You want to automate your life. So do we. And while there’s still no way to feed the cat and do the dishes in one fell swoop, we can at least make your digital life a little easier. But don’t thank us. Direct your praise at ifttt instead.

It has a weird name. We know. Just say “lift” but without the L. That’s ifttt. The acronym actually stands for “if this then that” which is the basis of ifttt’s operating philosophy. You create macros, or automated tasks, by combining a variety of web apps and services. The results are extremely cool.

Think of it as “duct tape” for the web, where you make sites that don’t normally talk speak each other’s language. In other words, you have the ability to send all your Instagram photos to a Dropbox folder, or have your phone ring every time a used SNES hits Craigslist. If this, then that. And we’re only just scratching the surface.

Android is designed in such a way that users that really want to go out of their way, can customize a device eight ways from Sunday. it can be easy to go a little overboard and end up with a ton of services pining the data network or the GPS. While useful, this is a major drain on battery life. If you want to keep your phone chugging along, but don’t want to make sacrifices, it could be time for a third-party battery.

There are a few things to look for no matter if you’re replacing your battery altogether, or just getting a second as a spare. Read on to stay powered up.

Library fans rejoice! The Kindle Lending Library service, announced in April of this year, has spread from its limited launch in Seattle to a far more accessible range of 11,000 libraries across the United States. The service mixes the routine and limitations of borrowing a book from a library with the lovely convenience of Kindle digital delivery. That is, libraries have limited digital copies of books, and only lend them out for certain periods of time, but you don't actually have to go to the library to check out a book.

Books can be checked out via participating library websites and synced to a Kindle via Wi-Fi or USB. And if you don't own the e-reader itself that's okay, too--anyone using the Kindle reading software can get in on the book borrowing action. Here's how to find out if your library's involved.

When you think about it, a username and password are just two strings of characters. A measly handful of letters, numbers and symbols are all that stand between your digital identity and nefarious spammers and phishers, hungry for just a taste of your juicy bits and bytes. While securing your many online accounts may be somewhat inconvenient, weigh that against the inconvenience of losing everything to a hacker who, with little effort, gained access to your personal information and used it to take money from your bank accounts and burn bridges in your name.

The following are just a few steps that you can take with relatively little effort to secure your online accounts and to rest, comfortable in the knowledge that your online identity is yours alone.

Without a doubt, one of the best cloud services in town is Dropbox. For the unaware, Dropbox allows users to sync files between their cloud storage and as many devices as they like. A free account will get new users 2GB of storage, plus there are plenty of ways to increase that limit for free. The official Dropbox app has been on Android for some time, but there are also a number of third-party apps that can improve the experience.

Taking advantage of just a few of these apps will make your cloud storage much more useful. Let’s go over how to take your Dropbox experience to the next level.

There's photography, and then there's photography — that is, all of the impressive lenses, filters and techniques that can make a good photo great. But while many popular image effects are only possible with special — and often expensive — photographic equipment, there is a way to approximate many of those results in software as well.

A fake tilt-shift photo, via Flickr user kennymatic.

That includes fisheye, tilt-shift, shallow depth of field and more. You’ll never beat the real thing, of course, but we can still come close.

DSLR owners, both new and old, take note: it's not all about the lenses. An extra piece of glass can be a great way to expand your camera's abilities — but it's also an expensive investment you don't necessarily need to make. There's a much cheaper way to get more from your old lens, and all it takes is a filter.

A dramatic example of a polarizing filter, via Flickr user jadjadjad.

Filters — to use a tired, but apt cliche — come in all shapes and sizes. In fact, there are a myriad of great filters that can both alter and even improve the look of your pictures. And you don't have to break the bank either. Here's how.

Network cables are the arteries and veins of the Internet. A cabled network is the most reliable of the available options for setting up network infrastructure as it provides the highest speeds, is less prone to failure and has fewer points of failure to check during troubleshooting. Being less prone to failure, though, does not make it foolproof. Cables get twisted, caught in doors, have clips broken and become unreliable as they’re pulled and tied in knots during transport.

Today, we're going to help you to become "that guy" who can fix network cables. Y’know, the guy who brings a roll of bare Ethernet cable, a crimping tool and a bag of 8P8C plugs to every single LAN, just in case. We’re here to tell you, that guy is awesome.

Most weeks, our famed MakerBot printouts are culled from a handy website called Thingiverse. It's here that members of the CNC community can submit pre-made models for anyone to print — and if some of our past videos are any indication, there are some very good ones available too. But while it's easy to print someone else's creation, there's something to be said for designing one yourself. There's a sense of accomplishment that you just don't get by mashing "print" on a pre-made design.

Today, we're going to use a free piece of software called Google SketchUp to make a simple 3D model, and show you how to turn your creation into a tangible piece of printed plastic art. There are some caveats, of course — some objects and designs are simply impossible to print — but we'll make sure you come away with something awesome for your effort.

After all, if you make something especially cool, we could print it on a future episode of the MakerBot Mystery Build!

There’s one thing--and only one thing--the Transformers films are truly remarkable for: staggeringly detailed computer effects shots from the incomparable artists at Industrial Light & Magic. In Dark of the Moon, Shockwave’s worm-like metal pet Driller consists of 70,051 separate parts, a good 20,000 more than Revenge of the Fallen’s Devastator. It took ILM 288 render hours per frame to animate the Driller eating its way through a CG Chicago skyscraper, and the visual effects files themselves took an hour just to load on the development house’s most powerful desktops.

No one does 3D modeling and animation like ILM--they’ve proven that time and again by bringing characters like Optimus Prime and Davy Jones to life. To climb to that level of talent, most of us have to start small, building our own simple 3D models and learning the ins and outs of shaping and texturing meshes. Getting into 3D modeling can be intimidating thanks to the complexities (and costs) of software like Autodesk’s $3500 3D Studio Max, but it’s easier than ever thanks to free options like Google Sketchup and Blender.

Interested in throwing yourself into 3D animation? Want to know how to design those cool objects we print in the MakerBot every week? Here’s how to jump headfirst into 3D modeling without spending hundreds of dollars on overwhelming software.

Google eBooks are compatible with all sorts of e-book readers, but until recently the service has never enjoyed the benefits of an affiliated electronic paper device. Now however, the iRiver Story HD has become the Kindle to Google’s Amazon, providing users with the kind of direct access that other online booksellers have enjoyed for years. Google boasts that the new device has access to “more than 3 million” free titles through their service. But is that really a selling point? Can’t other electronic paper devices provide free reading, too? We decided to take a look.

Here’s how to get started finding free content for the major e-book readers available.

Lion, the latest version of OS X was released on Wednesday, and already, many of you have made the jump. But if you’re still holding off, and wondering how exactly the upgrade process works, worry not — we’ll answer those burning questions right here and now.

For example, is a clean install necessary, or even possible? And now that OS X is offered as a digital download, can you reinstall from physical media in the event your hard drive dies? Read on.

While some of us have been busy fawning over Apple's latest MacBook Air refresh, let's not forget why we're really here. Lion was released today too, and if you're anything like us, you've already taken Apple's next version of OS X for a spin. But unlike Snow Leopard, this is more than a routine release.

Lion is a legitimate shift for Apple's decade-old OS, and as with any upgrade, it helps to know where to start. For Mac users new and old, here's some advice on how to get the most from your new Lion install, and take advantage of features new and old.

If you're big into iOS, AirPlay is a great method for streaming audio and video content between your Apple devices. But it's not perfect. Your iPhone and iPad can only stream out, for example — not the other way around. And your AppleTV will only accept the file formats supported in iTunes. These aren't quite deal breakers, but they can be annoying restrictions.

Luckily, there are are a few third-party solutions with AirPlay support — and they enable your Apple devices to do all the things they normally can't. If you've ever wondered how to re-direct audio (and sometimes video) from nearly any application or player to your iOS device — including all that new Spotify goodness — here's how.

We have, in the past, complained that Google makes it a hassle to buy apps. Well, they must read Tested (or just listen to their users) because over time, the Market has gotten a lot more user-friendly. One of the most useful features Google has rolled out to the Market as of late is in-app purchases. When you add this to the already exploding paid app ecosystem, it gets very easy to buy things. But, maybe too easy? We’re hearing more and more stories of people accidentally buying in-app goods.

Another incident might begin when a user lets their young ones play with the phone only to learn they bought $50 worth of in-game currency. Or maybe you just let an acquaintance borrow your phone? Not everyone is familiar with the concept that phones do ask for real money. We’re going to go over the best ways to guard against that kind of occurrence. Stick with us to protect your wallet.

With the Internet's second big browser war upon us, benchmarks, performance and speed have taken center stage in the fight for online supremacy. Here at Tested, we often discuss numerous technologies, from WebGL to HTML5, in attempt to suss out what browsers work best. But we also realize it's not always easy to understand what purpose these tests serve — and more specifically, the real-world benefits for people like you.

Here's a quick rundown of what all these names and numbers mean, why they matter, and how to run some tests of your own.

Android provides a lot of freedom with regards to file system access and storage. We definitely love having this kind of control, but it’s not just the user that gets this access. Any app that includes the modify/delete SD card contents permission has the same access to your storage card that you do. It goes without saying that you should only install apps you trust when they can access your files.

More than that, these apps can go around making folders, leaving files strewn about, and just generally messing the place up. In the short term a few apps won’t be a problem. But if you install a lot of apps, it’s going to get messy. Let’s go over some best practices for managing your SD card and keeping the file system neat and tidy.

Hosting is expensive. So is registering a domain name and renewing it every year — especially for a personal blog or wiki you might not use all that often. So why not host it yourself? It's not as crazy as it sounds.

Of course, we don't actually recommend you host your collaborative Star Trek wiki or trendy food blog on your own machine. What we're referring to are web applications that are just as useful when run locally as they are online. For example, some people maintain personal Wikis for storing notes and private information. Or consider ThinkUp, an app that archives all of your Twitter and Facebook posts, and generates statistics and trends with the results. You could buy a hosting plan and install each of these services online — or you could run them locally, free of charge. You'll get the same results, not to mention the added peace of mind that your personal data is safe, secure and only accessible by you.

Today, we'll focus on installing the aforementioned ThinkUp, one of many legitimate reasons for running online apps and services on your own machine with a local web server. Let's get started!