do them and meet client deadlines as well (a lot of internet entrepreneur have this problem, including yours truly).

How have our freelancing readers converted one-shot jobs into long-term clients? Let's hear your advice, or situations to avoid, in the comments.
Photo by Andyrob.

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Yahoo unveils a "sneak peek" of a new product that aims to bridge the gap between your web browser and desktop—BrowserPlus, a desktop utility that enables richer browser interaction, like drag and drop file uploads. The BrowserPlus utility is available for Windows and Mac at the moment and works with Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer 7. There are only three demo applications that use BrowserPlus: a Flickr drap-and-drop image uploader, an IRC chat client, and for the web monkeys, a JSON inspector. In short, BrowserPlus is more proof-of-concept than anything else. But, with Google ramping up Gears, Firefox 3 building in offline webapp support, and Yahoo busting out BrowserPlus, looks like your web browser and your desktop are going to be more than just friends in the coming months. The BrowserPlus sneak preview is a free download for Mac and Windows.

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Mac OS X only: Earlier today we reported that Mac OS's latest update to 10.5.3 included Google contact syncing to Address Book—if you've connected an iPhone or iPod touch to your Mac, that is. If you don't have an iPhone or iPod touch and unlocking this useful bit of functionality isn't worth paying hundreds of dollars for the device, a simple system tweak can turn it on for you.

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Talking to a bank call centre is even less fun than root canal work, so I think National Australia Bank might be onto something with its trial of a completely automated online chat support service. Simon Sharwood at the Smart Call podcast chatted with NAB's head of direct channels Tim Cullen, and Cullen revealed that the bank has been trialling computer-based chat support. The IM agent has a growing knowledge base of common queries, but can hand over to a human support agent if it can't work out what's going on.

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Mobile phones might be ubiquitous, but that doesn't mean they're equally well-designed for everyone. If you're short-sighted, seeing small buttons may be impossible; if you have limited muscular control, then a touch screen's a non-starter. Nokia Australia has just published an accessibility guide for its phone range, which includes some useful tips on picking the right phone model for your needs and setting it up for accessibility (in amongst the inevitable self-serving corporate gumpf and cheesy photography). While it's Nokia-specific, the guidelines are potentially useful whatever phone you end up buying.

Nokia Accessibility Guide (PDF)

Gmail users with Firefox and Greasemonkey: If you often use the CC or BCC field in Gmail but you're sick of clicking on the "Add CC" and "Add BCC" link to do so, we've got a pair of user scripts for you. Bypass the click step automatically by installing the:

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An engineers' strike means that Qantas services are likely to be disrupted on Thursday May 29 and Friday May 30, leading to delays and various other hassles, especially for commuters in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Flight disruptions are often an unavoidable fact of life, but there's some useful strategies you can adopt to minimise the hassle.

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Microsoft Australia is currently running one of those "visit our site and we'll give money to charity" promotions, promising to donate $1 to the Smith Family for every viewer (up to a $100,000 ceiling) of a site which promotes Office 2007 (and is also a sneaky way to get people to install Silverlight, Microsoft's Flash wannabe). I can't help thinking Microsoft would convince more people to use 2007 if the cursed Ribbon got dumped, but still, why not direct some more of Bill's money towards a worthy cause? (Handy tip: don't try this on a slow connection, on my Next G link it was beyond painful.)

Microsoft Smith Family Office Charity

Create your own web site with the free what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) web site builder Webon. Webon provides a simple solution for people with no experience with web publishing. That's not to say that you can't insert your own custom HTML or stylesheets, but if you don't have experience with any of that, Webon will take care of it for you. Likewise, when you're done Webon publishes your site to a custom subdomain, like http://lifehacker.webonsites.com (though you can get a custom domain for a fee). It's got several templates to get started, from blogs to photo albums, as well as several one-click add-ons to spice up your site. Be sure to check out the video demo on the homepage to get a better idea of how it works. If you're interested in starting up a simple web site with virtually no learning curve, Webon looks like a good choice.

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Last night here in San Diego Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer showed off Windows 7's biggest new feature—multi-touch integration—and today Google demo'ed their touch-enabled Android phone software. Judging from the iPhone's popularity, and the previews of these major software apps, it looks like actual keyboards and mice are on their way towards becoming obsolete. Impressed? Not so much? Hit the play button on the video above to see the multi-touch Windows 7 demo. Then tell us what you think of everything heading towards touch interfaces after the jump.

Windows only: The freeware Google Earth plug-in integrates Google Earth with your web browser, embedding the 3-D glory of Earth in Firefox or Internet Explorer. The results, which you can see in the video above, are impressive. There isn't a ton of Google Earth plug-in integration on the web yet, but check out the samples to understand the possibilities, like switching between Google Maps and Earth on-the-fly. The Google Earth plug-in is Windows only, supports Firefox and Internet Explorer.

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Mac OS X Leopard only: Today's release of Mac OS 10.5.3 added a juicy little tidbit to Address Book: the ability to automatically sync your Google contacts. After you've run Software Update and gotten 10.5.3 (and restarted your Mac), hit up Address Book's Preferences pane. At the button of the General tab, check off the "Synchronize with Google" box to get started. Be sure to back up your address book before you sync, and see the FAQ for more info. Update: Several commenters rightly point out that this capability only exists for iPhone owners, which is quite possibly a crappier move than forcing Safari onto Windows users on Apple's part. Time to switch to Linux.

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Just posted an update to the Better GCal Firefox extension, which adds Firefox 3 support, and an updated current timeline. Download it here.

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Erin from organisation weblog Unclutterer loves taking notes in books, so whenever she checks a book out from the library or borrows a book from a friend, she buys a stack of sheer colour Post-it notes. The notes are see-through, which means that whenever you want to circle a passage or make notes, you can just plop one down on top of the page and make your notes just like you normally would. If you've been reprimanded a time or two for your highlighting and notes-in-the-margin habits, these sheer Post-its look like a perfect compromise.

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One of the best side effects of using Facebook is knowing when your contacts' birthdays are—but you only see them if you log in. The Facebook application fbCal is out to fix that. Once you install it on Facebook, fbCal creates an iCal file for your Facebook contacts' birthdays as well as Facebook events. Subscribe to the feed in your iCal-enabled calendar app of choice, like Mac's iCal or Google Calendar. When I tried fbCal last night, I subscribed to the resulting birthday .ICS file in Google Calendar, and nothing showed up. This morning, however, all my friends' birthdays were lighting up my schedule, so give it some time to get working. Actually-useful Facebook applications are few and far between, but fbCal is definitely one of them. Thanks, Sam!

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iPhone/iPod touch only: Freeware application iSlsk is a Soulseek peer-to-peer client for the iPhone and iPod touch which can download MP3s from the Soulseek network directly to your device. Once you've downloaded a song, iSlsk imports the MP3 directly to your iPod so you can play it alongside all the rest of your music. Sounds too good to be true, right? It almost is. The video after the jump demonstrates just how incredible iSlsk is, and the catch:

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Audiophile blogger Santi needed solid speaker stands that wouldn't break the bank, and wound up using cinder blocks to get the job done. Santi writes:

I know most of you out there probably just stick your speakers on a desk, or shelf, and mostly likely the speaker is pushed all the way back against the wall. Well, let me tell you that this is NOT optimal. Speakers should be at least one foot away from the wall, and placed on sturdy structures that will not resonate with the speaker, which can colour the sound.

With some epoxy, cinder blocks, wood circles, and concrete paint, Santi painted and glued together a few cinder blocks to mount his speakers on, and the result is surprisingly good-looking (if unconventional)—plus there are built-in shelves inside the blocks. Maybe cinder blocks aren't just for college dorms any more.

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Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): If you've ever arrived late to an overly-popular web page just to get a 404 or similar error, you'll know how CacheIt, a free Firefox extension, can save you time trying to locate a pre-crash page image. From any page, jump to CacheIt's right-click menu, and it will try to link you to cached pages served up by Google, Coral CDN, MSN, Dot Cache, and the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. It probably won't work for every server every time, but you've got a fighting chance at seeing the last captured image of a page, whether it's down or not. CacheIt is a free download, works wherever Firefox (2, at the moment) does.

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