You knew your Mac could detect wireless networks and Bluetooth devices, but did you know it can also detect spirits? If you want to scan for supernatural activity, download an app called EMF6742, from the Department of the Supernatural. This little program uses your Mac's wireless hardware to scan for anomalies in electromagnetic fields, indicating nearby spirits. A higher number means a stronger anomaly in the EMF.

System requirements include "Mac OS X 10.5 or later, a wide variety of superstitions and/or a sense of humor." Yes, unfortunately, EMF6742 is just a joke. Apparently, some people downloaded it without realizing this, though, so if you're looking for something to show your friends to put the "trick" in trick-or-treat, give it a look!

Back in January, Netflix announced their new "Watch Now" video streaming feature, which allows customers to stream anywhere between six to 48 hours of full-length movie content per month.

As of now, only a limited number of customers have been given access to the service, due to handling capacity concerns, and the rollout is not expected to be complete until June. But... why should that stop you?

Dan of Uneasy Silence has posted a very handy trick that allows current members to bypass the wait and immediately access the video streaming feature. Unfortunately, it is still limited to Windows users, but this is a very sweet and simple little trick! Get streaming.

Whenever I'm troubleshooting Windows network issues (which is disturbingly often) I tend to look for Network Connections in My Computer (rather than Control Panel), but of course it's never there. Until now. Tech-Recipes has a great tip for adding a few new items to My Computer. Through an easy registry tweak (at your own risk, blah blah) you can add not only Network Connections but also Administrative Tools, Printers and Fax Devices, Scheduled Tasks, My Network Places, and Recycle Bin. Tech-Recipes says that you have to reboot your computer after making the changes, but in my case all it took was refreshing My Computer (F5). I'll be very happy never to have to dig around for Network Connections again.

[Via Lifehacker]

Update: Here are a few more entries that you can add to My Computer not mentioned by the Tech-Recipes article. I dug these up by poking around the ControlPanel\NameSpace section of the registry, and they may or may not be useful under My Computer. Anybody know of any others?

Portable Media Devices: {640167b4-59b0-47a6-b335-a6b3c0695aea}
Scanners and Cameras: {E211B736-43FD-11D1-9EFB-0000F8757FCD}
Folder Options: {6DFD7C5C-2451-11d3-A299-00C04F8EF6AF}
Fonts: {D20EA4E1-3957-11d2-A40B-0C5020524152}
Taskbar and Start Menu: {0DF44EAA-FF21-4412-828E-260A8728E7F1}

Been dying to try the new AJAXed-out Yahoo! Mail Beta? Well it turns out it only takes a few simple steps to switch your Yahoo! Mail account over to the new hotness. There's instructions over at the curiously-named Google Operating System, but they're a little vague, so here's the step-by-step:

1. Log into Yahoo! Mail and click on "My Account" and enter your password if prompted.
2. On the Account Info page next to the "Member Information" header click on "Edit."
   
3. Under "General Preferences" click on the link next to "Language & Content" or "Preferred Content" (mine says "Yahoo! U.S.").
   
4. On the subsequent page in the "New Setting" box choose Yahoo! United Kingdom, Germany, or France.
5. Click "Finished" and then "Finished" again on the next page.
6. You'll be prompted to sign a new TOS and then you should get an offer to join the Yahoo! Mail Beta.
   

Once you've joined, the setting will stick, so you can go back to "My Account" and switch your Language & Content setting back to whatever it was before. If you decide you don't like it, click on the "Switch Back" link at the top. As usual, your results may vary and there's no telling if and when Yahoo! will pull the plug on this particular trick.

I rely on Firefox's History to keep my most frequently-accessed web sites available at a keypress. I can type any letter into the address bar and immediately choose among my favorite web sites whose URLs start with that letter. That's not the tip; read on. Unfortunately, the History gets polluted sometimes -- somehow a web site I have no interest in visiting frequently will find its way to the top of the list for some letter I use often, which really chafes me. For some reason I've ever been convinced that there's no way to delete individual URLs from the History without just clearing the whole thing. Turns out I was wrong. In Firefox, if you want to delete an individual entry from the History, just highlight it (either in the History sidebar or in the address bar drop-down) and press Shift+Delete. Gone, never to bother you again!

Maybe this is news to nobody but me (indeed, it's right there in Help), but I'm just thrilled about it.