iFlex's starred items

Want to join the polyglot set but don't have the time for foreign language immersion, world travel, or academic courses? One Minute Languages offers basic instructions in a dozen languages for English speakers including German, Russian and Japanese that will help get you started. The short lessons are released weekly as a podcast you can subscribe to via iTunes, or you can just visit the site to play back archived tips in your browser. If you want the complete package for a particular language, a full download of all the lessons is only £3.50. The Radio Lingua Network, which produces the series, also offers Coffee Break Spanish and Coffee Break French — for those of you with more than a minute to spare as you sip your java. Extend your lessons with ten new vocabulary items a day and the interactive language teaching tools at Mango.

Windows only: Some PDF Image Extract isn't blessed with a grammatically sound name, but it does help you remember its sole purpose—pulling image files from PDF documents, in whatever number, quality, and format you want. Feed the app a file or directory of PDFs, set the easy-to-grasp image options (output directory, file mode, quality, and an option for black and white), and hit "Start converting" to get your files. I ended up getting a number of ".ppm," or portable pixelmap, files out of my PDF that I didn't ask for, but the JPEGs were also all there, knocked down to the file size I'd hoped for. Some PDF Image Extract is a free download for Windows systems only; Adobe or any other PDF reader isn't required to use.

The Digital Inspiration blog tackles the many ways you can insert video clips into a PowerPoint presentation for nearly any kind of presentation—online or off, created in PowerPoint or imported from Google Docs, streaming or played live off your hard drive. We've previously featured a video demonstration that detailed a download-convert-embed solution, but this guide suggests using the free online tools Zamzar or MediaConverter to get AVI-formatted copies that work without any plug-in in PowerPoint. Have you seen embedded videos really work in a presentation, or are they simply flash and false sizzle? Tell us your take in the comments.

Windows only: Ever update your system through Windows Update or install a new piece of software, and when the process completes, your system automatically shuts down or reboots? Of course you have. It's annoying, right? Free application ShutdownGuard addresses this problem by preventing Windows from automatically shutting down, rebooting, or logging off without confirmation. Each time it prevents a shutdown action, you'll see an alert in your system tray asking if you really want to shutdown. If you do, click the alert. If not, just keep on keeping on. The lightweight ShutdownGuard is a free download, Windows only.

DilbertFiles is a new paid file-sharing service from the creator of the delightful workplace satire, Dilbert. The problem: The service doesn't offer one free account, and even the pay accounts are overpriced for personal use. So unless you think a measly 1GB of storage, 250MB of transfer, and a few mild chuckles are worth $10/month (minimum!), I suggest you check out our Hive Five Best File-Sharing Services. [via]

DIY home web site FineHomebuilding has a nice guide demonstrating how to wrap large cords and hoses for clutter-free storage while avoiding twists and kinks. With a medium-gauge cord, for example:

I drape the line back and forth over my hand until I have a few feet left. Then I tie off the bundle with the remaining cord and create a loop to hang it with.

The post itself has more detailed instructions for medium- and heavy-gauge cords, along with air hoses. If you've got a preferred method you stick to when wrapping your large extension cords or hoses, let's hear it in the comments. On the other hand, if you're more concerned with smaller cords, try one of our many different headphone wrapping techniques.

Windows only: SoftMaker Office is a free, lightweight office suite consisting of two fast, simple applications. The fist, TextMaker, is a Microsoft Word-compatible word processor that runs lean (using around 12MB of RAM on my system) and is surprisingly feature rich. The second, called PlanMaker, is an Excel-compatible spreadsheet app that likewise offers impressive functionality, speed, and an equally light footprint. As if all that wasn't good enough, SoftMaker Office can run off your thumb drive, so it's a no-brainer when you need to open a Word or Excel document on someone else's computer. If you need an occasional word processor or spreadsheet app but don't need all the extra bloat of Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org, or even previously mentioned Go-oo, this one's worth a try. SoftMaker Office is a free download, Windows only. Thanks johnsmith1234!

Windows only: Create ISO-format disk images quickly and easily with Free ISO Creator. After downloading and installing the software, all you have to do is click Add File(s) or Add Folder to choose the data you want included in the image, select a name and location for the ISO file with "Save ISO As..." and click Convert. You can even create a bootable disk image by clicking Options and selecting the appropriate IMG file. Now you can burn the image to disk with ISO Recorder or mount the image as a virtual drive in Windows with the Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel, Clonedrive or Daemon Tools. Free ISO Creator is a free download for Windows.

Weightloss webapp Gyminee takes your fitness goals to the cloud. Search for new workouts, nutritional information, join groups of like-minded exercisers, participate in challenges, and find "GymBuddies" to serve as accountability partners and morale boosters. The layout of the site is clean and the functions easy to access. The home base of your Gyminee experience is "My Locker Room" where you can track a variety of fitness goals from defaults like body weight, body fat, resting heart rate, and size measurements, to custom user-defined entries like mile times, lap speed, or any other fitness goal you want to track. The locker room also has charts to map out your progress, a journal for detailing your fitness transformation, and a section for progress pictures so everyone can see how you went from Cubicle Jockey to Jacked and Tan. Thanks jonny6pak!