It was one of the first blogs that I added to Netvibes, my first RSS reading and management service, and was carried over to Google Reader, the Firefox extension Brief and my current RSS reader RSSOwl.

For the past year or so I have read less and less posts on Lifehacker. I usually only look at the headlines and mark the articles as read. It is not because the authors at Lifehacker produce less content, quite the contrary.

The core reason is my impression that Lifehacker has reduced the tech article output. Now, this may be my impression and I have no idea if this is true or not. What I do see is an increase in mobile and cell phone related contents which seem to have replaced much of the old tech related articles on Lifehacker.

Even worse in my opinion; The tech articles that get posted are often old news, at least for me and users who follow other tech news sites. Lifehacker is not the site anymore that discovers new and exciting applications for desktop operating systems.

Those tech articles are usually rehashes of other site’s findings, often no longer than 150 or so words long.

Maybe that’s life, that the mobile crowd has exploded and that apps and stuff are the new tech news. Don’t get me wrong. There is certainly a market for mobile apps and news, but it is unfortunately not something that I’m interested in.

As a consequence, I have made the decision to remove Lifehacker from my RSS feed. I will still stop by the site occasionally to see what’s going on. Important or interesting tech news on Lifehacker are covered by many sites that I’m subscribed to in my RSS reader, which means that I will still be able to read them.

For me personally, Lifehacker feels a lot like Digg. A site that I once used on a daily basis turned into something that I have little or no interest in anymore.

Are you a Lifehacker regular? What’s your impression then?

According to information posted on Mediaite nearly 1.25 million user accounts were dumped from the databases by a group called Gnosis. The group is currently cracking the database and managed to retrieve 273k passwords so far, some of which are linked to government sites.

The group promised to release the full site source code and full database dump in the next days. They did release a partial dump already. A total of 2650 users of the database have been using the password “password” or “qwerty”, two of the most insecure passwords ever. Of those users one had a gov, three a mil and 52 an edu email address.

Now, what do users need to do that had an account over at Lifehacker. They need to assume that their account was hacked along with the others, and that attackers were able to crack the password.

First step is to change the password over at the Gawker media site. That’s all if the username / password combination was only used on that one site. Problems arise for users who use the same username and password combination on all of their web accounts. These users need to change the password on all of their accounts.

Our tip: Install a password manager like Last Pass that can help in the generation of secure passwords and the storage of them. It is imperative to use a username / password combination only once on the web.

More information about the hack are available at Download Squad and Lifehacker.

Inactive windows and programs can take up valuable screen space. Most users minimize the programs to avoid this but it quickly becomes a repetitive process as the program windows need to be minimized whenever the programs have been accessed by the user.

The free program Swept Away has been designed to automate that process. It will automatically minimize windows that have been inactive for a set amount of time, 300 seconds by default.

The windows are automatically minimized to the system tray without user interaction. The program options can be changed to increase or reduce the time it takes before the windows are minimized.

automatically minimize windows

Swept Away has also an option to whitelist applications so that their windows will never be minimized even if the inactivity period exceeds the configured interval in the software program. Running applications can be excluded from the program’s system tray icon. A checkmark indicates programs that will not be minimized while the program is running.

Swept Away has its uses, especially if programs are run on the system that need to be active regularly but are not required to be visible all the time. The program is compatible with most Microsoft Windows operating systems, download is available over at Lifehacker.

The file management software Belvedere is a portable software program. The source code is provided as well on the program’s homepage. But what exactly are the features of the file management software?

Belvedere in its current stage can be used to define file management rules on certain folders of the system. The software program is capable of moving, copying, renaming, deleting or opening files that match conditions specified by the user.

Conditions for the name, file extension, size or dates can be configured. It would for instance be no problem to create a rule to move all files with the file extension xyz to another folder. Conditions can be combined so that Belvedere will automatically start the process when any or all of the conditions are met.

Belvedere is running in the background and checking automatically if any files meet the conditions set by the user. If that is the case it will automatically start the action defined by the user. A few things are problematic for now which hopefully will be changed in newer versions. It is for instance not possible to copy or move a file into a new folder if a file of the same name already exists in that folder.

Users working with extensions should also make sure to only add the extension and not the dot. Belvedere comes with a test button that can test the rules before they are added which is a good indicator if the rules have been properly configured.

You can download version .3 of the file management software over at Lifehacker.

Minime bundles the minimized windows into one System Tray icon. If you are the type of user who usually has dozens of icons in the Windows System Tray then you might want to consider switching from your favorite Tray Minimizer application to Minime.

While running Minime in the background users can make use of the keyboard shortcut [CTRL Shift Z] to minimize the active window to the System Tray. Windows can be reactivated by either choosing a single window or by selecting the Show All option.

Users are reporting problems with 64-bit editions of Windows Vista. Other editions and Windows operating systems should run fine. Minime uses about 6 Megabytes of computer memory when running in the background.

The [Play] link changes into a [Hide Player] link which when clicked hides the embedded player again normalizing the website in the progress. This is an excellent way to listen to the first few seconds of a mp3 before making the decision whether you want to download it completely.

The mp3 is actually downloaded to the user’s cache which would mean that it would be possible to grab it right of the cache instead of downloading it again. Great script Adam !

I like this way because I can listen to music directly without having to open an external application, in this case the music player.

Regscanner is the usual high quality Nirsoft application. You can run it from any location without installation it and it works right out of the box. The Regscanner search form might look a bit intimidating but it is actually providing some much needed functions. It offers all the search functionality of Regedit plus the following advanced options:

• Case Sensitive Search
• Searching for Unicode String in Binary Value
• Exact Matches plus five additional criterias for matching strings.
• Display keys that have been modified in a time range
• Display data of a certain size (in bytes)
• Display only values of a certain type (like DWORD)
• Scan one, several or all Registry base keys

A double-click on an entry opens the selected key in Regedit. Results can be exported as .reg files which can be imported into Regedit.

Let me explain what Better Youtube does. As I said earlier it’s basically a collection of Greasemonkey scripts that add various features to Youtube. You can enable and disable those features in the options of the add-on which is accessible  in the Tools > Add-ons menu by clicking on the Options button next to the Better Youtube extension.

The main new feature that has been updated just recently is support for high quality Youtube videos which will be automatically loaded if available. No need to fiddle around with url strings anymore.

Five options are available when you click on the options button. You can add download links to each Youtube video which makes it possible to download them, use an alternate player, hide comments, show full video descriptions by default and enable Theater View.

If you enable the latter all other options become unavailable. Theater mode is very nice if you happen to view high resolution, or higher resolution, videos at Youtube effectively doubling the size of the video.

They have some pretty useful stuff, all of them are “micro programs” designed for one specific use. They have a great text replacement utility for example, called Texter, which replaces abbreviated text, with the full one. You can use it to substitute “gH” with gHacks for example, or “sig” with your full signature.

Swept away is another good idea, it minimizes windows after a specified time when they loose focus. This means that if you have Photoshop always open (like I do), but only use it every hour or so, it will minimize itself. This is great for me, since it removes clutter from my desktop and enables me to actually work.

The post also points you to their great Greasmonkey compilation Firefox extensions like Better Gmail, Better Flickr and Better Youtube, all of which give you added functionality for these web applications. Better Gmail allows you integrate Google Reader for example, or change macros, and other cool features.

Overall, Lifehacker has produced some highly specialized, but quite usable and helpful applications. They are all free to use, so go nuts.

You may choose to always show the status bar or only on activity, you may hide all toolbars that are currently installed including the google and stumbleupon toolbar if they are installed on your system. The same can be done for the tab bar and the windows taskbar. Now, whenever you move your mouse over an hidden item (such as the menu bar) it becomes visible and you can interact with it normally.

The direct opposite of hidding certain items can also be configured which would be show always. If you can’t live without the tab bar and status bar you can select to have them always on. They never hide when you press F11 and go into fullscreen mode.

This application can benefit users with older displays and users who like to have all the information present on the screen.