Mysticgeek, a blogger over at The How-To Geek's realm, posts a step-by-step tutorial to creating flow charts with presentation-worthy looks in Microsoft Word 2007. If you've got an eye for design, you can add shadows, 3-D effects, and subtle colour shading to your boxes and lines, but if you're just looking for basic flow chart functionality, you'll only need to make it halfway down the post. Lacking a copy of Office 2007? Check out a free online tool like Project // DRAW, or do it on paper with a five-minute flowchart template from blogger John Richardson.

Google's addition of Suggest auto-complete suggestions to its main search box isn't going to be universally popular; one Lifehacker reader commented speedily that it was potentially a major nuisance. If you don't want suggestions for what you're looking for -- perhaps because you prefer accessing your own query history -- relief is at hand. As the Google Operating System reveals, going to Google's Preferences pane, and selecting 'Do not provide query suggestions in the search box' will switch off Suggest. (The option won't appear if Suggest hasn't been enabled when you access it.)

Internode today launched its Naked Extreme broadband plans, which potentially overcome one of the biggest problems with ADSL: the distance limit from exchanges, which for conventional services is just above 4 kilometres (and that's in cable length, not as the crow flies). In exchanges where it has installed its own equipment, Internode now claims it can extend ADSL services as far as 7.5 kilometres, offering a potentially much larger coverage area. If you're suffering in a broadband blackspot, this would be worth checking out to see if your region is covered. The company also enjoys a solid reputation for customer service, though I would be lying if I said my own recent switch to Internode was trouble-free.

No, I wasn't aware that it was Privacy Awareness Week until this morning either, but this global initiative does seem like a good opportunity to make sure that you're striking the right balance when it comes to your online (and offline) privacy. The Privacy Commissioner has long offered a handy 10-step guide to protecting your personal information. If your business has accidentally leaked other people's information the newly-released Guide to Handling Personal Information Security Breaches might be a godsend. Here at Lifehacker, we've covered dozens of privacy protection tools and techniques, from keeping files on your own PC private to what to do when using public computers. (If you're after some freebies, my current local library is giving away Privacy Awareness Week bookmarks which I'm guessing will also be on offer in other libraries and community centres.)

Word processors might check your spelling and point out obvious grammar problems, but they can't do much about ambiguity, inappropriate tone or incorrect vocabulary. If you want a real live human to fix up the awkward prose in that assignment or work report, Edit My Text, which offers a pay-as-you-go editing service based in Australia, might fit the bill. Pricing starts at $5.95 to edit 250 words through to $49.95 for a 3000-word piece, with a promised turnaround of 24 hours during the week. We haven't tested it out ourselves, but Lifehacker reader Sasha says it delivers on what it promises: "Heaps of people who don't write well would find this a God-send!"

You might have already encountered Google Suggest, which offers suggestions for what you might be looking for as you type it, on Google Maps or YouTube. (This isn't the "did you mean" suggestion after the search has performed, but live options in your search dialog). Google has now begun rolling out Google Suggest on its main search page, and promises that it will become more visible to site users over the next week. (No sign of it when I checked on both Google Oz and Google US for me so far, but it's early days.)

A recent survey by airfarewatchdog found that 85% of people would like to see a separate section on planes for people travelling with their kids. While that's both unrealistic and a little selfish, screaming young 'uns can add to what's already a stressful experience for many people. Here's some suggestions for how to survive the experience, drawing on some ideas from airfarewatchdog.

Read More »

Personal finance weblog The Simple Dollar explains how to cook a whole chicken and use every last bit of it for a frugal alternative to buying more expensive chicken breasts.

From [$11.50], you can produce a meal of chicken and vegetables to feed a family of four, a meal worth of leftovers, a bag full of chicken pieces in the freezer for a future meal for a family of four, and a bag of chicken stock for another meal or two. That's five complete meals and the key ingredients for eight more meals.

Read More »

Need a quick translation of a word into English? Type 'translate' followed by the word into Google's search box and it will now look the English translation for you straight away. While this doesn't offer the range of language pairs found in Google Translate, it's a quick fix for getting a translation from commonly encountered languages into English (currently, it covers French, Spanish, German, Russian, Chinses, Hindi, Italian, Korean and Portugese, though only into English from those languages).

Windows/Mac/Linux: Firefox extension and Internet Explorer add-on LastPass is a secure password manager for all your web passwords. Like other web-focused password managers, LastPass puts all of your individual passwords behind one master password. When you type in that master password, LastPass can then automatically log you in to any web site you visit with saved login credentials. Even better, LastPass syncs passwords over the internet, so all your saved passwords on your work computer, for example, will always be synced up on your home computer. I haven't been using it for long, but so far LastPass works seamlessly with Firefox and exactly as expected.

Read More »

Windows and Linux only: Amarok 2, the next version of the free, open-source media player, has just rolled out an official beta release, Nerrivik. The beta of the media manager we previewed back in June, improves memory management, overhauls the add-on scripting and metadata tracking, adds gapless playback, and streamlines the interface. Center-rail widgets still seem a little rough, but it's a usable preview of what's to come. Amarok 2 is a free download; Windows users can install it through the KDE on Windows Project, while Linux users can download the source or add the nightly build repository listed in our screenshot tour.

Windows only: Free Windows utility Folder Guide adds user-defined folders to your right-click menu for quick, easy access to any number of favourite folders. Once you add a folder, Folder Guide makes it a very simple affair to navigate to that commonly used folder in just two clicks. Explorer's Favourites menu already uses the same basic concept, but it's not as readily available as the right-click menu and it also integrates with Internet Explorer, which means any of those bookmarks clutter your folder shortcuts. If you like the quick access idea behind Folder Guide but don't like the execution, check out previously mentioned Direct Folders or previously mentioned Finder Style to put your favourites in the sidebar.

Despite the flurry of attention surrounding the iPhone and other new mobile phone platforms, Windows Mobile still has a widespread distribution and capacity for customisation. Approaching its ninth birthday, Windows Mobile has a large selection of old and new software that helps enhance the user experience and make getting things done (and sometimes goofing off) all the easier. If you're rockin' a Windows Mobile handheld, check out our favourite programs, add-ons, and tweaks for getting the most out of your Windows Mobile device.

Read More »

Firefox 3 comes with several preferences baked into its options dialogs, but there are still a few you can only access by rolling up your sleeves and digging into its configuration manually. Power users have been diving under Firefox's hood to get their browser to behave just how they like since version 0.9, but Firefox 3 offers some new settings that customise its new features. Let's take a look at our favourite Firefox 3 about:config tweaks for customising your browser.

Read More »

Today and through the rest of this week, we'll be taking a look at tips for finding, interviewing for, negotiating over, and succeeding in a new gig. First off is making inconvenient, low-tech job listing sites—the kind without RSS feeds, email alerts, or any other technologies beyond 2001—much more manageable through a combination of a "page scraper," or RSS generator, and automatic RSS-to-email services to make sure you're never near the bottom of the resume stack. Photo by shadytrees.

Read More »