This week, we confessed our favourite freaky food concoctions — think Doritos peanut butter sandwiches and buttered ramen — secured our online accounts by revoking access from shady apps, and more. Here's a look back at some of last week's most popular posts.
Mac: You can access your Kindle highlights from your Kindle itself, the apps or the web app, but none of those are particularly handy, especially if you use your Kindle for research. Knotes makes it easier to access those notes right from your Mac.
If you were too busy being productive instead of reading Lifehacker this month, have a quick rundown of March's most popular posts:
Top 10 Software Easter Eggs"Sure we like our chocolate bunny ears, but around these parts the best easter eggs aren't painted pink and stuffed with jelly beans—they're the undocumented and unexpected fun features hidden deep inside various software apps."What, you didn't spend every day of this month refreshing Lifehacker every hour? We forgive you. Here, have a recap of January's most popular posts.
So many Lifehacker posts, so little time. This week's best posts include:
Ensure a Fast Internet Connection When You Need It "Your internet connection is an indispensable part of your life, but between BitTorrent, Xbox Live, web browsing, and VoIP, sometimes there's not enough bandwidth to go around." Hot Image Your PC's Hard Drive with DriveImage XML "You don't need a complicated boot CD or expensive software to create a restorable system disk image for your PC: free utility DriveImage XML can save a full, working snapshot of your Windows hard drive while you work on it." Top 10 Food and Drink Hacks "You may not be able to power an iPod with an onion, but there are plenty of neat tricks and techniques that actually do work with everyday foods." Use Your iPhone's Internet Connection On Your Laptop "It's great that your iPhone has a data plan and a killer mobile browser, but when you're sitting at the airport waiting to catch a plane with your laptop right next to you, wouldn't it be nice to use your full-on desktop browser?" Get to Sleep Faster by Tensing Up and Repeating "The" "It's not news that many of us aren't getting enough sleep, but BBC News offers several tips from a director of Clinical Sleep Research for getting to sleep when your head hits the pillow that you may not have heard before." Start Meaningful Conversations "Learning how to initiate that first conversation can be tough, but it doesn't have to be." Find Critically-Acclaimed Torrents at PickyPirate "BitTorrent search sites like The Pirate Bay can help you find recently-released tunes, flicks and video games, but deciding which are worth the hefty downloads usually involves digging in more mainstream channels."
This week's best posts include:
10 tips for finding rental accommodation easily Even in a competitive rental market you can make househunting a lot easier for yourself by following a few simple steps. I just rented a lovely house in a popular inner city suburb of Sydney for less than I expected to pay - and it only took me two days of looking at houses. Here's how I did it. Make the Most of Your Dual Monitors "Now that you've added another monitor to your computer setup, you've got double the screen real estate to get things done—but are you putting all that space to good use?" Turn Your Old PC into a Webapp Monster with gOS "As more and more full-featured web applications look to replace traditional desktop apps, the concept of a web-based operating system has gained a lot of momentum." Stream Digital Music to Your Stereo with Squeezebox "If you've got gigabytes of music you want to play from a central server in your living room—without keeping a big ugly PC there—the Squeezebox network music player's for you." Better YouTube Firefox Extension "Watch YouTube videos more efficiently with Better YouTube, a brand new Firefox extension that compiles our favourite YouTube Greasemonkey scripts into a single convenient package." First Look at Firefox 3.0 "With the release of the much anticipated Firefox 3 looming just around the corner, we got our hands on the latest beta build of your favourite browser to get a closer look." Find Full Episodes Online with Find Internet TV "Search for and find episodes of your favourite missed television shows or web-based video content with web site Find Internet TV. In essence, the site is a search portal that knows where to look for current shows and can quickly tell you where to find what you're looking for." Where to Search for Low Airfares Online "If you haven't booked your ticket home for the holidays yet, the Productivity Portfolio weblog test-drove some top travel search engines you may want to hit up." Ten Ways to Defeat Brain Drain "Those of us who are busy all the time can experience burnout, exhaustion, and fatigue from spending long periods of time in focused concentration. I call this syndrome 'Brain Drain.'"
The newspapers are all atwitter about how competitive the rental property market is at the moment - particularly in Sydney. But even in a competitive market you can make househunting a lot easier for yourself by following a few simple steps. I just rented a lovely house in a popular inner city suburb of Sydney for less than I expected to pay - and it only took me two days of looking at houses. Here's how I did it.
This week's best posts include:
Rebuild Your Mac with 20 Useful Downloads "You erased your hard drive to install Leopard, and now you've got to load your Mac up with all your essential software..." Top 10 Free Video Rippers, Encoders, and Converters "To have your favourite clips how you want them—whether that's on your DVR, iPod, PSP or desktop—you need the right utility to convert 'em into the format that works for you." Homemade Halloween Costume Photo Gallery "Last week we put out a call for the best do-it-yourself Halloween costumes lifehackers could come up with, complete with instructions and images. As usual, you did not disappoint." Turn Thunderbird into the Ultimate Gmail IMAP Client "If IMAP's got you curious but you're not sure what desktop application to use with Gmail, consider the extensible, fast, cross-platform and free Mozilla Thunderbird, our beloved Firefox's little sibling." Gmail Speeds Up, Improves Contacts "First IMAP support, and now a new version's rolling out which includes message pre-fetching for speedier performance, a new contacts manager, and more keyboard shortcuts." Get A First Class Ticket For Coach Class Prices "First class airplane tickets might be less expensive than you think." Auto-Hide Your Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar "Love the bookmarks toolbar but only want it there when you need it? Reader Andy writes in with a tweak that makes the toolbar hide automatically, unless you mouse over it (like auto-hiding your Windows taskbar or Mac Dock.)" The Simplicity of Time Machine Compels You "If you're running Leopard and you've got an external hard drive, you WILL back up your data, even if that wasn't your intention when you bought the drive or plugged it into your Mac." Turn Any Action into a Keyboard Shortcut "The free, open source scripting language AutoHotkey may not be one of the most powerful or popular programming languages on the planet, but that's okay—it's not just made for programmers."
Happy Halloween! Lest you missed any good Lifehacker this month, here's a quick list of October's most popular posts:
Top 10 Wi-Fi Boosts, Tweaks and Apps "No doubt you've got a home wireless network or you've connected to hotspots at the local coffee shop or airport—but are you getting the most out of your Wi-Fi?" Top 10 Ways to Sleep Smarter and Better "Studies show that sleep deprivation costs Americans significant work productivity; yawning employees can't stay alert, make good decisions, focus on tasks or even manage a friendly mood at the office." Top 10 Google Products You Forgot All About "Living in the shadow of Gmail, Reader and Calendar's got to be tough, but that's what a slew of useful Google products do every day." Discover the .EDU Underground "Little appreciated outside the world of academia, there are literally thousands of .edu sites bursting with incredibly useful and interesting information and resources." Six Ways to Catch Your Favorite TV Shows "With the fall television schedule in full swing, many of us are back in the habit of plopping down in front of the tube at night to catch the latest installment of our favourite show when it's scheduled to air." Rebuild Your Mac with 20 Useful Downloads "You erased your hard drive to install Leopard, and now you've got to load your Mac up with all your essential software." A Look at Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" RC1 "Experienced Ubuntu users know what to expect from this Thursday's release of Gutsy Gibbon, the love-it-or-hate-it code name for version 7.10 of the popular Linux distribution." MacBook Pro 1GB, 2GB, and 3GB Memory Speed Tests "You already know you can upgrade your Mac's RAM yourself and save big money, but how much extra memory do you want?"
This week's best posts include:
The Complete Guide to Mac/Windows Interoperability "Today Mac OS and Windows can work together in harmony on the same home network, sharing files and printers, mounting one another's drives and using the same equipment, like wireless routers and USB drives." Get Lost in Translation Sites "There are plenty of online translation services that can give you anything from just a good idea to a complete translation of what you're looking at." The Power-Traveler's Checklist, Part Two: Travel Day "Here's our suggested rundown of to-dos to make sure your travel day goes smoothly, you catch your flight on time and you get there in comfort and style." Top 10 Google Products You Forgot All About "Living in the shadow of Gmail, Reader and Calendar's got to be tough, but that's what a slew of useful Google products do every day." Media Player Show and Tell "Rather than living life in the vanilla world of iTunes and Windows Media Player, these music lovers prefer media players they can tweak, customize, and personalize to their heart's content." What Gmail IMAP Means for You (and Your iPhone) "As reported late last night, some Gmail users are seeing IMAP support appear in the settings area of their account. This morning Google confirmed: IMAP just launched." A Better Way to Set Up Gmail IMAP "If you've set up Gmail IMAP using Google's instructions, you may have noticed a couple of snags—namely that your Sent Mail, Drafts, and Deleted Mail aren't necessarily matching up as you'd expect between your email client and Gmail." Instantbird 0.1 is Like Firefox for Chat "There are tons of great instant messaging applications available, but one nagging problem in the IM world is that there's no great, fully cross-platform chat app (unless you count Meebo)." Use colr.org to Plan a Color Scheme "Whether you're looking for some help designing the colour scheme of a web site, a blog, or a house, you can't do much better than colr.org, a site that loads random Flickr images and intuitively parses the colours out of the photos to give you the best combinations possible." Get airport Wi-Fi while you travel in Australia Airport lounges can be a source of unwanted downtime unless you can get online. Only a few Australian airports have free Wi-Fi, so we compiled a list of how you can get online in airports across Australia. Five Best Foods for Going Organic "Making the switch to organic can be difficult, especially when organic foods are often more costly than their non-organic counterparts."
The week's best posts include:
Rock Your Presentation with the Right Tools and Apps "At some point in your career as a student or professional, you're going to have to give a presentation—and when you do, you want to be prepared with the right content and applications." Cover Your Butt At Work with Thorough Notes "There's an easy way to protect yourself from accusations, blame and disrespect at the office: by keeping great notes." Save a Life With Your Computer "What if you could use your computer for more than writing up the latest TPS report or surfing the webernets for last night's Family Guy episodes?" A Seller's Guide to Craigslist "If you live in a city with a thriving Craigslist community, the free, popular online classified ads site is more than just a great place to find excellent deals in your community." Top 10 Wi-Fi Boosts, Tweaks and Apps "No doubt you've got a home wireless network or you've connected to hotspots at the local coffee shop or airport—but are you getting the most out of your Wi-Fi? " Menu Bar Show and Tell "The Mac Menu Bar—the small strip of applications on the top right of your Mac—houses some of the coolest apps you can run on your system." MacBook Pro 1GB, 2GB, and 3GB Memory Speed Tests "You already know you can upgrade your Mac's RAM yourself and save big money, but how much extra memory do you want?" Reboot Your Brain with a Caffeine Nap "Didn't get enough sleep last night? Grab a quick midday nap just after a cup of coffee." Build a Wi-Fi Adapter for Your Xbox 360 On the Cheap "Got an Xbox 360 but don't want to weave 100 feet of Ethernet cable through your living room or drop $100 bucks for the official Xbox Wi-Fi adapter—and you've got a nasty DIY streak?" Do You Sign The Back Of Your Credit Cards? "One of the most common ways to guard yourself against credit card misuse is to sign the back of your card, so that merchants can check the signature on your card with that on your ID. Right?" Ask the Readers: Best Online To-do List Manager? " every week, there's a new web application that helps you keep your to-do list. But which ones are you using to, you know, actually do things?"
