[Lifehacker] 4 New Entries: This Week's Top Downloads [Download Roundup]

This Week's Top Downloads [Download Roundup]

• StreamDesk Brings Web Streams to the Desktop (Windows and Mac)
  "StreamDesk brings a hand-picked selection of live video streams from sites like Ustream.tv, Justin.tv and Stickam directly to your desktop."
• Darik's Boot and Nuke is the Nuclear Option of Secure Data Shredding (All platforms)
  "If you're donating or otherwise handing off your hard drive, however, it's a serious tool for erasing data so it's really, really hard to ever find again."
• ExTray Puts iTunes Album Art on Your Desktop (Windows)
  "exTray is a free system tray utility that monitors your iTunes playback and displays album art and other track information on your desktop."
• Ultimate Windows Tweaker is Like Tweak UI for Vista (Windows Vista)
  "Ultimate Windows Tweaker makes no bones about its source of inspiration—the uber-specific, XP-customizing Microsoft tool TweakUI—and does pretty well by it."
• SnapTell Explorer Instantly Looks Up Any Product via Photograph (iPhone 2.0)
  "Similar to a bar code scanner (except you photograph the item cover, not its bar code), SnapTell automatically looks up your item and gives you links to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Wikipedia, and straight-up search engines so you can compare prices and find out more about it."
• Free Version of TouchType Email App Now Available (iPhone 2.0)
  "TouchType offers landscape view (and wider keyboard) for composing email on your iPhone or touch, and even better, can save and load reusable text snippets to reduce your typing and make sending repetitive emails a matter of a whole lot fewer taps."
• Merge MP3 Combines Audio Files in Drag-and-Drop Interface (Windows)
  "If you are looking for ways to merge a bunch of MP3 files into one larger file, and don't like the command line solution I wrote about earlier this week, try Merge MP3."
• Q-Dir Explores Files with Multiple Panes and Custom Views (Windows)
  "Free file browser Q-Dir makes for a good USB drive app or installed replacement for Windows Explorer for those who do a serious amount of file swapping, or just like to be able to keep multiple folder views open at once."
• Plex 7 Adds iTunes and iPhoto Support and More (Mac OS X)
  "The latest version of the free Plex Media Center for Mac now includes iTunes and iPhoto support, iTunes visualizations, TV theme music, and the ability to play songs you've purchased from the iTunes Store."
• Mmm Free Declutters Busy Context Menus (Windows XP)
  "Free utility Mmm offers an easy interface for hiding and organizing right-click context menu items—into a "Rarely used" subfolder, for example."

Make a Custom Leather Case for Your Small Electronics [Weekend Project]

Sure you could probably pick up a pleather case for nearly any electronic device you own, courtesy of eBay and healthy international trade routes, but it would lack the charm of a hand crafted leather case. There is an excellent tutorial over at the DIY blog Instructables on how to make a molded leather case. The tutorial details how to make the case for an iPod, but the molding technique is valid for anything you'd like to mold a case for. The required tools are minimal and inexpensive, for their sample they bought leather scraps off eBay and made their mold out of dense chipboard and tape. For other interesting DIY case ideas, check out how to make an iPod Nano case from scratch or how to make a laptop case out of floppies.

Leather iPod Touch Case Using Water! [Instructables]

Trim Your Budget by Reclaiming the Special Treats [Frugality]

What happens when something that was once a special treat, slowly becomes an expected part of your daily routine? Trent, over at frugality blog The Simple Dollar, noticed that things he had previously done as a treat of sorts had become necessary components of his day much to the detriment of his wallet. Describing how his enjoyment of the a local coffee shop had changed:

Eventually, the experience became routine. It was no longer a treat, it was just a standard part of my weekday. $5 in the morning, $5 many afternoons, all for something completely routine. It added up, too. $100 a month for my morning drinks. Perhaps $50 a month for my evening coffee. That's $150 a month given over to a treat that had become routine.

After going cold turkey on his morning coffee shop stops, he realized it wasn't so much the coffee that he enjoyed it was the familiarity of the routine. Replacing expensive routines with cheaper or free routines allowed him to both save money and increase his enjoyment of the pricier coffee shop when he did stop by. The shift away from the coffee shop wasn't really about the coffee though, it was about finding patterns of unnecessary spending and moving away from them. Most people don't break their budget every month with pricey splurges at upscale stores after all, they whittle it away with a hundred little insubstantial purchases. What treats-turned-routines do you have hiding in your own budget? Photo by journeycoffee.

When a Treat Stops Being a Treat - and How to Get It Back [The Simple Dollar]

Spice up Your Pics with some Photoshop Lighting Tutorials [Photoshop]

Over at design blog Web Design Ledger, they've rounded up over two dozen tutorials to teach you how to add impressive lighting effects to your photos. Whether you want to inject some sparkles, motion trails, sun flares, fire, star bursts or luminescence into your image, there is a tutorial for you. Completely new to Photoshop? Learn the basics of Photoshop in a week. No room in the budget for Photoshop? Check out GIMP, a robust freeware alternative.

28 Powerful Photoshop Lighting Effects

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