12 HackCollege Days of Christmas: Five Power Hours

For our fifth day in our Christmas series, we're going to cover something oft requested and fundamentally American: the Power Hour. Please don't do five. How could such a simple objective be lifehacked? Well, we've covered it before and it's also one of the more searched for things on HackCollege. We're going to do it the ultimate justice. If you don't know what a Power Hour is, here are the steps:

• Drink a shot of beer every minute for one hour.

Words to the wise: only experienced drinkers should participate in Power Hour(s) and be prepared to puke. 60 shots of beer equates to 60 ounces, or 5 cans, but the beer-in-shot form does a number on your stomach. It's like running a beer mile whilst not running.

Now let's lifehack it.

Let's face it, standing around methodically drinking booze is boring. So let's spice it up. Pick your favorite shot glass and a few friends. Get a light, cheap and borderline watery beer. A Power Hour with Guiness may be delicious, but around minute 38 you'll be in pain.

Most importantly, you'll want music. Wouldn't it be nice if there were a few programs that automatically advanced your song library every minute so that you knew when to take your next proportion? Why, we have just the thing for you.

For the Windows Drinkers

You're probably drinking because you're running Windows.

Your best friend is going to be iPowerHour, though. It's a Windows-only (damn) plug-in for iTunes. If you're not running iTunes and you don't have an iPod, you're a rarity when it comes to the average college student.

That's okay though, because Rosario also recommends MP3 Trimmer, another Windows-only program. You'll have to do some more heavy lifting, but you'll have the perfect playlist.

For the Mac Drinker

Go grab yourself a simple iTunes plug-in called Power Hour and you'll be good to go.

For the Linux (and Any) Drinker

Linux drinkers are a little out of luck. Thankfully, if you've got an Internet connection, you can stream some 1-minute long songs onto your computer. There is one site from which you can download videos and pre-made playlists:

• Hour of Power

Or if you're feeling up to the challenge, you can use Wine (the software) and install one of the other Windows power hour programs.

So have fun at the next Power Hour you participate in, and try to remain conscious.

This post is part of the 12 HackCollege Days of Christmas feature.

Four Easy Keystrokes (Quicksilver (Mac) for Students) - 12 HackCollege Days of Christmas

If you read this blog or hang out with a few lifehackers, you might hear this word, “Quicksilver” thrown around a lot. Now is a good time to try to understand it. It’s Christmas break and you have nothing better to do. For now, just take my word for it: this program will completely change the way you use your computer if you’ll give it a chance.

The problem with Quicksilver (the only problem with Quicksilver), is it is so outstanding, that a regular user can’t even explain what it is. It’s like trying to explain what a Swiss Army knife does without explaining all the parts. It’s like the Cliff Notes for Atlas Shrugged. It’s like reading a Wikipedia entry instead of the instruction manual. It’s like everything we do at HackCollege…

I’ll get to the point. Read this, and if you’re not interested, I don’t know what else to do:

Quicksilver is a way of running your entire computer right from the keyboard. Those who appreciate keyboard shortcuts will fall in love. But Quicksilver is also much more. Quicksilver enables you to tell your computer your ultimate goal so that it completes all of the intermediary steps for you. And the language that Quicksilver uses is the most intuitive thing I’ve ever seen -- right when you think of the task you need to do, you can send your processor off and running. It lets your computer truly become an extension of your mind.

For instance, I want to eject my thumbdrive. Instead of opening a new Finder window or hitting an active corner to reveal the desktop or dragging and dropping or hitting obscure shortcuts – you just type in what you want to do: eject the thumbdrive.

Another example: if I need to send an email to a friend, I’d usually have to open a browser, dig up the contact information, open Gmail, open a new message, copy/paste my friend’s information and then type up the email. Instead, with Quicksilver, you literally tell your computer what your ultimate goal is: to send an email to Albert. Moments later, a Gmail window opens up with Albert’s email address right where it should be.

Hopefully that sucked you in if you've never heard of Quicksilver. If you gave up on Quicksilver once before, follow my lead, because I think you'll like it after this. And, even if you're a regular user, scroll through to the end. I think there's some things you'd be interested in configuring. First, I’ll explain the installation, then, how it basically works, and finally, a few things especially for students.

Installation

Go to Blacktree’s website and download “Quicksilver.”

When you open the program for the first time, the setup is self-explanatory. The first thing you might have a question about are the “Recommended Plug-ins.” Well, of the recommended plug-ins, I recommend: Address Book, Firefox/Safari (whichever you use), and iTunes. The second thing you want to pay attention to is the activation hotkey. It’s really important that you remember what you set this to. Make it something easy that won’t trigger shortcuts in any other application. Mine is: ctrl+option+spacebar. Leave everything else as-is.

Now, pull up the Preferences (Quicksilver > Preferences…). In the Applications section: check “Start at login,” and “Enable advanced features.” In the Command section: uncheck “Reset search after.”

This is the last part, just bear with me. [Note to experienced users: I just do this part so that I have full control over the folder-depth that QS searches.] We're going to expand your Catalog to cover more data. Move over to the Catalog tab in the same window (upper-right). Highlight the User section in the left sidebar. Uncheck: Documents and Desktop.

Next, move to the Custom section of the sidebar. I'll go through this for your Documents folder, but you need to do it with at least your Pictures, Movies and Desktop folders, as well as any other major folder that you access frequently, but isn't encompassed by those.

Click on the plus symbol at the bottom of the window and select File & Folder Scanner. Browse to your Documents folder and click Open. If a Documents folder doesn't appear in the main window, then select the file in the main window that says File & Folder Scanner. Open the Info pane by clicking the icon in the bottom-right corner (if it isn't open already). Verify that under Path, the Documents folder is indeed selected. If not, you know what to do.

Change the pulldown menu just below so that it reads: Include Contents: Folder Contents. Then, move the slider under Depth all the way to the infinity symbol.

Remember, you need to do that whole thing until all of your major folders are pulled up in that main Sources window. For me, that's four: Documents, Desktop, Pictures, Movies.

These settings will ensure success as you play around with Quicksilver.

How it Works

First, I’ll run you through an example. We’ll eject the Quicksilver volume that got mounted to your desktop once you did the installation.

Invoke Quicksilver by hitting your hotkey. Now, start typing “Quicksilver” – but you don’t have to type the whole thing. Watch as the list shrinks for every letter you enter, narrowing down the possibilities, just like Spotlight. Whenever you’re ready, arrow down to highlight the Quicksilver volume. We’ve told Quicksilver what we want.

Press Tab, which moves us to the other pane. Start typing again, but this time, our verb: Eject. It should come up quickly. Make sure it’s highlighted. We’ve told Quicksilver what we want to do.

Finally, press enter, which will execute the whole shebang.

Think about what this could be like once you’re “trained” with Quicksilver. You typed something like: [hotkey], q, u, i, c, arrow down, tab, e, j, enter. If you did that with videogame-combo-move-like speed, you could perform that whole action within a moment of thinking about it – then move on to better things (like learning Quicksilver).

So, the basic equation is Subject (Quicksilver volume) and Predicate (Eject). In some cases, you can add a direct object – we’ll call it a “detail.” Think of things you can do with your computer now. Here are some examples and below, I’ll cover some of them in more detail:

iCal (subject); open (predicate)
“Macarena” (subject); play in iTunes (predicate)
Wikipedia (subject); search for (predicate); “longe” (detail)
www.hackcollege.com (subject); open in Firefox (predicate)
HackCollege team (subject); compose email (predicate); “hello, friends” (detail)
Junk folder (subject); move to (predicate); trash (detail)

The Training Period

It will probably take you about a week to become fully adjusted to using Quicksilver instead of your typical way of doing things. You should immediately implement the stuff below, but to get you started on using Quicksilver for everything else, you should force yourself to perform basic tasks.

Opening an Application

Don’t even use your dock anymore. Change the settings to put it on the side of your screen and make the icons really small. This will force you to use Quicksilver.

Press the hotkey to invoke Quicksilver. Start typing the application name until it gets highlighted. Press enter. That’s it!

Finding and Opening a File

This is simple too. Press your hotkey for Quicksilver and then start typing the first thing you remember about a file: maybe it’s part of the title or one of the concentric folders it’s in (unfortunately, Quicksilver can’t look for text inside the file like Spotlight does). Now, use your arrow keys to drill down to the specific file, if you need to. You’ve highlighted a file as the “subject.” The default “predicate” will be Open. No need to change that, just press enter (like with the application).

A common problem would be something like opening a picture. Typically, you’d open it with Spotlight by clicking on it, or just through Finder. But on a Mac, it’ll usually encourage you to open it with iPhoto, which is a big pain in the ass.

If you open it through Quicksilver you can find the file, tab over and make your predicate “Open with…,” tab again and then search for the program you want to use (probably Preview), in the detail portion.

Quicksilver for Students

The Web Search Function

Quick – you need a definition. You need a stock quote, stat. Your usual method for doing this isn’t fast enough; trust me. By the time you’ve opened the browser and loaded your homepage, Facebook has already distracted you and then after a few minutes you’ve forgotten why you opened the browser in the first place.

Setup

Like many things in Quicksilver, first, you need to install a new module. It’s really easy though. Open Quicksilver – the actual program, not just the hotkey – and go to: Quicksilver > Plug-ins. Browse through here for “Web Search Module.” You might have to open up the “All Plug-ins” section. Check the box next to it and it’ll install itself.

Since Quicksilver indexes all of your bookmarks, the Web Search Module sucks its essentials right from there. Open the browser you use (you should have installed the plug-in for your browser already – that’s important) and create a new folder. If Firefox came with a “Quick Searches” folder for you, then use that one. It’ll give you a head start. In this folder, you will place bookmarks for all of the websites with which you frequently use the search function.

We’ll setup Google as an example. Bring up Google and search for three asterisks (“***”). Bookmark the results page and make sure you rename it to something clear, like… “Google.” Here’s what that did. You saved a bookmark for this URL: http://www.google.com/search?q=*** CODE (or something like that). When you try to perform a web search with Quicksilver, it will simply replace those three stars with whatever search query you enter. So, this function will not work with searches that are in complex coding languages.

Using it

Try it out. Do your hotkey. Start typing “google” until that bookmark comes to the top. Now, tab over and start typing “search” until “Search For…” is highlighted. Press tab again and then type in your search. Press enter and you’ll send Google on its way. So, that’s the equation: [bookmark title], tab, Search For…, tab, [your search], enter. Quicksilver will do whatever necessary to blend in with what you’re doing. It’ll open a new tab if your browser’s already launched or launch it if it isn’t.

Unfortunately, this takes some getting used to since searching for something sometimes takes the opposite path (like in the dictionary, above) – where you enter the thing you’re searching for and the program you’d like to use for the searching is like your predicate.

Setting up More Searches

You should setup the Web Search Module with every single search function that you use. Just search for the three stars and bookmark the results page. Note that the name of the bookmark is important because this is what you’ll have to type right when you get the impulse to do a search.

Here are all of mine (the links are linked and what I name them are the titles) to give you some ideas. You might just bookmark these right from here if they interest you:

Google Search
Dictionary.com Look-Up Word
Urbandictionary.com Slang Look-Up
Wikipedia Search
IMDB Search
Thesaurus.com Synonym Search
LMU Website Search [my university’s website]
HackCollege Search
Metacritic.com Movie Search
Reverse Phone Number Look-Up
YouTube Video Search

Feeling Lackadaisical?

If you’re too lazy to do that, Blacktree has a way of installing a whole shit-ton of searches and the ones you use are bound to be on the list (there’s 604 of them). To enable them go to Quicksilver > Catalog > Modules > Web Searches (from docs.blacktree.com). Check the box next to it. To see the actual list (and perhaps widdle it down to the 200 or 300 searches you actually use) press the Get Info button in the lower right corner and open the “Contents” tab. Here, you can uncheck searches that are useless to you.

The Funky iTunes plug-in

The iTunes plug-in is great, it’s just not the best. That’s why I’m calling it funky. It’s definitely still one of my most-used Quicksilver functions. I use it along with another great app that you’ll find out about before these 12 days of Christmas are up.

The search within iTunes is great, so rather than screw with the already-flashy iTunes indexing, the creators of this plug-in just use the same index. (You’ll notice, if you go into the Quicksilver Catalog, that none of your music is indexed.) So, it takes a little finagling.

The Simple Setup

The iTunes plug-in should have already been installed when you first opened the program. If you didn’t do that, you can catch up by installing it the same way the Web Search Module was installed.

I like the Spotlight-like function of this plug-in, but if all you really want is a simple way to browse your music (sort of like you would on an iPod), then there’s no reason to set up all of this fancy stuff below. Just invoke Quicksilver like you’ve learned to, and start typing “browse” – you can take it from there with the arrow keys.

The Better Setup

For whatever reason, we have to setup a separate hotkey for searching iTunes. That’s just how this one works. So, go to: Quicksilver > Triggers > iTunes. Check the box next to “Search iTunes,” then hit that Info button again in the bottom-right corner. Under Settings, choose your hotkey. Mine is: option+command+s.

Using it

Even when I’m in iTunes, I still use this. Trigger the plug-in with your hotkey and then start typing the name of anything in your iTunes. Tab over and in the “predicate” section of the window, you’ll have four options: Play, and then 3 Party Shuffle operations. Since Play is the default, you can effectively type: [your iTunes hotkey], [name of song], enter – and the song will start playing.

You can also easily browse your albums and artists using the arrow keys. The right arrow will let you go inside the highlighted album or artist.

That’s all for now

I really hope you'll give Quicksilver a legitimate whirl. Me and a million other lifehackers completely endorse it, so give it a solid chance for a little while over the Christmas break. This trial period will not end up being a waste of time.

Also -- keep checking with us. Now that I’ve made an introductory post on Quicksilver, you can expect for plenty more student-centric uses to be posted.

This post is part of the 12 HackCollege Days of Christmas feature.

Three Sweet Functions in One for TV on Your Computer French Hens (Miro) - 12 HackCollege Days of Christmas

This is an easy pitch: imagine having an over-the-internet DVR (Tivo) on your computer for free.

This is Miro (formerly known as the Democracy Player), which combines an RSS aggregator, a Bit Torrent client and a robust media player -- that's three sweet programs in one. When they all operate together, it's like having a bunch of little men inside your computer who do all sorts of work for you. Yes, believe it or not, even TV-watching can be made easier. Oh yeah, I almost forgot -- there's no commercials either.

For me, Miro is like iTunes, but for video. All the organizing, playing and downloading (perhaps pirating) are all in one place.

Miro will basically download a superb copy of your favorite video content (sometimes even in HD), every time it gets released. When you watch the show, it automatically expires a few days later clearing space for more shows. If you fall a few episodes behind, they'll be waiting there for you. Or, if you miss a whole season (studying abroad) and find yourself with a bunch of free time on your hands (Christmas break), you can install a show and download all of the episodes as you like.

I'll stick with my "rule of threes" and do the setup for one show in three steps. Repeat it with all of your favorite stuff. In fact, if you want to practice this with a podcast feed instead of a TV one, you can use the one for the splendid podcast linked here, but the following will walk you through the process for a typical cable/network television show.

1. Start by Installing Miro.

   It's free, open source and it works with platforms I didn't even know existed.

   First-thing after it's installed and running, you'll want to remove all the clutter in the sidebar. Select all of the "channels" that come pre-installed in Miro, and it'll give you an option in the big window to delete them all in one fell swoop. Some of the feeds are neat though, so give them a peek.

   Next, you need to setup your scratch disc -- where all of the video files will be stored. A single half-hour episode will typically run you about 350MB, so take that into consideration. Go to Miro > Preferences... and under the Downloads tab, is the option to setup your downloads destination. Like iTunes, Miro will keep everything organized for you by creating separate folders for each show.

2. Go to TVrss and find your show's feed -- though, feeds can be found elsewhere.

   Now comes the questionable part. You have to install RSS feeds that syndicate downloads of your TV shows. This usually involves piracy. Ideally, someday, the networks will man-up and make feeds of their TV shows regularly available -- in which case you can still follow this tutorial, obtaining the feed from a legal resource.

   Until then, this method is about as legal as recording a show on VHS, but a whole hell of a lot easier. This ain't your typical torrenting experience. No abrasive pictures promising singles in your area and no silhouettes in the audience standing up in the way of a camera smuggled into a theater. It's clean, simple and the quality is pristine.

   At TVrss, click "Shows" and browse the index for your desired title. Clicking on the show (do it) will bring up all of the feeds -- but we want to limit it to just one Distribution Group. So, in the pull down menu in the search box, select a group. I suggest VTV since they tend to update their feeds faster. Click search.

   Now, we need to get a link for this feed on to the clipboard for transport over to Miro. The URL will be linked to "Search-based RSS Feed", which you need to copy -- so either follow the link and copy it out of the location bar, right-click and select Copy Link Location or pull up the properties and write down all 6,000 characters. This is your ticket to a show's season pass.

3. Create a new "Channel" in Miro that refers to your new feed.

   First off, the jargon here is a little botched. A "Channel" in Miro is not like a television channel. So, by adding a channel, you aren't adding everything Fox or CBS puts out, just one "feed" of one program. This works with any feed URL, including a podcast feed. They just call it a "Channel" instead.

   Hit Command+N or go: Channels > Add Channel.... A window pops up and Oh my goodness Miro, has clairvoyant powers! -- your clipboard-ed link will automatically appear in the field. Paste it in anyway, to be sure, and click Ok.

   Just to keep it all organized, you can change the name of the feed in the side bar by control+clicking and selecting Rename Channel.
   

As awesome as that is, Miro still does more, so don't stop there. The mysterious built-in media player is actually VLC (which Kelly covered thoroughly), if you're running Windows. For Mac users, it's still quite robust: Quicktime. So, you can play almost all of your video content right from here. To reduce confusion, I don't even have another torrenting program. I just drag and drop any other torrent instructions (other movies and videos) into Miro -- it'll download the file without adding a feed or anything -- and deposit the final thing into the same organized media folder where my TV shows go.

For Mac users, here's a quickie hack to make that a bit easier. Open a Finder window and go to: View > Customize Toolbar... -- with this open, you can now drag any program shortcut into your Finder toolbar. If you do that with Miro, it stays nice and available while you're browsing for the .torrent or video files, and it only takes a mini drag to pull it up in Miro.

Get the feed for the HackCollege Podcast right here. Add it as a Channel in Miro! It's a torrent feed, for fast and automated downloads.

12 HackCollege Days of Christmas: Two Dead Drives; Back Stuff Up

Hard drives are more fragile than Santa's elves' fingers; lots of small parts constantly working overtime. All it takes is one piece of dust or one sudden jolt to destroy your entire digital library, especially if you've got info on an external hard drive. For day 2 of the 12 HackCollege Days of Christmas, we're going to cover how to back up your stuff on all platforms.

Assess Your Need

For most people, a simple thumbdrive will do. If you're only backing up Word documents and pdf's, then a gig or two will do you good (and we know it's easy to delete a word document). They're the cheapest and most reliable; they've got zero moving parts. And a buyer can't go wrong with his purchase: all thumbdrives work about the same.

If you're planning on backing up larger media files (you photographer/videographer, you), we'll need to bring out the big guns. Get a reliable external hard drive with a decent warranty. If you can afford it, look at something like G-TECH drives. They have a 2-year warranty; compared to all other drives' 1-year. If you can't pony up the cash for a G-TECH drive, look at Seagate, Western Digital, or any other hard drive manufacturer that manufactures both the casing and the drive inside. Not trying to brag, I've got a 320 GB G-TECH G-RAID drive (for video editing) and a 320 GB Western Digital My Book Premium Edition. I'm satisfied with both.

So get yourself an external drive and let's get started.

Choose Files for the Lifeboat

Unless you're using Apple's new Time Machine (we'll get to that later), you shouldn't try to back up your entire system. Your operating system and programs can always be reinstalled in the case of a catastrophe.

Move all of your files into a few folders that will be your backup folders. DSLReports.com recommends the following folders/files/information:

• Address books


• E-Mail


• Calendars and schedules


• Documents


• Projects


• Databases


• Programs that are no longer available


• Web favorites


• Photos


• Settings


• Saved games

If you're using Google's suite, you can check off e-mail, calendars, documents, address books, and projects.

Make sure your put everything under the same folder separate from everything else. You'll need to work out of here from now on to avoid headaches. Once you've gotten yourself organized, it's time to get some backup software and put it to work.

Your Lifeboat Captains

With any backup scheme. You can always just copy the files into a safe location manually. If this suits your purpose, then skip this section. If you're looking to save some time and make sure you don't miss anything, read on...

Windows

Gina Trapani of Lifehacker does this topic more justice than I ever could. Read her post about backups on Windows.

Mac

If you've got a Mac with Leopard (10.5), just run Time Machine. It will give you the best performance for the least amount of work. Just make sure you keep that drive safe and immobile.

If you're not spoiled by your parents, welcome to the command-line jungle of Panthers (10.3) and Tigers (10.4). Us at HackCollege like to keep stuff free for you. The only reliable solution with incremental backups is command-line driven. It's name is rsync. It's pronounced like a forgotten step-brother of N*SYNC and is already on your Mac.

First, you'll need to get your hands dirty. Open up Terminal.app (Applications -> Utilities).

Now you're in the Matrix, or just the old-school way of running a computer. You will need the filepath for your source and destination folders. An example source could be: /Users/MIKE/Documents/IMPORTANTSTUFFTOBACKUP/. An example destination could be: /Volumes/MYHARDRDRIVE/MYBACKUPFOLDER/. Anything in caps you will need to change depending on how you've set things up.

So let's get to it. Type on all one line:

rsync -avz --exclude '.DS_Store' /Users/MIKE/Documents/IMPORTANTSTUFFTOBACKUP/ /Volumes/MYHARDRDRIVE/MYBACKUPFOLDER/

(This example was modeled after an old Lifehacker article example.)

Voila. Write this command down, memorize it, alias it (if you're smart), or write a shell script to run all of your backup commands (if you're really smart). This command will quickly copy your files that you have chosen to back up where they need to go. Just run the command how often you would like to back everything up. If you're super-duper smart (and probably are already backing your stuff up on the command-line), then set up a cron event to do this regularly.

Linux (Ubuntu)

My personal favorite backup tool is Simple Backup. Install it either by searching for it in the Synaptic Package Manager or by typing:

sudo apt-get install simplebackup

on the command-line.

Once installed, find it in System -> Administration -> Simle Backup Config. Select "Custom Backup Settings," add your folder to the list of included files, change the destination to something safe, then click Save. Your backups will run often and smartly.

Put the Backup Files in Good Hands

Simply putting your files on a hard drive is sometimes not enough. What if your dorm room catches on fire? What if your apartment floods? What if someone triggers an EMP device near your residence? So what do you do? Co-locate.

The most cost-effective solution for most people savvy enough to upload their backups will be the Amazon Simple Storate Service (S3). S3 is similar to using an FTP. We use it to serve up our podcast. The service allows you to securely store and download files up to 5 GB in size. Amazon charges you by the gigabyte, so you'll never be paying more than you need to. Check it out and google around to get yourself set up. (We'd talk about it here, but it's just way too much information for one post. Maybe we'll write a post about it in the future.)

Rescuing Files from the Lifeboat

Hopefully your drives will never crash and your ship will never sink. If your drive does crash, you'll usually need the same program you used to backup your files as you will to recover them. Good luck.

This post is part of the 12 HackCollege Days of Christmas feature.

"The Partridge Family" with VLC - 12 HackCollege Days of Christmas

If you're itching to watch a season of The Partridge Family, you'll be able to Netflix it. But you're so bored and you can't wait that long. Or you're traveling. Whatcha' gon' do? Probably search it out on the Net. Once you search it out and download it, your media player gives you a codec error. Now what? Our advice: reach for a traffic cone

Legal or not, videos downloaded from the Web can be stubborn to downright impossible to play. Whenever I've downloaded some obscure video file, I first reach for my trusty-and-never-dusty traffic cone.

"A traffic cone?" you say. Yes, a traffic cone. It's the icon for the VLC media player. It plays anything. No seriously, anything. Because of of the way proprietary codecs work, no single media player (iTunes, Windows Media Player, what-have-you) can play a file without some finagling. But the folks behind VLC use free decoding libraries and builds all of them right in. What does that mean? It means you only need to install one video program to play all of your video files.

I personally have been using VLC for a little over a year now. Although the program is still in beta, it delivers a user experience of a mature program. Oh, did I mention that it's available for just about every operating system you can imagine?

A gem like VLC is hard to find, and thus it makes a perfect cornerstone for our 12 HackCollege Days of Christmas feature.

• Get the VLC media player and stop worrying about video formats

This post is part of the 12 HackCollege Days of Christmas feature.

The 12 Days of HackCollege Christmas Feature

We'll be bringing loyal readers 12 different and useful programs and tip posts over the next few days as our little gift to you.

Here's the list, check it twice:

• "The Partridge Family" with VLC


• Two Dead Drives: Back Stuff Up


• Three Sweet Functions in One for TV on Your Computer French Hens (Miro)


• Four Easy Keystrokes: Quicksilver (Mac for Students)


• Five Power Hours!


• Six Hours A-Talking


• Seven Hours A-Surfing


• Eight Times the Internet Speed with OpenDNS


• Nine Onion Routers of Anonymity


• Ten Keys A-Sizzling (Mac)


• Eleven Clean, Fast PCs


• Twelve Friends on Facebook, Keeping Contacts in Sync

'Tis the Night Before Christmas, and It's Quiet Throughout the Web

Not a blogger is stirring, not even us.

But we have been busy typing away the last week preparing the 12 HackCollege Days of Christmas feature. We'll be bringing you 12 posts of free program-goodness. One for each day of Christmas.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Podcast Updates

Hey everybody. We hope the holidays are as well as can be. We've got a few podcast updates:

• We're on iTunes!


• Subscribe to the HackCollege Podcast (Video) with iTunes


• Subscribe to the HackCollege Podcast (Audio) with iTunes


• There are now more ways to get the podcast! We've got a shiny new torrent feed and an audio feed. Copy the link locations into your preferred podcasting client.


• Subscribe to the HackCollege Podcast Video Torrent Feed.


• Subscribe to the HackCollege Podcast Audio Feed.