If you are a woman and have ever wondered how men pee, or you are a guy and always wanted to see your pee adventures documented, then check out this informative and amusing illustration.

“

(Via Tybee Guy.)

Sing-a-Ma-Jigs – Meet the latest toy craze. Which also happen to be quite possibly the most annoying toys in the world.

It’s the last day of an unusually long weekend, and there’s absolutely nothing on the schedule. Break out the tools and pull up one of these nifty DIY projects to improve your living space and boost your can-do cred.

10. Light up your yard with mason jars

Buy a mess of ground-staked, solar or battery-powered yard lights from your local big box store, and people might be impressed at your ability to space the sticks you plunge into the ground. Convert some run-of-the-mill mason jars into hanging votive lanterns, battery-powered backyard lights, or go the way of weekend editor Jason and make your own solar-powered sun jars, and you’ll get some real kudos, and have a nicer looking yard, to boot.

9. Make your patio a Wi-Fi hotspot

Three different solutions of varying DIY-ness can get your Wi-Fi out to your grassier spaces. A self-powered solar extender is the ultimate in techno/eco-cred. If that kind of cost, soldering, and circuit knowledge is a stretch too far, you can install DD-WRT or boost your household router with Tomato to boost its signal strength and, in the case of DD-WRT, turn an old or spare router into a dedicated repeater. That still involves a bit of installing, though, so for a casual shot at backyard Wi-Fi, try a tinfoil parabola, a wok-style strainer, or a dollar’s worth of extender parts.

8. Build a backyard pizza oven

If you’ve had wood-fired pizza before, you know it’s notably different and tasty, and almost always pricey. You can have the good stuff whenever you feel like building a fire, however, with two different Lifehacker readers’ brick-by-brick instructions. Kevin Lester showed us his fourth pizza oven build, while Mike Wilkie based his two-level oven on Forno Bravo’s extensive wood-fired guide. You can do the same, and become the grill party invitation nobody turns down.

7. Assemble an outdoor movie theater

Your couch can only seat so many people. Your yard or patio, however, can fit as many folks as feel comfortable, and offers a much nicer environment to eat, drink, watch, and enjoy the waning bits of summer air, whether for the kids or with friends. Wired.com has hit upon this project twice, once with a house-mounted sheet and DVD/projector. Then the Geek Dad tackled the idea with a stand-alone outdoor screen, built with PVC pipe, mounted in cement, and ready for easy setup and take-down. You’ll need a decent projector for either setup, but often times, nobody at work minds if the presentation room is a little de-stocked on weekends.

6. Power up your Wii

You can’t pull off the total renovation that you can with an XBox Media Center, but your Wii can do a lot more than let you play tennis against the in-laws. You can surf the web with the recently-made-free Opera browser, and once that’s installed, a free Orb software package lets you use your Wii as a media center. These days, opening your Wii to the Homebrew channel doesn’t even require the purchase of an (admittedly great) Twilight Princess game and extensive hacking, and once that’s done, you can back up and load games from a hard drive, play old-school games in an emulator, and much more.

5. Build yourself a serious knife block

Two or three good, sharp knives are really all you need, but you’ve probably got more than that. If you bought them piece by piece, or don’t want to shell out for a generic hunk of wood, consider making your own wall-mounted magnetic holder for easy access and visual appeal, or cut a holder out of a counter for super-quick access. We’re also partial to Chris DiClerico’s DIY universal knife block, which requires only a few bucks of wood, dollar store bamboo skewers, and access to a table saw.

4. Get creative with enhanced paints

Go beyond the color spread at your local paint store, and you’ll likely find a good deal of neat paints that can inspire some awesome projects. Dry-erase or ‘whiteboard’ paint lets you jot down your ideas anywhere, and that inspired reader Chris Burke to make this awesome wall-size speech ‘bubble’. He also layered some magnetic paint underneath, the kind that lets you hang posters without nails or tacks. If school-style chalkboards are more your speed, you can grab a bucket of chalkboard paint, or make your own, and then craft an erase-as-you-go wall calendar, kid-friendly table, or wall mural (sorry, original link is apparently dead). If they made tinfoil-based Wi-Fi boosting paint, we’d simply declare the whole house in need of a new look.

3. Fold and cut your own furniture

You only occasionally need an extra seat or two for groups of guests, or maybe you just need a cheap place to sit when working in the garage. The Evil Mad Scientist blog suggests buying a few sheets of paperboard or plywood and crafting some flat-packing but sturdy stools. If it’s little ones you’re looking to seat, and entertain while you do so, the FoldSchool tutorial site details how to help kids make their own stepladders, creative kids table seats, and much more. (Original post)

2. Add rope lights for cheap ambient improvements

Gina’s father-in-law used rope lights (and a nifty reverse circuit switch) to craft an automatic pantry light system. Jason added an eye-pleasing and light-improving touch to his extreme home office makeover with strategic rope lights. Other crafty folks have found rope lighting useful for kitchen looks and ridiculously awesome home theater setups. It’s inspiring, illuminating stuff, and fairly easy to get started with.

1. Spruce up a bare wall

Not every notably blank wall in your dwelling requires custom-framed artwork or expensive prints. Gina combined her Flickr account and a few dollars of craft store hardware to craft a sleek wire photo wall, inspired by this wood block example (original link down). Adam found his inspiration in used record stores and great album art, crafting an album art wall on the cheap. If great-looking books are what you want to show off, you can get by with very little by converting a colored wire hanger.

(Via Lifehacker.)

For much of the world, it’s that special time of the year when students head back to school. The good news for students is that even though that means waking up early and doing homework, there are a number of web-based and social tools to help you get through the school year. From staying organized to improving study habits to making sure you reference your research sources properly, the web can help you be a better student.

We’ve assembled a list of 15 of the best applications available for students. What other applications are helping you at school this year? Let us know in the comments!

Stay Organized

The first thing you need to do in order to have a successful school year, is develop a plan to stay organized. If you’re constantly missing due dates or losing track of your notes, you’ll find yourself in a deep hole rather quickly. The following web applications can help you get organized and stay organized.

1. Evernote – Evernote is one of the best note taking applications available, allowing you to sync notes between the web, your phone, and any computer. With Evernote you can save text, audio, and images (like screenshots, entire webpages, or photos taken with your camera phone), and everything — even the images — is searchable, so you’ll never lose track of your notes. One of the ways Evernote really excels is in the number of different methods you can use to add notes to the application, which include via the web, mobile apps, email, or even Twitter.

2. Notely – Notely is a complete, end-to-end solution for taking notes and staying organized. With a course and assignment calendar, note-taking tools, and to-do list, Notely can keep you on top of your schoolwork and assure that you never miss a due date.

3. GradeMate – GradeMate is a free online organizer made with students in mind. With it you can create to-do lists, manage due dates, keep track of grades, and even collaborate with fellow students.

4. Backpack – Initially designed for business users, Backpack is also a great way for students to keep research organized. Backpack is sort of like a single page wiki that lets you keep files, images, notes, and to-do lists in a single place and share them with fellow students (which is great for collaborative projects).

Study Better

When you sit down to study, you want to arm yourself with the best web tools available to make sure you get the most of your study time. By utilizing the tools listed in this section, you can get more done, and do it more quickly, so that you can have more time for fun and still be prepared for that upcoming test or paper.

5. StudyRails – StudyRails is perfect for those who have trouble blocking out distractions when it comes time to study. The site lets users schedule study time and alerts them (by text message) when it is time to drop everything and hit the books. But where StudyRails really becomes important for chronic procrastinators is that it can be set to block out your favorite web sites and computer applications during scheduled study time. That way you won’t be tempted by Twitter or World of Warcraft when you’ve set aside some time specifically to write a paper.

6. Diigo – When you’re reading books for class, you probably use a highlighter and sticky notes to mark off the passages that are of particular note to what you’re studying. But what do you do on the web? Diigo is a web-based highlighter and sticky note system that lets you annotate your web research. You can also share your work with classmates.

7. Delicious – Delicious is the quintessential bookmarking application on the Internet. If all you want to do is collect all the web resources you’re using for a class, project, or paper under a single tag, Delicious is one of the best and easiest to use tools you can utilize.

8. Mindmeister – There is a slight learning curve involved, but once you get use to them, one of the best ways to organize your thoughts and research is through mind maps. And one of the best online mind mapping tools is Mindmeister, which lets you both easily create mind maps, and also collaborate on them with your classmates. They offer special discounted academic pricing for students.

Work and Collaborate

Web-based and social tools can also help you to actually get your work done and collaborate with others in your class on group projects. From word processing to presentations, the apps in this category will help you turn in complete and polished work.

9. Google Docs – Google Docs is one of the best online word processing and spreadsheets applications available, and it offers great collaboration features that allow you to work together on group assignments. In fact, we use it often here at Mashable to keep track of who is working on what and collaborate on posts and projects. The two main advantages of using Google Docs over more feature-rich applications like Microsoft Word (which is also a great application that I use on a daily basis) is that Google’s offering is free and, more importantly, you can access your files from anywhere. Also check out Adobe’s Buzzword.

10. EtherPad – EtherPad takes collaborating on written documents to a completely new level by allowing a group of people to edit a document at the same time and actually see what everyone else is writing as they write it. When used by multiple people meeting in person or combined with a VoIP app like Skype, EtherPad can be an amazing collaboration tool for group studying or hashing out who is doing what on a group project.

11. Sliderocket – It would be hard to get through your school career without having to give a presentation, and one way to make your presentation more memorable is with a great set of slides. SlideRocket is an awesome online presentation building tool that lets you create beautiful, multimedia rich presentations, that are accessible from anywhere. Also check out Empressr.

12. WikiDot – If you’re working in a group project, you’ll want to keep everyone on the same page, and one of the best ways to organize your thoughts as a group is by using a wiki. WikiDot is a great, simple, wiki hosting solution that students can utilize to create an unlimited number of wiki pages to organize their projects and group research.

Cite Right

Now that you’ve got your work in order, you’ll want to make sure you have everything properly cited, because like clichés, accusations of plagiarism are something you should avoid like the plague. The tools below will help you to keep track of your sources and cite them properly when the time comes.

13. CiteMe – This Facebook application from the Online Computer Library Center lets you search the world’s largest library catalog by title, author, subject, or ISBN and get properly formatted citations in APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, or Turabian style.

14. EasyBib – EasyBib is one of the most popular online bibliographic tools, letting you automatically create citations in APA, Chicago/Turabian, and MLA styles. Over 218 million citations have been generated using the site since 2001. Also check out Ottobib.

15. Zotero – If you need to cite your work in a more obscure style, then check out Zotero. This Firefox extension automatically collects your research sources and then lets you create citations in any of one of over a thousand different styles. Zotero also lets you take notes on your sources and is available in over 30 different languages.

(Via Mashable!.)

Desktop Wallpaper

Summer certainly flew by and while I occasionally wish we had just one more month to squeeze in, I realized that since my fingers are almost frozen, autumn definitely arrived! P.S. Meanwhile it’s Winter!

Resolutions: 2560×1600, 1920×1200, 1920×1080, 1680×1050, 1600×1200, 1440×900, 1400×1050, 1280×1024, 1280×960, 1280×800, 1280×720, 1024×768, 1024×600, 800×480, 480×272, 320×240.

(Via InterfaceLIFT: Newest Wallpaper.)

There is no arguing that YouTube is the most popular video sharing site out there, but that isn’t to say that there aren’t things about it that annoy users.  With that said, there are a wide array of plugins for Firefox to make the YouTube user experience that much better.  Here are over 20 that will let you save your favorite videos before they disappear, stop them from autoplaying when you come to a page, and more.

What would you build an extension to change if you could?  Let us know in the comments!

Download YouTube Videos

Ant Toolbar – The official toolbar for Ant.com includes a YouTube video downloader as well as a built in FLV player so you can play the videos you’ve snagged right from there.

Embedded Objects – This add-on will download pretty much any type of embedded file, including your favorite YouTube videos.

Fast Video Download – Fast Video Download works with numerous video sites and will also add a download link under embedded YouTube videos you find on other sites.

Flash Video Downloader – Besides allowing you to download your favorite videos from YouTube, this add-on will download flash videos from other sites and even games.

Flash Video Resources Downloader – Will let you download videos from most flash-based video sharing sites, will also let you enter a YouTube URL and be presented with the download information without needing to go to the page.

Magic’s Video – Downloader – Assists you with downloading FLV videos from around two dozen video sharing sites, including the market leader, YouTube.

Media Converter – This extension will allow you to not only download your desired videos, but it will also convert them right in the browser to the format you desire.

Sothink Web Video Downloader – Besides downloading videos from YouTube, Sothink will also let you capture videos in swf, wmv, asf, avi, mov, rm and rmvb formats.

Video DownloadHelper – Once installed, Video DownloadHelper’s icon will animate when you come to a page that has a video you can download.  Once you start the download process, you can also choose which format you want to save the file as.

Tools

Better YouTube – Collects some of the most popular Greasemonkey scripts for YouTube that do things like give you an alternate player, a cleaner theater interface and more.

GoogleTube – This extension adds a YouTube icon next to Google search results that have videos associated with them.  Click on the button and you can watch the videos directly on the search results page.

Groowe Firefox Toolbar – Gives you a toolbar that lets you search YouTube, Digg, Delicious and more.

Now Playing X – Allows you to feed videos you are watching to the Now Playing feature on messengers like Live, Yahoo, AIM, Skype and GTalk.

RickRadar – If you really fear being RickRolled, install this and it will evaluate pages. If it feels there is a high probability of Rick Astley being there, it redirects you.

TubeStop – Only has one job and that is to stop YouTube videos from autoplaying.

VodPod – Allows you to grab the embed code for a video and store it at VodPod.com and then publish it to your blog with just a click.

You Old Enough? – Tired of signing in to verify your age? This add-on will let you bypass the whole process.

YouPlayer – YouPlayer allows you to drag videos to your playlist and form your own list from around the Web.  If you find anything you like, right click on it and you can choose to download it.

YouTube Cinema – Allows you to play all YouTube videos in a default that shows them in cinema view.

YouTube Comment Snob – This add-on allows you to hide comments from people with numerous misspellings, excessive punctuation, all capital letters, no capital letters and so on.

YouTube Tooltip – Allows you to hover your mouse over a YouTube link and see what the video may be before you click on it. Can also show author, ratings and number of views.

(Via Mashable!.)

Kevin Rose’s podcast network powerhouse Revision3 announced their financial returns for 2008, and they paint a rosey picture for online video. It also helps fill in a little bit of the gaps I and the rest of us were left wondering about following the cancellation of several shows on the network earlier in October.

The revenue for the network as a whole was reported to have tripled in 2008, though the press release doesn’t have any hard numbers as to what the total dollar amount was. Oddly, and unlike most media networks, rather than talking specifically about viewership and download numbers, Rev3 highlighed the amount of watching going on by quantifying it in minutes of ‘viewer engagement.’

It’s definitely a term that’s being used to obfuscate the amount of actual viewership taking place.  Given how they seem to sell their ads (pre-rolls, post-rolls, host-read ads and certain affiliate relationships), it might be a more telling and insightful number to report exactly how many episodes viewed there were, rather than saying simply that they had achieved 140 million minutes of engagement monthly.

‘Despite today’s tumultuous economic climate, Revision3 is making huge strides, dramatically increasing both viewership and revenue,’ said CEO Jim Louderback in a statement today. ‘Like everyone else, we’re being cautious in how we approach 2009, but we anticipate continued growth over the coming months.’

They highlighted quite a few of their 60 advertising partners, including the Air Force, EA, Sony, Anheuser-Busch, Dolby, Virgin America, Go Daddy, Zune, Dr. Pepper, Carmex, Adobe, Microsoft and Axe.

The ones that are most prevalently advertising on the network these days are GoDaddy, Netflix, Michelob and Becks beer, GoToMeeting, and GoToMyPC, as we mentioned last month. Most of these seem to be affiliate style relationships, which definitely leaves the network with a lot of head room to grow.

2009 will see the online video market’s battle of the business models.

Revision3 is definitely one of the horses I’ve been watching run the video network race since their start in the business, and I’ve always had an affinity to its founders and many of their on-air talent. They’ve done a good job of pulling together a combination of recognizable faces, interesting genres and engaging shows. Because they’ve approached the business as creatives focused on video rather than aggregators with a broad-stroke approach (like Wizzard Media), they’ve an uphill battle on two fronts.

The first difficult front is that of content and audience monetization. Their application of commercialization has been uneven so far, though it seems to have markedly improved since the hire of Jim Louderback as CEO. Since the majority of the team is so focused on the creative side rather than the monetization side, this is to be expected, to a certain extent.

The other side of the business that’s an uphill battle for Rev3 has been the high cost of doing business as compared to a lot of the other players in their business.  Aggregators like Wizzard don’t have to front the costs of production, only that of distribution. That’s why they’re able to sustain their business off the same type of advertisments that Rev3 may have a hard time breaking even with.

This isn’t to say that Wizzard has a superior business model.  I think that if you talk to the business side over at Wizzard, they’ll readily admit that on average, the shows being produced at Revision3 are superior to what they host – that’s to be expected. Wizzard hosts tens of thousands of producers, whereas Revision3 hosts tens of producers.

That’s why Revision3 has made moves to crowdsource some of their production, but at it’s heart Rev3 is still a production house (not an aggregator). During the tough economic times we’re now facing for the forseeable future, it’s going to be a battle of the business models to see which one is boud for success.

(Via Mashable!.)

The best way to have people obsessing about your birthday is to never tell anyone the exact date. That’s what Google’s been doing; we pretty much know that big G’s 10th anniversary is in September, but the exact time is unknown.

And, while some have written about it almost a month ago, only now Google is officially ‘celebrating’ its birthday by releasing a special tenth anniversary page, featuring an interactive timeline of the company’s history.

They’ve also launched Project 10100, described as ‘a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible.’

The project works as follows: you send Google your idea by October 20th; it’s done by simply filling out a submission form, add a 30-second video if you like. Public voting on ideas begins on January 27th, 20 semi finalists will be chosen, and an advisory board will then select up to five final ideas. Google will commit 10 million dollars to make these ideas work.

Check out the introductory video below.

(Via Mashable!.)

Google announces it will release a brand new open source web browser tomorrow, called Google Chrome. Whaa? Yeah, that’s what we said. Here’s what Google says:

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

The Googlers said they borrowed parts of Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s WebKit to build Google Chrome, which sounds like it might be similar to Prism (but with tabs). We won’t know what Google Chrome will look like till tomorrow, when they make the beta available for download. In the meantime, do you want a new browser from the big G? Can you imagine it being good enough to switch from your current favorite browser? Either way, the browser wars just got a heck of a lot more interesting. Check back tomorrow for our full Google Chrome test drive.

(Via Lifehacker.)