Web cams are optimized for things like video conferencing, not close focus. If you're trying to use your web cam to record things close up—awesome stop-motion Lego combat, electronics tutorials, etc.—you can hack the focus with cheap reading glasses.

Vik Ollver was happy with his webcam—it even worked in Linux!—but he wasn't happy with the lack of close focus. He didn't care if it could focus across the room, he wanted it to focus sharply on the contents of his work bench. His solution is simple and cheap:

The focus was a problem for closeups, so I cut a pair of dollar-store +3 reading glasses in half and wrapped the earpiece around the back of the webcam. With a little encouragement it clips the lens over the flat part of the webcam's orb where the lens peeks out. Perfect.

Our favorite thing about this clever hack is that other than snapping the glasses in half at the nose piece and bending the temple and earpiece to hold the lens on, it requires no effort or even tools.

Have a clever hack of your own to share? Let's hear about it in the comments.

If you'd like a clever and cheap way to keep windows, goggles, and other glass and plastic surfaces from fogging up, you can use a potato to keep the vision-blocking condensation at bay.

Photo by jimmihomeschoolmom.

We're almost out of the so-cold-your-breath-fogs-the-windshield weather in most of the US but this trick works for everything from windshields to swim goggles. Over at the how-to site wikiHow they've shared a guide to using a cut potato to keep your windows fog-free.

1. Cut a raw potato in half. Be sure to use a clean potato, so wash it first if it is coated in soil. This is a good opportunity to use up an old potato that has started to sprout and is past its best.
2. Rub the cut part of one half potato on the window. This will clean it and leave a layer that will prevent fog from forming on the window.
3. Use the other half if needed. You can also cut off dirtied slices and keep using the existing half if wished.
4. Leave to dry without touching.

We thought it sounded too cheap and easy to actually work so we grabbed a potato and went and rubbed a raw slice on the shower door, window, and mirror in the bathroom. After a few minutes of steamy hot water the surfaces did in fact remain fog free. How well it lasts over time and how it compares to a $7 bottle of anti-fog spray from your local sporting goods store is open for debate.

Have a clever use to share? Let's hear about it in the comments.

Filed under: Internet, iPhone

TUAWVirgin America dumps Flash over lack of iPhone support originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac: Popular shareware software bundler and discounter MacHeist has released a new bundle, offering up 7 premium apps for $20. If you don't feel like shelling out the dough despite the hefty discount, let's take a look at free alternatives.

Get Evernote Instead of MacJournal

It may seem strange, but despite Evernote (read more) being for "notes" and MacJournal being for "journals", they both do the same thing. Essentially, they replace your word processor with an app in which you can add all sorts of media to what you're writing, including recording things straight from your iSight, and keep it all synced to the cloud. If you're already using Evernote, you can just go ahead and make a new notebook for your journal, and you've got instant journaling software. Lots of people tout MacJournal as blogging software too, but it seems pretty lacking in this department—there aren't really any free blogging clients for Mac (if you know of one, let us know in the comments), but if you're going to pay for one, you're probably better off with MarsEdit anyway.

Use Handbrake Instead of RipIt

There are a lot of DVD rippers out there, and lots of them are free—our personal favorite here at Lifehacker is the unbeatable combination of Handbrake (read more) and VLC (read more). If you have VLC installed, Handbrake can rip DVDs and offer loads of compression settings. If you're looking for a straight rip of the DVD, MacTheRipper will rip the VIDEO_TS folders right to your hard drive (which can be viewed with DVD Player by going to File > Open Media). It won't always work with some of the newest encryption techniques, but most DVDs should rip just fine. To be fair, though, RipIt may have a better success rate and could work where Handbrake and MacTheRipper fail.

Download Jumpcut Instead of Clips

Our last look at MacHeist alternatives suggested Jumpcut (original post) as a clipboard manager, and little has changed. This time, MacHeist is offering Clips, which is a pretty powerful clipboard manager. If you need, say, live search features, clipboard sharing, and smart clipboards, Clips is the way to go—and, as with most of the other MacHeist offerings, it includes a ton of eye candy—but if all you need is a simple way to manage multiple clipboards, you can't go wrong with the lightweight Jumpcut.

Use iTunes instead of CoverScout

Possibly the most disappointing offering in this bundle is the album art finding CoverScout, which not only costs money, but makes you give them your email address so they can invite you to their newsletter (which, let's be honest, is a huge turn-off). iTunes already has a cover art finder built-in, and, if you're looking to get the artwork embedded directly into the metadata of your files, then this handy Applescript will do you just fine. If you are part of a smaller population that listens to really obscure music and you are missing lots of cover art, however, then CoverScout might be the way to go. It also works if you use a media player other than iTunes that doesn't have a cover art finder—though I'm curious as to what you're using, since the OS X media player scene is ridiculously limited.

Get Cyberduck Instead of Flow

If you have a lot of FTP needs, look no further than the open-source Cyberduck (read more). It's come a long way and has a lot of features, including integration with external editors (one of Flow's most touted features is in-app editing). Flow is pretty seamless, but Cyberduck is probably more than good enough—again, unless you have an insatiable lust for eye candy.

Okay, RapidWeaver's Not So Easily Replaced

There's no tiptoeing around this one, RapidWeaver is miles beyond Apple's own iWeb, and there don't seem to be any great free WYSIWYG alternatives (plain text editors are free, of course, if you are an HTML ninja). RapidWeaver's biggest competition is Adobe Dreamweaver, both of which are fairly expensive—if you have need for a web site creation app, you might as well get the nanoBundle just for RapidWeaver, seeing as the bundle itself is 1/4 RapidWeaver's normal price.

The Bottom Line

Most of the apps offered in the latest MacHeist bundle are good, but only offer a few minor features over their free counterparts. If you absolutely need one of those minor features, then go for it—but in general, most of the free apps should suffice. The exceptions are RapidWeaver and the game, Tales of Monkey Island (which isn't really replaceable, but also doesn't really fit in the productivity category). If you want either of these, you can grab the bundle now and save yourself a ton of money. Also, if you need plenty of eye candy to keep computing fun, these apps won't disappoint—but eye candy is probably their biggest draw. If you're already on the fence about the whole thing, you might as well move along—even at the low price of $20, it's hard to justify paying money when there are so many great free apps out there.

La justice américaine a donné tort à Universal Music, qui avait exigé le retrait d'une vidéo où l'on voyait un bébé danser dans une cuisine en entendant une chanson dont les droits sont détenus par la maison de disques.

Huit ans pour rien. Après le dernier épisode de la saga King's Quest, un jeu vidéo développé par Sierra On-Line, des fans ont voulu redonner vie à la célèbre série d'aventure. Or, malgré l'octroi d'une licence non-commerciale, les ayants droit ont finalement exigé l'arrêt immédiat du développement.