Best Tech Now

If ever there were a holiday that yields colorful and flashy desktop wallpaper, it's definitely the Fourth of July. Celebrate the Fourth on your desktop with these swanky fireworks wallpapers.

If you're not going to be shooting your own stunning Fourth of July pictures this weekend, you might as well take advantage of the great photos other people have taken to properly decorate your computer screen for the holiday.

The following gallery is a collection of Fourth of July-themed wallpaper we plucked from collections across the web. Each photo has an attribution link that'll take you back to the source of the image for your full-size desktop needs. If you know of a stash of Fourth-themed wallpapers online, share the wealth in the comments below!

Photo by esens.


Photo by Joe Penniston.


Photo by twentyeight.


Photo by Tony M..


Photo by Stuck in Customs.


Photo by charness.


Photo by wmliu.


Photo by Jaako.


Photo by Barry Yanowitz.


Photo by brewskizzlr.

Most air travelers can't afford the comforts that come with a first class or business ticket, but just because you fly coach doesn't mean you can't maximize your flying enjoyment. Travel site Condé Nast Traveler shows us how.

Photo by Robert Scoble.

Apart from taking advantage of your seat's personal TV and AC power ports (where available), the article also details how best to snag an extra seat by focusing your search on middle seats. (As we've previously mentioned, you can also score some extra leg-room by booking with low-fare carriers.)

Middle seats tend to be filled starting from the front of the aircraft and moving toward the rear—which means that if your flight isn't full, you're likely to get an empty seat next to you if you request an aisle seat in the center section in the back.

If you happen to be flying solo this holiday weekend or in the future, you can also up your comfort level by selecting carriers with the fewest number of middle seats. 767s, for example, only have one middle seat per row, which lessens the odds that you'll get stuck between two people.

If you want to get really specific, we'd suggest trying something like previously mentioned SeatGuru to help you find the best available seat in coach. Whatever you decide, the article advises to always book a ticket with a seat assignment. If you do your bidding online and seat options aren't available at the time of purchase, pick up a phone and reserve one through the airline. You can always try to change it at a later date, but it's important to go in with something.

Check out the full post for more ways to make coach comfortable, and feel free to chime in with your own non-alcohol-related tips to get through a flight. Or, if you prefer to upgrade, hit up our previous post on how to get to first-class.

Windows only: Firefox lovers have no doubt already updated to the recently released Firefox 3.5 for its amazing new features, but if you're more the portable type, Firefox 3.5 Portable Edition is officially available for download.

This portable version comes to us from the reliable folks at PortableApps.com, makers of the popular, previously mentioned Portable Apps Suite, and brings all the goodies of Firefox 3.5 to your thumb drive. You may still need to perform a little about:config tweaking to get your extensions working with Firefox 3.5, but apart from that the portable version looks like it's ready to go.

Whether you've got a fancy new espresso machine at home or you just want to get a better idea of how drinks are prepared at your local coffee shop, this handy chart can help.

Designer Lokesh Dhakar wanted a visual way to represent the composition of different styles of espresso preparations:

I‘m new to the world of fancy coffee drinks. With the vast number of ordering options and new words with accented characters to pronounce the coffee shop ordering experience can be intimidating. I've created a few small illustrations to help myself and others wrap their head around some of the small differences.

Scouring various sources to get the low down on espresso drinks he put together a handy visual chart showing everything from straight espresso through the multi-ingredient caffé mocha, seen in the picture here. The entire chart is available at the link below and features nine espresso-based drinks. If you have your own nifty coffee-centric resources to share, sound off in the comments below.

You've read about the features, you saw the invites going out, but you might be wondering what, exactly, Google Voice could do for you. Here's our guide for the curious and uninvited on whether your phones need some Google juice.

We're not going to explain every feature, quirk, and option in the Google Voice service, which is slowly giving out invites to those who request them. We've already taken a first look at Google Voice, and Google Voice's own Getting Started guide does a nice job explaining the service's ins and outs. We're looking to answer the question we seem to hear most often from commenters, friends, tech pundits, and just about everyone: What would I get out of it?

The wild card: number portability

If the rumors prove true, Google will, at some point this year, allow you to "port," or at least integrate, your existing cell phone number with its service, requiring none of the millions of phone numbers the search giant is supposedly securing. That would eliminate three of the service's biggest barriers to entry:

• Having to call Google Voice, and then dial a number, to place a call "with" your Google number, so it shows up on caller ID as such
• Having to store and reply to a separate SMS number for each of your contacts so that, again, your Google number shows up
• The time and hassle of getting your contacts to call you at your new Google Voice number, despite the fact that your old numbers still "work"

If number portability/integration became a fact, we'd likely have to adjust this list of might likes/might nots, but for the time being, we're hoping to answer a few questions based on tests of the service in its invite-only phase.

You might like Google Voice if you:

• Regularly use two or more phones: If you've heard about one feature of Google Voice, or its GrandCentral predecessor, this is it—and for good reason. Google excels at giving you one phone number for others to have, then letting you fine-tune which phones that number rings to an OCD level. If you want your wife to ring through to your work line between 9am and 5pm, but not your chatty, unemployed friend, you can do that. If you want your home landline to ring along with your cell during the hours your carrier charges for minutes, you can do that, too.
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• Loathe standard voicemail: "Please enter your passcode, followed by the pound sign!" "You have ... two ... new messages. To hear your"—You know what we're talking about. Using cell minutes and precious time just to hear your friend say "Try you again later" is almost as annoying as trying to wipe the voicemail icon off your phone screen. Google Voice makes it easy to play voicemail audio and read semi-correct transcriptions from a single web page, and it's a good bet it'll be integrated into Gmail for even easier access. When you're away from your browser, Google Voice sends voicemail notifications through email or text message, making it easy to know that you really don't need to step outside and call your sister back just to confirm you prefer Diet Dr. Pepper to Diet Coke.
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• Enjoy text messaging, but not phone keyboards (and fees): For anyone whose friends chide them about short or nonexistent text message replies, this is a game-changing feature. When sent to your Google Voice number, text messages are organized on the Google Voice site like chat conversations, with back-and-forth dialogue and options to reply or mark as read and archive. Writing a new message is also easy—hit "M" or click the SMS button, start typing a name or phone number, then choose the contact and type away. You'll still be charged for texts you receive on your phone, but it can be a real money saver when you're near your plan's limit for the month. Those with iPhones, Android handsets, or other smartphones can also make use of Google Voice messaging on the go with apps like the previously mentioned GV (Android) and GV Mobile (iPhone).
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• Want better filters on who reaches you, and when: Google Voice has four levels of annoyance resistance available to weary phone hostages. You can activate "Call Presentation" to have every unknown caller say their name to Google's servers, which then call you and ask if you want to take the call. If the annoyance is someone you know, you move them into a particular group (like "Annoyances") and make that group always go to voicemail. If they sometimes call about something important, Google Voice's ListenIn features lets you send them to voicemail, but hear what they're saying and pick up, if necessary. If you absolutely can't get a telemarketer or semi-stalker to take the hint, the video at left explains how you can simply have them hear something that sounds like an old-school disconnect notice.
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• Are down with Skype-like VOIP calling: Want to make calls over a computer-connected headset and not pay a dime for them? Google Voice allows you to add a phone number from the Gizmo Project and control when it rings through. Make a call through Google Voice's web interface, set it to ring your Gizmo number when it's connected, and the other party just sees your standard Google Voice number—you're effectively making an outbound call for free that Skype and the like would charge you for.
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• Make a lot of international calls: We haven't done a price comparison, but Google Voice's rates to international landlines and mobile numbers are said to be competitive, and you can call from your own phones without having to hunt down the right calling card.
  
• Record calls regularly (and legally): Just hit the number 4 during a call and Google's robotic queen announces "Call recording on." Right now, it only works with incoming calls, but the finished recording is ready for playing, downloading, or embedding in your Google Voice inbox in a matter of minutes. It's how I recorded my Jonathan Coulton phone interview for later transcribing and audio clip pulling.
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• Have or want an Android phone: iPhones, BlackBerries, Symbian-based models, and Windows Mobile devices will likely get Google-built apps for integrating Google Voice into their dialing, voicemail, and SMS interfaces. But Android phones already have an impressive third-party app for doing so, Evan Charlton's GV, and would be a pretty good bet on being the first, or at least among the first, platforms to get the Google Voice team's attention. Fully integrated Google Voice means free, conversation-threaded SMS, fewer hassles with your one-and-a-half phone numbers, voicemails that don't require talk time, and much more.

You won't like Google Voice if you:

• Rarely use your cellphone and/or text messages: Unless you're that rare breed of VOIP headset lover who doesn't ever talk on a cellphone, there's not a lot to recommend Google Voice to landline-focused folks. Your office's phone system offers (hopefully) most of Voice's features, and residential internet phone providers can fill in the other gaps. It could be a help to those who absolutely won't type out a text on a phone—but, then again, so can email.
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• Think Google knows too much about you: There's something to be said for breaking Google's personal data monopoly, and the tinfoil hat crowd have a whole new set of worries with Google Voice—your voicemails, calling history, and text messages are, after all, right on Google's servers, for who knows how long. It's not all that different from Gmail—Google breaking one user's trust could collapse the whole system—but it is something to think about.
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• Dislike Google's Contacts handling: Google Voice uses the same contacts database, so if its auto-inclusion of names you've emailed a few times drives you batty, well, you'll get the same results from Voice's Click2Call auto-completion. Only the names you've stored phone numbers for show up on Voice's dial feature, but we'd like to see a way to set a "primary" number that's the default when you're typing out a name.
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• Get annoyed at voice delays: Early Google Voice users (myself included) are noticing an audio delay on certain calls. Sometimes it's ever so slight, like a wonky cell phone connection. Sometimes you and the other party are toppling over the ends of each other's sentences. Google is certainly aware of it, but since it's a service that inserts a server as the middleman between parties, there might be an inevitable bit of latency on Google Voice calls, as there is with most international calls. If you've ever switched carriers because of voice quality or connection problems, you might find a new antagonist in Google Voice.
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• Really don't want to write another "New number" email: As noted above, Google's rumored to be working on offering number portability/integration for Voice. In the meantime, Voice users have to ask their friends, acquaintances, and business contacts to save a new number, figure out how to deal with the stragglers, and, in all honesty, hope the service isn't abandoned by Google anytime soon. If you live and die by your availability and can't stand the idea of being late to return even one call, switching numbers just won't fly. Everyone else has to make the call.

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What's the reason you've really dug Google Voice so far, or really want to get in? What features does it still lack, and where does it fall down on convenience? We want to hear your take on this still young service in the comments.

You already know that if you want to lock down your Wi-Fi network, you should opt for WPA encryption because WEP is easy to crack. But did you know how easy? Take a look.

Today we're going to run down, step-by-step, how to crack a Wi-Fi network with WEP security turned on. But first, a word: Knowledge is power, but power doesn't mean you should be a jerk, or do anything illegal. Knowing how to pick a lock doesn't make you a thief. Consider this post educational, or a proof-of-concept intellectual exercise.

Dozens of tutorials on how to crack WEP are already all over the internet using this method. Seriously—Google it. This ain't what you'd call "news." But what is surprising is that someone like me, with minimal networking experience, can get this done with free software and a cheap Wi-Fi adapter. Here's how it goes.

What You'll Need

Unless you're a computer security and networking ninja, chances are you don't have all the tools on hand to get this job done. Here's what you'll need:

• A compatible wireless adapter—This is the biggest requirement. You'll need a wireless adapter that's capable of packet injection, and chances are the one in your computer is not. After consulting with my friendly neighborhood security expert, I purchased an Alfa AWUS050NH USB adapter, pictured here, and it set me back about $50 on Amazon. The guy in this video below is using a $12 model he bought on Ebay (and is even selling his router of choice). You won't go wrong with the Alfa, but do your research. There are plenty of resources on getting aircrack-compatible adapters out there.
• A BackTrack 3 Live CD. We already took you on a full screenshot tour of how to install and use BackTrack 3, the Linux Live CD that lets you do all sorts of security testing and tasks. Download yourself a copy of the CD and burn it, or load it up in VMware to get started. (I tried the BackTrack 4 pre-release, and it didn't work as well as BT3. Do yourself a favor and stick with BackTrack 3 for now.)
• A nearby WEP-enabled Wi-Fi network. The signal should be strong and ideally people are using it, connecting and disconnecting their devices from it. The more use it gets while you collect the data you need to run your crack, the better your chances of success.
• Patience with the command line. This is an ten-step process that requires typing in long, arcane commands and waiting around for your Wi-Fi card to collect data in order to crack the password. Like the doctor said to the short person, be a little patient.

Crack That WEP

To crack WEP, you'll need to launch Konsole, BackTrack's built-in command line. It's right there on the taskbar in the lower left corner, second button to the right. Now, the commands.

First run the following to get a list of your network interfaces:

airmon-ng

The only one I've got there is labeled ra0. Yours may be different; take note of the label and write it down. From here on in, substitute it in everywhere a command includes (interface).

Now, run the following four commands. See the output that I got for them in the screenshot below.


airmon-ng stop (interface)
ifconfig (interface) down
macchanger --mac 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface)
airmon-ng start (interface)

If you don't get the same results from these commands as pictured here, most likely your network adapter won't work with this particular crack. If you do, you've successfully "faked" a new MAC address on your network interface, 00:11:22:33:44:55.

Now it's time to pick your network. Run:

airodump-ng (interface)

To see a list of wireless networks around you. When you see the one you want, hit Ctrl+C to stop the list. Highlight the row pertaining to the network of interest, and take note of two things: its BSSID and its channel (in the column labeled CH), as pictured below. Obviously the network you want to crack should have WEP encryption (in the ENC) column, not WPA or anything else.

Like I said, hit Ctrl+C to stop this listing. (I had to do this once or twice to find the network I was looking for.) Once you've got it, highlight the BSSID and copy it to your clipboard for reuse in the upcoming commands.

Now we're going to watch what's going on with that network you chose and capture that information to a file. Run:

airodump-ng -c (channel) -w (file name) --bssid (bssid) (interface)

Where (channel) is your network's channel, and (bssid) is the BSSID you just copied to clipboard. You can use the Shift+Insert key combination to paste it into the command. Enter anything descriptive for (file name). I chose "yoyo," which is the network's name I'm cracking.

You'll get output like what's in the window in the background pictured below. Leave that one be. Open a new Konsole window in the foreground, and enter this command:

aireplay-ng -1 0 -a (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 -e (essid) (interface)

Here the ESSID is the access point's SSID name, which in my case is yoyo. What you want to get after this command is the reassuring "Association successful" message with that smiley face.

You're almost there. Now it's time for:

aireplay-ng -3 -b (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface)

Here we're creating router traffic to capture more throughput faster to speed up our crack. After a few minutes, that front window will start going crazy with read/write packets. (Also, I was unable to surf the web with the yoyo network on a separate computer while this was going on.) Here's the part where you might have to grab yourself a cup of coffee or take a walk. Basically you want to wait until enough data has been collected to run your crack. Watch the number in the "#Data" column—you want it to go above 10,000. (Pictured below it's only at 854.)

Depending on the power of your network (mine is inexplicably low at -32 in that screenshot, even though the yoyo AP was in the same room as my adapter), this process could take some time. Wait until that #Data goes over 10k, though—because the crack won't work if it doesn't. In fact, you may need more than 10k, though that seems to be a working threshold for many.

Once you've collected enough data, it's the moment of truth. Launch a third Konsole window and run the following to crack that data you've collected:

aircrack-ng -b (bssid) (file name-01.cap)

Here the filename should be whatever you entered above for (file name). You can browse to your Home directory to see it; it's the one with .cap as the extension.

If you didn't get enough data, aircrack will fail and tell you to try again with more. If it succeeds, it will look like this:

The WEP key appears next to "KEY FOUND." Drop the colons and enter it to log onto the network.

Problems Along the Way

With this article I set out to prove that cracking WEP is a relatively "easy" process for someone determined and willing to get the hardware and software going. I still think that's true, but unlike the guy in the video below, I had several difficulties along the way. In fact, you'll notice that the last screenshot up there doesn't look like the others—it's because it's not mine. Even though the AP which I was cracking was my own and in the same room as my Alfa, the power reading on the signal was always around -30, and so the data collection was very slow, and BackTrack would consistently crash before it was complete. After about half a dozen attempts (and trying BackTrack on both my Mac and PC, as a live CD and a virtual machine), I still haven't captured enough data for aircrack to decrypt the key.

So while this process is easy in theory, your mileage may vary depending on your hardware, proximity to the AP point, and the way the planets are aligned. Oh yeah, and if you're on deadline—Murphy's Law almost guarantees it won't work if you're on deadline.

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To see the video version of these exact instructions, check out this dude's YouTube video.

Got any experience with the WEP cracking courtesy of BackTrack? What do you have to say about it? Give it up in the comments.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker's founding editor, is tired of typing commands that start with "air." Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.

Google's data-crunching ways found that the majority of Gmail users aren't actually using the webmail service's labels. Starting today, those label names get higher placement, and drag-and-drop labeling aims to make Gmail's labels more like familiar email folders.

By placing users' own labels higher up on the left-hand sidebar, right below the main Inbox/Starred/Sent/Drafts/All Mail destinations, Gmail admits that keeping them in their own box, stuck underneath the chat widget, implied they weren't that important before. Fixes like those contained in Gina's Better Gmail 2 Firefox extension and the "Go to label" keyboard shortcut in Gmail's Labs section helped, but now labels are easier to reach, and kept more at the front of your email-clearing mind.

The three labels you use most are automatically shown below your main links, with the rest accessible from an "X more" drop-down. You can add more labels to your shown list, however, by clicking the downward-facing arrow next to a label and choosing "Show label."

Those higher-up labels are also a boon to frequent mouse users, as you can now click and drag single email messages, or multiple selected messages, onto a label to "move" it into that label (kind of like a folder, no?), or drag the label onto the messages to, uh, label them.

All these features and functionality will be "rolling out gradually" to Gmail users.

Unless you're on the wrong side of a Colombian drug lord, the kind of criminals who would break into your house are mostly opportunists. Use your car alarm to send them running.

Photo by epredator.

Most home intrusions are crimes of opportunity, where the criminal seeks to get things of value as quickly as possible and get out without confronting the home owner or, worse, the police. Burglar alarms are a strong deterrent—not because they make your house an impenetrable fortress, but because they're loud and indicate the police are being called. Lack a security system, and installing a new one isn't in your budget? Frugality blog Wise Bread suggests using your car alarm's panic button:

If you hear a noise outside your home or someone trying to get into your house, just press the panic button for your car. The alarm will be set off, and the horn will continue to sound until either you turn it off or the car battery dies. It's a security alarm system that you probably already have and requires no installation. Test it. It will go off from most everywhere inside your house and will keep honking until your battery runs down or until you reset it with the button on the key chain fob. It works if you park in your driveway or garage. If your car alarm goes off when someone is trying to break into your house, odds are the intruder won't stick around. After a few seconds all the neighbors will be looking out their windows to see who is out there and sure enough the criminal won't want that.

Nobody wants to be burglarizing a house with an attention-getting alarm going off and the cops potentially on the way—but your mileage may vary widely on whether or not your neighbors get involved.

Have a home alarm? Think using your car alarm for double duty would work well enough? Sound off in the comments below.

As wireless users know all too well, not all 3G networks are created equal. PC World recently put Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T to a multi-city test to determine which best delivers speed and reliability.

The magazine took a snapshot of the performance of those three major networks in 13 markets during March and early April (specifically, 5443 individual tests from 283 testing locations). Weather, time of day, and other variable factors not withstanding, the magazine found that Verizon had an average download speed of 951 kbps, and produced uninterrupted speeds in 89.8 percent of tests.

For its part, Sprint's 3G network delivered solid connections in 90.5 percent of cities tested, with average download speeds of 808 kbps across 13 cities, while the AT&T network's average download speed clocked in at 812 kbps. But where reliability was concerned, AT&T delivered only 68 percent of the time.

Take a look at the link below for the full city-by-city results, then let us know your take on PC World's conclusion. Do they match up with your own wireless experience in those cities? Let us know which network you use and how it fares in your location.

Wire baskets can stash cables under a desk, but they don't make it easy to yank out certain wires for laptops or other needs. A chain sinnet might just do the trick.

What is this mysterious and loopy creature? The Closet Entrepreneur blog explains how a sinnet handily tames cables:

The chain sinnet (aka chain braid, daisy chain, or monkey braid) is a cable shortening and storing method that can be used to make stray cables a little more pleasing to the eye.

You create a chain sinnet by making a loop at the base of your cord, then pull the remaining cord into each new loop. Be sure to keep your loops loose to avoid damaging the cord.

If you can't craft a working model from the text instructions, this video demonstrates the making of a sinnet chain with an extension cord:

Can't watch YouTube, or need a bit more background? Check out the full article below for more information and a picture guide to creating a chain sinnet. Have your own tricks for managing cable clutter with an allowance for portability? Sound off in the comments below.