Web site CalorieLab provides nutritional information for popular foods and restaurants to help you keep your diet on track. With over 70,000 foods and 500 restaurants in their database, there's a good chance that if you've eaten it, it's in there. If you're looking for that one healthy item on a restaurant's menu, CalorieLab provides full menu overviews along with more detailed nutritional information for each individual item. Keeping your choices healthy and counting calories can be difficult if you do a lot of eating on the go; CalorieLab makes it easy. While you're improving your dining-out habits, check out five fast food restaurants to feel good about, how to eat healthily at top chain restaurants, and how you can make the healthiest choices with your unhealthy fast food. Photo by pointnshoot.

If you're a GCal lover with the niggling complaint here and there, the Official Gmail Blog highlights several small but worthwhile improvements to the popular web-based calendar. Updates include better meeting request follow-ups and more flexible reminder schedules among a few other nice updates.

NBC's Today Show web site rounds up tricks for talking anyone into anything, whether you're negotiating over price, persuading your spouse, or influencing co-workers. A lot of the tips are more about simple manipulation, but the price negotiation tip offered a solid rule-of-thumb:

If you are the buyer, offer the salesperson 15 percent to 20 percent less than what you can really afford. For instance, if you absolutely can't spend more than $6,000 on a used car advertised at $7,000, try offering $5,100 (15 percent less than $6,000).

Of course you'll need to get comfortable with haggling to apply this rule, but if the seller is using the same rule in reverse for pricing the item (which the author also suggests), you almost have to haggle if you're going to get a reasonable price. Photo by jenn_jenn.

Windows only: Free application Startup Delayer staggers the applications that launch when you log in to Windows by user-defined increments. The reason: To mitigate the common startup bottleneck caused by all of your startup applications fighting to run at the same time. You'd never try launching eight different applications simultaneously under normal circumstances and expect your computer to handle it well, so why should your startup apps be any different? To use it, just drag applications to the delay bar at the bottom of the window. You can visualize the time between the launch of different apps and drag-and-drop the delays until you've got the perfect spacing.

Though you'll likely be delaying app launches by seconds, you can delay a launch for up to 24 hours (though we're not sure why you would). If Startup Delayer sounds familiar, that's probably because we featured an identically named application a while back. This Startup Delayer, however, makes the process much simpler and more manageable. Startup Delayer is freeware, Windows only.

Although losing your cellphone is never an enjoyable experience, it's a much worse feeling when your mobile device is carrying more than just contacts. If you're carrying things you don't want anyone else to have access to—whether it's personal information or company secrets—on your Windows Mobile device, it's a worthwhile investment of time to take a moment to set up an extra layer of insurance against data theft. If you're using a Windows Mobile device it is possible to configure your device to essentially self destruct after a set number of failed access attempts. Check out the walk-through at AskTheAdmin for the details on how to turn your Windows Mobile device into a self-destructing data safe.

Over at PC World, I (Adam) have written up 12 sly tech tricks for beefing up your tech arsenal, from password cracking to inconspicuously reading on the job. Got a favorite trick of your own? Let's hear about it in the comments.

Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): The Auto Dial Firefox extension automatically places shortcuts to your most frequently visited web sites inside all of your new, empty tabs. Mozilla Labs recently suggested that empty tabs could be put to better use by offering no-cost options for the user (i.e., if what you want isn't what's offered, it doesn't hurt anything). Although not as inspired as the undeveloped concept at Mozilla Labs, Auto Dial fits perfectly with this idea. If you want more control over the content built in to new tabs, check out the previously mentioned Speed Dial extension. Auto Dial is free, works wherever Firefox does.

You've got enough to keep track of in your day-to-day life without filling your head with the countless logins and passwords you've racked up over the years, and the Post-It note on your monitor just isn't an option. Luckily, there are several fantastic and secure password management applications designed to make it easy for you to remember, manage, and secure your passwords effortlessly. On Tuesday you shared your favorite password managers, and now we're back with the five most popular picks. Keep reading for a detailed look at each application, then cast your vote to help us pick the best password manager on the block.

Sxipper (All platforms)

Firefox extension Sxipper adds password management, auto-logins, and automatic form filling to Firefox. If you don't want to manually create multiple identities to fill in forms, Sxipper may be perfect for you. It can automatically learn and build personas for you based on information you've used to fill in forms. Sxipper builds on top of Firefox's default password manager, meaning all of your passwords remain safely encrypted and stored on your computer. (Original post)

KeePass (All platforms)

Desktop application KeePass is a free, open-source password manager with a robust and easy-to-use feature set. KeePass secures your passwords with a single master password and/or a key-file on your computer. KeePass is a Windows application, but an OS X- and Linux-compatible version—called KeePassX—is available with slightly less polish than the Windows counterpart. For those of you who'd like to take your passwords with you, KeePass is available as a portable application and as PocketPC, Symbian, BlackBerry, and PalmOS ports. We've covered KeePass a fair amount, including how to get started with KeePass, import your Firefox passwords, and track software licenses. KeePass doesn't come with built-in browser integration, but you can invoke a global, auto-login keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+A by default) when KeePass is running in your system tray.

1Password (Mac OS X)

Mac app 1Password is a commercial password manager and form filler for Mac OS X. Like RoboForm for Windows, 1Password integrates directly with your browser (Firefox or Safari) to auto-fill logins and forms. Like most of the rest, 1Password can automatically generate secure passwords for you, and all you need to remember is your master password. We've already mentioned 1Password's impressive iPhone/iPod touch app, but it also works with Palm devices. Currently 1Password supports syncing with .Mac accounts, but my1Password is under development to provide synchronization as well as online access to your passwords from any browser. 1Password will set you back $35, Mac OS X only.

RoboForm (Windows)

Desktop application and browser toolbar RoboForm is a popular password and form management utility for Windows only. In addition to password management, RoboForm lets you create identities to automatically fill in web forms. RoboForm is available in both freeware and shareware ($30) versions; the free version is very limited, though, so chances are you'll want to pony up for a license if you take this route. A portable version, called RoboForm2Go, is also available for $20. Like KeePass, RoboForm is available to carry on your Windows Mobile, Symbian, or Palm devices. Unlike KeePass, RoboForm sports a robust browser plug-in for seamless integration with Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Firefox's Password Manager (All platforms)

When it comes to password management, many of you look no further than Firefox's built-in password manager. It's free, it's there when you need it, and it's a no-brainer to integrate into your workflow. One word of caution, though: If you're going to stick with Firefox's password manager, be sure to secure your saved passwords with a master password. If you don't, all it takes for someone to peek at every single one of your passwords is clicking the Show Passwords button in the Saved Passwords dialog.

This week's honorable mentions go out to the cross-platform LastPass (original post) and the open-source Windows application Password Safe. Whether or not your favorite made the cut, let's hear more about the password manager you love best in the comments.

The defendant in a much-watched file-sharing case was dealt a serious blow this week when a judge ruled he tampered with evidence in the case. After first getting notice from the Recording Industry Association of America, Jeffrey Howell, according to Ars Technica,

... uninstalled KaZaA and deleted everything in the shared folder, reformatted his hard drive, downloaded and used a file-wiping program, and then nuked all the KaZaA logs on his PC.

Something to keep in mind if you ever find yourself unlucky enough to get caught. For more on the RIAA's take-down tactics and defenses against them, check out out this Ask the Law Geek post.

Six months after Beta 1 hit the streets, Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 to brave testers. The new beta includes features that make it look like a viable choice of modern browser, like a smart address bar (sound familiar?), tab grouping, private browsing, find in-page, suggested sites related to the current page, and more. Let's take a look at what's coming out of Redmond in the browser arena.

IE8 Beta 2's Most Useful Features

Smart Address Bar: IE 8 beta 2 includes a Smart Address Bar, that, like Firefox 3's "AwesomeBar," drops down suggestions as-you-type a web site URL gleaned from your favorites, feeds, and history. Unlike Firefox, IE 8 includes headers so you can see where each suggestion comes from.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Tab Grouping: Ever open a bunch of links from a single page in new tabs, and then lose track of which tabs came from what page? IE8's got a nifty "tab grouping" feature that colors your tabs based on their source. Here's what a few tab groups—one from Lifehacker, one from the MSN homepage—look like.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

InPrivate Browsing: What with the Smart Address Bar pulling up every site you've visited recently in plain view in its History suggestions, there may be times when you visit a site and have the browser forget it ever happened. IE 8 beta 2's "InPrivate" browsing mode adds an icon to the address bar, and forgets you were ever at a web page when it's enabled.

Updated! Tab Crash Resolution: Several commenters point out that IE8 offers a feature no other browser has—the ability to restore a crashed web site on a tab by tab basis. In my tests, no site crashed so I didn't see this in action; Here's more on the tab crash isolation feature.

IE8 Beta 2's Sort-of Useful Features

Favorites Bar: Getting to your bookmarks and feeds is a little easier with a button to expand your Favorites bar, a one-stop bookmarks shop. In the Feeds tab (not shown), any feeds you're subscribed to with new items show up in bold, and any "Web Slices" with new content also appear in bold.

Suggested Sites: When you enable the "Suggested Sites" feature, an item on your toolbar drops down a panel of web sites like the one you're on. This feature is great in theory, but in practice not so much. Lifehacker's suggested sites were totally off the mark.

Find on Page: This one's a yawner for anyone who's used to Firefox, but apparently IE doesn't already have "find on page," the ability to hit Ctrl+F, type a keyword, and see any instances of it highlighted on the current page.

All in all, IE 8 beta 2 sucks a lot less than one might expect, given IE6 and IE7. It feels like the product is truly catching up to the current state of the browser art, and the fact that my brother-in-law will get advanced features on his IT-lockdown Windows desktop is exciting. The IE8 beta 2 is a free download for Windows only. (Installation requires a computer restart.)