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HBO’s online streaming service, HBO Go, will soon exit beta status and be accessible to Verizon FiOS customers beginning this Thursday, February 18. Those subscribers will have access to more than 600 hours of HBO programming online, though they won’t be able to cut the cord just yet—access to Go is limited to those who already subscribe to HBO through a cable provider.

HBO’s online programming has already been made available to Comcast customers via Comcast’s Xfinity video service. The beta for Xfinity launched last summer, but the company opened it up to all cable + Internet customers in December of 2009.

The latest announcement breaks HBO’s content out of the Comcast bubble and brings the same concept to Verizon FiOS: as long as you subscribe to the cable channel and FiOS, you’ll be able to watch HBO’s shows content on the Internet. This includes shows like The Wire, Big Love, The Sopranos, and more, as well as a handful of movies available through HBO.

Content producers are sensitive to the idea that users might move to the Internet and ditch the (much more lucrative) traditional TV viewing experience, which is the main reason why HBO has set up Go as a subscriber-only benefit. It gives already paying customers more content in more places, but doesn’t give anything away to those who aren’t willing to pay for it on cable.

Despite these restrictions, FiOS customers are sure to be pleased with the offerings. HBO’s shows are often quite popular and there are few other ways to watch most of them online without paying extra (a la the iTunes Store).

This month we showed you the best times to buy anything, all year round, highlighted a better way to tie your shoes, discussed some problems with the Apple iPad, and a whole lot more. Here’s a quick look back.

• The Best Times to Buy Anything, All Year Round
  You’re always hearing about off-season, post-peak times to save money on purchases and food, but it always arrives too late. We’ve compiled a timeline and lots of best-time-to-buy suggestions into one post to help you plan a more frugal 2010.
• The Problem with the Apple iPad
  Yesterday, Steve Jobs worked his charm, attempting to wow the world with the Apple iPad, a new, super-slim computer he touted as the missing link between iPhones and laptops. It’s an undeniably beautiful device, but it also represents some serious problems.
• Five Best DVD-Ripping Tools
  You pay good money for your DVDs, but they’re hardly the only format you need these days. These five ripping tools ensure you can back them up, keep them on your media server, and load them on your favorite portable player.
• Ditch the Granny Knot to Tie Your Shoes More Efficiently
  The difference between shoes tied with a balanced, neat, and self-tightening knot versus those tied with an unbalanced, sloppy, and loose knot, is all in how you make your first loop.
• Pack a Gun to Protect Valuables from Airline Theft or Loss
  If you don’t like your bags being out of your sight and it makes you uncomfortable to think that airline workers are rifling through your stuff, you can take advantage of the TSA’s own security rules by—eek—packing a gun.
• How to Put Your PC to Good Use While You’re Sleeping
  The great part about your computer is that—unlike you—it doesn’t require any sleep. Take advantage of your PC’s insomnia by automating time- and processor-intensive tasks while you’re counting sheep.
• Your Passwords Aren’t As Secure As You Think; Here’s How to Fix That
  If you allow applications to save your passwords, anyone with physical access to your PC can decode them unless you’re properly encrypting them—and chances are pretty good you’re not.
• Five Best Email Clients
  Email as a technology has been around for decades, and thanks to wide spread adoption and popularity, it isn’t in danger of disappearing. Check out the five most popular email clients to help you wrangle your email.
• Browser Speed Tests: Firefox 3.6, Chrome 4, Opera 10.5, and Extensions
  Firefox 3.6 is out, Chrome’s stable version got a big upgrade, and Opera 10.5 is inching toward release. It’s a great time for us to break out the timer, process manager, and code tracker for some up-to-date browser speed tests.

Let’s look back at the week that was in Microsoft news. Here were the top stories:

After Google hack, Microsoft asks users to abandon IE6, XP: Microsoft is recommending that Windows XP and IE6 users upgrade both their browser and operating system, if only for the security improvements.

Microsoft patches “Google hack” flaw in Internet Explorer: Microsoft has issued an out-of-band security patch to address a remote code execution hole in Internet Explorer that was used in the recent Chinese attacks disclosed by Google.

Whether you want to curb your disposable paper towel use for the sake of your wallet, the environment, or both, home management blog Simple Mom has a great system for switching over to cloth towels for good.

Image by otakuchick.

Blogger Maya acknowledges it’s not easy to make the leap from paper towels to the cloth variety, especially since paper is just so darn easy to use. Once you get a system nailed down, though, Maya says you’ll find it’s not a hassle to go paper-free.

You’ll need a batch of sturdy cloth rags or bar towels for deep cleaning, some nice fabric napkins for dining, and a pile of inexpensive, generic napkins for everyday spills and wipe-downs. If you have kids, toss some child-sized washcloths in a drawer as well. Keep a basket under the sink to collect used towels and throw them in the wash every couple of days.

If you’re having trouble imagining cleaning up really icky messes without paper towels, Maya says it’s time to look at the situation differently.

Change your perspective. Once you start using cloth regularly, you will also start to dispose off older cleaning cloths regularly. Such messes are good opportunities to get rid of old rags. And if you have no cloth you can use, there is really no problem with using a little paper, is there?

The post goes into more detail about how to implement a paper-free home, so you’ll want to check it out to get the skinny. Also be sure to take a look at the comments. Some readers wanted to know about the environmental impact of washing all that cloth toweling, but readers say the extra laundry is actually quite minimal.

Is your home paper-towel-free? Do you still yearn wistfully for that roll of paper towels or are you really happy with your system? Share your tips and experiences in the comments.

The difference between shoes tied with a balanced, neat, and self-tightening knot versus those tied with an unbalanced, sloppy, and loose knot, is all in how you make your first loop.

Over at Runner’s World they’ve put together an instructional video to go along with an informative article on the difference between Granny Knots and Reef Knots. Well tied shoes are important to runners, but anyone can benefit from the simple change in knot tying-methodology outlined in the video below:

By simply altering the direction of the first loop you make when tying your shoes you can produce a neater knot that is less prone to coming untied. If the Reef Knot caught your eye, you may want to check out another interesting knot we’ve covered: the “world’s fastest shoelace knot, a.k.a. the Ian Knot. Have a bit of knot tying lore to share? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

Lasts week’s launch of Nexus One, Google’s Android phone, left smartphone users everywhere debating whether they should ditch their current phone and make the switch. According to weekly search data from Experian Hitwise, the volume of searches for “nexus one” outnumbered searches for “iphone” by more than 2:1 for the week ending January 10, 2010. The term “google phone” also experienced a significant spike in traffic, also beating out “iphone” for the week.

But will interest last as users consider the $529 price tag if they don’t switch to T-Mobile? Daily search data from Google Trends shows that the January 5 launch date was the most popular day for searching on Nexus One. By the end of the week, the hype died down, and search volume was far lower for Nexus One than for BlackBerry. It seems the typical technology adoption lifecycle will apply, and users will take a wait-and-see approach before making the leap to a new operating system and potentially a new carrier.

You pay good money for your DVDs, but they’re hardly the only format you need these days. These five ripping tools ensure you can back them up, keep them on your media server, and load them on your favorite portable player.

Photo by jonasj.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite DVD-ripping tool. We tallied up the votes, and now we’re back to highlight the five most popular tools used by Lifehacker readers to rip, backup, and encode their DVD collections.

DVD Shrink (Windows, Free)

DVD Shrink is a free and capable ripping tool that excels at, as the name would imply, shrinking DVDs. DVDs come in two common formats: DVD-5 (4.7GB) and DVD-9 (8.5GB); the Reauthor mode in DVD Shrink helps you to ditch disc extras and strip most larger DVDs down to fit into a standard (and less expensive) DVD-5 disc. DVD Shrink does a good job handling many protection schemes, but hasn’t been updated to remove some of the newest schemes.

DVD Fab (Windows, $50)

DVD Fab is a commercial DVD ripper that supports the removal of all current DVD copy protections. In addition to being current on protection schemes, it boasts a large array of options for stripping and repacking your DVDs once the copy protection is removed. You can rip the entire disc, rip only the main movie, or split it into pieces—among other options. Like DVD Shrink, DVD Fab also supports compressing DVD-9 discs to fit on DVD-5 discs.

Handbrake (Windows/Mac/Linux, Free)

Handbrake is a DVD-ripping tool with a strong emphasis on not just ripping media but recoding it for playback on computers, portable devices, and other non-disc based systems. Handbrake can help you convert DVDs and other MPEG-based video into MP4 and MKV files. You can tweak settings like video frame rate and audio codec playback to your heart’s content with Handbrake, and even batch encode all your media at one time to make filling up your iPod or other device relatively painless. The one major shortcoming of Handbrake is that it doesn’t have any copy protection removal tools built in, which means you may occasionally need to use a 3rd-party stripping tool to prepare your DVD for conversion.

AnyDVD (Windows, $60 per year)

AnyDVD is another commercial entry in this week’s Hive Five. It’s not cheap, with a one year license running $60—although the multi-year discounts quickly stack up—but it can boast that it stays on top of current protection and encryption schemes to makes sure you’re never locked out of your own discs. In addition to stripping protections from the disc, it also has the ability to control DVD playback speed so that DVDs played on media center computers will play slower and quieter, and it allows you to remove things like forced subtitles, warning screens, and disc material you don’t want.

DVD Decrypter (Windows, Free)

Although DVD Decrypter hasn’t been updated since 2005, it still works on a significant number of DVDs and has a strong following resulting from both its original user base and new users who find it cuts through the copy protection on their current DVDs protected with CSS, Macrovision content protection, region codes, and other hindrances.

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Now that you’ve had a chance to look over the five most popular DVD-ripping tools as nominated by Lifehacker readers, it’s time to cast your vote for the tool you like best:

Which DVD-Ripping Tool Is Best?(trends)

Have a favorite that wasn’t featured or a tip for ripping DVDs? Let’s hear about it in the comments. If you have an idea for a future Hive Five send us an email at tips @ lifehacker.com with “Hive Five” in the subject line.

Yesterday’s launch of the HTC Nexus One phone — known to most of us as “the Googlephone” even though Google backed away from putting its branding on the device — overwhelmed us with so many new features, so many specs to nerd out on, that we overlooked what could be the best news of 2010 for society.

The Nexus One uses two microphones, advanced audio processing, and smart software to cut out background noise from conversations. It also understands the spoken word better than any phone yet.

Where we’re going with this: You can toss your Bluetooth headset. Please. Talk into the phone.

A recent Wired magazine cover featured Inglourious Basterds star Brad Pitt sporting a prominent Motorola H500 earpiece, for a cover story titled “New Rules for Digital Gentlemen and other Highly Evolved Humans.” Not everyone spotted the note Wired printed next to Pitt’s collar in the tiniest possible font: “Rule No. 52: Ditch the headset. He can barely pull it off — and you are not him.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, CBS and Disney may soon partner with Apple to let users subscribe to television over the internet using iTunes. So let’s say every network jumps on board: Would you ditch cable for an internet alternative?

Photo by dailyinvention.

The article is a little vague on details, but it sounds like you’d pay a flat rate for access to a selection of shows from the participating networks. The shows would also likely be ad-free. I think most people would agree that collapsing all of your entertainment into a single internet pipe is inevitable somewhere down the line, but whether or not we’re ready for it is another question.

A lot goes into this kind of a decision from a consumer standpoint. For one, dollars-to-donuts that those videos will be weighed down by iTunes DRM that would severely limit how you could enjoy what you’re paying for—that is, if you’re not planning to watch your television through iTunes, an Apple TV, your iPod/iPhone, or QuickTime, you’d probably be in a bit of a pinch. On the other hand, having the choice to watch anything from a network you want, at any time, rather than dealing with an out-of-your-control firehose of mostly crap and commercials seems nice.

Just to get a better gauge of the viability of this sort of model, let’s strip away the iTunes part of the equation altogether and assume that if it starts with iTunes, eventually several providers may offer a service like this. We want to know:

Would You Ditch Cable for Online Subscriptions?(polling)

Share more specifics on how a plan like this may (or may not) meld with your TV-watching habits in the comments.

If you were looking for just one more reason to ditch Sprint then this could be it. A CDMA-flavored Palm Pixi just cleared the FCC — yes, another one — and we can say with confidence it’s not coming to Sprint this time around. Better yet, Palm’s model P121EWW matches up with that P121 code we saw leaked a while back for Big Red (Sprint’s model is P120EWW), and this sucker got tested for 802.11b/g WiFi. Looks like that Sprint ad touting the Pixi’s non-existent WiFi was more than just wishful thinking. With webOS-powered Palm gear already confirmed on Verizon for “early next year,” are you really going to make the jump to a WiFi-less Pixi on Sprint knowing what’s on the way? And more importantly, can we expect another terrifying series of ads targeting Sprint this time instead of AT&T?

Palm Pixi clears FCC with Verizon frequencies and WiFi in tow originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Dec 2009 12:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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