If you're rocking a Windows Mobile Smartphone but have yet to set up your Gmail account with the device, the Hackszine weblog offers a simple step-by-step for setting up your Windows Mobile phone with Gmail. Keep in mind that your Gmail account can only be accessed through POP and not IMAP using this method, meaning that your read mail status won't be reflected in your Gmail account. If you really want tighter integration between Gmail and your smartphone, I'd suggest setting up a Java Virtual Machine on your Windows Mobile phone and then installing Gmail Mobile. Whichever method you choose, both should give you excellent on-the-go access to your Gmail account.
HOWTO - use Gmail with your Windows Mobile Smartphone

Can I set iCal to repeat to-dos at regular intervals?How can I deal with my company's new "no headphones" policy?What can I do to fix my router if someone else's Wi-Fi network is interfering with mine?How can I get into better shape when I'm starting from absolute zero fitness?Does anyone have suggestions for a killer ultraportable laptop?

Ever have to crop or resize a picture to fit it better on a web site but end up disappointed with the content you have to lose from the photo? Using a method called liquid rescaling, your pics can be rescaled while retaining almost all of the pertinent content, so you can get the best of both worlds—a smaller image that retains everything you want. If it still sounds a little unclear, check out the video to see this brilliant idea in action.

If you're a fan of the open source image editor GIMP, you can download and install the Liquid Rescale GIMP plug-in to get liquid rescaling results (after you install it by moving the downloaded files into your GIMP directory, you'll see the Liquid Rescale option under the Layer menu). If you don't feel like installing anything, you should try out the Rsizr webapp, which does the rescaling from the comfort of your browser. Both tools are a good deal slower than what you see in the very cool video above, and neither are implemented to the full extent of what you're seeing in the video, but the results are still promising.
Liquid Rescale GIMP pluginRsizr

If you've ever had to carry a long rope—perhaps for rappelling or mountain climbing—for a lengthy period of time, you might get sick of shifting the rope from one arm to the other. Instead, the "butterfly coil" method may prove useful. You'll end up with a rope backpack, which should be much more comfortable. Of course, if you already have a backpack, you may not find an immediate use for this trick, but the tip comes in handy during times when you can't carry around the extra gear.
Rope into Backpack

US-centric: If you want to block your cell phone number from showing up on other phones (for whatever reason), you can do it temporarily simply by dialing *67 before the number you're calling. According to tech how-to site How To Do Things, you won't have any way to tell this is working (it does), but if you want to reassure yourself just call another phone number that has caller ID to double-check that your number, indeed, is blocked.
AU - To block your number being call-ID'd in Australia, I believe you need to dial 1831 before the number.
How To Block Your Cell Phone Number

Computer thief unknowingly uploads Photo Booth images to Flickr thanks to the FlickrBooth plug-in. Looks like there's more than one way to turn your iSight into a security camera.

Getting Things Done author David Allen calls any kind of productivity trick or system "advanced common sense"—using the smart part of your brain to help out the dumb part in its most feeble moments. The Getting Things Done weblog lists some of its best "advanced common sense," like writing things down, ubiquitous capture and setting up to-do's in their right contexts. For me, hanging up the car keys on the keyrack is the advanced common sense that keeps my dumb future self from running around the house looking for them when it's time to go.

Newly-launched webapp Fuser fetches your email and social networking messages and displays them in a single place to simplify their management. Register at Fuser and then add your Facebook and/or MySpace login details, as well as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AIM or any POP3/IMAP email accounts and see all your messages in Fuser. Fuser isn't an email client or backup service, mind you—if you delete a message from your Gmail account it will not appear on Fuser. It's just a single place to see all your stuff.

If you've been following the evolution of the One Laptop Per Child campaign, you know that along with working to bring cheap computers to kids in developing countries, they've also developed an awesome rugged laptop with an indoor/outdoor screen, no moving breakable parts, which requires no external power source, and has mesh networking capabilities. Very cool.
Prototypes of the OLPC have been passed around at various geek conferences in Australia recently, but now they're opening up a limited "Give 1 Get 1" program so you can fund a laptop for a child in the developing world, and get one for yourself or your own child:

"Starting November 12, One Laptop Per Child will be offering a Give 1 Get 1 Program for a brief window of time. For $US399, you will be purchasing two XO laptops—one that will be sent to empower a child to learn in a developing nation, and one that will be sent to your child at home."

Sounds like an awesome way to do some good, and get your hands on an awesome piece of technology. I suspect I know what a few altruistic geeks will be finding under their Christmas tree this year.

US-centric: If your cell phone bill is giving you the flutters, then mobile enthusiast jkOnTheRun can (possibly) help you out with their list of employer and educational discounts.
Just find your carrier (links are all provided) and figure out if you are eligible. Because I'm self-employed, I don't qualify for diddly, but if you find out you scored some savings please share in the comments. How to score a discount on your monthly cellular bill

We've already seen your killer desktops, but now it's time to get a little more granular. It's time to look at your system tray. We want to see what must-have utilities you run day in and day out in that little strip of screen real estate on the end of your taskbar. Hit the jump for more details and the detailed submission guidelines.

Mac users: Browse a group of photos full-size quickly and easily with trusty Preview.app. Avoid the load of iPhoto and the tiny thumbnails of Finder: highlight all the photos you'd like to see (hold down the Shift or Control key as you click the files in Finder) and Cmd+click. From the context menu, choose Open With > Preview, and the images will open in a single Preview.app window simultaneously, with thumbnails in the drawer for quick navigation between them.
Quick Tip: Open Mutiple Files in Preview Simultaneously

Firefox only - thanks to Paul's comment on our post about how to open a set of bookmarks with one click, I've learned of a nifty (admittedly not new!) Firefox extension.

Paul says:

"If you prefer to have different sites open on different days of the week -
ie you've got your weekday faves and different weekend faves - download the
'Morning Coffee' extension. You can then save different sites for different
days (individual days, M-F only, weekend only, M, W, F only or the T-days
only) - what a choice!
Then you only have to click the cuppa icon in the toolbar and the day's
sites automatically open.

What could be easier?!"

You can download Morning Coffee 1.26 here. It works with Firefox: 2.0b1 – 2.0.0. Thanks for the tip, Paul!

Twitter users, now you can follow Lifehacker US the microbloggin' way. Get our top stories plus a sprinkling of meta-commentary on the more ambitious days in your favourite Twitter client. Thanks, Ahsan!

Last week we took a look at the Windows desktops of our readers, and now we're back for week two of our Desktop Show and Tell. Today's focus: Macs. There's no better way to learn than with a little show and tell from our peers, and we've got buckets of good looking, tweaked out Mac desktops for you to look at, so let's get to it.

Windows users: For the last few sites that only work in Internet Explorer instead of Firefox, you can set up permanent bookmarks within Firefox to automatically open sites in IE Tab.
For existing bookmarks, right click on bookmark, select 'Properties,' and add the string 'chrome://ietab/content/reloaded.html?url=' to the beginning of the URL in the location field. Voila, one click to IE for those annoying pages that still need it.If you're still using Firefox as a file manager, you'll be able to follow the same routine to create shortcuts to your various directories. Thanks, gmplague!

Just in time for the Twenty20 World Championship, the official Google blog has announced a new tool which simplifies the search for cricket results:

Just type in a Google search box and you'll see a brief score of all the current cricket matches. A single click will also give you access to a detailed cricket score card.

If you're a diehard India fan, then type to get results for Indian matches. Of course, feel free to replace India with the country of your choice for country-specific results.

Get your cricket scores here

The Rugby World Cup kicked off in France on the weekend, and The Australian has reported that Vodafone has launched its own mini-channel on its mobile phone and subscription TV networks, devoted to the series.

Vodafone kicks off rugby channel

Enough Wikipedia already? Here's 20 non-Wikipedia online references for researchers and scholars.

One of the best ways to discover new music online is with Last.fm, a music recommendation community. Last.fm serves you up new tunes based on a marriage of your unique preferences and the rest of the huge Last.fm community. Last.fm is a pretty simple way to listen to tunes, but there are a few quick and dirty ways you can oomph it up a little. Keep reading for fifteen ways to tweak your Last.fm listening experience.