Life Clerks

Web-based account manager Zefty helps kids understand spending and parents manage what they owe the little ones. Manually or automatically “deposit” money into kids’ accounts, and they (and you) can see what they’ve saved. If your tyke’s tech-proficient, they get their own login to enter what they withdrew and why, but parents get a super-user account as well. There’s also “Zefty Checks” kids can request money with, and an allowance calculator that determines a reasonable pay rate. Zefty is free to use, requires a sign-up.

Original post by Kevin Purdy

Web site Appropedia describes in impressive detail how to convert your gas-powered lawnmower to solar power. The process involves some serious hacking of your original push mower and an investment in parts, but when you’re finished you’ll be hacking down grass with nothing but the power of the sun. Not bad for a weekend project, if a little on the expensive side.

Original post by Adam Pash

You can find some great deals buying video games used and secondhand, but there’s often the trade-off of not getting a manual or the original maps and cheat sheets with your disc—annoying with some games, near-deal-breakers for others, (I’m looking at you, StarTropics.) ReplacementDocs has over 1,000 manuals and reference guides available for games of all kinds, and helpful users are adding to that number. Use the search box to find your game’s pages, or browse around by platform. It’s somewhat hit and miss, with a lean toward involved role playing games, but a great place to look before throwing up your hands and giving up on navigating that unbeatable level.

Original post by Kevin Purdy

One of the side effects of having so much stuff to help us get work done is dealing with the clutter it creates in our workspace. But just like you can defragment a hard drive—organize the bits and bytes so that related ones are closest to one another for faster access—you can also defrag your office to make it more efficient. Put your stuff out of the way but within reach, and make it easy to find and put back with a few workspace organization techniques. Photo by lenski.

Defrag Your Gadgets, Appliances, and Supplies

The key to a good office defrag is grouping related items together. Put paper and ink refills near your printer, the recycling bin near your shredder, the camera USB cable and extra memory card in the camera bag, stamps near envelopes, the box of refill folders near the filing cabinet—you get the idea. Fact is that it’s a lot easier to print a document or send a letter when all your supplies are in one place.

Make that one place easy to use, too. If you have to reach up to the back of the top shelf just to get new hanging folders, you’re probably not going to add folders to your filing cabinet very often. One time, in a fit of decluttering my office, I stowed my printer on a short table under my desk just to get it out of the way because it looked better. To fit it under there I had to remove the back tray and folded up the front tray. After that I barely ever printed anything when I needed to, because it was a big hassle to move the printer out, assemble it, and load paper. Now I keep it out, assembled, and loaded with paper so I can just hit that Print button without a second thought. The point is to make things easy to get to and use, because that’s why you own them at all.

I picked up a small plastic drawer set to hold all my small office supplies—scissors, paper clips, markers, stapler, label maker, etc. When I got sick of going through all the drawers just to locate a Sharpie (and answering the question, “Where’s the Scotch tape?”), I put my label maker to work and “indexed” the drawers, as shown above.

Clear a Landing Strip, Set Up a Charging Station

Home organization blog Unclutterer suggest keeping a “landing strip” near the entrance of your home to drop keys, mail, and pocket change when you enter. The same concept works in an office as well: set up an inbox to catch incoming paper and mail, a charging station to drop off gadgets when they’re not in use, and just a clear place to set your bag or any stuff you walk into the office with.

Speaking of charging stations, there are quite a few spendy options out there, but you can also mod an existing space or piece of furniture to get the job done. Here’s my Ikea night stand station:

You can also use a simple basket or an affordable but good-looking media box.

Clean Out and Reorganize Your Filing Cabinet

No matter how much business you conduct digitally, fact is, in the year 2008, we still have to deal with actual pieces of paper. Luckily, the right size filing cabinet, a label-maker and some folders can make it almost fun to organize and track your documents. Here’s how to give your filing cabinet an extreme makeover.

Hide Your Cords

A good way to keep your workspace looking dusty and messy is with a pile of spaghetti cords under and around it. With a simple tray and a long power strip you can get cords off the floor and under control. There are dozens of neat cord management tricks out there; see our top 10 ways to keep cables under control.

For more organized workspace eye candy, check out some of the contenders from last year’s coolest workspace contest.

How do you keep your workspace clean, mean, and efficient? Share your tricks in the comments.

Original post by Gina Trapani

Web site RateBeer contains an enormous user-rated database of beers to help you find your new favorite beer. Last weekend we highlighted Beer Suggest, a new site scouring the net to bring you a good beer, but several commenters pointed out RateBeer (and BeerAdvocate) as sites that have been around for much longer—which means they boast more reviews and a more robust database of brews. So while you’re enjoying some nice late spring weather this weekend, check out RateBeer to find something tasty to relax with.

Original post by Adam Pash

Add a little eye candy to your most frequently used folders on your Mac by assigning a background image to the window. To do so, from the View menu, choose “As Icons.” Then again from the View menu, choose “Show View Options.” Under Background, choose Picture, and select the image you want to set as the background. This setting is folder-specific, so you can theme multiple folders separately.

Original post by Gina Trapani

Windows only: Freeware application Hotspot Shield secures your public web browsing by connecting you to the internet through the Hotspot Shield virtual private network. What more people seem to use Hotspot Shield for is to access US-only websites from outside the US. We post a lot of content on Lifehacker, and sometimes we get guff for not identifying US-only services. Hotspot Shield has been the go-to service for tons of Lifehacker readers dying to try a site who’ve hit the US-only wall. Hotspot Shield is ad-supported and installs a toolbar (lame, I know), Windows only. Got another tried and true method for accessing region-specific sites? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

Original post by Adam Pash

Windows only: Copy MP3s and other files to and from a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch with iPhoneBrowser, a free Windows file-browsing utility. iPhoneBrowser is a pretty no-frills file browser, as you can see in the screen above, but it’s less hassle then the FTP method included in our iPhone/iPod copying guide earlier today. The apps’ “Goto Location” menu can direct you to the folders containing photos, program icons, third-party apps, and more, if it works, but you can add your own favorite spots as well. iPhoneBrowser hemmed and hawed about my ZiPhone-broken iPod touch, but transferinng my MP3s to the desktop was still pretty easy. iPhoneBrowser is a free download for Windows systems only.

Original post by Kevin Purdy

Incorporating a new habit into your routine can be difficult, especially if it’s not an everyday activity, so personal development blogger Steve Pavlina offers several tips for maintaining that new habit. For example:

Suppose you want to exercise 5 days a week, and you really want to keep those off days. Instead of doing your regular exercise, you could schedule an an alternative activity for the same time. Instead of doing your usual workout, you could use your off days to go for a walk, read, meditate, write in your journal, etc.

Pavlina also suggests making appointments out of your habits to ensure that it’s got a serious placeholder in your daily schedule. Got your own method of making a new habit work? Let’s hear it in the comments.

Original post by Adam Pash

Windows only: Freeware application Start Killer hides the Start menu button, freeing up extra space on your Windows taskbar. You can still access the Start menu by hitting the Windows key, but Start Killer frees up a good chunk of taskbar real estate. You can optionally disable the Start menu altogether if you wanted to deny users access to it. Start Killer only does one thing, but there’s nothing we like better than a simple tool that does exactly what it says. If you’re looking for a similar tool for Vista (whose Start button is much smaller), our tipster sent us this AutoHotkey script that may do the trick. Thanks av8612!

Original post by Adam Pash