Although there are projects underway in Melbourne (myki) and Brisbane, and an endlessly stalled attempt in Sydney, Perth is currently the only Australian capital to have a proper city-wide transport smart card (SmartRider) that lets you pay for any form of transport without ever needing cash on hand, simply by swiping a card on a reader. This is, to be honest, a great pity.
As travellers to London (Oyster) and Hong Kong (Octopus) will attest, smart cards make travelling a breeze, eliminating the need to scrabble for change or work out unfamiliar systems, and improving security (you can scan your whole wallet rather than fiddling to take the card out). If you're visiting anywhere that has a smart card travel system for more than a day or so, ditch the paper tickets and get a smart card: even if you have to pay a deposit to get the card, the convenience is worth it, and in many places (Perth included) you get a discount on travel that'll quick eat up the cost anyway.

MapMe.com puts a friendly spin on adding information to Google Maps, making it possible to develop and rate maps relating to your favourite topic or your local area without needing a healthy dose of coding knowledge. Maps can easily be assigned memorable names (like the self-explanatory www.mapme.com/map/violent-pubs-nsw, shown above), while future plans include Facebook integration. The project (developed in true Web 2.0 fashion between Australia, the UK, the Philippines and Antarctica) is currently in beta, but seems to be running in fairly stable condition. Give it a spin (registration required to build your own maps).

MapMe.com

Just released a new version of the Better Gmail 2 Firefox extension, with bug fixes, the addition of the show CC and BCC scripts, and an update to the Redesigned skin. Download Better Gmail 2 0.5 here.

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A new study by Australian consumer agency Choice shows that game consoles, especially the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, use significant power even when they're not in use.

"Our tests found that leaving a Playstation 3 on while not in use would cost almost... five times more than it would take to run a refrigerator for the same yearly period," said the study which was published on Choice's web site.

Right behind the Playstation and Xbox in the electricity-sucking list is plasma televisions and desktop computers. To save money on your bill, turn off the power strip the consoles and TV is plugged into instead of relying solely on the remote control. Here are more ways you can save energy while computing.

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Apple has been pushing out podcasts from universities under the iTunes U brand for a while now, but the concept just got more interesting with the addition of half-a-dozen Australian universities:  Australian National University, Griffith University, Swinburne University, University of Melbourne, University of NSW, and the University of WA (for New Zealanders, Otago University has also signed up.) Content includes audio and video versions of guest and regular lectures, as well as research profiles. Shame we got stuck with the US-centric 'U' branding; frankly, if you want to go to university, you need to be able to pronounce words of more than one syllable. Though admittedly 'iTunes College' wouldn't be much better.

iTunes U

Dear Lifehacker,

Do you know of any online services where you can specify a list of torrents, and your credit card number, and you can have a disc set mailed to you with the results? Sometimes I can imagine this being faster than a download and certainly less hassle for some people. I searched Google with no luck, but I thought if such a thing exists, Lifehacker will know about it.

Signed, Pressed For Time, Hungry For Torrents

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Conferences are often viewed as an excuse to skive out of the office for a few days in a sunny location, but in truth there's not much point doing that: all your regular work will still be there when you get back. In a busy working life, how can you make sure the information you gather at a conference will get used?
Security expert and conference veteran Chris Joscelyne offered this useful tip at the ITSM Conference on the Gold Coast earlier this week: schedule time in your calendar to revisit conference materials and notes the week after you've been there. For maximum impact, Joscelyne advises a double-review process: "Make an appointment with yourself one month after you attend a conference and spend two hours reviewing how it was relevant to you."

Mac OS X only: Freeware application xMod tweaks OS X Leopard system settings through a easy-to-use—albeit clunky—interface. Similar to previously mentioned LeopardMOD, xMod tweaks everything from Finder to Safari, and offers tools to check the status of your hard drives or change the default screenshot behaviour. xMod is freeware, Mac OS X only. For more obscure but arguably cooler set of hidden tweaks, check out previously mentioned Secrets.

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If you've started controlling your PC with your voice but were looking for more ways you can take advantage of speech recognition to make your computer do things, blogger and Microsoft employee Rob Chambers publishes a handful of free macros you can add to your Speech Macros folder to execute any time. For example, Rob's Next Slide macro advances a PowerPoint presentation when you say "Next slide" and goes back when you say "Previous slide."

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In case it went under your radar, Leopard's Spaces feature has improved in the 10.5.3 release by making the workspace switch more intuitive. The upshot: You can now create and switch between workspaces based on tasks rather than apps.

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Windows only with Outlook: Sick of bumping up against your employer's tiny Exchange server space limit? The Outlook Attachment Remover can detach all those huge images and documents your co-workers insist on emailing around and free up space by offloading them to your hard drive. The Attachment Remover is a free Outlook add-in that lets you process a folder of your choosing, and specify which attachment file types and sizes you want to save to your hard drive (like only .PPT's larger than 100KB, for example.) Great way to reduce disk usage fast without having to manually delete or archive Outlook messages. The Outlook Attachment Remover is freeware for Windows, donations requested.

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Windows/Mac/Linux: Freeware application Deluge is a lightweight, cross-platform BitTorrent client. Aside from the standard BitTorrent functionality (you know, downloading), Deluge has a—dare I say—flood of great features for such a young client, including a web interface (like uTorrent and Transmission), full encryption, RSS support, and a plug-in system for adding even more functionality. In fact, if anything Deluge is an attempt at building a cross-platform BitTorrent client with the chops of the popular Windows-only uTorrent, and so far it looks promising. Deluge is free, open source, works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

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Today Microsoft announces that they will extend the amount of time manufacturers can ship low cost PCs with Windows XP until 2010. Clearly someone in Redmond is reading Lifehacker. Note that this doesn't apply to standard PCs, though, so if you want XP pre-installed you need to buy soon.

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Feel like your Getting-Things-Done-style next-action list is slipping away from you? Having a hard time getting through the list because it's feeling overwhelming? The Tools for Thought blog suggests taking a hard-eyed look at what tasks or projects might be irrelevant without your noticing the change:

Maybe an increase in petrol prices has made that road trip less appealing than it seemed a month ago. Maybe it's becoming clearer that upgrading a piece of software that works perfectly fine is just creating activity for its own sake.

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PageOnce, the all-in-one aggregation page for online accounts we've previously mentioned, is now open for public sign-ups—and still requires a small leap of faith in turning over a host of login details.

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Web-based information manager MyGADs lets you create, share, and retrieve important bits of information like flight confirmation numbers, birthdays, phone numbers, and more. Store address books, calendars, tasks, and notes in personal or public "GADs" with text messages, instant messages, or using the web site. Need to remember Uncle Billy's birthday? Instant message it to your GAD. Forgot when it was? Ask your GAD. The interface is easy and conversational. Set GADs permissions so friends and family can edit and/or view your GAD (i.e., Mum sets the schedule, kids can check it.) Kind of like a lo-fi cross between Sandy and Google SMS, MyGADs isn't just limited to retrieving information you have already fed to it. Queries like "Weather in New York", "Population of Britain", or "Who is Albert Einstein" will return relevant answers from sites like Wikipedia or the national weather service, too.

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Mac only: Free utility Shades adds finer screen brightness controls to your Mac than the defaults. Once you install the Shades Preference pane and turn it on, you can brighten or darken your screen across a much wider range than the Mac's built-in controls, and make your laptop in bed much more bearable to your sleepy significant other or the guy on the red-eye flight in the next seat. Shades doesn't affect OS X's default controls and colour profiles. If you get carried away by the range Shades provides and dim your screen too dark, Alt+Esc will set it back to the default brightness. Thanks eyeRmonkey!

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