If any of Lifehacker's best posts this week passed you by, catch up with a quick recap:

• ABC launches free iView online TV service
  "ABC iView has now been opened up to all Australian Internet users, offering access to a fair chunk of the national broadcaster's output on full-screen streaming video across six channels."


• WorldPurchases gives global access to US stores
  "
  It's a familiar problem: you spot an item you want in an online store, and then discover that it won't deliver to a non-US address or without a US credit card."


• Jailbreak iPhone 2.0 with PwnageTool
  "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 Best Tech Tools and Fitness Plans to Get in Shape
  "If there's one thing geeks and non-geeks alike all share, it's an aversion to exercise. No matter how much you'd like to slim your waistline and lose the belly, it's difficult to find a workout routine that not only works, but one that fits your needs and is easy to stick to."


• Top 10 Printable Paper Productivity Tools
  "There's a reason there's still so much paper around in this hyper-connected, everything-online age: the stuff is cheap, portable, compatible with all your applications, and everyone masters the interface by the time they're out of the first grade."


• Would a Prettier Linux Make You Switch?
  "Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth (who we interviewed last year) announced that he's out to make Linux a better-looking operating system than Mac OS X—within two years."


• DVD Catalyst Rips DVDs to Friendly Formats in One Click
  "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."


• Five Best Alternative File Managers
  "If you're any sort of power user, you've bumped up against the limitations of your operating system's default file manager on countless occasions."


• Outlook vs. Gmail—The Definitive Comparison
  "Gmail launched in 2004 and has matured each year, but Microsoft Outlook (with Exchange) is still the most popular tool for accessing email. Comparing the two side by side, is it time to jump ship from either platform?"

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Google is normally uber-secretive about the size of its search indexes, but the official Google blog did drop a fascinating hint this week: Google is now indexing more than one trillion unique URLs. Of course, that makes the core database the company stores even larger:

This graph of one trillion URLs is similar to a map made up of one trillion intersections. So multiple times every day, we do the computational equivalent of fully exploring every intersection of every road in the United States. Except it'd be a map about 50,000 times as big as the U.S., with 50,000 times as many roads and intersections.

All of which is good reason to be grateful that Google's doing it, so you don't have to. [The Official Google Blog]

The ABC's excellent iView service is clearly filling a need for Australians keen to access TV on their own schedule. In the first 24 hours following its launch, the service attracted 58,000 visitors, who downloaded 2.3 terabytes of content. Mind you, that amounts to just under 50MB each, which suggests that lots of people aren't doing much more than testing the service. But it's still a great start.

The Australian addiction to property investment is at least partly fuelled by the belief that while growth rates may vary, the value of a house will never go down. However, as economist Nigel Stapledon points out, while this may have been true since the mid-1960s, there have been points in history where the value of houses in Australia have declined, and current economic woes have seen property prices plummet overseas:

Of course that does not necessarily mean Australian house prices will fall now, but there is no law of nature that says they cannot fall.

None of that's an argument against owning (as opposed) to renting your own house, but it's something to bear in mind if you're thinking about a longer-term investment strategy.
Debunking housing myths [Herald Sun]

Samer from the FreewareGenius weblog steps away from reviewing software to take a look at how to create shortcuts on your USB drive. The problem: You can't create relative shortcuts in Windows, but since your USB drive letter can change each time you plug it in, shortcuts with full paths can break. Samer details how to use batch files to create shortcuts with relative paths, then goes a step further and converts the batch file to an EXE and gives it the same icon as the program it's launching. In his example, he's making a quick shortcut to Eject the USB drive using previously mentioned EjectUSB. If you're a real thumb drive junky, you can use batch files to quick-launch your USB workspace as soon as you plug in your thumb drive.

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Windows only: Free application ProcessQuickLink adds small icons to the left of every running process in the Windows Task Manager that—when clicked—tell you what that process does. The app looks up its information from ProcessLibrary.com, which provides a description of the process and recommendations for whether or not you should feel comfortable disabling it. When your computer seems slow and bogged down with running processes you can't make heads or tails of, ProcessQuickLink's seamless integration with Task Manager seems like the perfect way to hunt down and eliminate your unnecessary processes. For a full snapshot of all your running processes and their priorities, check out previously mentioned ProcessScanner. ProcessQuickLinks is freeware, Windows only.

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For those of you who prefer automating your computer maintenance on a schedule, the How-To Geek weblog explains how to automatically de-crapify your PC nightly. Setting it up takes little more than creating a scheduled task in the Windows Task Scheduler, but it's a great way to regularly clean out your PC with a set-it-and-forget-it routine. For more automated maintenance, check out how to set up a self-repairing hard drive.

Windows/Mac OS X only: Free screenshot and screencast sharing application Jing—which we first mentioned a year ago—turned one this week, and to celebrate they've significantly upgraded their free storage and transfer offerings. You now get up to 2GB of screenshot and screencast storage and 2GB of transfer per month on Screencast.com, which is 10 times the space and double the bandwidth. I'm a huge fan of Jing as the easiest cross-platform tool I've used to quickly share screenshots or screencasts (it's great for offering quick tech support). Anything you make with Jing can automatically be saved to Screencast.com, a local folder or network drive, an FTP server, or even Flickr (new since we first covered it) for quick sharing. Jing is freeware, Windows and Mac OS X only.

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Yesterday, I sent a quick email to let people know what time I was arriving on site. It was something simple like: "Brad will be there at 9:30AM. Thanks! EOM". Within seconds a reply came back "What does EOM mean?" In my smartypants way I responded: "End of message. Used it to save you the time of opening the message and having to reply, which by virtue of you replying has defeated its purpose. Now that I am replying to your reply, it's defeated doubly so." Ultimately, my response was even worse because they thought it was so funny, they forwarded it to half the office. But once your co-workers understand what EOM means, it can save you tons of time and unnecessary email back and forth.

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iPhone/iPod touch only: Free application Pageonce provides iPhone-friendly access to all of the information you have stored on previously mentioned web site Pageonce, an internet start page dedicated to aggregating your online accounts in one location. The app—like the Pageonce web interface—gives you an overview of everything from your Gmail and bank account to your cell phone usage and Netflix queue. Like the web site, the main concern here is trusting your sensitive logins to a third party. Even if you trust Pageonce with your logins, be sure to require a password every time you open the dedicated iPhone app so you're not screwed should you lose your phone. Pageonce is a free download from the iTunes App Store, works with your iPhone or iPod touch running 2.0 software.

Whether you're missing a crucial file at work or home, or you just need to tweak one little setting to get Mom's email working again, having remote control of another desktop can be seriously handy. But not everybody can walk the less-tech-inclined through installing a VNC server and opening up their router ports, or have the time to create their own SingleClick tech support tool (cool as it may be). Today, we're looking at the best solutions for getting into a computer remotely, whether you're helping out Uncle Bif, grabbing files from home, or controlling your media server from the lounger. Photo by miguelb.

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iTunes users who aren't heavy checkbox users, selecting songs by checking them off is an easy way to make playlists on the fly (by selecting "Match only checked items" in the Smart Playlist dialog). Macworld points out that you can check or uncheck a list of songs (from a search, or in a playlist, or in your entire library) by Cmd+clicking on any song checkbox in the collection (Ctrl+Click for Windows users). Are you an iTunes checkbox checker-offer? How do you put iTunes checkboxes to good use? Let us know in the comments. For more playlist fun, see our top 10 iTunes Smart Playlists.

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Our naughty brother site Fleshbot asks readers how they organise their, uh, adult-only media collection (NSFW) when it grows to over a few gigabytes. (NSFW=Don't click on that link at the office. Really!)

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Macworld points out a handy Firefox tabbing keyboard shortcut: Hit Alt+Enter (Opt+Enter for Mac users) to open a URL you've typed into the address bar in a new tab. This way, instead of hitting Ctrl+T to open a new tab, then the address, then Enter, you can skip one step. For more useful Firefox keyboard shortcuts, see our mouse-less Firefox feature.

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Career columnist Marci Alboher offers up advice on how to perform a controlled slide out of a lay-off situation and into your next job ASAP, using nothing more complicated than email (or a pen and paper, if you're all about sincerity). While most workers start cutting their ties to the shop that did them wrong, Alboher says focusing on the positives of your employment, while also working your farthest-out contacts, can net results:

While it may feel like an odd time for gratitude, you may make some good impressions by composing a few handwritten thank you notes to those who have helped you in your career. Similarly, if you can craft a graceful departure e-mail thanking colleagues for their support, providing your personal contact information and saying you are open to any leads or introductions, again you may be pleased with the results.

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