Filed under: Design

Have you ever wanted to design your own catapult? How about a toy robot, or maybe a more complex machine you’ve been layout out in your head? If so, you might already be familiar with Google Sketchup. It’s a simple to use 3D modeling program for Windows and Mac that has been popular for years, and is used in such other products such as Google Earth to create the buildings. What you may not know is that you can add a plugin to Sketchup which will enable physics, turning your sketches into simulators. /> id="more-20642"> /> Rather than try to describe exactly what it can do, I’ll give you this video to see for yourself.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows

We’ve all seen them – those ads on nearly every software website that offer to clean your registry or speed up your downloads. Many of us have learned to ignore them. Occasionally, however, you come across such an application that actually does what it says. It really cleans the registry, and it really can help repair your system. Such a program is IObit Toolbox. It’s a general purpose repair package reminiscent of the old Norton Utilities. It’s useful, portable, works on several versions of Windows, and to top it off, it’s free. /> id="more-20468"> /> Note: IObit Toolbox contains many applications. Many of them are small, simple tools that perform a single task. As such, those will be mostly ignored in this review in favor of the less common, or simply more interesting tools.

With the evolution of cloud based file hosting services, more and more users are attracted to online file back up services which allows you to store files on the cloud.

This is because a 260 GB hard disk is not enough anymore. You need more and more space and most importantly, you want to access those files from any computer you want.

With an online file hosting service, you can sync all your computers and mobile devices with ease. One of the very popular services is Dropbox. The free plan of Dropbox allows you to store up to 2 GB of data in the cloud and the pro plan costs $9.99 a month for 50 GB while $19.99 for 100 GB of space.

If you are looking for a cheaper alternative of Dropbox, here is another web service called iDriveSync, which offers considerate plans with more space. /> id="more-20351">

The release of Apple iPhone 4 left an impression that the second generation iPhones will be out of the scenes for good. But no, iPhone 3G is always as good as the day it has been released. It may not have the same functionality as the fourth generation, but still, you will not be left behind, technologically, if you have it. Now, that being said, I have something here for iPhone 3G owners — a step-by-step guide to jailbreak iOS 4.0.2 for your iPhone 3G to, at least, compete with others who have the latest model of iPhones and enjoy the features that iOS 4.0.2 offers. This one’s for Windows users alone. Mac users, I will publish another guide for you, too, in the near future. /> id="more-20104"> /> Important Notes:

Before you carry out the jailbreak, go through these notes and see if you are ready to perform the process;

Windows/Linux (with Chrome): By default, Google Chrome exits the entire program when you've closed the last tab. Chrome extension Last Tab Standing prevents this from happening by opening an empty new tab page when you close your last tab. More »

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Most Browsers (Greasemonkey): If your Facebook News Feed is still clogged with annoying applications and unimportant updates, simple user script F. B. Purity can seriously narrow it down to just the important stuff. More »

Windows only: If you're a Chrome fan and want to see the very latest in features and fixes, even if potentially unstable, you've now got a Canary Build. It's an auto-updating, near-nightly build that runs separately from your standard Chrome installation. More »

Chrome only: Google Chrome extension Chrome Nanny prevents you from wasting time on distracting web sites, so you can get things done instead of checking Facebook all day long. More »

We've already shown you how to organize Chrome's Aero Peek thumbnails, but reader coreyog writes in to show us that that's not all you can do—you can also see thumbnails for all of your open tabs. More »

Chrome: Docs PDF and PowerPoint Viewer automatically opens linked PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, and Word documents in Google Docs Viewer without requiring you to download the file and open it with a local desktop application on your computer. More »

Chrome: Blank Canvas Script Handler is a user script manager for Google Chrome that makes Greasemonkey scripts more compatible with Chrome while also providing a nice interface for managing those user scripts. More »

Chrome only: Google Chrome extension Trash Can adds a menu that lets you restore a recently closed tab directly from the main toolbar; useful when you've closed a number of tabs quickly. More »

Google Chrome: Chrome's new tab page is pretty useful, as is the even better, previously mentioned Speed Dial. If you'd prefer to make it a web page, though, New Tab Redirect will let you specify the URL for all newly opened tabs. More »

Windows: Google's Chrome browser doesn't have nearly the same kind of user profile control that Firefox offers. Until it's baked in, we have ChromeDeck, a handy utility that creates, manages, and produces shortcuts to multiple Chrome user profiles. More »

We love keyboard shortcuts here at Lifehacker, and Chrome's already got more than a few built in. But if you don't like the defaults, or want to add a few of your own, extension Chrome Keyconfig gives you pretty much endless possibilities. More »

Chrome's history menu lists your most visited sites and recently closed tabs, which is different from most other browsers. Extension Recent History gives you the history menu you're used to, listing your most recently viewed pages in a simple drop-down. More »