Whether it’s quitting time at your job or the remains of the 15 minutes you gave yourself to clean your inbox, it’s handy knowing how much time you’ve got left. This minimalist URL-based web timer provides exactly that service.The page at cd.justinjc.com, cobbled together by an unknown coder, watches for the text you put after its root domain. Enter cd.justinjc.com/5p, and you’ll get a countdown timer to 5 p.m. in your current time zone, with a progress bar and percentage count shown on the page. You can also enter specific timer counts, like cd.justinjc.com/3h15m30s for a count of three hours, 15 minutes, and 30 seconds. For a raw minute count, just enter cd.justinjc.com/80. The live count is also kept in the page’s title, visible in your browser tabs.

There might be 300 JavaScript countdown timers out there, but this one just happened to catch our eye for its convenience and adaptability.

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Closed down a tab you needed in Safari? In the latest version, the same keyboard shortcut you’d use to undo an oopsie in any other program will bring it back. That’s right—Command+Z (Control+Z on Windows) to the rescue.

It makes sense, of course, but it’s also different from the Command+Shift+T (Control+Shift+T) standard that’s emerged on Firefox and Chrome browsers on Mac and Windows. Still, knowing this shortcut should save you some time from looking for an extension to get the same job done.

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If you’d like to have empty space in between some of the icon sets on your Windows 7 taskbar to keep things organized and separated, this simple hack will get the job done.

Lifehacker reader Virgilstar shared this excellent tip here. We tweaked it a little and made a custom icon for you those of you within the software to make icons yourself.

The magic behind the trick is assigning a transparent icon to a short cut and then pinning that shortcut to the taskbar as a spacer in between to sets of icons you want to keep separate. The steps below detail how to do so.

First, make a folder in an out of the way spot—you don’t want your files to accidentally get deleted or moved later—and in that folder right click and create a new text document. Rename that text document to spacer1.exe. You’re just using the empty text documents to create dummy executable files to trick Windows. Repeat this step for as many spacers as you need. We created two for this tutorial.

Once you have created the number spacers, right click on each dummy exe and create a new shortcut. You don’t need to rename the shortcut from the default spacer1.exe - Shortcut, the name won’t be visible.

After you have the number of dummy executable files and shortcuts in accordance with the number of spacers you want, it’s time to swap the icons. You don’t want to space icons out with little generic Windows executable icons after all, you want to space them out with nice transparent open space.

We’ve created a 256×256 transparent icon for you. You can download it by right clicking on this link and saving the .ICO file to your computer—saving it right into the folder where you’re stashing your dummy executables might not be a bad idea.

When you have the icon on your computer, right click on one of the shortcuts you created in the earlier step and select Properties. In the Properties menu click the “Change Icon…” button. Browse to the location you saved the transparent .ICO file and select that as the new icon.

Repeat this until you’ve replaced all the shortcuts’ icons with the transparent icon. When you’re done the folder you’re working in should look something like this:

Now all you have to do is drag and drop the new short cuts you created to the taskbar and position them where you want to divide the space up. In the screenshot at the top of this article we used two spacers to separate the start button and Windows Explorer icon from our two web browser icons and then again to separate the browsers from the other executables.

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Mac only: If you’re going to warble along with your favorite song, make sure you get the words right. Get Lyrical is a free app that automatically displays the lyrics of whatever song is playing in iTunes.

This tiny app grabs lyrics from lyrics.wikia.com and shows them in a resizable window as the song is playing. you can choose to have Get Lyrical display words to every song as it begins, or only the ones you select in your playlist. The app also recognizes songs sung in Spanish. Don’t like the lyrics that come with the song? Edit, change, and save them right inside the app.

Get Lyrical doesn’t have as many features as MiniLyrics or iLyrics for Windows but it gets the job done and preps you for your next night of karaoke.

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Follow the given steps to configure shutdown tool on your computer:

To use this feature, you will need to be logged into your computer with administrative rights.

To perform this task, first make sure your both computers are directly connected or connected to network.

Click Start button then type shutdown -i in Run option then press Enter for next.

A small windows dialog box will appear with the title “Remote Shutdown Dialog”.

Here first click on “Add” button to add computer, a small Add computers window will open, here type the name or IP address of the computer (you can add many computer for same action) that you want to turned off, then press OK for next.

Now select the action “What do you want these computers to do (log off, restart or shutdown)”. If you want to warn your users about this action, select the check box “Warn users of the action” then set time, display warning for 30 seconds or more.

Now select the option that describes the reason to shutdown the computers and also type some comments for users.

Now when you press the OK button, the users will see a “System Shutdown Windows “with time and comments that you had been set.

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We frequently get emails from readers having trouble finding an old post on Lifehacker. They’ve tried the site’s search box but still aren’t having any luck. It’s not you, it’s us. There’s a better way.

Unfortunately Lifehacker’s search doesn’t always do the job of turning up content as well as it should, so when you’re having trouble finding what you’re looking for, turn your query over to the people who do search best.

That’s right, Google. I’ve been writing for Lifehacker since 2005, and I never use our internal search. Instead, I use Google’s site: search operator to get Google to do the searching for me. Just take the query you were planning to use with Lifehacker’s search, paste it in the Google search box, and add site:lifehacker.com to your terms. Google will limit its results to only Lifehacker, and the results are almost always better than Lifehacker’s default search engine’s results.

In fact, I use Google site: searches for almost every web site, so it’s not just Lifehacker. I even use a bookmarklet to quickly perform site: searches for any site I’m visiting.

I’d love it if Lifehacker’s search turned up better results on its own, but it’s a lot more important to us that you can find what you’re looking for, so rather than use our search engine, using Google with the site: search operator is your best bet.

Update: Intern Dustin reminds me that he’s had even more luck using Google’s blog search tool:

I’ve been using Google’s blog search a lot to find past articles with the site:lifehacker.com param, and it does an awesome job! The main advantage is it searches only the post content—not the comments. The date options are handy too, if you’ve got an idea when the article was published.

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If you hate installing all your Firefox extensions, plugins, and custom tweaks when you do fresh system installation, Silence of the Foxes will build you a custom and silent Firefox installation.

Silence of the Foxes works on both Firefox and Thunderbird, although most users will find it most helpful for streamlining Firefox installations.

Download Silence of the Foxes, extract the files, and run the main executable. You’ll need a Firefox installation file for Silence of the Foxes to unpack and repack. During the second step you’ll tell it what you want to include in the repack like your search plugins and bookmarks.

The default method is to pull from the existing Firefox installation—which makes it a great way to back up your present installation as-is—but you can jump into the .INI file and change where Silence of the Foxes looks for the Firefox installation and other settings.

Although it was originally designed for earlier versions of Firefox, the structure of directories and locations of key files has remained static and Silence of the Foxes still does a great job repacking all your favorite settings in a silent installation. Although we didn’t have any issues with Silence of the Foxes, we can’t emphasize enough the importance of backing up your Firefox profile before tinkering with Silence of the Foxes. We recommend previously reviewed MozBackup as a quick and easy way to backup your bookmarks, extensions, saved passwords, and more. Silence of the Foxes is freeware, Windows only.

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Windows only: If you’re going to create a photo mosaic, you might as well invest the time to do it well. Foto-Mosaik-Edda is a powerful tool for creating impressive, detailed, finely-tuned photo mosaics.

To use Foto-Mosaik-Edda you need a pool of source images—the bigger the better, as they recommend 2000 or more—and the actual image you want to base the mosaic off. In the case of our sample image we used 1,800 images of Marilyn Monroe and found that Foto-Mosaik-Edda did an excellent job using the variety of images we provided.

When you first use Foto-Mosaik-Edda, it does take a bit of time to get things moving. Point the application at the directory where your source images reside and it’ll scan through and create a base set of “tiles” for your mosaic. With 1,800 images it took about 15 minutes. If you’re scanning 10,000 family pictures to create a mega mosaic, plan on leaving your system for a while.

Once you have your pool of pictures scanned, creating a large mosaic is straight forward. Pick your primary image, give it a name, and then select the number of images and resolution of the final image. The size and resolution of the final image is largely limited by how much time you want to devote to letting your computer chug away at cranking out an image. For our sample image we created a 2600×3300px image using 8000 images, which took around 15 minutes to generate. If you have your own tricks and tools for creating interesting mosaic images, share the wealth in the comments below. Foto-Mosaik-Edda is freeware, Windows only.

Foto-Mosaik-Edda [via Gizmo's Freeware]

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Despite the fact that the internet is quite mainstream, it’s hardly lost its Wild West ways. Which tools do you use to tame rowdy content and make your computer kid and co-worker friendly?

We’re huge advocates of the freedom of information and the personal responsibility that comes with access to a tool as powerful and far reaching as the internet. Nonetheless, there are times when it’s necessary to filter the information coming down the pipe into your home or workplace. Whether you want to keep your kids away from disturbingly graphic internet memes or keep your employees more on task and less on non-HR approved sites, content filtering applications are available for nearly every situation. This week we want to hear about the software-based solutions you use to filter content on machines in your care.

Hive Five nominations take place in the comments, where you post your favorite tool for the job. We get hundreds of comments, so to make your nomination clear, please include it at the top of your comment like so: VOTE: Content Filtering Software. Please don’t include your vote in a reply to another commenter. Instead, make your vote and reply separate comments. If you don’t follow this format, we may not count your vote. To prevent tampering with the results, votes from first-time commenters may not be counted. After you’ve made your nomination, let us know what makes it stand out from the competition.

About the Hive Five: The Hive Five feature series asks readers to answer the most frequently asked question we get: “Which tool is the best?” Once a week we’ll put out a call for contenders looking for the best solution to a certain problem, then YOU tell us your favorite tools to get the job done. Every weekend, we’ll report back with the top five recommendations and give you a chance to vote on which is best. For an example, check out last week’s Hive Five Best Online Image Editors.

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Windows/Mac/Linux: Most developers did a bang-up job preparing their extensions for the Firefox 3.5 update, but on the Firefox 3.5 release day, one very popular extension didn’t make the cut: Google’s browser plug-in, Gears.

It’s a week later, and still no update from the folks at Google, but a few adventurous users have hacked together their own Firefox 3.5 compatible builds of Gears. We wouldn’t recommend that just anyone go download and install these Gears builds willy-nilly, but if you’re desperate to get Gears back up and running and you don’t mind a little risk (namely of your browser’s stability), it’s worth a go.

For Windows and Linux versions, check out these custom extension builds from this thread on the Gears Users Google Group. Mac users can try gearsff35osx on Google Code.

I’ve only tested the Windows version and so far everything’s working as expected. You’re mileage may vary, and as we said, if you’re not willing to take on a little beta-style risk (these aren’t official builds), you’re best off waiting for the official release from Google (which one would assume should be coming very soon). If you give it a try, let’s hear how the unofficial builds work for you in the comments. Thanks Matt and Eric!

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