If you have a new 4th-gen nano and a decent ear, you may have noticed something funny: After putting it to sleep, if you wake it up by inserting headphones, the left and right channels switch. I tried this with the most obvious stereo mix of all time, David Bowie's "Space Oddity," and it's really easy to duplicate yourself. While it's easy to correct, it's still definitely a weird, weird bug. Thanks to reader Matt for bringing it to our attention, and posting a thread at iLounge. Have you noticed it or any other weird glitches, like Genius' pathological avoidance of the lovely Norah Jones? (I'm serious, try it!)

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Reading Lifehacker can inspire you to reboot your computer habits, your workflow, your workspace, and even your home life. Believe me, I should know. About a year ago, I was a messy-desked, easily-distracted reporter who relished his lunch-break reading of Lifehacker's RSS feed. I asked to write a few posts, lucked into a real gig, and can now tell the story of becoming a task-minded guru who gets things done with the right software. That's not a true story, though. Inspired by an appearance by PostSecret founder Frank Warren here in Buffalo last night, I've decided to skip the authoritative "we" voice this afternoon and share my semi-secret Lifehacker failings and confessions. Read on to see what I'm not exactly getting done the right way, and offer up your own productivity penance. Photo by allaboutgeorge.

It's easy to confess that every member of the Lifehacker team uses, and geeks out about, the open-source, infinitely extensible browser Firefox. It's harder to admit that, despite all the amazing ways it can help a blogger copy links, download pictures and files, customize webapps, and do so much more, I'm primarily using the no-add-ons-available Google Chrome to surf and write. I'm hooked because it's snappy fast, it lets individual pages crash without bringing down the house (no small thing when you're testing new web services in the wee hours), it auto-converts Google results links into normal URLs, and I just, well, like it for some reason. Google hype gone to my brain? Perhaps. But with extensions and user scripts on the way, I tell myself I'm just an early adopter with a thing for top-mounted tabs.

Until one month ago, I was an evangelist for the Windows application launcher Launchy. Smacking Alt+Space to pull up nearly anything on my system felt great, and I was amped to see it launch for Linux. My laptop came loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium, however, and Launchy was one of many utility apps I always had running, but after a few months, I could definitely feel the drag. I re-installed Vista—because I'm cynical enough to believe it will, eventually, replace XP on most desktops—and thought about what I really needed. Our commenters have often noted that just hitting the "Windows" key and typing out what you're looking for is fast and works nearly as well. Turns out, for my uses, they were right. I still use GNOME-Do when I'm booted into Linux, but the open-source geek inside me feels dirty admitting it's re-assigned to the Windows key.

I majored in English at college and write for a living, but if you asked me how to divide a Word document into two columns and separate them with gray space, I'd need about 20 minutes to Google and poke around. It's not that you can't do cool things with Word, Excel, or (grudgingly) PowerPoint, but I've just never been called on to do them. So for my needs of writing words and spell-checking them, I'm using the auto-saving/syncing Google Docs, Notepad++, or our straight-text blog editor. Those charts and graphs in the browser speed tests? Yeah, those were pretty late nights.

This one truly feels like confession, as the Getting Things Done theology is pretty strong amongst our editorial team and readership. I create task lists, I break them down into actions, I tag them with their context areas, and I use a cell phone, my iPod touch, and Remember the Milk for universal capture. But there are items on my to-do lists that seemingly never come off, and the first-in, first-out mentality is just not how my brain works. My best example? "Clean out grill." That's been in my personal list ever since, well, it made sense to be outdoor grilling in upstate New York. In any stretch of free time I've found, though, I never think to do it, and I'll actually add and complete tasks to the list instead of breaking out the hose and rags. I'll only realize just how important task management is when I open up that kettle and see the char from late July staring back at me.

I was, to be honest, pretty amazed when I installed my first copy of Kubuntu and saw that you could do pretty much every computer task—browse the web, open Word documents, play media and IM—from a completely free (and speedy) desktop. Ever since, I've been impressed with the concept of switching to Linux entirely. When I last wiped Vista off my ThinkPad, I thought about making a go of it with Ubuntu, a copy of XP running in VirtualBox (for app testing), and a little WINE. But the thing about working entirely on Linux is that you end up spending, to this day, a lot of time looking up how to make things work, to emulate this or that Windows utility, to share a printer between Linux and XP systems, to fix a strange dual-monitor problem—in other words, not really working. It also isn't fair to evaluate some Windows apps inside a virtual machine, I remind myself, but the truth is, the most user-friendly Linux just isn't ready to replace Windows entirely—as the Ubuntu founder himself will tell you.

Those are my semi-shameful confessions to you, our wise and loyal readers. Now let's open it up to yours. What productivity tips, tricks, or software can you just not adapt to? What old, busted software are you still using despite all the good things you know about in newer apps? What skill have you been putting off learning since, like, forever? Tell us your tale in the comments, and we'll round up the most intriguing tales of woe for a future post.

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Filed under: Portable Audio

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Reuters - Shares of Apple Inc. rallied more than 9 percent Friday, as investors saw a newly attractive valuation in the battered stock and anticipated new laptop computers.

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Reader skarhead187 has submitted several desktops to the Lifehacker Desktop Show and Tell pool, and the thing that always stands out most—aside from a great eye for minimalism—is that despite using popular dock application ObjectDock, most of his desktops don't show any icons or branding. Keep reading for a look at a few more of skarhead187's desktops and to hear why he likes "genderless, organic desktops":

Windows needs a global menu; OS X has it, Ubuntu has the option. I like Ubuntu's bookended desktop and also its warm and organic interface. I think the futuristic interfaces of Vista and OSX are cheesy and will seem even more cheesy throughout time. I also hate the branding of operating systems (of course I understand it). I want my machine to just work and communicate the information I need with me without overwhelming me. This is my attempt to make a genderless organic desktop. I understand it looks similar to my other desktops, but that is why I've named the set Desktop Evolution.

Using Windows Vista Home Premium, Rainmeter, ObjectDock, and custom Transblack theme.

Most of the rest of skarhead187's desktops follow the same philosophy, and a couple even offer tutorials of their own.

I'm also using Pidgin here because I cannot get Miranda to sign in or retrieve any of my buddy lists (I would prefer it because its skinnable).

Looking good, skarhead187!

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Back in April we discovered a new music recording program from Celemony Software that could potentially revolutionize the music industry. It allows recording engineers to isolate and manipulate individual notes (as opposed to an entire chord) from a performance (no matter how lame) and turn it into a flawless piece of music. Celemony has revealed new details about DNA that claim the program will be able to handle "complete mixes (rather than a simple piano progression, for example)," but stresses that the more complex the job, the less likely you are to isolate individual notes.

Melodyne Plugin 2, the first product to incorporate DNA, has also added the ability to cut and paste / overlap notes and chords individually or in sequence. Unfortunately, the release date of the plugin has been pushed back to 2009—but Celemony has promised to run a public beta testing program prior to launch so people can familiarize themselves with the technology. The fact that it is getting pushed back sucks, but it's better late than never. After all, the recording industry needs a good kick in the pants to get their focus back on quality. [Music Radar]

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The Gadget: Archos 5, the touchscreen "internet media tablet" with HD video viewing, game support and web surfing, is poised to take on the comparatively puny-in-screen, puny-in-storage iPod touch. galleryPost("archos5review", 3, "");

The Price: $450 as tested ($350 60GB model with optional $100 DVR station add-on).

The Verdict: The Archos 5—actually the company's sixth-generation handheld—is nice, but it's not the iPod touch killer I was hoping for after the initial demo.

On one hand, the touchscreen interface is a fantastic upgrade over their last gen. The UI is more modern looking and the touch controls are responsive and more intuitive than their button counterparts. The 4.8-inch screen—a slight upgrade over the previous model's 4.3-incher—is a great size for watching videos without straining your eyes. (The iPhone and slimmer iPod touch have 3.5-inch screens.)

But despite its better look, the menu system is a pain to navigate. Certain options are lumped in categories where they don't fit, and there's an entire menu devoted to selling accessories and software function add-ons. Archos is known to sell barebones players that you have to amp up with software and hardware add-ons. But this one already has a web browser and a capable media player, so it's pretty annoying when the unit begs you to buy it upgrades. Worst of all, there's no way to turn the ads off.

Web browsing is as much of a pain. It only runs in landscape, and code-heavy sites such as Giz and ESPN never seem to fully load. The e-mail program is not clean or simple enough to be useful as a true on-the-go replacement.

While the DVR station streamed video from Archos to TV over HDMI—and did it in good detail—it uses an S-Video input to record shows onto the unit, so they look garbled, with the wrong aspect ratio and out-of-sync sound. The TV guide itself is serviceable, though slow and unattractive when compared to a TiVo or a standard cable box guide.

The Archos 5 is an improvement and brings Apple-like features to an otherwise standard PMP. However, beyond size and capacity, there is a distinct difference between the Archos 5 and the iPod touch. When it comes to quickly hitting the web, checking e-mail or listening to music, the iPod touch is smooth, and looks good, begging to be held. The Archos is far more clunky in its execution. Despite being the hands-down winner when it comes to watching video, it simply isn't as touchable. [Archos]

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

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You're more likely than ever to buy a smartphone, not just because they do so much more than dumb feature phones, with real email, decent web browsing and downloadable applications, but because they're cheaper than ever. With the exception of some expensive ass unlocked-but-unsubsidized European models, you generally don't have to pay more than $300 for a balls-to-the-wall smartphone—though the voice plan plus data fees can easily run you $80 or more per month. Here's a rudimentary overview of your choices (more now than ever before), why you might pick them, and why they might suck for you.

ANDROID by Google The splashy new entrant into smartphone land, Android is Google's Linux-based open source mobile platform meant to bring real, constantly connected internet to phones. Even though it's debuting on a single phone, the G1 from HTC, expect to see the free OS show up on tons of phones, from HTC, Motorola, and others. It's totally modern and powerful, and the fact that it's open source makes it incredibly appealing to some developers, so most signs point to awesome applications and mobile internet.

Why You'll Use It Unlike BlackBerry, iPhone or Windows Mobile, there are no limits on what application developers can do. So its real strength is the power that developers hold—we're hoping to see some of the wildest, most innovative applications hit Android first. You'll have tons of hardware options, from low to high end, and pretty much any input you want—touchscreen, QWERTY, whatever—once the ball gets rolling. This is the ultimate geek phone.

Why It Sucks Developers have to plug a lot of holes right off the bat, like the complete lack of business features. If they fail to come through, it could fall flat. Not as elegant as the iPhone (though it beats, say, Windows Mobile, by leaps and bounds), it still doesn't quite pass the "mom" test.

BLACKBERRY by RIM Research in Motion's BlackBerry started out as a glorified two-way pager before evolving into what most consider the best smartphone for email. It is also a shining validation of tightly integrated hardware/software model—they make the phones, they make the operating system. Previously it was a phone that corporations gave to people in suits because of its BlackBerry Enterprise Server, which integrates it with a corporation's email, plus its Exchange support and high security. Now, though, it's increasingly popular with real live people. The BlackBerry Bold offers the latest version of the standard OS, while the recently announced Storm uses one modified for a touchscreen.

Why You'll Use It It has the best email experience around—in part thanks to their traditionally awesome keyboards, so the touchscreen Storm is something of a risk. The OS is really to easy use, with everything neatly presented up front using rows and rows of icons. There's a reason it has surpassed Windows Mobile in marketshare and is the corporate drone phone of choice. Also, RIM seems intent on juicing up its already solid dev community, so expect even more great apps in the future. (Catching a pattern with the importance of apps?)

Why It Sucks It's totally closed and proprietary. You've gotta buy a BlackBerry phone to get the OS. If you're not using the Bold, Storm or the Flip Pearl, it's not very sexy and can easily look dated. Also, in past models, the web browsing experience was absolute garbage. Now just finding its stride as a consumer device, it's not as media-centric as some others, but that is fortunately changing as well.

IPHONE OS X by Apple Some haters still stay that the iPhone isn't really a smartphone, but for all practical intents and purposes it is. Running a stripped down but very real version of Mac's OS X, it's one of the most powerful and modern OSes of the bunch.

Why You'll Use It It's the most attractive and usable smartphone around, period. It has the best mobile internet browser, largely thanks to multitouch navigation. But its killer feature might be its ability to run third-party apps, which come from one of the most vibrant dev communities around, and are often—but not always—actually useful. Not to mention that, as an iPod, it's also the best music phone on the planet—at least until that mystery Zune phone appears.

Why It Sucks For being so powerful and modern, it can't do things even the dumbest phones do, like MMS, or copy and paste, a smartphone standard. Also email and corporate features aren't quite up to BlackBerry standards, lacking email search among other deficiencies. Apple tightly controls it, which might hurt development and innovation. And the whole making a phone call thing itself still kinda blows.

WINDOWS MOBILE by Microsoft Unlike the iPhone and OS X, the only thing Microsoft's smartphone OS shares with actual Windows is the name. It has its roots in Windows CE and originally went by the Pocket PC moniker before becoming Windows Mobile. Mostly for corporate troopers, the current version number is 6.1, and it comes in touchscreen and non-touchscreen flavors. It recently fell behind RIM's BlackBerry in marketshare.

Why You'll Use It Diehards swear by its power, even if it isn't so easy for Joe Six-Pack to pick up and run with. It runs on handsets from a bunch of manufacturers, and unlike the BlackBerry and iPhone platforms, you can build your own device to run it. So much of the most advanced mobile hardware you'll lay your eyes on runs Windows Mobile, including the HTC Touch HD and Sony Xperia X1. It's got a corporate soul, so it's designed for business users, and it has specialty applications (like in the medical field) that some professionals need and can't get anywhere else.

Why It Sucks There's a reason premiere Windows Mobile handset makers have become increasingly adept at covering up the user interface: It's frankly terrible, especially when it comes to touch navigation. It isn't a great media phone, has a god-awful native browser and doesn't look so hot either. Unfortunately the next version, WM7, is over a year away.

PALM GARNET Oh, whither Palm. Without getting into the complicated story of Palm's various fits, seizures and splits, the Palm OS goes all the way back to 1996, when it powered Palm's PDAs. All but dead now, its last hurrah was on the Centro before Palm plunged ahead with Windows Mobile. Supposedly work on its Linux-powered follow-up is well under way, but it's been delayed multiple times.

Why You'll Use It Though dated, the Palm OS makes a great starter smartphone, hence the success of the cheaper-than-dirt Centro. The learning curve is shallow and it provides most of the smartphone features you expect, even if it does look like it's still trapped in 1996.

Why It Sucks Uh, it's basically dead. You probably won't see it on another phone post-Centro, Palm's more pricey phones use Windows Mobile, and prospects on the upcoming Palm OS overhaul are dicey. (They should take Android and use it as a powerful foundation for the next Palm OS, but that's just my two cents.)

SYMBIAN by Nokia Symbian is the world's most popular smartphone platform, thanks to Nokia. The most prominent variant right now is S60. While it doesn't seem so ubiquitious in the US, abroad it's far more common. It powers some seriously sick hardware, like Nokia's N series, and has a solid dev community, though the free side of that isn't as big as on other platforms.

Why You'll Use It Did you miss the "world's most popular smartphone" thing? Buy a Nokia multimedia phone, and you buy Symbian. It offers a lot of the best smartphone features—strong email, web and calendar, plus a large global development community—in a package that is far more usable than Windows Mobile. Also, it works with Macs with far less hassle than Windows Mobile.

Why It Sucks It can be overly complicated, and still not as easy to use as a BlackBerry or the iPhone. If you're not using a really solid piece of hardware, it can be really sluggish. Also, connecting to the web can be annoying. And while it's on handsets from a couple of other manufacturers, for the most part, you had better love Nokia hardware.

And that's pretty much the lay of the land, at least for now.

Something you still wanna know? Send any questions about dumbphones, dumber people or Mark Wahlberg to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

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Hanging out at sites like Giz may have instilled in you an insatiable, pocket-emptying gadget habit. But now we're entering a new era—the old guys on the TV are saying that soon we may not even have pockets, let alone money for them. Don't panic though: You've probably got a wealth of gadgetry sitting underutilized in your living rooms, closets and basements, just waiting to be given powerful new (not exactly authorized) features. For free.

I've collected the best firmware replacements, software mods and homebrew hacks from the DMCA-flouting, EULA-hating frontiers of gadgetland that'll breathe new life into your stable of hardware and maybe—just maybe—let you feel that lusty new-gadget rush again.

Turn Your Xbox, Old PC or Apple TV into a Genuine Media Center Xbox Media Center is about as refined as an unauthorized hack can get, playing back virtually any audio and video format, running a bevy of console emulators and still playing your Xbox games. To be honest, this should almost be viewed as a natural update for every Xbox, which at its core is a slow but functional PC with an easy TV connection. (Any actual PCs you have lying around can run a PC-ported version of XBMC.)

Boxee is a very slick fork of the XBMC project for Mac, and it's available for Apple TV. As shipped, the Apple TV works fine within the closed iTunes ecosystem, but Boxee's support for virtually every video codec and free online video like YouTube, CNN, BBC, and Revision3 will suit your new, more destitute lifestyle a bit better.

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate. Installation is pretty straightforward in most cases, with simple Boxee and XBMC setup programs available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Before you load XBMC, though, you have to mod your Xbox with one of these methods, many of which require a specific game. After that it's all install wizards and lollipops.

Installing anything on the locked-down Apple TV used to take some serious finagling, but there are now tools that will create an automated Boxee installer on a flash drive. Just plug the drive in, restart and you're good to go. XBMC Online Manual Boxee

Make Over Your iPod, Archos, iRiver or Sandisk with Rockbox It's hard to look at the current generation of media players and not admire their diverse capabilities and extensible software platforms. That's not to say that your 5th-gen iPod doesn't play back music perfectly well, or that your iRiver H10 still isn't a kickass media player, but they do feel a bit dated. Rockbox replaces your MP3 player's operating system with something more substantial, effectively making it a completely new device. You get endless codec support, advanced audio options, dozens of games, useful apps like a calculator and a text editor, plus you can choose from tons of different interface skins for a unique look and feel. Rockbox's tweaking possibilities mean you will earn admiring "what is that?" questions from friends, and it won't cost you a thing. If your player isn't supported yet just hold on—everything from the Zen Vision:M to the Toshiba Gigabeat S has a fairly active dev team.

Difficulty: Easy. Rockbox has an automated tool called the Rockbox Utility available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It does the work for you. Even better, it often automatically configures your player to dual boot with its original OS. Rockbox Official Site

Convert Your PC or Notebook Into A Much More Expensive Mac It's undeniable that Macs are too expensive. For many, they are considered a luxury item whose added cost doesn't justify the benefit. Luckily Apple's switch to an Intel platform opened up a world of unauthorized OS X installations which can turn your existing PC into a powerhouse Mac Pro workstation, or morph your MSI Wind or Asus EeePC into the Mac netbook that should be in their goddamn product line anyway. Check the hardware compatibility list to see if your PC is eligible for the upgrade.

Difficulty: Moderate to Hard. If you're not morally opposed to downloading iATKOS and Kalyway, which are pre-patched Leopard install DVDs (this is bit torrent territory), then the process is much like installing any other OS. If you insist on building your own patched install from a DVD you own, then, well, good luck. Always check hardware lists first, though, because driver support is everything. OSX86 Project Page

Flash Your Crappy Router Into a Top-Line Piece of Hardware The DD-WRT project exists for a simple reason: Most routers are physically very similar, but are priced differently because of functionality derived from software. The DD-WRT firmware unlocks the potential of the most basic routers out there—too many to name but damn if yours isn't on the list. As it turns out, your budget model is kind of impressive: Program-specific traffic throttling, professional level wireless security and radical signal boosting are just a few of the dozens of new features that can be enabled.

Difficulty: Easy. If you can't manage this one, then you don't deserve a router—installation just takes a few clicks on the device's default configuration pages. A word of caution, though: Make sure your router configuration page is totally compatible with your browser before the operation, as some choke on Firefox and can botch firmware upgrades. Stick to IE if you have the choice. DD-WRT Project Page

Download Updated Maps For Your Old GPS I'm referring of course to capital 'D' downloading here, mainly because at the moment GPS map updates are a racket. You could spend hundreds of dollars on map data that is freely available on Google Maps, Microsoft Live and MapQuest, among others, or you can just, you know, not. Map packs for Garmin, TomTom and Magellan units are floating around torrent sites and usually don't require much more than a simple CD image mount and run routine to set up. (Guilty conscience sold separately.)

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate. If you're just running a copy of a CD, then you'll be able to use the installation wizards. Some more involved methods for Windows CE-based devices require some SSH file transfers, but these are relatively rare.

Jailbreak Your iPhone for Wi-Fi Internet Tethering Two internet plans are enough, but to sign on to a mobile internet contract when you've already got unlimited iPhone data feels kind of stupid. Jailbreaking your iPhone is now about as easy as performing a firmware upgrade, and there are actually multiple tethering apps. PDANet and iPhoneModem both work a treat, but keep in mind that excessive usage could draw AT&T's attention and ire: Tethering is not allowed on the data plan, even though it works fine. Both apps are available in Cydia, where you can also find a limited assortment of other apps that don't have a place in the app store.

Difficulty: Moderate. Jailbreaking can be managed through the Dev Team's fantastic Quickpwn tool, but it does take a few minutes and can go wrong if instructions aren't followed closely. After jailbreak, Cydia and Installer fill the role of the gray-market app store, functioning as simple package managers that are arguably as polished as their more legitimate younger brother.

PDANet and iPhoneModem take different approaches to tethering, but neither requires more networking expertise than it would take to, say, set up a router. iPhone Jailbreak PDANet iPhoneModem

Turn Your Wii Into a Free Emulation Machine It's more than a little infuriating to have to repurchase your childhood library of console games from the Virtual Console, especially when free PC emulators and accompanying ROMs abound on the old intertubes. All you need is a copy of Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess, an SD card and an SD reader and you're ready to install A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia, which is pretty much all anyone has ever really needed since this whole "Video Gaming Television Machine" thing got under way in the first place. Throw in extended media playback and some helpful widgets for an extra value-add.

Difficulty: Moderate. This is one of the only hacks here that needs additional hardware to work, even if it's basic. The good news is that once you find a copy of Zelda and load up your SD card, the process pretty much takes care of itself. Further app installs are taken care of through a intuitive dedicated channel. WiiBrew WIki

A great resource for similar projects is our industrious sister site Lifehacker, where you can find a veritable treasure trove of tutorials and tricks. Have you postponed any gadget purchases until you're sure your bank is solvent? Have any other budget hardware resurrection techniques that we missed? Let us know in the comments.

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Onkyo is poised to pack yet another wireless gadget on the 2.4 GHz band with their new MHP-UW2 headphones. However, the uncompressed connection should result in some decent CD-quality audio. (But what is the deal with that receiver? It almost doubles the footprint of the iPod Touch). At any rate, the MHP-UW2s are compatible with the iPod classic, Touch, Nano and Mini and it includes inputs for other audio devices. It set to be released in Japan on November 14th for around $200, but there is no word on whether or not it will haul that fat receiver across the pond to the States anytime soon. [Impress via Crunchgear]

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