iPhone vs Android App Development: An Inverse Relationship [Apps]

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A mobile analytics firm named Flurry assembled this chart, plotting the percentage of newly registered iPhone and Android app projects over time. The relationship? Frighteningly inverse.

While stats like this can certainly be misleading, it almost appears as if a small pocket of developers are jumping ship with every tempting Android or Apple-related project that comes up.

The January Apple app development boost, for instance, is attributed to the iPad (despite it being announced in the waning days of the month). While, it would probably be safe to attribute Android's strong December to the Droid and maybe even teases of the Nexus One. Android's July spike gets a bit more tricky, but the European release of the HTC Hero may have something to do with it.

Even though the public wasn't wooed by the iPad, developers certainly were. Of course, some of that love may be fleeting, depending on what Android devices pop up next. Oh, and it should be noted, despite how this graph may look, both Android and iPhone/iPad app development grew in January. [MacRumors]


LCDs or eReaders, Which Are Worse for Your Eyes? [Ebooks]

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The NYT published an interesting piece on display technologies, allowing doctors and professors to attack the age old question, are LCDs worse for your eyes than eReaders. The answer? It depends.

As Michael Bove, director of the Consumer Electronics Laboratory at the MIT Media Lab, puts it:

"It depends on the viewing circumstances, including the software and typography on the screen...Right now E Ink is great in sunlight, but in certain situations, a piece of paper can be a better display than E Ink, and in dim light, an LCD display can be better than all of these technologies."

Apparently, the high refresh rates of modern LCDs make it as easy on the eyes as any e-paper/e-ink technology, when ignoring environmental factors like light and ergonomics. Problems seem to arise from eye fatigue, which is more a product of the lighting situation and the user's practice of taking proper breaks (let your eyes rest every 20 minutes).

Also, Stephenie Meyer novels have been known to cause brain damage when read on any screen technology. [NYT]


Slime Molds Are Picky About Where to Eat, Despite Being Brainless | Discoblog

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slime-moldSlime molds have been popping up in the news quite a bit lately. A few weeks ago, they made headlines by mimicking the Japanese rail system. Now, a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that slime molds can make complicated choices about the amount and variety of nutrients they eat.

It might not seem like a big deal that an organism—whether mold, mouse, or man—can make complex decisions about how to feed itself.

Except that they have no brains. These amoeboid creatures have no specialized center dictating all their actions. So, as they spread across a landscape, they have no “mission control” to which to report their nutritional requirements.

In the recent study, scientists placed 11 different foods around the outside of a Petri dish, each with a different protein-to-carbohydrate ratio. They then plopped a slime mold into the center of the dish. The researchers found that the slime mold altered its growth pattern and migrated to contact the foods that provided it with the best proportion of nutrients. That’s a pretty great feat of coordination for a blob without a brain.

Speaking of which, the last time a slime ball got this much attention, The Blob was sweeping through 1950’s drive-ins. For now, I wouldn’t be worried—there have been no reports of bloodthirsty slime molds terrorizing quaint suburban neighborhoods. But don’t underestimate the slime. It’s smarter than you think.

Related Content:
80beats: Brainless Slime Mold Builds a Replica Tokyo Subway

By Anna Rothschild. This article is provided by Scienceline, a project of New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program.

Image: Flickr / Kristie’s NaturesPortraits


General Relativity: In Pretty Good Shape | Cosmic Variance

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If we celebrate provocative new experimental findings, we should also celebrate the careful null results (experiments that agree with existing theories) on which much of science is based. Back in October we pointed to a new analysis that used observations of gravitational lensing by large-scale structure to test Einstein’s general relativity on cosmological scales, with the intriguing result that it didn’t seem to fit. And the caveat that it probably would end up fitting once we understood things better, but it’s always important to follow up on these kinds of clues.

So now we understand things a bit better, and a number of people have been working to dig into this apparent anomaly. Here is a new paper from this week, that presents their own way of using these kinds of data to test GR against large-scale structure.

Testing General Relativity with Current Cosmological Data
Authors: Scott F. Daniel, Eric V. Linder, Tristan L. Smith, Robert R. Caldwell, Asantha Cooray, Alexie Leauthaud, Lucas Lombriser

Abstract: Deviations from general relativity, such as could be responsible for the cosmic acceleration, would influence the growth of large scale structure and the deflection of light by that structure. We clarify the relations between several different model independent approaches to deviations from general relativity appearing in the literature, devising a translation table. We examine current constraints on such deviations, using weak gravitational lensing data of the CFHTLS and COSMOS surveys, cosmic microwave background radiation data of WMAP5, and supernova distance data of Union2. Markov Chain Monte Carlo likelihood analysis of the parameters over various redshift ranges yields consistency with general relativity at the 95% confidence level.

One issue, as we noted way back when, is that it’s very hard to “test GR” without committing yourself to a model of the mass and energy sources that are causing the curvature of spacetime. So the game is to make some plausible assumptions and see where you go from there. This group seems to have assembled a sensible framework for testing deviations from Einstein, and come back with the answer that everything is on the right track.

We keep getting new and better data, of course, so we’ll keep testing. I suspect Einstein will continue to be right, but probably a lot of people thought Newton would continue to be right a century ago.


Ask Giz: When Is It Too Early To Change Your Facebook Relationship Status? [Badvalentine]

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You go out, you like each other, then you blow it by attempting to change your relationship status too soon. Our resident love doctor explains how soon is too soon, and what other freaky behavior might ruin your good thing.

One week is way too soon to add the "in a relationship with" phrase that is simultaneously coveted and feared by Facebook users everywhere. So is one month unless you're already uber-committed in some love story kind of way. But that doesn't mean you have to play it so cool that you look like you're out on the Facebook prowl while spending your nights on date after date (or video chat after video chat).

If you find someone you can't resist, why not remove your "single" status? Or remove the Interested in men/women/men&women listing so that it doesn't appear to others that you're interested and available. And definitely switch out "what you're looking for" away from "random play" or "whatever you can get" to something like "friendship." Just please don't put "networking." (Does anyone else think that's kind of douchey? Or is only me?)

There are plenty of ways to use Facebook to signal that you're done looking—at least for now—while you give the relationship a chance. Just do not change your profile picture to a lovey dovey photo of you two. At least not until you know the other person is on board, too. Otherwise it's like the virtual equivalent of putting a framed photo of you two on your desk, even though you've only been out a few times. (This actually happened to me once, years ago, and I still haven't recovered.)

If you're absolutely itching to become an official Facebook couple, talk to your like/love/lust interest about it first. Thank goodness the "in a relationship with" tool requires the other person to approve you first, but there's nothing to stop an over eager, OK creepy, person from uploading photos or writing elaborate notes about their dates. Heck, I even wound up recently with my profile photo on some dude's calendar of birthdays, even though we have never met or talked! Not cool.

If it's a relationship you hope will have any chance of working out, please tread carefully. Facebook is here to help not hurt, but it does take some pacing—and a little self-control.

Read more of Dr. Debby's love advice here during Gizmodo's Bad Valentine celebration.

Debby Herbenick, PhD is a Research Scientist and Associate Director of The Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, a sexual health educator at The Kinsey Institute and author of Because It Feels Good: A Woman's Guide to Sexual Pleasure and Satisfaction. She blogs at MySexProfessor.com.

Groom changing relationship status screengrabbed from YouTube, via Mashable

Bad Valentine is our own special take on the beauty—and awkwardness—of geek love.


When a star struggles to be free of its chrysalis | Bad Astronomy

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I have a fondness for bipolar nebulae: double-barreled gaseous clouds formed when stars are born, and sometimes as they age and die. I’ve seen a lot of them, and studied a lot of them, so I was surprised to see this image from the Gemini North telescope of a BPN I’m not that familiar with, called Sharpless 2-106:

gemini_sharpless2-106

Oooo, pretty! Sharpless 2-106 is about 2000 light years away, located in a region of the galaxy known for birthing stars. The nebula is only about two light years across — small for a star-forming region, but still over 2,000 times bigger than our entire solar system!

Deep in the middle of the cloud is a star struggling to be born. It may have about 15 times the mass of the Sun, big enough to put it squarely into the "massive star" category. It’s flooding the nebula with ultraviolet radiation, causing the gas to glow. Different atoms glow at characteristic colors, allowing us to identify what elements are present, at what quantities, and even at what temperatures. In this case, special filters were used to pick out the elements helium (purple), hydrogen (red), oxygen (green), and sulfur (blue). The result is not really a true-color image — it’s not what your eye would see if you were out there floating around — but it’s close. Amazingly, to me, each filter was exposed for only 15 minutes, resulting in a one-hour total exposure time for this image!

[Note: the purple glow surrounding that bright star is just an internal reflection, light scattering around inside the telescope. That's most likely a bright foreground star blasting out more light in the purple filter than the others; it doesn't mean that star has a giant shell of helium around it!]

The nebula is double-lobed because the star is probably surrounded by a thick disk of material: gas, dust, silicates and other junk swirling around that forms the star itself (and perhaps planets, though we can’t tell in this case because there’s simply too much stuff there obscuring our view). A typical disk is on the order of the size of our solar system, so is invisibly tiny in this image.

But the star is blowing out material too in a stellar wind. It gets stopped by the equatorial disk, so it can only blow up and down, above and below the disk, forming these two great lobes that stretch for trillions of kilometers.

If we compare this image to one taken in the infrared by Subaru, we learn even more:

gemini_spitzer_sharpless

Like the Orion Nebula picture the other day, the IR image shows that a cavity is being carved out the surrounding gas, most likely from the winds from that massive star. Streamers of gas can be seen on the left, probably formed as the outflowing gas slams into dense knots of surrounding material, a bit like a sandbar that forms when water flows around a patch of sand. You can also see lots more stars than in the optical image, including many bright ones you don’t see at all in the optical. The thick dust surrounding Sharpless 2-106 blocks the optical light from stars, but IR can pierce that veil and reach our telescopes, showing us the hidden treasures.

We see bipolar nebulae all over the place… I have another one I’ll be telling you about soon, one of my very favorite objects in the whole sky. If you’ve been reading my blog for more than a couple of weeks you’ve already seen it, probably without even knowing it. But that’s the only hint I’ll give for now. Stay tuned and I’ll tell you all about it. Promise!

Until then, soak in the beauty of this nascent star, which, in a few million more years, will blow away the tattered remnants of its cocoon, and emerge as another bright blue-white star to light up our galaxy.


Welcome To Your New Start Page [Start Page]

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This is even cooler than it looks: Fav4.org starts your browsing off with your four favorite website's icons already queued up. You can customize from among the 34 current offerings, and it looks as though they'll be adding more soon.

That's right: finally all you AOL/ffffound/MySpace/Linked In junkies will have a one-stop start page of your very own.

Let the write-in campaign for a Gizmodo icon begin! [Fav4 via NYTimes Bits Twitter]


2010 LP of Steuben County Annual Convention – Notice of Date and Time

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Dear friend of the Libertarian Party of Steuben County,
 
     This message is to provide official notice of the 2010 
 Annual Convention of the LPSC.  Our Convention will be 
 held at 4:30 P.M. on Wednesday, April 14.  Once again 
 we will meet at the Steuben County Community Foundation 
 building - 1701 N. Wayne Street.  (This is in Country Fair 
 shopping mall.)  The North door will be unlocked.
 
     We will be selecting two LPSC delegates to the State LP
 convention, nominating county candidates, and we will discuss 
 2010 campaigns.  Several members have already expressed an
 interest in campaigning for a local office in 2010.  I will send a

read more

Shuttle Astronauts Add the ISS’s Last Major Piece | 80beats

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issThe International Space Station is almost done. Astronauts on board the current space shuttle Endeavour completed the first of three spacewalks to install the last major component of the ISS: the Tranquility module. Its huge windows will offer ISS residents 360-degree view of space, the station, and our home world.

The U.S. Tranquility module — shaped like a soda can — is the last major American addition to the station, now 98% complete. Its placement completes 11 years of U.S. construction work on the outpost, which the United States has spent more than $50 billion building [USA Today]. An Italian team designed the module’s magnificent dome, which measures 10 feet in diameter. Seven windows provide the panoramic view.

With Tranquility’s power hookup now in place, astronauts will install the plumbing during their second space walk. Tranquility will house functional items like exercise equipment, toilet, and water recycling system. But there’s another reason the astronauts are keen to see it open its huge windows. NASA readily acknowledges the observation deck and its 360-degree views will improve the quality of life aboard the orbital outpost, where astronauts spend six months at a stretch [AP].

Plus, it’s just nice to be approaching the finish line, especially with only a few shuttle flights remaining before they go into retirement this year, and the future of human spaceflight uncertain in the United States. “What this mission symbolizes, I think, in a lot of ways, it’s like the Transcontinental Railroad. And our flight is kind of like putting the Golden Spike in the Transcontinental Railroad,” shuttle pilot Terry Virts said [USA Today].

Related Content:
80beats: Obama’s NASA Budget: Goodbye, Moon Missions; Hello, Private Spaceflight
80beats: “Interplanetary Internet” Will Soon Bring Twitter to the ISS
80beats: Strife on the Space Station: Russians Can’t Use American Toilet
80beats: Space Junk, Spacewalks, and Pee Trouble: News From the ISS
80beats: Russian Invasion of Georgia Imperils U.S. Access to Space Station
DISCOVER: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Living in Space

Image: NASA


Marine Invaders | The Intersection

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This is the fifth in a series of guest posts by Joel Barkan, a previous contributor to “The Intersection” and a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The renowned Scripps marine biologist Jeremy Jackson is teaching his famed “Marine Science, Economics, and Policy” course for what may be the last time this year (along with Jennifer Jacquet), and Joel will be reporting each week on the contents of the course.

In my favorite movie of all time, Jurassic Park, scientists clone a bunch of dinosaurs from the blood of prehistoric mosquitoes. I’m sure you’ve seen it. In the sequel, The Lost World, a Tyrannosaurus rex escapes from a cargo ship on mainland U.S. soil and wreaks havoc on my current hometown of San Diego—if this happened in real life, San Diegans would just shrug, grab their surfboards, and look for the next set of good waves. What if the T-Rex hadn’t been tranquillized and returned to its island? What if multiple dinosaurs had propagated on our continent and formed stable populations? We would label them invasive species. Or would we? After all, dinosaurs were native to North America about 70 million years ago. But I digress.

zebra mussel cluster - smallIn our most recent class, we unfortunately did not discuss whether the repopulation of our country with dinosaurs would constitute a species invasion. We did, however, talk about many of the vectors that transport invasive species through the marine environment. One such vector is the ballast water of ships: a freighter will fill its ballast tank in one part of the globe with water and various organisms, traverse an ocean to deliver its cargo, and empty the water and non-native organisms into a new, unsuspecting region. The result is an invasion of crustaceans, mollusks, and algae that might out-compete native species in new habitats. The most famous ballast tank stowaway is probably the zebra mussel, native to the Black and Caspian Sea, which has invaded North American lakes.

There are several methods of managing invasive marine species, most of which are costly and none of which are easy. One student shed light on some interesting technological advancements that might tackle the ballast water problem. A ship could heat its ballast water to 40° Celsius with microwaves to kill any invader that may have hitched a ride. Purging oxygen from a ballast tank with nitrogen could also wipe out the hitchhiking organisms, with an added benefit of preventing corrosion of the tank’s interior.

One method that almost always seems to spectacularly fail is biocontrol—introducing a new species to get rid of a problematic invasive species. The history of biocontrol is rife with notorious blunders: cane toads were introduced to Australia in 1936 to combat beetles that were ravaging cane fields. The cane toads didn’t take well to the cane fields, however, and quickly spread throughout the country, reducing reptile biodiversity along the way. In Hawaii, mongoose were introduced in the 1870s to control the rat populations (also invasive) that were eating valuable sugar cane. Except the mongoose preys during the day, while rats feed nocturnally. Whoops. The mongoose instead decided to eat some endemic Hawaiian birds and threaten their fragile populations.

As globalization continues, more species invasions are inevitable, to the point where the term “native species” will become increasingly irrelevant. Once established, invasives are extremely difficult to eradicate. Prevention seems to be the most effective and most cost-effective way of dealing with this issue. In the future, it will be interesting to see how marine ecosystems respond to more and more invasions. To be honest, I’m not too worried. After all, to quote the famous chaotician Dr. Ian Malcolm, “Life finds a way.”


Bing To Use Flickr Photos and Live Video In The Future, But Google’s Got Goods Too [Microsoft]

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Without wishing to compare Microsoft's Bing Sky to Google Sky, and its Bing Maps with photos and live video to Street View, they do sound pretty bandwagon-jumping-like, especially with Google Maps today adding some new Labs features.

Microsoft's said to "stay tuned" for release details, but has demoed the live video, which could prove really valuable when going on holiday for example—you can check places out before you bother going. The Streetside Photos feature isn't exactly revolutionary now that every man and his dog has used Street View, but by using people's uploaded Flickr photos (geo-tagged, naturally) they'll be in a higher-res and offer more color and life than Google's own Street View cars can snap.

The new features were shown off at the TED conference, and then later blogged on Bing's site:

"This tech preview mines geo-tagged photos from Flickr, and relates them to our Streetside imagery to show images matched to its original spatial context. Why is this cool? You're now able to see what that club looks like at night (is it really THAT scary?), see if you're really going to get a good sunset at that B&B you're looking to book, or check out the crowds on a Saturday morning at Pike Place Market in Seattle or get a view of the same market from decades prior. As more people share imagery, our challenge is to reunite those photos with where they were taken – again, provide context to the data in the ether."

Bing Sky meanwhile has been created using WolrdWide Telescope from the Microsoft Research division, and will let you:

"be able to walk outside in Streetside mode, look up, and see what's above – way above – right now where you're standing. Constellations come to life as you pan – you can even set the time of day so you can see what you'll see at 9pm – great for exploring with your daughter to get her ready for what she'll see when the sun goes down."

It does seem like unfortunate timing for them, when Google's put its Maps service into the Labs box, adding some new early features like the ability to see high-res aerial pictures of select locations; rotate a map the way you want it to appear, and a 'where in the world' game for quizzing yourself on countries (amongst others).

I still think Microsoft's got a hard game to play if it wants to properly catch up to Google, and while live video is impressive, there's just too many people out there doing Google Maps mash-ups and developing outside of the Microsoft box. [Bing via Search Engine Land via Blogoscoped]


Razzle Dazzle Battleships

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From Gizmodo:

During WWI, German U-Boats were alarmingly effective at sinking allied warships and transport vessels alike. But since a ship couldn't exactly be cloaked, Norman Wilkinson, British artist and naval officer, developed another method nicknamed razzle dazzle. U-Boats

10 Best Ways to Use Your PC While You’re Sleeping or At Work [Useful]

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There's only so much a processor can handle at once. That's why we keep our home PC powered on while we're at sleep or at the office. Forget about energy savings—a powerful PC is meant to be utilized!

Some processes, like games, monopolize CPU clock cycles, making it inconvenient to run other processor-intensive utilities in the background. From scheduled FTP downloads to converting digital photos and more, here are the ten best ways to keep your PC busy so it won't miss you when you're gone. Downtime be damned!

Record TV Shows and Movies

Sure, you can record TV shows and movies while you use your PC, but what do you do if you have two or three programs all battling for your attention? If you can't catch your favorites on Hulu or Boxee, or if you don't have a TV tuner than can handle multiple programs, take advantage of repeat broadcasts of many programs; catch the game live, and record your favorite news programs or movies later.

If your favorite movie station insists on having a marathon of your favorite movie, you might as well record the 2AM showing and watch something else in prime time. If you use Windows Media Center, you can use either the program guide or the movies guide to record movies.

Patch Applications and Run Windows Update

Windows Update enables you to decide when to download and install updates for Windows and for Microsoft Office and other programs supported by Windows Update/Microsoft Update. The default setting is in the middle of the night, but if your PC is busy with other tasks then, consider a time like Wednesday morning after you head off to work (Wednesday morning is also a perfect time to catch Microsoft's Patch Tuesday updates). Need a reminder on how to adjust your settings? Here's how to do it with Windows XP and with Windows Vista (and Windows 7).

Scan Your PC with Anti-virus and Anti-malware Software

Although most current anti-virus and anti-malware programs can run while you use your computer for other tasks, you're still better off to check your machine for problems when you're not using it. Depending upon your favorite software, you might be able to schedule scans from within the software, or in some cases, you might need to run Windows Task Schedule/Scheduled Tasks service separately.

To find out if your favorite programs have built-in scheduling, you might need to switch to the program's advanced mode or advanced menus. For example, to schedule scans with Spybot S&D, you must switch to the Advanced mode and open the Settings tag to locate the scheduler. However, you might need to update to the paid versions of some scan programs to have access to scheduling functions.

Depending upon the speed of your anti-virus and anti-malware scanners, you might be able to schedule them on the same day or night. If possible, schedule the scanner's update process to run before the scan program itself.

Check Your Hard Drive for Errors with Chkdsk+Defrag

While malware and spyware can deep-six your computer's performance, so can problems with your hard disk's structure. Use the dynamic duo of chkdsk and defrag to check your hard disks for errors and defragment files to keep your storage in good shape.

Chkdsk can be run from the command prompt, and by using command-prompt switches when you schedule chkdsk to run, you have a great deal of control over how chkdsk works. If you want to repair disk errors on the C: (system) drive, you'll need to schedule chkdsk to run at startup.

You can shut down and restart Windows automatically using Task Scheduler, enabling you to run Chkdsk on the system drive at startup. You should run Chkdsk before you run Defrag on a given drive to assure that files are not being moved to corrupt portions of the disk.

In Windows 7, you can select multiple drives for defragmenting, which realigns small file fragments into larger contiguous blocks. This enables faster file reads and writes, especially on drives with frequent changes, such as the drive you use for temporary or swap files or drives with frequent modifications to data files.

Backup Your PC!

You can configure most commercial backup programs as well as Windows's own backup programs to run on a schedule. To make scheduled backups work properly, keep the following in mind:

• Use an external hard disk or network location that's big enough for the backup (you won't be around to flip DVDs or removable media in and out of a backup drive). Use the default compression setting for the best combination of backup performance and backup size.
• Use the backup scheduler included in the backup software.
• Make sure your backup location is ready to receive the backup. With an external hard disk, make sure it's turned on and connected to your PC. With a network backup, make sure the remote drive or server is connected to the network – preferably, to a wired rather than a wireless connection.
• If you have time, verify the backup.
• For best performance, use gigabit Ethernet for network backups and eSATA or USB 3.0 for local drive backups.

To learn more about using Windows 7 backup, see our Windows 7 feature focus article.

Process Photos and Transcode Videos

If you're a serious digital photographer, you already know that shooting in RAW mode provides much more control over exposure, white balance, and other factors than shooting in JPEG. However, when it comes to sharing or printing your photos, JPEG rules. Cut out the tedium of converting your photos manually by using automation features in your photo editing software.

With Photoshop Elements and Adobe Camera RAW, you can use Process Multiple Files to convert RAW files into virtually any other format supported by Photoshop Elements, apply quick fixes, resize images, rename files, and add labels.

With Adobe Photoshop CS4 and Adobe Camera RAW, you can use the Image Processor to automate the conversion process and run actions. If you still use Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Camera RAW, you can also use Image Processor.

Depending upon what type of video you're encoding or transcoding, there are many choices, all of which take time better spent when you're away from your PC. Here are some of our tutorials and product guides:

How To: Download, Save and Convert Flash Video to Play on your iPod or DVD Player

Ultimate Guide to Playing and Transcoding Downloaded Videos

The Last DVD and Blu-Ray Ripping Guide You'll Ever Need

The Power User's Guide to Video Encoding with Handbrake

The Top Transcoding Apps for Watching Content on Consoles

Schedule Bittorrent Downloads and Pre-Load Steam Games

Whether you use FTP or Bittorrent to transfer files or play games delivered via Steam, you're pushing a lot of information through your home network to the Internet (and vice-versa). Here's how you can take advantage of away from your PC time to handle heavy bit-pushing.

If you use file transfer protocol (FTP) to shuffle files around, you know there are plenty of freeware versions to choose from. Unfortunately, just about all of those that include a scheduler feature will cost you a few bucks. One that won't cost you anything is WinSCP. Use its scripting feature to schedule file transfers. For a low-cost FTP program that doesn't require scripting to schedule transfers, consider ProSoft FTP Scheduler Standard Edition (about $25, 15 day trial).

Want to schedule Bittorrent transfers? Check out the Scheduler feature built into uTorrent. Scheduler allows you to adjust transfer speeds, go idle, or upload only at the times you select. For a tutorial, see page 7 of our own Paul Lilly's 20 Essential Tricks and Skills Every BitTorrent User Should Know. Be sure to see the comments for tips on using Dropbox and PeerBlock to improve uTorrent performance.

While Steam doesn't provide a way to schedule your downloads, you can pause and restart a game download whenever you want.

Run a Music Server

There's no need to drag your music collection between home and office. Give your iPod or Zune a rest and use our own Norm Chan's How To: Stream Your Music Library to Any Computer tutorial to bring your music to your office. The most time-consuming step (page 2) is importing your music into Netjukebox, so it's a perfect candidate for running it before you hit the hay or head to the office.

Compiling Code or Render Graphics

Compiling code and rendering graphics are among the most time-consuming tasks you can perform, so you shouldn't waste precious playtime by watching your computer munch program and video bits.

Start these processes before you clock out for the evening or as you start off to work. To make sure they run as quickly as possible, set your computer's power management for high performance and turn off other tasks that might interfere, such as Windows and application updates and other processes (such as the ones listed in this guide). If you're rendering graphics to an external drive or building a DVD or Blu-Ray disc, make sure your external drive is ready to roll and that you have a suitable blank disc in your drive.

Contribute to Distributed Computing

You can "give something back" to the world by devoting unused computer cycles to a cause you support. You can help make scientific discoveries or fight deadly diseases, and there's no shortage of causes looking for your help. For a list of projects, see these Maximum PC stories: Facebook and Intel want You to Donate Your Spare Cycles, Freeware Files: Five Free Distributed Computing Projects for your Idle PC!, and New Distributed Computing Initiative Wants to Create Artificial Life. Need more options? See Wikipedia's list of distributed computing projects and Distributed Computing Info's list of projects.

How to Manage It All When You're Away

Whether you're running apps that include built-in schedulers or need to start them yourself, you're going to want a way to log into your home PC from the office and keep an eye on what's going on. You could use commercial services like GotoMyPC, but if you're looking for a powerful freebie, check out the remote connection apps in our story The Ultimate Free Network Applications, Period. During your coffee breaks or lunch, you can stay in complete control of your PC at home.

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