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This Year in Google: The 2009 Edition [Google]

Posted on December 16, 2009
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When technologists of the future look back in time, they’ll remember 2009 as the year Google got serious about an internet operating system, speeding up the web, and indexing EVERYTHING in sight. Take a look at the year 2009 in Google.

Google’s Three Biggest Launches of 2009

Two of the three most significant Google releases of 2009 are not yet available to the public in a final release build, but all three are open source. In no particular order:

Chromium OS: In July, Google got Microsoft and Apple shaking in their boots when they announced they were building an operating system. The source code for Chrome OS (in its development phase it’s called Chromium OS) became available in November; early adopters can run virtual machine images and bootable USB drive versions of the OS.

Google Wave: In May, Google demonstrated their new, real-time collaboration webapp, Google Wave, to a crowd of incredulous developers who couldn’t stop applauding. In September, they invited 100,000 users to try the Wave Preview. By now, over one million users have joined the Wave Preview. We wrote a book about Wave; and you can give and get Wave invitations on our dedicated forum page.

Android 2.0/Droid: While Android-based handsets were already available when the year started, the Motorola Droid debuted in November running Android 2.0 (with turn-by-turn GPS capabilities) and took on the iPhone in its “Droid Does” ad campaign. Google also released a flurry of Android-only applications and updates to existing ones in 2009 to boost their mobile platform, including the Google Voice app (which Apple rejected on the iPhone), the amazing Google Goggles app, Google Maps enhancements, and Google Listen.

Google’s Most Updated Apps of 2009

While a few Google products did get shut down, “sunsetted,” or just didn’t change much, several marquee apps grew up a whole lot this year with serious feature additions and upgrades.

Search Engine Upgrades: Remember when Google was just a search engine? Googlers do, because they’re still busy bees improving search results and rolling out new ways to get to them. This year saw the rollout of Google web search’s Caffeine update, as well as music, social, and real-time search, along with several new Google Image search options, and updates to the Google Suggest drop-down.

Gmail: Thanks to Gmail Labs, our favorite web-based email client got a slew of new features for power users, from automatic translations to offline attachments to time zone notifiers to exportable mail filters. If you haven’t recently, cruise through your Gmail account’s Labs area to pick and choose from over 60 experimental features. Gmail’s mobile web application for the iPhone and on Android also saw an overhaul and vast improvement this year.

Chrome web browser: Google’s own browser, Chrome, saw a whole lot of movement in 2009, especially late in the year with the release of bookmark sync, official beta builds for Mac and Linux (finally!), and Chrome extensions.

Google News also saw a couple of interesting experiments like Fast Flip and the News Timeline.

Google’s Mission to Speed Up the Web

If there’s any one thing Google did this year, it was launch a concerted effort on all fronts to make the web faster. From developer tools (like Speed Tracer and the Google Web Toolkit) to consumer products (like Chrome and Google Public DNS), it’s kind of astounding the sheer amount of stuff Google put out there this year under the speed umbrella. They’re even going so far as attempt to reinvent the two pillar protocols of email and the web with Wave and SPDY (a faster replacement for HTTP).

And the rest….

2009 was also the year of a few legal skirmishes (like the Google Books settlement, the Cyanogen C&D, the Google Voice/FCC dust-up), a few acquisitions (like reCAPTCHA, Gizmo5, and AppJet), and data control initiatives (the Google Dashboard and the Data Liberation Front).

You could say it was a pretty busy year at the Googleplex.

Google’s 2009 Product Release Calendar

Take a chronological ride through the last four seasons at Google in this list of 2009 product releases and updates, listed month by month.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Now you tell us:

What’s the best thing Google released or announced this year?(answers)

What was the best Google launch of the year? The biggest flop? The product that made the biggest difference in your daily life? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor, looks forward to what the GOOG will come up with in 2010. Find her at Smarterware and on Twitter.






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The Human’s Guide to Running Google Chrome OS [Chrome Os]

Posted on December 2, 2009
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Two weeks ago Google released the source code of their upcoming Chrome OS operating system, and thanks to some fast and hard-working developers, you don’t have to be a coder to try it out.

While Google’s official word is that you have to build Chromium OS from source to try it out on your computer, several developers have released installable builds that save you the trouble. Let’s take a look at how to take Chromium OS out for a spin without typing make or build.

Setting Expectations: Meet Your New Bicycle

Before you get started, you should know that Chrome OS (or in this early development stage, Chromium OS) is an operating system that essentially consists ONLY of a browser. You can't install applications or twiddle with settings—Chromium OS feels like it's just Google Chrome with no layer between it and your computer. It's a neat idea, but kind of disappointing for software geeks who like lots of settings. It acts just like a regular old browser with not too many innovations, except that it's lightning fast. For more on Chrome OS's backstory, see our first glimpse at Google Chrome OS.

Mac-lover John Gruber predicts that Chrome OS will be the operating system on your secondary computer; he says that Google’s betting that instead of two cars, you just need a car and a bicycle. Meet what might someday become your new bicycle.

Testing Method 1: Run Chromium OS as a Virtual Machine

The easiest, surefire way to try out Chromium OS without even rebooting your computer is running it as a virtual machine. If you’ve got a Mac or an incompatible PC and you just want to see what Chromium looks like without having to restart or worry whether or not your internet connection or keyboard will work, this is the way to go.

What you’ll need: First you’ll need software that can run virtual machine images; I’d recommend you go with the free, cross-platform VirtualBox. Secondly, you’ll need to download the prefab Chromium OS virtual disk image. For the price of a free site registration, you can download a working virtual machine from gdgt.com.

How to boot it: If you’ve used VirtualBox before, firing up Chromium OS in it isn’t much different than any other operating system. When you create the new image, set the OS Type to Linux/Ubuntu as shown.

Then, use the vmdk file you downloaded from gdgt as the virtual boot disk.

For a detailed step-by-step screenshot tour, check out The How-To Geek’s guide on how to run Chrome OS in VirtualBox.

The disadvantage of this method is that Chromium OS won't be as fast as the operating system is designed to be, because it's running in a virtual machine—in other words, you won't get to see Chrome OS's amazing boot time or snappy responsiveness. The advantage of this method, however, is that your internet connection, keyboard, and mouse will work whether or not they're on Google’s list of approved hardware.

Testing Method 2: Boot Chromium OS from a USB Drive

A virtual machine is just that—virtual—and you want to see the real thing. You can run Chromium OS natively on your computer from a USB stick if you’ve got the right hardware.

What you’ll need: To boot Chromium OS natively, you’ll need a netbook or laptop known to work with Chromium OS (note: that list isn’t exactly complete, so your mileage may vary if you try gear that’s not listed), a 1 gigabyte USB drive, and the bootable USB image. Download the “Diet” Chromium OS for a 1 gigabyte USB drive here. (Thanks to Hexxeh for offering these!)

Note that the USB stick method does NOT work on Macs. (See below.) Also, a Chromium live CD is not available because it needs to write to the disk; therefore, a writable USB stick is the way to go.

How to boot it: The USB build developer Hexxeh describes how to prepare your USB drive for booting on Windows:

Download Image Writer for Windows and extract the program. Launch the program, and select the image (chromiumos.img) and your USB drive letter from the drop down box. Click “Write”. The install image will then be copied to the drive. Once it’s done, close the program and you can then boot from the USB drive.

Mac users can prepare the USB drive as well, but remember, Macs cannot boot into Chromium OS from the USB drive. Linux users, here’s how you can install the image to the USB drive.

Now that your USB drive is bootable, shut down your computer, insert the drive, and start your computer. As it’s booting, hit the boot menu key and set your computer to boot from the USB drive. (The boot menu key and method for setting the boot drive to the USB stick varies from computer to computer; check your user manual or Google your model to see how to do it.)

When your computer starts up for the first time, if you’re using Hexxeh’s build, the username and password are both facepunch. Normally these login details will be your Google account username and password, but if your machine is not yet connected to the internet, facepunch it is. If all goes well, your keyboard, mouse, and wireless or Ethernet adapter will work with Chromium OS and you’ll be in the cloud in seconds. If not, check this hardware compatibility list for more info about what might or might not work with your computer.

For an alternative to Hexxeh’s USB build, check out the handy torrent with instructions from MakeUseOf.com. (Note that the default login username and password is different than Hexxeh’s build in the MakeUseOf.com build.)

If you’ve got an ASUS Eee PC and you’ve already downloaded the virtual image in the first method, you can turn that into a bootable USB stick as well. Here’s how to create a USB stick from the virtual image and boot up your Eee from it.

If you’re already running Ubuntu Linux (Karmic Koala) on your laptop and you can’t get Chromium OS to work with your Wi-Fi card, Linux user Lee Briggs explains how you can patch the USB build with your current drivers.

The main advantage to testing Chromium OS using a bootable drive is you’ll get the native experience with the speed and responsiveness of a real computer. The disadvantage is that your current hardware might not work with Chromium OS.

What’s your favorite method for test-driving Chromium OS? Was it worth the time? Are you using it regularly? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor, looks forward to Chrome OS’s official release. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.






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The Power User’s Guide to Google Chrome, 2009 Edition [Google Chrome]

Posted on October 21, 2009
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Google Chrome has come a long way in the past year, steadily adding subtle but useful features for power users. Let's take a fresh look at Chrome's current offerings—especially for those willing to brave its early developer builds.

Not long after Chrome’s release, our 2008 Chrome Power User’s Guide covered its best features for savvy surfers, such as keyboard shortcuts and startup switches. We won’t rehash those here; instead we’re going to round up the new stuff that’s come out since in both the stable and developer build of Chrome. (For reference, as of writing, the stable build of Google Chrome is version number 3.0.195.27, and the developer release is version 4.0.222.12.)

Turn Chrome into a Site-Specific Browser with Application Shortcuts

If webapps like Gmail have replaced desktop apps like an old-school email client for you, you’ll like Chrome’s ability to act as a site-specific browser (SSB) with Application Shortcuts. Chrome’s minimal interface makes it a great candidate to get the heck out of your webapps’ way, and just act as a window to it. To put a Chrome Application Shortcut to Gmail, Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook, or any other webapp you like to keep open in a separate window, open the site in Chrome. From the Page menu, choose “Create application shortcuts.” From there decide to put your shortcut on the desktop, quick launch bar, and/or Start Menu. You can create as many Application Shortcuts as you like to all your favorite webapps or sites. When you open your webapp from the Application Shortcut icon, you won’t see Chrome’s address bar, or tabs, or your bookmarks bar. Any link that you click inside the application window will open in a different window in a full-on instance of Chrome.

Assign Keywords to Your Search Engines

One of Chrome’s most touted features is how you can search the web by just typing into its address bar (a.k.a, the “omnibox”). To search specific sites, you can even type certain domain names (like “youtube.com”) and then press Tab to search that site specifically. However, power users want to configure custom searches to happen in as few keystrokes as possible. Like Firefox’s keyword bookmark capabilities, you can assign a keyword to a search engine bookmark in Chrome, which uses the %s variable to pass parameters to the URL.

To do so, right-click in Chrome’s address bar and choose “Edit Search Engines.” There, you can add, edit, or remove searches and assign keywords in the Keyword field.

Using this technique you can, for instance, update Twitter with a keyword as well as search Lifehacker.com via Google. (Set the URL to google.com/search?q=site:lifehacker.com+%s and the keyword to lh. Then, to search Lifehacker’s archives in Chrome, type lh "your search here" into the address bar.)

Customize the “New Tab” Page

Chrome’s other slick headliner feature is its “New Tab” page, which displays a grid of frequently-visited web site thumbnails that help you get to where you’re most likely to go when you create a new tab. That list is more customizable than ever, with options to rearrange the thumbnails (just drag and drop) and pin thumbnails to specific locations on the grid (hover over a thumbnail and press the thumbtack button to do so). If you don’t need so much eye candy, you can switch to a list view by clicking on the view buttons on the upper right.

Get to Know New Chrome Startup Switches

Last year we covered several Chrome startup switches that let you do things like use multiple user profiles, always start Chrome in a maximized window, and disable certain features like Flash or JavaScript. Today there are three more startup switches worth mentioning. The --bookmark-menu switch adds a bookmark button to Chrome’s toolbar. The -incognito switch starts up Google Chrome in private, incognito mode. Finally, Greasemonkey fans will want to try the --enable-user-scripts switch to see if their favorite scripts work in Chrome. (A few other steps are required; here’s how to get Greasemonkey user scripts going.)

Choose Your Chrome Theme

As if ad-heavy web sites weren't enough, web browser themes can add even more visual distractions to your surfing experience. However, since Chrome's—well, chrome—is so minimal, its themes are less annoying than in other browsers. I prefer Google’s more muted in-house themes, but there are more vibrant artist themes as well. To activate a theme, from the Wrench menu, choose Personal Options, click “Get Themes.” Choose the theme you like from the Themes Gallery and click the “Apply Theme” button under it.

Master Mouse and Keyboard Shortcuts for Managing Tabs

Every power user has a few essential keyboard shortcuts in their arsenal, and Chrome offers some mouse-and-keyboard combinations for managing tabs, too. Like Firefox, you can middle-mouse-button click any link to open it in a background tab (or Ctrl+click for the same result). Shift+Click opens a link in a new window, Shift+middle+click (or Shift+Ctrl+click) opens a link in a new tab and switches to it, and Alt+click saves the contents of a link to your computer.

Switch to the Dev Channel Release for Extensions (and More)

Brave devotees to Google Chrome want to take advantage of its open development, and subscribe to the developer channel of early Chrome releases to get a preview of new features. Using Chrome’s Channel Changer tool you can switch from the stable release to the no-guarantees-on-stability beta or developer build. The risk you take in running into unexpected bugs is worth it for features the early builds offer. In the current Developer build version 4.0.222.12, you can sync your bookmarks, test extensions, and pin tabs. (Also, Mac and Linux users can finally try out Chrome via the developer channel, as a stable release is not yet available.)

(Dev Build Only) Synchronize Your Bookmarks

You use Chrome at home and at the office, and you want your bookmarks synced in both places, In the dev build of Chrome, from the Wrench menu, choose “Sync my bookmarks” to save your Chrome bookmarks in your Google account. (You’ll have to sign in to start syncing.) If you’re already using the Xmarks extension for Firefox or IE, you can use that in the dev build of Chrome, which includes the foundation of extension support with a few alpha add-ons ready for testing.

(Dev Build Only) Install Extensions

Chrome’s extension support is still young, but several alpha/beta extensions give you a glimpse of Firefox-like extension goodness in Chrome. Here are a few of our favorite Chrome extensions.

  • Gmail Checker: While it doesn’t appear to work for Google Apps accounts (someone? prove me wrong?), the Gmail checker puts the number of unread messages in your inbox on Chrome’s bottom toolbar.
  • Xmarks: Our favorite bookmark syncing extension for Firefox and IE is available for Chrome dev build testers as an alpha version. You must sign into Xmarks and sign up for the alpha test to get the Chrome extension.
  • AdSweep and Adblock+: Scrub annoying flashing ads from your favorite web sites.
  • Session Saver: As previously covered, this extension enables multi-tab saving and reloading.
  • WOT: Integrates web site reputation ratings a la Web of Trust into Google Chrome.
  • LastPass: Adds deeper auto-fill password management to Chrome.

To view and manage what extensions you’ve got installed in Google Chrome, from the Wrench menu, choose Extensions to open the Extensions manager, where you can reload, disable, and uninstall extensions.

(Dev Build Only) Shrink and Affix Tabs with “Pin Tab” Option

Finally, a tiny little tab feature that everyone seems to love is available in the dev build of Chrome: the ability to shrink a tab down to only its favicon, and pin it to your tab bar. Right-click on any tab and choose “Pin tab” from the context menu to try it out.

What other power tips for Chrome, stable or developer build, are out there? Share your best ones in the comments.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor, strongly suspects 2010 will be a big year for Google Chrome. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.






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Google Wave 101 [Google Wave]

Posted on October 7, 2009
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So you’ve snagged an invitation to Google Wave—or a pal is sending one your way—and you've already taken a look at what to expect. Let’s dive deeper into Wave features, etiquette, and extensions.

Learn Wave’s Keyboard Shortcuts

Every good webapp has a full set of keyboard shortcuts for getting around and performing the most common actions, and happily Google Wave is no exception. While Wave is still missing common shortcuts (j/k, please?), there are a few you must know now. Here are the ones to learn first:

  • Arrow keys: Move up/down within a list of waves, and left/right from inbox to open wave panel with your arrow keys.
  • Spacebar: Go to the next unread wave in a list
  • Ctrl+E: Edit a selected wave
  • Shift+Enter (in edit mode): Finish editing your wave; equivalent to clicking the “Done” button
  • Enter: Add a reply to a selected wave directly under it
  • Shift+Enter (in view mode): Add a reply to the bottom of a list of waves

Here’s the full list of keyboard shortcuts. Alternately, you can click on the image below to see them all.

Filter Waves with Advanced Operators and Saved Searches

Wave is a very Googly product, so searching is simply a matter of typing a keyword into the search box. But like Gmail, Google Wave also offers several advanced search operators that let you find waves based on who they're with, what they're tagged, and other attributes. For example, to see all the public waves—that is, waves in which anyone using Wave can see—use the with: operator. In fact, if you’re feeling lonely in Wave, the first Wave search you should try is with:public.

To save a search for reuse, click on the “Save Search” button on the bottom right of your Wave inbox. When you save a search you can also specify filter actions for all the waves that match it. Right now the only choices are “Archive” and “Mark as read.” Once you run that with:public search, every public wave you read will end up in your inbox, which becomes overwhelming almost immediately. So save your with:public search and check off “Archive” so they don’t clutter up your inbox. (You can also “Mute” chatty public waves that did make it into your inbox if you’re not interested in every new update.)

The opposite of with:public, the with:me search is very useful for just seeing waves that are explicitly with you (not with the public group). To limit your results to only waves you’ve updated, use by:me.

Other search operators include tag: for tags, and has: for attachments like images, files, and gadgets. For example, has:gadget returns waves with gadgets; has:image returns waves with images in them, and has:attachment returns waves with gadgets, images, or files. You can combine search operators, like with:public has:gadget, and use the minus sign to exclude waves as well, like -has:image. Here’s the full list of Wave’s advanced search operators.

Make a Wave Public

Now that you know how to find public waves, you probably want to make one of your own waves public. Problem is, there’s no one-click button to make a wave public. The trick is to add public@a.gwave.com to your contacts list. To do so, click the + button on the bottom right of your Contacts module. Type public@a.gwave.com into the Address field, and even when Wave says “User does not have a Google Wave account”, press Enter. The public group will appear in your contacts list, as shown. Add public to any wave you want to make public, but be prepared: Public waves often get destroyed by newbs and bots who haven’t been in Wave long enough to grok the etiquette (see below). Also note that if you switch computers, you may have to add public@a.gwave.com to your contacts list again.

Know Wave’s Bot Etiquette (and Bounce Unwanted Bots)

One of the biggest problems with public waves is that anyone can edit them or add recipients to them: including content-changing, and sometimes busted, bots. When you do your with:public search, you’ll find dozens of waves that have been destroyed by newbs adding bots to them that delete or mangle the existing content so bad that even playback is broken. Good Wave etiquette dictates that you don’t add bots to public waves. If you want to mess with a public wave, from its menu choose “Copy to New Wave” and go to town with your private copy.

If you’ve created a public wave and someone added a bot to it that you want out, add the Bouncy bot to your contacts (bouncy-wave@appspot.com). Then, add Bouncy to the wave, and reply to it adding the command bounce:botaddress, replacing botaddress with the email address of the bot to bounce. Bouncy will oust the unwanted bot from your wave. This only works on bots. After Bouncy’s done his job, you can delete the wave with the command and Bouncy’s response. Update: The Google Wave team has enabled the “Remove” button for bots only, obviating the need for Bouncy. To remove an unwanted bot from a wave, click on its icon at the top o the wave and lean on the “Remove” button. This only works on bots, not humans.

Garden Your Waves

Like a wiki, useful and popular waves require oversight and gardening, or else they fall in to disrepair or go out of date or get vandalized (especially if they’re public). You can oversee, clean up, edit, and update any wave you’re a participant in, and everyone will appreciate it if you do.

First, empty “blips” or replies are a common occurrence around Wave, which is still kind of twitchy in different browsers and new to a lot of folks who might accidentally hit Enter when they didn’t mean to reply. Delete empty blips when you come across them by clicking on the wave action drop-down on the top right of it, and choosing “Delete.”

To automate this process on waves you create, add the Sweepy bot (sweepy-wave@appspot.com) to your contacts and to the wave itself. Sweepy will not delete existing empty blips, but it will delete any newly-added empty replies automatically. (Sweepy is one of the very few bots that may supersede the “never add bots to public waves” rule, as Sweepy’s functionality cleans up the wave. For more on bots and gadgets, see this Google Wave Extensions list.)

If a wave becomes totally destroyed and you want to restore it to a former useful state, use its playback feature. Pause at the revision you want, and use the “Copy to a new wave” menu item to fork it into a new copy.

Bookmark a Custom Wave Layout

Netbook owners or those who keep Wave open in a small window appreciate the ability to minimize unneeded Wave modules and maximize the reading or writing area on the wave you’re working on at the moment. To load Wave with certain modules minimized by default, you can use a custom Wave URL with the #minimized parameter. For example, wave.google.com/wave/#minimized:nav,minimized:contact launches Wave with the Navigation and Contacts modules minimized. The wave.google.com/wave/#minimized:nav,minimized:contact,minimized:search URL minimizes Navigation, Contacts, and Search panes as shown here.

URL-observers will also notice that every individual wave has an ID that appears in the URL when you click on it. This means you could bookmark or IM a link to a public wave to anyone on Wave.

What Doesn’t Work in Wave

The Wave Preview is a pre-beta webapp, and lots of things aren’t working or just simply aren’t implemented yet. From the “it’s not just you” department, here are some notes on what’s not working:

  • Some bots and gadgets: A couple of bots I mentioned in my first look at Google Wave worked in the Developer preview, but don’t work in the regular preview, namely Bloggy, Polly, and several others. The best way to see if a bot works is to just try it, or search for its name and the with:public operator to find discussions about it.
  • Requests, or waves from other servers: The Requests link in the Navigation pane is presumably for you to approve waves that come from other servers. However, while Wave server federation is part of the protocol, it’s not yet working for real. That’s why users on the Developer preview can’t wave at users on googlewave.com. Yet.
  • Removing Wave recipients: Right now you cannot remove non-bots from a Wave once they’ve been added to it. Copy your wave to a new one and reinvite folks instead.
  • Uploading files (that are not images): While you can drag and drop images into a wave (and be sure to try that, it’s fantastic fun), you can’t upload other filetypes using the Files button yet. Update: While the files menu on the lower righthand corner of a wave is disabled, you CAN add files to a wave by dragging and dropping them onto the wave, or clicking the paperclip icon on a wave’s toolbar in compose mode.
  • The “I’m online” green dot: When the Wave preview first launched, a pretty green dot would show you which of your contacts was online at the moment. This feature had a serious bug involving Suggested Contacts so the Wave team had to pull it. Expect those dots to come back in the next few weeks.
  • Playback (sometimes): If a wave is huge and has lots of revisions or a bot has made extreme changes, playback on waves can be wonky or just not work at all.
  • Blog publishing: The Bloggy bot does not work right now, and while the Madoqua bot will give you Javascript embed code to add to your blog, ONLY people who are signed into Wave will be able to see your wave (and it has to be public, which makes it editable by anyone). So, while publishing waves on any web page with proper permissions and access by anyone on the web will happen, it’s not working right now.

Overall, Wave is a rich platform with a huge community of people discovering more of its ins and outs and quirks and workarounds every day. Wave users, what are your favorite tricks and tips for getting more out of Wave? Post up your comments below or in this public wave.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor, really hopes to meet Dr. Wave someday to tell him just how shiny everything is. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.






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The Beginner’s Guide to Tricking Out Your WordPress Blog [WordPress]

Posted on September 23, 2009
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You took the leap and installed WordPress to host your own blog because you want complete control over how it looks and works. Now, it’s time to power it up, lock it down, and make your blog completely yours.

What You’re In For

With all the hype around cloud computing and no-configuration-required hosted services, you don’t hear about the joys of running great software on your own server very much. The fact is, if you’re just a casual user who doesn’t know if you’ll stick to blogging over the long haul, or if you don’t want to spend a little time maintaining WordPress, you should sign up for a hosted blog at WordPress.com or Blogger or TypePad. (Also, this tutorial is not for you.)

But if you’re willing to keep WordPress updated religiously, you get access to a whole world of WP plug-ins that add features to your site, the opportunity to create and tweak custom WordPress themes, and a huge sense of accomplishment. In the most recent version of WordPress, keeping your installation up-to-date is a matter of clicking a link when you get notified to do so.

Everything you need to know about installing WordPress is right here. Got it up and running? Let’s get to customizing.

Initial configuration

The first thing you want to do on your WordPress blog is set up a new author with administrative access. Don’t use the default “admin” user to write your posts; create your custom username and give it admin privileges. Then, log out of WordPress and back in as your new username. For security reasons, some folks like to delete the admin user completely (as some WordPress attacks have used it to do bad things to your blog). Once you’ve got your administrative account working, add other authors to the list of users who might be posting to your blog.

Now it’s time to cruise through WP’s settings area and configure things just how you like ‘em. First, set up your post permalinks to look prettier for both humans and search bots. WordPress’ default post permalink looks like example.com/?p=123. Instead, under Settings>Permalinks, select something like example.com/2009/09/welcome-to-my-blog.

Next up, configure how you want comments to work on your blog. Under Settings>Discussion, you can enable comments and set other advanced options, like whether or not users have to be logged into your site to comment, or if comments should automatically close on posts after a certain number of days, if user avatars show up, or what words in a comment should automatically mark it as spam.

Speaking of, spam comments is a ridiculously epic problem across the internet for all blogs, so how you set up comments will mean the difference between miserable hours spent gardening V14gRa and “check out my sexy webcam!!” comments or not. Coming from Lifehacker’s “must register to post here” model, I checked off “Users must be registered and logged in to comment.” If you don’t want to put up the registration hurdle in front of your commenters, make sure you install the Akisment spam-killing plug-in (more on that below).

Must-have plug-ins

Just like you can extend Firefox with feature-adding extensions, WordPress also has a pluggable architecture and a whole world of plug-ins that can soup up your blog. When you're logged into WordPress, click on Plugins, and search for the name of the plug-in you want to install (which you can do without involving your FTP client). You can also just search on keyword, too—to find Twitter related plug-ins, just enter Twitter. The plug-ins that you use will depend on how you want your site to work and look, but here are a few that every WP user can benefit from.

WordPress Database Backup (Backup): Running your own server and database means that if things go wrong, it’s up to you to have a backup. This plug-in can email a full backup of your WordPress database on a schedule to an address you specify. I’ve had great success building my WordPress site locally with the backup this plug-in created; however, the other resident WP expert here on staff, The How-To Geek, recommends using the old-school cron job for "mysqldump -uUser -pPassword databasename > filename.bak" approach. No matter how you do it, make sure you’re backing up both your blog’s database and files. It’s worth consulting with your blog hosting provider about the best way for you to do this, too.

FD Feedburner Plug-in (Feeds): Google-owned FeedBurner is a must-use for anyone who publishes RSS feeds, like your blog does. FeedBurner saves you bandwidth costs by hosting your blog’s feed and offers statistics about how many people are reading it; this plug-in will redirect your blog’s feed to FeedBurner for you.

WordPress.com Stats (Stats): See what posts are most popular using this up-to-the-minute statistics plug-in, right inside your WordPress dashboard. WordPress.com stats doesn’t count visits to your own blog, and unlike the richer Google Analytics service, there’s no day-long delay to see what’s happening on your site. To run this plug-in, you have to get a WordPress.com API key (it’s free) and enter it into the plug-in’s settings.

Search Meter (Stats): If you have a search box on your site, you’ll want Search Meter, a plug-in which shows you what readers are looking for and finding (or not) on your site. Search meter also offers widgets you can add to your site which show readers what other readers are searching for.

WP SuperCache (Optimization): The first time a highly-trafficked site like Digg links to your blog, you’ll wish you had installed this plug-in, which maintains high-speed, database-call free “cached” copies of your WordPress pages on your server. Your site will run faster and won’t buckle under the strain of a lot of traffic if you’re caching it with this excellent plug-in.

Akismet (Comments Spam killer): Because comment spam can get so bad, WordPress now ships with the Akismet spam filtering plug-in. Since I’m requiring user registration to leave comments on my WordPress blog, I don’t have any experience with how good Akismet is (and haven’t had any spam at all), but word on the street is it’s absolutely essential for sites with open comments. Like WordPress.com stats, Akismet requires a WordPress.com API key.

Finally, to make your site as accessible to Google and other web search engines as possible, a few Search Engine Optimization SEO plug-ins help. I use All in One SEO Pack and Google XML Sitemaps.

Make Your WordPress Theme Yours

If you’ve got HTML and CSS chops, you can make your WordPress theme sing your tune. (For advanced stuff, some PHP skills come in handy, too.) First you want to start with a base theme. WordPress’ default theme is ok, but if you google “free WordPress themes” or take note of what themes sites you like already use, you’ll find an insane number of gorgeous and eye-catching site layouts. Picking your theme is one of the most fun (and most time-consuming) parts of setting up WordPress. It will be hard to choose!

Once you've installed the theme you want by downloading the .zip file and putting it in your WordPress themes folder, you can dig into the CSS and markup and make it your own. WordPress offers a theme editor in its interface which lets you update files on the fly (under Appearance>Editor). While this is convenient, it's also dangerous if you hit the wrong key, save the file, and don't have a backup. My recommendation is to set up WordPress and your theme of choice on your own computer, edit it in your favorite text editor, and upload it to your live server when it’s perfect. I started my WordPress blog with Lucian Marin’s Journalist theme, and made it mine by adding color to the header and tweaking how comments look.

If you’ve got patience and custom HTML you want to turn into a brand new WordPress theme, copy the default theme’s files into a new folder and get to hacking. The WordPress Codex is an invaluable resource for both starter reading and reference as you go. That is, when you get to the part where you’re thinking “WTF is wp_list_comments?”, Google it and you’ll find the function reference at the codex. It took me a full weekend of pretty intense theming work to get my first custom theme done and ready to go live, so give yourself some time, and most importantly, have fun with it. Here are some tips and links from my Twitter followers on creating a custom WordPress theme.

Sidebars and Widgets, Oh My!

The easiest way to customize your WordPress blog without digging into code or your FTP client is to do so with widgets. The latest versions of WordPress offer drag-and-drop custom modules you can add to and remove from your blog. When you’re logged into WordPress’ admin interface, under Appearance, click on “Widgets” to see what’s available and add and remove what you want on your site’s sidebar (or top bar or bottom bar, depending on where your theme puts it).

Advanced trickery

Here are a few more tips for advanced WordPress hackers who want to troubleshoot or try even more customization:

  • Use multiple custom sidebars: WordPress’ sidebar and widgets feature is very powerful and customizable; in fact, you can create and customize multiple sidebars or site zones to show up on different pages. (For example, the sidebar that shows up on a post page can look different than the one on the front page.)
  • Troubleshoot slowness and other problems with Firebug: Every web developer knows that the Firebug Firefox extension is absolutely essential when developing any site, and it’s true for WordPress, too. When my WP site went down because of multiple background 404′s doing resource-sucking searches, Firebug revealed the problem and so I knew how to fix it.
  • Use tags to display content differently: You can use conditional tags to display different types of content on your blog in different ways, like a short link or big photograph. I use has_tag to display “quick links” with smaller inline headlines on my front page by assigning the tag “brief.”
  • Set up a “staging” server: Once your blog’s up and running and live, you don’t want to make huge changes to it with the whole world watching. Set up WordPress on your local computer, hack away on your theme and/or plug-ins, then upload your changes when they’re complete and ready.

This post only scratches the surface of WordPress customization possibilities. The good news is WordPress' open nature and huge community means that you can find the answer to almost any WP question hitting up Google—or in worst case, asking the forums. Special thanks to the author of this CSS Tricks post who also writes the excellent Digging into WordPress blog, which I referenced for this post.

What did I miss? What are your favorite WordPress tricks, hacks, themes, plug-ins, security measures, and widgets? Shout ‘em out in the comments.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor, loves herself a little WordPress hacking. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.






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Maximize Firefox 3.5′s Viewing Area for Your Netbook [NetBooks]

Posted on September 16, 2009
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Your netbook’s screen is tiny and processor less than mighty, so you want to maximize the web page viewing area without any performance-killing Firefox extensions. Here’s how to consolidate Firefox 3.5′s chrome for your Windows or Linux-based netbook.

Even if you don’t have a netbook, these modifications still work if you want to consolidate Firefox 3.5′s chrome on your regular PC.

(This whole Firefox consolidation undertaking sound familiar? For longtime readers, it should be. Way before netbooks got hot, we consolidated Firefox 2 back in 2006, and then Firefox 3 with the help of Stylish in 2008. This version addresses a few Firefox 3.5-specific items and clears out the clutter sans add-ons.)

Here’s what Firefox 3.5 looks like by default (on my Eee PC running Windows XP). Click to view actual size.

There’s quite a bit of whitespace on Firefox’s chrome just asking to get utilized more efficiently. You can trim the highlighted areas in the image below from Firefox 3.5′s interface:

After a little toolbar rearrangement and interface decluttering, here’s what consolidated Firefox 3.5 looks like. You can see that a whole other Lifehacker post fits into the viewport after the consolidation. Click to view actual size.

Here’s how to maximize your web page viewing area and declutter Firefox’s chrome.

Relocate the navigation toolbar, buttons, and search box to the menu bar. To get this done, right-click on Firefox 3.5′s toolbar and choose Customize. From there, drag and drop elements on the lower toolbars to the menu bar, and check off “Use small icons.” (That will flatten the fat “keyhole” back button.) Hit play for a 30-second demonstration of the process (featuring old-school Lifehacker design).

Trim unnecessary interface doodads with userChrome.css. Just like you can style web pages with CSS, you can also style Firefox’s chrome. In order to modify certain aspects of Firefox’s chrome without using an add-on like Stylish, you edit a file called userChrome.css, which is stored in your Firefox profile directory. This file is user-specific and you can easily copy it from one Firefox installation to another. Here’s where Windows and Linux netbook users can find userChrome.css.

Windows XP
C:Documents and Settings[User Name]Application DataMozillaFirefoxProfilesxxxxxxxx.defaultchrome
where xxxxxxxx is a random string of 8 characters.

Linux
~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/chrome/

With Firefox closed, open the userChrome.css file and append whatever CSS bits listed in this article you want to apply. If a userChrome.css file doesn’t exist, save userChrome-example.css as userChrome.css.

Got your userChrome.css file open and ready for modifications? Let’s declutter.

Remove Firefox 3.5′s new tab button. Tab bar space is at a premium on your netbook, and you already use the Ctrl+T keyboard shortcut to open a new tab—so you don't need the new (and kind of annoying) Firefox 3.5 new tab button. Add this bit to userChrome.css to kill that button and make room for more open tabs.


/* remove new tab button next to last tab */
.tabs-newtab-button {display: none !important}

Remove the search box’s magnifying glass. You can just hit the Enter key to execute a search from Firefox’s search box, so the magnifying glass “go” button is just unnecessary eye candy. With your address bar up on the same level as the menus, you want as much horizontal space for typing search terms and web site addresses, so it makes sense to kill the magnifying glass. Here’s the userChrome.css bit that will do just that.


/* remove magnifying glass from search box */
.search-go-button { display: none !important}

Remove and combine disabled buttons. When there's no page to go back to or forward to, nothing loading to stop, or nothing loaded to refresh, all those buttons—back, forward, stop, and reload—just sit there, greyed out, doing nothing but taking up space. You want as much horizontal space as possible, so you can hide disabled (useless) back and forward buttons, and even combine the stop and reload button to make a dual-use single button. Here's the userChrome.css code that will do just that.


/* combine stop and reload buttons */
#stop-button[disabled] { display: none }
#stop-button:not([disabled]) + #reload-button { display: none }

/* don't show back or forward buttons if there's nothing to go back or forward to */
#back-button[disabled="true"] { display: none }
#forward-button[disabled="true"] { display: none }

Optional: Hide bookmarks bar. A lot of my web work depends on easily-accessible bookmarklets, so I did not hide my bookmarks bar, but others who don’t feel the same can gain more vertical space by doing just that. From the View menu, Toolbars, uncheck “Bookmarks Toolbar.”

All the CSS in one shot

To get all these changes in one fell copy-and-paste swoop, grab them from here and drop them into your userChrome.css, and restart Firefox.


/* remove new tab button next to last tab */
.tabs-newtab-button {display: none !important}

/* remove magnifying glass from search box */
.search-go-button { display: none !important}

/* combine stop and reload buttons */
#stop-button[disabled] { display: none }
#stop-button:not([disabled]) + #reload-button { display: none }

/* don't show back or forward buttons if there's nothing to go back or forward to */
#back-button[disabled="true"] { display: none }
#forward-button[disabled="true"] { display: none }

How do you customize Firefox—or any other app, for that matter—on your netbook? Let this newbie netbooker know in the comments. (For more userChrome.css fun, see our list of functional Firefox user styles.)

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor, likes her Firefox pared down on her netbook. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.






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Seven Easy Ways to Integrate Your Google Apps [Google Apps]

Posted on September 9, 2009
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The information you keep in Google apps like Gmail, GCal, Reader, and Voice doesn’t just live in one place. Check out a few easy but non-obvious ways to plug different Google apps together and share their data and features.

Get Your Calendar in Gmail

One of the most useful integrations available for Gmail and GCal users, the Google Calendar gadget puts upcoming events on your email sidebar. To turn it on, just enable the Google Calendar gadget in Gmail Labs. Click on the Options link to configure which calendars you want to display events from, and schedule events directly from Gmail using the gadget’s Add link. (Gmail Labs offers lots of other app integrations, like YouTube previews in Gmail, the ability to create a Google Doc from an email conversation, Picasa image previews, Google Docs as well as a Google web search gadget.)

Put Your Gmail Messages on Your Calendar

Gmail Tasks’ killer feature is how it can act as a bridge between your email inbox and your calendar. If you add a Gmail message to your Tasks list (just choose “Add to Tasks” from the “More Actions” drop-down) and add a due date, that task shows up on your Google Calendar on that date. Even if Gmail’s Tasks module isn’t your primary to-do list app, this is an easy way to “schedule” email you don’t need to deal with right now but does have a deadline in the future.

Get Google Docs in Your Calendar and Gmail

Courtesy of Google Calendar Labs, you can easily attach Google Docs to any event—like the batting lineup for the company softball game next week. In GCal's Labs area (in Settings), just enable the "Attach Google Docs" feature.

Gmail has had built-in integration with GDocs since back in 2006; any time you have a Word document or spreadsheet email attachment in a message, Gmail gives you an “Open as a Google Document” link next to it. You can also convert an entire Gmail conversation to a Google Doc by enabling the Gmail Labs’ “Create a Document” feature.

Get Google Profile Feeds in Google Reader

Google’s newish Profiles tool offers an interesting integration into Google Reader: the ability to associate people with the feeds they create. When you configure your Google Profile and enter the web sites where you've set up shop, the feeds available for those sites appear on your profile—as well as in Google Reader. When you're following someone in Google Reader, you can easily see their blog and social network feeds alongside their photo and bio thanks to Google Profiles. From the ever-so-specifically-labeled "Browse for Stuff" section in Google Reader, click on the "People You Follow" tab to browse the folks you care about and subscribe to feeds they're creating.

Get Your Google Voice Text Messages via Gmail

Just this morning the Google Voice team added email integration with your text messages. As Kevin reported, you can now get your GV text messages forwarded to your email (Gmail or not) and respond to them from there, without ever touching your Google Voice tab or your phone.

Get All Your Google Apps on iGoogle

You can't mention integrating Google apps without giving iGoogle a nod. GApps addicts' homepage of choice, iGoogle offers Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Gmail Tasks, and Google Voice gadgets for the ultimate, all-in-one, Google apps jumping-off spot. (In fact, last week during the Gmail outage, iGoogle's Gmail gadget was still working—even when the proper Gmail webapp was down.)

…Not to Mention Integration Add-ons and Your Browser Sidebar

Beyond in-webapp ways to access Google apps data across products, you can also hook up browser extensions like Integrated Gmail or iGoogleBar for Firefox. Alternately, for easy Google apps access no matter what web site you’re on, put your browser’s sidebar to good use.

What other ways do you use one Google app’s data in another? Shout it out in the comments.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor, likes finding new ways Google Apps inform one another. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.






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The Definitive Guide to Finding Free Wi-Fi [Free Wi-Fi]

Posted on August 19, 2009
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You’re out and about with your laptop and you’re in need of some fast internet connectivity. Here are some tried and true ways to find and get free Wi-Fi.

Photo by °Florian.

Easy: The Most Likely Places You’ll Find Free Wi-Fi

You can find some free Wi-Fi love at the local public library, Barnes and Noble, McDonald’s, the airport, university campus, independent coffee shop, or hotel lobby. Not all airports or hotels or even campuses offer free Wi-Fi though, so give the destination a ring before you hoof it over there only to be disappointed. (For example, the San Diego airport offers free Wi-Fi as does JetBlue’s T5 in New York’s JFK, but many other airports are pay-for access only. On the UCSD campus you used to need a password to log on; now guests can get free access.)

If you’re in a residential area, a little war-driving with the right equipment can turn up an open “linksys” hotspot. Rather than breaking open your conspicuous laptop, use your Wi-Fi-enabled smartphone or a Wi-Fi scanner keychain to scan and detect networks. (See the smartphone apps for finding open networks below.) The serious nerd can even outfit him or herself in a Wi-Fi scanning t-shirt, hat, or pair of sneakers. (Thanks, adrian_rich!)

Medium: Employ Wi-Fi Scanner Apps and Look-up Tools

Sometimes the built-in scanner on your smartphone or laptop can be too slow or won’t give you all the information you want about area networks. Here are some free apps and tools for scanning and finding free Wi-Fi networks.

Windows
When Windows’ built-in Wi-Fi network detector isn’t cutting it, download the free NetStumbler to get a detailed listing of available networks listed by channel, signal strength, and security type, including “hidden” SSID’s your PC might not detect otherwise.

Previously-mentioned free Windows app WeFi offers a community-generated database of free hotspots for searching. It does an okay job of finding hotspots, but beware of optional crapware in the installation process. (Just say no.)

Mac
On the Mac, iStumbler is the free scanner application of choice. iStumbler offers an informative table of nearby hotspots, including their names, security mechanism, channel, signal and noise percentages, and MAC addresses. iStumbler hasn’t been updated in a long time, and it didn’t work as well as it used to on Leopard on my Snow Leopard installation. For a pay-for alternative to iStumbler, check out AirRadar ($16/license, free trial available).

Smartphones: iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android
Your Wi-Fi enabled smartphone can scan for nearby networks using its built-in antenna, but a few apps let you search near your location or another location, too.

On the iPhone, I got the best results from JiWire’s Free Wi-Fi Finder, which searches areas by zip code or your current location. (You can also use the mobile JiWire webapp at iphone.jiwire.com.) Other iPhone Wi-Fi scanner apps include WifiTrack ($1) and WiFiFoFum ($3).

On Windows Mobile, WiFiFoFum is available, and as Kevin pointed out, the WeFi app is also available for Android.

Webapps
Installable applications aside, if you’ve got a smartphone with internet access, several webapps will search an area to help you find a Wi-Fi hotspot for your laptop, including:

Bookmark those in your mobile browser for future reference.

Desperation Level: High

Desperate times call for desperate measures. If your search for Wi-Fi is fruitless—or turning up only security walls—you've still got a few options.

First, you can turn your smartphone into a router by tethering to its connection. This isn’t going to give you the fast connection that most public Wi-Fi hotspots will, but it will get your laptop online. Here’s one method for enabling tethering on your iPhone 3.0; here’s how to turn a Palm Pre into a tethered Wi-Fi router. Android owners, the PdaNet app tethers your device to your laptop. In fact, PdaNet is a popular tethering app that works on Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Palm OS, and iPhone—though you'll need to jailbreak your iPhone to get it working.

Finally, from the “don’t be a jerk” files, if you absolutely have to, you can force your way onto a WEP-secured wireless network. Here’s how to crack a Wi-Fi network’s WEP password with Backtrack. Just because you can doesn't mean you should, of course—be prudent about hopping someone else's virtual gate.

What’s your favorite method, app, or search engine for finding free Wi-Fi? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor, wishes you a neighborhood blanketed in free Wi-Fi. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.





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Upcoming Tech That Will Rock Your World [Upgrades]

Posted on June 10, 2009
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Major announcements from Google, Microsoft, and Apple in the last few weeks have techies flipping out about the awesomeness coming to our browsers, pockets, and desktops in the very near future. Strap on your jetpacks; let’s take a look.

Google Wave

Google Wave is the one item on this list whose reading on the SQUEE-o-meter is off the charts. The ambitious new messaging platform sets out to reinvent email for the modern web. Google Wave rolls email, wikis, instant messaging, blog-style commenting, revision history and version control, collaborative document-editing, and a whole lot of Ajax magic into a single app that just might someday subsume email and other fragmented messaging and collaboration products.

Thanks to the new HTML 5 standard support in modern browsers, Wave offers live as-your-recipient-types updating to messages and documents in your browser, wave revision playback, live collaboration on a single wave (as in, you can watch the cursors of your co-workers typing away on your screen while you work), and smart contextual spellcheck that knows you meant “Iceland is an island” when you type “Icland is an icland.” If you haven’t already watched the hour-plus video demonstration of Google Wave (and don’t want to invest the time), check out the highlight reel.

Like Gmail and Google Maps did, Wave will set the bar for web applications even higher, and change our expectations about what’s possible in the browser on our desktop and on the handset. Since it’s not yet in the wild, it’s hard to say what Wave uptake and use will be like; likely early adopters will lead the way but that at first it will feel strange and almost too-powerful.

Google Wave is in an early, invite-only Preview now, but will be available to the public "later this year." Like Firefox, Chrome, and Android, Wave is open source and extensible. The Wave server you will use is also not necessarily hosted by Google—you or your organization could install a copy on your own server.

Windows 7

Windows is making a much-needed comeback from the flop that was Vista, and it’s called Windows 7. Sure it’s cool to knock Microsoft for past sins, and we’re not saying that Windows 7 is the end-all and be-all of all operating systems—but it's a marked improvement, and it's ready for the future.

Windows 7 adds visual features to your desktop that you need now as well as lays the groundwork for a tomorrow filled with multi-touch devices and tiny netbooks. Win7 is faster and smaller, able to run on a less powerful netbooks, and ready for your new touchscreen monitor or tablet. (We haven’t tried Win7′s multi-touch capabilities and for the record, some say that it’s only half-baked so far. The road to the future is a long one.) Current widescreen and dual monitor users will love Windows 7′s taskbar and Aero Peek features for multi-tasking, previewing, and managing several windows.

Windows 7 will be available in stores on October 22nd, but unlike any other item on this list, the release candidate is available as a free download right now for anyone to install and try out, no invites required. If you do, be sure to check out out our Guide to Upgrading to Windows 7 RC.

Snow Leopard

While it won’t offer the same “ooh shiny!” visual makeover that Windows 7 does, Apple is also battening down the hatches and getting Mac OS X future-ready. The next version of the operating system, 10.6, is a cheap $29, and is revamped, enhanced, and retuned. Snow Leopard takes up half the disk space of its predecessor, starts up and shuts down faster, and includes totally re-written default applications with 64-bit computing support which means your Mac can more efficiently address and use more memory.

Snow Leopard’s also making tracks into the corporation with Microsoft Exchange support and taking a page from the iPhone book with location awareness. And not to be left behind by Windows 7's new taskbar and Aero Peek, Snow Leopard adds Exposé to the Mac Dock to make managing and clearing away windows on your desktop as easy as possible. While Snow Leopard is light on the user-facing features, here's what you will notice when you upgrade this fall.

iPhone 3GS and the All-Out Smartphone War

Is it irritating (and hard on the wallet) that every single year there’s a newer, better smartphone on the market to lust after? Yes, ma’am. Is stiff competition between companies to manufacture the tiny and powerful computer we walk around with in our pockets awesome? Yessiree. Apple still leads the smartphone pack with the iPhone (and the new iPhone 3GS unveiled this week), but the Palm Pre and HTC’s line of Android phones are also in the game, and that means better phones for all of us.

When you step back and think about all the devices a good smartphone can be to us: phones, email terminals, GPS devices, e-book readers, iPods, cameras, video capture and editing devices, and pretty much anything else an app can make them, it blows the mind. Like Snow Leopard, the iPhone 3GS is light on the features (save the better camera and compass) but heavy on the speed and performance increases. Expect this war to rage on, and spawn even more devices. (Mac tablet, anyone?)

What does it all mean?

The major trends across all these products is creating a faster and slicker cloud and local desktop experience. (New browsers like Chrome and Safari 4 also capitalize on the “faster leaner meaner” sell as well.) Evolved standards (like HTML 5), more powerful hardware support (64-bit architectures) as well as portable devices like netbooks and touchscreens are all signposts along the way. Location-awareness continues to show itself on desktops and smartphones, and extensibility (whether it’s a smartphone app store or open-source extension) all means we’re in for a super-fun ride in the next couple of years.

Lest I gush all over my keyboard any more, it’s time to find out what you think:

What upcoming tech are you most excited about?(answers)

What upcoming bits of hardware and software are the stuff of your dreams? Which ones are the yawners? Tell us about it in the comments.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor, is wearing her “the future’s so bright” shades. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.





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Separate Your Data from Windows on a Standalone Partition [How To]

Posted on May 27, 2009
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With Windows 7‘s release just around the corner, now’s a great time to get your PC ready for the new operating system. First step: separate your data onto a dedicated partition.

The Newbie’s Primer: What’s a Partition?

A partition is what looks like a separate disk in your computer, with its very own letter—like a D: or E: drive alongside your C: drive. In reality a partition can either be a subset of an existing hard drive (virtual) or an actual separate physical drive.

A virtual partition is a slice of an existing drive. That means if you’ve got one physical hard drive, you can partition it into a C: drive and a D: drive. In Windows Explorer, those will look and act just like separate disks, even though it’s actually one hard drive.

A physical partition is a whole other hard drive that gets its own letter when you add it to your computer.

The Benefits of a Standalone Data Partition

By default, Windows stores your data in a user-specific directory–C:Documents and SettingsginaMy Documents in XP, C:UsersginaDocuments in Vista, etc. However, for the power user, there are benefits to dedicating a single drive letter to your precious data.

Fresh operating system installations are easier. Whether you’re doing a fresh installation of Windows 7 or formating your hard drive to reinstall Windows XP from scratch, a separate data partition comes in handy. With your data stored on partition other than C:, nuking your Windows drive is much easier because you don't have to delete and copy back your files. You never have to touch your data partition—it's there and ready to use when Windows is.

Accessing data from multi-booting operating systems is easier. If you’re both curious but apprehensive about upgrading to Windows 7, you can have your operating system cake and eat it too by dual (or triple) booting your system. If you do decide to dual boot Windows 7 alongside your existing Vista or XP system, a standalone data drive will serve you well: both OSes can access your files in their dedicated location, without one having to navigate through the other’s default folder hierarchy.

Separate hard drives reduce the risk of total failure. If your data partition is a separate physical drive, you’ve got redundancy that reduces the risk of total PC failure. If your C: drive fails, you can pull your data drive out, stick it in an drive enclosure or install it in another PC, and go. If your data partition fails, you’ve still got a working PC: you can just restore a data backup without having to reinstall Windows. With a separate partition for your data, it’s just easier to image, back up, or transfer your important files, photos, videos, and tunes.

You might get better performance. While I haven’t tested this or seen official confirmation from Microsoft on it, at least a couple of savvy Lifehacker readers say that a separate physical partition can boost your PC’s performance, because Windows has another place to store virtual memory and paging information.

The Pitfalls and Gotchas of a Standalone Data Partition

While neat freaks will love the clean separation of their data and operating system with a standalone partition, there are a few things to keep in mind.

You’ve got to switch where all your applications save their documents. It’s not difficult to tell Windows you’ve relocated your “My Documents” folder, but with a separate data partition you do have to do just that. (In all versions of Windows, it’s a matter of right-clicking on your My Documents icon and setting the path in the Properties dialog). Even if you do that, some older software might not get the memo. Reader pdok said:

I’ll confess a little separation anxiety here. I used to do this partition scheme, but finally gave in to the standard “My Documents” hierarchy because there are so many stupid programs that don’t check where the user file store is. I was constantly redirecting default file saves to my separate partition, and eventually I just gave it up since it ended up not saving me time. Yes, I know you can define different locations for My Docs, but I found even Microsoft programs that were too unsophisticated to handle a non C-Drive default location.

For example, here’s how to tell Dropbox to use a different syncing folder.

You’ve got to manually export some types of user data that programs keep within their Application Data folder, like browser bookmarks, Outlook’s PST file, Firefox’s profiles, and address book contacts. There are two types of user data on your system: the files you explicitly create and save, and the data you implicitly create and save, like software profiles and contact lists. Your separate data partition won’t have the implicit stuff unless you manually export ‘em or do things like back up your Firefox profile.

Size matters. (And so do good backups.) When you create your data partition, make sure you give both your operating system and your documents folder as much room as they need. While you can resize partitions after you’ve created them, it’s not as easy on older versions of Windows and can nuke your whole drive if something goes wrong. So size does matter: make the right decision up front. Along those same lines, a separate partition for your data doesn’t mean you still don’t need to do thorough, regular, and preferably automated data backups.

You can’t store application installations on your data partition. Because installing a Windows application makes registry changes and plants various DLL’s around your system, I don’t recommend installing apps anywhere other than your C: drive with Windows. The best way to back up and separate your software is to keep the original installation disks. A separate data partition doesn’t include program installation files. In fact, reader Brian Sexton reminds us:

Software activation for applications such as Flash, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver and media authorization for such things as iTunes purchases are tied up with the system and its registry or at least hidden files, not just the obvious applications and data, so even if most of your data is safely stored on a separate drive or at least completely backed up to another drive or removable media, you still might have to deal with reactivation and reauthorization hassles even if you are using the same exact system after the crash, just with a new hard drive.

How to Set Up Your Data Partition

Still game? Here’s the quick rundown on how to get your dedicated data drive going.

Add another physical hard drive to your PC. For true separation of operating system and your data, you want to crack open your PC’s case and install a new hard drive. Once your new drive’s got its own letter and is formatted and ready for use, it’s a matter of moving your data over to it.

Partition the free space on your existing drive. If you want to split your existing hard drive into separate partitions for your OS(es) and data, you need a repartitioning tool. Windows Vista comes with one installed by default; here’s a step by step on how to repartition your drive in Vista. If you’re using Windows XP, you want to try a free tool like GParted. Adam walks you through how in step 1 of his article on how to dual boot Windows 7 with XP or Vista.

Once your data partition has a letter and data on it, tell Windows you relocated your My Documents folder and you’re good to go. (For the extra anal, here’s how you can further organize your data partition).

You a believer in a separate data partition? Any tips for living the multi-disk computer life? Post ‘em up in the comments.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker’s founding editor, has been separating her data and operating system for years now. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.





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