Check for a Seal of Approval Before Buying Expensive Olive Oil

We've shown you a few ways to tell if that pricey bottle of olive oil is worth your money, but here's another one: Check for a seal of approval from the local or regional authority where it was bottled. As an example, Zester Daily explains that many California olive oils are sent to the California Olive Oil Council's panel of expert testers for certification. The process usually costs a fee, one that doesn't necessarily represent whether the oil will pass. If the oil does pass, the oil company gets to put a much-coveted seal of approval on the bottle to prove their extra virgin olive oil is the real thing, and not a mish-mash of oils from various places and pressings. There are similar councils and authorities around the globe, and all it takes is a quick Google search from your phone in the grocery store to see if the seal is legit. Of course, not every company does this (especially small companies), so it's not completely universal. Zester Daily says that if you're really looking for a universal way to tell a good oil, look for a harvest date before you buy. If the bottle you're holding doesn't have one, that should tell you something on its own. Similarly, a check of where the bottle is from and where the olives were grown will help you too—the fewer sources of olives for your bottle, the less time the olives spend in transit, being handled, packaged, and processed. Hit the link below for more olive oil buying tips.

The Fighting Spirit Desktop

This custom dual-monitor setup comes to us from Flickr user Grant House. The main display above is clean, with the taskbar on the left, shortcuts on the right, and plenty of room to work. The second display below is equally good-looking, but sports more tools, widgets, and useful information. Here's how he set it up. Want the same look for your Windows desktop? Here's what you'll need to make it yours: The wallpaper for the left display and for the right display, made specifically for this setup The Rainmeter system tweaking and monitoring tool for Windows The S7DE skin for Rainmeter to create the shortcut launchbar on the right side of the primary screen (above) The Wisp theme for Rainmeter to create all of the widgets on the second screen (below) Grant's custom Rainmeter configs to tweak the settings on Wisp to fit the background colors and wallpaper DisplayFusion to keep different wallpapers on each monitor Here's the right display in action, sporting the custom wallpaper and skins above: It may look complicated, but it's a pretty elegant look with only a few tools installed. If you like what you see, or have trouble reproducing the look, head over to Grant's Flickr page to ask him how to get things just right. While you're there, make sure to let him know how much you like his work! Do you have a good-looking, functional desktop of your own to show off? Share it with us! Post it to your personal Kinja blog using the tag desktop showcase or add it to our Lifehacker Desktop Show and Tell Flickr pool. Screenshots must be at least at least 640x360 and please include information about what you used, links to your wallpaper, skins, and themes, and any other relevant details. If your awesome desktop catches our eye, you might get featured!

How to Post to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ at the Same Time

Google doesn't make it easy to crosspost from other networks to Google+, but that's okay—turn it around and use Google+ as the feed for your other social networks instead! Here's how to funnel all of your Google+ posts (or just the posts you want) over to Facebook or Twitter using IFTTT. This tip comes to us from Magenta River Photography, who uses a similar approach to share photos across networks easily. You'll need two tools to make this work. IFTTT, of course, and Yahoo! Pipes, which will give you an RSS feed of your public (not your private or circle-only) Google+ posts. Here's how to set it all up: First, you'll need your Google+ ID number. Log in to Google+ and click "Profile" on the left sidebar. Grab the string of numbers in your profile URL (should be google.com/u/0/XXXXXXXX/posts) Visit this Google+ RSS Link Yahoo Pipe and paste in your profile ID Number. Run the pipe, then right-click "Get RSS" to copy the RSS link to your clipboard. Log in to IFTTT and activate the Facebook and Twitter channels (if they're not already). You'll have to log in to each service and authorize them to post on your behalf. Use this G+ to FB recipe or this G+ to Twitter recipe if you want to post from Google+ to Facebook or Twitter based on a specific keyword. Paste in your RSS URL in the "Feed URL" and the keyword you want IFTTT to look for in order to crosspost in the "Keyword or simple phrase" field. Use this G+ to FB reicpe or this G+ to Twitter recipe if you want to everything you post to Google+ to go to Facebook or Twitter, with no exceptions. Activate your selected recipe, and you're finished. Any future posts (or future posts that match your keyword) will be automatically posted over at Facebook or Twitter (or both). That's it. I've tried this out a couple of times and it works—just be aware that the title of the article may show up in the post status at Facebook, not embedded in the link section. We know a lot of you use Google+, so now you can use Google+ to your heart's content while simultaneously sharing the same interesting links and stories you find there with your friends on Facebook or Twitter. Until Google makes it easier to post in to Google+ from outside, you may as well use Google+ as the source and post everywhere else from there.

How to Face Your Fear of Starting a 401(k)

When I was in high school, my father’s employer launched a 401(k) program. He’d been there for twenty five years (off and on) at that time and was getting fairly close to his retirement, so it wasn’t a huge deal for him. Still, my father has always been pretty careful with his money. Aside from their mortgage, my parents have never been in significant debt, even during periods of unemployment. They put money directly from their pay into a credit union every pay period and treated it as an emergency fund, saved up for major expenses like Christmas, and completely avoided the desire to spend to “keep up with the Joneses.” Naturally, he wanted to know more, so when his company held some informative meetings in the evening about utilizing the new 401(k) program, he attended. He also took me along. I was about fifteen at the time and, quite honestly, the idea of retirement was about the furthest thing from my mind. There were really two things I took away from that whole experience: One, saving for retirement was important and it should be started as early as possible. I can’t tell you how many times my old man said that he wished the program had been around when he started working there. If it had been, my parents would be doing really well right now. The other thing is a bit more troubling. Based on the attendance at the sign-up meeting, my father commented that at least half of his coworkers didn’t bother to sign up at all. This included a few of his closest work pals. I remember asking him why they didn’t do this, because the 401(k) program seemed like a no-brainer both to him and to me. He just smiled that half smile and told me that he thought they were afraid of taking home less pay. My mind flashed back to the presentation from that informative meeting, where someone showed what would happen if someone contributed $30 a week to their 401(k) starting in 1965. By 1995, someone who had done that would have enough money saved that they would effectively be doubling their Social Security payments in retirement. The effect on their take-home pay was to simply lose $20. The math for saving for retirement makes the choice common sense. This is particularly true if your employer offers any matching at all on your retirement plan. Not taking advantage of that is akin to throwing money in the trash, plain and simple. So, why doesn’t everyone do it? I think my father’s comment really hit the nail on the head. It’s fear. Some are afraid of the complexity of the plan. They’re on unsure ground when it comes to such things, so it’s easier to just not do it. Others are afraid of the ups and downs of the stock market. They even out over time, but hearing stories about the stock market dropping 40% in a single year makes them afraid to ever put their money out there. The stock market has recovered everything and more since 2008, but that experience has placed fear into many hearts. Still others might be afraid of a slight reduction in their paychecks. Some people dread the idea of even a $20 reduction in each paycheck. All of these fears are groundless in the face of securing your retirement. A 401(k) plan– particularly if your employer offers matching–is, for most people, an incredibly easy tool for taking control of what happens to you down the road. If the plan’s complexity makes you afraid, ask for help–stop at your human resources office and simply request some assistance with signing up. If you’re afraid of the ups and downs of the stock market, remember that you’re not investing for one year. You’re investing for thirty or forty years. Also, you don’t have to invest in stocks if you don’t want–you can have your 401(k) money invested in bonds or real estate or other things. If you’re afraid of losing a bit of your paycheck, ask yourself how often you spend $5 or $10 on something completely unnecessary. It’s incredibly easy to just cut two or three little forgettable expenses out of your life. Step away from the fear and step up to the plate for your retirement. Opening a 401(k) plan is a great first step.

Contactive Identifies Unknown Callers, Adds Social Info to Contacts

Android: Getting a call from an unknown number forces you into making a quick decision based on no information: do you want to talk to this person or not? Contactive helps solve this by putting a name to the number. This app isn't the first to try to demystify unknown numbers, but the service uses a crowdsourced model for identifying business numbers, so the list is constantly growing. In addition, incoming calls from your contact list will display social media updates from a wide variety of sources. While some manufacturer variations of Android will do this, others (including Google's own stock dialer) do not, but it's still a handy feature to have.

Ask For Personal Stories When Receiving Advice

When you have a problem, it seems like everyone has a solution. If you're on the receiving end of advice, ask the person about their success (or failure) with the suggestions they're giving. Obviously, you don't want to be rude ("How did it work for you?" is more polite than "Oh, yeah? Prove it."), but asking about their situation allows you to separate hard-earned experience from idle guesses. As business blog Inc. points out, it also allows you to learn more about their perspective and figure things out for yourself: This simple change uncovers the usually hidden backstory of your advisors’ opinions and also allows you, as the listener, to benefit from their experience by drawing your own conclusions rather than feeling bullied of overwhelmed by their recommendations. Ideally, you'll get the best advice from those who have already achieved what you want in life. Unfortunately, there are people out there who love to help, but are barely able. By diving into the stories behind some advice, you may be able to separate the wheat from the cliché analogies and platitudes.

boxer-this guy is so cute