When it's time to finally clear out that dusty trunk full of home movies on VHS tapes, you have a couple of options: pay someone to transfer all that precious video to DVD, or do it yourself. For several hours of tape, having it done can get expensive, so the Unclutterer blog runs down the steps for capturing and burning VHS videos to disk the DIY way. You'll need a video capture card or external capture device (a camcorder will work), and to import it to a video application like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker. From there you can edit the clips, add titles, music, and burn the whole shebang to DVD. The whole process isn't a quick one, depending on how much tape you have and how fast a system and large a hard drive you've got. Have you digitized old VHS tapes? Got any gear or tricks that made it faster or easier? Let us know in the comments.

Author of In Defense of Food Michael Pollan explained his "eater's manifesto" at Google last month. Watch the video to hear Pollan discuss his seven word philosopy ("Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.")—or download the hour-long clip it to your iPod to watch later.

Windows only: Freeware application DExposE2 is a clone of Mac OS X's Expose feature for Windows XP and Vista. Aside from the basic Expose features, which we've seen from a lot of clones in the past, DExpose2 features a handful of extra features like interactive previews, hot corners, multi-monitor support, and more. If you like the look and feel of Expose but have never found a good substitute for your Windows PC, the freeware DExpose2 may be the best available. DExposE2 comes in portable and installable flavors, so you can check it out with a quick download and no install. Hit the jump for a video of DExposE2 in action.

TimeTube is one of those rare YouTube mashups that make the video-sharing site both fun and functional. Type in a search term, and TimeTube lines up the results on an easily-navigated timeline, letting you trip down memory lane or learn more about a topic as it progresses through the social media jungle. There are alternate views—a list, a flipbook, and geo-located—but the timeline view is what really sells this mashup. Got another tool that stramlines and organizes YouTube searches? Let's hear about it in the comments.

• AVG Free Anti-Virus 2008 Released, Much Improved (Windows)
  "Aside from a general interface overhaul and faster performance, the updated anti-virus scanner has added several new features with a focus on web security."
• Harmony Downloads Album Art for Fullscreen Coverflow (Windows)
  "Freeware application Harmony integrates with your iTunes library to provide an attractive, Coverflow-like interface of your albums."
• Xobni Beta Now Open to the Public (Windows)
  "Xobni adds email analytics, better contact cards, fast search, threaded conversations, and more to your Outlook inbox."
• Cairo-Dock Adds Slick, Custom App-Launching to Linux (Linux)
  "Free utility Cairo-Dock makes a strong showing, not least for its highly-configurable and slick appearance, as well as a good range of plug-ins and third-party applets."
• OpenOffice 3.0 Beta Now Available, Adds Native OS X Support (All)
  "OpenOffice.org, the free office application suite, has released a beta of its 3.0 version to the public with a few key features rolled in."
• PandoraBoy Brings Streaming Radio to Your Desktop (Mac)
  "Free, open source application PandoraBoy pulls the popular streaming internet radio site Pandora out of your browser and integrates it with your Mac desktop."

Blogger Rafe Needleman uses Gmail to record memories of his young son's life. With the hefty storage, easy accessibility and robust filter and search tools, it's a neat way to be able to quickly pull up that time when your little one met Santa Claus—or yanked your laptop off the table. Of course, with stuff this precious, it's always a good idea to back it up.

You're a busy person, with a button-up career gig that takes up most of your waking hours. So when you clock out, you don't have time to put in all the work to get into party mode. What you need is a button—a party button—to take you from straight-laced to party in a matter of seconds. The emergency party button, activated by turning a key and pressing a big red button, does exactly that. After dimming the overhead lights, the party button turns on the party lights, turns up the music, and fires up the fog machine. Hit the jump for a video of the party button in action.

Give your cat a comfy place to snooze and save some money by turning an old sweater into a cat bed. Step-by-step tutorial site wikiHow runs down how. The result can even be a dog bed (for small dogs) and your pet will love cuddling up in something that smells like you, too.

Spring is upon us, and with a little know-how, you can water your lawn more smarter this year. Tutorial site wikiHow offers strategies to reduce your water usage while maintaining a healthy, hearty lawn. For example:

Water deeply to encourage deep root growth. Frequent shallow waterings encourage weed germination, and they also cause the grass plants' roots to grow shallow, leaving the plant more susceptible to drought and to certain diseases. Watering only when your grass really needs it encourages the roots to grow deeper

The article is full of other smart watering tips—like watering early to avoid evaporation—that are worth a read before you put out the sprinklers. Photo by Finstr.

iPhone/iPod touch only: The lamest omission in the whole of iPhone development is the lack of sync for Notes. Let's be honest—the iPhone keyboard is nice, but you don't want to have to use it for all your notes. That's where RemoteNote comes in, a donationware iPhone application available through Installer.app. Whenever you run it, you can view, edit, create, delete, back up, and even print your notes through your web browser. Similar shareware tools have been available, but RemoteNote is the first no-cost option I've seen. RemoteNote works with both the iPhone and iPod touch, requires installation of the Jiggy Runtime (also from Installer) and a jailbroken iPhone. Thanks Lee!

Learn to build basic assistance programs to help the hearing-impaired identify speakers in a bandwidth-limited context. Use sndpeek and custom algorithms to match voices to a pre-recorded library so users know who is speaking in teleconferences, podcasts, and live media events.

QGRUBEditor is a graphical frontend for managing the GRUB bootloader. By using QGRUBEditor, you do not have to mess around with the GRUB configuration in /boot/grub/menu.lst anymore. This article shows how to install and use QGRUBEditor on Ubuntu 7.1.

The most popular innovation of IBM AIX Version 6.1 is clearly workload partitioning (WPARs). Once you get past the marketing hype, you'll need to determine the value that WPARs can provide in your environment. You can discover that here.

This document describes step by step how to set up a Mandriva One 28 Spring (Mandriva 28.1) desktop (GNOME). The result is a fast, secure and extendable system that provides all you need for daily work and entertainment.

aDesigner is a disability simulator that helps designers ensure that their content and applications are accessible and usable by the visually impaired. The new version adds support for OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Flash content; presentation simulation function for ODF documents.

This document describes how to set up and configure rsyncbackup on Debian Etch. Rsyncbackup is a Perl script that cooperates with rsync. It is easy to configure and able to create scheduled backups (partial and incremental backups).

If you dual boot with Windows and Linux, and have data spread across different partitions on Linux and Windows, you should be really in for some issues. It happens sometimes you need to access your files on Linux partitions from Windows, and you realize it isn't possible easily. Not really, with these tools in hand - it's very easy for you to access files on your Linux partitions from Windows. Full Story

Learn what's involved when introducing a Linux client pilot in your organization, including planning for business and IT requirements, architecture decisions, risks, and understanding how IBM's open collaboration client is used to implement this desktop of the future, today.

This document describes how to set up an installation environment with kickstart and NFS on Fedora 8. With the resulting system you will be able run unattended Fedora 8 installations on the client systems in your LAN - additionally, you will save lots of Internet bandwidth. The whole client configuration can be included into the kickstart file (especially the post-installation script) so you, the admin, will also save a vast amount of time.

The Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) runs Linux, but getting it to run well requires some tweaking. The first part introduced features and benefits, and Part 2 takes a look at where all the memory goes in the PS3 and how to reclaim it, along with what significant things can impact a PS3 system's performance running Linux.