Windows only: Free application Glary Utilities performs vital maintenance on your system to keep it in tip-top shape. Glary Utilities performs six key functions, from optimising your registry to clearing out that spyware you accidentally installed. The application also removes dangerous entries from your Start Menu, fixes invalid shortcuts, erases your web browsing and application usage history, and frees up space on your hard drive by deleting temporary files. Glary Tools was voted a user a favourite by many of our readers in our best Windows maintenance tools Hive Five, and with all these features and functionality, we're not surprised. A free version of Glary Utilities is available for download for Windows only, though there is a professional version available for $US39.95.

The Tombuntu blog points out a seriously helpful package available in Ubuntu's extended repositories that make creating super-efficient 7-Zip archives simple and fast, whether you're right-clicking or working with a command line. Run this command to install it:

sudo apt-get install p7zip

Users of other Linux distros should find a similar package in their own sources. Once installed, creating compressed archives for storing or emailing is as simple as selecting the files, right-clicking, and choosing "Create Archive," and de-compressing just as simple.

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Windows/Linux: Free note-taking app Incollector is a pretty convenient and lightweight way to keep small bits of data close at hand, while also keeping everything organised and easily accessible. Pull up Incollector from the system tray and tell it what kind of note you're adding—conversation snippet, web address, plain text, among others—and what tags apply to it. Add comments, give it a star rating, and all that data can be used to create saved searches, filter by tags or ratings, and even search from the system tray by right-clicking the icon. Incollector isn't a high-powered, universal note collector, but it fills its desktop role nicely. Incollector is a free download for Windows and Linux systems.

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Marking a song as "Loved" or a "Favorite" on music discovery apps like Last.fm and Pandora doesn't help you a whole lot when you want to hear them again. Free mashup site Favtape bridges the gaps between your Last.fm or Pandora profile, track-finding sites like Seeqpod, and the dead-simple interface of a site like Muxtape to create a playlist of your marked tracks. Some tracks might not actually play once loaded into Favtape, but it's a cool way to create an instant playlist of songs you'll definitely like.

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The best way to put your newly jailbroken iPhone 2.0 to good use is to turn it into a mobile phone modem for your laptop. When tapping out an email or pinching and swiping on the iPhone's web browser just doesn't get the job done—and you want to use the full keyboard and screen on your laptop in a Wi-Fi-less place—you can get your computer online using the iPhone's data connection. We've covered how to "tether" your iPhone before, but now that the iPhone 3G connection is speedier and the jailbreak process updated, here's a refresher course. (Of course, if you're on one of the data-light plans such as Telstra, this could be a really expensive idea - proceed with caution.)

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As the Beijing Olympics loom ever closer, free resources to help visitors to China for the games are gathering steam. Hot on the heels of Lonely Planet's free Chinese phrasebook for the iPhone, AsiaHotels.com is offering a tourist guide to the games as a free PDF.

Dear Lifehacker,
I was hoping I could put a question to the Lifehacker community. I know a lot of folks out there are Eee PC owners, and I've finally caved and ordered myself a 901 (it's a 20GB Linux model -- I may switch distro as I run Ubuntu/XP on my main rig). I'm curious about whether there's anything I should do/gather in preparation, while I wait for my black beauty to be delivered. Essentially, it will put my waiting-for-a-new-toy-anxiety on hold, and I'll be that little bit more organised when it actually gets here. I realise there are many Lifehacker posts that are Eee-centric already, however they're mostly for taking it apart or using it, once you have it. Any advice? Cheers, Paul C

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I don't kid myself that four days spent in Tokyo, staying in Western-oriented hotels and with someone around to translate most of the time, is going to lead to in-depth insight into Japanese culture and work approaches. Nonetheless, there were a few self-evident lessons about the future of technology. Click after the jump for some quick ideas to help you approach organising from a different angle. (Photograph of votive prayers at the Meiji Shrine, which might put your to-do list into perspective.)

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Rampant confusion over mobile phone plans and charges (and yes, we're still waiting for Vodafone to get back to us on its particularly bad case of iPhone plan perplexity) has apparently got so bad that the ACCC is getting involved. ACCC head Graeme Samuel has reminded consumers to be especially careful with excess data fees:

"The ACCC is particularly concerned that consumers may be misled if they are not made sufficiently aware that their data allocations can be exceeded - at significant cost. In the case of smartphones, consumers can download greater amounts of information from the internet than ever before. With this, comes the potential for them to exceed their phone plan value and incur considerable additional charges."

This is sound advice, which we'd almost deem obvious if so many people hadn't signed up sight unseen for iPhone deals. The ACCC is asking phone companies to supply evidence of their consumer education programs in this area; given the speed with which many responses are handled in telcos, we'd suggest self-education is still the best option. Read that small print carefully!

Now that iGoogle has full-screen Gmail, weather, and other gadgets, you may start accessing more of your Google services from inside iGoogle. The iGoogle Header Remover Greasemonkey user script toggles the visibility of the iGoogle logo and search box to optimise your screen real estate so you can focus more on the new and improved full-screen interface. If you need to bring back the header for any reason—for example, to do a quick Google search, just click the Toggle header link. With the header collapsed, running full Gmail in iGoogle feels that much more like the default Gmail interface and you're not wasting all those pixels. iGoogle Header Remover is free, requires Firefox with Greasemonkey.

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Technology is turning us all into a bunch of time-wasters according to The Observer, which reports that the beep of an email alert alone is costing the US economy $70 billion per year. Wonder what our Twitter habits are adding up to. [via]

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The TorrentFreak weblog wants to speed up your BitTorrent downloads with practical advice for getting around your firewall and managing your upload speed. They're mostly beginner tips, so you may also want to try more advanced techniques as well.

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As any photography hobbyist knows, shelling out for expensive gear can put a hurt on your pocketbook. We've covered how to create a cheap DIY softbox here before, but if you're looking for something more durable than a cardboard box check out the Instructables tutorial by user sdhigbee on how to turn a $23 outlay into a reasonable clone of a $140 umbrella softbox. If you need to photograph small objects, check out another previous tip on how to make your own homemade light tent.

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Windows only: Free application DVD Catalyst Free rips videos from DVDs to device-friendly formats for your iPod, iPhone, PSP, PS3, Xbox, smartphone, and more in one simple click. Normally we prefer previously mentioned HandBrake for this job, but DVD Catalyst Free is much friendlier if a quick and simple rip is all you're looking for. Either way, DVD Catalyst Free is worth a download. If it's not quite what you're looking for, check out our five best DVD ripping tools for more great ripping tools. DVD Catalyst Free is freeware, Windows only. A shareware version of DVD Catalyst is available if you need an expanded feature set, but the free version should be plenty for most.

When you don't want to depend solely on the official App Store to get your iPhone 2.0 applications, you want to jailbreak your iPhone or iPod touch—and less than two weeks after the iPhone 2.0 launch, it's easier than ever to do with your new device. The hard-working iPhone Dev Team released the jailbreak utility PwnageTool version 2.0.1 this weekend, and while it's not as one-step as ZiPhone, it still offers an easy GUI interface for the job. Let's take a look at the step by step for jailbreaking your iPhone 2.0 device with PwnageTool.

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Windows only: Our favourite iPod video conversion software maker Videora now offers an iPhone 3G version. Convert all types of video files like AVI, DivX, XVID, FLV, X264, VOB, MPEG, and DVDs into a format that your iPhone 3G can play (that is, MPEG-4, H.264). Videora iPhone 3G Converter is a free download for Windows, and requires the .NET framework to run. For more on video conversion, check out our top 10 free video rippers, encoders, and converters.

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Windows only: Free utility Windows Updates Downloader is a seriously convenient tool for anyone starting over with a fresh Windows re-installation (such as a slipstreamed XP installation with SP3 pre-loaded), or anyone who wants to make their updates portable for later installation. Once installed, you have to point the app at an "Update List" for Windows XP or Vista (or Office 2003, if that's installed). Hitting "+" doesn't seem to point to the right page, which is here. Once the list is loaded, you can grab any of Microsoft's current updates as executable packages, easily plugged into a slipstreaming tool or run by themselves on a system that needs it. Perfect for managing big updates on multiple systems, and saving wait-and-download time on a re-installation. Windows Updates Downloader is a free download for Windows systems only.