Windows only: The free Orca Browser is a web browser based on the Firefox 3 core with the same speed and features of Firefox in addition to a handful of extra features. Those extra features include a built-in ad blocker, flash blocker, auto form-filler, and perhaps most useful, an online storage account that syncs your bookmarks, auto-form information, and more with an online account. Orca is made by the same folks who developed the freeware Avant Browser, which is based on Internet Explorer with an emphasis on speed and improved features.

Orca has a consolidated chrome to optimize screen real estate and comes boxed with several different themes. The biggest drawback I've noticed off the bat is that it doesn't seem to support Firefox extensions. (It appeared to be working when I tried installing some extensions, but still no luck after restarting.) If you're attracted to Firefox because of its extensibility, this is sort of a deal-breaker. On the other hand, if you use Firefox for the security and speed, don't want to install extensions yourself, but want more functionality, Orca may be worth a look. The Orca Browser is a freeware, Windows only. It's currently in alpha, but a more official release is slated for August.

DIY weblog Hackosis details how to fix your scratched LCD monitor after a scarring encounter with a sharp object. The post offers two different methods for addressing the LCD scratches, from a temporary fix involving a little petroleum jelly to a more difficult but permanent solution that involves removing the scratch and re-lacquering your monitor. I've also heard the pencil eraser method works for simple scratches, though I haven't tried it. If all this LCD talk has got you in the mood for more LCD maintenance, check out how to clean an LCD monitor, fix your LCD's stuck or dead pixels, and remove LCD image burn-in. Photo by liewcf.

Google's Wikipedia competitor, Google Knol, officially opens its doors today. The site is already populated with several knols (definition: 'an authoritative article about a specific topic'), but anyone can create their own knol as of today. The major difference between Google Knol and Wikipedia—as we pointed out in our original post—is that knols aren't collaboratively written in the same way Wikipedia articles are. Instead, a single user creates and moderates a knol.

Any topic can have several knols written on it, so the featured knol is based on your credentials and the authority of the article. There's also no anonymous editing of knols, so you'll need to sign in with your Google account to get started. Currently knols are limited (most of my search results turned up empty), but take a look at the lung cancer articles on Google Knol and on Wikipedia for some comparison browsing. Now that you can officially take a look, let's hear if you think Google Knol has the chops to overtake your Wikipedia obsession in the comments.

Web-based music search tool Mix Turtle creates playlists of songs you find online. Working from an index of millions of songs, Mix Turtle supplies suggestions to your search terms as you enter them. Covering a broad spectrum of time and tastes, Mix Turtle returned impressive results for diverse searches such as Miley Cyrus, Robert Miles, and Miles Davis. Once you find songs you would like to listen to, you simply click on them to start playing or click on the plus symbol next to the song to add it to your playlist. Create an accoung and log in to save your playlists, but a login is not required to use the service. The playback applet has no control for volume or jumping about within the track that is playing, but otherwise the playback is clean and the quality of the tracks high. While not a replacement for more robust service like Pandora, song selection was easy and playback enjoyable. Mix Turtle is free to use.

Our brothers in gadgetry Gizmodo make the case for why jailbreaking your iPhone is worth it even with the App Store. Here's why we still need the iPhone app black market.

Windows only: Free, open-source application Halite is a BitTorrent client with a focus on a small memory footprint. With Halite running and actively downloading on my system, I never saw the memory usage crest 10MB of RAM—which, as BitTorrent weblog TorrentFreak points out, is about half the memory consumption of the popular-for-its-small-footprint uTorrent. Granted, Halite doesn't have near the advanced features of uTorrent, but it does support most basic features, like encryption and selective file downloading. If all you want is a no-nonsense BitTorrent client that can grab your downloads with the best of them, Halite may be just what you need. Halite is free, Windows only.

There's a reason there's still so much paper around in this hyper-connected, everything-online age: the stuff is cheap, portable, compatible with all your applications, and everyone masters the interface by the time they're out of the first grade. Ingenious hackers and productivity thinkers, however, have taken paper to the next level in a huge variety of ways, creating templates for pocket organizers, super-handy calendars, thoughtful gifts, and even makeshift tools. Fire up your printer and let's take a stroll through some of the best printable productivity tools out there. Photo by Cirofono.

Note: Don't waste paper! Use recycled paper whenever possible, and preview your work before you hit print to reduce mistakes and unnecessary tree deaths.

10. Print out in-a-pinch graph paper or rulers.

Sometimes it's just easier to write or sketch out your thoughts when there's guidelines on your paper, as you may remember from grade school. If your office or home office doesn't keep a stack of it handy, there are many DIY solutions. Printable Paper keeps a virtual Staples aisle of graph and lined paper on hand, while PrintFreeGraphPaper.com lets you click to determine your sheet's parameters. If you just need to know whether an object or life-sized picture is 4.5 inches but you're missing a ruler, try a collection of the paper version.

9. Turn PDFs into a palm-held booklet.

If you've got reading to do on your commute, or anywhere you're on the go, it's a lot more convenient if it fits in your pocket. Spare yourself staple-torn sheets and awkward folding with BookletMaker, which takes in PDFs and reprints them as readable, multi-page booklet(s) you can order and customize. Note that PocketMod (you'll see it below) and Adobe itself have a similar capability baked-in, but without the multi-booklet convenience.

8. Print a custom CD case.

As replacements for busted jewel boxes or containers for thoughtful gift mixes, a paper CD case is an attractive, value-added way to keep scratches and thumbs off your loose tunes or programs. The link above shows how to fold and decorate your paper sheath; for a more straight-forward artist/album/track listing, check out paper CD case.

7. Fold a paper wallet.

We're obviously big fans (in gawking at, if not always assembling) of DIY wallets of all types, but the durable paper wallet detailed at Instructables is truly cheap, conversation-starting, and, if made out of Tyvek film, durable and water-proof. It's also super-thin, which your well-worn back pockets will thank you for.

6. Fold a 3D, 12-sided desk calendar.

Admittedly, a dodecahedral, AD&D-style calendar isn't as useful as your standard at-a-glance models, but it sure outdoes your fellow cubicle workers for ingenuity. Generate your own print-and-fold PDF at Ole Arntzen's site, and check out illustrated assembly instructions at simplehuman.

5. Plan with a 'Candy Bar' calendar.

Add a timeline to your project notebook or wallet for a computer-free date reference with Dave Seah's Compact Calendar—an Excel worksheet you download and mark off important dates on (original post). The 'candy bar of time' layout of continuous days makes highlighting blocks of dates easy. For those who want an at-a-glance calendar at their desk, a monitor strip calendar offers similar no-click convenience.

4. Template your note-taking.

Many college graduates couldn't look back at their notes from any lecture and make much sense of them at this point—unless they took them right the first time. Whether you're in academia or just need better notes from your meetings, the Cornell Method of note-taking breaks down raw sentences into workable concepts and items. Once you've learned the basics, you can pre-print Cornell-formatted templates at Cornell-Notes to force your hand, and your brain, to do the right thing.

3. Print out a personal CEO with the Printable CEO.

When you don't have an actual CEO making sure you're working on the important things in the business of your life, you can print one out. The Printable CEO is a simple checklist that constantly asks 'When is something worth doing?' Geared to those building sales-based services, you can easily re-purpose the Printable CEO for any goals or decisions, as Lifehacker alumnus Keith Robinson found out.

2. Print your own PocketMod mini-organizer.

PocketMod, a free webapp that creates slick-looking printouts you fold a few times into a mini-organizer, embraces the very reason paper is still around in this ultra-digital age—it's portable, it's cheap and recyclable, and you don't need special tricks to embed daily/weekly/monthly planners, a calendar, RSS feeds, notes, or anything else into it. The original design will keep you busy for some time, but you can also track your mileage and workout schedule, keep the kids (hopefully) entertained, and create walk-around maps. The PocketMod is a truly extendable system that anyone can use.

1. Configure your own planner with the D*I*Y Planner 3.0.

You can drop some serious cash on expensive paper planners at the fancy stationary store, but they always have too many pages of this but never enough of that. Instead, configure and refill your planner with the wide range of printable D*I*Y Planner templates, a collection of more than 100 lists, calendars, task management, thought trees, and other helpers in all the standard paper sizes. They've also added a Hipster PDA edition (here's more on clever little hack), stylish covers, and much more.

There are many, many cool uses for ink on paper—or even just paper itself, in the case of opening beer bottles—so let's hear what bits of pulp make your day more productive, more fun, or just come in handy for you on a regular basis. Share your links and ideas in the comments.

Windows only: Backup utility Double Driver lists all the hardware drivers installed on your system and creates backups of both the actual drivers and lists of the driver names. While handy with any computer, Double Driver really shines if you have a computer that came with pre-installed drivers that are hard if not impossible to come by. With a few clicks you'll have those archaic laptop drivers backed up and ready to put back to work after a fresh install. Double Driver is a free download for Windows only.

Firefox with Greasemonkey: The Google Reader for Wider Screens Greasemonkey script uses all the horizontal space available in GReader for better viewing on wide monitors. Install the script to take advantage of a wide browser window and scroll up and down less than you have to. The Google Reader for wider screens user script is a free download for Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension installed. Thanks, Andy!

Windows only: Free virtual archive tool Pismo File Mount can help you cut down on unnecessary CD burning and folder space by mounting compressed and ISO files as virtual drives. There are lots of utilities and means to do this, of course, but Pismo offers the simple route. Just right-click on a disc image or zipped file and choose 'Mount' or 'Quick Mount,' and you can assign the folder to, say, drive Z:, or just have its contents pop up in a window. Grab what you need, close it down, and you're done. Pismo File Mount is a free download for Windows systems only.

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KuKu Klok is a pretty straightforward webapp—you set a time for an alarm to go off, you choose a sound to wake up to, and you hit 'Set Alarm.' Kind of like the Online Alarm Clock, but the neat part is that the Flash-based app goes off even if your internet connection drops altogether. Add in the selection of sounds to rise and shine to—including the 'Slayer Guitar'—and it's a pretty nifty tool for when the cell phone's out of reach, or you're napping near your laptop.

Windows only: Windows Search 4.0, an updated version of the desktop/web search tool that was introduced with Vista, is now officially available for Windows XP and Vista through Windows Update. As was the case with the technical preview, Windows Search 4.0 boasts faster and deeper indexing, better handling of email cataloging, support for encrypted documents, and a new system tray interface. Windows Search 4.0 is free and being rolled out gradually, but you can grab it manually from a link at this page.

If you're a fan of the foldable, all-in-one PocketMod organizer, or if you're traveling and don't want to swing for those pocket-sized walking maps, customized mapping site Mapufacture has a handy PocketMod export function that could come in really handy. After signing in, you choose the area you want to cover, add any data layers you want marked (landmarks, food, etc.), and then click 'Create a PocketMap' on the lower-right side. There's also GPS export, web embedding, and standard printing, but the PocketMod function is truly unique. If a custom-printed, foldable map intrigues you, check out how to use a PocketMod as a travel and workout tracker or a back-seat kid entertainer.

Every time a new research study around personal productivity and office culture appears, we dutifully post the 'proof' that information overload, email distractions, and multitasking are keeping you from getting work done—but are they? Sure, many of these findings seem very feasible, but it's hard not to think they're published only as a crutch for a larger commercial or media message—either 'the internet is destroying your life!' or 'you need to buy this product.'

Over the few years this site's been in existence, studies have shown that email kills concentration more than smoking pot does, that you've got 11 minutes before the next interruption, that dual monitors increase productivity, that no one understands the intended tone of your email, that email overload costs the American economy more than $700 billion a year, and that multitasking kills your ability to focus and get things done.

Ok, fine. Most of these findings seem to be sensible (except for the pot versus email one, which got way too sensationalized). Even though a study that shows widescreen monitors increase your productivity was commissioned by Apple right around the time they were marketing their cinema displays, my personal experience has confirmed (subjectively) that more screen real estate does help spread out windows and make it easier to work.

Even so, the constant reappearance of these studies in mainstream media over the last few years do make one question what's going on. It's the information and email overload studies that trip my BS detector the most. While I agree that an overstuffed inbox and constant email monitoring can kill your day, this $700 billion a year cost to the American economy makes me raise one eyebrow high in doubt. Did researchers factor in how much time email actually saves people who use it? I get dozens of messages per day and spend a good amount of time managing all of them. I'm the first to complain about what a time sink email can be. However, if I had to get on the phone or mail a letter to Adam, Kevin, Tamar, and Jason every time I wanted to tell them something? Nothing would get done around here. $700 billion a year lost after a gazillion gained leaves us in the black in the end.

Yet, research like this fuels productivity hucksters' cannons with more ammo so we can prescribe yet another productivity system that will solve this terribly widespread problem. (I include myself in this.) Software and hardware companies put out more products that track your time, measure your output, organize your stuff, and make you 'more productive' in every which way. 'Social web' applications like Twitter and Facebook continue to be condemned in mainstream media as a giant waste of time—because we've got so many other 'unimportant' things like email eating up our time anyway.

Even though we're very much a cog in this giant machine, I have my doubts.

The longer I do this, the more I suspect that a good part of the 'information overload' story is a myth cooked up by folks who don't know how to use the internet well in order to demonize something they don't understand. I get more done via email and surfing the web than my parents ever did using phones and libraries, even when I'm having a bad day and switch to my email application the moment I see a new message notification.

At least three other well-seasoned internet veterans agree. In chapter 5 of her book, Connect!, Anne Zelenka argues against 'firewalling your attention' to block out distractions and get things done. That's the old way of thinking; Zelenka asserts that you can be productive by being open to tangents, distractions, and the riding the flowing river of news and information you're exposed to on the web each day. In defense of 'wasted' time online, author Clay Shirky points out that interacting online is so much better than what we used to do with our free time (that is, watch TV or get ripped). Even Bill Gates said that we're actually suffering from information underload, not overload. (Though Gates, then head of a giant software maker, did say we need better products to manage the information we do get—and surely his company's out to make them.)

In short, this post is our very belated disclaimer for any productivity research findings we publish on these pages. Personal productivity is indeed personal, so always take study result findings around digital life and the ensuing prescriptive solutions with more than one grain of salt. When you choose the solutions to implement in your life, make sure they resolve problems you have, not 98% of faceless office workers somebody commissioned by some company polled somewhere.

If there's one default application that comes with any operating system out of the box, it's a file manager. But whether it's Windows Explorer or the OS X Finder, your operating system's default file manager doesn't always offer all the features you want for handling your files. That's why for this week's Hive Five, we want you to tell us about your favorite alternative file manager. Read on for more details and to nominate your favorite alternative file manager in the comments.

The first round of the Hive Five voting takes place in the comments, where you nominate your favorite tool for the job. We get hundreds of comments, so to make your nomination clear, please include it at the top of your comment like so: VOTE: File Management App Goes Here. If you don't follow this format, your vote may not be counted. To prevent tampering with the results, votes from first-time commenters may not be counted. After you've made your nomination, let us know what makes it stand out from the competition.

About the Hive Five: Our new feature series, the Hive Five, asks readers to answer the most frequently asked question we get—'Which tool is the best?' Once a week we'll put out a call for contenders looking for the best solution to a certain problem, then YOU tell us your favorite tools to get the job done. Every Thursday, we'll report back with the top five recommendations and give you a chance to vote on which is best. For an example, check out last week's Hive Five best Windows backup tools.

Wired's How-To Wiki details how to flex your Google-fu to get Craigslist results from every Craigslist domain. In essence, the author does a Google site search of Craigslist.org and excludes pages with the word 'directory' to eliminate directory listings of names and phone numbers. The resulting query looks like:

...where 'search terms' is replaced by whatever you're looking for. Granted, Craigslist is designed primarily for local buying and selling of items, but if you don't have a Craigslist city near you or you don't mind trying to do some long-distance Craigslisting, this method can help you find good deals across the globe. You can limit your results to newer listings by using this method for filtering Google results by date.

We've shown you how to make a couple of different compact keychains, but DIY web site Instructables is back with the ultimate fulfillment of the streamlined keychain and multi-tool: the Swiss Army Keys. Despite the name its creator has given it, the mod requires the previously mentioned Leatherman Micra, up to six keys, and something to cut and drill your keys with. The result, as you can see in the photo, is a fully working Leatherman with a few tools swapped out for keys. Very handy, and with the pocket-knife-small Leatherman Micra, it'll easily fit anywhere.

Windows only: Free, open source application HFSExplorer reads and extracts files from drives formatted with the HFS+ file system native to Macs. Common uses for HFSExplorer include reading files from your Mac file system from Windows running in Boot Camp or—something I've used it for—grabbing music in Windows from a Mac-formatted iPod. HFSExplorer is free, Windows only, requires Java. For help setting it up, check out Simple Help's guide.

Windows only: Free Windows utility PlacesBar Tweaker puts your frequently-accessed folders in Windows' Open and Save dialog box's sidebar. If the Desktop, My Documents, and My Computer (the default folder locations in the Places Bar) aren't the folders you most want to fetch and put files, the PlacesBar Tweaker is for you. This small utility lets you add custom folders to the Places bar and reorder them for quick and easy access. Windows XP's TweakUI utility can achieve the same end (among several other adjustments), but if you don't need everything TweakUI offers, the PlacesBar Tweaker is a slimmer option. (Don't forget previously mentioned OpenWide can also save the file listing view type in open dialog boxes as well.) The PlacesBar Tweaker is a free download for Windows only.