You have to keep books somewhere. I take pains to give away as many books as I buy, and to read or at least use any book that I have, and I still never have enough shelves for them all. This one is cool and innovative, and if no one has noticed, this was a staircase BEFORE it became bookshelves, and the owners did…

All depends on the level of hiding/encrypting you need.

Photo2Sketch (Standard) is freeware ([www.thinkersoftware.com]) and does not require more training than 30 seconds of trial and error.

VOTE: PStart ([www.pegtop.de])

TrayURL [www2.webng.com] is the way I go. Fully portable (one .exe and one .ini file) and freeware using the famous AutoIT [www.autoitscript.com] language, featured at Lifehacker, it autoloads from my USB key and sits in the system tray using minimal resources.

NONE of the above. Too settled to feel the need of the whole social networking thing (also a bit cautious as sites and fads come and go), I share my bookmarks across different browsers and computers using a Portable Bookmark freeware called TrayURL ([www2.webng.com])

It is cool. I'm thinking of making it something that is a bit more unique that I can add to my signature and have it look innocuous, so I can have a second rule that does something for any replies to one of the [w] messages.

Here are a couple alarms that work if you unplug the USB key containing the software, or in the case of the second one, if you unplug the power cord.

I don't have the lock-down problem of .exe's but I wonder, as per the suggestion that you can write VB scripts within some MS apps, if they can use Run calls to run a .exe on the USB port?

To change Default printers, create shortcuts (1 per printer) with the command line

The basic recipe for a compost to work well is 1 part nitrogen (grass clippings, kitchen and vegetable waste) to 3 parts carbon (leaves, shredded paper). The reason many compose piles smell is that there is too much of the nitrogen stuff, so for them especially, mix in the shredded paper if you don't have enough…

VOTES:

Principles

I have never found a contact manager that I liked well enough to not abandon after a dozen or so names. Usually because I have to fire something up and wait for loading,a nd interrupt my other work, etc.

I use the Paper Wallet ([www.ipapercraft.com]) with photos. The outer two photos are of family (Grandpa's perogative), and th inside two have consumer points card numbers (not credit or debit cards!), and other stuff I need to remember. Then I ditch all but the essential ID (drivers and health) and one credit and…

TED Notepad ([jsimlo.sk])

MP3 lectures or radiocasts.

As I use my moleskines in my back pocket, and being very aware of sciatic nerve issues (I will not carry a wallet back there) my flat pens tend to be with my mini-pencils in some other pocket. I do clip them to the moleskine if for some reason it is in a shirt picket, and it works well, but teh benefit fo the…

I have been using Regshot regularly to prepare deployments, test installs, and even to figure out where registration keys are so they can be archived in case of system crash. It is portable, so it always resides on my USB and on each of my systems at work and home.

Being a bit mistrustful of online systems, I've looked and keep coming back to the freeware version of SyncExp ([www.syncexp.com]). Using an [autorun.inf] on my USB drive to give the syncing option when I first plug it in, I always have my critical directories up to date.