Mozilla pushed out the first release candidate of Firefox 3 early this evening, so if you're already field testing Firefox 3, now's the time to go to Help -> Check for Updates to download the latest and greatest build. If you're wondering what to expect, check out the RC1 release notes. Looks like we're getting close! Thanks Owen!

Wrap your Friday with a quick recap of our most popular posts this week:

• Get Vista's Best Features in XP
  'Despite the fact that most of you prefer XP to Vista and would rather Microsoft extended XP's shelf-life, several new and improved features available in Vista would be great to have in XP.'
• Top 10 Things You Forgot Your Mac Can Do
  'Macs may be more expensive, and Mac users more elitist (ahem), but blind Apple loyalty aside, there are a number of neat features bundled into your Mac that make it super useful and fun.'
• XBMC Turns Your Mac into the Ultimate Media Center
  'You don't have to mod your classic Xbox to run the best free media center application around anymore: Dedicated developers have ported the Xbox Media Center (XBMC) software to the Mac, and its killer features will convince you to abandon Front Row forever.'
• Slim Down Your Wallet with Your Phone
  'Blogger Albert Alberts loves a slim wallet, and after reading over some of our wallet-slimming tips, he realized he had a powerful wallet-slimming tool in his pocket all the time: his iPhone.'
• Handle a Traffic Stop and Avoid Your Ticket
  'Car and Driver magazine knows a thing or two about getting pulled over, so they asked seven state troopers from across the country what they want and don't want from you, the driver, during a routine traffic stop.'
• DExposE2 Like Mac Expose but Better
  'Windows only: Freeware application DExposE2 is a clone of Mac OS X's Expose feature for Windows XP and Vista.'
• How to Cram All Your Travel Gear in One Bag
  'Now that most of the major airlines have begun charging an extra fee for checking a second bag, National Public Radio's All Things Considered tackles the art of one-bag packing, interviewing Doug Dyment, owner of previously mentioned OneBag.com.'
• Do You Still Use Browser Bookmarks?
  'In the age of social bookmarking and blogs, old fashioned browser bookmarks (or 'Favorites,' as Internet Explorer refers to them) are teetering on the edge of obsolete.'
• Hive Five: Best RSS Newsreaders
  'On Tuesday you nominated your favorite RSS newsreaders, and over 400 comments later, we're back with your top five choices.'
• Sync Your iPhone Wirelessly in Linux
  'Apple may open up its iPhone and iPod touch devices to third-party apps next month, but the chances that Linux users will get invited to the party are slim at best.'

If you take a lot of digital photos but are frustrated with the strange yellow glow or green hue to your results, weblog Of Zen and Computing's guide to adjusting the white balance of digital photos is for you. Taking you step-by-step through adjusting the color temperature in Photoshop, the guide makes it easy to understand how to fix these imbalances and give your pictures the more natural look they deserve. We've covered this territory once in the past, but this post's screenshots and detailed instructions are worth another look if you're new to correcting color.

Tim from the Daily Cup of Tech weblog has transitioned to an almost all BitTorrent TV diet, but the resulting disorganization of files left him with an unsettled stomach. He prefers to archive everything he downloads to a system of folders, but while some video files he downloads hit his hard drive as plain AVI files, others are archived RARs, and manually organizing it all became to much of a hassle. The solution: a saucy Windows batch script that automatically extracts RARs and sends all of his files off to the proper, well-organized folders. If you've got your own method of automating your file organization, let's hear about it in the comments.

Windows only: Freeware application Lebendig adds snazzy, lightweight animations to your windows—like spinning a window as you launch it or fading out when you close it. Apps like Lebendig aren't uncommon, but Lebendig does set itself apart by using very little memory while still adding a little snap to your daily computing. It's not the eye candy of Aero, but it's a good way to avoid some of that UI jealousy that you're bound to have using XP every day. Then again, if you're really getting jealous of some of Vista's better features, check out how to get Vista's best features in XP.

Windows only: Freeware application Elevator disables the User Account Control prompt for specific applications through your right-click menu, getting rid of the UAC annoyance for apps that require administrator privileges every time they run. We've shown you how to disable UAC entirely and how to disable UAC for specific apps before, but it required a little more sleeve-rolling than this simple right-click solution. Elevator is freeware, Windows Vista only; installation requires a little finesse, so be sure to read the instructions.

This week's release of Fedora 9 makes carrying a full-fledged Linux desktop around on a USB drive a three-click affair. Even better, you don't need Linux installed to create it, you can leave the data on your thumb drive untouched, and any files you create or settings you tweak remain in place the next time you boot up. After the jump, let's create a fully-functional desktop-to-go using a simple Windows program and a 1GB or larger thumb drive.

Why Fedora?

Turning a live CD ISO into a bootable USB image has been possible for some time now, but it usually involves some heavy lifting with the command line, and almost always in Linux. Fedora's liveusb-creator program makes USB imaging dead simple, and the Fedora distribution itself has a lot going for it. The latest 'community' version of Red Hat's Linux package benefits from the same updates to the GNOME desktop that Ubuntu's Hardy Heron includes, and KDE fans get a pretty full-featured version that runs on the customizable KDE 4. You can see a full list of updates and improvements to Fedora 9 here, but it's best to check it out for yourself. Here's how.

Make your live USB

First we'll need to grab Fedora's liveusb-creator tool by grabbing the zip file listed under 'Download,' extracting it and running the liveusb-creator.exe file found inside in Windows.

The top options on the window let you choose to use a live Fedora CD image you've already downloaded or have the tool grab a copy of the standard Fedora 9 disc itself. If you'd rather grab the file yourself or download it through a torrent, use one of the links listed under 'live media' at the Fedora Project. Plug in your USB drive if you haven't already, and make sure it's selected in the 'Target' field. Don't worry about files you've got on there—as long as the tool has space to put Fedora on there, it won't touch your other files.

The slider to the right is the most important part—'Persistent Overlay' is the space on the thumb drive you want to use for storing your files and settings. The Fedora system itself is going to take up roughly the size of a stuffed CD; using an empty 1GB thumb drive, I chose 205MB for the overlay, which left 63MB free, but you can scale that up for larger drives or down if you want more free space. Keep in mind that any files you store on the drive itself can be accessed from inside your USB-booted system, so a bigger persistent overlay isn't always necessary.

Hit 'Create Live USB,' and watch the creator do its thing. Once it's done, your stick is probably ready to get plugged in and booted up.

Fix booting problems

I say 'probably' because there's a chance, especially if you've done some formatting or other live-booting experiments, that you'll get an error at boot-up stating there's 'No partition active' or something similar. If that's the case, head to your Start menu's 'Run' command ('Start search' box in Vista), type in diskpart and hit Enter. You'll get a 'DISKPART>' command prompt, where you should follow these commands to mark your USB drive as 'active.'

• list disk (Note the number that corresponds to your USB drive, usually '1')
• select disk 1 (Assuming '1' was your USB drive
• list partition (If you multi-partitioned your USB drive, select the right one, otherwise we'll assume '1')
• select partition 1
• active
• exit

Customize your persistent desktop

Now you should be set to boot into Fedora 9. You'll see a splash screen counting down from 10 when you boot (hit Enter twice to speed it up), and you'll land at a desktop that's pretty much a fresh Fedora 9 install. You can access to your USB drive's files from here, connect to a wired or wireless network with the icon in the upper-right system tray, and you've got a solid set of built-in applications—Firefox 3 Beta 5, the GIMP, Pidgin, the Transmission BitTorrent client, and a pretty nifty Bluetooth manager, to name a few.

Want to put Thunderbird or OpenOffice.org? Head to the upper-left menus and click to System->Administration->Add/Remove Programs. Anything you install goes into your 'persistent overlay,' so as long as you've got space for it, you can add whatever you'd like.

Now it's time to explore and get familiar with a GNOME-based Linux system (or KDE 4, depending on which image you grabbed). Here are a few suggestions on helpful tweaks you might want to make once you're set up:

• Enable your NTFS drives: If you've loaded a USB Fedora on a system with Windows installed, you'll want to open up Add/Remove Programs, search for 'ntfs-config,' and install that package. From the System menu again, choose NTFS Config, and you can select the drives you want to have access to.
• Sync data with your Windows apps: Once you can see your NTFS drives on your desktop, you can use your established settings in Firefox 3, Thunderbird, Pidgin, and other apps if you're booting on the same system as Windows. Check out our guide to dual-booting with shared data; if you're using Firefox 2 in Windows and only want to replicate bookmarks in Fedora, the GMarks synchronizer has updated to support versions 3 and 2.
• Turn off annoying system sounds: One misstep Fedora makes, at least in my opinion, is enabling by default a slew of little chirps and whistles every time you click or do something. To silence them, head to System-Preferences->Hardware->Sound, click the 'System' tab, and un-check the 'Enable system sounds' box.

You've now got a portable system that's great for rescuing un-bootable computers, bringing your favorite work apps on the go, or just testing out Linux with realistic performance and custom options. What apps and tweaks have you made to your own live USB system? Share your tips, and questions, in the comments.

Kevin Purdy, associate editor at Lifehacker, wrote this feature from inside his USB drive. His weekly feature, Open Sourcery, appears every Friday on Lifehacker.

Windows only: Adam already walked you through how to download music from your friends' iTunes libraries over the internet using Mojo, and now Windows users can get in on the fun. Install the Mojo 2.0 beta for Windows, set up an account, and swap Mojo usernames with your friends to populate your buddy list. From there you can browse their playlists, search their libraries, play and download any songs to your computer. The Mojo Windows beta is a free download; upgrade to Mojo Pro to get an unlimited buddy list. Thanks Matt and Jack!

Kwiry, the text-yourself-a-reminder service, has added a potentially neat feature for shoppers, urban adventurers, and anyone who wants a visual element to their memory-activators. Snap a picture on your smart phone or standard set, email or text it to Kwiry with some explaining text (i.e. 'Must check out this restaurant soon'), and it'll come up with your reminder when you head to Kwiry's renovated mobile site to dig through reminders. There's a lot of uses here if you buy into Kwiry's system of forget-me-nots, and it's a free place to store phone pics for any reason.

Windows only: Need to pull an email address from a file you can't open, or a message folder from an ancient mail client? Point E-Mail Address Extract, a free Windows utility, at the folder or specific files, and let it do its text-parsing thing. The old-school-looking app comes with some basic file filters enabled (like HTML pages and .dat files), but you can direct it to pull any type of file you'd like from any folder. The app dumps any found addresses into an ordered text file, which makes exporting them elsewhere a bit easier. It's the kind of tool you're glad to find, but hope you don't have to use too often. E-Mail Address Extract is a free download for Windows systems only.

In addition to its new ability to automatically detect what language you're trying to translate, Google Translate adds 10 more languages to its capabilities: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish.

We love screencasts because they can teach you how to get things done on your computer, but one creative filmmaker went beyond the howto and choreographed a full music video to Mac application actions. The result is the mesmerizing video above, which will hopefully add a little fun (if not productivity) to your Friday. To find out more about the video, hit the link below for an interview with the creator. There's also a shortened Windows XP version. Got a screencast you want to share? Our system automatically embeds YouTube videos, so just drop 'em in to the comments below.

Thanks to this week's sponsors for keeping us in web servers: Chevy Fuel Solutions, Jet Blue, Kicker, MS Office Small Business, NCTA, Nokia, Symantec, TiVo, Toshiba, Toyota, Unscrew America, and Zune. Drop a few bucks in the bandwidth fund and advertise on Lifehacker.

Linux only: One intrepid Ubuntu user has written up a nifty tutorial on using a webcam tool available in the standard repositories, motion, to turn a standard webcam into a motion-detecting security system. Once the camera sees something large enough move as to be suspicious, a custom script written by the blogger sends a notification to you through your Twitter account. It might not be the most reliable theft or home invasion prevention tool, but it could offer insight into when your roommates are invading your space or whether someone's using your laptop when they shouldn't be. The tutorial requires some command line work, but it's spelled out and explained pretty thoroughly. Photo by MShades.

Visiting New York City and wondering whether a cross-town cab is any faster than the subway? Mobile|Traffic, a free web service for mobile phones (and standard browsers as well) offers updates from more than 4,600 traffic cameras in seven countries, including the U.S., U.K. and Australia. Simply navigate from country to state/province to city, and you'll get a recent shot of the intersection. Using Mobile|Traffic from a phone requires a data plan, as you'd imagine, and, as MakeUseOf points out, it's in serious need of map and search functions. But it's simple, free, and pretty useful if you don't always trust vague traffic reports of 'moving steadily' and the like.

If you're a veteran Windows XP user, you're familiar with the 'helpful' count of your unread email messages you'll find at the login screen—which is usually wrong or overstated (my screenshot came from a fresh install of Thunderbird). The Online Tech Tips blog shows how to eliminate this stress-inducing reminder through a registry hack. Readers comfortable tweaking in regedit can find the values and instructions at the link below; those who don't mind installing a free (and very handy) power-user program can accomplish the same thing using TweakUI (here's where to look once you've busted out this power tool).

Unless you made a fistful of cash last year, you've got a stimulus check either already in your bank account or on its way. Naturally, the goal of the stimulus package is to add a bit of fuel to the sputtering engine of the U.S. economy, but since no one's watching to ensure that you cash that check and head straight to the mall, we're wondering what your plans are for your money. Photo by Todd Kravos.

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

The poll choices above are pretty vague, so give us more details on your stimulus package plans in the comments.

In the wake of the recent Google Reader for iPhone update, web site Mozilla Links saw an opportunity to make good use of the new mobile interface by putting Google Reader iPhone into your Firefox sidebar. The setup is a snap, and when you're done the simple, mobile-friendly iPhone interface loads perfectly and looks great in the Firefox sidebar. Add this one to the growing list of mobile apps that fit perfectly in your sidebar.