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According to a survey conducted by market research company Forrester, 80 percent of U.S. consumers won't pony up if the web sites they currently read for free decided to go behind a pay wall. Would...
You won't find a law that says a workspace has to be in a gray fabric-covered box or a white-walled room. Today's workspace proves that with the beautiful, airy openness of a childhood tree house. ...
Windows Vista/Windows 7: If you're running multiple operating systems—and if you weren't before the release of Windows 7 you most likely are now—EasyBCD is a simple application for tweaking your bo...
Readers offer their best tips for making coffee-house milk foam at home, searching your history from Chrome's address bar, and easily wiping deodorant streaks off clothing. Don't like the gallery l...
It's not a great place to find yourself, but if you ever lose or forget your password for OS X, you're not out of luck. Weblog AppleDoes details how to quickly and easily reset your password. All y...
Nothing puts a damper on your work life like a bad boss, but at times—particularly in a down economy—simply finding a new job isn't an option. Photo by stuartpilbrow. Career blogger Marci Alboher i...
Whatever your motivation for wanting to have a dash-cam, this simple hack will help you capture your road travels with a car-mounted camera. Tim Cox wanted to turn his iPhone into a Cops-style dash...
Android: Ustream brings its streaming video service to the Android platform with a new app, allowing shooters to stream feeds instantly over 3G or Wi-Fi, save them for later web sharing, and even c...
What do you do if you want some extra privacy in your office but you're not at liberty to go around tearing walls down and remodeling to fit your needs? Don your DIY hat and set to work. Lifehacker...
Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Firefox extension JavaScript Options gives you finer-tuned controls on what web site scripts are allowed to do to your browser. Once you've installed the extension...
The popular web site uptime-monitoring service Pingdom is now offering free accounts. The free account provides monitoring for a single web site, 20 SMS alerts—you can purchase more if you need the...
Whether you're moving, short on cash, or running out of storage space, you've got plenty of reasons to ditch your physical media. Hard drives are cheap; here are our recommended methods of saving, ...
If you looked at the Magnetic Light Mine and thought, "Mate that thing with a Gorillapod and then we'll talk" well you're in luck. Joby, the company behind the Gorillapod has released a flashlight ...
We sort our dishes more quickly, try out a new word to save time, and get a great example of how not to organize our cables. Don't like the gallery layout? Click here to view everything on one page...
You've got plans to explore the great outdoors but no insect repellent? No problem. Just use leftovers from last night's party and this eco-friendly mix that's as customizable as the cocktails you ...
New ideas and ways of thinking—or people who think differently than you do, for that matter—aren't always easy to embrace. Instead of sticking with your knee-jerk reactions, better understand your ...
Staring at a blank sheet of paper won't do much to ward off your writer's block. Next time you're lacking for inspiration, try experimenting with clusters to get the creative juices flowing again. ...
When we showed you how to banish stains with homemade stain removers, many of you begged for methods to rid yourself of those unsightly, yellow, I-don't-know-how-this-happened-I-swear-I-used-antipe...
We've taught you to blow gigantic bubbles and to make invisible ink. Combine the two, and you can have colorful soap bubbles that disappear without leaving a stain and keep the kids amazed. Photo b...
If you're a fan of sketching out your ideas on white boards, you'll find more than adequate space to do so in this home office. Need a break from all the work? You can step next door to the gaming ...
Windows only: Free application uSbuntu Live Creator installs a Live CD from an ISO image onto your USB flash drive—much more useful, portable, and easy to deal with than carrying around a CD. Once ...
Don't let the height of your favorite fruit tree stand between you and a fresh apple, orange, or other delicious treat. Bring the lofty prize right down to your hand with a DIY fruit picker. It isn...
We deal with fruit flies, adjust our keyboards, and walk down the aisle with some money saving tips for weddings. Catch (And Kill) More Fruit Flies With Vinegar When we showed you how to repel fli...
As wireless users know all too well, not all 3G networks are created equal. PC World recently put Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T to a multi-city test to determine which best delivers speed and reliabili...
Many of us wouldn't mind shedding a few excess pounds, which is why the health industry makes a killing selling diets, exercise gear, and weight-loss plans. But a new study finds that being overwei...
Not one to be outdone by Microsoft's Bing travel site or the myriad other net travel guides, Google today rolls out City Tours for planning and navigating itineraries. Currently a Google Labs proje...
Windows/Mac/Linux: The early adopters at weblog gHacks note that Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate 2 has already been distributed to Mozilla's mirror servers and is available for download from third-pa...
Windows only: Have you ever told a little white lie about when you started working on a project, hoping nobody would notice that the file timestamps disagree? SKTimeStamp helps you lie more effecti...
Snooth is a search engine and social network for wine lovers covering everything from wine reviews and rankings to vineyard and varietal information. If you're at all interested in wine, beyond jus...
Mac OS X only: Free application PicoPlay is a barebones music player for OS X that plugs into your iTunes library and playlists for quick access to your tunes with low resource requirements. That's...
Certain foods just go together, like red meats and rosemary, garlic and fish, and oatmeal and orange juice. Men's Health suggests those pairings and others exist for a reason—your body wants more o...
Want to load up to 100MB of video, audio, or pictures into a Boxee media center without any file copying or configuration? DropBoxee, a new Boxee app, grabs and plays just about any media from a dr...
We're big fans of recycling things into new and better things here at Lifehacker. Today's featured workspace aptly turns a bunch of wine cases into a sturdy and storage-friendly desk. Lifehacker re...
Windows only: The latest update for Growl for Windows adds a slew of new features—including support for Thunderbird, Snarl, system monitoring, and even a Gmail notifier. Once you install Growl for ...
Despite its difficulties playing nice, Hulu remains among the more popular TV streaming services. Today, the company introduced their own desktop application that enables remote-controlled viewing ...
Monitors, external hard drives, buy one get one free webcams, and a free ice cream bar or two, it's that deal of the day time again. Geek Gear! Buy the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 Get the QuickCam...
Josh Straub obviously loves Guitar Hero, but isn't so fond of how the plastic play-action instruments included with them perform, or break from non-intensive use. So he took the time, and pictures,...
If you were intrigued by our previous coverage of kite photography, but put off by the expense and knowledge of electronics required, this tutorial will get you started cheaply and without solder. ...
DVRs have revolutionized the way people watch TV, but if you've always wished your DVR were a little better at skipping commercials, this classic 30-second skip hack is a must. For what it's worth,...
It's easy to guess what went wrong with a work project after it goes South. Web Worker Daily wants you to get a little foresight, though, and know what to fix, or when to bail. Georgina Laidlaw spe...
Screen capture applications are handy tools to have around. Sure a simple Print Screen and paste into Paint might suffice if you're a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of screenshot-taker, but if you're a p...
Mac OS X only: Free, open-source media center Plex pushed out an update boasting a truckload of feature updates, bug fixes, and perhaps most exciting, beautiful integration with Netflix through a n...
World percussionist David Kuckhermann has fought problems with tendinitis and carpal tunnel syndrome in his career. He demonstrates a few hand and wrist stretches and motions that helped him ward o...
By all security analysts' measure, the Conficker worm was set to release whatever vengeance it could on the world today. Luckily, according to most reports, Conficker appears not to have had much o...
The folks at Mozilla are pushing out a quick release of Firefox 3.0.8 next week to address a zero-day exploit found in the latest version, according to weblog gHacks. The fix is already on Mozilla'...
Until recently, Sara Rimer had the kind of home office where a filing cabinet ended up as just another surface for clutter piles. Then she called some home office designers, reconfigured everything...
For some most of us, making "small talk" while in an elevator, waiting in line, or made to "network" isn't fun, or easy. Thomas Farley, editor of Modern Manners, offers a few tips on getting by. Ph...
The beans and blends you pick for your morning cup of Joe determines how much caffeine you'll drink down. A veteran coffee snob breaks down which "varietals" you want for morning energy—or a more s...
Read everything else but still didn't get your fill of Lifehacker today? Enjoy yourself some leftovers: the trials and tribulations of innovation Boxee giveth, Hulu taketh away. [boxee blog]Firefox...
Web application FrameFinder lets you try size up frames online so you can find just the right glasses for your face without dealing with the pushy LensCrafters folk. Just upload a pic, step through...
Most work spaces you'll see us feature here are home and commercial offices, but on occasion we find a good reason to break the pattern—like this garage turned into a gorgeous craft room. How did s...
Reader Chaebi69's desktop blends the popular Enigma desktop with a beautifully artistic wallpaper to create an absolutely stunning overall theme. Chaebi69's previously featured Heavenly Desktop was...
Two previously mentioned favorites Shoeboxed and Evernote have teamed up to make searching and organizing your receipts a breeze. As you may remember, Shoeboxed is a service that automatically scan...
Next time you're drafting office memos or customizing your desktop, keep this in mind: Researchers have found that instructions written in plain, straight-forward fonts are more likely to be comple...
A well placed fan can save serious cash on both heating and cooling costs, and this clever room-to-room corner fan moves air and stays out of the way. There's not much to explain beyond what you se...
The National Association of Home Builders has released their Housing Opportunity Index covering the most and least affordable cities in the country. Here's a quick rundown of the top 10 metropolita...
Exclusive Lifehacker download for Windows only: Kill Tools terminates running processes from the keyboard with a set of hotkey-triggered kill functions that can kill windows by name, title, or more...
For those Google Chrome users who need access to one or two Silverlight sites, a Microsoft developer offers a file-tweaking work-around to get access to certain sites. The Chrome/Silverlight hack r...
Tax season is quickly approaching, and we want to hear your smartest tax tips and advice. We could just beg for your tips, but as a little icing, we're offering a Fellowes Shredder for one lucky re...
Thanks to this week's sponsors: Allstate, ESET, Fellowes, Honda, ING Direct, HP Mediasmart Server, Mophie, Namco, New Egg, Sharp, T-Mobile, Toshiba, Virgin Atlantic, Vonage. Click here to advertis...
When you enable Offline Gmail, the new service doesn't actually download all your messages—just about 10,000 of them. And Gmail has its own method of determining which messages it stores for seriou...
iConvert is a web-based application for converting icons from the format of one operating system into another and from image files into new icons. The iConvert interface is straight forward, select...
Windows only: If you're looking to securely store files on your flash drive and unlock them without any installed software, WinPT is like a TrueCrypt you can take anywhere. TrueCrypt, one of our fa...
Life in a snowy winter climate without a garage includes a yearly sentence of months wielding an ice scraper to clean off your car. Make winter less arduous with these handy DIY de-icer recipes. S...
Create archives with significant names automatically by selecting the most important file in the group before creating your new archive. When using the built in ZIP-file creator in Windows XP—acce...
Popular Firefox extension Ubiquity—which adds a natural language command line to Firefox—sees a significant update today. The extension, developed by the folks at Mozilla, now boasts a killer new ...
Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Firefox extension TabCloser adds a tab context menu item that quickly closes all tabs from web sites with the same domain name. Once installed, simply right-click ...
If you're dying to try out Windows 7 but aren't ready to give up your installation of XP or Vista, let's take a look at how to dual boot Windows 7 with XP or Vista. Step 0: Download the Windows 7 B...
If you're a fan of Make magazine and their DIY-ethos, you won't want to miss the premiere of Make Television. Available both online in HD and on a large number of public stations across America. C...
Buried in the fine print of many cellphone contracts is a bit about how you can transfer your plan to someone else—and you can find that someone online. The NY Times reports on Celltradeusa.com an...
Are you decent with a bulleted list in PowerPoint 2007, but need to get a bit more creative? You can learn how to pull off a few useful effects right inside the program. Microsoft's Office Online t...
Apple releases a slew of firmware updates for MacBooks and MacBook Pro notebooks purchased after the October '08 launch, which include fixes and stability improvements. You can get 'em through Sof...
URL-shortening service Bit.ly now offers a Gmail gadget that helps you make sure the long web site addresses you send out via email don't get wrapped and become unclickable. To install the Bit.ly ...
Free CD and DVD burner ImgBurn emerged victorious in this weekend's Hive Five Best CD and DVD Burning Tools, followed closely in tow by commercial burner Nero 9. Freeware app CDBurnerXP rounded cam...
Dear free software developers: Before we American nerds sit down to our turkey and mashed potatoes today, know that your creations are at the top of the list of things we're most thankful for. Wh...
Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Experimental Firefox extension TooManyTabs organizes extra browser tabs in Firefox, allowing you to store over 50 extra tabs in a special row for quick access at a...
Windows only: Free application Process Manager adds an entry to your right-click context menu that adjusts an application's priority or kills the app. Once Process Manager is running, the kill and ...
Windows tip: Whether you use them or not, many applications install superfluous entries to your Windows right-click context menu resulting in a cluttered mess. The How-To Geek weblog details how to...
Windows only: Hot Corners, a free utility for Windows desktops, adds the "hot corners" abilities of OS X's Expose system to any Windows desktop. The system tray utility can assign actions like mini...
Spice up your videos, games, applications or just make system alerts a little more hilarious by downloading sound effects from Soundsnap. Whether you're an electronic musician using Ableton Live or...
Sate your afternoon sugar cravings with a dead-easy chocolate cake recipe that only requires hot chocolate mix, flour, an egg, cooking spray, and oil (all stuff you've got in your pantry anyway). ...
Windows Vista only: We took a liking last week to the Windows 7 calculator and its many uses for serious mathletes, as well its templates for calculating mortgages, salaries, and other real-world n...
Social bookmarking web site Delicious turned five yesterday, and in that time the site has signed up 5.3 million users, bookmarked over 180 million URLs, and helped bring social bookmarking to the ...
The Wise Bread blog has an inspiring list of for anyone who ended up with more candy than their waistline really needs around the house. Some involve re-rolling the sweets into baked goods, but oth...
Schedule and keep track of a project over time with a Gantt chart from a spreadsheet created in Google Docs thanks to a gadget from Viewpath. You just need to enter task start and end dates, perce...
With a focus on culinary arts, instructional video site How2Heroes has a fantastic library of video howtos on everything from a guide to eating lobster by a marine bioligist to this great primer on...
Windows only: For typography junkies with large font collections, Cfont Pro will help you manage your addiction. With support for all the major font file types, including Postscript and TrueType, ...
Mac OS X only: Free application iBackup is an advanced backup utility featuring support for everything from run-of-the-mill files to application preferences. That means backing up important files o...
Anyone have a good open-source alternative to Quicken?I'm looking to buy a smartphone and wondering: Is the iPhone my best option?What is a reputable mass email service?Any suggestions for a good M...
You no longer need to tell your friends or readers of your posts to skip to a crucial section of a YouTube clip. Embedded videos can now be set to start at a certain number of seconds. As the Googl...
Accidental music mogul Dave Brown helped launch the careers of Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes and The Album Leaf, among others. These days his record label turned consulting company, Holiday Mat...
It's your cheapskate uncle's favorite cost-saving advice—tell them to skip the ice when ordering fountain drinks at the movies or in restaurants. But what if you like your cola, well, cold? Wired m...
Founder of previously mentioned music playlist creator Muxtape says he walked away from licensing deals that would restrict what songs you could upload there and plans to feature indie bands only....
Windows only: Up-and-coming instant messaging application Digsby has released a new updated with significant performance improvements and added support for business-oriented social networking site ...
Reader Elderbear shows off his four virtual desktops that he switches between using previously mentioned Yod'm. On each desktop he's running Samurize to embed system and personal info in the deskt...
Windows only: Check the various values and variables on your computer more easily using desktop diagnosis tool PC Audit. Available as a portable-friendly standalone executable, PC Audit checks sys...
The free Google Maps Mobile adds another update to the increasingly feature-rich mobile maps application, this time rolling out Street View and walking directions. The app recently added transit s...
So often, the reason clean-out-and-declutter sessions hit a dead end isn't lack of motivation, but an object you can't quite say you'll never need again—an arcane instruction manual, computer games...
Many people adore the look of photographs taken with older cameras. The millions of plastic bodied cheap lens bearing cameras that flooded the consumer photography market starting around the mid-2...
Personal finance weblog The Simple Dollar rounds up a handful of great tips for finding an auto mechanic you can trust. Choosing a mechanic is always a stressful undertaking—particularly if you don...
Windows only: Just when you thought a simple shutdown button was all you needed to turn off your computer, Slawdog's free Smart Shutdown utility offers so many more useful options. If you're alway...
Mac only: XBMC for Mac—the open source media center software that offers a more flexible alternative to Front Row—has been renamed Plex, rebranded, and redesigned. Plex's most recent release inclu...
Over at PC World, I (Adam) have written up 12 sly tech tricks for beefing up your tech arsenal, from password cracking to inconspicuously reading on the job. Got a favorite trick of your own? Let's...
Beloved music playlist hosting service Muxtape's gone offline to "sort out a problem with the RIAA," but if you've got some web server space, you can host, stream, and share your own digital music...
What's the best way to catch all of the Olympics that I missed?If I want to drop into college courses, should I ask the professor for permission or should I just sit in?What's the best way to react...
Weblog Apartment Therapy Re-Nest shows how to repurpose a pile of old magazines or vintage books into a small table in just about 10 minutes. Pulling it off is a simple matter of tucking every 10 p...
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser. Reader Kaelri showcases a beautifully tweaked Windows desktop in a cube. Kaelri was kind enough to include hardware and app confi...
Windows/Mac/Linux: Cross platform application Subdownloader makes short work of locating subtitles for your movies. Subdownloader uses a fast hashing algorithm, which, according to the developers,...
The Sundry Buzz blog's Linda doesn't like to jump onto stiff, scratchy sheets after bringing them home from the shop. After a little net research, she found a seemingly sure-fire way of making them...
Those of us who have forgone a fancy BlackBerry, Treo, or iPhone know a standard cell phone is probably the most non-interactive, un-tweakable device in the gadget stable. But for many phones, the...
Free email protection service akapost isn't the only way to hide your email from spam bots and unknown correspondents, but it is one of the most hassle-free ways of doing it, for both mailer and re...
Windows only: Free multi-network instant messaging application Digsby is testing a new release with significant improvements. The very young IM client quickly found a place among the five best ins...
One Hundred Push Ups Takes You from Zero to a Hundred in Six Weeks"Web site One Hundred Push Ups details a training plan for going from 0 to 100 push-ups in a matter of six weeks. We've discussed w...
iPhone/iPod touch only: Mocha VNC Lite, the latest free utility added to the iTunes App Store, is one of those great programs that jailbreak enthusiasts probably thought would never appear in offic...
Reader jdgoal14 shows off his productive desktop, powered by widgets, launchers, and other good looking utilities. Jdgoal14 writes: The widgets are from Yahoo Widgets and I use apps launchers such...
Mac OS X only: Freeware application GrabUp automatically uploads screenshots to the internet and pastes the URL in your clipboard for quick and easy sharing. The application installs as a pref...
Need an image with dark blue and green undertones for desktop wallpaper or a design project? Multicolr Search Lab, a free search utility, digs through roughly 3 million images in Flickr's "Interest...
Our early-rising sibling site Gizmodo has a complete walkthrough of Apple's new App Store, available inside the just-released iTunes 7.7. No iPhone/iPod Touch 2.0 upgrade yet (update: well, here's ...
Editor: Project manager and writer Scott Berkun knows how to get things done when you've got a team of people, a to-do list, and a deadline. Today he offers an excerpt from his newest book, a must-...
Just updated the HTML Helper Greasemonkey user script, which now helps you add images to your comments here on Lifehacker and our sibling blogs. No Greasemonkey? The update got rolled into version ...
Mozilla officially announced today that Firefox 3 set the Guinness World Record for most software downloads in 24 hours, totaling at an impressive 8,002,530 downloads. Now that it's official, don't...
Windows Mobile devices only: Free application TaskPlus is a Today screen plug-in that reorders the standard task list interface on Windows Mobile devices into a compartmentalized and more manageab...
Windows only: Free, open-source application KDE Window-Sizer resizes and moves windows when you click anywhere inside the window while holding the Alt key. To move a window, then, hold Alt and left...
Windows Vista tip: The Hackosis blog points out that Windows Vista uses only one CPU to boot itself by default, regardless of whatever dual- or quad-core hardware you're using. Enabling multi-core ...
Get Lifehacker's top five stories of the week plus occasional cannot-miss breaking news alerts delivered straight to your email inbox by popping your address into the subscription box on our sideb...
If you have a keyboard hooked up to your Windows Media Center computer, you'll beat out any remote user with this collection of 42 keyboard shortcuts courtesy of the Simple Help blog. Hopping betw...
Print any document from your computer to any other internet-connected PC with webapp CloudPrint. The service, by the folks at Hewlett-Packard, is built around the notion that you'll use it primaril...
Previously mentioned web-based mind mapping tool MindMeister adds the ability to create and add to your maps via email. Enable your account's "Geistesblitz Email" in settings and save the unique e...
Weblog ScienCentral reports that when you can't come up with an answer that's sitting on the tip of your tongue, you're best off forgetting about it altogether. That's because, according to a stud...
The Tech-Recipes tips blog points out a handy shortcut that some users of the super-handy Growl Mac OS X notification tool might not know. Rather than closing every individual notification that pi...
You've always been able to email yourself with a phone call through voice-to-text service Jott, but with the introduction of Jott Feeds, Gmail (and Google Apps) users can now have a summary of the...
Linux only: AcetoneISO2, a free, open-source application for Linux systems, gives you complete control over your disk images and CD/DVD mounting without having to touch the command line once. The p...
Today Microsoft announces that they will extend the amount of time manufacturers can ship low cost PCs with Windows XP until 2010. Clearly someone in Redmond is reading Lifehacker.
iFlix manages your entire Netflix queue from the comfort of your iPhone, from adding, re-ordering, and browsing Netflix. Netflix lovers won't find a better iPhone app than iFlix. Aside from queue m...
ACCESS DENIED. Those two bone-chilling words are the last thing you want to see when you're trying to log into a system or open a file, but they're not necessarily a dead end. Several free tools c...
Just posted an update to the Better GCal Firefox extension, which adds Firefox 3 support, and an updated current timeline. Download it here.
You already know how to create multiple user profiles in Firefox for various types of online work; but if you're trying to troubleshoot an existing Firefox profile, start up the 'fox in "Safe M...
Wired's How-To Wiki guides newcomers gently into the soft terrain of composting, a great way to recycle biodegradable goods and create some of the best growing soil around. You can get started with...
Most spam and phish-bait emails are easy to spot, but once in a while, some creative subject can leave you guessing whether a message is legitimate or not. If you're an Outlook user, the Productivi...
Google Earth has added geo-located Google News stories to its many useful layers, giving users of the desktop app access to national headlines and local news. Starting today, users can expand t...
Next time you need to give a presentation from afar, fire up Zoho Show, invite a few attendees, and give the presentation in real-time with Zoho Show's Remote feature. You invite participants, and ...
Wrap your Friday with a quick recap of our most popular posts this week: Get Vista's Best Features in XP"Despite the fact that most of you prefer XP to Vista and would rather Microsoft extended XP'...
Kwiry, the text-yourself-a-reminder service, has added a potentially neat feature for shoppers, urban adventurers, and anyone who wants a visual element to their memory-activators. Snap a picture o...
The latest version 9 of the Fedora Linux distribution is now available for your downloading and installation pleasure. The Fedora-lovers at Ars Technica report: Fedora 9 delivers a cutting edge de...
If you're one of those folks who handwrites HTML, you know how laborious it can be to type out all the tags and descriptors for a simple but highly-efficient table. Kotatsu, a free AJAX utility, ge...
The popular up-and-coming chat application Digsby (original post) has integrated the newly released Facebook Chat. Digsby separated itself from the pack of the five best instant messengers with its...
Windows XP Service Pack 3 officially hit Microsoft servers this morning, and although it won't be available through Windows Update today, it should be sometime soon. Your desire to stay on the cutt...
Weblog Daily Gyan points out a simple about:config tweak that disables the installation delay for new Firefox extensions. As you may know, Firefox tries to protect you from malicious attacks by set...
Today web-based office suite maker Zoho adds pivot tables and VB macros to their online spreadsheet product. You may not use Zoho's online office suite because you're lazy and already have a Goog...
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