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"Flickr Bikes" Photo-Map Locales Across the Globe

Date: Monday, 15 Sep 2008 16:00

For their new "Purple Pedals" campaign, Yahoo has dispatched a handful of GPS-enabled bicycles equipped with cameraphones that automatically shoot and upload photos to Flickr to riders in cities all over the world, from San Francisco to New York and soon, to Singapore, Denmark and the U.K.. The bikes come with solar panels which power the camera, and special software that uses the phone's accelerometer to snap photos every 60 seconds automatically when the bike is in motion. I was one of the lucky folks to get my hands on one of these bikes, and I've been riding it all over San Diego for over a week now. Let's take a look at how the bike works, how it was made, and how you can turn your handlebars into a tripod and photo-map your neighborhood in similar fashion.

The Anatomy of the Flickr Bike

The Flickr bikes have two main components: a waterproof, rotating cameraphone housing mounted to the handlebars, and the solar panels and a control panel for charging the bike behind the seat.

Here's what the cameraphone housing looks like up close. You can rotate the housing backwards 180 degrees to take a photo of yourself (upside down) while you're riding, and simply turn your wheel to pan left or right. Inside there's a Nokia N95 cameraphone with a custom Python script which fires off the shutter every 60 seconds while the phone's accelerometer detects that you're in motion, and uploads the resulting photo with geotags to the bike's Flickr account.

The handlebars provide stability for the camera, and since this bike is more of a cruiser than a racer, the photos come out quite good—not at all blurry. When you flip up the solar panels on the box behind the seat, you can see the bike's Control Panel, where you power it on, set it in "charge" or "ride" mode, or pull out an electrical plug to charge it in a pinch.

Say hello to the bike's Control Panel.

A whole team of designers and engineers got together to custom-build the Flickr bikes. To see more on how they came together, check out a series of short "Making of" videos. Here's the first installment.

See the rest of the Flickr bike "Making of" videos here.

The Photos and Map

Once the bike is charged and ready to roll, you just get on and start riding. A small shutter light on the back of the camera housing illuminates every minute to show the rider when it's taking a picture. Automatically, with no intervention at all, the phone uploads the photos it takes to Flickr in the background as you ride, mapping your path almost real-time. Here's my bike's Flickr account, and here's a map of a leisurely ride I took around Mission Bay yesterday here in San Diego.

Here's the full map of my bike's rides so far. Check out a slideshow of the bike's photos here: Keep track of more Flickr bikes as they ride around cities near you:

Billyburg's Bike (New York, NY)
Amit's Bike and FlickrHQ's Bike (San Francisco, CA)
Jessamyn's Bike (Bethel, VT)
Dogseat's Bike (Jersey City, NJ)

Yahoo's official "Start Wearing Purple" site (warning: Flash-heavy, with sound) has a "Purple Pedals" section where you can see where the bikes currently are, how they were made, and even download an owner's manual.

Turn Your Handlebars into a Tripod

After the first day of riding my Flickr bike around town, I was immediately frustrated by my inability to see what the bike's camera could see. While I appreciated the designers' intention to hide the technology and buttons from the rider as much as possible, I still wanted more control. Since the housing covers the cameraphone's screen, there's no way to frame photos as you ride. (Also, while the cameraphone is high-res for a phone, the photos are still not as high-quality as a regular digital camera.) So, to take advantage of all the riding I'd be doing anyway, I mounted my handheld digicam on top of the cameraphone housing with some zip ties. This way when I stop at a particularly scenic place, I can frame the photo using the Canon's screen (which is at the same angle as the cameraphone's lens), and hit the shutter myself. Here's what my DIY camera mount looks like from the front:

And from the back (what I see when I'm riding).

Of course, the handheld cam doesn't shoot or geo-tag automatically. I have to stop to hit the shutter, but it's let me get some much higher-quality shots around town than the cameraphone. If you've got a phone that's compatible with software like Yahoo's ZoneTag, or you're just willing to use a consumer digital camera and geotag your photos yourself when you get home (using something like this quick geo-tagging bookmarklet), you too can turn your handlebars into a tripod and go out and discover your neighborhood. If you put together your own lo-fi version of the Flickr bike, post photos of your setup in the Lifehacker Tip Testers Flickr Group. Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, is having a ball with her Flickr bike. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Monday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

Author: "Gina Trapani" Tags: "Flickr, Bicycles, Cameraphones, Clips, D..."

"Flickr Bikes" Photo-Map Locales Across the Globe

Date: Monday, 15 Sep 2008 16:00

For their new "Purple Pedals" campaign, Yahoo has dispatched a handful of GPS-enabled bicycles equipped with cameraphones that automatically shoot and upload photos to Flickr to riders in cities all over the world, from San Francisco to New York and soon, to Singapore, Denmark and the U.K.. The bikes come with solar panels which power the camera, and special software that uses the phone's accelerometer to snap photos every 60 seconds automatically when the bike is in motion. I was one of the lucky folks to get my hands on one of these bikes, and I've been riding it all over San Diego for over a week now. Let's take a look at how the bike works, how it was made, and how you can turn your handlebars into a tripod and photo-map your neighborhood in similar fashion.

The Anatomy of the Flickr Bike

The Flickr bikes have two main components: a waterproof, rotating cameraphone housing mounted to the handlebars, and the solar panels and a control panel for charging the bike behind the seat.

Here's what the cameraphone housing looks like up close. You can rotate the housing backwards 180 degrees to take a photo of yourself (upside down) while you're riding, and simply turn your wheel to pan left or right. Inside there's a Nokia N95 cameraphone with a custom Python script which fires off the shutter every 60 seconds while the phone's accelerometer detects that you're in motion, and uploads the resulting photo with geotags to the bike's Flickr account.

The handlebars provide stability for the camera, and since this bike is more of a cruiser than a racer, the photos come out quite good—not at all blurry.

When you flip up the solar panels on the box behind the seat, you can see the bike's Control Panel, where you power it on, set it in "charge" or "ride" mode, or pull out an electrical plug to charge it in a pinch.

Say hello to the bike's Control Panel.

A whole team of designers and engineers got together to custom-build the Flickr bikes. To see more on how they came together, check out a series of short "Making of" videos. Here's the first installment.

See the rest of the Flickr bike "Making of" videos here.

The Photos and Map

Once the bike is charged and ready to roll, you just get on and start riding. A small shutter light on the back of the camera housing illuminates every minute to show the rider when it's taking a picture. Automatically, with no intervention at all, the phone uploads the photos it takes to Flickr in the background as you ride, mapping your path almost real-time. Here's my bike's Flickr account, and here's a map of a leisurely ride I took around Mission Bay yesterday here in San Diego.

Here's the full map of my bike's rides so far. Check out a slideshow of the bike's photos here:

Keep track of more Flickr bikes as they ride around cities near you:

Billyburg's Bike (New York, NY)
Amit's Bike and FlickrHQ's Bike (San Francisco, CA)
Jessamyn's Bike (Bethel, VT)
Dogseat's Bike (Jersey City, NJ)

Yahoo's official "Start Wearing Purple" site (warning: Flash-heavy, with sound) has a "Purple Pedals" section where you can see where the bikes currently are, how they were made, and even download an owner's manual.

Turn Your Handlebars into a Tripod

After the first day of riding my Flickr bike around town, I was immediately frustrated by my inability to see what the bike's camera could see. While I appreciated the designers' intention to hide the technology and buttons from the rider as much as possible, I still wanted more control. Since the housing covers the cameraphone's screen, there's no way to frame photos as you ride. (Also, while the cameraphone is high-res for a phone, the photos are still not as high-quality as a regular digital camera.) So, to take advantage of all the riding I'd be doing anyway, I mounted my handheld digicam on top of the cameraphone housing with some zip ties. This way when I stop at a particularly scenic place, I can frame the photo using the Canon's screen (which is at the same angle as the cameraphone's lens), and hit the shutter myself. Here's what my DIY camera mount looks like from the front:

And from the back (what I see when I'm riding).

Of course, the handheld cam doesn't shoot or geo-tag automatically. I have to stop to hit the shutter, but it's let me get some much higher-quality shots around town than the cameraphone.

If you've got a phone that's compatible with software like Yahoo's ZoneTag, or you're just willing to use a consumer digital camera and geotag your photos yourself when you get home (using something like this quick geo-tagging bookmarklet), you too can turn your handlebars into a tripod and go out and discover your neighborhood. If you put together your own lo-fi version of the Flickr bike, post photos of your setup in the Lifehacker Tip Testers Flickr Group.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, is having a ball with her Flickr bike. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Monday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

Author: "Gina Trapani" Tags: "flickr, bicycles, cameraphones, clips, d..."

The Power User's Guide to Google Chrome

Date: Monday, 08 Sep 2008 16:00

Now that you've been enjoying Google Chrome's headliner features and speed for almost a week now, it's time to dig into the less obvious functionality and options you don't already know about. Become a keyboard shortcut master, take a peek under the hood, and customize its behavior and skin with some of the best shortcuts, bookmarklets, themes, add-ons, and subtle functionality in Google Chrome.

What, you don't like Google Chrome? Here, have the power user's guide to Firefox 3.

Mousing Around Chrome

Despite its marketing as a minimalistic browser that forgoes all the extras, Chrome's interface actually sports quite a few useful features. Here are a few that will speed up your browsing with the mouse even more:

Click and hold (or right-click) the Back or Forward button to go directly to a page far behind or forward in your browsing history.
When you've got a URL on your clipboard, right-click Chrome's address bar to Paste and go to your destination (and save yourself an extra tap on the Enter key).
Click and drag any textarea corner to resize it to your liking; great for blog comments, web email, or forums with textareas that aren't big enough to accommodate your masterpiece.
Ctrl+Mousewheel to zoom in or out of pages in Chrome.
Drag and drop downloads out of Chrome's status bar and onto your desktop to save them there, or into any Explorer window to save them there. (You already know you can drag and drop a Chrome tab out into a new window, or back into an existing Chrome window to dock it there.)

Chrome's Keyboard Shortcuts

If you're not much for the mouse, you're in luck: Google Chrome has lots of built-in keyboard shortcuts, many of which mirror Firefox's—so you don't have to retrain your fingers. Here are a few of our favorites:

(Chrome only) Ctrl+B toggles the bookmarks bar on and off.
(Chrome only) Shift+Escape opens Google Chrome's Task Manager.
Ctrl+L to move your cursor to the address bar.
Ctrl+K moves your cursor to the address bar to enter a Google search.
Ctrl+T opens a new tab.
Ctrl+N opens a new window.
Ctrl+Shift+T opens the last closed tab.
(Chrome only) Ctrl+Shift+N opens a new window in "Incognito Mode."
Ctrl+Tab cycles through open tabs; Ctrl+Shift+Tab reverse cycles through open tabs.
Ctrl+J opens the Downloads tab.
Ctrl+W closes the current tab.
Ctrl+R refreshes the current page.
Ctrl+H opens the History tab.
Alt+Home loads your homepage.
Ctrl+1 through 9 switches to a particular open tab position.
Ctrl++, Ctrl+-, Ctrl+0 Enlarges, reduces, and restores default text sizes, respectively.

Tweak Your Options

Hit up Chrome's Options dialog (click on the wrench, and choose Options) to customize Chrome's behavior even more.

Set multiple tab as your home page. While Chrome's default thumbnail page of your most visited sites is pretty cool, you might want to just skip that step and set the browser to open certain tabs every time. Like Firefox, Chrome can set several tabs as your homepage. In the Options' dialog Basics area, under "Open the following pages," enter the URLs.
Open the last session's tabs automatically. Also like Firefox, Chrome can automatically restore the tabs from your last browser session. In that same Options area as above, just select "Restore the pages that were open last."
Add the home button to your toolbar. Chrome's toolbar is pretty sparse by design, but once you've set your homepage(s), you might want to get to them in one click. In the Options dialog's Basics tab, you can also check off "Show Home button on the toolbar."
Set your default Downloads save location. Also in Options—but under the "Minor Tweaks" tab—you can set Chrome's default download location to something other than the "My Documents" folder.

Master Chrome's Startup Switches

Like all good open source software, Chrome comes with a long list of "startup switches"—that is, parameters you can use when you launch the program to customize its behavior. While most of the switches are only useful to developers, a handful let power users do some handy stuff.

Quick primer: To use a startup switch, create a new Chrome shortcut on your desktop (or elsewhere). Right-click it and choose Properties. In the Target field, add the switch in question immediately following the path to chrome.exe. For example, your target using a -disable-java switch might look like:

"C:\Documents and Settings\gina\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" -disable-java

Here are some things you can do with Chrome's startup switches.

Tweak the number of suggestions the address bar offers. Increase or reduce the number of suggestions in the address bar drop-down using the -omnibox-popup-count switch. For example, to increase it to 10 suggestions, use -omnibox-popup-count=10. [via The How-To Geek]

Create and maintain multiple user profiles. Since Chrome learns so much from your usage patterns, you might want to create more than one user personality based on the task at hand. For example, you can set up a "work Chrome" and a "play Chrome" user profile (like you can with Firefox's user profiles). While Chrome doesn't offer a handy utility to create new profiles like Firefox does, all it takes is creating a new user directory, and then using Chrome's --user-data-dir startup switch to point it there. The Digital Inspiration blog runs down how to create and use multiple profiles in Chrome.

Speed up browsing by disabling functionality. When you want to surf Flash-free, Java-free, or even Javascript-free (even though that's not really the point of Chrome, but whatever), there's a list of -disable Chrome startup switches that can block plug-ins, content, or features you don't want, like:

-disable-dev-tools
-disable-hang-monitor
-disable-images
-disable-java
-disable-javascript
-disable-logging
-disable-metrics
-disable-metrics-reporting
-disable-plugins
-disable-popup-blocking
-disable-prompt-on-repost

Always start Chrome in a maximized window. Take advantage of all that screen real estate you've got with Chrome. Using the -start-maximized startup switch, the browser will fill your screen on launch, automatically.

Themes

Dress up Google Chrome to your liking by downloading a Chrome theme and saving its default.dll file into the application's Themes directory. Update, 9/9/2008: Link to Chrome theme download source updated.

For Windows XP users, by default that folder is:

C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application.2.149.29\Themes\

In Windows Vista it's:

C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\0.2.149.29\Themes\

(Note if Google Chrome updates, you may have to change the version number in this path.)

Reveal Chrome's Secret Diagnostic Info

While Chrome doesn't have Firefox's super-handy about:config area, it does have several about: pages that show you all sorts of interesting information about what's going on behind the scenes. Check out Google Chrome's full list of hidden about: pages here.

Get Extras: Bookmarklets, AutoHotkey Scripts, and More Chrome-Related Downloads

While Google Chrome doesn't support extensions (yet), several macros, bookmarklets, and other third-party extras can make working with Chrome easier. Here's a quick list.

Block ads in Google Chrome with Privoxy. Using free web proxy and ad-blocking software Privoxy, you can block distracting advertisements in Google Chrome.
Create Custom Chrome keyboard shortcuts with AutoHotKey. Our favorite Windows macro scripting language, AutoHotKey, can make browsing with Chrome via the keyboard even easier. Here's a full Chrome shortcut AHK file that adds nine keyboard shortcuts (including the much-needed "Paste and go" shortcut).
Preview a web site's RSS feeds, or print a page in one click with bookmarklets. Without toolbars or extensions, plain old bookmarklets come in very hand. Here's a bookmarklet that auto-detects and previews a web site's feed. Here's one that will print the current page. (You can also just hit the Ctrl+P keyboard shortcut).
Open pages from Firefox in Chrome. If you're browsing in both Firefox and Chrome and like to use Chrome for certain pages, the Open in Google Chrome Firefox extension does just that. With it installed, set certain links to open in Chrome, or select a link and choose "Open in Chrome" manually from the context menu.
Run Chrome from your thumb drive. When you're in IT lockdown or traveling from computer to computer (but want to keep your Chrome settings), you want the portable, standalone version of Chrome (free download).
Anonymize your Chrome surfing. Chrome Anonymizer scrambles your unique ID and makes it impossible for anyone to track what you're doing in Chrome.

Shuck off Google's Branding and Go Open Source with Chromium

Switch to the more frequently updated and open source version of the Chrome browser, called Chromium. Google expert ~~Phillip Lennsen~~ Ionut Alex Chitu explains:

Do you want Google Chrome without Google's branding and with an open source license (BSD license)? Check out Chromium, the open source project created for Google Chrome. You can install the latest snapshots for Windows or download the code and build it in Windows, Mac, Linux.

To install Chromium in Windows, go to the most recent directory from this page (it should be at the top) and download mini_installer.exe. Note that these snapshots could be less stable than the version available at google.com/chrome and you may need to manually update Chromium.

Speaking of updating, you can keep on top of frequent Chromium builds using the Chrome Nightly Builds Updater utility.

Look Forward to What's Coming

Word on the street is that Chrome is coming for Mac and Linux users, as are extensions—plus it'll be in Google's upcoming mobile phone operating system, Android. (Linux users, if you can't want for Chrome and don't want to build Chromium yourself, here's how to run Google Chrome in Ubuntu with WINE.)

What are your favorite Google Chrome tips and tricks? Shout 'em out in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, likes her Chrome tricked out just so. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Monday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

Author: "Gina Trapani" Tags: "Google Chrome, autohotkey, bookmarklets,..."

The Power User's Guide to Google Chrome

Date: Monday, 08 Sep 2008 16:00

Now that you've been enjoying Google Chrome's headliner features and speed for almost a week now, it's time to dig into the less obvious functionality and options you don't already know about. Become a keyboard shortcut master, take a peek under the hood, and customize its behavior and skin with some of the best shortcuts, bookmarklets, themes, add-ons, and subtle functionality in Google Chrome.

What, you don't like Google Chrome? Here, have the power user's guide to Firefox 3.

Mousing Around Chrome

Despite its marketing as a minimalistic browser that forgoes all the extras, Chrome's interface actually sports quite a few useful features. Here are a few that will speed up your browsing with the mouse even more:

Click and hold (or right-click) the Back or Forward button to go directly to a page far behind or forward in your browsing history.
When you've got a URL on your clipboard, right-click Chrome's address bar to Paste and go to your destination (and save yourself an extra tap on the Enter key).
Click and drag any textarea corner to resize it to your liking; great for blog comments, web email, or forums with textareas that aren't big enough to accommodate your masterpiece.
Ctrl+Mousewheel to zoom in or out of pages in Chrome.
Drag and drop downloads out of Chrome's status bar and onto your desktop to save them there, or into any Explorer window to save them there. (You already know you can drag and drop a Chrome tab out into a new window, or back into an existing Chrome window to dock it there.)

Chrome's Keyboard Shortcuts

If you're not much for the mouse, you're in luck: Google Chrome has lots of built-in keyboard shortcuts, many of which mirror Firefox's—so you don't have to retrain your fingers. Here are a few of our favorites:

(Chrome only) Ctrl+B toggles the bookmarks bar on and off.
(Chrome only) Shift+Escape opens Google Chrome's Task Manager.
Ctrl+L to move your cursor to the address bar.
Ctrl+K moves your cursor to the address bar to enter a Google search.
Ctrl+T opens a new tab.
Ctrl+N opens a new window.
Ctrl+Shift+T opens the last closed tab.
(Chrome only) Ctrl+Shift+N opens a new window in "Incognito Mode."
Ctrl+Tab cycles through open tabs; Ctrl+Shift+Tab reverse cycles through open tabs.
Ctrl+J opens the Downloads tab.
Ctrl+W closes the current tab.
Ctrl+R refreshes the current page.
Ctrl+H opens the History tab.
Alt+Home loads your homepage.
Ctrl+1 through 9 switches to a particular open tab position.
Ctrl++, Ctrl+-, Ctrl+0 Enlarges, reduces, and restores default text sizes, respectively.

Tweak Your Options

Hit up Chrome's Options dialog (click on the wrench, and choose Options) to customize Chrome's behavior even more.

Set multiple tab as your home page. While Chrome's default thumbnail page of your most visited sites is pretty cool, you might want to just skip that step and set the browser to open certain tabs every time. Like Firefox, Chrome can set several tabs as your homepage. In the Options' dialog Basics area, under "Open the following pages," enter the URLs.
Open the last session's tabs automatically. Also like Firefox, Chrome can automatically restore the tabs from your last browser session. In that same Options area as above, just select "Restore the pages that were open last."
Add the home button to your toolbar. Chrome's toolbar is pretty sparse by design, but once you've set your homepage(s), you might want to get to them in one click. In the Options dialog's Basics tab, you can also check off "Show Home button on the toolbar."
Set your default Downloads save location. Also in Options—but under the "Minor Tweaks" tab—you can set Chrome's default download location to something other than the "My Documents" folder.

Master Chrome's Startup Switches

Like all good open source software, Chrome comes with a long list of "startup switches"—that is, parameters you can use when you launch the program to customize its behavior. While most of the switches are only useful to developers, a handful let power users do some handy stuff.

Quick primer: To use a startup switch, create a new Chrome shortcut on your desktop (or elsewhere). Right-click it and choose Properties. In the Target field, add the switch in question immediately following the path to chrome.exe. For example, your target using a -disable-java switch might look like:

"C:\Documents and Settings\gina\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" -disable-java

Here are some things you can do with Chrome's startup switches.

Tweak the number of suggestions the address bar offers. Increase or reduce the number of suggestions in the address bar drop-down using the -omnibox-popup-count switch. For example, to increase it to 10 suggestions, use -omnibox-popup-count=10. [via The How-To Geek]

Create and maintain multiple user profiles. Since Chrome learns so much from your usage patterns, you might want to create more than one user personality based on the task at hand. For example, you can set up a "work Chrome" and a "play Chrome" user profile (like you can with Firefox's user profiles). While Chrome doesn't offer a handy utility to create new profiles like Firefox does, all it takes is creating a new user directory, and then using Chrome's --user-data-dir startup switch to point it there. The Digital Inspiration blog runs down how to create and use multiple profiles in Chrome.

Speed up browsing by disabling functionality. When you want to surf Flash-free, Java-free, or even Javascript-free (even though that's not really the point of Chrome, but whatever), there's a list of -disable Chrome startup switches that can block plug-ins, content, or features you don't want, like:

-disable-dev-tools
-disable-hang-monitor
-disable-images
-disable-java
-disable-javascript
-disable-logging
-disable-metrics
-disable-metrics-reporting
-disable-plugins
-disable-popup-blocking
-disable-prompt-on-repost

Always start Chrome in a maximized window. Take advantage of all that screen real estate you've got with Chrome. Using the -start-maximized startup switch, the browser will fill your screen on launch, automatically.

Themes

Dress up Google Chrome to your liking by downloading a Chrome theme and saving its default.dll file into the application's Themes directory. Update, 9/9/2008: Link to Chrome theme download source updated.

For Windows XP users, by default that folder is:

C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application.2.149.29\Themes\

In Windows Vista it's:

C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\0.2.149.29\Themes\

(Note if Google Chrome updates, you may have to change the version number in this path.)

Reveal Chrome's Secret Diagnostic Info

While Chrome doesn't have Firefox's super-handy about:config area, it does have several about: pages that show you all sorts of interesting information about what's going on behind the scenes. Check out Google Chrome's full list of hidden about: pages here.

Get Extras: Bookmarklets, AutoHotkey Scripts, and More Chrome-Related Downloads

While Google Chrome doesn't support extensions (yet), several macros, bookmarklets, and other third-party extras can make working with Chrome easier. Here's a quick list.

Block ads in Google Chrome with Privoxy. Using free web proxy and ad-blocking software Privoxy, you can block distracting advertisements in Google Chrome.
Create Custom Chrome keyboard shortcuts with AutoHotKey. Our favorite Windows macro scripting language, AutoHotKey, can make browsing with Chrome via the keyboard even easier. Here's a full Chrome shortcut AHK file that adds nine keyboard shortcuts (including the much-needed "Paste and go" shortcut).
Preview a web site's RSS feeds, or print a page in one click with bookmarklets. Without toolbars or extensions, plain old bookmarklets come in very hand. Here's a bookmarklet that auto-detects and previews a web site's feed. Here's one that will print the current page. (You can also just hit the Ctrl+P keyboard shortcut).
Open pages from Firefox in Chrome. If you're browsing in both Firefox and Chrome and like to use Chrome for certain pages, the Open in Google Chrome Firefox extension does just that. With it installed, set certain links to open in Chrome, or select a link and choose "Open in Chrome" manually from the context menu.
Run Chrome from your thumb drive. When you're in IT lockdown or traveling from computer to computer (but want to keep your Chrome settings), you want the portable, standalone version of Chrome (free download).
Anonymize your Chrome surfing. Chrome Anonymizer scrambles your unique ID and makes it impossible for anyone to track what you're doing in Chrome.

Shuck off Google's Branding and Go Open Source with Chromium

Switch to the more frequently updated and open source version of the Chrome browser, called Chromium. Google expert ~~Phillip Lennsen~~ Ionut Alex Chitu explains:

Do you want Google Chrome without Google's branding and with an open source license (BSD license)? Check out Chromium, the open source project created for Google Chrome. You can install the latest snapshots for Windows or download the code and build it in Windows, Mac, Linux.

To install Chromium in Windows, go to the most recent directory from this page (it should be at the top) and download mini_installer.exe. Note that these snapshots could be less stable than the version available at google.com/chrome and you may need to manually update Chromium.

Speaking of updating, you can keep on top of frequent Chromium builds using the Chrome Nightly Builds Updater utility.

Look Forward to What's Coming

Word on the street is that Chrome is coming for Mac and Linux users, as are extensions—plus it'll be in Google's upcoming mobile phone operating system, Android. (Linux users, if you can't want for Chrome and don't want to build Chromium yourself, here's how to run Google Chrome in Ubuntu with WINE.)

What are your favorite Google Chrome tips and tricks? Shout 'em out in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, likes her Chrome tricked out just so. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Monday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

Author: "Gina Trapani" Tags: "Google Chrome, Autohotkey, Bookmarklets,..."

Email Innovations You Want in Your Inbox

Date: Monday, 18 Aug 2008 16:02

The basics of how email works hasn't changed much since its invention, but even forty years later, there are still tiny features and enhancements that can make dealing with large volumes of email easier. Your email client already provides message attachments, filtering, HTML email, auto-fill contacts, spell-checking, folders or labels, keyboard shortcuts, search, and an advanced spam filter. What else do you need? Well, as people rely on email as a primary means of communication, and everyday users deal with a mounting level of new messages per day, even more advanced features can help all of us keep our inbox under control. In honor of Mozilla Thunderbird 3's latest alpha release, let's take a look at some email innovations—some concept, some already available in various clients and plug-ins—that you want in your inbox.

Undo Sent Message

(Concept) At one time or another, all of us have hit the Send button and immediately regretted it. While Gmail offers a nice (and unusual) "Undo" option for most email actions—like labeling messages or archiving them—there's no Undo once you've sent a message. What would be super-useful for those facepalm moments after you've sent a regrettable email is the ability to take it back. Say your client queues up outgoing mail for 10 minutes before sending it (unless you explicitly override the delay to send immediately), and you get the chance to recall sent email every time. Update: There is a way to defer sending messages in Outlook now.

Snooze This Message

(Concept)
Sometimes you just don't need to deal with an email message this very second, but you don't want it cluttering up your inbox or lost in a folder somewhere. Adding a "Snooze button" to your inbox could solve the problem: You hit "Snooze" on a message and it disappears from view—until a day later, when it reappears again, unread and in your inbox, ready for processing.

Reply to Selected Text

(Available in Apple Mail, Eudora and coming in Thunderbird 3)
This one's less an innovation and more a dead simple feature every client should already have. When someone sends you an email with a question or a comment buried in the body, "Reply to Selected Quote" is the feature you want. Just select the quote you want to respond to and hit "Reply to Selected Quote," and your email client clips that text and quotes it, and only it, in your reply.

Smart Reply Templates

(Available in QuickText extension for Thunderbird)
The concept of email templates is as old as the hills, but most implementations are still dumb (or non-existent, especially in web-based mail like Gmail). Smart email templates offer variables that refer to the elements of a message you've already received—like the sender's first and last names, for example. See how the QuickText extension for Thunderbird handles smart reply email templates better.

Attachment Reminders

(Available as an Outlook macro or Greasemonkey script for the old version of Gmail)
So you just wrote this long, explanatory message about the file attached to your email and you send it—without the attachment. Detecting the words "attached" or "attachment" in the body of your email isn't difficult, and it would be nice for an email client to pop up a prompt that says—"Hey, looks like you meant to attach a file to this message" when there's no attachment but the words appear.

Language-Based Filtering

(Sort of—but not quite—available in Gmail)
When you only speak certain languages but you receive messages in many others, chances are those messages are spam (or at least messages you don't want to see). Right now, filtering foreign language spam involves searching on specific characters in various languages. But the evolved email client could detect what language a message is in and filter based on that criteria. (For example, in Gmail, to filter all non-English messages you could use -lang:english, though currently this does not work reliably.)

Usage Trending

(Available in the Mail Trends script for Gmail and built into Eudora)
What time of the day do you get the most email? What sender fills up your inbox the most? Who do you send the most messages to? While spam filtering has gotten super-smart over the years, regular usage trending is still not available in most email clients. Since you spend most of your workday in an email client, getting data about what you're putting in and getting out of it can help you use email smarter and more efficiently. See what kinds of trend information Mail Trends for Gmail gave me on my usage.

Faceted Search/Related Messages

(Available in the Seek extension for Thunderbird, RelatedMail add-on for Mail.app, Xobni for Outlook)
Your email inbox and sent mail archive is basically a huge personal database of communication over time, and smart search can help you slice and dice it by topic and sender. While Gmail is ace at helping you pinpoint that one message you're looking for, a few other add-ons offer "faceted search", a related message view, and statistics about your email relationships. The free Xobni add-on for Outlook is probably the most developed and feature-rich of the current crop of advanced email search products; see how it works here.

Now that you've seen just a few possibilities of the evolved email client, tell us which one you want the most (or have and love).

What did we miss? If you were designing the latest iteration of Thunderbird, what feature would be highest on your list to build in immediately? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, wants her inbox to be like Kanye—better, faster, stronger. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Monday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

Author: "Gina Trapani" Tags: "Email apps, Clips, Email, Email filters,..."

Email Innovations You Want in Your Inbox

Date: Monday, 18 Aug 2008 16:02

The basics of how email works hasn't changed much since its invention, but even forty years later, there are still tiny features and enhancements that can make dealing with large volumes of email easier. Your email client already provides message attachments, filtering, HTML email, auto-fill contacts, spell-checking, folders or labels, keyboard shortcuts, search, and an advanced spam filter. What else do you need? Well, as people rely on email as a primary means of communication, and everyday users deal with a mounting level of new messages per day, even more advanced features can help all of us keep our inbox under control. In honor of Mozilla Thunderbird 3's latest alpha release, let's take a look at some email innovations—some concept, some already available in various clients and plug-ins—that you want in your inbox.

Undo Sent Message

(Concept) At one time or another, all of us have hit the Send button and immediately regretted it. While Gmail offers a nice (and unusual) "Undo" option for most email actions—like labeling messages or archiving them—there's no Undo once you've sent a message. What would be super-useful for those facepalm moments after you've sent a regrettable email is the ability to take it back. Say your client queues up outgoing mail for 10 minutes before sending it (unless you explicitly override the delay to send immediately), and you get the chance to recall sent email every time. Update: There is a way to defer sending messages in Outlook now.

Snooze This Message

(Concept)
Sometimes you just don't need to deal with an email message this very second, but you don't want it cluttering up your inbox or lost in a folder somewhere. Adding a "Snooze button" to your inbox could solve the problem: You hit "Snooze" on a message and it disappears from view—until a day later, when it reappears again, unread and in your inbox, ready for processing.

Reply to Selected Text

(Available in Apple Mail, Eudora and coming in Thunderbird 3)
This one's less an innovation and more a dead simple feature every client should already have. When someone sends you an email with a question or a comment buried in the body, "Reply to Selected Quote" is the feature you want. Just select the quote you want to respond to and hit "Reply to Selected Quote," and your email client clips that text and quotes it, and only it, in your reply.

Smart Reply Templates

(Available in QuickText extension for Thunderbird)
The concept of email templates is as old as the hills, but most implementations are still dumb (or non-existent, especially in web-based mail like Gmail). Smart email templates offer variables that refer to the elements of a message you've already received—like the sender's first and last names, for example. See how the QuickText extension for Thunderbird handles smart reply email templates better.

Attachment Reminders

(Available as an Outlook macro or Greasemonkey script for the old version of Gmail)
So you just wrote this long, explanatory message about the file attached to your email and you send it—without the attachment. Detecting the words "attached" or "attachment" in the body of your email isn't difficult, and it would be nice for an email client to pop up a prompt that says—"Hey, looks like you meant to attach a file to this message" when there's no attachment but the words appear.

Language-Based Filtering

(Sort of—but not quite—available in Gmail)
When you only speak certain languages but you receive messages in many others, chances are those messages are spam (or at least messages you don't want to see). Right now, filtering foreign language spam involves searching on specific characters in various languages. But the evolved email client could detect what language a message is in and filter based on that criteria. (For example, in Gmail, to filter all non-English messages you could use -lang:english, though currently this does not work reliably.)

Usage Trending

(Available in the Mail Trends script for Gmail and built into Eudora)
What time of the day do you get the most email? What sender fills up your inbox the most? Who do you send the most messages to? While spam filtering has gotten super-smart over the years, regular usage trending is still not available in most email clients. Since you spend most of your workday in an email client, getting data about what you're putting in and getting out of it can help you use email smarter and more efficiently. See what kinds of trend information Mail Trends for Gmail gave me on my usage.

Faceted Search/Related Messages

(Available in the Seek extension for Thunderbird, RelatedMail add-on for Mail.app, Xobni for Outlook)
Your email inbox and sent mail archive is basically a huge personal database of communication over time, and smart search can help you slice and dice it by topic and sender. While Gmail is ace at helping you pinpoint that one message you're looking for, a few other add-ons offer "faceted search", a related message view, and statistics about your email relationships. The free Xobni add-on for Outlook is probably the most developed and feature-rich of the current crop of advanced email search products; see how it works here.

Now that you've seen just a few possibilities of the evolved email client, tell us which one you want the most (or have and love).

What did we miss? If you were designing the latest iteration of Thunderbird, what feature would be highest on your list to build in immediately? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, wants her inbox to be like Kanye—better, faster, stronger. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Monday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

Author: "Gina Trapani" Tags: "email apps, clips, email, email filters,..."

Miro is Your TiVo for Internet Video

Date: Monday, 11 Aug 2008 16:00

In the dog days of summer when there's absolutely nothing new on television (except the Olympics), it's time to start watching the web—and you need the right tool to do just that. The free, cross-platform internet video player Miro can automatically download online video series via RSS feed or BitTorrent, play almost any format you throw at it, and keep track of what you've watched and what's new and queued up for you. More and more independent producers are putting out fabulous video content on the web, but keeping up with it by visiting your favorite video hosting web site or in your regular feed reader can be almost impossible—but setting up Miro is like getting TiVo for web video. Let's take a look at how to subscribe to free internet television with Miro.

Miro's TiVo-Like Features

In short, Miro is a video "podcatcher"—software that uses video feeds to automatically download new episodes for you and keep track of what you've watched and not watched. Kind of like an inbox for your video subscriptions, here's what Miro looks like with a few subscriptions set up.

(Note: This screenshot is from a Mac, but Miro works on Windows and Linux as well.) There you can see my subscription to the great Google Talks YouTube feed, and Miro separates what's available on the feed, what clips it's already downloaded to my hard drive, what's unwatched, and what it's in the process of downloading in an easy to use interface. On the left hand column, you can see my current subscriptions, and how many unwatched items each has in the green circle.

Since I often can't take time out of a workday to watch longer video clips, I like to run Miro on a computer connected to my actual television, so I can relax on the couch and watch my subscriptions full-screen during TV time. Here's a rundown of the killer features that make Miro ideal for keeping up with online video:

Automatic downloads and unwatched counts keep you on top of your subscriptions. Like TiVo's Season Pass, Miro works in the background, silently queuing up video you've subscribed and storing it for as long as you specify. Like your email inbox or RSS reader, it displays how many unwatched items you have next to each subscription in the left column.
Auto-expire times delete the old stuff you're never going to see. Like TiVo, you can tell Miro to automatically expire and delete video that's older than a certain number days, or to stop downloading after it's queued up a certain number of unwatched episodes.
Video search, folders, and playlists let you find and organize as you see fit. Create playlists of clips, and drag and drop subscriptions and playlists into folders and subfolders in the left column to keep your video organized and easy to access. Here you can see that I put all the parts of The Machine that Changed The World (a documentary on the history of computing Miro downloaded via BitTorrent from here), in its own playlist. (Click to enlarge.)
Resume where you stopped playing. Like TiVo, Miro remembers where in your clip you hit the "Stop" button, and can resume playing an item right where you left off.

Most important of all, Miro seems to be able to play any video file format you throw at it. You can also go full-screen on playback by hitting the Ctrl+F key combination (or choosing Full Screen from the Playback menu).

Adding Channels to Miro

If you're new to watching online video series, some of Miro's terminology can be confusing at first. Inside Miro, a "channel" is actually a feed of clips. So if you're at a YouTube page like the Talks@Google page, to subscribe to that channel in Miro you need to copy the video RSS feed to your clipboard. In Firefox you can use the blue RSS icon on the far right of the address bar; in this case that URL is http://www.youtube.com/ut_rss?type=username&arg;=AtGoogleTalks. Once you've copied that link to your clipboard, in Miro from the Channels menu, choose Add Channel. Miro will automatically enter what's on your clipboard into the URL entry box, so you can hit Enter or OK to subscribe.

By default, YouTube user subscriptions appear in your subscription list named "YouTube :: Videos by So-and-So." To give it a more recognizable name, right click on the sub in the left column and choose Rename Channel, and enter a better name (for easier spotting and sorting).

You can also create a dynamic, keyword-based search channel with Miro. Say you want to see all the videos on YouTube that involve the word Lifehacker. From the Channels menu, choose "New Search Channel" and enter your keyword and source (either an engine, playlist, or URL.)

Use the Playlist menu to create manual playlists that you can drag and drop individual video clips into. Then you can also use the Channels and Playlist menus to create folders in your subscription list; then, drag and drop videos and subscriptions into those folders to organize them further.

Watch a Web Series Continuously

One of Miro's handier features is its ability to do continuous, consecutive playback on a group of videos. For example, when you want to watch a web series like The Guild—each episode of which is just a few minutes—you can sort the subscription from episode 1 through 10, then start playing the first one, and sit back and relax. Once Miro's finished playing back one episode, it can automatically move onto the next till you've watched the entire playlist or subscription.

Recommended Channels

While Miro comes with a nice selection of starter channels, here are a few tangentially related to nerds and lifehackers around the internet I really like:

Check out what video feeds your fellow readers suggested in our recent Ask the Readers post about the best video feeds out there.

Of course, subscribing to video podcasts is just one way Miro can download content from the web. Back when Miro was named Democracy Player, Adam detailed how to use its built-in BitTorrent client to download your favorite TV episode torrents from the web.

Two last items of note before getting started with Miro: First, while Miro is relatively stable, on a slower machine it can hog up resources when it's catching up on your subscriptions. On my old PowerBook media center Mac, once in awhile I have to restart Miro to get other things done on the machine. Second, while iTunes does have the ability to subscribe to video podcasts, Miro is a much better tool for the job. Check out this comparison of iTunes' video podcatching capabilities versus iTunes.

What are your favorite Miro tips and tricks and channels? Let us know how you watch the web in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, likes watching the web on her television with Miro. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Monday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

Author: "Gina Trapani" Tags: "Online Video, BitTorrent, Feature, Feed ..."

Miro is Your TiVo for Internet Video

Date: Monday, 11 Aug 2008 16:00

In the dog days of summer when there's absolutely nothing new on television (except the Olympics), it's time to start watching the web—and you need the right tool to do just that. The free, cross-platform internet video player Miro can automatically download online video series via RSS feed or BitTorrent, play almost any format you throw at it, and keep track of what you've watched and what's new and queued up for you. More and more independent producers are putting out fabulous video content on the web, but keeping up with it by visiting your favorite video hosting web site or in your regular feed reader can be almost impossible—but setting up Miro is like getting TiVo for web video. Let's take a look at how to subscribe to free internet television with Miro.

Miro's TiVo-Like Features

In short, Miro is a video "podcatcher"—software that uses video feeds to automatically download new episodes for you and keep track of what you've watched and not watched. Kind of like an inbox for your video subscriptions, here's what Miro looks like with a few subscriptions set up.

(Note: This screenshot is from a Mac, but Miro works on Windows and Linux as well.) There you can see my subscription to the great Google Talks YouTube feed, and Miro separates what's available on the feed, what clips it's already downloaded to my hard drive, what's unwatched, and what it's in the process of downloading in an easy to use interface. On the left hand column, you can see my current subscriptions, and how many unwatched items each has in the green circle.

Since I often can't take time out of a workday to watch longer video clips, I like to run Miro on a computer connected to my actual television, so I can relax on the couch and watch my subscriptions full-screen during TV time. Here's a rundown of the killer features that make Miro ideal for keeping up with online video:

Automatic downloads and unwatched counts keep you on top of your subscriptions. Like TiVo's Season Pass, Miro works in the background, silently queuing up video you've subscribed and storing it for as long as you specify. Like your email inbox or RSS reader, it displays how many unwatched items you have next to each subscription in the left column.
Auto-expire times delete the old stuff you're never going to see. Like TiVo, you can tell Miro to automatically expire and delete video that's older than a certain number days, or to stop downloading after it's queued up a certain number of unwatched episodes.
Video search, folders, and playlists let you find and organize as you see fit. Create playlists of clips, and drag and drop subscriptions and playlists into folders and subfolders in the left column to keep your video organized and easy to access. Here you can see that I put all the parts of The Machine that Changed The World (a documentary on the history of computing Miro downloaded via BitTorrent from here), in its own playlist. (Click to enlarge.)
Resume where you stopped playing. Like TiVo, Miro remembers where in your clip you hit the "Stop" button, and can resume playing an item right where you left off.

Most important of all, Miro seems to be able to play any video file format you throw at it. You can also go full-screen on playback by hitting the Ctrl+F key combination (or choosing Full Screen from the Playback menu).

Adding Channels to Miro

If you're new to watching online video series, some of Miro's terminology can be confusing at first. Inside Miro, a "channel" is actually a feed of clips. So if you're at a YouTube page like the Talks@Google page, to subscribe to that channel in Miro you need to copy the video RSS feed to your clipboard. In Firefox you can use the blue RSS icon on the far right of the address bar; in this case that URL is http://www.youtube.com/ut_rss?type=username&arg;=AtGoogleTalks. Once you've copied that link to your clipboard, in Miro from the Channels menu, choose Add Channel. Miro will automatically enter what's on your clipboard into the URL entry box, so you can hit Enter or OK to subscribe.

By default, YouTube user subscriptions appear in your subscription list named "YouTube :: Videos by So-and-So." To give it a more recognizable name, right click on the sub in the left column and choose Rename Channel, and enter a better name (for easier spotting and sorting).

You can also create a dynamic, keyword-based search channel with Miro. Say you want to see all the videos on YouTube that involve the word Lifehacker. From the Channels menu, choose "New Search Channel" and enter your keyword and source (either an engine, playlist, or URL.)

Use the Playlist menu to create manual playlists that you can drag and drop individual video clips into. Then you can also use the Channels and Playlist menus to create folders in your subscription list; then, drag and drop videos and subscriptions into those folders to organize them further.

Watch a Web Series Continuously

One of Miro's handier features is its ability to do continuous, consecutive playback on a group of videos. For example, when you want to watch a web series like The Guild—each episode of which is just a few minutes—you can sort the subscription from episode 1 through 10, then start playing the first one, and sit back and relax. Once Miro's finished playing back one episode, it can automatically move onto the next till you've watched the entire playlist or subscription.

Recommended Channels

While Miro comes with a nice selection of starter channels, here are a few tangentially related to nerds and lifehackers around the internet I really like:

Check out what video feeds your fellow readers suggested in our recent Ask the Readers post about the best video feeds out there.

Of course, subscribing to video podcasts is just one way Miro can download content from the web. Back when Miro was named Democracy Player, Adam detailed how to use its built-in BitTorrent client to download your favorite TV episode torrents from the web.

Two last items of note before getting started with Miro: First, while Miro is relatively stable, on a slower machine it can hog up resources when it's catching up on your subscriptions. On my old PowerBook media center Mac, once in awhile I have to restart Miro to get other things done on the machine. Second, while iTunes does have the ability to subscribe to video podcasts, Miro is a much better tool for the job. Check out this comparison of iTunes' video podcatching capabilities versus iTunes.

What are your favorite Miro tips and tricks and channels? Let us know how you watch the web in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, likes watching the web on her television with Miro. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Monday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

Author: "Gina Trapani" Tags: "online video, bittorrent, feature, feed ..."

Power Up Windows Explorer with Free Add-ons

Date: Monday, 28 Jul 2008 16:00

When moving, copying, pasting, browsing, and getting information about your files feels like tedious work—and it can in the feature-sparse Windows Explorer—you need some power add-ons that can help. Instead of completely replacing Windows Explorer with an alternative file manager, you can pick and choose the extra features you want and add them piecemeal. Let's take a look at some free power add-ons for Windows Explorer that make dealing with your growing file collection faster and easier.

Note: Installing every single one of these toolbars and add-ons may slow down Windows Explorer, so pick and choose the ones that give you the features you need.

QTTabBar Adds Tabs to Windows Explorer: Get the tabbed browsing experience in Windows Explorer with the QuickTimeTabBar add-on. Once installed, right-click on the Explorer toolbar and select the QTTabBar toolbars, which add both tabbing and other features, like access to recent tabs and file previews. QTTabBar works in Vista and XP with .Net Framework 2.0 or later. QTTabBar homepage, original post.

explorer breadcrumbs.png
Explorer Breadcrumbs Adds "Breadcrumb" Folder Trail: Move up and down your folder hierarchy with ease by adding a "breadcrumb" folder trail to Windows Explorer. This little ditty is a bit buggy—it didn't work for Adam in his original tests, but it has worked for me—so proceed with that in mind. Explorer Breadcrumbs is a free download for Windows 2000 and XP, donations requested. Explorer Breadcrumbs homepage, original post.

Xentient Thumbnails Offers Actual File Preview: Replace Windows Explorer's boring default image icon with a preview of the actual image itself as shown above. Xentient Thumbnails is a free download for Windows XP only. Xentient Thumbnails homepage, original post.

FileBox eXtender Keeps Oft-Used Folders Always In Reach: Add favorite folders you're always reaching for to every Explorer window with FileBox eXtender, which adds two small buttons that drop down a file menu, and a quick keyboard shortcut to get to those folders as well. Set up your preferred key combo (Adam suggests Ctrl+Shift+F) and type the first letter of the folder you want to select it. FileBox eXtender works in Open and Save dialogs as well, in Windows XP and Vista. FileBox eXtender homepage, original post.

TeraCopy Speeds Up Big File Copy Jobs: Get greater control of file copy operations—especially ones that involve several gigs—with TeraCopy, a simple utility that offers pause, resume, and error recovery to your file copy jobs, as well as speeds them up overall. TeraCopy homepage, original post.

OpenWide Customizes the Open/Save Dialog File View: Set your Open/Save dialog to always list your files in details view, automatically focus your keyboard where you choose, and even place the box's exact location on your screen using OpenWide for Windows XP and 2000. OpenWide homepage, original post.

Folder Size Sorts Folders by the Size of Their Contents: Add a column to Windows Explorer that displays how much space a folder's taking up with Folder Size, a small utility that also lets you sort by folder size as well—making quick cleanup of empty or space-hogging folders a snap. FolderSize is a free download for Windows XP only. Folder Size homepage, original post.

PlacesBar Editor Adds Frequently-Used Locations to the Open/Save Dialog Box: Save and open files straight to your most frequently used files by adding them to Windows' Places bar using the PlacesBar Editor. Unlike PlacesBar Tweaker, PlacesBar Editor works for Microsoft Office dialog boxes, too. PlacesBar Editor is a free download for XP and Vista, donations requested. PlacesBar Editor homepage, original post.

InfoTag Magic Displays File Details on Mouse Hover: Peek inside a file with InfoTag Magic, a small utility that displays a file's metadata (like MP3 tags) in a tooltip when you hover your mouse pointer over the file. Windows XP only. InfoTag Magic homepage, original post.

If this list of add-ons doesn't cover what you want or need in Windows Explorer, check out our recent Five Best Alternative File Managers post, as nominated by Lifehacker readers.

What are your favorite add-ons for Windows Explorer? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker, likes a more powerful Windows Explorer. Her weekly feature, Geek to Live, appears every Monday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Geek to Live feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

Author: "Gina Trapani" Tags: "windows explorer, downloads, feature, fi..."