Lifehacker

Spice up Your Pics with some Photoshop Lighting Tutorials [Photoshop]

Jason Fitzpatrick — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:00:00 PST

Over at design blog Web Design Ledger, they've rounded up over two dozen tutorials to teach you how to add impressive lighting effects to your photos. Whether you want to inject some sparkles, motion trails, sun flares, fire, star bursts or luminescence into your image, there is a tutorial for you. Completely new to Photoshop? Learn the basics of Photoshop in a week. No room in the budget for Photoshop? Check out GIMP, a robust freeware alternative.

Find an Instructor at TeachStreet [Learning]

Jason Fitzpatrick — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:00:00 PST

TeachStreet is a combination social network and class review web site. Users can search for classes in their area or list themselves as a teacher to become visible to potential students. There are currently 120,000 listings across 500 US cities although— to the dismay of budding Flaminco dancers in Pembino, North Dakota— the highest concentration of listings are in major metropolitan areas. Users can search for new classes, review classes they have taken, and network with other users who share common interests. For another way to search out an instructor, check out TutorLinker. For stay at home but still mind expanding experiences, check out the top ten universities with free online content.

What a Lovely Name Helps You Select a Name by Traits [Parent Hacks]

Jason Fitzpatrick — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 13:00:00 PST

What a Lovely Name is a tag-based search engine for baby names. Rather than take the traditional approach of searching for a name and then reading what traits are associated with that name, with What a Lovely Name you select a handful of traits you value and the gender of the child and the site suggests names. The name suggestions are refreshingly multicultural, in testing various trait combinations I wasn't stuck with a laundry list of Anglo-Saxon names. Interestingly when I chose the two traits I find most endearing in my own daughter, elegance and strength, her name appeared in the list of suggestions. The tags aren't limited to just personality traits, although it's certainly the strongest draw of the site, you can also use cultural tags to see names by country and region or celebrity tags to see what names are popular amongst athletes, actors, musicians and so on. For another fascinating look into baby naming conventions, check out the NameVoyager to see the popularity of names over time and The Baby Name Map to see the most currently popular names in your region.

DIY Hot Sauce [Cooking]

Jason Fitzpatrick — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:00:00 PST

If you find the hot sauce spread at your local food emporium a bit lacking, it's time to do it yourself and create a batch of palate-scalding sauce that's just right. Over in the Dining and Wine section of the New York Times, there is a straight forward method for making your own hot sauce. If you have chili peppers, vinegar, a blender and a stove to boil the mixture on, you're in business. Even if you have no intention of cooking up a batch of hot sauce this weekend the comments from home-brewing hot sauce aficionados are a wealth of information about hot sauce brewing and a fascinating read. Photo by jslander.

Top 10 Things You Can Do with a DVD [Lifehacker Top 10]

Kevin Purdy — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 09:00:00 PST

The proliferation of thumb drives and external hard drives has made optical media like DVDs seem a little less handy—but there are still plenty of ways to put DVDs to good use. These shiny, multi-gigabyte discs can run entire operating systems, put movies on your computer and vice-versa, host a robust copy of Wikipedia, and do so much more, if you know how to work them. Check out some of our favorite hacks and tips for getting the most out of DVDs, whether released by Hollywood or purchased at OfficeMax. Photo by MiNe (sfmine79).

10. Boot a custom operating system from a DVD.

It's certainly not a trick you can't pull off with a CD, but putting a live-booting operating system on a DVD gives you a lot more space to fit the apps you really want and use, along with any files you keep going back to. You can roll your own Ubuntu system with Reconstructor, or back up your particular Linux desktop by making a live DVD with remastersys. You can even make your own live-booting Windows XP CD with this guide from TackTech. And when you're tired of pretending to get things done in live operating systems, try out some racing, shooting, volleyball, and ten other free Linux games on the linuX-gamers.net Live DVD.

9. Smooth over disc scratches with household items.

From the files of the Can't Believe It Really Works Department: If you've got a DVD (or CD) that your drive skips on or refuses to play, and it doesn't look like it was dragged from the bumper on a cross-country trip, get out a little standard white, non-gel toothpaste, rub a little in the scratched portions, and buff it off. The stuff might just polish the disc enough, and smooth out its surface, to let a laser do its thing. If you're not sure that the tube in your bathroom cabinet passes muster, try reaching under the sink and polishing the disc with Pledge. The light wax can fill in the cracks and crevices and get you back to, uh, being productive, of course.

8. Mount ISO files as virtual drives.

If you've backed up a favorite game disc, flick, or other DVD to ISO, or just happened to grab one from the ether of the web, you might not always want to spend the time, or spare DVD-R, on burning that image—and, besides, it'll run a lot faster from a hard drive. Mounting an ISO image as if it were a real disc in a drive is an established hack, and one that's pretty darned handy. We like Virtual CloneDrive for Windows, the built-in Disk Utility in Mac OS X, and AcetoneISO2 for Linux. They'll all save you a disk, and lend you that clever feeling that you've pulled a fast one on your system somehow.

7. Put Wikipedia on a DVD.

To make the vast wealth of Wikipedia data available to schools without constant internet access, the SOS Children's Villages group created a 2.9GB, 5,500-article edition of the user-edited encyclopedia, Wikipedia school edition, that puts 20 million words at the fingertips of anyone who wants them. Great for on-the-go research (that you'll want to double-check and properly source, of course), actual school use, and it's one BitTorrent download you'll want to keep seeding after you're done grabbing it.

6. Create ISOs from DVDs.

Need a copy of a DVD but lack for a blank? Want to re-create that perfectly ripped DVD of Space Ghost episodes for multiple friends? An ISO file is your best friend, because it works on any system in a ton of software apps. Windows users have, for example, the Free ISO Creator, Linux users can hack one together from the terminal, and Mac users can create disk images using the built-in Disk Utility. Grab a few DVDs you'd never want to lose to the ravages of time and create an ISO you keep backed up—one day, you'll be really glad you did.

5. Automatically catalog your DVD collection

If you're a film nut, pack rat, or some mix of both, it can be all kinds of convenient to know what you've got on the shelf to watch, trade, or rip—or just print out and brag to your friends about. We've previously highlighted two free apps that can do that—Eric's Movie Database for Windows and DVD Hunter for Macs—but the $40 Delicious Library (Mac OS X) and DVD Profiler ($30, Windows) won out in our Battle of the Media Collection Managers for their intuitive interfaces and cataloging power.

4. Easily play ripped DVDs.

There are lots of tools to rip video files from DVDs, but most of those videos take a hit in quality for smaller file sizes. On the other hand, getting those VIDEO_TS folders to just up and play isn't half as simple. At least, until you download Lifehacker's own DVD Play tool, which thumbnails Amazon cover art for any rips you've got stashed in a folder and plays them using that multi-tool of multimedia, VLC Media Player. If you've only got a few discs ripped onto your drive, or you just like to do it yourself, you can also check out Hackszine's guide to playing ripped DVDs with VLC.

3. Get your DVDs on your iPod or iPhone for free.

The idea of watching TV episodes or entire movies from your iPod sounds like an air travel veteran's dream, until one realizes that Apple entirely expects you to pay separately for an iTunes copy of the flick. Skip that noise by using some really simple workarounds. Rick Broida explained a while back how to copy DVDs to our iPod using the free DVD Decrypter and Videora iPod Converter for Windows, and the mighty HandBrake for Mac OS X. There's since been Windows and Linux versions of HandBrake released, but two of your current Windows-using Lifehacker editors have found the free version of the Freez iPod Video Converter to be a fast, reliable converter to iPod-friendly formats.

2. Burn any video file to a playable DVD.

In most cases, the idea of burning nearly any flick to a playable DVD is a lot easier than the implementation. Adam's run down an app and a method, however, to burning any video file to a playable video DVD, using the DVD Flick app for Windows. More than just converting data from any of 45 video file types, DVD Flick also allows for custom menu creation and subtitle insertion. If DVD Flick doesn't agree with you, there's also DVD Creator, also for Windows and also free.

1. Rip DVDs to video with little fuss.

Let's guess that more than 90 percent of anyone trying to back up a DVD or play its video files on another platform don't want to mess with bitrates, audio codecs, or answer any questions about "passes"—just the playable file, thank you very much. Adam Pash feels very much the same, and created a one-click tool for DVD ripping. We've run down the more involved process for DVD ripping in Linux, while any user can rip DVDs with Handbrake or MacTheRipper. If you never want to choose single bit-anything, these tools won't make you do so.

What magic can you work with a blank (or media-stuffed) DVD or an ISO file? What tricks would you like to pull off, but need explained? Post your tips, and requests, in the comments.

[Sponsored]

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 09:00:00 PST

Auto-Delete Keeps Your Folders Clean [Featured Windows Download]

Jason Fitzpatrick — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:00:00 PST

Windows only: If you're prone to leaving files to linger in your designated download folder and never quite getting around to deleting them, Auto-Delete should be your organization buddy. After selecting a folder to be monitored you are offered a handful of options: age of files to be deleted, inclusion of subfolders, and whether or not the files will be directly deleted or moved to the recycle bin. If you're in the market for a more versatile file janitor that can handle more than one folder, check out Belvedere for Windows and Hazel for Mac OS X. Auto-Delete is freeware, Windows only.

This Week's Most Popular Posts [Highlights]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:06:24 PST

When there's too much Lifehacker and too little time, switch to our trimmed-down top stories feed to skip the extras and get right to the good stuff. Don't care about Windows-only downloads or the iPhone? Customize our URLs to see only the posts you want. This week's most popular posts include:

Customize Your Own Killer "Enigma" Desktop
"Windows desktop tweaker extraordinaire and Lifehacker reader Kaelri—who brought us the gorgeous Lightning at Sunset desktop and then showed us how to do it ourselves—is back, this time with a fresh new desktop he calls "Enigma.""
Gmail Updates Its Look, Adds Themes
"Google's beloved web-based email client has always been ripe for third-party design customization (we've always been partial to the Gmail Redesigned skin in Better Gmail, for example), but now Gmail is officially riding the interface customization train by offering 30-some new themes to spice up your inbox."
Thirty Cliches You Should Avoid (Going Forward)
"Using a data analysis tool that monitors new books, research papers, broadcast transcripts and news sources, Oxford University came up with a list of the top 10 most irritating phrases."
Top 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Web Browsing
"Even in a world where high-speed internet is just a tall house blend away, anyone can get stuck with a slow or uncertain connection at home, in the office, or at the worst possible time while traveling."
Five Best Video Chat Applications
"When you really want to stay in touch over a long distance, a simple phone call or voice chat pales in comparison to a face-to-face video chat."
Liberate Yourself from Old Email Addresses
"If you've been on the internet for any substantial amount of time you've likely accumulated your fair share of email addresses..."

Create Holiday Art at Google Docs [Friday Fun]

Gina Trapani — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:33:38 PST

Four Googlers show off their artistic skills as well as Google Docs' collaboration capabilities in the time-lapse video above of a spreadsheet holiday art project. Hit the play button to watch them fill in an 100 row by 186 column spreadsheet with 18 colors to make a detailed holiday snowflake pattern. (The eagle-eyed will notice that at least one of the authors was not using Google's own browser, Chrome—it looks like Firefox on the Mac.) Hit the link below to grab the template and make your own.

LittleShoot Adds P2P File-Sharing to the Browser [File Sharing]

Gina Trapani — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:39:15 PST

New peer-to-peer file sharing web service LittleShoot finds and downloads files right inside your web browser. LittleShoot founder (and former LimeWire engineer) Adam Fisk says he created LittleShoot to overcome LimeWire's shortcomings. To get started, you can search for a keyword at the LittleShoot web site without installing a thing and you'll get dozens of results from YouTube, Flickr, Yahoo, and LittleShoot users. (See the results for a search on "Twilight" above.) To play or download a file, you will have to download and install a small LittleShoot add-on. To publish a file on LittleShoot, hit the Publish tab and add a file on your local computer. The Mashable web site reports that LittleShoot is optimized to find nearby computers that host the file you need as well as defaulting to computers on the same ISP to increase download speeds and responsiveness. All in all, LittleShoot is looking very promising for P2P-ers who don't want to run full-fledged BitTorrent or other clients. What's your favorite way to P2P? Let us know in the comments. Thanks, Sangraal!

Is Beta Culture a Bad Thing? [Snap Judgment]

Gina Trapani — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:35:08 PST

At our brother site Gizmodo, Jesus Diaz posts a ripping rant against what he calls "beta culture," and consumers' tolerance for half-baked software and hardware that breaks more often than it should. Diaz writes:

We have surrendered in the name of progress and marketing and product cycles and consumerism. Maybe those are good reasons, I don't know, but looking at the past, it feels like we are being conned. Deceived because the manufacturers of electronic products have taken our desire to progress faster and even embrace the web beta culture as an excuse to rush things to market, to blatantly admit bugs and the rushed features sets and sell the patches as upgrades.

While I see where he's coming from—especially in regards to hardware you spend your hard-earned cash on—we're fans of testing beta software (the key word being "testing") because it's often where the best new features are. What about you?
Tell us more in the comments.

QuoteURLText Copies Highlighted Text and Source URL [Featured Firefox Extension]

Jackson West — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:00:00 PST

Firefox only: If you like to copy and paste snippets of web pages—but want to include the source URL and date and time in one shot—the QuoteURLText add-on's for you. Once installed, just select the relevant quote from a web page and press Ctrl+Shift+C (Win) or Command+Shift+C (Mac) and the selection will be copied along with the URL of the source page. Additional options allow you to include the time browsed and title of the page, as well. Advanced options let you refine the metadata added to the selection in the clipboard further. QuoteURLText is a free add-on download for Firefox browsers.

Tap the Hive in Today's Open Thread [Open Thread]

Gina Trapani — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:01:00 PST

We spend all day typing at you, so now it's your turn to type back at us. This comment thread is officially open: post your cries for tech help, reader surveys, questions about the meaning of life, favorite screenshots, video clips, site feedback, rants, and raves below. Don't forget to respond to a specific comment by a fellow reader by hitting the arrow on the bottom right hand side of it. Anything goes here (within reason, of course—play nice, my kittens), so let's start cocktail hour early and chat it up. We'll round up the best threads that appear here over the weekend so they don't fall off the page into oblivion before the night is done. Have fun! Photo by Soffia S.

Sponsor Shout-out [Thanks Sponsors]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:00:00 PST

Thanks to this week's sponsors: Chevy Fuel Solutions, Cingular, Energizer, Gyration Air Mouse, HP MediaSmart Server, IGN, The Last Remnant, Livescribe, The New York Times Magazine, Nokia E71, Pernod, Rovio, Samsung, Toshiba, Zune. Click here to advertise on Lifehacker.

Happy People Watch Less TV, Study Shows [Happiness]

Gina Trapani — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:00:52 PST

Researchers at the University of Maryland found the one activity unhappy people do more than happy people is watch TV. The New York Times reports:

"We looked at 8 to 10 activities that happy people engage in, and for each one, the people who did the activities more — visiting others, going to church, all those things — were more happy,” Dr. [John] Robinson said. “TV was the one activity that showed a negative relationship. Unhappy people did it more, and happy people did it less.”

The study doesn't indicate whether TV-watching is a symptom or a cause of unhappiness, so turning off the TV won't necessarily make you happier. Have unhappier times in your life involved more TV-watching, less, or the same as happy times? Let us know in the comments.

Mmm Free Declutters Busy Context Menus [Featured Windows Download]

Gina Trapani — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:13:29 PST

Windows XP only: When you right-click on your desktop or on a file, do you have to go through two dozen useless menu items before you hit the one you want? Free utility Mmm offers an easy interface for hiding and organizing context menu items—into a "Rarely used" subfolder, for example. With Mmm running, hit the colored button it adds to the top left of the menu to see the configuration area, shown here. Check out the before and after photos of my context menu using Mmm.

Before:

After:

Recently, the How-To Geek explained how to clean up your right-click menu by editing the Windows registry—a fine option for super-savvy users who don't want to run yet another utility to achieve the same end. If messing with your registry isn't your bag, previously mentioned FileMenu Tools and ShellExView also get the job done. Mmm Free is a free download for Windows XP only; Mmm+ offers more options for $9.99. Thanks, gravi_t!

Lifehacker's Mobile Site Revamped [Announcements]

Gina Trapani — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:42:43 PST

We just pushed an update to Lifehacker's mobile-friendly site version, located at m.lifehacker.com. Mobile users on the Blackberry, iPhone, and other handsets who visit Lifehacker will be automatically redirected there; click the "classic Lifehacker" link to see the full-on browser version on your phone. Suggestions, thoughts, feedback? Post it in the comments here.

Plex 7 Adds iTunes and iPhoto Support and More [Featured Mac Download]

Gina Trapani — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:19:17 PST

Mac OS X only: The latest version of the free Plex Media Center for Mac now includes iTunes and iPhoto support, iTunes visualizations, TV theme music, and the ability to play songs you've purchased from the iTunes Store. This tight iTunes/iPhoto integration comes in part from the Plex Media Server, which makes your songs and photos show up inside Plex while running in parallel. The Plex developer explains:

The Plex Media Server is a standalone program that runs alongside Plex (or alone on any machine, it’s a Universal Binary). It serves up media from your iLife applications (iTunes and iPhoto today, Aperture and Lightroom shortly). Plex communicates with the Plex Media Server on the local machine, on your local network, or even across the world over the Internet. This means that you can play your friends’ iTunes playlists or browse their podcasts or photo albums.

The Plex Media Center is a fork of the XBMC project, which also offers a Mac version. In fact, XBMC Atlantis' Mac version also includes iTunes and iPhoto support; compare our Plex screenshot tour to the Atlantis tour to see the differences between the two projects, which share the same code base. Plex is a free download for Intel Macs running Leopard only.

iTunes 8.0.2 Adds Screen Reader Support [ITunes]

Gina Trapani — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:35:15 PST

Along with the release of the iPhone 2.2 software, Apple also drops a new iTunes update to version 8.0.2, which includes bug fixes and integration with VoiceOver (Mac) and Window-Eyes (Windows), screen reader utilities for increased accessibility. Hit Check for Updates from the iTunes menu to download it.

Spicebird 0.7 Beta Adds Google Gadgets and Instant Messaging [Featured Download]

Gina Trapani — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:40:23 PST

Windows and Linux only: A new release of the open-source, all-in-one email, calendar, and task manager Spicebird is now available for download. Kevin took you on a tour of Spicebird 0.4 back in January, but the new version 0.7 adds features and fixes. Notably, 0.7 got support for Google gadgets on the home screen, revamped instant messaging capabilities, Google Calendar support, and experimental blogging capabilities—see the full release notes for details. The Spicebird 0.7 release is a free download for Windows and Linux. Thanks, Asian Angel!

360 Cities Panoramas in Google Earth [3D]

Kevin Purdy — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:00:00 PST

Prague-based virtual panorama company 360 Cities is offering its entire collection of nearly 10,000 spherical images on Google Earth. Head to the "Featured Preview" layer in the 3D tool to enable 360 Cities, then just click to scan around and gawk. [via]

iPhone 2.2 Firmware Update Now Available [IPhone]

Kevin Purdy — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:50:00 PST

The long-awaited 2.2 firmware updates for iPhones and iPod touch models hit iTunes at midnight last night, pushing a good deal of new features and long-awaited fixes to the mobile devices. We've already detailed some of the major new features already: Street View with walking/transit directions in Google Maps (iPhones only, unfortunately) and "emoji" face emoticons, over-the-air podcast downloading, and, while not really a feature, it's expected that 2.2 will be jailbroken before you know it. There's a good number of interface and usability improvements too, like improved HTML email formatting and location sharing, stability and menu bar tweaks to Safari, and a few other punch-list items. I'm downloading my 240MB-ish iPod update just fine this morning; tell us your impressions of 2.2 in the comments.

[Sponsored]

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:50:00 PST

Spice up Your Desktop With Lightweight Wallpaper Shifter [Featured Windows Download]

Jason Fitzpatrick — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:30:00 PST

Windows only: Wallpaper Shifter is a lightweight wallpaper randomizer. The installation is 8.11MB which by portable-application standards isn't super light, but the system resources consumed by Walllpaper Shifter are extremely lightweight.

Wallpaper Shifter is a little program that starts when you login to Windows and picks a random wallpaper from your list. Depending on the wallpaper width and height, it can automagically scale it for you to fit your desktop without deforming it's proportions. It does not remain running in the background so no system resources are used.

If you need a more complex wallpaper changer that will stay active during your Window session, check out John's Background Switcher. Wallpaper Shifter is freeware, Windows only.

Q-Dir Explores Files with Multiple Panes and Custom Views [Featured Windows Download]

Kevin Purdy — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 06:00:00 PST

Windows only: Free file browser Q-Dir makes for a good USB drive app or installed replacement for Windows Explorer for those who do a serious amount of file swapping, or just like to be able to keep multiple folder views open at once. The app—which installs by default, but can run by itself after renaming it "Q-Dir.exe"—offers a customizable number of panes, though the default four-square is a pretty good starting point. You can save any view you like to a favorite button, along with adding shortcuts to frequently-accessed folders. There's also a quick-filter box in the lower-right for easy sorting and finding, and if you use Q-Dir regularly, you'll be glad it keeps your right-click shell extensions and offers its own "*Q-Dir" launch option on right-clicking a folder. Q-Dir is a free download for Windows systems only. Only need two panes? We're also big fans of replacing Explorer with Xplorer2.

Get One Year of PC Magazine Free [Magazines]

Kevin Purdy — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:30:00 PST

Publisher Ziff Davis has printed the last edition of PC Magazine and announced it would go online-only, but fans can get a free one-year "subscription" emailed to them every month at GoReadGreen.com, along with a few other mag titles. [via]

OrbLive Apps Stream Media and TV to Your iPhone [Featured IPhone Download]

Kevin Purdy — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:00:00 PST

iPhone/iPod touch only: Streaming media server Orb has released free and $9.99 versions of an app that lets you watch videos, listen to music, check documents and even stream live or recorded TV to your iPhone or iPod touch. Like other combinations that use Orb's Windows-only (for now) software at their core, connection speeds and lag vary depending on the two sides of the connection, but streaming video to my iPod touch was decent enough, if a tiny bit out of sync. The main difference between the free and paid versions is a big one—the free version picks three items from each category to stream, while the paid app gives you full access to anything you want to grab. That's just about all there is to it, though you'll want to head to the app's settings to optimize streaming for EDGE, 3G, or Wi-Fi connections. The OrbLive applications are free and $9.99, and both require an iPhone or iPod touch running at least the 2.0 firmware. Check out our screenshot tour and Wii media center guide for a closer look at the Orb software itself.

Google Launches SearchWiki for Custom-Ordered Search Results [Google]

Kevin Purdy — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:00:00 PST

Some logged-in Google users are seeing an interesting new feature enabled on their results pages this morning. SearchWiki adds two buttons to the right of each result that let users move their favorite or most relevant results to the top spot or kill out a result entirely for their page only, as well as add notes for yourself on certain results and add entirely new results to that crucial first page. You (and other users) will be able to see the changes your username has made, along with aggregate numbers for other users' actions (x voted up, x removed). While they're just for your information right now, Google engineers have said they might consider letting group decisions impact global results. I don't have SearchWiki enabled in my account yet, so I can't tell if the "I'm Feeling Lucky" results work with the re-ordering (so cool if so). Check out Google demonstration video below, and tell us what you dig and don't about SearchWiki in the comments. Screenshot from Google Operating System.

Best Desktop Customization Tool? [Hive Five Call For Contenders]

Adam Pash — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:30:00 PST

Sure your computer's desktop may be functional out of the box, but some of us need to put the 'P' in PC before we really feel at home at a computer. We love looking at how our readers have customized their desktops, so for this week's Hive Five, we want you to share your favorite desktop customization applications. Keep reading for more details and to nominate your faves in the comments.

Hive Five nominations take place in the comments, where you post your favorite tool for the job. We get hundreds of comments, so to make your nomination clear, please include it at the top of your comment like so: VOTE: Desktop Customization Tool Goes Here. NEW RULE: Please don't include your vote in a reply to another commenter. Instead, make your vote and reply separate comments. If you don't follow this format, we may not count your vote. To prevent tampering with the results, votes from first-time commenters may not be counted. After you've made your nomination, let us know what makes it stand out from the competition.

About the Hive Five: The Hive Five feature series asks readers to answer the most frequently asked question we get—"Which tool is the best?" Once a week we'll put out a call for contenders looking for the best solution to a certain problem, then YOU tell us your favorite tools to get the job done. Every weekend, we'll report back with the top five recommendations and give you a chance to vote on which is best. For an example, check out last week's Hive Five Best Video Chat Applications.

Email Activity Random but Cyclical [In Brief]

Jackson West — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:00:00 PST

Looking at aggregate data of 3,000 email accounts over a three month period, researchers at Northwestern University say that emails are responded to randomly, but the volume of sent mail follows predictable patterns. Namely, late at night on the weekends it's much less likely you'll receive any reply, for the obvious reasons — sleep and time off from work on weekends. The study suggests that the best time to contact someone when looking for a timely response, such as Monday morning, and can help network administrators plan for high-volume periods. Connectivity at home is better than it was when the data was recorded, but is it just me or do you actively avoid email outside of business hours as well?

Forkbombs and Other Things Not to Type in Terminals [Linux]

Jackson West — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:30:00 PST

"Tell the noob to type rm -rf /," the troll types to his friend in IRC before you're a series of lulz after a friendly call for Linux tech support help turns into a formatted hard drive. If you don't know what a forkbomb is or what it looks like you might want to check this list of seven commands that could prove lethal if typed into a command line shell. If you're making the plunge into operating systems like Ubuntu but are worried about what not to do, check it out. Any horror stories you readers might want to pass along to save someone else a headache down the line? Photo by zakwitnij

Integrate YouSendIt with Microsoft Office [Microsoft Office]

Gina Trapani — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:25:19 PST

Send that big PowerPoint presentation or Excel spreadsheet without clogging up your recipient's email inbox straight from Microsoft Office using previously mentioned file delivery service YouSendIt. Their new Office add-in puts YouSendIt into, appropriately, the Send to menu above the Email option. The YouSendIt Microsoft Office add-in is a free download. [via]

Process Manager Prioritizes, Kills Running Apps via Right-Click [Featured Windows Download]

Adam Pash — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:00:00 PST

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 priority options are only available when you've right-clicked a window's taskbar item. That's pretty much all there is to it. The app runs in your system tray and eats less than 1MB of RAM. While Process Manager doesn't do anything you can't already do from the Windows Task Manager, it does provide quicker access to a couple of handy functions and is worth a try if you do much force-quitting. Process Manager is a free download, Windows only.

Ask MetaFilter Roundup [Hive Mind]

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:29:00 PST