A weekend may not seem like a lot of time, but you might be surprised by what you can learn in just 48 hours. Here are a bunch of new skills you can pick up on the weekend, or at least master the basics. More »

Blogger and developer Matt Gemmell has gazed into the dark side of of search engine optimization (SEO), and while he understands the value of having your personal site, your blog, or your company's web site rank well in search results, he's not willing to sell his soul to do it. Instead, he's written a simple guide to SEO for non-dicks. More »

Firefox 7 is set to be released today, and with a big focus on performance, we thought it time for another round of browser speed test. We pitted the four most popular Windows browsers against each other in a battle of startup times, tab-loading times, JavaScript powers, and memory usage, with some surprising results. More »

Making your own customer t-shirts is awesome, but it can get a little pricey and excessive if you have to order in bulk. The quality of inkjet transfers isn't exactly ideal, either. Fortunately, Instructables user Matthew Vieke has a great solution that requires just a shirt, a sharpie, and a few other optional items: More »

On this week's episode of Lifehacker, we're throwing a party. We'll be organizing beverages with binder clips, using a few tricks to remember people's names, opening a glass bottle with whatever you've got handy, and more. More »

We spend a lot of time talking about how to improve our own lives, but how about the lives of our pets? Today we're looking at ten great ways to improve the life of your cat—which has its benefits for you, too. More »

New web service Protocol.by helps you generate email signatures that link to your account at the service, and that contain the information your email recipients need to best contact you, and the order in which they should try. More »

Checking your luggage is like gambling with your belongings. Something could break, get stolen, lost, and so on, and checked baggage generally comes with high fees. Here's how to almost guarantee you'll never have to check your luggage again and, if all plans fail, how to make the best of a bad situation. More »

Windows/Mac/Linux: If you're a coder and haven't tried the free, cross-platform text editor Komodo Edit yet, you may be in for a treat. Komodo Edit supports a wide range of scripting languages and boasts powerful customization and extension options for easier coding. More »

If you want a quick and easy way to mount your phone or MP3 player to your car's dashboard, reader Craig Lloyd shows us how with a simple office supply. More »

Looking for a place to stash some cash, jewelry, or other valuable objects? Your home offers plenty of hiding spaces, and the Construction of Secret Hiding Places is a free manual that will teach you how to use or make them. More »

As an anti-theft measure, clothing stores tag certain items with security tags so you'll set off an alarm when you leave with the tag still on the garment or ruin it by spilling ink from the tag if you try to remove it yourself. This isn't a problem so long as the tag gets removed before you leave the store, but sometimes clerks can miss a tag at checkout. If that's happened to you, here's what you can do about it. More »

Dear Lifehacker,When you fly on an airplane, FAA regulations require you to turn off and stow portable electronics, but is this really necessary? Sometimes I leave my phone on during take off on purpose by accident and nothing ever happens. Is this rule B.S. or is there really something to it? More »

Last week, we showed you how to build your own custom PC, from picking the parts, to putting it together and installing your OS. Here's the complete guide, along with a printable PDF version that you can use as a reference. More »

When you need to scan an image, you use a regular scanner, but what do you do when you need to scan a 3D object? Apparently you use a webcam, a laser pointer, and some free software. More »

At its most basic, Network attached storage, or NAS, is a great way to share files on your local network. But it's also a perfect solution for backing up your computers, streaming media across your home network, or even torrenting files to a central server. If you have an aging computer lying around, you can turn it into a NAS for for free with the open-source FreeNAS operating system. Here's how. More »

File syncing is a godsend when you work on multiple computers or devices and want to make sure you have the most up-to-date files wherever you log in. While online services like Dropbox may be the most convenient options, there are plenty of reasons you may want to "roll your own cloud" and sync your files to your own web server or just on your local network. Below, we'll detail how to set up a Dropbox clone, complete with instantaneous, encrypted syncs, cloud backups, and file versioning, using cross-platform software GoodSync. More »

Dear Lifehacker, More »

Our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have released a handy "Tips for Talking to the Police" cheatsheet intended to help you understand your rights, specifically in regards to searching your digital stuff. More »

With many sites being compromised and user data released publicly on the web, you may have fallen victim. Should I Change My Password? is a simple webapp can tell you if you may be at risk. More »

DIYer Palle Olsen picked up some cheap super glue and mounting tape to mount his PS3 and its four annoying cables to the wall. More »

Maybe you've heard of BitCoin—it wants to shake the entire global economy. And some people think it might! It's online money—an alternative to dollars and euros. Well what's that mean? It's complicated, but we break it down. More »

An Android personal data leakage epidemic has just been revealed. The vulnerability affects 99% of Android phones and may allow hackers to steal your Facebook, Google Calendar, or other personal data if you use a rogue open Wi-Fi network. Here's how to protect yourself. More »

Dear Lifehacker, More »

If you're still waiting for Android 2.3 Gingerbread, we recommend checking out CyanogenMod 7. It not only brings Gingerbread to tons of Android phones, but other great features like canned SMS responses, over- (or under-) clocking, and a new simple theme engine. More »

More and more, the fragments of your life exist as particles on a disk mounted inside your computer—disks susceptible to temperature changes, power surges, fire, theft, static, and just plain wear and tear. Hard drives fail. It's a fact of computing life. It's not a matter of whether your computer's disk will stop working; it's a matter of when. The question is how much it will disrupt your life—and it won't, if you have a backup copy. More »

You find a lot of interesting articles as you browse the web, but you don't always have time to read them right away. Read-it-later services like Instapaper and Read It Later both help solve that problem, but rather than signing up for yet another service, you can actually turn your Google Reader account into a personalized read-it-later archive. More »

Chances are you've accumulated a few spare thumb drives over the years, choosing new ones thanks to better form factors and increased capacities. But what do you do with the old ones that are just lying around? Here are our top 10 clever, fun, and practical uses for your spare thumb drives. More »

Android: Google's Reader webapp is pretty good, but we've longed for an official, native Google Reader app since we started using Android. Today, Google made that dream come true, with extras like volume-key navigation, multiple accounts, and sharing. More »

Ge.tt is a clever, instant file-sharing webapp that makes sharing files simple and fast. You can share a link to your file(s) immediately, without waiting for the upload to complete, and it doesn't use Flash, Java applets, or any other plug-ins. More »

Some people avoid any and all update notices—and you can't always blame them, given how many occur on the average computer. Reader Andrew Chandler suggests fixing their ignoring ways with the no-fuss Ninite installer and Task Scheduler automation. More »

Your body can naturally generate Vitamin D, but only if it gets enough of the right kind of sun. For those living above a certain latitude, that daily sun is hard to come by. David McCandless explains how to get it. More »

Many utilities and service providers offer paperless billing, but on their own terms. Doxo, a web-based billing startup, contacts your billers, potentially accepts your bills for you, and stashes your account info. If you're intrigued, we've got invitations for you. More »

Windows only: We recently featured Universal Androot, an app that rooted many Android phones, but had a few limitations (and Google's already killing it with a patch). Windows program SuperOneClick is the easiest, most universal rooting app we've seen yet. More »

Windows only: CCleaner Enhancer updates the popular system cleaning utility with support for cleaning up after 270 more applications, so you can keep your system even more crap free. More »

Adding contexts to your tasks can help stay productive with the tools you have access to, but let's be honest: Sometimes your mood trumps everything when you're working through your to-do list. That's why reader phool adds his mood to task contexts. More »

Being a good host in the 21st century isn't what it used to be. Your guests have to deal with Wi-Fi passwords, confusing home theaters, and more. Next time you've got guests, blow them away with your sophisticated, 21st-century hosting skills. More »

If you've been using Dropbox since the wee early days, you might not have noticed the "Getting Started" tab in the web version. Click it, though, and you'll likely get another 250 MB of Dropbox space for "steps" you've already completed. More »

Inexpensive phone mounts are almost always disappointing with low-quality parts and a poor grip on your phone. This cheap DIY mount is slim, solid, and and will fit your phone perfectly. More »

We love a good live CD, but what if your favorite one doesn't quite have every application or tweak you need? Here's how to roll your own Ubuntu Live CD, with all the packages you want, and some nice customizations, to boot. More »

Canonical's latest endeavor, somewhat confusingly called Ubuntu Light, is an instantly-on-and-connected netbook and desktop solution. It's new "Unity" UI sports many of the features Mac users have come to know and love, built for easy browsing and window management. More »




Ubuntu - Operating system - Canonical - Ubuntu Light - Unity

Not everyone has the time or inclination to build and maintain a full-fledged web site. If you're just looking for a simple way to unify all your online profiles, these personal landing pages are a perfect fit. More »




Hive Five - FAQs Help and Tutorials - Web Design and Development - Relationships - Personals

Desktop applications have their charm, but most of your information already lives on the web. Ditch those clunky desktop apps for webapps without losing their better features—like notifications, shortcuts, offline access, etc.—and free up precious system resources along the way. More »

You're constantly told how easy it would be to hack your weak passwords, but complicated passwords just aren't something our brains get excited about memorizing. Reader calculusrunner offers a brilliant tip that turns weak passwords into something much, much better. More »

Years ago we suggested sticking a borked hard drive in your freezer for a chance at recovering your data before the drive goes completely kaput. Developer site Server Zone highlights the same tip, with more detailed instructions for saving your freezer drive. More »

Google's office suite, Google Docs, updates with big changes focused on significantly improving document collaboration in Docs. That means new features, like Google Wave's real-time, character-by-character editing for multiple users, as-you-type spell check, a new commenting system, and more. More »

Faced with a forced furlough, a New York Times writer devoted an entire day off to earning more interest, trimming bills, scheduling extra mortgage payments, and earning better rewards. Luckily, he turned his "Financial Tuneup" into a handy and explanatory checklist. More »

Gmail launched a new feature this morning designed to detect suspicious activity in your account and notify you when a suspicious login has occurred in your account. More »

Panic is a software company that makes useful tools like my personal favorite, Transmit for the Mac. They've also made a beautiful project status display that keeps their team on top of what they're working on and keeps everyone motivated. More »

Finding a good proxy is difficult. You either have to run it yourself from your home computer or web server, or you're left scavenging about for free proxies online. Instead, you can run one for free through the Google App Engine.
If you want total control over your proxy experience, you can always run a home proxy. We showed you how to set one up last month with our guide to bypassing heavy-handed firewalls. While you're tinkering away with your home network it's also worth setting up a SSH SOCKS proxy to encrypt and secure all your remote traffic too.

If you don't want to leave your computer on all the time or be limited by the speed of your home internet connection however, you can use a Google account to set up a proxy server that runs off the Google Apps Engine and allows you to browse via proxy independent of your home network and without having to trust a sketchy third-party proxy. You'll be running your own proxy server through the Apps Engine, free for you to tweak. They've put together a detailed guide at Digital Inspiration, check out the video below:

For step by step instructions, including lots of screen shots, visit the link below. Have your own way for circumventing firewalls and browsing on your own terms? Let's hear about it in the comments.

How-To Setup Your Own Web Proxy Server for Free with Google Apps Engine [Digital Inspiration]

Ed. note: We love a good media center almost as much as we love automation, so self-confessed media geek Alex Ward's fully automated media center caught our eye. It's all the benefits of an awesome media center without all the hassle.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how to use EventGhost to begin to automate your PC. Now we are going to take things a step forward and use EventGhost alongside a few other free programs to set up an amazing and fully automated Home Theatre PC.

If you have not read my previous EventGhost article I advise you to go and read it now as I am going to skip past the basics here.

Step One: Getting all the applications
To truly get this working properly you are going to need a few programs; they are all free and fairly straightforward to use (but I'm going to show you how anyway), so get to work on the list below and let me know when you have it all downloaded and installed.

XBMC – The excellent free to use media centre application
Torrent Episode Downloader – This does a similar thing to uTorrent's RSS downloader but I personally feel it does a better job and is easier to use.
uTorrent – You can actually use any torrent application provided it has the ability to move files to a separate location when finished.
EventGhost – Of course you already have this as you have hopefully gone through the previous tutorial.
The Renamer – A superb and easily automated tool for finding and renaming your TV shows, it can also be made to work with movies but there is a better tool for that.
Ember Media Manager – Automatically finds and downloads information for your movies.

Step Two:  Getting ready for XBMC
The biggest difficulty a lot of people seem to face when they first set XBMC up is getting the library mode to work; this is because XBMC needs to have a specific file structure in order to scrape (download information about) your media files.

Note: I'm going to work on the assumption that you have a hard drive set up just for your media, if you do not then create a folder on one of your drives and do all this in the root of that folder.

Firstly create the following folders:
TV Shows, Music, Photos, Movies, Unsorted Media

There are some things that XBMC does not scrape all that well or simply things you would like to be able to access in XBMC but don't really want it to be categorised as a TV show or movie, in this instance you should also create a folder for that (E.g., Documentaries, Children's TV shows, etc…)

Prepare your movies
The Movies folder should not directly contain any files; each movie should be in a folder which has the movie's name and year as its title. The movie file itself should be the movie's title, if it is a HD movie then you can also add that information to the file name:

E.g. /Movies/The Shawshank Redemption [1994]/The.Shawshank.Redemption.720p.BluRay.mkv

Setting up your TV Shows folder
The TV Shows folder follows a similar format; each show should have a folder with its name and year as the title and each series of a show should go inside a ‘series x' folder.  The name of each file should be the name of the show followed by the series number and episode number, if you wish you can also add the title of the episode:

E.g.  /TV Shows/Life on Mars [2008]/Series 1/Life on Mars – s01e01 – The Crash.avi

Make sure you format the series and episode numbers using the above example, this method always works for the main scrapers. The year is not essential for movies or TV shows, it just makes it simpler for the scraper to make sure it's downloading the information for the correct title.

Setting up your music folder
The music folder should contain a folder for the artist and then a folder for each album inside it.:

E.g. /Music/Fleetwood Mac/Rumours/

The year should not be needed for albums as it's rare that an artist will use the same album name more than once.

Setting up the other folders
Photos are simple to categorise as they do not get scraped—therefore you can put any pictures you like in there without worrying about file structure.

The unsorted media folder should be empty.

Copying your media
At this stage you are ready to copy your media to the folders. If you have thumbnail or fanart files already you don't need to copy them over (unless you know the scraper will have trouble finding them) as this will be taken care of later.

Step Three: Using Ember Media Manager to pre-scrape your movies

XBMC has a great scraping tool; however it is quite slow and if you re-install your media centre for any reason you will have to re-scrape all your files again from scratch. Ember Media Manager is faster and even better, it downloads all the needed files to the movies folder, so if you do need to reinstall, no re-scrape is required (plus it downloads trailers – which is just awesome).

To set it up, go to ‘edit > settings', click ‘Files and Sources' then ‘add source' and browse to the root of your movies folder. (This can be done during setup as well, so you may not need to do it now). I won't tell you which boxes need ticking as it is all about personal preference really.

Once that's done, return to the main menu and click ‘update library' (although I think this happens automatically the first time anyway). Once your list appears, select ‘Scrape Media > New Movies > Automatic > All items' and watch it find everything for you (Note: If you did not add the year to the folder names then you may get odd results on some movies using ‘automatic', use ‘ask' instead).

If you use the ‘automatic' mode then this should be the last time you ever see this screen as we will automate it in a later step.

Step Four: Using Torrent Episode Downloader (TED) to find and download your TV shows.
Before we start this please make sure you have your torrent program set up to send all completed downloads to your ‘unsorted media' folder. (Note: You can use your existing downloads folder if you wish, just make sure that it's only updated when the download has completed)

TED is a simple Java application which automatically finds your favourite TV shows and starts downloading them. It's fairly simple to set up, but here is a little tutorial anyway.

Once the program is installed, click on ‘add show'. You will then be presented with the ‘Add show' window. Simply select the show you want to download and choose the episode you want to download from (this doesn't work that well for older episodes).  Once this is done, select the episode and click ‘Edit show'.

The default settings are ok for the most part, however, I find that I get better results if I make a few tweaks. Firstly in ‘Feeds' click on ‘+' and add IsoHunt, select ‘yes' when the dialog box pops up and then click on ‘filters', change the top number to 300mb and the maximum size to 1200mb (this means you won't get low quality files and you might get the odd HD one—if you don't want HD, then set the max to about 750mb). Don't bother with ‘download in HD quality' as it's not perfect and usually results in no torrents being found for a lot of shows.

Once you have done that, just rinse and repeat until you've added all the shows you want.

Note: If you do not want TED to automatically open your torrent application (like if you download on a schedule) then you can change the options in Extra > Preferences.

Step Five: Use The Renamer to automatically sort and move your TV shows.
Sadly many files on BitTorrent have not been named with media centres in mind and most scrapers are rubbish unless the file names and folders follow their rules. Thankfully a fantastic application called ‘The Renamer' exists to solve this problem.

This program is very easy to set up and even easier to use. Firstly, click on ‘settings' then change your fetch folder to your ‘unsorted media' folder and the TV shows archive to your ‘TV Shows' folder.

Make sure the following boxes are ticked

s1e01
add "0" for Season (only the first time it appears)
include sub folders
Auto move after renaming,
Showname
Season
Episode titles
To TV Show Folder
To Season folder

And that's it!

Ed. note: If you routinely download subtitles for your television shows or movies, make sure to grab the subtitles before renaming. Subtitles packages are timing-based—down to the millisecond specific!—and one subtitle package for a TV show is not the same as any other package.

Step Six – Tie it all together with EventGhost

Ok, so far we've managed to get a series of systems together to download and catalogue our TV Shows and organise our movies to be imported into XBMC. Now it's time to make it automatic using EventGhost.

Firstly we need to install two plugins to EventGhost. ‘Directory Watcher' and ‘XBMC', you can find these in the ‘Plugins' menu (see the small image to the left). To ensure that your movies are scraped automatically as well, install two copies of ‘Directory Watcher'

Set the first Directory Watcher Plugin to look in your ‘unsorted media' folder and the second to look in your ‘Movies' folder. Then create a new macro called ‘move new shows'

Inside this macro set it to automatically launch the renamer (System > Start Application), in the command line box type ‘–fetch' and set the window options to ‘minimised' (this never seems to work for me but you may have more luck. Then – still inside the same macro – add another action below it, ‘Update Video Library' from the XBMC folder.

Now create a new macro called ‘scrape new movies', set it to open ember media manager and in the command line box enter ‘–newauto  –all' (remember this is only foolproof if you add years to your movie directories). Then – still inside the same macro – add another action below it, ‘Update Video Library' from the XBMC folder.

Finally add an event called ‘DirectoryWatcher.Updated' to the top of the first macro and one called ‘DirectoryWatcher2.Updated' to the top of the second and sav[…]

The newest generation netbooks sport a strong enough CPU/GPU combo to handle HD content, but millions of netbooks have a much lighter pairing that needs a little help. This guide will help get you stutter-free HD content on your netbook.
Image from Big Buck Bunny, an open-source HD movie.

Over at the website of magazine PCPro they've put together a guide to HD-playback on a netbook. Most netbooks, including nearly every netbook built before the end of 2009, isn't well suited for HD playback. Despite the hardware limitations, however, you can, with the proper codec, play HD video on your netbook.

The crux of their setup is a combination of Media Player Classic Home Cinema and CoreCodec's CoreAVC codec. Media Player Classic is free, but CoreAVC will run you $10. We know $10 isn't free, but we've used CoreAVC to help older computers function as media centers without getting crushed by HD-playback and we definitely think it worth $10. Especially when you note the playback time PCPro was squeezing out of their netbook battery with it:

And if you're concerned what HD playback is going to do your netbook's battery life, you might just be pleasantly surprised. We took one of the latest Pine Trail netbooks lying around the PC Pro office and with screen brightness set to maximum and 802.11n enabled, found that 90 minutes of looping a 720P trailer only sapped about 25% of our battery. Turn off wireless and drop the brightness a little and you'd probably be able to get through 3 or 4 movies before running out of juice: perfect for those boring, long-haul flights.

Check out the full article at PCPro to see how they configure the codec and player for maximum efficiency. Have a tip or trick for better media playback on a netbook? Let's hear about it in the comments.

How-To Play HD Video on a Netbook [PCPro]

If your workplace or school's extra-restrictive internet filter has you pulling your hair out during the occasional browsing break, there's hope! Here's a quick look at how to get around heavy-handed browser restrictions with the open-source PHProxy.
Back in January we pointed you toward PHProxy, along with some instructions for setting it up on a web server; fact is, most people don't actually have access to a web server to run something like PHProxy. The solution: Install a local web server on your home computer, then run PHProxy from there. Setting one up is actually a lot easier than you may think.

A quick crash course on proxy servers: Let's say your dastardly workplace blocks you from reading Lifehacker. Many web filters block web sites based on URLs, so if Lifehacker were blocked, the filter would recognize the URL http://lifehacker.com and automatically block any connection. A proxy acts as a go-between for your browser and the web site you want to access, and as far as the web filter can tell, the proxy-employing user isn't visiting Lifehacker—she's visiting whatever the URL is for the proxy. And since we're setting PHProxy on your home computer, chances are slim that the web filter will block your home IP address (or URL, which we'll talk about more below).

When you're done here, you should be able to access restricted sites from anywhere by routing your requests through your home computer. First I'll explain how to install a local web server on your computer (for Windows and then Mac users), then explain how to install and use PHProxy from there, and finally I'll walk you through how to access your newly minted local proxy server easily from any other computer.

Download and Unzip PHProxy
Regardless of your OS of choice, the first step is easy: Head over to SourceForge and download PHProxy, then unzip your download to a folder and name that folder phproxy. Put it in a safe place, and we'll get back to it later.

Install a Local Web Server on Your Windows PC
In order to run PHProxy on your home computer, you'll need to install a local web server. You've got lots of options for doing this, but probably none easier than just downloading and installing WAMP—which stands for Windows (your operating system), Apache (the web server), MySQL (a database, which PHProxy won't actually use), and PHP (the popular programming language, which PHProxy is named for and written in).

Once you've downloaded WAMP, go ahead and run through the installer. It's a pretty basic install, and when you're done, launch the WAMP system tray application. After you do, you'll notice a new icon in your system tray (it's the one that looks like a speedometer). WAMP's running, but it's still not turned on. To put WAMP online, left-click the system tray icon and click Put Online.

Now, to verify that everything's working, left-click the WAMP icon in the system tray again and click Localhost—or just point your browser to http://localhost/. If all's well, your browser should load a page that looks like the one below.

Good work—you now officially have a web server up and running on your PC. You can skip the Mac section and head straight to the section on installing PHProxy to your server.

Install a Local Web Server on Your Mac
Above, Windows users installed a web server bundle called WAMP—in which the 'W' stood for Windows. Mac users, appropriately, have MAMP—Mac, Apache (the web server), MySQL (a database that you won't actually be using), and PHP (a popular web programming language after which PHProxy is named). So go download MAMP (it's a hefty 156MB download) and install it to your Applications folder (make sure you install the free version and not the Pro version).

Now it's time to fire up MAMP. Open the MAMP folder you dragged to your Applications folder, then double-click MAMP.app to launch it. On this first run, click the Preferences button in MAMP, click Ports, and then click the Set to default Apache and MySQL ports button. Hit OK (enter your password to confirm), then point your browser to http://localhost/ (or http://localhost/MAMP/ if you want to see the MAMP landing page). If everything's working as it should you should see a page called "Index of /" at localhost, or the page below if you go to the MAMP URL.

Good work, you're officially running a local web server on your Mac. Now to PHProxy.

Install PHProxy on Your Server
Now we want to install PHProxy on your server. I'm using "install" pretty loosely here; assuming you've already downloaded and unzipped PHProxy to a folder named phproxy, all you really need to do is copy that folder to the root directory of your local web server.

To find your server's root directory on Windows, just click the WAMP system tray icon and click www directory (which, on my Windows 7 installation, is located at C:\wamp\www\. Inside this folder you should see a file called index.php—that's the page that loaded when you pointed your browser to http://localhost/ above. Now simply take the phproxy folder you unzipped PHProxy to above and drag it directly inside the www folder.

Mac users, the MAMP root directory is located inside the MAMP folder at /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/. Likewise, just open that folder and copy the phproxy folder to it.

And... there you have it-you've officially installed PHProxy. To make sure it worked, point your browser to http://localhost/phproxy/. You should see the page below.

(Click the image above for a closer look.)

To test it further, all you have to do is type or paste the URL you want to visit into the web address input box and hit Enter. Below you can see me visiting Lifehacker through my PHProxy installation.

(Click the image above for a closer look.)

Depending on what your web filter is blocking, you can tweak the way PHProxy works—you can show or block images, allow or reject cookies and scripts, encode the URL you're visiting into a string that's complete gibberish, and more. Handy, huh?

Set Up Port Forwarding and a Friendly URL
At this point PHProxy should be working fine from your home computer, which is all well and good, but now we need to make it easy for you to access your local PHProxy installation from outside your home. To do so, we're going to have to set up port forwarding, then optionally we'll give your PHProxy server a friendly URL.

Set Up Port Forwarding on Your Router: When you try to communicate with your home computer from outside your local network, the request first has to go through your router—which then identifies which computer the request is intended for and sends it on its merry way. When you're running a web server on your home computer, other computers looking to communicate with that server will try communicating with it on port 80 (you don't really need to know what any of that means; web servers generally communicate on port 80, and that's what browsers try to access by default). So when your router receives a request on port 80, you need to tell it that those requests should be forwarded to your local PHProxy server.

Rather than detail the entire process, I'll point you toward our previous guide to accessing a home server behind a router/firewall. All routers are a little different, and that's a general guide, so if you want more specifics, try visiting PortForward.com, selecting your specific router model, and finding the instructions for setting up port forwarding with Apache (the web server).

If you've successfully set up port forwarding, you should now be able to access your home server by visiting your network's external IP address (this is the single address that identifies your home to all the other computers on the internet). Quickly point your browser to What Is My IP and copy the series of numbers following "Your IP Address Is:", paste that into your browser's address box, and hit Enter. If everything went according to plan above, your browser should now load up your local server. Add /phproxy/ to the end of your IP address and you should see the PHProxy homepage. Smooth.

Now that your web server is accessible to the outside world, you don't want to let just anyone access it, so at this point it's a good idea to password protect your server. We've already been down this road before, too, so rather than explain it all here, head to step three in our guide to setting up a personal home web server. (For a little extra help generating the necessary password files, I also like web site Htaccess Tools.)

Set Up a Friendly URL: You could stop at that point, but that series of numbers that makes up your IP address isn't all that friendly, and in fact, if your ISP assigns you a dynamic IP, it could change regularly. Luckily you can assign a friendly domain name to your home proxy server for free using DynDNS.com, a process that we've detailed in the past.

By assigning a domain name to your home server, you can create an easy-to-remember URL like mycrazyproxy.selfip.com, rather than typing in 76.189.XX.XXX every time you want to access your home server.

A Few PHProxy Pointers
PHProxy is an excellent tool, but you should also be aware of the concessions you're making when using it. For example, you should expect your browsing experience to slow down considerably when you're browsing through your home proxy. Remember, your requests are being routed through your home proxy server every step of the way, which puts a rather slow middleman (your home network) between you and the web sites you want to access.

Also, while PHProxy works like a charm for most plain old browsing, it can be tricky when it comes time to log into some web sites. For example, I could log into Twitter without any issues, and I was able to get to the static HTML version of my Gmail account and Facebook, but—though I was able to log in—I had trouble viewing either until I told PHProxy to remove scripts. In fact, I found that removing scripts was a good step whenever I had trouble with sites I wanted to log into.

[…]

Whether you call it a huge privacy flaw or just an annoyance, Google Buzz can put the contacts you automatically follow—a.k.a. those you most frequently email or chat—on a public profile page. Here's how to undo that.
Google Blogoscoped's Philipp Lenssen felt he had to avoid following certain Buzz contacts, as he didn't want to expose his social circle to the wider net. He's right—if you have a Google Profile, once you set up Buzz, those you're following, and those following you, are shown on your profile page in a right-hand link list.

Update: This might not apply if you haven't touched much inside Buzz, or haven't set up a Google Profile, or that Profile is set to be hidden from the public. If so, you're mostly in the clear. But keep in mind that, once you post to Buzz, your profile will likely be created, and you'll want to know what's getting put up on the web.

To turn this off, sign into your Google account (via Gmail or elsewhere) and head to your Google profile—that link should work if you're signed in. Look for the two links showing "Following X people" and "X people following me." There's a gray note underneath those numbers, indicating whether they're visible to just you or to everyone.

If they're visible to everyone, hit the "Edit Profile" link on the right-hand edge of the blue bar in the middle of the page, to the right of "About me," "Buzz," and "Contact info." In the third column of options there, there are checkboxes that control privacy features, and one of them is labeled "Display the list of people I'm following and people following me." Un-check that box, and now your list of followers and followees is private—or at least seen only by those you're following, perhaps.

Want Google Buzz gone entirely? Log into Gmail, then look at the bottom of your inbox page for a "Turn off Buzz" link. If you're mainly annoyed at Buzz's constant, um, buzzing, read up on removing Buzz updates from your inbox.

This tip came courtesy of Contributing Editor Lisa, who was similarly shocked to see Google dropping everyone's frequently-contacted names on the net. If you've found a similarly crucial privacy tweak for Buzz, tell us about it in the comments.

Windows only: LookInMyPC generates a complete report of what's going on in a computer—from hardware to software, and everything in between. After playing around with it, this writer wouldn't start troubleshooting a PC without it. I'm not kidding.
Whether you're a tech guru who knows your way around your computer better than the company that built it, or a novice just getting acquainted with your system, LookInMyPC is a free app you'll want to download and run at least once, even before you need its diagnostic help. It's like a big verbal X-Ray of your PC, detailing everything from the brand of network adapter you have to the number of user accounts on your system.

Everything that a LookInMyPC report generates can already be found in your computer's accessible files if you know where to look, but this utility makes it so much easier. Just open the system inspector and tick the boxes to select all or some of the more than 40 diagnostic checks you want it to perform. Seconds later, you'll have a long report outlining every detail LookInMyPC ferreted out for you. Stash it in a drawer with your computer's owner's manual for a fast and handy reference sheet the next time you need to know what brand sound card you have or what the specs are on your processor.

LookInMyPC is also a great tool for diagnosing computer issues, especially if you're troubleshooting an unfamiliar computer. Instead of spending time poking around your uncle's PC to figure out basic system information, just generate a general report with memory and operating system information, then get down to business. Once you have a feel for what issues you're trying to correct, you can generate more specific reports like Registry Run Entries or Firewall Info. LookInMyPC even gives you data on Windows updates, recent System Restores, and the default email client.

The utility won't make any changes to your system at all, no matter what issues it identifies. The reports open up in a browser window and many of the results—like system hardware vendors and application names—are hyperlinked so you can quickly Google-search things you don't recognize.

One really nice touch that's included in this app is the ability to generate a report that automatically turns itself into a ZIP file and emails it to the address of the user's choice. That's a huge help when you get a distress call from a relative who wants you to troubleshoot his computer remotely.

LookInMyPC is designed to work with Windows 2000, 2003, XP, and Vista, but we ran it on Windows 7 with no issues. Pair this app with screencasting webapp ShowMeWhatsWrong and you'll be the neighborhood PC go-to person in record time. What apps and tools are already in your troubleshooting toolkit? Know of a similar solution, like previously mentioned SIW? Tell us in the comments.

LookInMyPC [via Addictive Tips]

E-book readers are popular for reading digital books, but they've got their limitations. If you have a netbook, you already have a powerful and virtually unrestricted portable e-book reader on your hands. You just need to know how to set it up.
(Photo remixed from nDevilTV and austinevan.)

Dedicated e-book readers do have certain things going for them; they're very light weight, have long-lasting batteries, and their digital, e-ink screens are easy-on-the-eyes. A big negative mark against them—in the minds of most geeks at least—is how dreadfully locked down they are. You can't tweak them, modify them, or use them as you see fit. Netbooks, by default of being an unrestricted personal computer capable of running any applications or reading any formats you care to throw at them, suffer from no such shortcoming. The following guide will help you turn your netbook into a comfortable e-book reader that—while it may not be as ultra lightweight and battery-friendly as a Kindle—will be infinitely more flexible.

Physical Tweaks and Tricks

Rotate The Screen: The tiny widescreen format of the netbook is, in the traditional orientation, terrible for reading e-books. It's squatty and doesn't do a very good job displaying large amounts of text at one time. Holding the netbook sideways in your hands like a book is the ideal way to maximize the screen real estate and read it comfortably.

Depending on your graphics chip and drivers, you may be able to rotate the screen orientation without any additional software by simply pressing CTRL+ALT+Left Arrow or CTRL+ALT+Right Arrow. While it's great to have a built-in solution without installing any additional software, it's a less than ideal solution. The built-in screen-rotation trick works great for desktop computers where you might be rotating a widescreen monitor into a portrait position, but it's not so handy on a netbook or laptop where the orientation of the keyboard and trackpad changes with the orientation of the physical screen.

Fortunately a lightweight solution exists. EeeRotate is a tiny application that combines the rotation of your screen and the rotation of the touchpad at the same time using a single shortcut. Once EeeRotate is installed pressing CTRL+ALT+Right Arrow rotates the screen and touchpad 270 degrees and CTRL+ALT+Up Arrow returns it to normal.

EeeRotate is a must have application for setting up your netbook as an e-book reader and we'd advise downloading it before proceeding.

Adjust The Screen Brightness: You should decrease the screen brightness to the lowest setting you can comfortably read it at. Not only will you extend your battery life but you'll decrease the strain on your eyes. One of the strong selling points of stand-alone e-book readers is that their digital ink screens aren't back lit and can be read under the same conditions that you would read a regular book.

If your netbook has the ability to turn off the back light altogether you can try it out. Your experience with no back light can vary wildly though. With my Asus netbook I can read it comfortably in direct sunlight just like I would read a Kindle but anything less than full and direct sunshine makes the back-light-off setting completely useless.

Use a Special Power Saving Mode: Reading a document for an extended period of time on your netbook requires little to not effort on behalf of the computer. You can maximize your netbook's battery life as an e-book reader by setting up a special power saving mode just for the times you're using it as an e-book reader. Just switching it to the maximum power-saving mode won't cut it, putting your netbook in maximum power save usually has featured not conducive to reading like shutting the screen off after short periods of inactivity.

Your netbook may have an advanced power manager installed, but to quickly tweak the power settings in Windows you'll want to open up the Power Options menu. Right click on the battery icon in your system tray or look under Settings -> Power Management. You'll want to tweak your power settings so that the monitor never turns off, the hard disks spin down after 5 minutes—once you load an e-book to read it's in the memory of the computer and you won't likely need to do any heavy hard disk accessing—and set the system to never go into standby mode. With the brightness turned down and the hard disk kept quiet, you should be able to squeeze out quite a bit of reading time.

Setting Up E-Book Software
What e-book software you end up using is entirely a matter of personal preference, and the dealbreaker might be as tiny as what key is closest to your thumb when holding the netbook in a comfortable position and what that key does—turns the page, pages down, etc—in a particular e-book application. With that in mind, we'd urge you give each of the following free applications a test drive to see which one is the most comfortable option for your netbook, how you hold it, and your reading style.

Kindle for PC (Windows, Free):
I'm highlighting the Kindle for PC software first for only one reason. If you want to semi-recreate the experience of having a Kindle without actually buying a dedicated Kindle, you can install Kindle for PC on your netbook. Unless you absolutely want that experience we can see no reason at all to install Kindle for PC. You cannot manage your personal library of e-books and documents with Kindle for PC, so you're essentially importing the experience of having a DRM-locked down Kindle onto your netbook. If you have a lot of e-books already and don't have a relationship with Amazon as your e-book provider, Kindle for PC was a no-go right out of the gate for me.

Calibre (Windows/Mac/Linux, Free):
Calibre is an open-source solution for not just reading e-books and other portable document formats but also organizing them in a meticulous fashion. Calibre isn't just a great option for viewing e-books in a vertical orientation on your netbook; it's a great option for organizing your collection, downloading news to read on your netbook-turned-e-book reader, and even syncing your collection to actual e-book readers if you decide to invest in one later on. Calibre supports nearly every portable document format out there, although less common formats like the CBR comic book container format require conversion—Calibre handles all the conversion in-program.

Mobipocket Reader Desktop (Windows, Free):
Mobipocket Reader has a similar layout to iTunes and gives you a more Kindle-like experience on the Netbook than the actual Kindle for PC software can provide. Where the Kindle for PC software falls flat and Calibre shines with organization, Mobipocket Reader stands out for having all the neat annotation, bookmarking, and interface tweaking aspects you find in the Kindle Reader but brought to Windows without all the DRM-hassle. If you've been pining for a Kindle but find the Kindle for PC experience to be lacking, it's worth checking out Mobipocket Reader for a bells-and-whistles portable reader. If you fall in love with Mobipocket Reader Desktop on your netbook you'll be pleased to know you can get versions for your Blackberry, Windows Mobile phone, Symbian phones, Palm, and several dedicated e-book devices.

You can, of course, use just about any software you want as long as it can run on your OS and works when the orientation of the screen is rotated—good luck with Adobe Reader! We couldn't get most e-books to display correctly once rotated—which is the beauty of using a netbook over a hardware and firmware-locked dedicated e-book reader.

The above tools will get you started with enjoying e-books on your netbook in a more pleasing orientation and format. If you have a favorite reader or tool for making e-book consumption on your netbook comfortable, we'd love to hear about it in the comments.

Windows: If you want to print a large image off your home printer and be able to reassemble it, it takes some enormous photo editing cut 'n crop patience—or a copy of Easy Poster Printer.
Photo by Paulo Barcellos Jr..

Easy Poster Printer works on a simple principle: your image is divided into sections and fed to your printer chunk by chunk so the end result is a stack of segments that can be reassembled into the large image. The process is commonly known as tiled-printing or rasterbation. You can use online services to create tiled images such as previously reviewed The Rasterbator and Block Posters. Both are great services but they don't allow you the level of customization afforded by Easy Poster Printer and they require you to upload your image and thus have less control over it and less privacy.

Easy Poster Printer lets you tweak the size of the final image, the orientation of the image, the paper used, the print quality, and how much overlap there will be between images for clean border-free alignment. The default set of page sizes is all metric but you can easily add in your own imperial paper sizes—and since you'll likely not be using anything other than 8.5x11 and 11x17, it's not much of a chore to manually enter the sizes.

Easy Poster Printer is freeware, Windows only. Have a favorite tool for getting more out of your printer? Let's hear about it in the comments.

Easy Poster Printer [via gHacks]

Sometimes the most interesting stuff in an unfamiliar city is hiding in plain sight. With the right location-aware and map-friendly web tools, you can find the best cheap eats, picture-worthy sights, and much more. Start with this list of in-the-know apps.
Photo by epicharmus.

We've previously taken an example tour around Austin, TX with tools to find the best spots in new cities, some of which are detailed here, as well. For this list's sake, we'll assume you're familiar with the most popular local search tools, like Yelp, UrbanSpoon, and, well, Google and Google Maps. Beyond those tools, we wanted to provide a list of less well-known sites and services that pin down stuff you might not know about that is right around the corner.

10. See what pads are for rent or sale
There are plenty of webapps that let you cherry-pick apartments for rent and homes for sale from the comfort of your monitor at home. If you're right in the perfect neighborhood and want to know what's up, you've got other options. Realtor.com's iPhone app is the newest entrant to the game, but has, as you might expect, quite a database to pull from. HotPads.com has a similar location-aware app for Android phones, one that can also provide turn-by-turn directions to any listing you pluck out. Real estate data and "Zestimate" provider Zillow has an iPhone app too, but can also work from any phone with its very minimalist text interface. For more apartment-specific tools, head over to our readers' five favorite apartment search tools. (Original posts: Realtor.com, Zillow mobile)

9. Find photo-worthy sites with Flickr
I use Flickr mainly to find the food that people feel is worth embarrassing their table enough to take a picture of, but the photo-sharing site's nearby photo finder helps you discover sights and locations you never knew about, right around the corner from where you are. You can simply search Flickr for your location ("Chicago"), find a neat-looking photo and add /nearby to the photo's URL, or you can hit the "Map" link on any photo that has its location tagged. (Original post)

8. Snag a comfortable Wi-Fi spot
If all you want is a connection, we've got you covered. Gina's definitive guide to finding free Wi-Fi recommends such tools as WeFi and JiWire, along with other means of hopping on the net from almost anywhere. If you want somewhere you'll actually enjoy being with your laptop, LaptopFriendlyCafes.com covers 104 spots in New York City (and a scant few shops elsewhere), or type "laptop" or "wi-fi" into local review aggregator Yelp and see what comes up.

7. See what's listed nearby on Craigslist
Having a good handle on the Craigslist listings for the area you're in is like knowing someone who's always up in everybody's business—and knows where all the deals and low-key events are happening. Craigsphone for iPhone and Android phones does a great job of reformatting Craigslist for mobile viewing, calling, and mapping; in NYC and San Francisco's Bay Area, it can even show you what's close to your exact location. If you're elsewhere and want updates on items or apartments up for grabs, check out our classic Craigslist for power users guide, which explains how to make RSS feeds your always alert friend. (Original Craigsphone post)

6. Find things to do on Goby
If you have time before you head out, either on a trip or in your neighborhood, hit up your local alternative weekly's web site or newspaper's entertainment guide. If you're looking for a quicker glance, listing and calendar aggregator Goby does a notably good job of rounding up everything that's listed as a public or paid even in and around a location. Most of the stuff tends toward high-profile events and family-friendly happenings, but that might be perfect for that one rained-out vacation day in an otherwise sunny city. (Original post)

5. Catch an awesome concert
Unless you're married to, or best friends with, a concert promoter, you're going to have a few moments every year where you'll hear about an awesome show by a band you're digging at a neat venue—last week. Not so if you sign up at Bandsintown, or grab its iPhone app, both of which can keep you in the know about shows coming to your town, or whatever you consider a reasonable driving distance. Music streaming and discovery service Last.fm can also email you about shows from its vast database of artists happening nearby, and there is, of course, always signing up for notifications at your truly favorite artists' web sites. Just be sure to create a smart Gmail filter to keep the "NEW EP OUT SOON!" emails from cluttering your inbox. (Original Bandsintown post)

4. Learn what's around the corner with Near Me Now
Google's not the first entrant into the geo-location game, but the new "Near Me Now" link on its mobile home page is notable for being quick, simple, and not requiring a separate app to access (it's all web-based). It's out right now for iPhone and Android phones, but we hope it expands soon, as the pleasure of finding out scads of info about all the restaurants on the street you're facing, with the click of a link, belongs on every phone. (Original post)

3. Find great eats and drinks on semi-snobby boards
Sites and apps that offer restaurant reviews often suffer from overstuffed and not-quite-trustworthy data. A great, authentic Somali restaurant might get only one single-star review from an eater expecting something different, while a sugary-sauced Chinese joint might get a high volume of three-star ratings because, well, it's always open. Visit the forums of foodie sites like Chow/Chowhound, eGullet, and Roadfood.com, do a search for your town, and see what people serious enough to sign up for a site named "Chowhound" and the like are saying. For a tall pint of great beer, try Beer Advocate's forums.

2. See streets in augmented reality
Remember how the Terminator could pull up information on anything he saw, as he saw it? With an iPhone or Android unit, you are (scarily?) close to that reality. Apps like augmented reality browser Layar for iPhones and Androids, and the "Monocle" in the Yelp iPhone app use your phone's camera, GPS chip, and motion/balance sensors to take what you're looking at, pull down the web's knowledge about it, and bring it back to you. Yelp shows businesses that have been reviewed by somebody, anybody, while Layar is the true walking tour app. You choose which "layers" to add to your view, like Wikipedia mentions, Flickr photos, real estate listings, and Google Maps listings. It's like having someone back at your computer meticulously research everything you're seeing and feed it to you, but you don't have to wear a Secret-Service-style earpiece to do so. (Original posts: Yelp, Layar)

1. Pin down the cheap stuff
Need to fill up, but feel like you're about to pay tourist-trap prices? Down to just pocket change and an inch of credit-card space? The new classic GasBuddy is always reliable, but MSN Auto's overnight gas price finder has earned kudos, too. For cheap food and drinks, give Cheap-Ass Food a look, and give MappyHour a peek for drink specials. If you're looking for a way to spend some time without having to eat, drink, or drop much cash, DiscountYeti finds free museum days and other local discounts and maps them out for you. (Original posts: cheap eats, gas prices).

Check the comments in our previousl feature on local spot finding for more tips and tools, and drop your own recommendations for living like a local in the comments.

Want a wall-sized satellite view of your neighborhood? A full-page street map of the town you're visiting? Google Map Buddy, a free, portable map maker, grabs data from Google Maps and arranges it exactly how you want it.
When you un-zip and run Google Map Buddy, it asks you to choose your Google Map nationality, then opens a browser to let you search out the location you're looking at. Once you get there, hit "Select area," then draw a rectangle around the area you want to capture. After fine-tuning the zoom level and hitting "Create Map Image," Map Buddy goes to work grabbing, tile by tile, your area's map. It generates a generally high-resolution PNG of your area, and provides the individual map tiles to keep and arrange yourself into a larger grid, if you'd like.

The software itself can be described as "picky"—you have to "X" out any particular business or destination that pops up in a dialog box on the map, and after zooming in on the Google Map browser to your destination, Map Buddy asks you for a deeper zoom level than what you've already set. So it's not an elegant tool, exactly, but it does deliver the very printable, full-picture map of your destination.

Map Buddy is a free download for Windows systems only, and doesn't require installation.

The Google Map Buddy [Augmented Reality Software via The Red Ferret Journal]

If you're looking for a way to organize all the information you find and research you do online, and you've had enough with bookmarking, copying and pasting, and cobbled-together techniques not cutting it, Zotero is a comprehensive information manager for Firefox.
Zotero is, at its heart, a citation manager. It was designed to facilitate research and to make organizing and including that research in essays and publications pain free. As such, it's an excellent tool for any scholar, researcher, or student to have in their toolbox. Its utility extends well beyond preparing to write a paper, however, as it allows you to grab nearly anything off the web and insert it into the Zotero system. The following video gives a quick overview of some of Zotero's features:

If the overview video caught your interest, read on and check out some of the other great screencasts to see the individual features in action.

Getting Items in Zotero

You can add items in a myriad of ways to Zotero. From within Firefox, just click the Zotero icon in the address bar, on the status bar, or hit CTRL+ALT+Z to activate Zotero. You can add nearly everything on the web from books—Zotero will add in all the information about the book automatically—to highlighted portions of web pages, to full out saving entire web pages for future reference. Unlike bookmarking a web page, Zotero saves the page just like you would save it to your computer. Thus when you go to reference it later on, even if it has moved or been deleted, you still have the images and text archived. In addition to capturing information from the web, you can supplement your Zotero archive by adding files right from your computer like images, HTML documents, PDFs, and more.

Organizing Your Research

Zotero allows you to organize your research into collections. The collections are highly flexible and an item can belong to multiple collections simultaneously. They use the analogy of the playlist—and it's fitting—you can "mix" your research into as many collections as you need. Your Zotero library is the master collection of all your research, and from that research you can pull citations, clippings, PDFs and so on, and create a collection representing your current area of interest or research like "19th Century Medieval Literary Criticism" or "Potential Markets for Growth". Collections are easily modified and even shared.

Word Processor Compatibility and Citations
Although Zotero was built to facilitate researchers using Firefox and working on the web, the system—through the use of plug-ins—allows you to work in your favorite word processor using Zotero. They've made plug-ins for Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, and NeoOffice. If word processor support is a deal breaker for you, make sure to check out their word processor compatibility chart. Check out the Word integration in the video below:

As the video shows, inserting citations and even changing them in-text is easy. You're not just limited to citations in word processors however, you can drag and drop citations right from Zotero into any text box. Zotero comes with a built-in library of common citation formats like AMA, APA, Chicago Style, MLA—over a dozen by default. If that isn't enough you can dip into the style repository and select from hundreds of alternative citations styles. On the rare chance you can't find a citation style—and it would be rare!—you can hop over to the Zotero support forum and put in a request that they add it to the archive.

Syncing Your Research and Files

Nobody wants to lug around a computer or flash drive and risk losing all the research they've done. Zotero has multiple channels for syncing your data to ensure your research is safe. Zotero syncs itself to the servers, if you have it installed on multiple computers you can sync all the instances of Zotero through the Zotero servers, and to further replicate your data you can share it with friends through the Zotero group system so that your joint research is stored across multiple computers.

Zotero is a complex yet easy to manage research tool. Fully intended for academic research, you can use it outside of academia to manage your research on any topic from nearly any source on the web. Our overview here highlights some of the best features of Zotero, but a quick browse through the support section on Zotero's web site will show you even more capabilities and innovative ways people are using Zotero to help wrestle with the enormous amount of information web-based research provides.

If you have experience with Zotero or just have a research tip or trick up your sleeve, let's hear about it in the comments.

Freelancing isn't something you should just jump into, but it makes sense for a good number of workers. If you're looking into, or getting started with, working on your own, here are 10 resources we think every freelancer can learn from.
Photo by Mat Honan, who is himself a freelancer.

10. Make your schedule family-friendly
If you're going to have to entirely ignore your kids and family when you're working at home, you might as well head into the office. Career columnist and Wall Street Journal writer Alexandra Levit offered up six tips for working parents to spend more time parenting. They were aimed at anyone with a job, but freelancers certainly have an easier time of shifting their schedules back and ahead, taking web meetings instead of traveling for in-person summits, and involving their children in their work. Photo by Amit Chattopadhyay.

9. Do it without quitting your day job
Why freelance on the side instead of full time? The taxes are a lot more simple, the income a bit more stable, and, best of all, your day-to-day job provides you with countless opportunities to meet and greet future clients and referral helpers. That's assuming your side gig is kosher with your boss, of course, but if you want to test the waters of selling yourself on the freelance market, do it without quitting your job.

8. Use discounts to get paid on time
Becoming your own Accounts Payable department is new to most freelancers, and not very fun. If you run into clients who are hesitant to pay on time, or leave you on the hook waiting for their next order, try offering a discount or repeat business incentives, as suggested by Web Worker Daily. Give clients a 5 percent discount if they pay within, say, 24 or 48 hours of invoice shipment, or whatever you consider prompt—the cash value is almost certainly worth the time you'll spend tracking it down and worrying. If clients make you wait forever for their next order, offer a coupon or discount after receiving payment on a gig, giving them a small bit off if they place another order within a certain time frame. It's easy for small businesses to lose track of freelance people, but they tend to pay attention to dollars and cents. (Original post)

7. Track your work and generate invoices simultaneously
The web is full of freelancers and contractors, and many of them have created better systems for tracking time and sending bills. There are too many free or "freemium" services to try and compile into one list, but, hey, let's throw out a few. MakeSomeTime is simple, CurdBee handles everything up to the Google Checkout/PayPal payment screen for clients, FreshBooks covers a lot of different aspects of billing, Toggl is a great second-by-second live tracker, and BlinkSale has been generating crisp-looking invoices for years. Any of them are worth checking out, and probably fit the bill better than a gigundo spreadsheet. (Original post)

6. Know what you can write off
If you're starting to get actual, notable income from your freelance work, the first thing you should do is find someone who knows how to handle the taxes of independent contractors. Gina proved the value of a good accountant in her human versus TurboTax.com showdown, but noted that an experienced filer could probably make due with the tax software solution. The Freelance Switch blog also offers 10 easy-to-miss freelancer deductions, like coffeeshop meetings, unpaid invoices, and gig hunting expenses, that any independent worker would do well to look into. (Original post)

5. Find more work
Cold calling is not fun, and if you think it might be, watch Glengarry Glen Ross again. A good lead comes from knowing where people are looking. FreelanceSwitch has compiled a monster list of freelance job sites, though some of them are going to be hired-gun-type, low-paying grunt work. On the other hand, a 10-minute call to your clients can get you all kinds of results you weren't even looking for. (Original post)

4. Track your pitches with a custom spreadsheet
Who should you call with a reminder that you're available, and who needs a quick follow-up on a pitch? Those are questions you should have answers for. Web Worker Daily's Celine Rogue explains how to set up a spreadsheet with drop-down choosers, collated data, and other tools to become a great pitch, client, and job tracker. Half of life is just showing up, after all, and some extra percentage is knowing exactly where and when to be present with an offer. (Original post)

3. Get into the estimated tax groove
If you don't cover the tax burden throughout the year of not having an employer to deduct social security, unemployment, and other taxes for you, the month of April will truly be the cruelest. Read how our own self-employed readers set aside money for estimated tax payments four times each year (or in other installments), and read how Gina automates her finances to always have the money on hand, even when her income is very variable.

2. Learn your legalese
Besides having to learn the basics of contracts and work rules, freelancers should try to grab the basics of selling and regulating resalable (and different) stock work, as well as know how to stand their ground on copyright, fair use, and Creative Commons. It is, in short, not enough to simply create cool things—you have to know how to shepherd them through the cloudy worlds of commerce and the web these days. Photo by MikeBlogs. (Original posts: legal resources, stock work).

1. Determine your hourly rate
Not every contract will rely on hourly rates, but you'd best be prepared to offer a price if someone asks. The general advice is to aim slightly higher than you figure you should really charge, because you will always, always aim low when you're determining the time and administrative costs of getting the job done. If you want a more concrete number to base your rate on, try FreelanceSwitch's hourly rate calculator, which takes your office and supply costs, experience, and other factors into account. (Original post)

If you're an established freelancer, what apps, tools, or advice did you find truly helpful when starting out? If you're still green at working for yourself, what do you need the most help with? Swap the tips and stories in the comments.

Last summer we detailed how to crack a Wi-Fi network's WEP password using BackTrack. Now video blog Tinkernut revisits the subject with a great video step-by-step of the process.
Before you go calling the cops or putting on your bank robber mask, a helpful reminder from our original post:

Knowledge is power, but power doesn't mean you should be a jerk, or do anything illegal. Knowing how to pick a lock doesn't make you a thief. Consider this post educational, or a proof-of-concept intellectual exercise.

BackTrack has also updated to version 4 since we last featured it, but the process appears to have remained basically the same. The interesting thing about BackTrack is how easy it is to crack a WEP-encrypted network, which serves as a very good reminder to use WPA encryption to significantly boost your home network security.

How To Hack Wireless [Tinkernut]