Latest technology finds:

• Aerofoil extends your notebook’s battery life under Windows Vista and Windows 7 – Basically it toggles off/on the sidebar and Aero features when you're running on batteries and a few other optional settings but that can allegedly save you 25% of battery power. If Aero and sidebar are using up CPU resources to that extent, it might make sense to disable them altogether and save the electricity regardless of whether you're plugged in or not.
• The real cost of free – Cory Doctorow makes some very important points:

  I don't care if you want to attempt to stop people from copying your work over the internet, or if you plan on building a business around this idea. I mean, it sounds daft to me, but I've been surprised before.

  But here's what I do care about. I care if your plan involves using "digital rights management" technologies that prohibit people from opening up and improving their own property; if your plan requires that online services censor their user submissions; if your plan involves disconnecting whole families from the internet because they are accused of infringement; if your plan involves bulk surveillance of the internet to catch infringers, if your plan requires extraordinarily complex legislation to be shoved through parliament without democratic debate; if your plan prohibits me from keeping online videos of my personal life private because you won't be able to catch infringers if you can't spy on every video.

• Record multiple Internet radio stations with streamWriter – There are lots of options for boosting your music collection, some are 100% legit, some are totally illegal (in most countries) and some are borderline. Recording from the radio was the music piracy of the 70s and 80s and usually involved pressing the record button as soon as the DJ stopped chatting and just before they cut in again on the outro…so not perfect. Now, there are tools that do the same job digitally. Legit? Depends.
• Goo.gl link shortener creates QR codes – Goo.gl the link shortener has a trick up its sleeve that no other URL shortener yet has, as well as offering analytics it can also be used to turn any link into one of those photographable square "barcode" information codes that let you connect with a smart phone photo to a site.
• Scan downloads before downloading – VirusTotal is an online service that scans files for viruses with over 40 different security tools (occasionally it throws up false positives, but you can spot those as it will be some unknown tool that flags a file). But, here's a neat trick to scan a file *before* you even download it…
• In it to win it? Yeah, right – Simulate your lottery balls for the next decade and realize just how much money you're wasting on what essentially amounts to a tax on stupidity. If you take part, quit while you're ahead.