Web Nectar: May 2007

Exclusive Lifehacker Download: Better Flickr version 0.2 now available

Firefox only: Just posted an upgrade to Lifehacker's own Better Flickr Firefox extension, which adds extra functionality to our favorite photo-sharing web application, Flickr.

This update fixes a MAJOR bug in 0.1 with disabling features (oops), and adds 4 more fabulous scripts that offer HTML controls on comment boxes, handy user and photos size links and rollover access to photo metadata. After the jump, see the new features in action and grab the download.

Note: Current Better Flickr users can use Firefox's Add-ons dialog box in the Tools menu to upgrade to the newest version; just hit the Find Updates button.

Better Flickr version 0.2's new features include:

That's just the new features, you see. See Better Flickr's full option set and download the latest version at its homepage. As always, bug reports, script addition requests, suggestions, criticism and adulation are all welcome in the comments.

[via] Lifehacker

RealPlayer takes online videos offline

[via] Download Squad

Yahoo Mail and the little checkbox that could

Yahoo Ads Back the Checkbox to Yahoo Mail

Many users of Yahoo's new Mail application have recently noticed the sudden (and very welcome) return of a long lost old friend: the checkbox. While Yahoo's massive and very exciting mail overhaul focused on making web email function more like desktop email, they forgot this one important feature from their web mail roots.

The checkbox's triumphant return is testament to the mistakes designers often make when they cater to their power users. It also shows the need for applications to focus on simple, visual, and adaptive (as in "single click") controls. Before they added back in the CheckBox you could still select multiple messages by holding the Ctrl key or select all messages by pressing Ctrl-A, but these shortcuts were difficult to communicate to anyone but the power desktop user. The checkbox, however, is easy to understand.

The other cool thing about the checkbox (and a reason why it could be a cool addition even to desktop mail clients) is that it lets you interact with multiple messages or select all messages using only your mouse. Trying to explain to your Grandmother that she needs to hold a key on her keyboard while carefully clicking on each message is neigh on impossible, it is easier for her to just move one message at a time. But give her a checkbox and she's in business! The checkbox makes organizing into folders much more accessible to all users, power or otherwise.

This brings us to the other old-is-new feature recently added back to Yahoo Mail: the move button. Again, you can move messages just by dragging and dropping, but that requires a precise (i.e. difficult) series of mouse moves that make the application less than accessible. By adding back the checkbox and the move button Yahoo Mail now has the power of a Web 2.0 mail client but the flexibility to be used just like a good old fashion "Hotmail inspired" mail client. Which just goes to show that the newest, flashiest, and most amazing features are nothing but liabilities if only 10% of your audience are comfortable using them.

Interested in doing more with Yahoo Mail? Check out our top 11 list of tips and tricks.

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[via] Download Squad

Backup: Set up simple file versioning with Automator

The MacApper weblog details how to take advantage of Automator to create a very simple version control system when you need a good versioning solution but a full-on version control system, like previously mentioned Subversion, would be out-and-out overkill.

The backup methods used are very similar to my simple version control system for Windows, but this Mac solution takes advantage of the much-maligned/beloved Automator. Not only is this a useful versioning method, but the post also serves as a nice introduction to Automator.

[via] Lifehacker

Featured Mac Download: Lightning fast word processing with Bean

Mac OS X only: Free, open source application Bean is a lightweight, Cocoa-based word processor for Macs.

When we highlighted NeoOffice, the Mac-like port of OpenOffice.org, a lot of readers wanted to find a simple word processor that was a bit more spry than the generally slow Neo/Open/Microsoft Office suites provide. Bean may very well be that application. It's low on features compared to the Office suites, but it's got a lot more word processing power to than a totally simple text editor like Text Edit.

[via] Lifehacker

Is Google planning to add search to Google Reader?

For a company that's primarily known for its search engine, Google's been a bit slow to add a search function to its RSS reader. The ability to search your read and unread feeds would come in handy about a thousand times a day when you're trying to recall that item you glanced at and quickly moved past.

Martin Porcheron has spotted some changes in Google Reader's CSS file that hint that a search could be showing up soon. It looks like Google plans to add a search box to the right of the Google logo. Or this could all just be a big misunderstanding.

In somewhat related news, you may notice a link to your Google Reader Trends has popped up among the navigation links on the left side of the page, under your starred and shared items.

[via Googlified]

[via] Download Squad

Webapps: Make screencasts online with Screencast-O-Matic

Web app Screencast-O-Matic lets you quickly create and host video screencasts (with audio) in a jiffy.

All you need to do is head to the web site, click on Create, choose your capture size, audio preferences, and then hit Go! Screencast-O-Matic runs a Java applet that handles the screen captures, and though it could use a little work smoothing things out around the edges, it's really easy to use (check out my done-in-a-minute demo here). We've covered free screencasting apps before (like Wink and CamStudio), but Screencast-O-Matic shows a lot of promise, would be great for quickly creating and sending simple instructions to your less computer-literate friends or family, and since it runs through a Java web applet, it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers.

[via] Lifehacker

Slacker - new desktop app for your tunes

Slacker the internet radio for people who are, uh slackers, or too weary to create playlists for their tunes, has just released a desktop app in beta. You can now manage your entire music library and create playlists. (Gasp!) This goes without saying, but only if you want to. You can still be the slacker you were before you downloaded the desktop app.

Some neat features of the desktop app are a mini-player, large album art and groovy visualizations, and of course the playlist thing ability (no pressure though).

Here are the system requirements:

Windows XP + SP2 or Vista
Flash player 8.0 or higher
Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher
Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher
Broadband Internet connection

Sorry Mac users - Mac is not supported at this time (and we're not happy about it).

When the Slacker portable player becomes available sometime in June, you can use the desktop app to sync your custom Slacker stations and music collection to it.

Here's the link for the Slacker's desktop download.

[via Digg]

[via] Download Squad

ITunes: Save a Smart Playlist as a static playlist

Macworld details how you can easily save your dynamic iTunes Smart Playlists as a regular static playlist by simply dragging and dropping the Smart Playlist onto the Playlists header.

Once you drop, the contents of the Smart Playlist will be automatically copied to a new playlist that you can rename to your liking. We're nuts about Smart Playlists, and every now and then those dynamic playlists produce a list so killer that you'll want to listen to over and over again. This simple tip offers a quick way to make it happen. Works on Mac and Windows.

[via] Lifehacker

Windows Live Writer Beta 2 released

When we posted that the commercial WSIWYG blogging application Post2Blog had gone freeware, one reader pointed out that it looked a lot like Windows Live Writer.

While Post2Blog had a number of features missing from Live Writer, (and still does), Microsoft has released a major update to Live Writer with support for:

Live spell checking
Table editing
Categories, tags, and labels (depending on your platform)
Available in 6 languages
Support for new APIs

Existing Live Writer plugins should work with the new version, and Digital Inspiration has a nice list of useful plugins.

[via] Download Squad

Featured Windows Download: Upload Picasa pics to Flickr with Picasa2Flickr

Windows only: The Picasa2Flickr plugin adds a button to Picasa that lets you directly upload selected pictures to your Flickr account from the comfort of Picasa.

If you're a Flickr die-hard who's love for Picasa has turned your eyes to the Picasa Web Albums more than once, this little plugin adds the same simple one-click upload capability for Flickr. It's currently not the prettiest implemenation the world has ever seen, but it works like a charm. Picasa2Flickr is free, Windows only, requires Picasa and Java.

[via] Lifehacker

Warner to create (semi) comprehensive music video website

Warner Music is working with Premium TV to create an online site featuring the record label's entire music video library. The service will be supported by advertising, and the videos will be available to stream for free. You'll be able to download videos for a fee.

While you can currently access some Warner content from the label's website, the deal would include Warner's entire library, plus previously unseen content.

As CD sales continue to decline and online video continues to grow in popularity, the move seems to make sense. But most music fans don't really associate artists with the labels they're on. In other words, even if Warner posts its complete catalog, there's a good chance you wont' find the artist you're looking for on Warner's site.

It'll be hard to compete with existing sites such as YouTube or MTV's Overdrive that have videos from multiple labels.

[via I4U News]

[via] Download Squad

Linux Tip: Use Synaptic Package Manager to remove abandoned packages

Linux only: Whenever you've installed a package using apt, Synaptic, or any other package management system, you've undoubtedly noticed that your package of choice's dependencies are installed simultaneously. The process is streamlined and very convenient. You've also probably noticed that whenever you remove a package, the package's dependencies get left behind -- lost somewhere in the soul of your machine.

Similar to Mac application AppDelete, Synaptic Package Manager has built in functionality that allows you to locate and remove packages that have been left behind. The Ubuntu Forums has very detailed instructions on how to remove packages of this variety including: residual config packages, partial packages, unncessary locale data, and orphaned packages. Although the tutorial is housed in the Ubuntu Forums, it will work in any Linux distro that uses Synaptic. Thanks, Nano!

[via] Lifehacker

Tailgate Hacks: Open a beer with your car door

You're at the tailgate with plenty of bottled beverages and no opener. No problem, says Jason Valalik - just use your car door latch. Check out his ultra-short video to see how.

If that doesn't work, you could always open the bottle with another bottle or with a simple piece of paper.

[via] Lifehacker

Herding Cats:

Meeting master Merlin Mann sings the praises of Doodle, an organizing webapp that helps schedule busy folks in different time zones in meetings.

[via] Lifehacker

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes: Lifehacker design adjustments

Hello. You may have noticed that Lifehacker's look and feel just changed slightly. We've made some design adjustments to make our content easier for you to scan and read, and we hope you like them.

We did our best to test the new look across major browsers, but if you see anything out of whack, let us know here in the comments. (Be sure to hit Control-Refresh in your browser to make sure you're seeing the latest style.) Thanks for your help and patience while we make Lifehacker the best it can be. Now back to productivity and software.

[via] Lifehacker

How To: Use Firefox as a Windows file manager

We've already discussed how to replace Windows Explorer with the excellent, tabbed Xplorer 2, which is a lot like Firefox for files. Now reader Mark says he actually uses Firefox - with the IETab extension - to browser web pages and local folders all in one Firefox window:

I just have IEtab set up to automatically engage whenever the page begins with "file:///*" and set the folders I open often as my homepage such as Recently Downloaded Music, My Documents, iTunes Music, etc.

The great thing about this method is that all of Firefox's tabbed bookmark and keyboard quick search tricks work just as well with file:// URLs as web site URLs. Thanks, Mark!

[via] Lifehacker

Scanner Hacks:

Avoid bleed-through from the dark image on the backside of that newspaper or magazine clipping you're scanning: put a piece of dark construction paper behind it first.

[via] Lifehacker

Featured Linux Download: Awn Linux application dock

Linux only: Free open-source app Awn is an application dock for Linux.

Awn allows you to setup custom launchers exactly the same way it's done on the Mac OS X Dock. Additionally, Awn supports the drag and drop method of adding launchers, and it even tracks your open windows. The homepage describes the features of Awn very concisely:

Clicking an icon switches to that window, clicking again will minimize the window. Right-clicking will bring up a menu exactly like that of what you see on the window-list, allowing you to maximize, minimize, close, and resize the window. Dragging something on top of an icon will activate that window. Visually (and quite attractively) responds to 'needs attention' & 'urgent' events. Can show windows from the entire viewport, or just the visible viewport.

Ubuntu users should closely follow the installation instructions on the Awn homepage. Users of other Linux distros can find specific instructions on the homepage, also. Awn is a free download for Linux and requires Affinity.

[via] Lifehacker

Launch: Access your Google Reader feeds offline with Google Gears

Holy offline access, Batgirl! Google releases Google Gears, an application that lets web sites store their data on your local computer using only your web browser. Google Reader is already supported - read your feeds on the plane! - and word on the street is that Gmail and Google Docs is to come. Screenshots after the jump:

On the Mac, Google Gears is just a regular Firefox extension; on the PC it's a full-blown application (.exe installer.)

To install, first you must ponder and agree to your "relationship with Google," to make sure this data-mingling is, you know, consensual.

On Windows download the installer and run it; Mac, install the Firefox extension. After this things got dicey for me on the PC, but on the Mac when I restarted my browser and went to Google Reader, I got this prompt:

Once you allow, you'll have the option to "go offline" (check the little icon on the upper righthand corner:

When you do go offline, Gears will download all your unread items for offline access:

Once that's done, you can read feed items even when you're not connected to the intertubes. And I must say it's hella snappy without all that network traffic happening! When you go back online, Gears sync's up your read items with new items waiting for you in the cloud.

Like I said, even after running the local installer a couple of times on my XP (virtual) machine, Gears seemed to have no effect, but it worked like a charm on the Mac with Firefox. Your mileage, of course, may vary. Google Gears is hot out of the oven and still in beta so do use with care.

[via] Lifehacker

DIY Mashups:

I wasn't able to get in to try it myself, but the newly-launched Google Mashup Editor smells like GOOG's attempt at Yahoo! Pipes.

[via] Lifehacker

Retro Roundup: One year ago on Lifehacker

Erase permanent marker from your dry erase board
"Draw over what you want to erase (make sure you draw slowly to fill it in better). Erase."
Hack Attack: Apartment hunting 101
"I signed the lease on my new (perfect) apartment last Friday after only a week of searching, and I learned a lot along the way."
How to retire rich
"For you young'uns who haven't started storing your nuts for a long, wrinkly winter, this is a great primer."
How to hold that thought till morning
"Reach over and turn your alarm clock upside down, lay the night stand lamp on its side, place a shoe in a drawer, or drape your house coat over the lamp..."
Build a solar-powered wifi extender for your backyard
"The materials cost about $375. But! To surf out in the garage while you're supposed to be mowing the lawn? That's priceless."
How to mouse goofy
"My mother taught me how to mouse goofy, i.e. mousing lefty rather than righty."
"Smackbook Pro" switch desktops by touch
"Mac user Erling Ellingsen is putting the new Macbook's motion sensor to work with his virtual desktop manager: he's programmed it to switch desktops when he hits the side of his 'Smackbook Pro.'"

[via] Lifehacker

Launch: Get hand-picked search results at Mahalo

Newly-launched search engine Mahalo offers results filtered by human beings.

Our Guides spend their days searching, filtering out spam, and hand-crafting the best search results possible. If they haven't yet built a search result, you can request that search result. You can also suggest links for any of our search results.

While the results lists aren't (and won't ever be) as extensive as Yahoo or Google's, the engine says what you do get is higher quality. A quick foray through Mahalo's popular searches listed on the front page and a few other terms makes it look promising, but the whole human bottleneck issue is worrisome. The web's a big place.

[via] Lifehacker

Negotiation Skills:

Finance blogger Ramit Sethi describes how he convinced his bank to waive an overdraft fee.

[via] Lifehacker

Launch: Google Maps' Mapplets add data layers to your map

A new feature in Google Maps, Mapplets, places data overlays onto your map - like movie times, crime rates and real estate prices. We've covered dozens of Google Maps mashups since Maps launched, and Mapplets just makes those mashups available on Google Maps proper, instead of having to go to another site to see them.

Mapplets are available at the developer preview. Once you add a few, a "Mapplets" tab appears in your Maps interface. Hit the video for a Mapplets demonstration courtesy of Google.

[via] Lifehacker

Home Office:

The Unclutterer weblog suggests using labeled, extra-large magazine files to stow software CD's, manuals and other information for each of your computers. Damn, does that look good.

[via] Lifehacker

Linux Tip: Beautify Firefox web page forms on Ubuntu

Web page form elements in Firefox - like buttons, dropdowns and checkboxes - don't look so good by default on Ubuntu. Tame the pixelly, aliased madness with a style installation script that smooths out those buttons and input boxes with a much-improved look. See the difference in the image above - radio buttons and checkboxes especially benefit from the upgrade.

[via] Lifehacker

Get A Job, Son: Your new gig is here

This week at Lifehacker Jobs:

E-Commerce Director - Confidential, North New Jersey
Work from Home Internet Copywriter - McGarry Internet, Ltd., Boston, MA
Summer Interns: Software Development - The Motley Fool, Alexandria, VA (Washington DC area)
Junior Software Developer - Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA
Project Manager - Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA
Web Administrator - Marijuana Policy Project, Washington, DC
Experienced Web Developer - Integrum Technologies, Chandler, AZ (Phoenix Area)
...and more

Employers, tap into the hive of productivity that is the Lifehacker readership. Submit your job listing now and we'll include it on the Gizmodo Job Board, too.

[via] Lifehacker

Featured Windows Download: Speed up file copying with TeraCopy

Windows only: Free file-copying utility TeraCopy speeds up file transfers and can pause, resume and test file copy operations. With TeraCopy you can:

Copy files faster. TeraCopy uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times. Asynchronous copy speeds up file transfer between two physical hard drives.
Pause and resume file transfers. Pause copy process at any time to free up system resources and continue with a single click.
Error recovery. In case of copy error, TeraCopy will try several times and in the worse case just skips the file, not terminating the entire transfer.

You can also use TeraCopy to diff the contents of two directories by running a "Test" copy, which shows you which files exist in the destination directory as compared to the source. If you've ever had Windows fail at the very last minute of a multi-gigabyte file copy, TeraCopy's for you. TeraCopy is a free download for home use for Windows. Thanks, Daniel!

[via] Lifehacker

Coolest Workspace Contest: Let the voting begin

After five glorious weeks of highlighting user-submitted workspaces, the time has come to narrow down our favorites. To crown this year's winner, we're going to choose a favorite from each weeks' themed entries one at a time and then undertake one final vote-off between the finalists.

Our first batch of entries highlighted workspaces that were tightly integrated into the home. Hit the jump to pick your favorite from the first week, get more contest details, and take a look at a roundup of all of our accepted Coolest Workspace submissions.

Our first week brought our lowest number of entries, so we've only got three workspaces in competition today. Give them a look and cast your vote. For a closer look, click the image to check out the submission's full gallery.

As always, keep in mind that our polling system is not bulletproof and is, indeed, quite gameable, but we trust that you'll keep this fight fair. (For more details, check out the official contest rules.)

As for the rest of the contest, it's going to look like this:

We'll run a poll asking for your favorite pick from each week of the Coolest Workspace Contest for the next 4 workdays (Friday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday).
Each poll will remain open for 24 hours only, so be sure to get your votes in the day the poll goes up.
After 24 hours, I'll declare the winner for that weeks' Coolest Workspace submission.
The five winners will then battle it out for supremacy next Thursday in a final poll to decide this year's Coolest Workspace Winner—a lucky soul with a $500 Amazon Gift Certificate in the mail.

Finally, if you're playing catch-up on the Coolest Workspace Contest, here's where we've been so far:

Lastly, you can check out every workspace we highlighted this year by clicking through to the '07 gallery (not every workspace will show up in the thumbnails, but individually clicking through the images should let you get a look at every highlighted entry).

Good luck to everyone in the running, and to the rest of you - get voting!

[via] Lifehacker

Easy HTML To Any Script Converter

Sometimes the headlines just write themselves. Easy HTML To Any Script Converter deserves an award for most accurately named program - ever! It does just what it says. The basic idea is that you paste in a block of HTML, select a language, hit go, and copy the code into your application. The Converter delivers a block of code for the particular language you selected with all offending characters escaped correctly and the HTML ready to be printed to the users screen.

A large number of languages are supported ranging from C# to PHP to JavaScript to Ruby. The actual conversion process is pretty simple. You can even setup your own conversion routine if your particular coding flavor isn't included with the default languages. Another nice feature is that you can convert a single file or a large list of files automatically, without having to copy and paste anything.

One other feature, which appears to have been added as an after thought, is a simple Email to Javascript conversion tool. Enter your email address and the subject you'd like the email to contain and the tool will generate some illegible code that you can put on your web page. The code should protect your email address from the various harvesting bots often used by spammers, but still allow your visitors to email you without going through a nasty contact form.

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[via] Download Squad

Customizing Firefox through about:config

Firefox is a highly customizable browser. You probably knew that. But there's a lot you can do to optimize your browsing experience beyond changing some options in the "Tools" dropdown menu. And in order make those changes, all you need to do is type about:config into your address bar.

We've shown you a few of the changes you can make before. But ComputerWorld has put together a great list of more than 20 ways to enhance Firefox through about:config. Here are a few highlights:

Tweaks that (may) speed up the way Firefox renders pages
Control the way the X button shows up on tabs (ie: make Firefox 2.0 look like Firefox 1.5)
Open search results in a new tab
Reduce the amount of memory Firefox uses for caching

[via] Download Squad

Make Screencasts the easy way with Screencast-O-Matic

There are plenty of free tools out that let you make videos of the activity on your desktop. Wink and CamStudio are two excellent tools, but Wink records your screencast as a flash file, while CamStudio doesn't let you record audio and video at the same time when using Vista (yet).

Screencast-O-Matic is a new web-based screencast program that is incredibly easy to use. And since it uses a Java applet, it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines. Here's a little screencast we put together showing the new Street View in Google Maps.

You may notice two things right off the bat. The audio sounds like it's recorded through a telephone. It's not, but Screencast-O-Matic seems to emphasize video over audio, and the resulting sound is a bit subpar.

Second, we uploaded this video to YouTube in order to share it. Although Screencast-O-Matic lets you upload your videos directly to their site as soon as you've finished recording, there doesn't appear to be any way to embed those videos in a blog. Fortunately, you can also export videos as a Quicktime videos, which you can then upload to YouTube or other sites.

We would have made a screencast showing how to set up a screencast, but that probably would have crashed our test PC. While you could take us at our word that Screencast-O-Matic is super easy to use, we've created a photo gallery to walk you through the process.

[via TechCrunch]

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[via] Download Squad

Steve Jobs: YouTube coming to AppleTV

Steve Jobs is taking all of the fun out of hacking Apple products like the AppleTV by announcing that new features are on their way. While hackers have been busy working on a plugin to play YouTube videos on an AppleTV box, apparently so has Apple.

Jobs made the announcement during a talk with the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg at the paper's "D: All Things Digital" conference.

YouTube video won't officially be supported for a few more weeks, but it should greatly expand the utility of that little box in the living room by providing tons of free (if short) content to go along with your iTunes purchases.

[via] Download Squad

Google Maps Street View invades privacy, exposes alien life

That certainly didn't take long. Google launches a new "Street View" mode for Google Maps, showing thousands of streets up close and personal, and within 24 hours, users start to get a bit creeped out by just how close up those photos are.

BoingBoing reader Mary Kalin-Casey noticed that you can see in her apartment window. In fact, when you look into her living room, you'll see her cat peeking back at you. Of course, the first thing she did when she discovered this invasion of personal privacy was to email the link out to the world, so go figure.

But wait, that's not all. As one Gizmodo reader noticed, if you know where to look, you can also find what appears to be an image of E.T. attempting to phone home -- and almost getting sliced in half by a laser beam. Or something. You can check out that image after the jump.

Continue reading Google Maps Street View invades privacy, exposes alien life

[via] Download Squad

Calacanis launches human based search engine, Mahalo

Jason Calacanis, the man behind the Weblogs Inc empire, (that this blog is a part of) has officially announced his latest project, Mahalo, and its main goal is to help people - a lot. Jason has kept a great number of people itching to know what he's been working on during his Entrepreneur in Action at Sequoia Capital and the news was dropped today at the Wall Street Journal's D conference.

Mahalo (thank you, in Hawaiian) plays off what Yahoo and Ask did way back in the early days of the internet and what DMOZ is still well known for today, indexing internet content by hand. However Mahalo spices things up to provide much better end results for users. But how can people do this better then say for instance, Google's machines? Typically when searching Google, Yahoo, or other machine based search engines, top quality results can get lost in the mix, and a real deep quality search might not get made. Mahalo's search guides that compile these results do use top locations like Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN, Flickr, Delicious and other services to create clean and organized results, except they aim to get the best results possible for users. Could it ever beat out Google? No, they really are not in competition, but it sure can provide an additional location to search for more accurate and higher quality results.

The 40 person team behind Mahalo currently has the top 4,000 search engine result pages complete so far in the initial Alpha launch, and hopes to have over 10,000 by the end of 2007.

[via] Download Squad

Google Gears takes online applications, offline

Online applications are great, but what happens when you can't get a connection to the internet? Whether it is because you are on an airplane, or in the middle of nowhere camping, and have to get certain emails, calendar items, or files, you are quite possibly out of luck. Its sure a bummer, and one of the reasons why so many people are hesitant about using online applications for their most important information.

Now Imagine being able to take your online applications, offline, and store that data locally in a completely searchable database? Google is making this possible with Gears. Google Gears is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide complete offline functionality. Google hopes that developers will use this new toolset to create offline web applications using JavaScript APIs to store and serve the applications resources locally, as well as store data in searchable databases. All of the syncing runs in the background without burning out the browsers memory usage, or slowing anything down.

The Google Gears Beta is currently available for installation on Windows XP,Vista, as well as on Mac and Linux machines. The plug-in works with Firefox 1.5+ and IE 6+. Google's first stop with Gears is Reader, with JavaScript APIs getting released shortly for data storage for use in applications like Docs and Spreadsheets.

The official Google Gears announcement will be made tomorrow to over 5,000 developers at Google's Developer Day gathering.

[via] Download Squad

First Google Gears app: Offline Google Reader

Well, that was fast. Google Gears hasn't even been announced yet, and already Google Reader users can install it and wallow in the splendor that is offline reading. Yep, Google Reader now offers the ability to download the 2000 most recent unread posts, so that you can read them when not connected to the internet.

The link shows up as a single innocuous red word, "offline", at the top right of your Google Reader screen. Clicking on it takes you to a page where you are invited to install the beta of Google Gears. So far we've only tested it on a Mac with BonEcho (a Mac-specific version of Firefox), and it works great. Since Google Gears is going to be available for all major platforms, we can assume this will work just as well on Windows.

Now the wait for what we're drooling after: Offline Gmail. Please, Google? Pretty-please?!

[via] Download Squad

It's official, eBay pays $75 million for StumbleUpon

Looks like the rumors were true. Auction site eBay is shelling out $75 million to buy social web discovery service StumbleUpon.

According to the press release, the acquisition gives eBay exposure to StumbleUpon's growing community of over 2 million users. Still seems like an awkward match to us. In recent years, eBay purchased PayPal, but that was a no-brainer, and Skype, which has an obvious commercial aspect.

The company hardly needed StumbleUpon to build its brand recognition. And if they just start injecting eBay auctions willy nilly into stumble results, they'll pretty much break the community they bought as members begin to evacuate the spam-laden sinking ship. Still, a separate "stumble to find books, computer parts, or hummels" section could make a lot of sense.

eBay senior director Michael Buhr assumes the post of general manager of StumbleUpon, while StumbleUpon's current management team remains in place.

[via] Download Squad

BUY the First Beta Invite to eBay's San Dimas Project

We talked about the San Dimas project before, and we just got an update from Alan Lewis, San Dimas product manager. He says the beta is feature complete and they are working hard to get rid of bugs while also making minor changes. Response to the project has been greater than expected and beta invites, which will be starting soon, may flow forth slower than they hoped. They have also a project FAQ, for which you can submit questions, at the San Dimas blog

But for the l33t who want in on the beta, you can bid on the first invite with proceeds going to charity. At the auction they give all the details on what the winner will get. This includes the very first beta email, and it will be sent 6 hours prior to any other invites. The winner will also get a certificate to prove to your friends and family you were there first... which we're sure they'll be impressed with, just as soon as they're done asking, "What the heck is San Dimas?" The final kicker -- a "Preston / Logan '08" T-shirt -- which reminds us to remind you, "Be excellent to each other."

[via] Download Squad

Feds arrest one of world's most prolific spammers

A 27 year old Seattle man responsible for sending billions of spam e-mails every day has been taken into custody. A lawyer for Microsoft calls Robert Soloway one of the world's top 10 spammer. And officials suggest now that he has been arrested you may notice an immediate drop in the amount of spam in your inbox.

Soloway's been charged with 35 counts including fraud, money laundering and identity theft.

While no one wants to receive unsolicited email advertising products you don't want, (well, apparently someone must, or there wouldn't be any point to spamming), prosecutors say Soloway went much further, breaking numerous laws to get his messages out.

Many of his emails include fake headers with e-mail addresses registered to names of innocent individuals or organizations, which has led to some email services blacklisting those addresses or domains.

He tells prosecutors he has no money, but he drives a Mercedes and lives in an expensive apartment. This isn't Soloway's first tussle with the law. In 2005 Microsoft won a $7 million judgment against him, and in 2006, an Oklahoma ISP won another $10 million. If found guilty in the federal case, Soloway could be facing some serious jail time.

[via] Download Squad

Google buys Panoramio to use with Google Earth

Google is all about buying companies. Not just any company, companies that help with their mission to organize all of the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Well, they have done it again with a site we profiled late last year, Panoramio.

Panoramio was built as a Google Maps mashup that lets users map photos based on geographic locations. The company is based in Spain and connects digital photographers with the ability to geo locate, store and organize photos in Google Earth. An API is also available with Panoramio that lets developers embed functionality into websites.

Google has already been using Panoramio's images in Google Earth as a default layer since early this year.

[via] Download Squad

Fedora 7 released today

Red Hat released Fedora 7 today, a new version of their Linux operating system developed in partnership with the open source community and Red Hat engineers. This is Fedora's first release to merge the Fedora Core and Fedora Extras package repositories under one set of packaging policies. Another first for Fedora 7 is all the software used is released under a free license, and all decision-making is made in public.

The big innovations touted for this release are:

Revisor tool - a graphical appliation built on top of Fedora's other build tools that gives flexibility to build an ISO, a live CD, etc. Mike Spevack, Fedora's project leader, feels this is Fedora's crown jewel. Customized versions of Fedora are now possible to an extent that was not available previously.

Live CD - first time for Fedora, (however not an industry shake-up here).

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) technology has been integrated with the Fedora graphical virtualization manager tool. KVM provides a full virtualization solution, and users have a choice between KVM and Xen, along with Qemu, in this release.

You can pick up a copy of this new version at the Fedora Project.
Thanks FF!

[via] Download Squad

LiveJournal removes 500 accounts, promises to restore some

So this group called Warriors for Innocence complains to LiveJournal that some of the pages and communities hosted by the service violate LiveJournal's terms of service and are run by pedophiles. In response, LiveJournal removes about 500 journals.

LiveJournal hosts millions of journals, so the easiest way to do this was to remove (not delete) sites with "objectionable" interests, such as "incest," or "rape." The only problem is that not every community with those interests is expressing some sort of a perverted fantasy. Some communities that were removed may have included sites devoted to survivors of incest or rape.

Six Apart CEO Barak Berkowitz has apologized for the mixup, and admits that LiveJournal did not complete its review of all the sites before removing them. He also says the company should have contacted members before removing their pages, and that the sites are currently being reviewed. All legit sites will be restored today.

[via Life is a road]

[via] Download Squad

Google Checkout now available through WAP

Its 2007, and we don't have flying cars yet, but we do now have the abilities to buy items via our mobile devices. Ok, so it's not totally futuristic, but nonetheless it's a step towards the future.

Google has announced that Google Checkout buyers can now make fast, secure purchases using mobile devices straight from any WAP enabled Checkout merchant. The process involved in purchasing is a little different than with the online steps involved. Buyers must verify their identity with a special PIN, rather than a login. Merchants that are hooked up in the standard Google Checkout program will automatically have mobile functionality built into their existing store (including mobile-friendly sites), so no further implementations are involved.

Google plans on adding further functionality as the mobile system, and its user base grows. Lets just get a move on on the flying car thing.

[via] Download Squad

How To: Maintain threaded view in Thunderbird

One way to make Mozilla Thunderbird more like Gmail is to turn on the threaded view of your email. However, by default Thunderbird does not maintain the threaded view when you sort by a column (such as sender, date, etc.). Chris Ilias' Blog explains that you can configure Thunderbird to maintain a threaded view even when you sort your email by column.

What if you want to keep threaded view on? Go to Tools->Options->Advanced->General, and click on "Config Editor". In the Config Editor, search for the preference mailnews.thread_pane_column_unthreads. Double-click on it, which should change the value to false.

To add Gmail-like search capabilities to Thunderbird, check out the Gmail UI extension. — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Programming: How to build a Firefox extension

Ever since we started releasing home-brewed Firefox extensions here at Lifehacker, several readers have asked: How difficult is it to build a Firefox extension? For someone with a bit of programming experience, the answer is not that difficult.

The meat of a Firefox extension is simply Javascript - the not-very-mysterious stuff of bookmarklets and regular old web pages - and a markup language called XUL (pronounced "zool.") To build your own, you'll need some Javascript know-how, comfort editing XML files, and a healthy curiosity about bending your favorite web browser to your will.

I started teaching myself how to build Firefox extensions using free tutorials and resources on the web over two years ago. While whole books have been written about creating Firefox extensions, today I've got a quick start list of resources for the curious programmers out there who want to give it a try.

Warning and disclaimer: This post isn't our usual Lifehacker fare - it's a programming tutorial intended for actual hackers, not just lifehackers, who want to get their feet wet in Firefox development. We'll get back to how-to's applicable to regular humans right after this.

Set up your development environment

First things first: you're going to develop a Firefox extension? At some unfortunate moment, you're going to completely hose your Firefox profile. This isn't a possibility, it's a guarantee. So do yourself a favor, and create a fresh Firefox profile that you use exclusively for development. Here's how to create and manage multiple Firefox profiles. I enjoy having my default profile running for quick code reference lookups, and launching my "dev" profile simultaneously using the -no-remote switch detailed in that article.

Once you've loaded up your fresh, clean dev profile, you'll want to make a few about:config tweaks and install a couple of development extensions to make your life easier.

Hello, Firefox extension world!

Back in December of 2004, during some mindless web surfing, I stumbled upon Eric Hamiter's excellent How to create Firefox extensions tutorial and it was the single link that got me started down the road to extension development. The tutorial is a bit dated (especially since Firefox 2), but it's a nice complement to Mozilla Developer Center's official Building an Extension document.

Following the instructions - which involve a lot of placing specific XML and Javascript files in specific folders and zipping them up just the right way - you can build a simple extension that pops up a "Hello, world!" Javascript alert. Do it - every programmer starts a new language by saying hello to the world.

For extra Hello World help, see MozillaZine's Getting Started with Extension Development. A slew of other extension development tutorials are available here.

The Extension Wizard

Once you get into the extension development groove, you'll quickly tire of creating all those weirdly-named folders and files. That's where Ted Mielczarek's Extension wizard comes in handy. You give it your extension's information: ID, icon, license, author and other information and it'll generate an extension folder and file skeleton for you.

The Greasmonkey Compiler

Another wizardly extension-helper is the previously-posted Greasemonkey user script compiler. A Greasemonkey script is just Javascript; and this compiler turns that script into a full-fledged extension. (Note: The Better Gmail extension and all its younger siblings released here on Lifehacker started out using this compiler.)

WTF, XUL?

One of the steep learning curves of extension development is getting your head around XUL, and how it creates elements like menu items and dialog boxes in Firefox. Think of it this way: XUL creates Firefox interfaces like HTML creates web pages. (But being XML, XUL Is a lot stricter in its rules of what's allowed and what's not.)

For example, a simple XUL-based window with radio buttons for apples, oranges and cherries looks like this in XUL:

<?xml version="1.0"?> <?xml-stylesheet href="chrome://global/skin/" type="text/css"?> <window id="yourwindow" xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"> <radiogroup> <radio label="apples" /> <radio label="oranges" /> <radio label="cherries" /> </radiogroup> </window>

To start experimenting with XUL, install the Extension Developer's extension in your development profile. From the Tools menu, Extension Developer submenu, choose "XUL editor" to start composing XUL documents that preview live as you type, as shown:

Finally, the complete reference and mother lode of XUL tutorials is available at XUL Planet.

Automating builds

Once your extension is working and ready in your development Firefox profile, you want to zip it up and try it out in your "real" Firefox install. Doing this manually is an exhausting pain in the buttocks, so do yourself a favor and use a build script to reduce the process to a single command operation. I use a modified version of this Windows build script to package up my extensions.

Like all good things in life, Firefox extension development takes a serious investment, but the reward - making your web browser do exactly what you want it to - is huge. You ready to give extension dev a try? Let us know how it goes in the comments. —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

CBS buys Last.fm for $280 million

While early rumors had Viacom preparing to purchase UK-based internet radio site Last.fm for $450 million, it looks like the CBS corporation has snatched up last.fm for the bargain price of $280 million. (If you're scratching your head, yes, CBS used to be part of Viacom, but the two split up last year).

Last.fm had set itself the (possibly unrealistic) goal of adding every music track every recorded to its library. Having a major media corporation for a parent makes that lofty goal seem a bit more feasible. But perhaps just a bit.

CBS has strong roots in terrestrial radio, with 179 stations in 50 markets across the U.S. While the fate of online radio remains to be seen, there's no doubt online music services are gaining in popularity, so it makes sense that CBS would want to pick up one of the market leaders. Last.fm boasts that it has 15 million listeners each month.

[Thanks Gil Creque!]

[via] Download Squad

URL Hacking: Google enables face recognition in Image Search?

Reader Dennis writes in with a juicy tidbit regarding Google Image Search:

When you add &imgtype=face to the picture search string, only photos with faces are showing up. This feature has not been officially announced yet and I have no idea how reliable it works.

For example, a regular Google Image Search for "paris" returns lots of photos of the city. The modified search returns lots of photos of Paris Hilton. The same technique works for "Trapani" - a regular search turns up photos of the Sicilian city of Trapani, the modified version gives you photos of people's faces with the last name Trapani. Freaky! Thanks, Dennis! —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Ask The Readers: Is Twitter worth your time?

The writers over at CNET debate whether or not micro-blogging tool Twitter is a stupid fad or a worthwhile tool.

Senor writer Elinor Mills says Twitter's just a bunch of "stream-of-conscious babblings" for friends and people who have time to "read inane musings of strangers." Staff writer Caroline McCarthy says Twitter's randomness is a "welcome diversion." Coincidentally, the Lifehacker editors had quite the internal debate about whether or not Twitter is a post-worthy app, and while there was a difference of opinion about Twitter's longevity, we all agreed it is never going to boost productivity. (Since that discussion, after much resistance, I became addicted to the crack that is Twitter after all.)

Do you think Twitter's a flash in the pan or an innovative social networking tool? Let us know in the comments. —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

RIP, Mouse And Keyboard: Microsoft unveils a touch-sensitive table computer

Microsoft thinks the future of computing is a touch-sensitive table, which lets users manipulate data using their fingers and sweeping gestures. Here's a mesmerizing video demo of a touchscreen in action.

[via] Lifehacker

Job Search: Potential employers are Googling you now

A new study shows that one fourth of human resources people have decided against hiring a job candidate based on information they found online about that person. Luckily, you can have a say in what Google says about you.

[via] Lifehacker

Linux Tip: Embed the terminal on the desktop

Linux only: Similar to Mac OS X application Geek Tool, DevilsPie is an open-source application that allows you to control how specific elements of a window appear. The Ubuntu Forums explain how DevilsPie can be used to embed a Gnome Terminal session into the desktop.

The objective is to have a gnome terminal running as the desktop background, right above the actual background image, that won't be displayed by the statusbar or ticker.

The process requires installing DevilsPie, creating a configuration file, customizing a Gnome Terminal session, and adding DevilsPie and the Gnome Terminal to your list of startup programs. Although this process is outlined in the Ubuntu Forums, it should be extensible to any flavor of Linux running Gnome.— Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Featured Download: iTunes 7.2 supports DRM-free iTunes Store purchases

Windows and Mac: Apple releases the newest version 7.2 of iTunes which supports previewing and purchasing DRM-free tracks from the iTunes Store. Playlist magazine reports:

Apple is calling the new music "iTunes Plus," and plans to offer it alongside the FairPlay-encrypted AAC files it has offered for some time through the iTunes Store. "iTunes Plus" files cost a bit more -- $1.29 per track, versus the $0.99 per track for protected files -- but have been encoded at a higher bit rate, 256Kbps AAC, instead of 128Kbps AAC, which should yield better audio fidelity.

Get iTunes 7.2 by hitting the Check for Updates item in the iTunes menu. Then, in the iTunes Store page, under Quick Links click "iTunes Plus." iTunes is a free download for Windows and Mac. —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Politics: MAPLight.org maps money to votes

The NY Times' David Pogue explains MAPLight.org, a fascinating but not-so-easy-to-use web site that correlates the amount of money special interest groups give lawmakers, and how those lawmakers voted on the issues at hand. Interesting stuff, but I still need the "For Dummies" version.

[via] Lifehacker

How To: Print to PDF in Ubuntu

Linux only: Add a PDF virtual printer to Ubuntu similar to CutePDF for Windows in 5 simple steps. The Arsgeek weblog describes how. Just install cups-pdf, then add a Postscript printer using the Gnome printing dialog.

The printer turns your current document into a PDF and places it into a folder called "PDF" in your home directory. While outlined specifically for Ubuntu, the process is extensible to any flavor of Linux. — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Post2Blog 3 released as freeware

Post2Blog is a really handy WSIWYG blog editor for publishing posts to blogs on a number of platforms including WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, and a few dozen others.

While the program used to cost $39, Bytescout Software has released version 3.0 as freeware. In other words, you have absolutely no excuse for not checking it out.

Here are some of the highlights:

Live spellechecking
Depending on what blog platform you're using, images can be uploaded automatically to your blog, to Imageshack, Flickr, or other locations
Plugins for Internet Explorer and Firefox let you copy and paste text from the web to your blog with just a few clicks
Microsoft Word toolbar lets you compose entries in Word and upload them to your blog with just a click
Quickly add images or documents to your entry by clicking "send to" and "Post2Blog" in Windows Explorer

[via CyberNotes]

[via] Download Squad

Internet leaders meet at Next Web Conference

Certain future events can be predicted accurately by just about anybody. For instance, anyone with a pulse and a soul can tell you that regardless of how many characters Eddie Murphy plays, the movie Norbit won't win an Oscar this year. But when it comes to the future of the web the predictions should be left to the experts. Luckily for interested parties, many of the experts in this field will be in the same place at the same time for The Next Web Conference. On June 1st at the Tuschinski Theatre in Amsterdam many of the industry leaders will be on hand to discuss the future of this crazy little internet fad that so many people seem to be interested in.

Tickets are almost sold out (57 left when this was written) and are 550 Eur if bought before May 30 or 750 Eur afterwards. You can see a short preview video that has some huge names answering questions. This whole conference is great for anyone looking to get a leg-up on the competition when it comes to the latest in web technology. Also, with this many tech people converging on the anything-goes city of Amsterdam, it has a new Revenge of the Nerds movie written all over it, and that can be nothing but fun.

[via] Download Squad

Social Networking and Ecommerce

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[via] Download Squad

Microsoft announces Surface computer interface

Microsoft is taking the wraps off its new "Surface" platform, which should be commercially available later this year. Essentially, Surface lets you interact with a computer via a tabletop interface, no keyboard or separate display needed. Touch the screen to make selections and move images around.

Use two hands to make pictures larger or smaller. Or place certain items on the tabletop to interact with the computer.

The first Surface computers could cost up to $10,000 so don't expect to pick one up for your living room just yet (unless you're a super early adopter with too much disposable income). Rather, they'll show up at hotels, retail stores, restaurants and casinos first.

Harrah's in Las Vegas will have a "virtual concierge" service letting guests reserve tickets, peruse menus, or make purchases. It's just a matter of time until someone builds a realistic virtual poker application.

T-Mobile has signed on to take advantage of Surface's object recognition capabilities, by allowing customers in selected stores to pick up a cellphone, place it on the table and get information about prices and phone plans.

[via] Download Squad

Apple launches iTunes 7.2 with support for DRM-free music

It looks like Apple is prepared to start selling DRM-free music from EMI this afternoon. We've known this day was coming, but yesterday Apple released iTunes 7.2 with support for "iTunes Plus," which seems to be Apple's name for unencrypted music.

A quick refresher course. DRM-free tracks will be available for $1.29, or $.30 more than tracks with Apple's Fair Play copy protection. While the ability to play the files on any device you choose is probably worth the extra cost, the songs will also be encoded at 256kbps, compared with 128kbps for the encrypted $.99 songs.

Apple is also expanding its iTunes U service, making university lectures available to the public for free.

[via tuaw]

[via] Download Squad

We Were Wrong: Forever stamp not a good investment

Slate columnist Nathaniel Rich calls our previously-posted advice to invest in U.S. "forever stamps" a bad idea, because postal rates have increased more slowly than the actual inflation rate in the last 30+ years. I'll take financial advice from anyone with that last name. [via kottke]

[via] Lifehacker

It All Comes Together: Ask Lifehacker roundup

[via] Lifehacker

Featured Greasemonkey User Script: Access your feeds and email with the Gmail + Reader Integrator user script

Firefox with Greasemonkey: Access your Google Reader subscriptions in Gmail using the Gmail + Reader Integrator user script.

Similar to the previously mentioned Gmail + Google Reader script, Gmail + Reader Integrator displays your Google Reader subscriptions inside Gmail. Unlike the previous script, Gmail + Reader Integrator has a streamlined interface that maintains the categories you have setup in Google Reader. Additionally, Gmail + Reader Integrator opens your feeds below your Gmail inbox so you can see your email and feeds simultaneously. After the jump, check out a screenshot of this in action.

While you're getting Gmail in gear, don't forget to grab Better Gmail (Editor: which may soon include this script.) Gmail + Reader Integrator is a free download that works with Firefox and Greasemonkey. Thanks, Adam! — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Cooking: DIY recipe notebook with a break-back easel binder

Food site Serious Eats recommends putting together your own recipe notebook with Post-its, sheet protectors - and this is the key - a standing "break-back easel" three-ring binder:

I can whole-heartedly endorse the wonders of sheet protectors to extend the life of printed recipes beyond one sauce-drenched session. They're also great for adding pages to the aforementioned three-ring binder without having to rummage through your desk drawers for that ultimate unitasker, the hole-punch. My only amendment to Unclutterer's recipe-binder recipe: spring for a "break-back easel" binder that's built to stand up on its own, saving you time and counter space as you dart between binder, mise en place, and stove.

I'd never seen one of these free-standing binders, but they look like they'd be super-useful in the kitchen OR the office for hands-free at-a-glance binder reference while cooking or typing. —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Fatdoor introduces you to your neighborhood without stepping outside

One fascinating aspect to online social communities is the ability to meet people around the globe who share your interests. In many cases, you're introduced to people you never would have met under other circumstances.

But the truth of the matter is most of us don't even know the people in our own neighborhoods. Of course, you could walk out the front door and ask to borrow a cup of sugar from the house across the street or better yet, bring them some fresh baked cookies. But where's the fun in that?

Fatdoor is a new social community site (with an awful name) that lets you find people, businesses, and organizations in your area in a Web 2.0 way. In other words, you get a map. And user reviews. Not sure if that restaurant on the corner is any good or if there's a cheaper grocery store nearby? Fatdoor lets you rely on the wisdom of the masses, if you believe there is such a thing, and if enough folks from your neighborhood have signed up.

You can write information about yourself, about your friends and neighbors, and about local institutions. In other words, this startup will either be an excellent replacement for the phone book, or it'll become the online equivalent of a stall in the men's room.

While Fatdoor has launched in alpha, not all neighborhoods are covered yet so you might receive a message alerting you that your neighborhood is in invitation only mode when you attempt to sign up.

user. Hopefully

[via Mashable]

[via] Download Squad

Building a Linux-like packaging system for Windows

One of the coolest features Windows users might notice when they try out Linux distributions such as Ubuntu is the ease with which you can find and install open-source programs. While Windows users have to scour the web to find, download, and install applications, Linux users can type a simple "apt-get" into their terminal or open up Synaptic package manager or a similar application.

Ed Ropple wants to know why Linux users should have all the fun, and has proposed working with WinLibre to develop a software repository and packaging system for Windows as part of Google's Summer of Code.

Such a service could make finding and installing new programs much simpler. Not only would you be able to find open source software that fits your needs (something you can already do with websites like OSALT.com), but you can be sure that each program has been tested out by the community maintaining the repository.

[via Slashdot]

[via] Download Squad

Firefox Tip: Force links to open in the background

Firefox has always had the option of forcing a link that tries to open in a new window to open in a new tab. Reader J writes in with a good reason to take it a step further. J configures Firefox to force links that try to open in new windows to open tabs in the background, instead. J explains:

Google Reader seems pretty neat, but it's always bugged me that using the "v" key to view a link opens that link in a new tab. I usually like to browse all feed items, open interesting links in the background, and then view the opened links [all at once].

In order to force all links that open in a new window to load in a background tab, type about:config in the URL bar and change browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground to true. While you're at it, be sure to grab some other Firefox tweaks, too. Thanks, J! — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Second Thoughts: How to uninstall Internet Explorer 7

Luckily, you can remove IE7 from Windows XP PC using Control Panel's "Add/Remove Programs." Nice to know it's not more permanently glommed onto Windows' innards.

[via] Lifehacker

Featured Windows Download: Do more at the command prompt with NirCmd

Windows only: Freeware command-line app NirCmd extends the functionality of the Command Prompt.

NirCmd is a small command-line utility that allows you to accomplish tasks using the Command Prompt that would normally require a user interface. NirCmd has no "formal" installation process. All you need to do is copy "NirCmd.exe" to "C:\Windows" and then begin using it with Command Prompt. You can grab a list of the uses of NirCmd at the project homepage.

NirCmd is a small command-line utility that allows you to do some useful tasks without displaying any user interface. By running NirCmd with simple command-line options, you can write and delete values and keys in the Registry, write values into INI files, dial to your internet account or connect to a VPN network, restart Windows or shut down the computer, create shortcuts to a file, change the created/modified date of a file, change your display settings, turn off your monitor, open the door of your CD-ROM drive, and more...

NirCmd is a free download and works on Windows XP and Vista. — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Lala to launch free music on demand service

Music website Lala plans to launch a new music on demand service soon. While online radio sites like Pandora or Last.fm let provide a stream of audio tailored to your tastes, Lala's service will let you click on an individual song and listen to it. Currently that's only something you can do with subscription services like Rhapsody.

There's just one problem. It costs money to stream audio on demand. A lot more than internet radio stations have to pay to stream music, even if new royalty rates take effect this summer.

In order to offset the costs, Lala hopes to sell CDs through its service. The theory is that visitors to the site will be music fans who are willing to pay for the music they like. But the average user will have to buy one CD per month in order for Lala to break even, that just doesn't seem too likely.

[via TechCrunch]

[via] Download Squad

Stuff We Like: USB rechargeable batteries

USBCELL rechargeable batteries are NiMH (non-alkaline) batteries that plug right into your computer's USB port to juice up.

Nothing's worse than being hard at work or play and having the battery die in your wireless mouse or game controller. USBCELLs recharge from your tower, monitor, game console or keyboard's free USB port; or you could turn a USB hub into a battery recharging station. These suckers reduce waste, keep batteries on hand, fully recharge in about 5 hours, and cost £10 for a pack of two. —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Hive Mind: Ask MetaFilter roundup

[via] Lifehacker

MyLiveSearch will revolutionize web searching, according to, well, themselves

If you go to mylivesearch.com, you're greeted with the statement "My Live Search is the first, true 'real-time' search engine to appear on the www", which would be cool, if it wasn't for one little problem. It's not actually online yet. Confidence is a good thing, but you can't talk about how your product is the coolest thing on the web, when it's not actually there yet. That seems silly. The best thing on the site is the quote ".....and they thought it couldn't be done!" Ignoring the fact that they lead in with 5 periods for some reason, they talk as though they've already proven all the doubters wrong already. Maybe this is needless skepticism, but it just comes off like the tiny kid in high school who's so insecure about his size and ability that he makes things up to make himself feel more important. You know the kid. He was about 5'3 and 88 pounds but always told the story about how he beat up 3 guys at the same time who were all at least 6 feet tall.

An article from Australia's "The Age", where the company is based, claims that Google is keeping a close eye on the start up, although you'd have to assume that if Google was really concerned about the competition they would have simply bought them out by now. Reading the quotes from the creator, Robert Gabriel, you get the sense that he really believes that he's got it all figured out. Even his photo makes him look miles too overconfident. If enthusiasm and confidence were moustaches and the ability to attract middle aged women, Gabriel would be Tom Selleck. Ignoring the smarminess of this guy, he might actually have a solid idea. The search engine he's created combs the web in real time, instead of using indexed database results. This ensures that as the web changes, the search results will change along with it. It also allows parts of the web not indexed by sites such as Google to be looked at. We'll see how well the whole thing works when a public beta is launched in the coming weeks.

[via] Download Squad

Featured Windows Download: Control iTunes using keyboard shortcuts with iTunes Hotkey

Windows only: Open-source app iTunes Hotkey controls iTunes with keyboard shortcuts.

Coded by fellow Lifehacker reader, The Amazing Ant, iTunes Hotkey assigns key combinations to iTunes functions. From the included help file:

Ctrl+Insert: Play
Ctrl+Home: Pause
Ctrl+Page Up: Previous song
Ctrl+Page Down: Next song
Ctrl+End: Stop
Ctrl+Up: Increase iTunes volume (not system volume)
Ctrl+Down: Decrease iTunes volume (not system volume)
Ctrl+Shift+Insert: Toggle shuffle mode
Ctrl+Shift+Home: Toggle repeat mode

Anyone out there want to throw together a user interface so you can assign custom keyboard shortcuts? iTunes Hotkey is a free download, requires the free .NET framework to run, and works in Windows XP and Windows Vista. — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Google Maps Street View goes live

Google has launched its new "Street View" feature for Google Maps, and it's pretty sweet. We'd post a picture, but a video is worth a thousand words... or pictures in this case. Here's a video from Barry Schwartz showing a Street View of the area around his office building in Suffern, NY.

Basically, the Google Maps toolbar is getting a little more crowded, with a new "Street View" button next to "traffic." When you click the button, certain streets in covered areas (such as New York and San Francisco) will turn blue, and a little yellow man shows up on the screen. Click the yellow dude and drag him over to a blue street to view a street-level image.

Once you've got the street view, you can click on arrow buttons to move forward or backward. Click elsewhere on the image and drag left or right to change your angle. All the images cover 360 degrees.

[via Google Blogoscoped]

[via] Download Squad

A primer for WordPress themes, plug-ins and tips

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[via] Download Squad

Battle Of The Mac Desktop Search: Google Desktop vs. Spotlight, according to Macworld

Macworld isn't in love with Google Desktop for the Mac. For my money, it beats Spotlight hands down any day.

[via] Lifehacker

Bookmarks: Link multiple URLs at once with A Few URLs

Not sure when or why you'd need this, but web service A Few URLs rolls a group of links into just one. Here's Lifehacker, Gizmodo and Consumerist.

[via] Lifehacker

Productivity: Read hundreds of feeds with Google Reader

Uber-blogger Robert Scoble demonstrates how he reads 622 web site feeds per day using Google Reader. (Nausea warning: lots of shaky camera action in video above.) Hackszine summarizes his technique:

Use Google Reader (keyboard commands make browsing faster)
Use "all items view" to see the full river of news in chronological order
Filter out potentials in the first pass. Take a top level filter for topic, information density, author, and quality of post. Only articles that make the cut are looked at in more detail.
Superhuman abilities help

To become a Scoble-like feed ninja, check out how you can get good with Google Reader. —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Featured Linux Download: Dock any application to the system tray with AllTray

Linux only: Open-source app AllTray docks any application to the system tray that does not have a native tray icon.

AllTray works in KDE, Gnome, Xfce, Fluxbox, and WindowMaker, and can tuck any application into the system tray. AllTray also supports command-line arguments. If you regularly call applications from the terminal, you can use AllTray to load your applications directly in the tray. For example, entering "alltray firefox" into a terminal will load Firefox directly in the system tray. Additionally, clicking the "close" button from a restored window will minimize it right back to the system tray.

Ubuntu users can download AllTray from the repositories using:

sudo apt-get install alltray

Other Linux users can grab AllTray from the Sourceforge homepage. AllTray is a free download for Linux only. — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Cars: DIY windshield desk

Reader Alvin got his hands on a spare car windshield and turned it into a desktop:

This is a windshield that's been made into a table. I just got it now from a friend. There are two of them but this one seems to look better, better curves. It does blend well with the total look. It's on two temporary chairs.

Looks like he's got the CPU and monitor hanging from the ceiling, too. Thanks, Alvin! —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Featured Greasemonkey User Script: Fight procrastination with Time to Go

Firefox with Greasemonkey: The Time to Go user script sends you away from time-sucking web sites after a certain amount of time you set.

Inspired by Gina's fantastic Invisibility Cloak, Time to Go is a user script for the weaker-willed -- like myself. Rather than banning you from a web site completely until after a specific time (like Invisibility Cloak), you set an amount of time to enjoy certain web sites with Time to Go. When you are nearing the allotted time, Time to Go issues a countdown. When time is up, it forwards you along to a web site of your choosing.

What's particularly nice about Time to Go is that it comes packaged with a user interface that makes customizing the script really easy. The author recommends forwarding yourself to an angry picture of your boss to encourage you to get back to work!

Time to Go is a free download that works with Firefox and the Greasemonkey extension. — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

How To: Close chip bags without the clip

If you ran out of clips to close all those half-eaten bags of chips leftover from the weekend barbecue, Instructables demonstrates a useful chip-clip-no-more bag fold. Hit the video to see it done, and the link for the step by step. —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Launch: Google Maps adds Street View

Google Maps adds a new perspective to the urban landscape: Street View lets you navigate down the streets of big cities like New York, Denver, Miami, Las Vegas and San Francisco. Go to Google Maps and hit the "Street View" button to check it out. (Amazon's A9 was the first to release this kind of street-level mapping almost 2 years ago, and then Microsoft followed suit last year.) —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Lifehacker Code: Upgrade Flickr with the Better Flickr Firefox extension

Everyone's favorite photo-sharing web application, Flickr, has had tons of ancillary applications and user scripts developed for it to tweak, mod and add to its functionality. Dozens of Greasemonkey user scripts have popped up that make Flickr better; so in the spirit of Better Gmail I've rolled a few of my favorites into a new Firefox extension called Better Flickr.

After the jump, check out Better Flickr's features and grab the download.

Better Flickr Firefox extension

Version: 0.1
Released: May 29, 2007
Creator: Gina Trapani, using Greasemonkey scripts by several authors, compiled using Anthony Lieuallen's Greasemonkey Compiler.

License: Better Flickr is licensed under the Mozilla Public License; all included scripts copyright their original authors.

What it does: Adds a menu of optional extra features to Flickr. To view the enabled features and get more information on each, in Firefox's Add-ons dialog, click on Better Flickr's Preferences dialog, as shown:

See a full run down of each extra feature below:

Lifehacker photo gallery thumbnails require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click here to see the Better Flickr FIrefox extension photo gallery in a Javascript-enabled web browser.

Installation: Click the Better Flickr download button above in Firefox. A yellow bar will appear across the page that reads "Firefox prevented this site (lifehacker.com) from asking you to install software on your computer." Click the "Edit Options" button and allow lifehacker.com to ask you. Then, click on the link again. Press the Install button in the dialog box, and restart Firefox.

Usage: Once Better Flickr is installed, log into Flickr to see the enhancements. To turn a feature on or off, visit the extensions Preferences dialog and select or deselect the appropriate checkboxes. Refresh Flickr to see the changes.

Credits: Better Flickr is a compilation of work done by several Greasemonkey scripters, including doc18, Paul Bausch, steeev and Mortimer. The scripts were compiled using Anthony Lieuallen's Greasemonkey Compiler. I modified the output of the compiler to include multiple scripts with the ability to enable and disable individual features.

Bug reports and feature requests: I started off Better Flickr small with only a few scripts. Do you one you'd like to see included in a future release? Let me know in the comments. Newcomers, here's how to get a comment login. — Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Google goes Green(border) with another acquisition

Google has another aquisition under its belt and this one is a little green. Not in the environment sense, but in a secure sense.

GreenBorder, based in Mountain View, California, has developed a way to isolate each internet session from the rest of a users PC. This way threats like viruses, spyware, trojans and malware can be secluded and tossed when users close down their browser window instead of potentially infecting machines. A green border displays around safe pages, and files that are downloaded from the internet can be opened in a virtual environment so as not to infect the rest of the user's machine.

The application is available for use in both Internet Explorer and Firefox. With over 100,000 downloads since October 31st 2006, the Windows version of the software is currently available on Download.com for $29.95, but knowing Google, this will be down to free in no time at all.

There is no word yet on the final purchase price of GreenBorder.

[via] Download Squad

Access your media collection from your handheld - Mobile Minute

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[via] Download Squad

Googleholic for May 29th 2007

In this issue of Googleholic we cover:

Lost in Google's translation
Google Analytics downage
Google Maps at street level
Google + Linux = Bye bye Microsoft?
GPS on the golf course care of Google
Could Facebook be Google's next acquisition?
Memorial Day at Google overlooked

Continue reading Tuesday's Googleholic...

Continue reading Googleholic for May 29th 2007

[via] Download Squad

Microsoft adds New York 3D imagery to maps

If there's one city in the U.S. that you might actually want to see a 3D map of, it's probably New York City, because, you know, there's stuff to look at. Des Moines, Iowa, not so much.

But for some reason, when Microsoft launched 3D views of major cities for its Live Maps and Virtual Earth programs, New York was curiously absent. Today, Microsoft is rolling out 3D imagery for New York and other cities including Austin, Cincinnati, Tampa, and Savannah in the U.S, Ottawa in Canada, and Northampton, England.

If you want a sneak peak before downloading Virtual Earth, Search Engine Land points out this movie of the 3D New York imagery in action. In the meantime, Google could be preparing to announce a new "street view" for Google Maps, and the search company is also expected to announce a major expansion of its 3D building rendering for Google Earth.

[via] Download Squad

Longhorn Reloaded - what Vista might have been

You may remember Windows Longhorn as the codename for the project that eventually led to Windows Vista. But some folks out there aren't satisfied with that explanation. They say Longhorn was meant to be much more, before Microsoft changes its goals for the final release, stripping the new WinFS file system among other things.

Vista was instead built from the Windows Server 2003 kernel. But the Joejoe Group has gone back to the earlier build 4074 of Longhorn and continued development from there. The group has now released the unofficial (and unsupported by Microsoft) Longhorn Reloaded M1 Technical Refresh. The latest version can be installed on a partitioned hard drive along with your native operating system.

Longhorn Reloaded features temporarily abandoned by Microsoft like WinFS, and features that eventually found their way into Vista like Aero. So far, Microsoft hasn't sent any cease and desists to the Joejoe group, but the Longhorn Reloaded is almost certainly a violation of Microsoft's terms of service, so it'll be interesting to see how the project develops both from a technical and a legal standpoint. Right now, you can download the operating system for free. Don't expect all of your XP or Vista drivers to work though.

[via Softpedia]

[via] Download Squad

Kinkless blog offers five step series to a clean desktop

Ethan J. A. Schoonover at the Kinkless blog has just finished penning a five-step series titled Five Steps to a Kinkless Desktop. Some of you might know Mr. Schoonover and Kinkless from the AppleScript mod he provides for The OmniGroup's OmniOutliner Pro, which can turn an OO Pro document into a powerful, though somewhat clunky, GTD utility (soon to be replaced by a full-blown product called OmniFocus).
Getting back to Ethan's five step process, however: it's more of an exploration of what's wrong with both some of today's software (i.e. - the fact that most browsers default to dumping all your downloaded files to the desktop) as well as our own habits. He begins the series with step 1: The "No Mercy Cleanup, with instructions on how to get started with a broad-sweeping gesture to get things started, and rolls on through the rest of the series offering tips and tricks for not only keeping your desktop clean, but more importantly: developing good habits for getting your work done.
For those who aren't interested in hopping on the GTD bandwagon, fear not: while some of his methods and ideals are inspired by the GTD paradigm, a crash course in Getting Thing Done just to learn how to get things done is nowhere to be found. This is simply good clean tips and tricks -sometimes involving Mac OS X-specific software, mind you - for tidying up your desktop, and then keeping it that way.

[via] Download Squad

What's the meaning behind Joost's IndyCar sponsorship?

Joost seems to be at the forefront of an explosion into public realm care of one of the worlds top ad locations, IndyCar. What does this mean? Is Joost really ready to go mainstream? If anything they just stepped up their marketing efforts this past weekend with a 7th place finish.

Joost -- the so-far leading IPtv application -- is getting pretty big in the "tech" world, with thousands of users logging in to check out the services offerings, if not tuning in on a daily basis. Could it be that this Web 2.0 service is ready to launch into the mainstream marketplace where armchair beer drinking sports fans tune in online to catch their favorite shows?

Earlier this month Joost and the IndyCar Series teamed up to broadcast races online, and have seen so much success that they are planning on adding more channels in short order. Joost currently has over 150 free quality channels of programming on its roster including Comedy Central, IndyCar, MTV, Warner Bros, National Geographic, and Reuters.

[via] Download Squad

Intelliverb makes intelligent searching seem kind of stupid

As an ideal, intelligent searching makes a lot of sense. You can say "we should make internet searching more intelligent" and people would say "that's a great idea!" Then again, you could say "we should make an entire lake out of ice cream" and people would say "that's a great idea!" The point being, a lot of ideas look great on paper (Ice cream lakes, for example. Don't give up on that dream) but when you try to put them into action, things go terribly wrong. Enter Intelliverb. The company, based in Maryland, have created a full content based search engine that is driven by their own algorithm called PageScale. This system ranks throws out the old approach of ranking pages based on popularity and instead uses their complicated algorithm in an attempt to find better results. Of course, logic dictates that the most popular pages are popular because they are the most useful/helpful, and therefore probably what people are searching for. But where did logic ever get anyone?

Of course it should be noted that the company is not exactly a giant, and the engine is still just in a conceptual phase. So maybe it'll be useful someday. But right now it's almost like the company is doing it's best to over-complicate internet searching, and doing it's best to ignore the fact that the results it gives back aren't terribly helpful. Going out on a limb, one might even say that as they perfect their intelligent search algorithm it will probably just end up looking more like the engines that return results based on popularity. That'd be awesome. Although maybe we're judging this thing too quickly. Maybe it actually is intelligent. Only an incredibly smart system would recognize that someone searching for "Yahoo" is obviously not looking for yahoo.com, but instead is clearly trying to find the now retired Unofficial Yahoo Weblog that hasn't been updated since summer 2006. Well played Intelliverb, well played.

[via] Download Squad

Find a better connection with WeFi

How can "we-find" a better connection when on the go...and get it quickly? Searching for that perfect connection is such a hassle, especially if you aren't familiar with the area you're in. You can spend hours trying to activate your wireless. WeFi aims to change that through an online community; linked by wireless access.

WeFi launched a short while ago and provides its users with pinpointed WiFi locations, and connects users of that connection with one another. The tool is a downloadable client for Mac and PC users, having a similar feel to an IM application. When WeFi is launched users are presented with a map of all of the WiFi connections in the area. This includes open, locked, and restricted connections.

Adding a social aspect to the tool is the ability to see which friends are currently online by adding them to your contact list. Friends can then share locations, maps and hot spots with each other.

In the future, WeFi will be incorporating all sorts of tools that help users gauge the quality of signals including hot spot reviews. Nonetheless, this is one tool to have in your wireless connection arsenal when traveling to not only a new location, but anywhere around your town where you are not familiar with signals.

[via] Download Squad

20 temporary email services - how many do you need?

Here at Download Squad HQ, we sign up for a lot of new products and web services. And there's nothing quite as painful as putting your email address out there for yet another possible spammer.

That's where temporary email services come in. Need to enter an address to sign up for that new free service? Sign up for an email account that will expire in 10 minutes, wait for your registration info to come in, and kablooey, your temporary mailbox implodes and nobody can trace you.

While these services are great, we're not sure how useful this top 20 list of "temporary and disposable email services" is. Don't get us wrong, there's nothing particularly wrong with any of these services. But do you really need 20? The internet is full of top 5, top 10, and top 101 lists.

The top 10 Firefox extensions is one thing. But sometimes you just don't need that many options. One will do. So feel free to click on through and pick one at random. We'd recommend not reading the full list for fear you'll hurt your brain trying to decide which is actually best.

[via] Download Squad

Lifehacker Code Update: Better Gmail Firefox extension version 0.7 now available

bettergmail-0.7-update.png

Firefox only: Just uploaded the newest version of the Better Gmail Firefox extension, which adds 6 more options to our favorite web-based email solution.

Version 0.7 adds a "compose message with Gmail" link to mailto: links on web pages, an option to use fixed font on plain text messages, the ability to hide the labels box in the sidebar, a Google Calendar link which loads your GCal in the messages area in the folder list, the ability to shrink long URLs in outgoing messages with a keystroke, and an option to use larger attachment filetype icons.

All said and done, Better Gmail now rolls up 27 Greasemonkey user scripts into one extension! After the jump, take a look at the new features and grab the download.

Better Gmail version 0.7 new features

Of course these are just the new additions in this version. Head over to Better Gmail's homepage to see a comprehensive list of everything you get.

Current Better Gmail users can update to the newest version in Firefox's Tools menu -> Add-ons. Just click the "Find Updates" button. Everyone else? Hit the link below to grab the download.

Got a Greasemonkey user script you'd like to see in Better Gmail? I take requests. Let me know in the comments. —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Twitterbar: Firefox add-on of the day

Twitterbar brings Twitter to your Firefox toolbar. Released under the GPL, Twitterbar adds a tiny icon to the right hand side of the addressbar. Type your twitter into the addressbar, mouseover the icon to see how many characters you have left and click to post; It's just that simple.

Twitterbar also supports URL only tweets, simply click the icon without changing the addressbar text, the resulting tweet will automatically prepend "Currently Browsing: " to the URL.

[via] Download Squad

Food: Get some comfort food recipes at What's Cooking Grandma?

Grandmothers are generally known as the best cooks on the face of the earth, mostly because they sprinkle a little bit of love into everything they make (awww). Now you can get some of that Nana love over at What's Cooking Grandma?, a fun site with dozens of videos of various grandmothers all over the world sharing their recipes.

I have to say that I love the concept of this site; basically, I'm getting my grandma fix anytime I need one. There's so much good stuff here: Nannie Webb's apple crumble, Gran Paula's fruit slice, and Nana Ruth's lemon meringue pie - of course, all baked with love. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Shopping: Grab a bargain with deal aggregator Dealighted

If you're looking for a sweet deal, you definitely want to check out Dealighted, a sweet mashup of deals from forums like Slickdeals, Fatwallet, Gottadeal, and more.

I'm always on the lookout for a bargain, and when I found out about Dealighted, my good deal radar practically went off the charts. You'll find mostly tech-related stuff here, but there's also the random clothing, accessories, or food goodies. Do you have a favorite bargain site to share? Let's hear it in the comments. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Announcements: Happy Memorial Day, back tomorrow

Lifehacker takes her hat off to the people who sacrificed themselves for their country this Memorial Day. We'll be back with our regularly-scheduled slew of life hacks tomorrow, Tuesday.

[via] Lifehacker

"Street view" coming to Google Maps?

It looks like Google is prepping a new feature for Google Maps that will include a street-level view. While it's not clear what that view will look like, how users will navigate, or if it will be easier to use than Microsoft's version (shown to the right), Google has registered a series of domain names related to the project:

ZDNet reports that Google could be set to announce the new feature, along with 3D buildings for Google Earth at the Where 2.0 conference beginning on Tuesday.
It'll be interesting to see if Google can find a good way to make street level maps useful as well as impressive to look at. Sure, it'd be cool to virtually drive down the street and look in your office window to see if you can find yourself. But being able to search for driving directions, and then actually see the route before getting in the car could make navigating the road a whole lot easier.

[via] Download Squad

Reddit and Pligg vulnerabilities discovered

It hasn't been a good weekend for social ranking sites. Security vulnerabilities were uncovered at Digg-competitor Reddit and Pligg, a site that lets you create your own Digg clone. The security problems at each site were unrelated and have been patched.

Basically, the problem at Reddit was that the site let users upload malicious code in their comments that could grant access to your account login and other information. For the most part, Reddit users played with vulnerability by uploading benign code. The exploit has been fixed, and now any user who uploaded such code has had the text replaced with "I am a terrible person."

The Pligg vulnerability was even more serious, allowing an attacker to take over an entire website. Pligg has released a patch, and recommends anyone running a Pligg site upgrade immediately.

[via Frantic Industries]

[via] Download Squad

Run Linux apps on Windows or OS X with Lina

Next month a California-based startup plans to release an application that will allow Windows, Mac, and Linux users run Linux binaries without any modifications. Lina is a Linux virtual machine that runs allows users to run applications with the native look of their host operating system. It also lets you install applications with a mouse-click, no need to compile software from source code.

The idea is that developers will be able to create programs for one platform, and they'll be able to run on three different operating systems. This could both expand the market for open source Linux applications, and cut down work for developers. Lina will be free for open source developers, while a licensing fee will apply to commercial developers.

Lina is still a work in progress, with no support for GTK+ or USB peripherals yet. The virtual machine takes up less than 40MB when installed.

[via Slashdot and Linux Devices]

[via] Download Squad

Firefox 2.0.0.4 almost ready

Mozilla is giving our beloved Firefox one last round of testing before they release 2.0.0.4 on the general public. The update, which includes security fixes, stability improvements and enhancement to Firefox's ability to block popups.

The ad blocking patches in 2.0.0.4 will ensure that content requested through Flash or Javascript methods will be subject to the same policies as normal HTTP requests; Allowing tools like Adblock Plus to keep out even more brand-tacular content you don't want to see.

If all goes according to plan, users will begin to see the upgrade on Wednesday, May 30th.

[via] Download Squad

Fullerscreen 2.0 for Firefox: now with slideshows

Fullerscreen is a Firefox add-on that supercharges your browser's full-screen mode. While Firefox has a built in full-screen mode that pops up when you hit F11, it really just makes some of your toolbars go away. Fullerscreen makes them all disappear.

This weekend, Daniel Glazman released Fullerscreen 2.0. While the original program didn't really leave much room for improvement (what was he going to do, design a program that makes your monitor larger?) Glazman has added a new feature: slideshow support.

If you visit a page that's formatted for slideshows, when you press F11, Firefox will ask if you want to enter slideshow mode. You'll then be able to navigate a simple presentation with your keyboard's arrow keys. Slideshows are pretty easy to design, and in fact, you can watch a slideshow that describes the process. But unless Fullerscreen becomes fully integrated into a future Firefox release, I can't see many web designers actually creating slideshows designed for this particular add-on.

[via Linux.com]

[via] Download Squad

Japan: go ahead and post TV shows online, just pay royalties

How do you get people to stop posting television clips and full episodes to the internet? You probably don't. But a government panel in Japan has an interesting take on that idea: don't try to stop internet pirates, just regulate them.

The Intellectual Property Rights Policy Work Group is expected to issue its recommendation this week. If adopted, anyone would be allowed to post television programs online without permission of the content owner. But anyone who uploads such video would be required by law to pay a royalty to the content owner.

Under Japanese law, television rights belong not just to a network or studio, but also to the actors, making it very difficult to get permission from every stakeholder to redistribute programming. The move isn't likely to be popular with content producers, since it limits their control over how their material is distributed, and takes away their ability to negotiate royalty fees.

But it makes a certain amount of sense. As the RIAA and MPAA in the U.S. are well aware, going after pirates is an expensive and time consuming process. Sure, it might be almost as difficult to get everyone who is uploading video to pay royalties as it is to sue them into oblivion. But such a law could be a start. It would allow YouTube, for example, to begin charging fees to users who upload copyrighted content, both reducing the amount of pirated material online and increasing revenues for content holders.

[via Ars Technica]

[via] Download Squad

Meetings: Plan global meetups with the World Clock Meeting Planner

If you need to make a call around the world, set up a meeting, etc., use the World Clock Meeting Planner to help you figure out what time(s) work best for everyone involved.

You can set up times for up to six different cities; you can also delineate just by time zones if that works better for you. For anyone who has relatives scattered across the globe, this is a potential peacemaker - no more getting jarred out of sleep at 4 AM to talk about your Auntie Beth's trip to Maui. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Video Demonstration: Make your own air horn in five minutes

Make an air horn with a balloon, a film canister, and a straw in less than five minutes.

Seriously, this is like the easiest project ever, folks - and just think how well this homemade airhorn will go over in in ~~church~~ that baseball game this weekend! — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Weekend Project: Use binders to organize your magazines

If you, like me, have stacks of magazines laying around your house that need to be reined in, you might want to try ReadyMade Blog's simple (yet oh so effective) cheap and easy organizational method.

All you need is a few binders, scissors, and string - plus a good amount of time (this will really depend on how many magazines you have). It's a really nice way to get all your piles of National Geographic dating back to 1989 in order; plus, if you really want to go the whole hog, you can even decorate the binders to celebrate your newfound GTD project. Or not. Either way, you're organized, and that's a good thing. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Productivity: Ten ways to organize yourself with Backpack

We're all about the Backpack love here at Lifehacker, so when Web Worker Daily wrote up ten different ways to use Backpack more effectively, it made me squeal with productive glee.

You can use Backpack for a myriad of incredibly useful things, and they've nailed pretty much all of the uses I've tapped Backpack for: to-do lists, reminders, project planning, etc. However, I'd be interested to see if you handy dandy Lifehackers out there have come up with even more killer ways to Backpack your life into submission, so let's get crackin' in the comments section. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Job: How to predict you're going to get fired

Financial blog Wise Bread has come up with twenty different questions to ask yourself that might let you know a pink slip is coming your way. Some of the more intriguing are:

Are you no longer in the loop about, well, anything?

Has your company recently been sold or merged?

Do people whisper more, or does the conversation change as you approach?

Gosh, just reading these made me a wee bit nervous. If you've had to deal with the whole firing or laid off thing, what were some of the clues that helped you figure it out ahead of time? Thoughts in the comments. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Career: How to write a resignation letter

Quitting your job - for whatever reason - can be smoothed out a bit with a good resignation letter, and job help site Emurse.com has come up with a few "I quit!" letter scenarios for you.

Basically, resignation letters serve to keep bridges from being burned. They're also a good way to tie up loose ends, leave on a good note, and keep everything nice and legal. What's your best advice for quitting a job? Let us know in the comments. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Home: How to keep your garbage disposal happy

WikiHow has some practical advice for keeping your garbage disposal in working order.

Tips include turning the water on when you run the disposal, avoiding stuffing large items down in there, and dropping some ice in your disposal once in a while (it sharpens the blades). Oh, and FYI? It's not a good idea to drop unpopped popcorn kernels in your disposal - those little puppies will bust it real good (and I'm not speaking hypothetically on this one, unfortunately). — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

How To: Learn the eight essential tie knots

Want to learn how to tie one on? Try Ben Silver's eight essential tie knots tutorials.

We've definitely posted about how to tie a tie before here at the Lifehacker mansion, so most of this information might be old hat. However, if you would like to venture out of the tie status quo and try a Prince Albert, a Four-In-Hand, or a Windsor on for size, then today is your lucky day. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Happiness: Get more out of life five different ways

Productivity blogger John Wesley has come up with five different ways to make the most of your life. They include:

Live below your means

Educate yourself

Develop lasting personal relationship

It's easy to get so caught up in busyness that we lose our focus on what will really bring us the most happiness in the long run. This is a pretty good list, but do you see anything missing (chocolate, for starters)? Let us know in the comments. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Travel: Find playgrounds for your roadtrips with Waymarking

Got a roadtrip coming up? You might want to use Waymarking to plan out attractions along the way, such as public playgrounds for the kinder:

Go to Public Playgrounds.

Enter a zip code under "Address Search" (upper right) to find some nearby playgrounds

When you click on an item, it gives you the GPS coordinates so you can map it in Google Maps, or you can drive directly to it if you have a GPS device.

You can also use Waymarking to find other fun stuff, such as museums, oddly shaped buildings (yes, really), libraries, etc. — Wendy Boswell

[via] Lifehacker

Design an education game for the OLPC

How do you get national governments to commit to ordering hundreds of thousands of your new low-cost computer for "educational" purposes? Put more games on it, of course.

The One Laptop Per Child Project is hosting a "game jam" in Needham, Massachusetts from June 8th through the 10th. The goal is to get small teams of game designers together to create open source games that:

Take advantage of the XO laptop's mesh networking capability
Use the built in camera
Use the XO's tablet mode (it's not a touch-screen, but there are joystick-like buttons on the side
Oh yeah, and educational games, and applications that let kids create their own games

Right now, the OLPC project has about 2.5 million orders for the XO laptop, which is a bit shy of the 3 million goal the developers had set for themselves in order to begin shipping by September. The laptops might look a bit more attractive if there's more software designed to run on them, such as games that teach young children to read or do math.

[via PC World]

[via] Download Squad

Announcements: Introducing guest editor Kyle Pott

While Adam takes a much-deserved week-long vacation, join me in welcoming our newest guest editor, Kyle Pott.

If Kyle's name sounds familiar to you, it's because we've featured several posts written by Kyle in the past. Kyle's an active tech writer at NewLinuxUser.com, OfficeTweaks.com and Petri.co.il, and his Lifehacker commenter alias is stevejones.

Welcome aboard, Kyle! —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Linux Tip: Re-theme your "sudo" applications

~~Linux~~ Ubuntu desktop users: If you're constantly creating "sudo" sessions in Nautilus (or other applications), it's very easy to confuse your sudo windows with your regular windows. This often results in accidentally opening read-only versions of your system files -- very frustrating! A quick way to visually separate your simultaneous sessions, is to assign a different theme to your sudo applications. To do this, open a terminal and type the following:

sudo gnome-theme-manger

Pick a new theme, and any time you launch an application using sudo, you will be able to clearly see the difference between your sudo windows and your regular windows. Check out the difference in the Nautilus sessions shown above (the sudo window is shown in brown on the right, and the regular user window is shown in blue on the left). What other Ubuntu/Linux tips do you have? Let's hear 'em in the comments. — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Featured Mac Download: Control iTunes from the menubar with You Control: Tunes

Mac OS X only: Freeware app You Control: Tunes controls iTunes from the menu bar with easy access to your music library.

Although You Control: Tunes forces you to cough up your email address to register before you can start using it, its expansive customization options (location, colors, hotkeys, fonts, and size) make it an awesome, fully-customizable addition to your menu bar. Also, as is shown in the screenshot above, You Control: Tunes unobtrusively overlays the upcoming song, artist, album, and other miscellaneous information for your listening pleasure. You Control: Tunes runs an engine that interacts with iTunes, so you can listen to your music without ever really seeing the iTunes interface. You Control: Tunes is a free download for Mac only. — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Web As Desktop: Create an online desktop with DesktopTwo

DesktopTwo (mentioned before in the comments) is an online desktop ("webtop") that is robust and very easy to use. Currently in beta, DesktopTwo is chocked full of useful features including an easy to use 1GB hard drive, RSS reader, a POP mail reader, MP3 player, calendar, IM, and more. DesktopTwo is free, flash-based, and very responsive. If you're looking for an easy way to play your MP3s anywhere, you'll be up and running in about 2 minutes with DesktopTwo.

DesktopTwo has a few bright spots like full-screen mode, desktop search, extremely easy bulk uploading of files (just select a group and upload) and an impressive MP3 player that will stream your music skip-free and lag-free. Now for the downsides.

DesktopTwo doesn't save your session when you leave, and the MP3 player does not let you subscribe to podcasts. Also, DesktopTwo has a heavy list of requirements including Flash, Acrobat Reader, Java, pop-ups must be enabled, and you have to punch open more than a few ports (80, 5222, 8888, and 11500 - 11600) if you're running a firewall. I've been impressed with DesktopTwo the last few weeks I've been using it. Even with the heavy list of requirements I had absolutely no problem getting DesktopTwo going. What's your favorite "webtop"? Let us know in the comments. — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Microsoft Outlook: Stop automatically sending read receipts

Sick of big brother checking up on you to see when you read his email? Hidden deep within the dark soul of ~~Lookout~~ Outlook 2003 is the ability to disable automatically sending read receipts. From the Tools menu, Options >> Tracking Options, choose "Never send a read receipt."

Once that's done, Outlook will never send read receipts or prompt you prior to sending a read receipt again. — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Stuff We Like: Under-the-desk Pedal Exerciser

If mounting your desk to a treadmill isn't an option, you might want the less obtrusive and less expensive Pedal Exerciser.

Stow this wheel-less, stationary "bicycle" under your desk and quietly pedal to your heart's content. No longer will you annoy your coworkers while cycling at the office . Coming in at a reasonable $43, this bike will turn you into your office's Lance Armstrong in no time. The Pedal Exerciser can also be used on the upper body if you want to go completely overboard and turn your office into a gym. Check out some more workouts you can do at work. — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

How To: Add an HTML signature to Gmail

Techie Derek Punsalan describes how to add an attractive HTML email signature to your outgoing Gmail messages using our very own Better Gmail Firefox extension. Aw, shucks. Thanks, John! —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

It's The Little Things: Small changes bring big improvements

Reader Dan writes in with a "Lifehacker meets Malcolm Gladwell" article in the NY Times last week, which describes how small, incremental changes can yield huge results. See more on how to practice your personal Kaizen (continuous slow improvement.) Thanks, Dan!

[via] Lifehacker

Workspaces: 10 multi-monitor Mac desktops to drool over

In the spirit of cool workspaces, the Glenn Wolsey weblog gathered a collection of 10 fantastic multi-monitor, Mac-themed workspaces. While these workspaces aren't part of the official Coolest Workspace Contest (so don't try voting for them) they are definitely worth a look. Surprisingly, Al Gore's ridiculously awesome office setup missed the cut. I think having one or more Apple Cinema Displays can turn practically any office into a top 10 in my book. Agreed? — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

It All Comes Together: MacGyver roundup

[via] Lifehacker

Google Calendar: GCal now available for mobile phones

A mobile, web-based version of Google Calendar is now available. It's not as slick as Gmail for Mobile - you can view your calendar but not edit it - and you've got to be online with your mobile web browser to access it. Here's how to add and view events via SMS.

[via] Lifehacker

Linux Tip: Record streaming radio with Streamripper and streamtuner

Streamripper and streamtuner are Linux applications that work in tandem, allowing you to listen and record streaming radio.

Streamtuner is a basic application used primarily for playing internet radio from any number of sources including Xiph, basic.ch, punkcast.com, Google Stations, Live365, and SHOUTcast. Streamripper, on the other hand, sits stealthily in the terminal recording and parsing all of the music pipped through your system into MP3s. Leaving Streamripper running all day will rack you up a healthy dose of your favorite tunes. What's particularly nice about the combination of Streamripper and streamtuner is that once you choose a station to record, you can exit streamtuner leaving only a tiny, non-obtrusive terminal window for Streamripper.

Note that Streamripper doesn't do a perfect job parsing your songs into individual MP3s. Unfortunately, there tends to be a few seconds of overlap at the beginning and/or end of the songs. If this bothers you, you can always edit your newly recorded songs with Audacity. Ubuntu users can grab Streamripper and streamtuner out of the repositories with this command:

sudo apt-get install streamripper streamtuner

Other Linux users should grab the appropriate package for your distro at the streamtuner and Streamripper homepages.

Don't worry Windows users, you're not left out in the cold. Stationripper lets you do the same thing. — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Timesavers: TextExpander tells you how much time you've saved

You already know we're big fans of text substitution as a timesaver around here, but it's great to get actual numbers on that. Our favorite Mac text substitution app TextExpander shows you how much time you've saved using it: In TextExpander's "Register" pane, the number of snippets expanded, the number of characters saved and the number of hours you've saved using it appears.

When I hit one hour of time saved, TextExpander popped up, prompting me to register. One hour of my life is well worth the $30 license fee, so I went ahead and purchased it even though TextExpander works fully without a key. (Great sales pitch, TextExpander.) When Adam gets home I'm going to bug him for this feature in Texter.

How much time have you saved with text substitution? Let us know in the comments. —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Featured Linux Download: Add screen actions with Brightside

Linux only: Open-source app Brightside adds reactivity to the corners and edges of your screen (in Gnome) so you can execute commands using only the mouse.

Brightside offers a combination of the functionality of Mac OS X apps, VirtueDesktops and Active Screen Corners. Almost exactly the way Active Screen Corners allows you to attach custom commands to your mouse gestures in Mac OS X, Brightside brings this awesome feature to Linux.

Softpedia does an excellent job detailing Brightside's functionality:

Brightside provides 'edge flipping' to allow you to switch to the adjacent workspace simply by pressing your mouse against the edge of the screen. Brightside also allows you to assign configurable actions to occur while you rest the mouse in a corner of the screen.

Ubuntu users can download Brightside out of the repositories with the following command:

sudo apt-get install brightside

Debian users can grab a Debian version, and all other distros can head to Softpedia to get a generic version of Brightside (a free download). — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Drawing: Draw floorplans, diagrams and charts online with Cumulate Draw

Previously-mentioned online drawing tool Cumulate Draw's newest version adds lots of handy features, like network and floor plan shapes.

Quickly throw together a network diagram, flowchart, org chart, or rearrange your furniture using office (and kitchen and bath) floorplan items. Cumulate Draw's interface is rich with click and drag features to enlarge, rotate and re-position items. Click on the image above for a quick and dirty chart I threw together in a few minutes with Cumulate Draw. Thanks, Chris! —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Collaboration Tools: Online word processing for groups with Writewith

Webapp Writewith simplifies word processing for groups, with in-browser document editing and the ability to share and collaborate on documents with other users.

Writewith boasts a chunk of impressive features that Google Docs doesn't offer, like being able to see users' avatars when they are viewing or editing a document, assigning tasks and deadlines to fellow editors, simultaneously editing documents, embedded chatting, comprehensive history reports of all changes, revision comparisons, and the ability to upload or export documents at-will. Import and export the following file formats to Writewith, too: DOC, RTF, ODT, HTML, and TXT, and it's free to register and use. Check out the video demo courtesy of the Writewith folks for a feature rundown. — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Bookmarklet: Refresh Netvibes without reloading the whole session

Reader Andrew writes in with a helpful bookmarklet that reloads your Netvibes home page modules without refreshing the entire page.

Drag this link [ Netvibes Refresh ] to your browser's bookmarks toolbar, and when you're on your Netvibes page, click it to refresh the modules. Andrew says:

It's not rocket science, but it's handy and it saves reloading the entire Netvibes session, which can be a bummer if you're like me and you use Meebo in a Netvibes tab as it kills your IM session.

Thanks, Andrew! —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Tweaks: Speed up Adobe Reader 8

All you want to do is view that PDF, but Adobe Reader takes forever to load, especially on an older PC. If an Adobe Reader alternative isn't a possibility for you, the Arsgeek weblog's got a quick speedup tip for Adobe Reader 8's excruciatingly slow load time. Just remove the "accessability.api" file.

To remove this 'feature' simply navigate to your %Program Files%\Adobe\Reader 8.0\reader\plug_ins folder, and rename (delete, copy elsewhere) the 'accessability.api' file. The same file exists, but in slightly different locations, in older version of Acrobat Reader.

Arsgeek warns that removing the accessability.api file will take with it Adobe's ability to read documents out-loud. I'm willing to trade Adobe reading my documents out-loud like Ben Stein for the increase in speed. Goodbye, accessability.api! — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

How To: Use GCal as your todo list

Reader David's a big Google Calendar user and writes in with how he uses it as a task manager:

To get around Google's lack of ToDo list, I make use of the drag and drop and colour tags in Google Cal. I have one calendar called "Todo" (in red) and one called "Done" (in brown). Then I create events in ToDo, assigning the tasks to days, and move them when necessary. After I complete a task, if the event details I move it to the Done calendar so that it shows up in a different colour. This way I get to keep my Todo list with my other Google services plus get the notifications to my Gmail (reminders to complete a task, and my daily agenda email).

I like this system because arguably every one of your todo's should have a date attached to it. The only problem is that if you didn't complete yesterday's items, you have to manually drag and drop the item to today, but that's a kind of built-in "do I really need to do this?" review. Plus your "Done" calendar serves as a great accomplishment log, too. Thanks, David! —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Featured Windows Download: Record any audio with MP3myMP3 Recorder 2.0

Windows only: Freeware app MP3myMP3 records audio from any source piping through your PC.

Record internet radio and save to mp3 or wav. Record streaming audio from the Internet, microphone, or any other source for that matter. MP3myMP3 Recorder works directly with your system sound card - if you can hear it, you can record it!

Select any input source and MP3myMP3 Recorder can save it to WAV or MP3 formats. Since it doesn't restrict the length of your recordings, MP3myMP3 is an ideal candidate for turning documents into MP3s, recording Skype calls, or digitizing cassettes among other things. MP3myMP3 Recorder is a free download for Windows only. — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Why Didn't We Think Of This Sooner: Digitize books while you prove you're human with reCAPTCHA

reCAPTCHA's a clever way to kill two birds with one stone: have your web site users prove they're human and help digitize books all in one shot. Doing this would reduce my indignation about CAPTCHA's by 97%.

[via] Lifehacker

How To: Embed any web page inside Thunderbird

Blogger Clint writes up a nifty way to load up his TiddlyWiki (or any web page) in Thunderbird automatically.

Simply set the "Mail Start Page" to the URL you want to see when you start T-bird, whether it's Lifehacker.com or your TiddlyWiki. The bad news is sites that require logins to view your info - like Google Calendar or Tada Lists - don't work, so that's why this trick is well-suited to your locally-saved TiddylyWiki. Here's more on how to Get things done with TiddlyWiki. Thanks, Ivan! —Gina Trapani

[via] Lifehacker

Featured Mac Download: Drag and drop zip archives with YemuZip

Mac OS X only: Freeware app YemuZip is a graphical interface for creating zip files on the fly.

Create zip files using a drag and drop with YemuZip. Before creating the zip archive, YemuZip forces you to choose whether to create the file in "PC compatible" or "Mac specific" modes. (The Mac format will maintain the integrity of your metadata.) But don't worry, the files created using PC compatibility mode are totally compatible with your Mac, too. If YemuZip isn't for you, you can always create zip folders using a single keystroke. Yemuzip is a free download for Mac only. — Kyle Pott

[via] Lifehacker

Tgif: This week's best posts

Ok kids, we're skipping out early today to get started on 3-day weekend fun early. To all of you in the U.S., enjoy your Memorial Day weekend. Don't forget: you can get once-weekly notification of Lifehacker's best post using our Highlights feed. If that's not quite enough, instead grab our daily top stories feed.

This week's best posts include:

Exclusive Lifehacker Download: Trick out Google Reader with Better GReader
"...welcome GReader tweaks like maximizing the viewing area, skipping Google's default subscribe mechanism, and adding keyboard shortcuts all rolled up into a single Firefox extension, called Better GReader."
Top 10 Mac OS X tweaks
"OS X ships with some odd and sometimes inconvenient default settings, and it's got a few nifty little perks for power users who enable them, no third-party software required."
Automatically upload a folder's photos to Flickr
"...a cross-platform script called uploadr.py can watch a folder of your choice for new pictures, then automatically upload them to your Flickr account."
Useful search plugins for Firefox and IE7
"One of the most convenient features of modern browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 is the built-in search box in the upper-right hand corner. But besides the standard Google, Yahoo and Amazon options, do you have the search plugins you need?"
Coolest Workspace Contest: Music and miscellany
"Today's workspaces have a common musical thread, but overall they represent a mix of the best workspaces that didn't quite fit in with our other categories."
Amplify your car remote signal with your head
"This video shows you how to extend your car alarm remote's range by holding it to your head."
Mount remote file systems with MacFusion
"...a friendly user interface for mounting remote file systems over FTP or SSH using MacFUSE."
Free your Mac of Microsoft Office with NeoOffice
"...a free, full-featured office suite for your Mac based on OpenOffice.org."
Al Gore rocks multiple monitors, could stand an inbox
"Al Gore's got a sweet multi-monitor setup, but wouldn't win any coolest workspace contests."
Allocate your money in envelopes with Budget
"Your grandparents may have used the envelope method by distributing their money into real paper envelopes marked with the name of the expense; i.e., electricity, food, rent, etc."

[via] Lifehacker

Want a job at Google? Don't forget your GPA

If you're interviewing for that dream job at Google -- like Amazon evangelist Jeff Barr -- don't forget your GPA. Jeff writes about his interview in Mountain View, "They were almost ready to make the "can't refuse" offer but the process became bogged down when I couldn't recall my college GPA. Given that I earned my degree in 1985 and have been earning a living by writing code since I was 15 or 16, this didn't seem all that essential."

Jeff goes on to make a strong point of irony, "Funny thing is, I now have several more emails in my inbox from other Google recruiters. After reading these emails it appears that they don't know that I interviewed there last year! Perhaps they don't have this data in searchable form. Could that be?"

Given the chance, we'd hire him.

[via] Download Squad

Spout: social networking to find new films

Have you ever sat down and wondered what would happen if you were to crossbreed MySpace with NetFlix? If you have, perhaps it might be time to re-take a biology course or two you freak. How the hell did you plan on forcing two internet services/sites to mate? You need a hobby, you weirdo. But if you managed to get past the obvious physical hangups and somehow allowed yourself to believe those two could have a lovechild, it might have looked something like Spout. While the name of this crossbreed is nowhere near as giggle-inducing as the fabled Beefalo, Spout is a lot more useful to the average person.

Spout users each have a personal profile, which is dynamically updated as the users give their opinions on movies. These views are used to build lists of recommended movies for users based on their interests. They've been operating for some time now, but have been adding new features. Most notably a feature called Moviemind. It works by taking a movie title and then finding other movies for you that are similar. The social networking side allows you to meet up with other users who have similar tastes, and mine them for new movie ideas. You know, things that people used to do with real friends. Remember those things? Real friends? No? You're right, the internet knows you better than your real friends ever did anyway. Take its advice.

[via] Download Squad

Get that HDR look in Linux with Qtpfsgui

Before you ask: no, the headline is not a typo - Qtpfsgui is an app for the Linux users in the crowd that brings the oh-so hyper-realistic High Dynamic Range look to images without the need for a larger app like GIMP. However, Qtpfsgui isn't an image editor, per se - it only provides the specific tools for merging different exposures of the same image into an HDR image, so if you were shooting by hand or need to re-align one of your shots for some reason, Qtpfsgui is not the tool for those particular jobs.

Qtpfsgui works with JPEG, TIFF and RAW formats, but be careful if you edit any of these images before bringing them to Qtpfsgui, as it relies on the exposure data in the EXIF tags to properly HDR-ify your images.

Nathan Willis has a nice writeup at Linux.com covering more of what Qtpfsgui is capable of, otherwise you can snag your own copy from its home at SourceForge.

Thanks again FreeRhino

[via] Download Squad

Googleholic for May 25th 2007

In this issue of Googleholic we cover:

Google's software commitment
Google's FCC radio auctions
$950 per share transparency
Google Seattle grows
Google is entering the genomics business
Google Wireless
Google is the next Google

Continue reading Friday's Googleholic...

Continue reading Googleholic for May 25th 2007

[via] Download Squad

Internet Archive has a Wayback bookmarklet

Many enthusiastic web surfers know that the venerable Internet Archive is the home of the Wayback Machine, a tool that allows you to go back in time with a particular website to see what previous versions looked like. What we hadn't noticed until today is that the Wayback Machine has a bookmarklet you can use when viewing any site to quickly check if there are archived versions of it. The 'marklet can be had farther down on the Wayback Machine site, and the convenience it adds should prove useful to surfers who are curious about the history of a particular site.

[via] Download Squad

What does the future hold for Ubuntu?

Ubuntu begins shipping on Dell PCs today -- with $50 knocked off the price tag when compared to the same model with Windows Vista -- it's a hallmark day that comes after years of waiting but, will it really make a difference? There has never been a desktop Linux version available from a major hardware manufacturer until now. (Hint: Linspire doesn't count. Michael Robertson did more to damage Desktop Linux than he ever did to further it) In the past, hardware companies have fiddled with server versions of the OS but, that's an entirely different animal; Servers are shipped to staff who know what to do with them, desktops are shipped to grandma's house at Christmas time.

The buzz so far is incredibly positive. PC World just placed a 100 Best Products crown on Ubuntu's head, Wired is asking, "Is Ubuntu Linux right for you, too?" and, the only pessimistic coverage I can dig up is this piece, which asks if Ubuntu's support operations are ready for the big leagues and real n00b endusers.

Operating System adoption is a Catch 22 game; Software makers don't want to release product for a platform that isn't leading or gaining mindshare but, it's hard to gain mindshare without a significant crop of commercial software available on your platform. Ubuntu, and Mark Shuttleworth, may be the first to truly capitalize on the huge trove of good-to-great open source desktop software out there as a springboard to the attention of commercial software vendors. Toshiba is already rumored to be mulling the idea of offering Ubuntu on its line of notebooks and, just a few more breakaways could catapult Canonical's Feisty Fawn into the annals of history, and the living rooms of many a consumer.

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[via] Download Squad

Google brings Calendar to mobile devices

Tired of waiting until you get to your office or home to check appointments in Google Calendar? Wait no more, Google has just added the ability to make Calendar items available on mobile devices.

Google's Calendar for mobile devices can be activated by visiting "calendar.google.com" from your phone. When logged in, you can see upcoming events with dates, times, locations, descriptions and even guest lists. Will we soon see a mobile application for this? Maybe, given Gmail's track record.

Needless to say, you might not have to fiddle around with plugins and extensions to sync Google Calendar with Outlook from now on. Just remember to watch your data rates if you don't have unlimited service on your mobile.

[via] Download Squad

Legal copying of HD-DVDs on the way?

As it currently stands, copying your HD-DVDs to make backups is a grey legal area. It's legal for you to make the backup, but the HD-DVD disc you're copying is encrypted as a 'security' measure and, thanks to the DMCA it's illegal for you to unencrypt it in anything but an "approved device" and -- surprise of surprises -- no "approved devices" have the ability to write out that backup copy.

That could change. According to Macworld the content companies may be ready to bend just a little, adding a "managed copy" provision to the licensing of AACS -- the HD DVD content protection system -- which would allow for homemade copies, albeit at a higher cost.

"The idea is that the content companies could charge a premium according to how many copies are allowed, Ayers said. It remains a possibility that consumers, if given the chance to make three copies of "Spider-man 2" could give those copies to their neighbors, which technically would qualify as low-volume piracy."

Given the fragility of DRM in general, and growing consumer awareness and dissatisfaction with the limits DRM attempts to impose, this move could be seen in one of two ways. Either the content producers are starting to realize that home consumers are not the source of piracy problems, and probably shouldn't be alienated given that they are the source of revenue driving the industry -- or -- This is simply a stop-gap measure being implemented by an industry who sees the walls are crumbling, but is powerless to truly understand why. Our cynicism tends to push us towards the latter answer but, maybe that's just our skeptical nature?

[via] Download Squad

EU says Google may be violating privacy laws

The European Union's data protection advisory group sent a letter to Google this month asking why the company keeps records of user searches for up to two years.

The underlying issue here is whether Google and other search engines are violating users' privacy rights by maintaining search records, even if those records are used to improve the user experience by offering personalized search options. European Union investigators are also looking at the way Yahoo! and Microsoft store data.

Google is well aware that there are privacy concerns associated with its retention of search data, and is taking steps to anonymize data that is kept for more than 18 to 24 months. In other words, for about two years, the company will be able to track a particular user's search results. After that, the data will still be available, but there will be no way to associate it with a specific user.

[via] Download Squad

Pay it square - nice tool to recoup your money

Did they pay? Who still owes money? Where do I stuff all this cash while I wait for everyone to pay-up? Here are some questions you probably don't want to deal with but since you volunteered to be a group treasurer, team manager or money person, you're stuck with.

PayItSquare might be of some help to people like you who are collecting and recording amounts of cash for a group. The beauty of it is people can pay you online via their credit card or a paypal account and you get paid immediately through a paypal account.

We asked Brian Anderson, the founder of PayItSquare, what the service fee was. Here's his response:

Continue reading Pay it square - nice tool to recoup your money

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[via] Download Squad

The new face of Facebook

Facebook has made a major step forward with the launch of Facebook Platform, which promises to make the uber-addictive Facebook even more pervasive. The long and short of it? Facebook has opened their API to developers in a big way, allowing enterprising comapnies and individuals to develop tools for use within Facebook's world, and which can tap Facebook's ever growing and enormous list of users.

What does it mean to the Facebook addicted non-developer? You'll be able to do more with your facebook account, and all in a way sanctioned and sanitized my Facebook's -- so far -- rather intelligent management. A far cry from MySpace, where third party add-ons are banned and re-allowed so often we've mostly stopped bothering to care.

So far the list of new Facebook toys is pretty sweet. The ability to add in content from Twitter, Box, iLike, Forbes and even frivolities like HotorNot should make the FB rank right up there with crack cocaine on many people's web radar. In a recent talk Facebook's creator Mark Zuckerberg claimed that not only does facebook add 100,000 users a day, but half of the users they have come back to the site every single day, racking up 50 pageviews per head for a total of 40 billion views per month. Make the site any more addicitive and the DEA or the ATF will have to step in and initiate steps to list it as a controlled substance.

[via] Download Squad

Top 12 ways to overcome PC disaster

PC World has put together a round-up of ideas to save you from the worst things that could happen to you. These end-game scenarios include:

These are some of the most frequent problems that an IT technician will be asked to deal with, but if you don't happen to have an IT person to beg and offer your life-savings, PC World has put together articles for each issue that may arise to help you out of your predicament.

You may want to bookmark these articles, or print them out and store them in a firesafe, just so when your PC takes a nose-dive, you'll have something to fall back on. There are a few gems that are not so common knowledge for your triumph over the untimely death of man's "new best friend" (that's the computer if you haven't had enough coffee yet today). Good luck, you're going to need it.

[via] Download Squad

YouTube plugin for AppleTV

YouTube is quickly becoming the next Doom. Whereas a consumer device (cellphone, PDA, internet appliance) was once judged as truly geek-worthy when someone hacked it to play Doom, now you know your device has arrived when someone hacks a way to play YouTube videos on it.

A Series of Tubes is the latest in a long line of AppleTV hacks for those not afraid of voiding their warranties. You'll need to install Perian on your AppleTV, and you'll have to load the program using Patchstick or ATVLoader. In other words, this hack is not for beginners.

So far, the plugin lets you download and view YouTube videos. A future release will let you stream them from the web.

[via] Download Squad

Send large files with Outlook and YouSendIt

YouSendIt, MailBigFile and a host of other web services have popped up due to the simple fact that most email services won't let you send really large attachments. While Google upped its email attachment limit to 20GB this week, if you've got a 100MB file, you're still better off using a third party service.

But opening a browser window or tab and waiting for a file to upload just isn't that much fun (or reliable if you accidentally close the tab before your upload is done). YouSendIt recently released a beta version of a plugin for Outlook 2003 that will let you send large files almost as honest to goodness email attachment. No web browser required.

You can set Outlook to use YouSendIt for every file, to ask before sending every file, or for every file over a specified size. YouSentIt lets you send files up to 100MB for free, or if you have a paid account (starting at $5 per month), you can send files up to 2GB in size.

[via Digital Inspiration]

[via] Download Squad