Category : Entertainment, Featured, Work, Life, etc.
We've worked hard this year to bring you lots of great original video content, covering a range of subjects from building a Hackintosh to slowing down Justin Bieber. Here are the most popular original videos from 2010.
Photo remixed from an original by Matt Katzenberger
How to Downgrade Your iPhone 3G[S] from iOS 4 to iOS 3.1.3
Evidently a lot of you weren't happy with the performance of your previous generation iPhone once you upgrade to iOS 4 as downgrading your iPhone 3G easily won first place as our most popular original how-to video. In fact, it was one of the most popular posts of the year overall. While Apple's made many improvements to iOS 4 to improve performance on older iPhones, if you're still not happy you can use this simple method to downgrade. Be sure to check out the full post for everything you'll need.
How to Build a Hackintosh Mac and Install OS X in Eight Easy Steps
Unsurprisingly, our Hackintosh video was one of the most popular Lifehacker original how-to video of the year. We put more work into this video than any other so it's great to see it near the top of the list. If you want a new Mac but don't want to sink thousands of dollars into it, we'll walk you through the entire process on video. Visiting the post itself will give you the video broken up into each step as well to make it easier to handle this project over time. If you've never built or hacked your own Mac before, it's a lot of fun and a great way to learn the ins and outs of the operating system.
How to Disable Facebook Places
Facebook Places wasn't exactly at the height of popularity when it first came out as several aspects of the new feature caused a privacy scare. Since Facebook's privacy options aren't exactly the easiest to navigate, we thought we'd offer our assistance in helping you disable Facebook Places if you decided it just wasn't for you. While it's been pointed out that the feature technically cannot be disabled, this video points out how to render it essentially useless. If you love Facebook Places, keep enjoying it. If you don't, we've got you covered.
How to Get Started with Usenet in Three Simple Steps
I didn't make a lot of friends by breaking what some call the "first rule of Usenet" (which, like in Fight Club, is "you don't talk about Usenet" — you can read my argument against this in the full post if you're curious). Nonetheless, it wound up being one of our more popular video how-tos. Usenet is a really wonderful way to find and download content online. While the video above explains how to set up your Usenet client, the full post provides instructions on finding a provider and finding content as well. If you're tired of BitTorrent and want something a bit more reliable, you ought to give Usenet a try.
How to Install Android on an iPhone in Six Easy Steps
Although Android hardware has greatly improved over the past year, Apple hardware generally has a lust-worthy quality that few manufacturers can match. For that reason, it isn't a surprise that there's an interest on running a more open operating system like Android on a beautiful device like the iPhone. While there are several drawbacks to running Android on Apple hardware at the moment, it looks promising. If you've got an old iPhone lying around and want to give it a try, watch the video above to learn how.
A Guide to Organizing Your Android Home Screen
Android offers a wealth of organization options so once you have a bunch of apps installed, organization can get a little bit overwhelming. This video demonstrates great organization tips, tricks, and strategies to make navigating your Android more pleasant.
How to Play SNES on Your iPad in Four Easy Steps
As a long-time SNES devotee, I jailbroke my iPad for the sole purpose of playing Super Nintendo games on the go. Being able to use a Bluetooth Wiimote provided the physical buttons needed to make this worthwhile, plus the iPad's large screen didn't hurt either. While this process is very specific to SNES, there are plenty of other emulators available to the jailbreak community. If you jailbreak and install SNES on your iPad, you'll have no problem doing the same for additional emulators. Note: the video demonstrates an outdated jailbreaking process. Make sure you research the correct jailbreaking process for the version of iOS that your device is running.
How to Run Windows, Mac, and Linux Side by Side and Pain-Free with VirtualBox
Triple booting is great, but the need to restart when you frequently want to move between operating systems can be a pain. Instead, using VirtualBox, you can run Windows, Mac, and Linux, side by side, simultaneously. Check out the video above for an overview, and the full post for a step by step guide.
How to Silence Vuvuzela Horns in World Cup Broadcasts
It's been awhile, but remember the vuvuzela craze during the World Cup this year? Yeah, it's hard to get the annoying sounds of those horns out of your head. Fortunately, you can at least get them out of your videos, and—depending on your television—right out of your television. This video demonstrates how to use a few EQ filters to virtually eliminate the vuvuzela from the World Cup broadcasts this year, or any you encounter in the future.
How to Create Your Own Slowed-Down Ambient Epics
Who knew that Justin Bieber sounded so good when slowed down by 800%? What was originally believed to be a hoax turned out to be real: you can truly create some great ambient tracks by slowing down songs by incredible amounts. Want to give it a shot? Check out the video above.
Make and Host Your Own Customized, Personal Landing Page in a Few Minutes
Flavors.me and About.me both over some very cool services, but if you want full control and portability over the personal landing page you create with either tool you just can't have it. We thought it would be great to have an open source, portable alternative that you could host virtually anywhere—so we made one. Check out the video above to see how it works and the full post to see how to implement it.
De-Grease Your Laptop with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser
One of the most annoying problems connected to laptop ownership is keeping your body oils off of the keyboard and trackpad. While we received several great reader suggestions, one of the best and simplest was using a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to solve the problem. It worked so well we decided to document the process and show you how it works in this video.
How to Make Your Own Touchscreen Heads Up Display
When the iPad was just a rumor waiting to be hatched, I got impatient and decided I wanted to make a touchscreen tablet of my own. I hackintoshed an old HP Mini 1000 I had lying around, removed the keyboard, and installed a cheap touchscreen overlay. To make it a bit more tablet-like, I wrote some software in Adobe AIR to create a heads up display (HUD). If you want to see how it works, watch the video above. If you want to make one yourself and use/improve upon the software I made, check out the full post.
How to Take Wireless Photos with Your DSLR and iOS Device
Your iPhone can make an excellent remote shutter, live view screen, and photo viewer for your DSLR. Setting it up can be a bit of work, however. This video shows you how to tackle the problem and turn your iOS device into an amazing digital photography tool.
How to Make All Your Video AirPlay-Compatible
As usual, Apple has some pretty strict specifications for the video you can play on their hardware. The release of AirPlay—Apple's new video streaming technology—certainly didn't change this. So, if you want to make all your video AirPlay-compatible, here's how to do it.
That's all for this year! If you want more original Lifehacker video, check out all of it, plus our very first Ask Lifehacker Live for lots of quick original video tips we created in response to your questions.
You can contact Adam Dachis, the author of this post, at adachis@lifehacker.com. You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
We move fast at Lifehacker, but sometimes we like to take the time to answer a question, explain something in the news, or get just plain geeky on a topic. Here are some of our best explainer posts from 2010.
Photo remixed from an original by Matt Katzenberger
This is our first year rounding up "explainers," mainly because this is the first year in which we all started contributing them. We're glad we did, though—some of our explanatory posts rank as our finest work, and it's more than a little gratifying to take out the time and words to really tackle a topic that's been chewing at our brains. But enough of that—on with the details:
What Caffeine Actually Does to Your Brain
Caffeine and productivity are inseparably married in the minds of many, but it's far from a simple pick-me-up. We dug into what caffeine really does to your brain, the limits of its effects, how you can work off a tolerance, use it as an optimal pick-me-up, and fend off headaches. Image via rbrwr.
What Alcohol Actually Does to Your Brain and Body
It's not as wise to try and "use" alcohol like you would caffeine—its effects are wide-reaching and not as obvious as the tales you've heard. We dispelled some myths, offered a few tips, and explained how it causes all those stadium fights, doesn't really help you sleep, and likely extends your life, but not the way you think. Image via TheDeliciousLife.
How and Why Chrome Is Overtaking Firefox Among Power Users
Since our founding, we've been fans of Firefox, and still are today. But using Chrome for more than a year, the majority of Lifehacker editors have made the switch, and Adam sought to explain why. It's about little things, near-total syncing, Google integration, and no-restart-needed extensions—but mostly, it's about speed, and the perception of speed.
What "Free Public WiFi" Is and Why You Should Avoid It
It's everywhere, it doesn't work, and it's not going away until Windows XP dies off. It's "Free Public WiFi," and it's almost like an in-joke among veteran Wi-Fi searchers—except the joke's not all that funny. With some help from NPR, we told the tale of the zombie network that lives on and on.
Why You Should Never Pay More Than $10 For HDMI Cables
Back when analog cables were kind, cables with gold connectors, gas injections, and all kinds of interference ploys could be sold to audio-video nerds with a semi-straight face. But today's HDMI cables are digital—they work, or they don't. Financial site Mint.com, along with chart helpers WallStats and TheRip, explained in images and pointed words why you should never shell out for expensive HDMI cables—ever.
You Don't Need to Regularly Reinstall Windows; Here's Why
It seems obvious that Windows slows down over time, and that a brand-new, freshly installed Windows is faster. But A doesn't always have to lead to B, as the How-To Geek explained for us. Certain kinds of regular maintenance and occasional batches of cleaning can restore your system to nearly just-installed status.
Why You Shouldn't Switch Your Email to Facebook
We took both sides of Facebook's declaration of a new kind of messaging service: one suggesting a warm embrace of the "new email,", the other (more popular) advocating that Facebook is not a place you should do your typing and sending—it's walled off, not in your control (or at least less so than IMAP-based email), and, more practically, banned at a lot of workplaces.
Why Is Wi-Fi Coverage So Bad in My House, and How Can I Fix It?
Wi-Fi signal seems like downright voodoo sometimes. Sometimes you can grab a signal from the neighbor two houses down, but most of the time, your living room router might not reach your upstairs bedroom. We walked through all the issues that could affect your coverage, and even came up with a spiffy VOICE acronym for troubleshooting. Also: chicken wire. Image via blmurch.
What's the Best Way to Block a Number from Calling My Cellphone?
You don't need an advanced, feature-packed, mini-computer phone to block numbers from being able to bother you—though apps for Android and iOS are certainly one easy way to go. Google Voice, and carrier options, can work for anyone.
Android Task Killers Explained: What They Do and Why You Shouldn't Use Them
When Android first came out, the multi-tasking, anything-goes app system seemed in need of a firm hand to hold wayward programs in check. But these days, nobody should be opening a task killer as often as their email, and Whitson explained why.
Is Hiding Your Wireless SSID Really More Secure?
The How-To Geek explained for us all the many, many ways that a "hidden" wireless broadcast name, or SSID, can be discovered, worked around, and otherwise made to seem silly. If hoping nobody finds your router is your only defense, keep working at it.
What's the Easiest Way to Share Large Files and Media with Friends?
I know, I know—you're thinking, "I bet Lifehacker said Dropbox." But we didn't! It's actually another program, one with the advantage of allowing files larger than 2 GB, and which can start sharing files instantly, rather than waiting for them to upload to a remote server.
What's the Registry, Should I Clean It, and What's the Point?
The short version of the How-To Geek's run-down: cleaning and fixing your registry will never leave you with a desire to phone up your friends and relatives and extoll the virtues of this amazing Windows tip you just discovered, and explain just how radically it has changed your life.
What Should I Do to My Work Laptop Before I Leave My Job?
Whether you're working for a large company that's likely to wipe and re-image each and every hard drive before re-assigning it, or a small firm that likely hands out the HR department's secrets unwittingly, it's a good idea to think about what you might have left sitting around on the hard drive. Jason offers tips on searching down and securely wiping out your stuff.
Why We Hack: The Benefits of Disobedience
"How do you relate to a serial killer like Dexter? You do it because he murders other serial killers-read: bad people. He does something wrong because good behavior won't accomplish what needs to be done. (See also: Batman.) It's this same mentality, this same brand of unrest, that fuels all kinds of disobedience. In particular, it's why we hack."
What's the Best Way to Share Files with a Nearby Computer?
Rather than trade files over a USB key, and wait for the file copies to happen two times, here are the ways you can set up two computer to quickly trade files between one another at speeds much faster than you're used to on the internet. When all else fails, there's always a direct cable connection between the two systems.
Nine Common Myths and Misconceptions About Viruses, Examined and Debunked
The bad news is that firewalls won't protect you. The good news? Viruses can't cause your hardware to die—or infect alien spacecraft, for that matter. Step back from the standard stuff you hear about viruses and get a gimpse of the truth. Image via TedRheingold.
How Do You Know If Your Download Really Has a Virus?
In which we detail the sad number of false positives that pop up across most major commercial virus detection apps—especially as it applies to Lifehacker-created software, or anything utilizing the awesome automation software AutoHotKey. The How-To Geek recommends running VirusTotal to get a bigger picture of any file that supposedly contains malware, as well as doing crazy things like asking the developer if he's seen that kind of warning before. Image via Daquella manera.
Google Buzz Explained
It seems so long ago that Buzz just suddenly jumped into all our Gmail inboxes, ready to connect us to our friends (even if the people we email aren't always friends) and eager to get us talking. We took an early view of Buzz and explained where it was coming from, what it was trying to do, and some of the issues we had right up front.
What You Need to Know About the New TSA Screenings (and Gropings)
Just a reasonably quick explanation of what those scanners are, what your alternatives are, and what happens when you refuse both the full scan and the pat-down in a U.S. airport.
There you have it—20 posts in which we offered a hopefully more explanatory look at something new, or so often taken for granted. If you have a favorite explainer from the past year, or would like us to target something for 2011, tell us so in the comments.
I was watching another great episode of HBO’s True Blood last night and during the final credits the most interesting song started playing. At first I didn’t know if I liked it, then when I backed up the DVR to confirm that Evan Rachel Wood was in fact guest starring as the Queen, I really liked the song, so I popped out the iPhone and fired up Shazam with the hopes that it would actually identify the song, and low and behold 30 seconds later it told me that the song was Frenzy by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (iTunes Link). If you didn’t stick around for the credits, check out the song, it’s amazing. I’m always surprised at the music in the shows produced by Alan Ball, he has such a dark and devious mind.
Hope you enjoy the song, and of course always remember that this is just my opinion and I could be wrong.
-Brian
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In a case of piracy that some analysts called unprecedented, untold thousands of people watched a version of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” online Wednesday, a full month before its scheduled theater release.
Category : Entertainment, Movies
The movie is called The Hangover, and here is the trailer.
