If music is part of your everyday work routine, workout, or commute, stuffing your player full of tunes and hitting shuffle just won’t cut it. Scan these 10 tips for improving and expanding your music playlists.
Photo by Fey the Ferocious Feyrannosaur.
10. Build persistent online playlists
Last.fm, Pandora—they're both popular places to listen to tunes online, but they don't let you queue up music for later, unless you're a monthly subscriber. If you want to slot and stream exactly the music you want to hear anywhere there's a net connection, however, you've still got options. If you're the DIY type, check out our guide to hosting your own playlist with Opentape. If you’re looking for a pre-built web solution ready to search and stack your picks, Mixtape.me, built by editor Adam Pash, and Grooveshark are a couple good choices among many options. If you’re particularly fond of your own collection but can’t bring it with you, head to our roundup of ways to stream your music over the net.
9. Make Genius smarter about recommendations
Apple really set the bar just a tad too high when it named iTunes’ music recommendation service, and, in general, Genius doesn’t provide awesome mix tape ideas from your subconscious. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t be better. Wired suggests a few ways to get along with Genius, like sticking with the iTunes store’s genre labeling and un-checking suggestions that are way off. The general suggestion, though, is giving Genius time to figure out your library, which obviously means you need to buckle down at work and start tearing through albums. (Original post)
8. Pick good music for working/studying
Some Lifehacker editors are partial to the ambient but beat-driven tracks available on Groove Salad, or the more traditional pick of Brian Eno. Our readers, however, are a hive mind unto themselves, and have a lot of strong picks for music that meshes well with work. In general, tracks that don't pull your attention away, or perhaps move in unpredictable patterns are great accompaniment for getting things done—classical works you're not familiar with, new and complex music, or, for some folks, tracks so familiar that they're just a comforting soundscape.
7. Make your music sound better
Any playlist gets better if you can bump up the sound quality. If your personal style, or office culture, forbids the ear-enveloping headphone "cans," in-ear earbuds can work just fine—if you know how to put them in. Luckily, a CNET audiophile can explain, with detailed pictures, exactly how to fit earbuds into your ears for better sound fidelity and long-term comfort.
6. Share music with friends and coworkers
If you hear someone with a killer tune playing from their own hard drive, they can usually be cajoled into sending a copy your way. But what if they’ve brought that track in on their MP3 player? Grab a copy of DoubleTwist for Mac or PC, hook up their phone or MP3 player, and you’re on your way to really enjoying the benefits of mobile music. If you’re strictly an iPhone or iPod person, our guide to copying music from your iPhone or iPod to you computer for free should have you covered.
5. Grab music outside your country restrictions
Sites like Lifehacker can seem like such a tease sometimes. We tell you about the best desktop music player we’ve ever used, then tell you about how it’s blocked to the U.S. Well, Spotify and other music services are only blocked if you’re traveling on normal, pedestrian web routes. We’ve previously mentioned ways to access U.S.-only content like Hulu or Pandora, and recommended tools like FoxyProxy, but, honestly, most popular services have already filled Google search results with work-arounds and routes to them. Tech news web site TechCrunch, for instance, is only too happy to suggest a route to sign up with Spotify.
4. Grab the music you’re streaming
Sometimes your web radio station or music recommendation service, like Pandora or Last.fm, hit it right on the head. To grab those songs that sound right on, try the previously mentioned Tubemaster++, a browser wrap-around that can grab audio or video from any Flash-based page. There’s also Screamer Radio, which adds in a lot of great radio stations to check out. For recording and decoding any kind of audio running across your system, however, we recommend having a copy of VLC on hand.
3. Banish tracks from your MP3 player forever
You're out for a jog or on the way home from work when, suddenly, an insipid, album-filler track just kills your whole groove. Don't try and make a mental note to banish that track—mark it one star. Then set up your music manager to never load one-star tracks onto your player, and you're on your way. (Original post)
2. Tag your tunes the right way
If your music collection came from a lot of sources, some of them more shadow-y than others, your files are probably a librarian’s worst nightmare. Tagging them all with the right genre, artist, album, track, and disc numbers can be done easier than you think with software tools like MediaMonkey or any of six reader selections for best MP3 tagging tools. While you’re feeling all rebuild-y, go ahead and embed album art the easy way.
1. Use smart(er) playlists
If you want iTunes (or another programmable music manager) to surprise you with good, relevant picks from your library, Smart Playlists are the way to go. Gina’s recommended Smart Playlist settings can ensure you’re hearing music you haven’t heard in at least a week (unlike with, say, the radio), find the seldom-played gems in your collection, and compile best-of lists for the year so far, the holidays, or whenever.
Those are geeky suggestions, anyways, about how to give your regular listening material a boost. What have you done to improve your auditory organization? Tell us about it in the comments.
Times are tough, but just because things aren’t looking so hot in the finance department doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a nice vacation. Consider 
Let’s say you do have a good reserve of spare cash for your vacation and you’re ready to go abroad. Chances are you’ve already done your share of planning, but for a little extra help fitting in with the natives, check out web site 
If you’re traveling across time zones, jet lag can rob you of precious fun-time, so take a look at British Airways’ 
Of course, flying isn’t the only way to get somewhere when you head out on holiday. Perhaps instead of flying the friendly skies, you may want to enjoy one of the 
Nobody wants to think all that much about what’s waiting them when they return from a relaxing vacation, so if you can manage it, just 
If you haven’t snapped some great photos, how will you ever remember what you did? (Or prove you were there?) Take a few words of wisdom from the New York Times’ on 
I'm a firm believer in unplugging as much as possible during a vacation, but who am I kidding—most of us still travel with our laptops. Keep it safe in your luggage by 
When it comes to lugging around all your bags, we’re major proponents of the one-bag philosophy of traveling light. In fact, web site 
If you’re only goal is cheap tickets without much hassle, take a look at our 
If there’s one thing we hate, it’s starting off and ending our vacation with a suffocating airplane ride. Head to web site 
Cheap, powerful, and available almost everywhere—solar energy is a truly great thing. With these 10 sun-powered projects, you can turn a sunny day off into some brag-worthy, possibly money-saving backyard tech.
Leave them alone long enough, and nearly every kid will investigate, or at least hear about, the devastating effects of magnifying glasses and clear, sunny weather on insects. Route that fascination with concentrated sunlight into some wood engraving. Aluminum foil (or, preferably, foil tape), sunglasses, a razor blade, and a magnifying glass are all you need to get creative with an old piece of wood or other dark objects. You’ll need to provide supervision, lest bad aim turn into a kindling incident, but it’s a great project for kids, as well as a unique way to leave your mark with style. (
It’s not an efficient way to keep your hot tub filled, but the kind of solar-powered water heater detailed at the Instructables link above can get a big batch of water up to 170F without requiring any work from your water heater, and the kit costs around $5 with the right parts suppliers. Even if you pay a bit more, think about how often the backyard grill, deck, or pool could use a little cleaning with some hot, soapy water. This project gets you a free source of ever-ready cleaning water, and at a pretty neat price. (
This little project is the most reliant on a strong bit of sunlight, but totally worth the effort when you pull it off. The chocolate polishes the bottom of a soda can, which better focuses and intensifies sunlight reflections, creating a cone of fire-starting power that leaves your fellow campers impressed—or the other attendees at the park picnic grateful you were there when they forgot the matches. (
If you’ve got a small-ish lawn, a battery-powered mower is much easier on your and your neighbors’ ears, and it saves you the hassle and cost of gas refills. Take those eco-benefits to the next level by converting a gas-guzzling push mower to use a solar-charged battery. Appropedia’s version is a definite 
A solar-powered house sounds like a neat idea in abstract, but how would you know if your house’s roof could really sustain worthwhile energy? Luckily, a big search company has overhead images of just about every house out there, and mashup tool RoofRay can use that image, plus your location’s average sunlight and some roof details, to get a starting estimate on whether you can use the sun to push back on your power meter a bit. (
Probably the least practical and most expensive of the projects listed here, the solar-powered Wi-Fi extender is definitely the most rewarding from a geek cred and green power perspective. Popular Science explains in great detail how to solder and network together a semi-standard Linksys Wi-Fi router, range extender, solar panel, battery, and higher-powered antenna, and then set it up to grab Wi-Fi from your household's main network and expand it to the great outdoors—or, at least, the outdoors behind your house. That leaves you with regular web access anywhere around your property, without having to worry about running cables across the lawn. (
There’s an entire realm of recipes and cookbooks that purport to help you get cooking done in the summer without turning on your oven. Skip the gazpacho and the house-warming heat with an oven built from aluminum foil, construction paper, plastic, and a few other household items, including a firm cardboard box. It’s great for saving energy, saving time, and feeling like you really made the most of a warm, sunny day. Want to get a bit more efficient and physics-y with your outdoor oven? Try a 
If you're lucky enough to live where plants and food grow all year, you already know the power of photosynthesis. For those who could use a little more prep time for their seedlings, a longer growing season, or just a buffer against the occasional plant-punching dry spell, The Door Garden explains how to take some light construction materials—$50 if you happen to have most of it lying around, about $150 purchased new—and build a greenhouse that will withstand most winters and thrive in every other season. Just got a few plants you want to get started with condensed 
We’re big fans of the 
The solar-powered outdoor lights they sell at your local garden/home improvement store can be subtle or original-looking—if you want to pay a premium. Otherwise, you're stuck with painted plastic and models that hold a pretty weak charge. The sun jars constructed by our own Jason, on the other hand, cost only about $11 each—less if you have jars or batteries on hand—and give off a pretty neat glow, powered entirely by solar energy from earlier that day.
Cooking isn’t a skill you can pick up through reading alone. Watch chefs, enthusiastic home cooks, and even a surprise celebrity guest demonstrate cooking skills everyone can use in this roundup of 10 great instructional cooking videos.
A very helpful father shows you how to find the “axis” of a mango, giving you the most efficient yield of a delicious summer treat. (
There are many ways to extract egg whites, yolks, and shells separately, as 
If the idea of smooth, almost creamy eggs makes you cry foul, you won’t dig Hell’s Kitchen star and renowned British chef Gordon Ramsay whips up what he calls the “perfect scrambled egg,” with crème fraîche (or sour cream or yogurt as a fill-in) and absolutely no overcooking. Otherwise, looking at the results, you might join with your Lifehacker editors in hoping for a free weekend morning to try this out and make “the missus” or mister very happy indeed. (
Rochester chef Art Rogers demonstrates for Lifehacker how to get consistent slices using the “knuckle guide” technique, and then neat, consistent, less-messy diced onion with horizontal and vertical cuts. Yeah, the video’s a little shaky and has its brief out-of-focus moments, but the knife skills are front and center. (
Whether you’re eating healthier, accomodating a food safety fan, or cooking for the little guys, sometimes you’ve got to grill your hamburgers all the way through. America’s Test Kitchen, the PBS cooking show from the creators of Cook’s Illustrated, demonstrates 
We are not made of stone, and we could not resist including a clip of America’s most surreal superstar, humbly demonstrating in his own kitchen how he makes roasted chicken with pears. More important than the crazy vocal cadence or his recipe, though, is the technique, sometimes referred to as 
There’s something about grilling food outdoors that’s both exhilarating and terrifying. It’s great to commune with your food in such a straight-up way, but what if it goes wrong? We’re here to help overcome your fear of the flame, or step up your grilling game, with these 10 techniques.
Not every cut can be filet mignon, and some meats, like pork, almost always deserve a lengthy dip in some flavor-infusing sweet and salty stuff. Your grocery store wants to sell you a 12 oz. bottle of sickly-sweet stuff for a hefty markup. But you’ve got oil, acids, and flavoring agents at home, so 
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Maybe you’re pulling out the grilling can for the first time this weekend, and … eee-yuck. Here’s what you do. Swipe off whatever big, grungy stuff you can with a stiff (preferably wire) brush and then 
Unless you live in Hawaii, you really can’t count on the weather to hold for your grilling just because you bought buns and paper plates. If it’s just a drizzle and you can make do with the garage door open, go to it. If the weather or temperature really put a crimp in your style, or you just lack for grill space, consider 
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We like Real Simple’s 
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We asked and our commenters responded about 
Two years ago, we 
Self-promotion alert! Adam wrote this one, but it’s not like it’s a big money-maker for him (there’s no money involved at all). All the Google Inline MP3 Player does is add a [Play] link next to any linked MP3 file you come across on the web, making it both easy to find them and super-easy to play them without having to wait for your browser plug-in, VLC, Windows Media Player, or whatever you’ve got on your system to load. It quickly inserts Google’s/Gmail’s player onto the page with the MP3 loaded for streaming, and you can hide the player again by clicking, well, [Hide Player]. Nice, simple, and works.
There are, to be sure, a 
Apart from everything else you’ve heard about it, 
If you’re a 
For whatever reason, you can’t just select a bunch of 
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Self-Promotion Alert Pt. 2: We made this one as well. It doesn’t alter how web pages display and operate; instead it alters how you operate your web pages. If you’re prone to more-frequent-than-necessary trips over to Twitter, Facebook, Fark, or any other time-sucking sites, just load them into Invisibility Cloak, as Gina describes in her write-up on 
Some web sites give you just one line of space to type out a lot of information, like an address, article comment, or other mini-post. Textarea Resize pushes on the downward edge of any typing area and makes it one line bigger whenever you hit Ctrl+Enter, and knocks it back down with a Ctrl+Shift+Enter. Take that, web sign-up forms! Want more control over your text area sizes? Try this 
Move from traditional email clients to Gmail’s web interface, and the first thing you’ll likely ask is, “Where are the folders?” Folders4Gmail eases the transition and makes sense of Gmail’s clever, unique, but sometimes hard-to-grok labels. Create a folder called, for example, “Sports.” Next, create a folder named “SportsSoccer.” “Soccer” shows up nested under “Sports,” and you can get as multi-level as you’d like, assuming you’ve got this neat little script installed to show them all as drop-down, folder-like containers.
It’s easy to forget these days that the internet started out as a place for academics and researchers to trade data and knowledge. Recapture the web’s brain-expanding potential with these free resources for educating yourself online.
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As Ramit Sethi put it in 
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Sites like 
If being dropped off at the music store/mall/piano teacher’s house wasn’t a memorable part of your childhood, you might dig the digital age’s equivalents a lot more. Guitar players, in particular, have a lot of places to turn for video, audio, and graphical teaching tools. Adam rounded a lot of them up in his guide to 
A huge number of colleges, universities, and other degree-granting universities are going all open-source these days—giving away the actual guts of their courses, while retaining their revenue stream by awarding degrees only to those who pay. In this day and age, though, programming, marketing, design, and other self-taught skills are pretty valuable, however you came by them. Whether you're looking to break into a field or just augment your skill set, dig into our guide to 
It's the little things that make a Windows system great—like utilities that use less than 10MB of memory to make your life easier. Here are 10 apps that pack a lot of greatness into very little space.
You don’t open your programs in the order you want them nealy arranged on your taskbar, you open them when you need them. Taskbar Shuffle knows this, and makes it easy to quickly swap windows around, along with system tray icons. It also allows you to close out windows with a simple middle-click, which alone could make it worth the roughly 6MB price of admission. You won’t know you wanted to fling windows out of your cursor’s way until you try it.
It’s probably smaller than your desktop wallpaper. But Everything is more useful and efficient than applications 25x its size. Everything only searches through file names, not inside the contents of them, but it does so stupid-fast as you type. You’ll usually find your file with a few keystrokes, and Google fans will appreciate the boolean operators that enable and/or elegance. Definitely an app you’ll want to right-click and create a keyboard shortcut for. There’s also 
If you’re rocking dual, triple, or even quadruple monitors at home or at the office (and, let us just say, lucky you on that last bit), these apps have a relatively small system footprint, but make a big impact in how your system looks. They both manage separate or split wallpapers across multiple monitors, and can grab and rotate images from your computer, Flickr, or other sources. With DisplayFusion’s 
I know, it's like we never give up on promoting this, right? Well, what can we say—we (the royal "we," really) wrote it because it filled a need in our half-breed lives of alternating text and HTML. Turns out, though, that folks ranging from power emailers to military writers have found dull, boring text they can automate, misspelled words to catch on the fly, or perhaps powerful, seriously secretive acronyms they'd occasionally like to spell out. For less than 2.5MB of RAM on most systems, this one packs a pretty hefty punch.
In a magical world without computer stress, we’re all running virtual machines to try out software we might not want, and we simply uninstall it there, keeping one system nearly pristine. For the real world, Revo Uninstaller scrubs an application and all its traces off your Windows system. It can also turn off programs that are starting up with Windows, and uninstall applications with a crosshair “Hunter Mode” that doesn’t require you to know what it’s named.
Nir Sofer has contributed a wealth of 
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Windows Task Manager isn’t a bad tool, necessarily, but it only gives you a layman’s view of what’s eating up memory or pulling serious CPU cycles. Process Explorer expands on the vagueries of “rundll” or “svchost” with a double-click, links background services to applications, and points to the folders they come from. You might not need it all the time, but when you’re rooting around and trying to 
There are a lot of good reasons to keep on rockin' Windows XP, but some of the built-in utilities can feel a bit, well, dated—and that goes for a good number of Vista tools, tool. Notepads without tabs? A Paint app that can't really resize or undo more than one action? Skip the headaches and work-arounds and run down our list of 
If you feel like you’ve heard this one before without really knowing why, you probably saw it listed as the 
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You're working on a project you want to show a few friends, but not the whole world—and that includes Google's curious crawlies. Drafting an .htaccess file to password-protect files can be laborious text work, but webapps like 
You might blog about the latest Linux kernel developments, but an increasing number of the web’s readers are getting their blog reads done on mobile Safari. Make it easier for them to read, and you to publish, with tools like the 
One reason so many new-fangled webapps have such crazy, vowel-deficient names is because the net seems almost completely picked over for .com addresses. Don't sacrifice your clever idea or give up on your name, though—head to 
Your site should say something about you and your interests, not your skill at creating JavaScript roll-down menus and sidebar graphics (unless you’re a web developer, of course). Skip the programming and Photoshop books and run through our 
Few web phenomenon come close to the sight of seeing an inspired post you write near the top of a Google search—but it's on someone else's site, plagiarized completely. Keep track of who's stealing from you with a search at 
Back when “YouTube” was just a funny way of describing your television, anyone who wanted a web site pretty much had to pay for the domain name and the remote storage space to host it. Not so in these modern times, when any number of services are begging to give you the free space and tools you need to put yourself, or your project, on the web. As we’ve pointed out, the 
It might just be the smartest marketing move Microsoft has made in years—creating a free software tool that most any blogger the Lifehacker editors have chatted with think is just great. It works with WordPress, Blogger, MovableType, and lots of other blog platforms. It takes the HTML and grunt work out of drafting, editing, and posting your work. And it supports plug-ins that empower it to 
This free, cross-platform Adobe Air app puts a fast-moving, attractive-looking face on the raw visitor data 
Lifehacker reader Stephanie