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You know the story by now. Some Apple guy leaves his iPhone prototype in a bar. Some guy finds it. A few weeks go by. He then leaks photos of the thing to both Engadget and Gizmodo. Then he sells Gizmodo access to it for $5,000.

It's a good story, with a lot of ins, outs, and what have-yous, as Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski would say. But while a lot of attention has been focused on whether it was, like, cool, for Gizmodo to have paid for information, man, the real question is what would you … Read more

OmniFocus is a high-powered, flexible, feature-filled task-management app that's based on the widely used Getting Things Done (GTD) productivity method, but it's designed to accommodate a variety of work styles. OmniFocus uses a GTD-esque approach ("Capture, Organize, and Do") to handle actions, projects, and contexts. You work in a relatively clean, two-pane interface, with folders and projects in the sidebar and grouped actions in the main outline (where you add, edit, and check off actions).

Within this interface, it's easy to set up versatile contexts for your actions, distinguish between sequential and parallel actions within … Read more

Lock up your Excel spreadsheets and secure their formulas in binary format and protected VBA code using this compiler that converts the sheet into an EXE file. It offers options for prohibiting illegal copying and for including an end-user license agreement with the executable packet.

DoneEx XCell Compiler installs a DoneEx menu on the Microsoft Excel menu bar between the Window and Help commands. It performed well in our tests; after saving a worksheet and selecting the Compiler command from the new menu, the add-on launched a dialog box with a variety of options for compiling the sheet into an … Read more

Stress can be alleviated, say the gurus at TROG Bar, if we understand that it isn't the result of being too busy, but instead from trying to manage (and actively remember) all of our tasks all at once. With that in mind, the TROG Bar presents a flexible system to keep your tasks organized and offers you help getting the most from the program.

TROG Bar (which, by the way, is short for Total, Relaxed Organization Guru) integrates nicely with Microsoft Outlook and can work in conjunction with several popular task management systems such as Franklin Covey and Getting … Read more

This free toolbar comes jam-packed with helpful tools to enhance your browsing. Though we encountered a small glitch, it performed well for us overall.

DidDone Toolbar offers a fully customizable interface. The settings menu offers tabs for changing skins, adding and removing buttons, adding Web sites to your white list, and managing your RSS feeds. The toolbar also offers zoom and cleaning options. We found the cleaning options hit and miss. The clean cache and cookies features worked as promised, but the clean history feature failed to work. This was the only flaw in an otherwise useful toolbar. The log-in … Read more

Joy Division isn't the only one that's trying to get the timing just right for a special-edition Zune. Allen Iverson's people are apparently hoping to do the same with their own exclusive version of Microsoft's media player now that his Denver Nuggets have barely secured the last spot in the NBA playoffs.

An etching of the superstar will appear on the back of a limited-edition 8GB Zune packaged with a pair of Reebok shoes called the "Answer XI Zune," according to CrunchGear. Weird.

Only 60 of these special bundles will be sold at a … Read more

There's something to be said about Web services that have been set up to help people coordinate things in the least stressful way as possible. I dig sites like CircleUp (coverage) that offer a way to set up polls, or to solve quick logistical questions within a group, without requiring the creator or the users to agonize over the interface and execution. That's why MyPunchBowl's new checklist feature is pretty much the best addition to a party-planning service yet.

The idea is simple: you, as party creator, make a list of things you need for the party. … Read more

Among two-parent, Mom and Dad families, most women feel that the "Mom" role means that her brain becomes not only the family's collective memory store, but its search engine as well. Even Google can't answer questions such as:

"Mom, where's Princess Leia's shoe?" (At the bottom of the blue box in the playroom.)

"Honey, are we out of toilet paper?" (Look in the kids' bathroom.)

When are our property taxes due....when is my next dental check-up...what day is the dog's birthday?… Read more