The last clip was a tease. But here we see lots more sample footage as some brave Carnegie Mellon students make D&D play on the Microsoft Surface. Don't you dare pretend you're too cool for this. [Surface Blog via Kotaku]

If you sync your Google contacts between multiple devices or pull from multiple email accounts, you’ve probably got quite a few duplicate entries. Now your Google and Gmail contacts let you kill those dupes en masse with a single button.

Hit up your contacts from Gmail, or head to google.com/contacts, and hit the “Find duplicates” button in the lower-right area. You’ll be provided with the list of contacts with at least 2 entries each, which you can view in expanded form, and then either merge together or kill off. Not that this is some new-fangled tool or an advanced feature, but I know at least a few Google users’ primary annoyances with contacts can be salved, if not cured, with this little button.

As reported on Kotaku, Microsoft has officially launched their latest effort to deliver PC games directly to users via the Internet. After creating a Gamertag and downloading the Games for Windows – LIVE software, you will have instant access to many popular titles. These are the games which are currently featured: 1. Shadowrun 2. Viva Piñata 3. Battlestations: Pacific 4. DiRT 2 5. Fallout 3 6. Red Faction: Guerilla 7. Resident Evil 5 8. Street Fighter IV NOTE: For a limited time, Shadowrun and Viva Piñata are on sale for 50% off. Other titles, such as Section 8 and Hot Import Nights, are said to be available as well.

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What do you get when you combine millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne with his superhero alter-ego, Batman? The stretch limo Batmobile, that’s what.

[CarScoop via BornRich]

If you don’t use the Hibernate option in Windows 7, you can save some disk space by disabling it. Here we will look at a few different ways to manage hibernate options in Windows 7.

Note: Hibernate mode is not an option on systems with 4GB of RAM or more.

Enable or Disable Hibernate Through Command Prompt

Using the Command Prompt might be the easiest way to enable or disable Hibernation. Click on Start and type CMD into the search box and it will be listed under programs. Right-click on the icon and select Run as administrator.

The Command Prompt opens and you will use the following to enable Hibernation.

powercfg /hibernate on

Type in the following to disable hibernation.

powercfg /hibernate off

Manage Hibernation Through Control Panel

Click on Start and open Control Panel then click on Power Options.

On the left side click on Change when the computer sleeps.

Now click on Change advanced power settings.

In the Advanced Power Options window expand the Sleep tree then expand Hibernate after and change the minutes to zero to turn it off. Or you can specify the amount of minutes you want to pass before it goes into hibernation. After you’ve made your selection click Apply and Ok then close out of the remaining screens.

Where is Hibernate?

What if you try the command line option to turn it on and Hibernate mode still isn’t available? Then what you’ll want to do is disable Hybrid Sleep by expanding Allow hybrid sleep and turning it Off.

Now you should have Hibernate and Sleep as part of the power options in the start menu and will also be an option when you hit Ctrl+Alt+Del.

Disable Hibernate Through Regedit

Note: Changing registry values can cause your computer to become unstable or stop functioning and is only recommended for experienced users. 

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way…you might want to completely disable Hibernate mode through a registry edit. Open the Registry and browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Power and change both HiberFileSizePercent and HibernateEnabled value data to zero. After you’ve made the changes close out of the Registry Editor and restart the machine.

If you always turn off your computer or never do, you can disable the Hibernate mode to gain a bit of extra hard disk space. On our Windows 7 (32-bit) machine with a 300GB hard drive, disabling Hibernation gained us just over 3GB of more disk space. That may not seem like much especially with today’s high capacity drives, but if you don’t need Hibernation, why not reclaim that space?

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The Toronto Blue Jays have dealt ace pitcher Roy Halladay to Philadelphia as part of a three-team trade involving the Seattle Mariners, SI.com reported on Monday.

As a tech writer, I regularly cringe at all the bad tweaking advice out there, and disabling the system pagefile is often a source of contention among geeks. Let’s examine some of the pagefile myths and debunk them once and for all.

What is a Pagefile and How Do I Adjust It?

Before we get into the details, let’s review what the pagefile actually does. When your system runs low on RAM because an application like Firefox is taking too much memory, Windows moves the least used “pages” of memory out to a hidden file named pagefile.sys in the root of one of your drives to free up more RAM for the applications you are actually using. What this actually means to you is that if you’ve had an application minimized for a while, and you are heavily using other applications, Windows is going to move some of the memory from the minimized application to the pagefile since it’s not being accessed recently. This can often cause restoring that application to take a little longer, and your hard drive may grind for a bit.

If you want to take a look at your own pagefile settings, launch sysdm.cpl from the Start menu search or run box (Win+R) and navigate to Advanced –> Settings –> Advanced –> Change. From this screen you can change the paging file size (see image above), set the system to not use a paging file at all, or just leave it up to Windows to deal with—which is what I'd recommend in most cases.

Why Do People Say We Should Disable It?

Look at any tweaking site anywhere, and you'll receive many different opinions on how to deal with the pagefile—some sites will tell you to make it huge, others will tell you to completely disable it. The logic goes something like this: Windows is inefficient at using the pagefile, and if you have plenty of memory you should just disable it since RAM is a lot faster than your hard drive. By disabling it, you are forcing Windows to keep everything in much faster RAM all the time.

The problem with this logic is that it only really affects a single scenario: switching to an open application that you haven’t used in a while won’t ever grind the hard drive when the pagefile is disabled. It’s not going to actually make your PC faster, since Windows will never page the application you are currently working with anyway.

Disabling the Pagefile Can Lead to System Problems

The big problem with disabling your pagefile is that once you've exhausted the available RAM, your apps are going to start crashing, since there's no virtual memory for Windows to allocate—and worst case, your actual system will crash or become very unstable. When that application crashes, it's going down hard—there's no time to save your work or do anything else.

In addition to applications crashing anytime you run up against the memory limit, you'll also come across a lot of applications that simply won't run properly if the pagefile is disabled. For instance, you really won't want to run a virtual machine on a box with no pagefile, and some defrag utilities will also fail. You'll also notice some other strange, indefinable behavior when your pagefile is disabled—in my experience, a lot of things just don't always work right.

Less Space for File Buffers and SuperFetch

If you’ve got plenty of RAM in your PC, and your workload really isn’t that huge, you may never run into application crashing errors with the pagefile disabled, but you’re also taking away from memory that Windows could be using for read and write caching for your actual documents and other files. If your drive is spending a lot of time thrashing, you might want to consider increasing the amount of memory Windows uses for the filesystem cache, rather than disabling the pagefile.

Windows 7 includes a file caching mechanism called SuperFetch that caches the most frequently accessed application files in RAM so your applications will open more quickly. It's one of the many reasons why Windows 7 feels so much more "snappy" than previous versions—and disabling the pagefile takes away RAM that Windows could be using for caching. Note: SuperFetch was actually introduced in Windows Vista.

Put the Pagefile on a Different Drive, Not Partition

The next piece of bad advice that you’ll see or hear from would-be system tweakers is to create a separate partition for your pagefile-which is generally pointless when the partition is on the same hard drive. What you should actually do is move your pagefile to a completely different physical drive to split up the workload.

What Size should my Pagefile Be?

Seems like every IT guy I've ever talked to has stated the "fact" that your pagefile needs to be 1.5 to 2x your physical RAM—so if you have a 4GB system, you should have an 8GB pagefile. The problem with this logic is that if you are opening 12 GB worth of in-use applications, your system is going to be extremely slow, and your hard drive is going to grind to the point where your PC will be fairly unusable. You simply will not increase or decrease performance by having a gigantic pagefile; you'll just use up more drive space.

Mark Russinovich, the well-known Windows expert and author of the Sysinternals tools, says that if you want to optimize your pagefile size to fit your actual needs, you should follow a much different formula: The Minimum should be Peak Commit – Physical RAM, and the Maximum should be double that.

For example, if your system has 4GB of RAM and your peak memory usage was 5GB (including virtual memory), you should set your pagefile to at least 1GB and the maximum as 2GB to give you a buffer to keep you safe in case a RAM-hungry application needs it. If you have 8GB of RAM and a max 3GB of memory usage, you should still have a pagefile, but you would probably be fine with a 1 GB size. Note: If your system is configured for crash dumps you'll need to have a larger pagefile or Windows won't be able to write out the process memory in the event of a crash—though it's not very useful for most end-users.

The other size-related advice is to set the minimum and maximum size as the same so you won’t have to deal with fragmentation if Windows increases the size of the pagefile. This advice is rather silly, considering that most defrag software will defragment the pagefile even if Windows increases the size, which doesn’t happen very often.

The Bottom Line: Should You Disable It?

As we’ve seen, the only tangible benefit of disabling the pagefile is that restoring minimized applications you haven’t used in a while is going to be faster. This comes at the price of not being able to actually use all your RAM for fear of your applications crashing and burning once you hit the limit, and experiencing a lot of weird system issues in certain applications.

The vast majority of users should never disable the pagefile or mess with the pagefile settings—just let Windows deal with the pagefile and use the available RAM for file caching, processes, and Superfetch. If you really want to speed up your PC, your best options are these:

• Upgrade your RAM.
• Clean off the crapware—the biggest cause of system slowdown.
• Switch to Microsoft Security Essentials and stop paying for bloated Windows security packages.
• Windows 7 handles multi-tasking much better than Windows XP did.

On my Windows 7 system with 6GB of RAM and a Windows-managed pagefile, every application opens quickly, and even the applications I haven’t used in a while still open almost instantaneously. I’m regularly running it up to 80-90% RAM usage, with dozens of application windows open, and I don’t see a slowdown anywhere.

If you want to read more extremely detailed information about how virtual memory and your pagefile really work, be sure to check out Mark Russinovich’s article on the subject, which is where much of this information was sourced.

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Don't agree with my conclusions? Voice your opinion in the comments, or even better—run some benchmarks to prove your point.

The How-To Geek has tested pagefile settings extensively and thinks everybody should just upgrade to Windows 7 already. His geeky articles can be found daily here on Lifehacker, How-To Geek, and Twitter.

All-things BitTorrent weblog TorrentFreak broke down the numbers and rounded up the 25 most popular torrent sites of 2009. The results represent several best-known sites (like The Pirate Bay), but also probably a few you're not all that familiar with. Incidentally, number 20 on the list, Demonoid—a hybrid public and private tracker that we've always liked despite its recent downtime—is back up and running. And while we’re on the subject, feel free to share your BitTorrent search engine of choice in the comments. [Top 25 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2009 (Warning: Link contains one very small but NSFW thumbnail image of one of the sites)]

Mark Goldstein is the Editor of Photography Blog. And he’s been so kind as provide us with his favorite point and shoot picks in every key category.

Best for lowlight

Canon PowerShot S90 ($400)

The camera of the moment, the popular PowerShot S90 is a small but perfectly formed compact for the keen photographer. Concentrating on image quality rather than simply joining in the megapixel race (just like Sony’s TX1 / WX1 models), the S90 offers DSLR-like results in a pocketable device, making it the perfect second camera for any self-respecting DSLR owner. A sensible resolution of 10 megapixels and fast zoom lens make the S90 an excellent choice when the lighting drops. This is one camera that you carry everywhere and still achieve breath-taking photos that will look great on your wall. [Review]

Best bang for your buck

Samsung HZ15W ($250)

Samsung can always be relied upon to deliver more for less, and the HZ15W is certainly no different. The HZ15W can’t quite match every feature that its main rivals offer, but it does cost a lot less than them. With an amazingly versatile 10x zoom lens, high-definition video and a wealth of beginner-friendly modes, this well-designed camera is simple to use yet offers enough features and quality to satisfy more experienced photographers. The HZ15W could well be the only camera that you ever need. [Review]

Best video/still crossover

Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7 ($400)

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7 is not only one of the best video compacts on the market, it’s also one of the best cameras full stop. Support for the AVCHD Lite format almost doubles the recording time, albeit at the expense of editing ease. The dedicated Record button, stereo microphone, wind cut function and audio sampling at 48kHz combine to make the TZ7 a star performer for moving images. It’s also a fantastic stills camera too, with an incredibly versatile 12x zoom and top-notch image quality – a great do-it-all, carry-everywhere device. [Review]

Best super slim model

Sony TX1 ($300)

Sony has long ruled the roost in the “it’s so slim you can barely see it” category, and the desirable TX1 continues that tradition. Combining a sturdy yet stylish metal body, clever sliding front plate and impressive folded lens optics in a frame that’s just 14.1mm thick, the TX1 still manages to pack in a 4x zoom lens and 3-inch touch-sensitive rear screen. You also get the added bonus of Sony’s impressive “Exmor R” back-illuminated CMOS image sensor, which greatly improves low-light performance. Available in a variety of attractive colors to match your personality, the TX1 is guaranteed to look as good as you. [Review]

Best wet and rugged

Pentax Optio W80 ($210)

Ed note: Brian Lam reviewed most every rugged camera under the sun last summer, and his favorite all around performer went to the Pentax W80, a Jack-of-all-trades rugged cam featuring a 5x internal zoom lens. Its picture quality doesn’t compete with the best point and shoots, and the W80 can only be dropped from around 3 feet, but it can go underwater up to 16 feet and function in temperatures down to 14 degrees. [Review]

There are obviously a lot of other great cameras this year for every budget and level of experience. See all of Photography Blog’s camera reviews here (http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/).

Mark Goldstein is the Editor of Photography Blog. Photography Blog has been independently reviewing cameras and reporting photography news since 2003.

The search giant showed us how real-time search would work, but very quietly turned on the actual feature this morning. Search for a topic that’s getting a lot of play on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, or Identi.ca, and you’ll see those results in a (strangely) scroll-able mini-section on your results page. Are you seeing these results unexpectedly today? Have they been helpful, or just noisy? [ReadWriteWeb]

You probably already saw that the average American tears through 34GB of data per person per day. Here’s how the media has evolved these last few decades (sorry print), and below a way to compare your consumption with Joe Average.

This chart breaks down each activity by hours, bytes, and words for the total population, average per user, and average per American in 2008. There’s a lot to process here, but my first reaction is: that many people still watch TV in standard def?

*A 1 with 21 zeros after it [UC-San Diego]

Microsoft has re-posted the USB/DVD download tool after it was discovered it contained GPLv2 code. Installing Windows 7 on a netbook can be a daunting task. The lack of DVD drive can make even the most skilled geek feel inadequate and mortal. The only real way to plug external data into a netbook is via its USB ports. Now these handy lil' ports would be great, assuming Windows 7 actually came on bootable flash drives. Sadly, Microsoft hasn't decided to take that route. Instead, you're stuck scratching your head, googling (or binging, whichever) the best way to turn your flash drive into an installation disc.

Read full story…

Microsoft announced the Windows 7 Touch Pack back in May but originally it was meant for OEMs only. Today the company confirmed that it will be offering the Touch Pack for download soon. The official Touch Pack site states "the Touch Pack comes preinstalled on some multitouch PCs running Windows 7, and will soon be available for download. It's not included in Windows 7." A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the sighting to Neowin but would only say "Microsoft is planning to make it available via download soon but has not confirmed/committed to a timeline." Obviously, in order to use these applications, you will need a Windows 7 PC that supports multi-touch.

Read full story…

We cover a lot of tips every day on Lifehacker, but we get our greatest pleasure from putting together in-depth, step-by-step guides. From Windows 7 to Hackintoshes and beyond, here’s a look back at our most popular how-to features of ’09.

How to Do Everything with Windows 7

Windows 7 was a huge part of 2009, and the Lifehacker crowd was eager to try it out early on—but not necessarily ready to ditch XP or Vista outright to do so. This guide got you up and running with a Windows 7 and Vista/XP dual-boot system. Once you got it up and running, our complete guide to Windows 7 got you started with the most important parts of tackling your new operating system. We toured Windows 7’s best, most underhyped features, schooled you on its impressive list of cool new shortcuts, and detailed how to pull a little XP mode in Windows 7. It was a pretty good year for Windows users.

How to Build a Hackintosh with Snow Leopard, Start to Finish

The Apple tax is always a little higher than a lot of people are willing to pay, so this year’s guide to building a Hackintosh with Snow Leopard, start to finish, followed up by the simplified guide to install Snow Leopard on your Hackintosh PC, no hacking required made a pretty big splash.

How to Crack a Wi-Fi Network’s WEP Password

Whether you’re verifying the security of your own network or up to something a little more dubious in nature, this guide to cracking a Wi-Fi network’s WEP password with BackTrack—followed by this WEP cracking redux post that took WEP cracking out of the command line realm proved popular.

Google Wave First Look

Google Wave made a serious splash this year, and while a lot of people still aren’t sure how to best put it to use, there’s no doubt that there’s a lot of interesting technology going on there. We did our best to help you understand how you might use it yourself, starting with our Google Wave first look, moving onto a few best use cases for Wave, and rounding it out with a guide to Wave keyboard shortcuts, filters, searches, and more with our Google Wave 101 guide.

Clean Up and Revive Your Bloated, Sluggish Mac

Feel like your Mac isn’t the speedy little box it used to be? Our guide to cleaning up and reviving your bloated, sluggish Mac will get your machine back to running like a champ. (PC users, we’ve got you covered here.)

Prep Your Mac for Snow Leopard

Windows users had the Windows 7 release, Mac users had the Snow Leopard upgrade, and this guide detailed how to prep your Mac for Snow Leopard for a painless transition.

Build a Silent, Standalone XBMC Media Center On the Cheap

The future of home entertainment isn't in your cable box as you know it today—it's in powerful home theater PCs. There was a time when you'd need a big, noisy box next to your computer if you wanted to impress with your HTPC, but this guide to building a silent, standalone XBMC media center on the cheap turns an inexpensive, tiny nettop computer into a standalone XBMC set-top box.

The First-Timer’s Guide to Building a Computer from Scratch

Ever been interested in building your own PC from the bottom up but always been a little scared of rolling up your sleeves with computer hardware? Building a computer from scratch is easier than you think, and it’s also one of the most satisfying projects a tech enthusiast can tackle.

Programmer 101: Teach Yourself How to Code

Whether you just want to do some simple scripting or you want to start down the road to an entirely new skill set, our 101 guide for teaching yourself how to code is a great place to get started.

How to Fix Your Relatives’ Terrible Computer

If you didn't already fix every one of your relatives' computers over Thanksgiving, don't worry—the holidays are quickly approaching, and you know your the resident IT person for your friends and family. Our guide to fixing your relatives’ terrible computer can help.Photo by Justin Marty.

Cut the Cable For Good with Boxee and Apple TV

If our above guide to building a silent, standalone XBMC media center wasn’t quite your bag of chips, consider our step-by-step guide to cutting the cable for good with Boxee and Apple TV. You remember Boxee, right? They’re the killer media center folks who had to fight it out with Hulu all year, and they just updated with an impressive new look and feel. Photo by philcampbell.

Six Ways You Should Be Using Twitter (that Don’t Involve Breakfast)

Twitter may be taking the world by storm, but it’s often- and much-maligned by many of our readers. (47 percent of you say you’d never even use it.) Say what you will about tweeting, but if you’re not using Twitter for at least search, we think you’re missing out.

Properly Erase Your Physical Media

A whopping 40% of the used hard drives on eBay contain easily recoverable personal data. This guide details how to properly erase your physical media when you get rid of anything containing a hard drive so your personal data doesn’t end up in someone else’s hands. Photo by Robert Scoble.

The Definitive Guide to Finding Free Wi-Fi

Spend a lot of time on the road and out of the comfort of your home or office? Our definitive guide to finding free Wi-Fi can help you find some fast internet while you’re out of your home territory. Photo by °Florian.

The Beginner’s Guide to Creating Virtual Machines with VirtualBox

We play around a lot with various pieces of new software and even entire operating systems around these parts. Play it safe or just play around with our beginner’s guide to creating virtual machines with VirtualBox, a free, open-source virtualization tool.

Use Firefox to Fix the Web’s Biggest Annoyances

The web is an amazing place. It can also be an extremely annoying place. Skip the annoying flashing ads, turn off auto-playing movies and sounds, skip the auto-refreshing pages, and more with our guide to fixing the web’s biggest annoyances with Firefox.

How to Build a Web Site from Scratch with No Experience

Ever wanted to try your hand at building a web site you've been dreaming about—but have no experience with web development? We've been there (I was proud to release MixTape.me earlier this year), and this guide for building a web site from scratch with no experience will point you in the right direction.

You’re Backing Up Your Data the Wrong Way

Your data is the most important thing you've got on your computer—in fact, it's everything. If you aren't backing it up correctly, one bad move and all that information—and all those memories—goes the way of the dodo. If you're not sure if you're backing up the right way, this how-to will steer you in the right direction.

Ten Must-Have Gmail Filters Available for Download

If your inbox is overflowing and you feel like you’ve lost control, these 10 must-have Gmail filters will get you started slicing and dicing your inbox into a more manageable place.

An Exhaustive Guide to Saving Your Smartphone’s Battery

If you spend a lot of time outside your home or office, your smartphone is likely your lifeline to the rest of the world. Problem is, your pesky battery can die pretty quickly if you’re not mindful of how you’re using it. Follow our exhaustive guide to saving your smartphone’s battery and you may be able to squeeze a few more hours out of that gadget of yours. Photo by [177].

Make Free VoIP Calls from Google Voice

Soon free-calling functionality may be built into Google Voice (now that Google’s bought Gizmo5), but in the meantime, here’s how you can make free phone calls using Google Voice.

Hack Your Wii for Homebrew without Twilight Princess

If you’ve got a Wii and want to undertake a little homebrew fun, the Twilight Princess hack used to be the only way to go. Not so anymore, and our guide to hacking your Wii for homebrew without Twilight Princess walks you through how to go from zero to homebrew step by step.

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Which Is Your Favorite Lifehacker How-To Feature of 2008?(polls)

Got a favorite Lifehacker guide on or off this list that we covered in ’09? Let’s hear about it in the comments. If you’re feeling nostalgic, you can also gander back at the most popular how-to features of 2008.

We promised you a look at Windows Live Messenger 2010 earlier this week when we revealed Microsoft is planning both Bing and Messenger iPhone applications next year. Thanks to an anonymous tipster we received several screenshots of Microsoft's upcoming Messenger client due in 2010. We have confirmed these to be genuine and they offer a small insight into what the software giant is planning for Wave 4 of Windows Live. Firstly the main Messenger window that contains your contacts has changed somewhat. Included on the left hand side is a "social stream" of updates provided by Windows Live. These are updates from your Messenger contacts and the data is provided by Windows Live.

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