Namebench is a Google "20% project" and is a free download for Windows, Mac, and the command line. The benchmark tests take several minutes to run, depending on how much data you throw at it, so be prepared to go make yourself a sandwich after you press the "Start Benchmark" button. When I ran Namebench, I didn't get full results because the alternate services timed out, but I'm pretty sure that's because of restrictions on my network. What about you? Does OpenDNS or Google Public DNS beat out your ISP's DNS servers? Thanks, Vince!
Namebench [Google Code]

I admit: since my desktop is behind my router's firewall and I'm super-careful about what I do on it, I haven't run AV or spyware blocking utilities on my PC in years--without a single problem. Happily MSE gave it a clean bill of health. It didn't try to upsell me for a paid subscription, and it didn't report that it quarantined harmless browser cookies (a common red herring that malware cleaners use to make you think they're saving you). While security experts who make their living selling you this kind of software will tell you not to depend entirely on it, I'll replace AVG Free on Grandpa's computer with this this weekend. Kudos to Microsoft for finally offering malware protection at the right price.

Microsoft Security Essentials [Microsoft]

Photo by °Florian.

The Most Likely Places You'll Find Free Wi-Fi

You can find some free Wi-Fi love at the local public library, Barnes and Noble, McDonald's, the airport, university campus, independent coffee shop, or hotel lobby. Not all airports or hotels or even campuses offer free Wi-Fi though, so give the destination a ring before you hoof it over there only to be disappointed. (For example, the San Diego airport offers free Wi-Fi as does JetBlue's T5 in New York's JFK, but many other airports are pay-for access only. On the UCSD campus you used to need a password to log on; now guests can get free access.)

Read the rest at Lifehacker »

Better Gmail 2 users can now enjoy the new Hide Labels in Message Row script (which hides labels until you roll over the message), and a Hide Spam Count update that doesn't underline the Spam link when you have themes enabled. Bettter GReader users will like that the Preview Item script no longer conflicts with Google Reader's new notes capability; and Show Feed Favicons has been fixed (for Firefox 3.1 users only). Both extensions are now fully Firefox 3.1 compatible, no hacks required. I'm not going to open comments on this post--if you've got questions or feedback, join the Better Firefox Extensions mailing list, which is happily going strong. I've submitted both new versions to Mozilla Add-ons for approval as well. Enjoy the updates and fixes!

Secrets provides enough fields per item to accommodate several types of information, from web site passwords to your ATM PIN to your credit card number, and they're all locked up with a master password. Here are some screenshots of it in action.

After you enter your master password, Secrets takes you to your list of data. Hit the menu key to add or remove items, or see when your Secrets database was accessed.

To add a secret (like my OpenID login), use a form that includes fields for a descriptive title or URL, username, password, email, and a large notes textarea.

To see a secret PIN or password, tap or click an item once and it will appear, as shown.

To edit an entry, tap/click and hold it. Secrets will prove useful for sensitive stuff you need to remember when you're out and about like your ATM PIN, but like KeePassDroid, the one missing essential feature is search. When I copied my KeePass database file to Android for use with KeePassDroid, it was basically useless because I have dozens of entries in it, and no way to search them. If Secrets introduces a fast search (and a KeePass database import, while they're at it)--it would be aces.

GV's About dialog says that GOOG hasn't released an official, supported API for the product, so it'll only work as long as Google Voice's mobile interface doesn't change. No doubt the Android developers at Google are busy at work building default hooks to Google Voice into a future release of the mobile phone operating system. But until Google Voice support comes out of the box, GV's the way to go.

Install GV from the Android Market (it's free), and hit up the settings to enter your Google Voice username, password, and phone number. From there, any time you make a call or send an SMS, you have the choice to use your Google Voice number or your cell phone number.

Here's what that looks like.

Tap and hold on a contact you want to text or call, and GV will ask which method you want to use, as shown.

Since I'm switching to my Google Voice number full-time, I checked off that "Use by default for this action" box before I chose GV for both texting and calling.

For the most part the transition to Google Voice with GV is going well for me, save a couple oddities that take some getting used to.

First, to place a call, you tap your contact, and GV calls you first. You pick up, and then it rings your contact. That's the only way to have your GV number show up on the caller ID on the other end--but it's still weird when you're used to just picking up a phone and dialing.

Update: Commenter Oren points out that in GV's settings, you can choose "Dial out" instead of "Call back" as the method for calling a contact. That option calls Google Voice, which prompts you to "dial the number of the person you want to call." Hang in for a moment, and do nothing, and GV will ring the contact you chose automatically. Awesome, thanks, Oren!

Second, when you text message a contact from your GV number via GV, and that person replies, you can reply back to their message--but the "From:" number is an unknown 406 phone number. Again, you can save that Google-Voice-to-contact specific number in their contact record, but it introduces yet another phone number into the scenario.

Google Voice is still young and needs more work to grab the folks without high tolerances for multiple-phone-number complexity in exchange for the convenience it provides. But for the early-ish adopters on Android, the GV app is a good bet. (Thanks for the tip, emailtoid!)

Install MinTTY either in Cygwin's setup (find it under Shells) or get the standalone download from MinTTY's homepage. The downside to MinTTY? It doesn't include a tabbed interface and the developer doesn't plan to add tabs, either. Still, MinTTY's a big upgrade for anyone who spends time with Cygwin. After MinTTY's installed, choose its shortcut instead of Cygwin's from your Start menu. MinTTY is a free download that works with Cygwin for Windows only.

If beginners are interested in learning a bit about Unix through Cygwin, check out my three-part series of tutorials published over at Lifehacker:

• Introduction to Cygwin, part I
• Introduction to Cygwin, part II - More useful commands
• Introduction to Cygwin, Part III - Scripts, packages and more

My personal faves include Font Squirrel, Dafont, and WhatTheFont; hit the whole list to get them all.

In fact, the I Will Teach You To Be Rich book, which went on sale today, is an excellent graduation gift for the college students in your life who are venturing out into a horrible economy steeped in student debt. To get a taste of what it's like, download the introduction PDF for free.

When you do get the book, you can find my contribution on page 134, a short piece on how I automate my week-to-week transactions in order to set and track long-term goals. Here's a full reprint.

Set It and Forget It: Automate Your Finances to Focus on Long-term Goals

Tech-savvy folks who want to get more done in less time don't want to fuss with tedious money tasks like writing checks and transferring funds, so financial automation is very popular among the Lifehacker readership. Personally, I'm right there: "Set it and forget it" is my guiding personal finance system principle. Well, not exactly "forget it", but I set up my accounts to run themselves to the extent they can, and check in on things monthly to make sure all the gears are turning as I intend.

I'm a busy person who doesn't want to think about money matters any more than I need to, so I rely heavily on automated transfers, deposits, and email notifications to keep my dollars and cents where they need to be. Most good banks these days offer electronic bill pay, direct deposit, recurring savings account transfers, and some even offer email notifications if an account balance goes above or below a certain threshold. I use all these tools. My income goes in, bill payments go out, and my credit card gets paid in full with minimal intervention. If my credit card debt in a given month goes above a certain threshold--like $3,000--I get an email letting me know so I can make sure I've got that cash ready in my checking account. For week-to-week money tasks this all works like a charm.

For a longer, birds-eye view of my finances, I use a desktop copy of Quicken to suck in all my account transactions and make me pretty charts. Using Quicken I check in on my net worth over time and see if there are any expenses that I can cut down. This kind of overview work is where I spend the most amount of time--deciding on my savings goals, tracking them, seeing where I was same time last year, plotting where I want to be same time next year. Being a personal productivity obsessive, I'm big on having goals and using checkpoints along the way to get there. I use my Google Calendar to set 12 savings goals throughout the year, with an email reminder for each one. At the end of each month I get an email from my calendar saying something like, "It's October! Should be $X in the nest egg account by now!" That really keeps me on track when life has swept me away and I'm thinking about other things.

As a freelancer things get tricky around tax time--and tax time happens 4 times a year for self-employed folks. I use automated monthly transfers into an income tax holding account so I can pay my quarterly estimated taxes without feeling like I just lost my shirt. (That's not a good feeling, ever--so do whatever you have to do to avoid it. In fact, having your mind right about your money, and keeping an attitude of confidence and prosperity is one of the best financial moves you can make, regardless of what your account balance is.) I use a simple spreadsheet to track deductions, and a big manila envelope to keep original receipts--one envelope per year.

Some of the best debt reduction strategies we've gotten from Lifehacker readers involve tricking yourself into putting money aside, and making it hard to spend. Many endorse the old-fashioned way: cut up the credit cards, and pay down the ones with the highest interest rates most aggressively. One of the wackier suggestions is freezing your credit card into a block of ice, so that you literally enforce a "cooling off" period (or in this case, a melting period) for any credit card purchase. Another strategy to avoid impulse buying is filling up online shopping carts or wishlists and then making yourself wait a week or two before you pull the trigger and hit the "Check out" button. I use this method a lot: usually, impulse buys make much less sense when you've had some time to think about it.

In the end, managing your finances well is a lot like developing a strong personal productivity system: you keep track of everything without making it your full-time job, you set goals, you break them down into small bite-sized tasks, you save yourself time by automating manual work, and spend your time and brainpower focusing on the big picture. That's what I try to do with my time AND money.

Pick up a copy of the I Will Teach You to Be Rich book at Amazon, or head over to Ramit's blog to find out more.

So I just posted a quick fix-it version 0.7.3.1, which includes changes from the very speedy and helpful Arend von Reinersdorff. (Arend is responsible for Better Gmail 2's most popular features, Folders4Gmail and Hide Spam Count, and I know--because users flip out the moment they stop working. Thanks, Arend.)

Sadly I had to remove several scripts which have not yet been updated to work with Gmail's new markup. Update, Thursday, March 5th: All scripts have been fixed in version 0.7.3.2, which is available now! Thanks for your help.

In the meantime, download the new fix-it version 0.7.3.2 using the Download button on the right, from Better Gmail 2's homepage, or just using Firefox's Add-on boxes' "Find Updates" button. Thanks for your patience with the broken features the last couple of days.