Let’s face it. We are the Y generation and a lot of us spend at least half of our lives (or so it seems) on the internet Tom and jerry a nutcracker tale download. There are hundreds of tips and tricks out there (known by techies as “lifehacks…” see Lifehacker, for example) to make your life both on and off the web easier and more productive. While many of these “hacks” seem to actually make life more complicated, there are a handful that will grease your wheels a little bit as you navigate through this jungle of the web.

1. ADIUM: Adium is a chat client that is a million times better than iChat. Not only does it have a slightly better interface, but it can integrate pretty much every chat client you have. AIM obviously, but also Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, Windows Messenger, and most amazingly and importantly….Facebook Chat! I’ve also found that using Facebook Chat through Adium greatly reduces the lag time and bugs that are often associated with it. Besides these amazing features, that little duck icon is just so darn cute.

2. FORGOTTEN ATTACHMENT DETECTOR FOR GMAIL: This is not a downloadable program, but rather a small tweak that will save you a lot of frustration with yourself. Have you ever sent an email and forgot to attach your attachment? This just leads to another awkward back and forth that you really didn’t need to have, wasting precious seconds you could be using StumbleUpon. Luckily, in the GoogleLabs section of Gmail (top right corner, to the left of Settings), you can turn choose to have a message pop up if you wrote “attach, attached, or attachment” into your message, but did not, in fact, attach anything.

3. VLC: This program is a must-have for anyone who watches any kind of video file (including DVD’s) on their computer. VLC can open basically any video file that you may download from the internet. So, when you download those crazy foreign documentaries about Japanese Manga (not that I’ve ever done that…) and the file extension is nothing you’ve ever seen before, VLC can take care of it. Also, supposedly you can tweak it so it will play DVDs from different regions, but sadly I have not figured out how to do it. Maybe you can.

4. WHERE’S MY CELLPHONE: This one is pretty self-explanatory. You go to this website when you’ve misplaced your cell phone (aka its still in your cardigan that is somehow now buried deep in your laundry pile). You type in your number, and it calls your phone so you can find it. Helpful if you’re one of those people whose roommate is about to move out because he/she has had to call your phone at least once everyday; not helpful if your phone is on silent.

5. LAST.FM: A lot of you might think of this radio/website/plug-in to be old news, but I’ve encountered an astonishing number of people lately who’ve never heard of it or don’t know what it is. If you are into music at all, it’s one of the best music tracking programs ever. Basically you install a small program called a Scrobbler and it records every track you listen to and when you listen to it. “But doesn’t iTunes do that?” you ask? Yes, but Last.fm does it way better. You can download it anywhere you listen to your music (including your iPhone and iPod) and it will record your most listened tracks, albums, and artists. It then makes (really good) recommendations for artists you might like and lets you stream and even download some tracks for free. It’s also really fun to look up your friends and see how compatible you are musically.

6. OPEN OFFICE: Too broke to to afford a copy of Office (even the Student and Teacher Edition will run you about $150)? Are you tired of having to reformat your TextEdit documents every time you print something out? Download OpenOffice, which is free, and has pretty good replicas of Word, Excel, Access, and Powerpoint. The only thing you must remember is to save your documents as .doc, .xls, or .ppt to make sure that they will open on another computer that doesn’t have OpenOffice .

7. GOOGLE READER: If you read a lot of blogs, this will make your life approximately a million times easier and more enjoyable. I know so many people who just won’t make the transition to using an RSS reader and I have to tell you, it’s completely worth it. Plus, once you transfer all your blogs you currently read (including NYULocal, obviously), it’s super easy to add more. Once you sign up, you just go to settings and drag the “Subscribe…” link to your bookmark bar. Then, the next time you find yourself on a blog that you just can’t go another day without being alerted of every single post, you just hit that button, and voila, your days of being deprived are over. It’s also easily integrated with Gmail. If you’re a Gmail user, set up your reader simply by clicking “Reader” at the top left corner of your Inbox, right next to “Documents.”

8. MEDIAFIRE: This is a trick that will seriously change your downloading life forever. I’m not advocating illegal downloading, but for the the casually curious listen or if, let’s say, you lost all your music because your hard-drive crashed, this will help you replenish a good part of your music collection without too much trouble. You simply type into Google: site:mediafire.com + “whatever artist or album or song you want here” and all the Mediafire links with those words as the title will pop up. Make sure to hit “repeat the search with omitted results included” if it gives you the option. Most bigger files will be .rar instead of .mp3, but your computer can easily (and, if you’re on a Mac, automatically) unpack the files to be made compatible with iTunes.

No need to thank me after you revolutionize your life with these hacks. Just make sure to spread the word. Check out Lifehacker for more tips and of course, if you haven’t already, see the ultimate hack at Nicole He’s infamous Gmail post. Share your hacks in the comments so we can all fall into the internet-induced pit of laziness together.

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