Start.io delivers a customizable start page engine

Start.io is an engine for creating customized start pages, with the added bonus of letting you know when your favorite sites have updated. It comes equipped with a drag-and-droppable interface for adjusting and grouping your links, and several nice-looking preloaded layouts to choose from. On top of that, the CSS is entirely customizable, so you can modify existing layouts, or build your own from scratch.

The first thing I wondered about Start.io was why it just lets you know that one of your links has updated, instead of using RSS to show you exactly what the updates were. The answer (explained on the about page) makes a lot of sense: you don't come to your start page when you want to read a bunch of RSS feeds. You go there when you want to click through to the sites themselves, not Google Reader or your standalone RSS app. If you want an RSS reader as your start page, there are other services you can check out, but I haven't see a complete start page engine like Start.io anywhere else.

What's your start page? Do you like Start.io, or do you have a better alternative? Let us know in the comments.

Google introduces better related terms and longer snippets

We report on a lot of new software and projects from Google, so sometimes it's easy to take it for granted that search is still one of the things they do best. Google searches just got even better, too, with useful improvements to the way the search engine finds related concepts and an increase in the length of search result "snippets" for longer searches.

Longer snippets are something I've wanted for a long time. I hate it when I get really close to finding the entirety of the information I need without actually having to click through to a result, but the snippet comes up one word short. That frustration should be greatly decreased with longer snippets that attempt to show more of your search terms together. This new feature kicks in when your search contains 4 or more words.

The improvements to related terms mean that Google can now more accurately suggest other searches that relate to your search terms. The example they give is searching for principles of physics, which now suggests searches for things like quantum mechanics, special relativity and the big bang. This should make narrowing down your results and finding what you want on Google even easier.

Grotrian Pianolina - Time Waster

Download Squad is a strange place to read about German piano builders, but when their site has a time waster as good as this one, we can't ignore it. I don't know whether Grotrian makes good pianos, but I know that their Pianolina game is a great way to kill some time. It's a sort of open-ended music composition toy, where different colored blocks represent different notes that sound when they bounce off a wall or another block.

To get you started, the Pianolina has a few pre-programmed compositions by the likes of Beethoven and Satie. These quickly go awry, though, when things inevitably start bumping into one another. If you let them play long enough, you wouldn't recognize the melodies anymore. When you switch to compose mode, and start experimenting with your own composition, half the fun is in hearing it gradually break down. Pianolina may be a time waster, but at least it's a creative one.

Hulu plans to go international

Online video site Hulu has become one of the most popular video portals in the internet over the past year. It showcases high quality content from major television and film studios with fewer commercials than you'd see if you watched the same programs on TV. But Hulu has faced one major hurdle: The company doesn't have deals in place to distribute that content outside of the US, which is why international users are typically met with a message telling them that videos aren't available when they visit the site.

Hulu's been planning to go global for a while now, but it looks like the company could be a bit closer. PaidContent reports that the company has hired a new vice president to oversee international operations.

It seems likely that one of the first areas outside the US that Hulu will be available will be the UK. What I'd love to see is a reciprocal relationship, where in addition to streaming US content to British viewers, Hulu could work out a deal to distribute BBC content in the US.

PirateBay's IPREDATOR VPN service to debut on April 1

It's no April Fools' prank. On April 1st - the same day that Sweden's Draconian new intellectual property legislation (IPRED) goes into effect - the Pirate Bay will debut their new IPREDATOR VPN service.

Where IPRED aims to make it easier for copyright holders to get their hands on ISP log files to investigate suspected transgressors. With IPREDATOR, a user can give "the man" a swift kick in his digital groin and sneak away unscathed while he's doubled over in agony.

No log files are maintained, and all traffic is tunneled, making it more difficult to track activity to a specific user.

Initially, the service will be opened to a select group of 500 testers. Once the kinks have been worked out, IPREDATOR will be available world-wide for a modest 5 Euro monthly fee.

Those who are interested and want to roll the dice in hopes of getting in early can register for the beta at ipredator.se.

[via TorrentFreak]

Drop.io launches Conference.io real-time collaboration in 2 clicks

Last week file sharing service drop.io launched a new real-time feature that allow users to chat with one another at a drop site. Today the company is fleshing out the real-time features by adding support for free conference calls. This means you can set up a virtual space for a conference at a moment's notice, chat with participants, talk on the phone, record or listen to voicemails, and share files all from one location.

Here's how it works. Just hop on over to conference.io and name your chat room. If you want to add any files you can do it here, but you don't have to. Click the drop it button and you're good to go. You can set an administrator password for the room, but again you don't have to.

Conference.io isn't the first service available that lets you set up a web-based chat room in a matter of seconds. But it's the first one that I'm aware of that also supports file uploads, embedding images in chat, and telephone conference calling.

Zinc Beta 3 is a better multimedia web browser

Zinc is a full screen browser for internet video. But that description doesn't really do the application justice. Basically, it allows you to watch internet video on your television screen using a remote control almost as easily as a keyboard and mouse. You know, a lot like Boxee. But there's one major thing setting Zinc apart from Boxee: Zinc is based on Firefox. And that's going to make it awfully hard for content partners to detect whether you're using Zinc or Firefox, which means it'll be a lot harder for companies like Hulu to ask Zeevee (the makers of Zinc) to block access.

Zinc started out its life as the interface for a hardware set top box that ZeeVee wanted to charge $499 for. That business model didn't really pan out, so the company split is focus and started working on a $2500 enterrprise hardware solution that lets companies like hotels stream HD content throughout the building and the free Zinc media browser.

Version 3 which came out today has a smoother interface, more detailed information about videos and channels, and content from new sources including The CW, Revision3, and Netflix. You can either install Zinc as a standalone application or download and install a Firefox extension that will let you launch the Zinc interface from within Firefox 3.

Right now Zinc is Windows only, but a Mac version is due out next month.

[via NewTeeVee]

Get the best deals on eBooks with ebookprice.info

When you walk into a bricks and mortar book store, you can either pay the price the company is asking for the books, or decide that you can get a better deal and walk away. On the internet, you can just shop around from the comfort of your desk chair until you find the best price and click buy. But there's an even faster way.

Ebookprice.info is a web site that finds prices for a handful of popular eBook stories including Amazon, eBooks.com, and Powell's. I'll be honest. The web site is ugly. But it's functional. In a quick scan, I've found several titles that are going for $7.99 in one store and over $16 in another.

[via jkOnTheRun]

Lifehacker's Better Gmail scripts come to Google Chrome

Since I wrote a post about ten great Firefox userscripts, I've been excited to see how user scripting is progressing for other browsers. Apparently, in the case of Chrome, it's come along far enough that Lifehacker's insanely popular Better Gmail script collection now has a Chrome version. Many Gmail addicts swear by these, so this could make the difference in choosing a browser for some.

So, what's better about Better Gmail? You can hide the stuff you're not using, including chat and the unread spam message count. You get handy visual touches like highlighting a row when you hover over it, and showing icons for attachment types without having to open a message. You can also use labels as folders, sub-folders included. These sound like small improvements, but you'd miss them if you didn't have them. Now users of one more popular browser don't have to worry about that.

Redlasso rises from the ashes, set to offer TV clips from Fox

Redlasso is a company that made a big splash last year by offering bloggers and web publishers the chance to find and embed television clips on their web sites. And then it was hit by lawsuits from NBC and FOX and it sort of faded away into oblivion.

Now Redlasso says the suits have been settled and the company has reached an agreement with Fox News Corp to distribute clips from local Fox affiliate stations. Clips from local news reports and other content will be available. And Redlasso will split advertising revenue with Fox.

It's interesting that Redlasso will be providing local content and not material from FOX's national programming. Techcrunch infers that this means the relationship is a trial run. It could also be an attempt to figure out a new way to monetize local news content at a time when local news outlets are having a hard time keeping afloat.

[via Business Insider]

Mozilla unveils "cognitive shield" new tab concept for Firefox

When you open a new tab in Firefox 3.0 you see a blank page. Mozilla has been working on ways to make that page more useful for a few weeks now. Mozilla isn't the first company to rethink the blank window. Opera has offered a "speed dial" feature with user-customizable thumbnails for your favorite web sites for a while. And Google Chrome automatically generates thumbnails from your most frequently visited pages.

But Mozilla doesn't just want to give you quick access to the sites you visit most. The team also wants to make sure the new tab area isn't too distracting. And that's led to a completely new concept that the developers are calling a "cognitive shield."

What happens is that Firefox will keep track of your recently and frequently visited pages. But instead of showing you a list of links or thumbnails every time you open a new tab, Firefox will show you a dull gray set of icons for those pages. If you type an address or search term into the location bar, you'll never see anything other than this unremarkable list of icons. But if you scroll your mouse over the page it will expand into a colorful list of web sites and favicons.

Unlike Opera's speed dial, the Firefox bookmarks are automatically generated. But unlike Google Chrome's thumbnails, you can add or remove links from the Firefox new tab page. You can also disable this behavior by clicking the asterisk in the bottom left corner of the screen.

In order to try out this concept design, you'll need to have the most recent beta version of Firefox 3.1 and then you can download and install the New Tab prototype add-on. Eventually this feature or one very much like it could find its way into a future version of Firefox.

Qimo Linux teaches kids to be penguins from an early age

Want your kid to love Linux as much as you do, but worried that he or she might be learning too much about Windows and OS X on the streets (or at school) to feel comfortable with an open source operating system? Qimo is here to help.

Qimo Linux is based on Ubuntu, but it's designed for children over the age of 3. It features large cartoon-like program icons and comes with a bunch of open source and educational games including Tuxmath, Tuxpaint, Tuxtype (a typing game) and even some games that don't have Tux in them like GCompris and Childsplay.

Unlike Edubuntu, Qimo is designed for home use, not classroom use. The operating system can be run from a LiveCD or installed. Qimo uses a simple interface based on Xfce.

[via instant fundas]

Box.net launches full text-search

Content storage and collaboration solution, Box.net, has really been on a tear with new and enhanced features. In the last two months, the service has launched enhanced collaboration tools and a web-based word processor; today, they add another new feature: full-text search!

Now, Box.net Business customers can search the full text of PDF, TXT, CSV, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files and Box Web Documents. The new search feature will also scan any file descriptions added by users, which is great for more generic documents that might be tagged for something more specific. According to Box, they've already tested the new search feature with one customer who has more than 300,000 documents, and the results have been great.

When I talked to Box last month, it was clear that the company's focus is really on building tools for small and large businesses. Having used Box to share and collaborate with some of my fellow Weblogs bloggers, that focus really comes through in the actual service itself.

With full-text search, Box is really making the argument for businesses to move their file systems online or over to Box, without having to pay for something like Microsoft SharePoint. And because you can access the documents from anywhere, this is a really nice solution for telecommuting employees or businesses with multiple locations.

Last.fm to charge international users a subscription fee

Online music streaming service Last.fm is about to begin charging users in all but three countries a subscription. If you don't live in the US, UK, or Germany, you'll be able to listen to up to 30 tracks as part of a free trial. after that, you'll need to shell out €3.00 each month to use the service.

Last.fm, which is owned by CBS works with thousands of musicians, labels, and others to secure the rights to stream music in the US and internationally. But either Last.fm is getting greedy, or someone at the company realized that the cost of streaming music and paying for license fees in all of those countries was too high and Last.fm needs to find some way to pay its bills.

Last.fm competitor Pandora pulled the plug on all of its international streams in 2007 and 2008.

[via Mashable]

The Windows 7 UI changes that Microsoft discarded

Windows 7 has a shiny new user interface that aims to make it easier to accomplish tasks on your computer without getting distracted by all the eye candy. But before settling on the new Windows taskbar, Aero Peek feature and other design elements, Microsoft considered a number of other possibilities. TechRadar has a look at some of them.

For instance, an early toolbar design had a taskbar with thumbnails of running programs instead of icons and pop up menus. But the icons were too small to be usable. Another version used a "Bat Signal" because when you scrolled your mouse over an icon the full window would open on the desktop, and a spotlight would shine up from the taskbar at it.

You can find more early ideas for Windows 7 at TechRadar.

Start.io delivers a customizable start page engine

Start.io is an engine for creating customized start pages, with the added bonus of letting you know when your favorite sites have updated. It comes equipped with a drag-and-droppable interface for adjusting and grouping your links, and several nice-looking preloaded layouts to choose from. On top of that, the CSS is entirely customizable, so you can modify existing layouts, or build your own from scratch.

The first thing I wondered about Start.io was why it just lets you know that one of your links has updated, instead of using RSS to show you exactly what the updates were. The answer (explained on the about page) makes a lot of sense: you don't come to your start page when you want to read a bunch of RSS feeds. You go there when you want to click through to the sites themselves, not Google Reader or your standalone RSS app. If you want an RSS reader as your start page, there are other services you can check out, but I haven't see a complete start page engine like Start.io anywhere else.

What's your start page? Do you like Start.io, or do you have a better alternative? Let us know in the comments.

Google introduces better related terms and longer snippets

We report on a lot of new software and projects from Google, so sometimes it's easy to take it for granted that search is still one of the things they do best. Google searches just got even better, too, with useful improvements to the way the search engine finds related concepts and an increase in the length of search result "snippets" for longer searches.

Longer snippets are something I've wanted for a long time. I hate it when I get really close to finding the entirety of the information I need without actually having to click through to a result, but the snippet comes up one word short. That frustration should be greatly decreased with longer snippets that attempt to show more of your search terms together. This new feature kicks in when your search contains 4 or more words.

The improvements to related terms mean that Google can now more accurately suggest other searches that relate to your search terms. The example they give is searching for principles of physics, which now suggests searches for things like quantum mechanics, special relativity and the big bang. This should make narrowing down your results and finding what you want on Google even easier.

Grotrian Pianolina - Time Waster

Download Squad is a strange place to read about German piano builders, but when their site has a time waster as good as this one, we can't ignore it. I don't know whether Grotrian makes good pianos, but I know that their Pianolina game is a great way to kill some time. It's a sort of open-ended music composition toy, where different colored blocks represent different notes that sound when they bounce off a wall or another block.

To get you started, the Pianolina has a few pre-programmed compositions by the likes of Beethoven and Satie. These quickly go awry, though, when things inevitably start bumping into one another. If you let them play long enough, you wouldn't recognize the melodies anymore. When you switch to compose mode, and start experimenting with your own composition, half the fun is in hearing it gradually break down. Pianolina may be a time waster, but at least it's a creative one.

Hulu plans to go international

Online video site Hulu has become one of the most popular video portals in the internet over the past year. It showcases high quality content from major television and film studios with fewer commercials than you'd see if you watched the same programs on TV. But Hulu has faced one major hurdle: The company doesn't have deals in place to distribute that content outside of the US, which is why international users are typically met with a message telling them that videos aren't available when they visit the site.

Hulu's been planning to go global for a while now, but it looks like the company could be a bit closer. PaidContent reports that the company has hired a new vice president to oversee international operations.

It seems likely that one of the first areas outside the US that Hulu will be available will be the UK. What I'd love to see is a reciprocal relationship, where in addition to streaming US content to British viewers, Hulu could work out a deal to distribute BBC content in the US.

PirateBay's IPREDATOR VPN service to debut on April 1

It's no April Fools' prank. On April 1st - the same day that Sweden's Draconian new intellectual property legislation (IPRED) goes into effect - the Pirate Bay will debut their new IPREDATOR VPN service.

Where IPRED aims to make it easier for copyright holders to get their hands on ISP log files to investigate suspected transgressors. With IPREDATOR, a user can give "the man" a swift kick in his digital groin and sneak away unscathed while he's doubled over in agony.

No log files are maintained, and all traffic is tunneled, making it more difficult to track activity to a specific user.

Initially, the service will be opened to a select group of 500 testers. Once the kinks have been worked out, IPREDATOR will be available world-wide for a modest 5 Euro monthly fee.

Those who are interested and want to roll the dice in hopes of getting in early can register for the beta at ipredator.se.

[via TorrentFreak]

Drop.io launches Conference.io real-time collaboration in 2 clicks

Last week file sharing service drop.io launched a new real-time feature that allow users to chat with one another at a drop site. Today the company is fleshing out the real-time features by adding support for free conference calls. This means you can set up a virtual space for a conference at a moment's notice, chat with participants, talk on the phone, record or listen to voicemails, and share files all from one location.

Here's how it works. Just hop on over to conference.io and name your chat room. If you want to add any files you can do it here, but you don't have to. Click the drop it button and you're good to go. You can set an administrator password for the room, but again you don't have to.

Conference.io isn't the first service available that lets you set up a web-based chat room in a matter of seconds. But it's the first one that I'm aware of that also supports file uploads, embedding images in chat, and telephone conference calling.

Zinc Beta 3 is a better multimedia web browser

Zinc is a full screen browser for internet video. But that description doesn't really do the application justice. Basically, it allows you to watch internet video on your television screen using a remote control almost as easily as a keyboard and mouse. You know, a lot like Boxee. But there's one major thing setting Zinc apart from Boxee: Zinc is based on Firefox. And that's going to make it awfully hard for content partners to detect whether you're using Zinc or Firefox, which means it'll be a lot harder for companies like Hulu to ask Zeevee (the makers of Zinc) to block access.

Zinc started out its life as the interface for a hardware set top box that ZeeVee wanted to charge $499 for. That business model didn't really pan out, so the company split is focus and started working on a $2500 enterrprise hardware solution that lets companies like hotels stream HD content throughout the building and the free Zinc media browser.

Version 3 which came out today has a smoother interface, more detailed information about videos and channels, and content from new sources including The CW, Revision3, and Netflix. You can either install Zinc as a standalone application or download and install a Firefox extension that will let you launch the Zinc interface from within Firefox 3.

Right now Zinc is Windows only, but a Mac version is due out next month.

[via NewTeeVee]

Get the best deals on eBooks with ebookprice.info

When you walk into a bricks and mortar book store, you can either pay the price the company is asking for the books, or decide that you can get a better deal and walk away. On the internet, you can just shop around from the comfort of your desk chair until you find the best price and click buy. But there's an even faster way.

Ebookprice.info is a web site that finds prices for a handful of popular eBook stories including Amazon, eBooks.com, and Powell's. I'll be honest. The web site is ugly. But it's functional. In a quick scan, I've found several titles that are going for $7.99 in one store and over $16 in another.

[via jkOnTheRun]

Lifehacker's Better Gmail scripts come to Google Chrome

Since I wrote a post about ten great Firefox userscripts, I've been excited to see how user scripting is progressing for other browsers. Apparently, in the case of Chrome, it's come along far enough that Lifehacker's insanely popular Better Gmail script collection now has a Chrome version. Many Gmail addicts swear by these, so this could make the difference in choosing a browser for some.

So, what's better about Better Gmail? You can hide the stuff you're not using, including chat and the unread spam message count. You get handy visual touches like highlighting a row when you hover over it, and showing icons for attachment types without having to open a message. You can also use labels as folders, sub-folders included. These sound like small improvements, but you'd miss them if you didn't have them. Now users of one more popular browser don't have to worry about that.

Redlasso rises from the ashes, set to offer TV clips from Fox

Redlasso is a company that made a big splash last year by offering bloggers and web publishers the chance to find and embed television clips on their web sites. And then it was hit by lawsuits from NBC and FOX and it sort of faded away into oblivion.

Now Redlasso says the suits have been settled and the company has reached an agreement with Fox News Corp to distribute clips from local Fox affiliate stations. Clips from local news reports and other content will be available. And Redlasso will split advertising revenue with Fox.

It's interesting that Redlasso will be providing local content and not material from FOX's national programming. Techcrunch infers that this means the relationship is a trial run. It could also be an attempt to figure out a new way to monetize local news content at a time when local news outlets are having a hard time keeping afloat.

[via Business Insider]

Mozilla unveils "cognitive shield" new tab concept for Firefox

When you open a new tab in Firefox 3.0 you see a blank page. Mozilla has been working on ways to make that page more useful for a few weeks now. Mozilla isn't the first company to rethink the blank window. Opera has offered a "speed dial" feature with user-customizable thumbnails for your favorite web sites for a while. And Google Chrome automatically generates thumbnails from your most frequently visited pages.

But Mozilla doesn't just want to give you quick access to the sites you visit most. The team also wants to make sure the new tab area isn't too distracting. And that's led to a completely new concept that the developers are calling a "cognitive shield."

What happens is that Firefox will keep track of your recently and frequently visited pages. But instead of showing you a list of links or thumbnails every time you open a new tab, Firefox will show you a dull gray set of icons for those pages. If you type an address or search term into the location bar, you'll never see anything other than this unremarkable list of icons. But if you scroll your mouse over the page it will expand into a colorful list of web sites and favicons.

Unlike Opera's speed dial, the Firefox bookmarks are automatically generated. But unlike Google Chrome's thumbnails, you can add or remove links from the Firefox new tab page. You can also disable this behavior by clicking the asterisk in the bottom left corner of the screen.

In order to try out this concept design, you'll need to have the most recent beta version of Firefox 3.1 and then you can download and install the New Tab prototype add-on. Eventually this feature or one very much like it could find its way into a future version of Firefox.

Qimo Linux teaches kids to be penguins from an early age

Want your kid to love Linux as much as you do, but worried that he or she might be learning too much about Windows and OS X on the streets (or at school) to feel comfortable with an open source operating system? Qimo is here to help.

Qimo Linux is based on Ubuntu, but it's designed for children over the age of 3. It features large cartoon-like program icons and comes with a bunch of open source and educational games including Tuxmath, Tuxpaint, Tuxtype (a typing game) and even some games that don't have Tux in them like GCompris and Childsplay.

Unlike Edubuntu, Qimo is designed for home use, not classroom use. The operating system can be run from a LiveCD or installed. Qimo uses a simple interface based on Xfce.

[via instant fundas]

Find local food in season with the Locavore iPhone app

There are lots of iPhone apps that help you find nearby places to eat or shop, but Locavore offers a totally different twist. It tells you which foods are in season and available locally, and also helps you find farmers' markets where you can pick them up. It also links to information and recipes for each of the ingredients in its database.

The search is by state, so some of the markets that come up might not be as close as you'd like. On the plus side, Locavore does use the iPhone's location features to show the closest markets first. If you're a serious foodie, Locavore looks like the app you want in your pocket when you plan a shopping trip. The pricetag is a reasonable $3.

Vuze adds remote playback support for videos on iPod, consoles

You're probably using a bittorrent client to download the occasional movie or episode of The Office by now. If you're looking to make the process of going from torrents to remote viewing a little more hassle-free, you might want to take a look at the newest version of Vuze. After conducting a user poll, it was clear that Vuze users wanted easier access to their downloads on devices like the iPod Touch, PS3, and Xbox 360.

The development team has delivered, with beta support for those devices. Turn on device support, and adding a file to iTunes requires only a simple click-and-drag - Vuze takes care of conversion. PS3 and Xbox users, your content is automatically ready to stream from your desktop to your console.

CEO Gilles BianRosa states in the official blog post that "Vuze has always supported open platforms and technologies, and we've designed our device support to embrace as many of the devices you asked for, as possible. Expect more to follow soon." Based on the results of the poll, Wii users should be next in line.

Device support makes Vuze a very compelling option for media-heavy torrent downloaders, especially less technically savvy types that don't want to be bothered with having to convert files after downloading.

To try it out, grab the new version from Vuze's download page.

[via TorrentFreak]

ScreenToaster adds support for YouTube uploads, MOV downloads

ScreenToaster is a web-based screencasting utility. You just fire up the web page, hit record, and ScreenToaster launches a Java applet that lets you record audio and video of anything happening on your desktop. It's great for recording tutorials, presentations, or showing off your video game skills to friends.

Today the ScreenToaster team launched a few updates that make the service even more useful. First, users can now automatically upload HD screencasts directly to YouTube from ScreenToaster.com. Second, you can download videos in MOV format for editing on your desktop.

There's also a new beta API available that lets web publishers incorporate ScreenToaster with their web sites. You can let your visitors record and publish videos directly on your site using the API.

These are just the latest new features. ScreenToaster also recently added the ability to download SWF files, set privacy levels, and share videos via email, social networking sites, or social bookmarking pages.

Use Google Voice with your own phone number? Not yet, but maybe soon

Google Voice, or the service formerly known as GrandCentral, assigns users a single phone number that you can give out to friends, colleagues, enemies, or just about anybody else. You can then link that number to your existing phone lines so that when a user calls it will ring your home, work, and/or cellphone. You can set permissions so that calls from some numbers will always go straight to voicemail. And you can get text transcriptions of voicemails emailed to you.

There's just one problem - you have to give everybody a new phone number. To date there's been no way to make your current number the primary number for Google Voice or GrandCentral. But it looks like that feature could be coming soon.

In the Google Voice help section, there's an area labeled "Porting your number." Unfortunately, right now the page says that you can't actually do this... yet. But it does state that Google is looking into this option and the company is asking for feedback. So if you like the idea of using Google Voice but don't like the idea of reprinting your business cards, go ahead and send Googel a note to let them know what you think.

[via Lifehacker]

Google introduces better related terms and longer snippets

We report on a lot of new software and projects from Google, so sometimes it's easy to take it for granted that search is still one of the things they do best. Google searches just got even better, too, with useful improvements to the way the search engine finds related concepts and an increase in the length of search result "snippets" for longer searches.

Longer snippets are something I've wanted for a long time. I hate it when I get really close to finding the entirety of the information I need without actually having to click through to a result, but the snippet comes up one word short. That frustration should be greatly decreased with longer snippets that attempt to show more of your search terms together. This new feature kicks in when your search contains 4 or more words.

The improvements to related terms mean that Google can now more accurately suggest other searches that relate to your search terms. The example they give is searching for principles of physics, which now suggests searches for things like quantum mechanics, special relativity and the big bang. This should make narrowing down your results and finding what you want on Google even easier.

Grotrian Pianolina - Time Waster

Download Squad is a strange place to read about German piano builders, but when their site has a time waster as good as this one, we can't ignore it. I don't know whether Grotrian makes good pianos, but I know that their Pianolina game is a great way to kill some time. It's a sort of open-ended music composition toy, where different colored blocks represent different notes that sound when they bounce off a wall or another block.

To get you started, the Pianolina has a few pre-programmed compositions by the likes of Beethoven and Satie. These quickly go awry, though, when things inevitably start bumping into one another. If you let them play long enough, you wouldn't recognize the melodies anymore. When you switch to compose mode, and start experimenting with your own composition, half the fun is in hearing it gradually break down. Pianolina may be a time waster, but at least it's a creative one.

Hulu plans to go international

Online video site Hulu has become one of the most popular video portals in the internet over the past year. It showcases high quality content from major television and film studios with fewer commercials than you'd see if you watched the same programs on TV. But Hulu has faced one major hurdle: The company doesn't have deals in place to distribute that content outside of the US, which is why international users are typically met with a message telling them that videos aren't available when they visit the site.

Hulu's been planning to go global for a while now, but it looks like the company could be a bit closer. PaidContent reports that the company has hired a new vice president to oversee international operations.

It seems likely that one of the first areas outside the US that Hulu will be available will be the UK. What I'd love to see is a reciprocal relationship, where in addition to streaming US content to British viewers, Hulu could work out a deal to distribute BBC content in the US.

PirateBay's IPREDATOR VPN service to debut on April 1

It's no April Fools' prank. On April 1st - the same day that Sweden's Draconian new intellectual property legislation (IPRED) goes into effect - the Pirate Bay will debut their new IPREDATOR VPN service.

Where IPRED aims to make it easier for copyright holders to get their hands on ISP log files to investigate suspected transgressors. With IPREDATOR, a user can give "the man" a swift kick in his digital groin and sneak away unscathed while he's doubled over in agony.

No log files are maintained, and all traffic is tunneled, making it more difficult to track activity to a specific user.

Initially, the service will be opened to a select group of 500 testers. Once the kinks have been worked out, IPREDATOR will be available world-wide for a modest 5 Euro monthly fee.

Those who are interested and want to roll the dice in hopes of getting in early can register for the beta at ipredator.se.

[via TorrentFreak]

Drop.io launches Conference.io real-time collaboration in 2 clicks

Last week file sharing service drop.io launched a new real-time feature that allow users to chat with one another at a drop site. Today the company is fleshing out the real-time features by adding support for free conference calls. This means you can set up a virtual space for a conference at a moment's notice, chat with participants, talk on the phone, record or listen to voicemails, and share files all from one location.

Here's how it works. Just hop on over to conference.io and name your chat room. If you want to add any files you can do it here, but you don't have to. Click the drop it button and you're good to go. You can set an administrator password for the room, but again you don't have to.

Conference.io isn't the first service available that lets you set up a web-based chat room in a matter of seconds. But it's the first one that I'm aware of that also supports file uploads, embedding images in chat, and telephone conference calling.

Zinc Beta 3 is a better multimedia web browser

Zinc is a full screen browser for internet video. But that description doesn't really do the application justice. Basically, it allows you to watch internet video on your television screen using a remote control almost as easily as a keyboard and mouse. You know, a lot like Boxee. But there's one major thing setting Zinc apart from Boxee: Zinc is based on Firefox. And that's going to make it awfully hard for content partners to detect whether you're using Zinc or Firefox, which means it'll be a lot harder for companies like Hulu to ask Zeevee (the makers of Zinc) to block access.

Zinc started out its life as the interface for a hardware set top box that ZeeVee wanted to charge $499 for. That business model didn't really pan out, so the company split is focus and started working on a $2500 enterrprise hardware solution that lets companies like hotels stream HD content throughout the building and the free Zinc media browser.

Version 3 which came out today has a smoother interface, more detailed information about videos and channels, and content from new sources including The CW, Revision3, and Netflix. You can either install Zinc as a standalone application or download and install a Firefox extension that will let you launch the Zinc interface from within Firefox 3.

Right now Zinc is Windows only, but a Mac version is due out next month.

[via NewTeeVee]

Get the best deals on eBooks with ebookprice.info

When you walk into a bricks and mortar book store, you can either pay the price the company is asking for the books, or decide that you can get a better deal and walk away. On the internet, you can just shop around from the comfort of your desk chair until you find the best price and click buy. But there's an even faster way.

Ebookprice.info is a web site that finds prices for a handful of popular eBook stories including Amazon, eBooks.com, and Powell's. I'll be honest. The web site is ugly. But it's functional. In a quick scan, I've found several titles that are going for $7.99 in one store and over $16 in another.

[via jkOnTheRun]

Lifehacker's Better Gmail scripts come to Google Chrome

Since I wrote a post about ten great Firefox userscripts, I've been excited to see how user scripting is progressing for other browsers. Apparently, in the case of Chrome, it's come along far enough that Lifehacker's insanely popular Better Gmail script collection now has a Chrome version. Many Gmail addicts swear by these, so this could make the difference in choosing a browser for some.

So, what's better about Better Gmail? You can hide the stuff you're not using, including chat and the unread spam message count. You get handy visual touches like highlighting a row when you hover over it, and showing icons for attachment types without having to open a message. You can also use labels as folders, sub-folders included. These sound like small improvements, but you'd miss them if you didn't have them. Now users of one more popular browser don't have to worry about that.

Redlasso rises from the ashes, set to offer TV clips from Fox

Redlasso is a company that made a big splash last year by offering bloggers and web publishers the chance to find and embed television clips on their web sites. And then it was hit by lawsuits from NBC and FOX and it sort of faded away into oblivion.

Now Redlasso says the suits have been settled and the company has reached an agreement with Fox News Corp to distribute clips from local Fox affiliate stations. Clips from local news reports and other content will be available. And Redlasso will split advertising revenue with Fox.

It's interesting that Redlasso will be providing local content and not material from FOX's national programming. Techcrunch infers that this means the relationship is a trial run. It could also be an attempt to figure out a new way to monetize local news content at a time when local news outlets are having a hard time keeping afloat.

[via Business Insider]

Mozilla unveils "cognitive shield" new tab concept for Firefox

When you open a new tab in Firefox 3.0 you see a blank page. Mozilla has been working on ways to make that page more useful for a few weeks now. Mozilla isn't the first company to rethink the blank window. Opera has offered a "speed dial" feature with user-customizable thumbnails for your favorite web sites for a while. And Google Chrome automatically generates thumbnails from your most frequently visited pages.

But Mozilla doesn't just want to give you quick access to the sites you visit most. The team also wants to make sure the new tab area isn't too distracting. And that's led to a completely new concept that the developers are calling a "cognitive shield."

What happens is that Firefox will keep track of your recently and frequently visited pages. But instead of showing you a list of links or thumbnails every time you open a new tab, Firefox will show you a dull gray set of icons for those pages. If you type an address or search term into the location bar, you'll never see anything other than this unremarkable list of icons. But if you scroll your mouse over the page it will expand into a colorful list of web sites and favicons.

Unlike Opera's speed dial, the Firefox bookmarks are automatically generated. But unlike Google Chrome's thumbnails, you can add or remove links from the Firefox new tab page. You can also disable this behavior by clicking the asterisk in the bottom left corner of the screen.

In order to try out this concept design, you'll need to have the most recent beta version of Firefox 3.1 and then you can download and install the New Tab prototype add-on. Eventually this feature or one very much like it could find its way into a future version of Firefox.

Qimo Linux teaches kids to be penguins from an early age

Want your kid to love Linux as much as you do, but worried that he or she might be learning too much about Windows and OS X on the streets (or at school) to feel comfortable with an open source operating system? Qimo is here to help.

Qimo Linux is based on Ubuntu, but it's designed for children over the age of 3. It features large cartoon-like program icons and comes with a bunch of open source and educational games including Tuxmath, Tuxpaint, Tuxtype (a typing game) and even some games that don't have Tux in them like GCompris and Childsplay.

Unlike Edubuntu, Qimo is designed for home use, not classroom use. The operating system can be run from a LiveCD or installed. Qimo uses a simple interface based on Xfce.

[via instant fundas]

Find local food in season with the Locavore iPhone app

There are lots of iPhone apps that help you find nearby places to eat or shop, but Locavore offers a totally different twist. It tells you which foods are in season and available locally, and also helps you find farmers' markets where you can pick them up. It also links to information and recipes for each of the ingredients in its database.

The search is by state, so some of the markets that come up might not be as close as you'd like. On the plus side, Locavore does use the iPhone's location features to show the closest markets first. If you're a serious foodie, Locavore looks like the app you want in your pocket when you plan a shopping trip. The pricetag is a reasonable $3.

Vuze adds remote playback support for videos on iPod, consoles

You're probably using a bittorrent client to download the occasional movie or episode of The Office by now. If you're looking to make the process of going from torrents to remote viewing a little more hassle-free, you might want to take a look at the newest version of Vuze. After conducting a user poll, it was clear that Vuze users wanted easier access to their downloads on devices like the iPod Touch, PS3, and Xbox 360.

The development team has delivered, with beta support for those devices. Turn on device support, and adding a file to iTunes requires only a simple click-and-drag - Vuze takes care of conversion. PS3 and Xbox users, your content is automatically ready to stream from your desktop to your console.

CEO Gilles BianRosa states in the official blog post that "Vuze has always supported open platforms and technologies, and we've designed our device support to embrace as many of the devices you asked for, as possible. Expect more to follow soon." Based on the results of the poll, Wii users should be next in line.

Device support makes Vuze a very compelling option for media-heavy torrent downloaders, especially less technically savvy types that don't want to be bothered with having to convert files after downloading.

To try it out, grab the new version from Vuze's download page.

[via TorrentFreak]

ScreenToaster adds support for YouTube uploads, MOV downloads

ScreenToaster is a web-based screencasting utility. You just fire up the web page, hit record, and ScreenToaster launches a Java applet that lets you record audio and video of anything happening on your desktop. It's great for recording tutorials, presentations, or showing off your video game skills to friends.

Today the ScreenToaster team launched a few updates that make the service even more useful. First, users can now automatically upload HD screencasts directly to YouTube from ScreenToaster.com. Second, you can download videos in MOV format for editing on your desktop.

There's also a new beta API available that lets web publishers incorporate ScreenToaster with their web sites. You can let your visitors record and publish videos directly on your site using the API.

These are just the latest new features. ScreenToaster also recently added the ability to download SWF files, set privacy levels, and share videos via email, social networking sites, or social bookmarking pages.

Use Google Voice with your own phone number? Not yet, but maybe soon

Google Voice, or the service formerly known as GrandCentral, assigns users a single phone number that you can give out to friends, colleagues, enemies, or just about anybody else. You can then link that number to your existing phone lines so that when a user calls it will ring your home, work, and/or cellphone. You can set permissions so that calls from some numbers will always go straight to voicemail. And you can get text transcriptions of voicemails emailed to you.

There's just one problem - you have to give everybody a new phone number. To date there's been no way to make your current number the primary number for Google Voice or GrandCentral. But it looks like that feature could be coming soon.

In the Google Voice help section, there's an area labeled "Porting your number." Unfortunately, right now the page says that you can't actually do this... yet. But it does state that Google is looking into this option and the company is asking for feedback. So if you like the idea of using Google Voice but don't like the idea of reprinting your business cards, go ahead and send Googel a note to let them know what you think.

[via Lifehacker]

Newssift: business-oriented news trend browser

Newssift is a way to gauge the media buzz around various business topics, companies and people. It analyzes qualitative data from a whole bunch of news sources, and lets you browse stories on a subject and see if the overall media vibe is positive or negative. It strikes me as a sort of Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes for the business world.

Newssift has a search feature, and also a list of popular topics to browse from the front page. You can combine more than one topic into a single search, and save searches if you want to keep up to date on them. Newssift also shows a breakdown of the sources on a specific topic, so you know how many stories are coming from newspapers, TV or blogs. I'm not in the financial field, so I'm not sure how useful a tool Newssift is, but it's definitely an interesting experiment.

Thomson releases mp3HD lossless codec and toolkit

Lossless audio codecs (like FLAC and ALAC) have been around for a while, but Thomson's new mp3HD format might be the one that finally achieves mainstream adoption.

mp3HD has one key advantage over other lossless formats: it's fully backwards compatible, meaning you should be able to play encoded files back on any device that supports mp3.

Bitrates are similar to FLAC, ranging from 500 to 900kbps. The average bitrate for pop/top 40 music comes in at 876kbps which produces a 26mb file for a four-minute track.

One more thing mp3HD has going for it is that it utilizes something most users have grown accustomed to: the .mp3 file extension. Familiarity means a lot to the average user - try asking some of your non-techy friends what an .ogg file is. Using the extension that has become synonymous with digital audio files should improve mp3HD's chances of achieving mainstream adoption.

Thomson has also released a command line enocder and decoder for Windows and Linux, as well as a Winamp plugin for mp3HD.

Browser Ball - Time Waster

Browser Ball is an experimental time-waster that lets you spawn new browser windows and throw a beach ball around them. You can set up as many new windows as you want, and the ball will bounce off their edges and cross between overlapping windows, which makes for satisfying free-form play.

The most appealing part of Browser Ball isn't the game itself, but the concept of using multiple windows to create a playing surface. Sure, you can blow off steam by bouncing a beach ball around, and it's actually kind of addictive, but this could also be a fun way to create simple environments for browser-based games. Your desktop is the playing field, and that's pretty neat.

Skype goes corporate, allows Skype calls from SIP phones

Skype has launched a new beta service that allows businesses using SIP telephone systems to make and receive Skype calls on their regular telephones. No headphone and computer needed.

Skype for SIP beta works a lot like Skype, in that you can call and receive calls from other Skype users for free, and pay Skype rates to make calls to domestic and international land lines or cellphones. Customers can also purchase Skype phone numbers that people can use to call in from traditional phones.

The service is aimed at medium to large sized businesses tht use PBX phone systems with Session Initiation Protocal, or SIP. Because the service hooks right into the PBX, users will be able to use their phone hardware to do things like route calls, engage in conference calls, record calls, and record voicemail.

Web Developers: help rid the world of IE6 with a simple script

Now that IE8 is here, maybe it's high time that a concerted effort was made to get rid of Internet Explorer 6 once and for all. You'd think by now that most users would have at least upgraded to IE7, but just about every Windows XP system that appears on my workbench is still running the clumsy old oaf-of-a-browser.

@staringispolite has created a simple, open source way that you can help drive the IE6 demon out of our Internet. The Google Code project is called, aptly enough, sevenup. It's inspired by both Google's effort and the movement started by a group of Norweigan websites.

It's a 1k javascript that displays a polite CSS reminder to people who visit your site using IE6 that they should seriously consider upgrading their browser to something a bit more modern. It's respectfully done, though, and includes an option for the user to dismiss the reminder and never be bothered again.

Sure, you could do this on your own from scratch, but sevenup is ready to use and easy to integrate. Do your part to save less tech-savvy web surfers from their browser!

Microsoft pokes fun at the web, acknowledges what private browsing is for

Microsoft has put together a series of videos to promote the launch of Internet Explorer 8. The strategy? Poking a bit of fun at the things we spend our time doing on the internet, like looking at videos of hamsters dancing, ordering completely useless things on eBay, and replacing language with acronyms.

Toward the end of the video above, several of the comedians tapped by Microsoft for the campaign also imply what everyone knows: the new private browsing mode in Internet Explorer 8 (and Firefox 3.5 and Google Chrome) isn't just for privacy advocates. There might be another reason people would like to surf the web without saving any cookies or other items that would indicate which web sites they've been visiting. It's not exactly rocket science, but it's interesting to see it (almost) acknowledged in an officially sanctioned video from Microsoft.

You can check out more videos in the series at the IE8 YouTube page or on Microsoft's web site for the campaign. But you'll need to have Silverlight installed to see the videos on the latter site.

[via Mashable]

YouTube launches video player for Windows Mobile, Nokia S60

Google has launched a new mobile video player for Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 phones. The application adds support for additional phones, boots faster than previous versions, and streams video optimized for 3G and WiFi connections.

You can use the application to search or browse for videos and play them on your device. When you click play, videos will launch in full screen mode.

To install the application, visit m.youtube.com on your mobile device and click the download link. There's a list of supported S60 devices, but no support list for Windows Mobile. Having tried unsuccessfully to install the YouTube player on my Dell Axim X50v, I can tell you that it does not support Windows Mobile 2003SE. But I suspect if you've ot a device with Windows Mobile 6.0 or a newer operating system you should be covered.

[via CoolSmartPhone]

Crowd-source your blog editing with gooseGrade

Have you ever wished that you could have someone edit your blog posts for typos, spelling errors and grammatical mistakes? Most of us aren't lucky enough to have someone dedicated to catching and fixing our every mistake.

Rather than asking one person to edit for you, why not effectively enlist the help of all of your blog's readers? That's what the folks at Brave New Code figured, anyway, when they decided to create the gooseGrade WordPress plugin.

The concept is simple: install the gooseGrade plugin on your site. Then when readers are visiting your site and they see something that could be corrected, they click on a Grade This button on your site and enter the correction they believe should be made. As the site's owner you have the final say as to what changes to apply, so this isn't a tool that is going to let people insert spam all over your site.

While the concept is interesting, I have doubts that people will take the time to edit someone else's work online, in particular I have doubts that people will take the time to understand that they even have the capability of suggesting edits. This tool would have to be baked-in to a major blogging platform like WordPress.com or TypePad before I think enough people would understand what is going on to actually make use of it.

I kind of wish that it was, actually, because the idea is appealing. It's just going to take a lot for this idea to reach the critical mass it would need to become successful.

[via Panache]

10 GMail Labs features worth enabling

The GMail crew has been doing a great job of adding useful features of late -- some of them right into GMail, others in Labs. If you haven't clicked on the little green beaker in the top toolbar yet, there are plenty of excellent features worth turning on. Here are 10 that I find particularly useful.


Offline
Arguably the most powerful feature available in labs right now. Offline access requires the installation of Google Gears, but it's an invaluable option for anyone who needs access to their inbox any time internet access isn't available.

Undo Send
Newly added, the five-second windows is just long enough to evaluate any misgivings you might have or catch the rare but horrendous typo that you didn't notice was underlined.

Media Previews
Apart from the obvious convenience of previewing Flickr and Picasa images and Yelp comments below a message, the YouTube preview is a much less obvious way for you to watch that clip your buddy sent you about the kid that just left the dentist's office.

Continue reading 10 GMail Labs features worth enabling

Windows Mobile 6.5 updated, Honeycomb UI tweaked

Microsoft showed off a recent build of Windows Mobile 6.5 at MIX09 yesterday, and it doesn't look quite like the earlier builds we've seen. Probably the most notable change is that Microsoft has removed the "honeycomb" grid lines that populated earlier versions. Program icons are still laid out in a staggered pattern, but there aren't lines separating the areas. I can't decide if I like the new UI better or not, what do you think?

Another update is that when you flick your finger to scroll through pages of icons, the animation will flip through one window at a time and then stop, which should make it a lot harder to miss the button you're looking for. Of course, if you have a ton of applications, it'll take longer to scroll through them all this way.

You can watch a 3 minute video of the presentation at I Started Something.

Fifty gorgeous and free icon sets

Icons are to me like clothes are to my wife - meant to be changed. I love sprucing up my desktop with customized icons and a funky background, only to change it all up a week later.

If you're like me, then you're going to enjoy this list of 50 of the most beautiful icon sets created in 2008 at NOUPE. The icon sets listed are intended for everything from customizing your Mac or Windows desktop, to iPhone replacement icons, to web development. There's a little something for everyone, so have a peek if you're at all curious.

Do you have a favorite resource for free icons? Link it up in the comments.

Shareaholic releases accelator for Internet Explorer 8

Shareaholic has long been a favorite Firefox addon of mine, and today its developers announced that Internet Explorer users can now get in on the social sharing goodness.

Right-click anywhere on a page to call up the accelerator and you've got instant access to popular sharing options like Digg, Delicious, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and Yahoo Buzz. The email option is equipped to send via GMail, your default desktop mail app, or Buzzster. Clicking the related link will send you to OneRiot to see who else is talking about the page.

Unlike some other accelerators I've used, Shareaholic loads fairly fast. I'd prefer to have the Firefox-style button always at the ready, but the fraction of a second delay is barely noticeable.

Jay from Shareaholic shared a few words about the development process, saying "It was quite easy to develop for IE8. Took us less than a week to go from nothing developed to keynote ready [and the] Ie8 team was great to work with. In the past developers have tended to stay away from IE because of the complexity involved with creating addons for it. Accelerators in IE8 make it much easier."

That's good news for Microsoft and IE8 users, especially if it means other developers follow in Shareaholic's footsteps and port their addons to accelerators.

Firefox 3.5 will support IRC through Mibbit

Mibbit is a web-based IRC client that lets you log onto pretty much any IRC server from the comfort of your web browser. Typically the first thing you need to do is visit mibbit.com. But that's about to change, because Mozilla is adding Mibbit support to the next version of Firefox.

If you download a recent nightly build of Firefox 3.5, you'll find a new option for "irc" in the applications setting in the options dialog. From the drop-down menu, you can select Mibbit or designate a desktop IRC client. Now when you enter an IRC server in your URL bar, Firefox should automatically launch Mibbit. Just make sure the address starts with "irc://" or "ircs://" and you should be good to go.

SMPlayer 0.6.7 adds support for DVD menus

SMPlayer is a frontend for the open source MPlayer media player. Like MPlayer, that means SMPlayer can handle a wide array of video formats. And the latest build brings SMPlayer one step closer to being a complete replacement for Windows Media Center with experimental support for DVD menus.

SMPlayer 0.6.7 also makes it esier to load external subtitle files, doest a better job of sorting new files added to playlists, and and allows users to configure audio and subtitle delays if necessary.

The media player is available for Windows or Linux. There's also a portable version for Windows that can be run from a USB flash drive.

[via gHacks]

Windows 7 Volume mod for Windows XP

Windows Vista and Windows 7 have a ton of features that differentiate them from Windows XP - an operating system that is, after all, nearly a decade old. But some folks are going to be slow to upgrade because XP still meets their needs, runs software they need it to run, and because you don't need to pay a new fee to keep using the operating system that came with your computer.

But that doesn't mean you can't still have some of the advantages of a new operating system. Microsoft puts millions of dollars and plenty of manpower into optimizing its operating system and making it easier to use. Sometimes it even works. And it usually only takes a short time for hackers and graphic artists to start figuring out ways to make older operating systems such as Windows XP look like newer software like Windows 7.

If you're not looking for a complete transformation pack, there are ways to just change the look and feel of certain Windows components. For example, the volume mixer. fediaFedia has put together a tool for making the Windows XP sound mixer look like the Windows 7 version. Installation is a bit tricky. You need to:

• Go to your Windows\System32 director, back up your sndvol.exe file to a safe space
  
• Press Win+R and type "dllcache" in the box to open a new window
• Copy the sndvol.exe file you downloaded to the dllcache directory and click OK when it asks if you want to overwrite the existing file
• Now copy the downloaded sndvol.exe file to your Windows\System32 directory and click OK to overwrite existing files

When you're done you should see shiny new volume mixers. If you don't like them, fire up the Windows task manager and kill the sndvol.exe process and then copy your backup version of sndvol.exe back to the dllcache and system32 directories.

[via Technobuzz]

Google makes 500,000 free eBooks available for Sony Reader

Sony and Google are partnering to make half a million books that Google has digitized for its eBook project available for free to Sony Reader customers through the Sony digital book store. That brings the total number of books in the Sony store to 600,000, or more than twice the number of eBooks found in Amazon's Kindle store.

The only catch is that these books are all public domain works, most which were written at least 80 years ago. Not exactly the stuff of the New York Times bestseller list. Amazon, by contrast offers a number of new release titles for around $10.

You also don't need a Sony Reader to access the Google library. Any computer or mobile device with an internet connection will do.

Microsoft confirms widgets coming to Windows Mobile 6.5

The rumors were true. Microsoft plans to support internet widgets in Windows Mobile 6.5.Widgets are basically bits of internet code that can run like native apps on your mobile phone. In other words, rather than launching a program that's taking up space on your mobile device or loading a web browser and then navigating to a web page, you'll be able to just click a button and launch a web service in a standalone window.

You can already use these types of widgets on desktop computer operating systems, the iPhone, or the upcoming Palm Pre with WebOS. Windows Mobile 6.5 support could make it a lot easier for developers to create web apps that will run on multiple platforms with minor modifications. Instead of developing for the iPhone, Windows Mobile, OS X, Windows 7, and so on, they'll be able to develop for the web and make sure their apps are compliant with the widget engines on each platform.

Right now, Microsoft is showing off screen shots of a few sample widgets for Live Search, stocks, and weather. More information will be available to developers in April.

Movable Type launches Motion social streaming package

The Moveable Type folks at Six Apart have officially released the cross-platform publishing package they announced late last year. It's called Motion, and it's available to Movable Type Pro users now. Motion lets you publish to multiple services at once, and it allows your community members to comment using their existing accounts on Google, Yahoo and Facebook.

You can quick-publish a microblog via Motion -- including photos, videos and other rich content -- and you can pull in your activity on other sites, including Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. This basically seems like a quick and easy way to do the kind of thing social networking geeks have been doing by hand on their own sites. If you're the sort of person who thinks of a website as a community, you definitely want to give Motion a look.

Facebook users hate the redesign, but does it matter?

There's a buzz going around about a poll on Facebook, where 94% of the almost 800,000 respondents gave the site's new redesign a thumbs-down. That's a pretty big sample size, so it seems clear enough that at least a portion of Facebook's base isn't happy with the changes they've made. The important question might not be "do people like the new redesign?" though. It might be, "Does it matter whether people like it?"

I'm with Eric Eldon at VentureBeat on this one: users don't always know what they want, and a lot of people have negative attitudes toward having to relearn a site they were already very familiar with. When the dust clears a little bit, and folks have had a chance to test-drive the site a bit, then Facebook might have to start listening to constructive criticism. For right now, they should -- and will, more than likely -- work out any kinks in the new design, but give it some time to win people over.

Download Squad readers, what do you think? Do initial user reactions to the new design matter? Should Facebook scrap it, or give it a chance, and why? Vote in our poll, or leave a comment if you have more to say.

View Poll

Wordds organizes articles by reading time for mobile devices

Wordds is a web service that solves a problem that I'm not really sure that I had. The idea is certainly clever: Wordds is a service that organizes full-length articles from a number of publications based on the number of words in the article. It then presents them to the reader grouped by estimated reading time in ascending order. There is a regular browser interface, and Wordds also provides a mobile interface for most handheld devices.

The list of publications Wordds uses as sources is fairly lengthy. Currently it consists of BusinessWeek, Foreign Affairs, New York Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Portfolio, Rolling Stone, Salon, Smithsonian, Sports Illustrated, The Advocate, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Time, and Wired. Unfortunately, there is no indication of just what the selection criteria is for articles that make it onto Wordds. If random selections from these publications do not suit your tastes, you may not find Wordds to be of much value.

Personally, I like the innovation of organizing content by reading time, especially for mobile devices. I could see this being of use in an RSS reader, or in an article clipping application like Instapaper. But when I have little to no control over the articles that Wordds presents to me, I can't honestly see myself using it terribly often.

[via jkOnTheRun]

Moogis: Would you pay $125 to stream live concerts online?

There are a lot of people trying to figure out how to make money online by charging for music that many internet users have come to think of as free (MP3s downloaded from BitTorrent or Limewire, music videos and concert clips on YouTube, and so on). Some folks, like Trent Reznor and RadioHead have chosen to give away music for free or ask fans to pay what they can afford in order to promote CD sales and concert tickets. Allman Brothers founding member Butch Trucks has another idea - use the internet to provide live streaming video of concerts for fans who can't make it to the shows.

This month Trucks launched Moogis, a web site that allows subscribers to watch all 15 of the Allman Brother's concerts at the Beacon Theater in New York this month live as they happen. Once the concerts are over, you can watch them any time you like for up to 6 months. The price? $125.

Compared to the price of an album of music on iTunes, that sounds pretty expensive. But compared to the price of a single front row concert ticket, it's not so bad. And the video streams are available in high definition, from multiple angles, meaning you get a better view than you would if you were in the theater. And nobody's going to spill beer on you, (unless your house is a bit rowdier than mine).

Trucks hopes to expand the service to include performances by other bands soon. And I think die-hard music fans would be willing to pay for this kind of access to performances. But I have to wonder whether the price is too high. Because let's face it, sitting in front of your computer or TV and watching a concert isn't the same thing as being there. It's hard to justify paying a price as if you were.

[via NewTeeVee]

Fugly Friday: The World's Worst Website?

Unfortunately the stout folks at Guinness don't have a "World's Worst Website" category (best I could find was the worst mouse plague, which I assume happens frequently in schools). Fear not, as one intrepid designer has endeavored to show by way of example; I give you the "World's Worst Website," and oh boy, does it deliver.

Pretty much every web design sin in the book is covered, from hosting with Angelfire, to using frames, marquee text, blinking backgrounds, misspellings, links to dead-end pages and much, much more. Try turning your sound all the way up before visiting, then run.

This appears to be created by Michelle from Gold Nugget Webs, a site that isn't exactly fugly, but isn't going to win any awards, either. In fact, it appears Michelle has a thing for understated design, opting to choose aliased text, pixelated JPEG's and CAPS LOCK. To be fair, I get the feeling her clients aren't the most web-savvy or design-savvy bunch (do you know of an opal mine that Starck designed?), so what you see could be at the client's request. And I've certainly had the experience of a client demanding something that made you want to retch. Still, as a monument to fugliness, Michelle's "Worst Website" is easily in the top 10.

Web Developers: help rid the world of IE6 with a simple script

Now that IE8 is here, maybe it's high time that a concerted effort was made to get rid of Internet Explorer 6 once and for all. You'd think by now that most users would have at least upgraded to IE7, but just about every Windows XP system that appears on my workbench is still running the clumsy old oaf-of-a-browser.

@staringispolite has created a simple, open source way that you can help drive the IE6 demon out of our Internet. The Google Code project is called, aptly enough, sevenup. It's inspired by both Google's effort and the movement started by a group of Norweigan websites.

It's a 1k javascript that displays a polite CSS reminder to people who visit your site using IE6 that they should seriously consider upgrading their browser to something a bit more modern. It's respectfully done, though, and includes an option for the user to dismiss the reminder and never be bothered again.

Sure, you could do this on your own from scratch, but sevenup is ready to use and easy to integrate. Do your part to save less tech-savvy web surfers from their browser!

Microsoft pokes fun at the web, acknowledges what private browsing is for

Microsoft has put together a series of videos to promote the launch of Internet Explorer 8. The strategy? Poking a bit of fun at the things we spend our time doing on the internet, like looking at videos of hamsters dancing, ordering completely useless things on eBay, and replacing language with acronyms.

Toward the end of the video above, several of the comedians tapped by Microsoft for the campaign also imply what everyone knows: the new private browsing mode in Internet Explorer 8 (and Firefox 3.5 and Google Chrome) isn't just for privacy advocates. There might be another reason people would like to surf the web without saving any cookies or other items that would indicate which web sites they've been visiting. It's not exactly rocket science, but it's interesting to see it (almost) acknowledged in an officially sanctioned video from Microsoft.

You can check out more videos in the series at the IE8 YouTube page or on Microsoft's web site for the campaign. But you'll need to have Silverlight installed to see the videos on the latter site.

[via Mashable]

YouTube launches video player for Windows Mobile, Nokia S60

Google has launched a new mobile video player for Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 phones. The application adds support for additional phones, boots faster than previous versions, and streams video optimized for 3G and WiFi connections.

You can use the application to search or browse for videos and play them on your device. When you click play, videos will launch in full screen mode.

To install the application, visit m.youtube.com on your mobile device and click the download link. There's a list of supported S60 devices, but no support list for Windows Mobile. Having tried unsuccessfully to install the YouTube player on my Dell Axim X50v, I can tell you that it does not support Windows Mobile 2003SE. But I suspect if you've ot a device with Windows Mobile 6.0 or a newer operating system you should be covered.

[via CoolSmartPhone]

Crowd-source your blog editing with gooseGrade

Have you ever wished that you could have someone edit your blog posts for typos, spelling errors and grammatical mistakes? Most of us aren't lucky enough to have someone dedicated to catching and fixing our every mistake.

Rather than asking one person to edit for you, why not effectively enlist the help of all of your blog's readers? That's what the folks at Brave New Code figured, anyway, when they decided to create the gooseGrade WordPress plugin.

The concept is simple: install the gooseGrade plugin on your site. Then when readers are visiting your site and they see something that could be corrected, they click on a Grade This button on your site and enter the correction they believe should be made. As the site's owner you have the final say as to what changes to apply, so this isn't a tool that is going to let people insert spam all over your site.

While the concept is interesting, I have doubts that people will take the time to edit someone else's work online, in particular I have doubts that people will take the time to understand that they even have the capability of suggesting edits. This tool would have to be baked-in to a major blogging platform like WordPress.com or TypePad before I think enough people would understand what is going on to actually make use of it.

I kind of wish that it was, actually, because the idea is appealing. It's just going to take a lot for this idea to reach the critical mass it would need to become successful.

[via Panache]

10 GMail Labs features worth enabling

The GMail crew has been doing a great job of adding useful features of late -- some of them right into GMail, others in Labs. If you haven't clicked on the little green beaker in the top toolbar yet, there are plenty of excellent features worth turning on. Here are 10 that I find particularly useful.


Offline
Arguably the most powerful feature available in labs right now. Offline access requires the installation of Google Gears, but it's an invaluable option for anyone who needs access to their inbox any time internet access isn't available.

Undo Send
Newly added, the five-second windows is just long enough to evaluate any misgivings you might have or catch the rare but horrendous typo that you didn't notice was underlined.

Media Previews
Apart from the obvious convenience of previewing Flickr and Picasa images and Yelp comments below a message, the YouTube preview is a much less obvious way for you to watch that clip your buddy sent you about the kid that just left the dentist's office.

Continue reading 10 GMail Labs features worth enabling

Windows Mobile 6.5 updated, Honeycomb UI tweaked

Microsoft showed off a recent build of Windows Mobile 6.5 at MIX09 yesterday, and it doesn't look quite like the earlier builds we've seen. Probably the most notable change is that Microsoft has removed the "honeycomb" grid lines that populated earlier versions. Program icons are still laid out in a staggered pattern, but there aren't lines separating the areas. I can't decide if I like the new UI better or not, what do you think?

Another update is that when you flick your finger to scroll through pages of icons, the animation will flip through one window at a time and then stop, which should make it a lot harder to miss the button you're looking for. Of course, if you have a ton of applications, it'll take longer to scroll through them all this way.

You can watch a 3 minute video of the presentation at I Started Something.

Shareaholic releases accelator for Internet Explorer 8

Shareaholic has long been a favorite Firefox addon of mine, and today its developers announced that Internet Explorer users can now get in on the social sharing goodness.

Right-click anywhere on a page to call up the accelerator and you've got instant access to popular sharing options like Digg, Delicious, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and Yahoo Buzz. The email option is equipped to send via GMail, your default desktop mail app, or Buzzster. Clicking the related link will send you to OneRiot to see who else is talking about the page.

Unlike some other accelerators I've used, Shareaholic loads fairly fast. I'd prefer to have the Firefox-style button always at the ready, but the fraction of a second delay is barely noticeable.

Jay from Shareaholic shared a few words about the development process, saying "It was quite easy to develop for IE8. Took us less than a week to go from nothing developed to keynote ready [and the] Ie8 team was great to work with. In the past developers have tended to stay away from IE because of the complexity involved with creating addons for it. Accelerators in IE8 make it much easier."

That's good news for Microsoft and IE8 users, especially if it means other developers follow in Shareaholic's footsteps and port their addons to accelerators.

Firefox 3.5 will support IRC through Mibbit

Mibbit is a web-based IRC client that lets you log onto pretty much any IRC server from the comfort of your web browser. Typically the first thing you need to do is visit mibbit.com. But that's about to change, because Mozilla is adding Mibbit support to the next version of Firefox.

If you download a recent nightly build of Firefox 3.5, you'll find a new option for "irc" in the applications setting in the options dialog. From the drop-down menu, you can select Mibbit or designate a desktop IRC client. Now when you enter an IRC server in your URL bar, Firefox should automatically launch Mibbit. Just make sure the address starts with "irc://" or "ircs://" and you should be good to go.

SMPlayer 0.6.7 adds support for DVD menus

SMPlayer is a frontend for the open source MPlayer media player. Like MPlayer, that means SMPlayer can handle a wide array of video formats. And the latest build brings SMPlayer one step closer to being a complete replacement for Windows Media Center with experimental support for DVD menus.

SMPlayer 0.6.7 also makes it esier to load external subtitle files, doest a better job of sorting new files added to playlists, and and allows users to configure audio and subtitle delays if necessary.

The media player is available for Windows or Linux. There's also a portable version for Windows that can be run from a USB flash drive.

[via gHacks]

Windows 7 Volume mod for Windows XP

Windows Vista and Windows 7 have a ton of features that differentiate them from Windows XP - an operating system that is, after all, nearly a decade old. But some folks are going to be slow to upgrade because XP still meets their needs, runs software they need it to run, and because you don't need to pay a new fee to keep using the operating system that came with your computer.

But that doesn't mean you can't still have some of the advantages of a new operating system. Microsoft puts millions of dollars and plenty of manpower into optimizing its operating system and making it easier to use. Sometimes it even works. And it usually only takes a short time for hackers and graphic artists to start figuring out ways to make older operating systems such as Windows XP look like newer software like Windows 7.

If you're not looking for a complete transformation pack, there are ways to just change the look and feel of certain Windows components. For example, the volume mixer. fediaFedia has put together a tool for making the Windows XP sound mixer look like the Windows 7 version. Installation is a bit tricky. You need to:

• Go to your Windows\System32 director, back up your sndvol.exe file to a safe space
  
• Press Win+R and type "dllcache" in the box to open a new window
• Copy the sndvol.exe file you downloaded to the dllcache directory and click OK when it asks if you want to overwrite the existing file
• Now copy the downloaded sndvol.exe file to your Windows\System32 directory and click OK to overwrite existing files

When you're done you should see shiny new volume mixers. If you don't like them, fire up the Windows task manager and kill the sndvol.exe process and then copy your backup version of sndvol.exe back to the dllcache and system32 directories.

[via Technobuzz]

Google makes 500,000 free eBooks available for Sony Reader

Sony and Google are partnering to make half a million books that Google has digitized for its eBook project available for free to Sony Reader customers through the Sony digital book store. That brings the total number of books in the Sony store to 600,000, or more than twice the number of eBooks found in Amazon's Kindle store.

The only catch is that these books are all public domain works, most which were written at least 80 years ago. Not exactly the stuff of the New York Times bestseller list. Amazon, by contrast offers a number of new release titles for around $10.

You also don't need a Sony Reader to access the Google library. Any computer or mobile device with an internet connection will do.

Microsoft confirms widgets coming to Windows Mobile 6.5

The rumors were true. Microsoft plans to support internet widgets in Windows Mobile 6.5.Widgets are basically bits of internet code that can run like native apps on your mobile phone. In other words, rather than launching a program that's taking up space on your mobile device or loading a web browser and then navigating to a web page, you'll be able to just click a button and launch a web service in a standalone window.

You can already use these types of widgets on desktop computer operating systems, the iPhone, or the upcoming Palm Pre with WebOS. Windows Mobile 6.5 support could make it a lot easier for developers to create web apps that will run on multiple platforms with minor modifications. Instead of developing for the iPhone, Windows Mobile, OS X, Windows 7, and so on, they'll be able to develop for the web and make sure their apps are compliant with the widget engines on each platform.

Right now, Microsoft is showing off screen shots of a few sample widgets for Live Search, stocks, and weather. More information will be available to developers in April.

Google Street view goes live in the UK

Google has launched Street View in the UK. Street View lets Google Maps users see photographs of streetscapes photographed by Google vehicles. At launch, you can see imagery for 25 cities in the UK including London, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Glasgow, and Sheffield and Southampton.

Overall, Google Maps has pictures of more than 22,000 miles of streets in the UK.

When the service launched in the US, it raised some privacy concerns. The UK is already light years ahead of the US when it comes to government surveillance cameras. But the BBC reports that Google did take some steps to ensure privacy in the UK version, including blurring faces and automobile license plates.

Facebook users hate the redesign, but does it matter?

There's a buzz going around about a poll on Facebook, where 94% of the almost 800,000 respondents gave the site's new redesign a thumbs-down. That's a pretty big sample size, so it seems clear enough that at least a portion of Facebook's base isn't happy with the changes they've made. The important question might not be "do people like the new redesign?" though. It might be, "Does it matter whether people like it?"

I'm with Eric Eldon at VentureBeat on this one: users don't always know what they want, and a lot of people have negative attitudes toward having to relearn a site they were already very familiar with. When the dust clears a little bit, and folks have had a chance to test-drive the site a bit, then Facebook might have to start listening to constructive criticism. For right now, they should -- and will, more than likely -- work out any kinks in the new design, but give it some time to win people over.

Download Squad readers, what do you think? Do initial user reactions to the new design matter? Should Facebook scrap it, or give it a chance, and why? Vote in our poll, or leave a comment if you have more to say.

View Poll

Wordds organizes articles by reading time for mobile devices

Wordds is a web service that solves a problem that I'm not really sure that I had. The idea is certainly clever: Wordds is a service that organizes full-length articles from a number of publications based on the number of words in the article. It then presents them to the reader grouped by estimated reading time in ascending order. There is a regular browser interface, and Wordds also provides a mobile interface for most handheld devices.

The list of publications Wordds uses as sources is fairly lengthy. Currently it consists of BusinessWeek, Foreign Affairs, New York Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Portfolio, Rolling Stone, Salon, Smithsonian, Sports Illustrated, The Advocate, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Time, and Wired. Unfortunately, there is no indication of just what the selection criteria is for articles that make it onto Wordds. If random selections from these publications do not suit your tastes, you may not find Wordds to be of much value.

Personally, I like the innovation of organizing content by reading time, especially for mobile devices. I could see this being of use in an RSS reader, or in an article clipping application like Instapaper. But when I have little to no control over the articles that Wordds presents to me, I can't honestly see myself using it terribly often.

[via jkOnTheRun]

Moogis: Would you pay $125 to stream live concerts online?

There are a lot of people trying to figure out how to make money online by charging for music that many internet users have come to think of as free (MP3s downloaded from BitTorrent or Limewire, music videos and concert clips on YouTube, and so on). Some folks, like Trent Reznor and RadioHead have chosen to give away music for free or ask fans to pay what they can afford in order to promote CD sales and concert tickets. Allman Brothers founding member Butch Trucks has another idea - use the internet to provide live streaming video of concerts for fans who can't make it to the shows.

This month Trucks launched Moogis, a web site that allows subscribers to watch all 15 of the Allman Brother's concerts at the Beacon Theater in New York this month live as they happen. Once the concerts are over, you can watch them any time you like for up to 6 months. The price? $125.

Compared to the price of an album of music on iTunes, that sounds pretty expensive. But compared to the price of a single front row concert ticket, it's not so bad. And the video streams are available in high definition, from multiple angles, meaning you get a better view than you would if you were in the theater. And nobody's going to spill beer on you, (unless your house is a bit rowdier than mine).

Trucks hopes to expand the service to include performances by other bands soon. And I think die-hard music fans would be willing to pay for this kind of access to performances. But I have to wonder whether the price is too high. Because let's face it, sitting in front of your computer or TV and watching a concert isn't the same thing as being there. It's hard to justify paying a price as if you were.

[via NewTeeVee]

Fugly Friday: The World's Worst Website?

Unfortunately the stout folks at Guinness don't have a "World's Worst Website" category (best I could find was the worst mouse plague, which I assume happens frequently in schools). Fear not, as one intrepid designer has endeavored to show by way of example; I give you the "World's Worst Website," and oh boy, does it deliver.

Pretty much every web design sin in the book is covered, from hosting with Angelfire, to using frames, marquee text, blinking backgrounds, misspellings, links to dead-end pages and much, much more. Try turning your sound all the way up before visiting, then run.

This appears to be created by Michelle from Gold Nugget Webs, a site that isn't exactly fugly, but isn't going to win any awards, either. In fact, it appears Michelle has a thing for understated design, opting to choose aliased text, pixelated JPEG's and CAPS LOCK. To be fair, I get the feeling her clients aren't the most web-savvy or design-savvy bunch (do you know of an opal mine that Starck designed?), so what you see could be at the client's request. And I've certainly had the experience of a client demanding something that made you want to retch. Still, as a monument to fugliness, Michelle's "Worst Website" is easily in the top 10.

Web Developers: help rid the world of IE6 with a simple script

Now that IE8 is here, maybe it's high time that a concerted effort was made to get rid of Internet Explorer 6 once and for all. You'd think by now that most users would have at least upgraded to IE7, but just about every Windows XP system that appears on my workbench is still running the clumsy old oaf-of-a-browser.

@staringispolite has created a simple, open source way that you can help drive the IE6 demon out of our Internet. The Google Code project is called, aptly enough, sevenup. It's inspired by both Google's effort and the movement started by a group of Norweigan websites.

It's a 1k javascript that displays a polite CSS reminder to people who visit your site using IE6 that they should seriously consider upgrading their browser to something a bit more modern. It's respectfully done, though, and includes an option for the user to dismiss the reminder and never be bothered again.

Sure, you could do this on your own from scratch, but sevenup is ready to use and easy to integrate. Do your part to save less tech-savvy web surfers from their browser!

Microsoft pokes fun at the web, acknowledges what private browsing is for

Microsoft has put together a series of videos to promote the launch of Internet Explorer 8. The strategy? Poking a bit of fun at the things we spend our time doing on the internet, like looking at videos of hamsters dancing, ordering completely useless things on eBay, and replacing language with acronyms.

Toward the end of the video above, several of the comedians tapped by Microsoft for the campaign also imply what everyone knows: the new private browsing mode in Internet Explorer 8 (and Firefox 3.5 and Google Chrome) isn't just for privacy advocates. There might be another reason people would like to surf the web without saving any cookies or other items that would indicate which web sites they've been visiting. It's not exactly rocket science, but it's interesting to see it (almost) acknowledged in an officially sanctioned video from Microsoft.

You can check out more videos in the series at the IE8 YouTube page or on Microsoft's web site for the campaign. But you'll need to have Silverlight installed to see the videos on the latter site.

[via Mashable]

YouTube launches video player for Windows Mobile, Nokia S60

Google has launched a new mobile video player for Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 phones. The application adds support for additional phones, boots faster than previous versions, and streams video optimized for 3G and WiFi connections.

You can use the application to search or browse for videos and play them on your device. When you click play, videos will launch in full screen mode.

To install the application, visit m.youtube.com on your mobile device and click the download link. There's a list of supported S60 devices, but no support list for Windows Mobile. Having tried unsuccessfully to install the YouTube player on my Dell Axim X50v, I can tell you that it does not support Windows Mobile 2003SE. But I suspect if you've ot a device with Windows Mobile 6.0 or a newer operating system you should be covered.

[via CoolSmartPhone]

Crowd-source your blog editing with gooseGrade

Have you ever wished that you could have someone edit your blog posts for typos, spelling errors and grammatical mistakes? Most of us aren't lucky enough to have someone dedicated to catching and fixing our every mistake.

Rather than asking one person to edit for you, why not effectively enlist the help of all of your blog's readers? That's what the folks at Brave New Code figured, anyway, when they decided to create the gooseGrade WordPress plugin.

The concept is simple: install the gooseGrade plugin on your site. Then when readers are visiting your site and they see something that could be corrected, they click on a Grade This button on your site and enter the correction they believe should be made. As the site's owner you have the final say as to what changes to apply, so this isn't a tool that is going to let people insert spam all over your site.

While the concept is interesting, I have doubts that people will take the time to edit someone else's work online, in particular I have doubts that people will take the time to understand that they even have the capability of suggesting edits. This tool would have to be baked-in to a major blogging platform like WordPress.com or TypePad before I think enough people would understand what is going on to actually make use of it.

I kind of wish that it was, actually, because the idea is appealing. It's just going to take a lot for this idea to reach the critical mass it would need to become successful.

[via Panache]

10 GMail Labs features worth enabling

The GMail crew has been doing a great job of adding useful features of late -- some of them right into GMail, others in Labs. If you haven't clicked on the little green beaker in the top toolbar yet, there are plenty of excellent features worth turning on. Here are 10 that I find particularly useful.


Offline
Arguably the most powerful feature available in labs right now. Offline access requires the installation of Google Gears, but it's an invaluable option for anyone who needs access to their inbox any time internet access isn't available.

Undo Send
Newly added, the five-second windows is just long enough to evaluate any misgivings you might have or catch the rare but horrendous typo that you didn't notice was underlined.

Media Previews
Apart from the obvious convenience of previewing Flickr and Picasa images and Yelp comments below a message, the YouTube preview is a much less obvious way for you to watch that clip your buddy sent you about the kid that just left the dentist's office.

Continue reading 10 GMail Labs features worth enabling

Windows Mobile 6.5 updated, Honeycomb UI tweaked

Microsoft showed off a recent build of Windows Mobile 6.5 at MIX09 yesterday, and it doesn't look quite like the earlier builds we've seen. Probably the most notable change is that Microsoft has removed the "honeycomb" grid lines that populated earlier versions. Program icons are still laid out in a staggered pattern, but there aren't lines separating the areas. I can't decide if I like the new UI better or not, what do you think?

Another update is that when you flick your finger to scroll through pages of icons, the animation will flip through one window at a time and then stop, which should make it a lot harder to miss the button you're looking for. Of course, if you have a ton of applications, it'll take longer to scroll through them all this way.

You can watch a 3 minute video of the presentation at I Started Something.

Fifty gorgeous and free icon sets

Icons are to me like clothes are to my wife - meant to be changed. I love sprucing up my desktop with customized icons and a funky background, only to change it all up a week later.

If you're like me, then you're going to enjoy this list of 50 of the most beautiful icon sets created in 2008 at NOUPE. The icon sets listed are intended for everything from customizing your Mac or Windows desktop, to iPhone replacement icons, to web development. There's a little something for everyone, so have a peek if you're at all curious.

Do you have a favorite resource for free icons? Link it up in the comments.

Shareaholic releases accelator for Internet Explorer 8

Shareaholic has long been a favorite Firefox addon of mine, and today its developers announced that Internet Explorer users can now get in on the social sharing goodness.

Right-click anywhere on a page to call up the accelerator and you've got instant access to popular sharing options like Digg, Delicious, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and Yahoo Buzz. The email option is equipped to send via GMail, your default desktop mail app, or Buzzster. Clicking the related link will send you to OneRiot to see who else is talking about the page.

Unlike some other accelerators I've used, Shareaholic loads fairly fast. I'd prefer to have the Firefox-style button always at the ready, but the fraction of a second delay is barely noticeable.

Jay from Shareaholic shared a few words about the development process, saying "It was quite easy to develop for IE8. Took us less than a week to go from nothing developed to keynote ready [and the] Ie8 team was great to work with. In the past developers have tended to stay away from IE because of the complexity involved with creating addons for it. Accelerators in IE8 make it much easier."

That's good news for Microsoft and IE8 users, especially if it means other developers follow in Shareaholic's footsteps and port their addons to accelerators.

Firefox 3.5 will support IRC through Mibbit

Mibbit is a web-based IRC client that lets you log onto pretty much any IRC server from the comfort of your web browser. Typically the first thing you need to do is visit mibbit.com. But that's about to change, because Mozilla is adding Mibbit support to the next version of Firefox.

If you download a recent nightly build of Firefox 3.5, you'll find a new option for "irc" in the applications setting in the options dialog. From the drop-down menu, you can select Mibbit or designate a desktop IRC client. Now when you enter an IRC server in your URL bar, Firefox should automatically launch Mibbit. Just make sure the address starts with "irc://" or "ircs://" and you should be good to go.

SMPlayer 0.6.7 adds support for DVD menus

SMPlayer is a frontend for the open source MPlayer media player. Like MPlayer, that means SMPlayer can handle a wide array of video formats. And the latest build brings SMPlayer one step closer to being a complete replacement for Windows Media Center with experimental support for DVD menus.

SMPlayer 0.6.7 also makes it esier to load external subtitle files, doest a better job of sorting new files added to playlists, and and allows users to configure audio and subtitle delays if necessary.

The media player is available for Windows or Linux. There's also a portable version for Windows that can be run from a USB flash drive.

[via gHacks]

Windows 7 Volume mod for Windows XP

Windows Vista and Windows 7 have a ton of features that differentiate them from Windows XP - an operating system that is, after all, nearly a decade old. But some folks are going to be slow to upgrade because XP still meets their needs, runs software they need it to run, and because you don't need to pay a new fee to keep using the operating system that came with your computer.

But that doesn't mean you can't still have some of the advantages of a new operating system. Microsoft puts millions of dollars and plenty of manpower into optimizing its operating system and making it easier to use. Sometimes it even works. And it usually only takes a short time for hackers and graphic artists to start figuring out ways to make older operating systems such as Windows XP look like newer software like Windows 7.

If you're not looking for a complete transformation pack, there are ways to just change the look and feel of certain Windows components. For example, the volume mixer. fediaFedia has put together a tool for making the Windows XP sound mixer look like the Windows 7 version. Installation is a bit tricky. You need to:

• Go to your Windows\System32 director, back up your sndvol.exe file to a safe space
  
• Press Win+R and type "dllcache" in the box to open a new window
• Copy the sndvol.exe file you downloaded to the dllcache directory and click OK when it asks if you want to overwrite the existing file
• Now copy the downloaded sndvol.exe file to your Windows\System32 directory and click OK to overwrite existing files

When you're done you should see shiny new volume mixers. If you don't like them, fire up the Windows task manager and kill the sndvol.exe process and then copy your backup version of sndvol.exe back to the dllcache and system32 directories.

[via Technobuzz]

Google makes 500,000 free eBooks available for Sony Reader

Sony and Google are partnering to make half a million books that Google has digitized for its eBook project available for free to Sony Reader customers through the Sony digital book store. That brings the total number of books in the Sony store to 600,000, or more than twice the number of eBooks found in Amazon's Kindle store.

The only catch is that these books are all public domain works, most which were written at least 80 years ago. Not exactly the stuff of the New York Times bestseller list. Amazon, by contrast offers a number of new release titles for around $10.

You also don't need a Sony Reader to access the Google library. Any computer or mobile device with an internet connection will do.

Microsoft confirms widgets coming to Windows Mobile 6.5

The rumors were true. Microsoft plans to support internet widgets in Windows Mobile 6.5.Widgets are basically bits of internet code that can run like native apps on your mobile phone. In other words, rather than launching a program that's taking up space on your mobile device or loading a web browser and then navigating to a web page, you'll be able to just click a button and launch a web service in a standalone window.

You can already use these types of widgets on desktop computer operating systems, the iPhone, or the upcoming Palm Pre with WebOS. Windows Mobile 6.5 support could make it a lot easier for developers to create web apps that will run on multiple platforms with minor modifications. Instead of developing for the iPhone, Windows Mobile, OS X, Windows 7, and so on, they'll be able to develop for the web and make sure their apps are compliant with the widget engines on each platform.

Right now, Microsoft is showing off screen shots of a few sample widgets for Live Search, stocks, and weather. More information will be available to developers in April.

Google Street view goes live in the UK

Google has launched Street View in the UK. Street View lets Google Maps users see photographs of streetscapes photographed by Google vehicles. At launch, you can see imagery for 25 cities in the UK including London, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Glasgow, and Sheffield and Southampton.

Overall, Google Maps has pictures of more than 22,000 miles of streets in the UK.

When the service launched in the US, it raised some privacy concerns. The UK is already light years ahead of the US when it comes to government surveillance cameras. But the BBC reports that Google did take some steps to ensure privacy in the UK version, including blurring faces and automobile license plates.

Internet Explorer 8 slips early on Windows Update

Despite what CNET announced ealier this week and what Microsoft has announced as the official release time for Internet Explorer 8's RTM (4pm GMT), I've just finished watching the installation wrap up on a system on my workbench via Windows Update. Due to the heavy server load Microsoft is anticipating, that wasn't supposed to happen right away.

In case you're not excited about the prospect of IE8 sneaking on to the systems you support (including your home computer), you can grab the blocker toolkit from Microsoft's web site.

We've looked at the new browser before (just this morning, as a matter of fact). Warnings aside, IE8 is a step in the right direction from Microsoft.

SXSW 2009: Blinging your blog with JS-Kit

Chris Saad tells Grant how JS-Kit works as an advanced commenting system for your blog, including stuff like OpenID and Facebook Connect. But it's also more than that: it provides widgets for comments, ratings, polls and chat across a network of 600,000 blogs. Basically, JS-Kit is an all-purpose system to cross-pollinate your comments and other info across sites in the network. These aren't all small sites, either: I Can Has Cheeseburger and Jetblue are some of the well-known sites that are on board with JS-Kit.

TweetDeck beats Twhirl to the punch, adds Facebook support

If you've been using TweetDeck without a dual-display setup, it's just about time for you to make a purchase. With newly-announced support for Facebook, you're going to need some more real estate. The release comes two short days after Twhirl frontman Loic Le Meur announced that Seesmic had released a standalone Facebook app which, like TweetDeck, is built on Adobe Air.

Setup involves logging in to Facebook and the usual two or three clicks afterwards. Once completed, you'll have a new panel showing your Facebook friends' updates and a checkbox next to the update field to enable posting to Facebook. Curiously, TweetDeck includes the ability to email or tweet Facebook updates, something which doesn't necessarily jive with Facebook's TOS.

For now, that's about it for functionality. You can't, for example, send replies. With TweetDeck's history of Twitter kung-fu there will likely be plenty of enhancements in the coming months.

New social app Foursquare is Dodgeball Part Deux

Dodgeball was legend amongst Internet social junkies. This cool mobile app let you know where your friends and crushes were, and made meeting up easy. It was so beloved that there was a farewell party in San Francisco when the site shut down. Something with that much community support can't stay dead for long, though, so now there's Foursquare, a Dodgeball "sequel" from one of the guys behind Dodgeball.

So, what does Foursquare do? Like Dodgeball, it lets you check in from your phone when you go somewhere. Foursquare has several ways to do this, via iPhone, a mobile web interface, or good old text messaging. Foursquare also has Twitter integration, so you can get/send checkins through Twitter's direct message interface. It's launched in 12 cities so far, so go check if yours is supported. Dodgeball is dead, long live Dodgeball.

SXSW 2009: Catching up with DataPortabiity

Grant Robertson catches up with the Data Portability project to see what they've accomplished in the past year. Turns out it's quite a lot. Internal governance mechanisms are in place, so the project can go forward and get more sites on board with its vision of interoperability and user control of data. If you don't know what Data Portability is and does, this video is a good primer.

Calibre looks like the essential app for eBook fans

If you're starting to amass a large collection of eBooks, formatted for all kinds of different readers, Calibre might be just what you need to help organize them. It's a cross-platform app that can read and tag eBooks from Kindle 1 and 2, iPhone, and readers from Sony and Cybook. It can also convert text from all kinds of sources into eBook format, and function as its own server of sorts, so you can access your library online.

Calibre also looks great, with a display mode similar to the Cover Flow in iTunes -- can someone explain what's up with Cover Flow being so hot right now? -- and a more practical list mode that just shows cover images on the side. You can also edit or fill in information about your books from Calibre, to make sure your library is accurate and organized. Oh, and if you're a fan of the Stanza reader on the iPhone, Calibre's hosting feature makes your books accessible through that, too.

Internet on TV updates: Pandora for Vudu, iPhone Boxee remote

For the last decade or so people have been talking about how eventually the TV screen and computer monitor will merge. Over the last year or two, we've actually started to see that happen. More and more people are watching TV on their computers either using TV tuner cards or internet video from sites like Hulu. And computer apps like Boxee and set top boxes like Vudu are making it easier for people to watch internet content on their televisions.

Today both Boxee and Vudu announced new services. Vudu is partnering with internet radio station Pandora to allow users to stream personalized music stations over their TV/home entertainment system. And Boxee has launched an application for the iPhone that lets users turn their phone into a remote control for Boxee.

The Boxee iPhone Remote is available in the Boxee App Box, which was launched a few weeks ago. Boxee has been in the news a lot lately due to the company's battle with Hulu. After a bit of back and forth over whether Boxee users should be able to watch Hulu videos using the full screen Boxee browser for the TV (instead of visiting Hulu's web site using a computer), the folks at Boxee seem to be focusing on building a larger community of developers and applications around their platform. This weekend Boxee also announced support for Blip.tv content through a plugin available at the Boxee App Box.

SXSW 2009: Meet the small business web with Shoeboxed, Freshbooks, Outright and Batchblue

Download Squad's fearless lead blogger, Grant Robertson, has got his hands full in another interview from SXSW. Grant gathered a group that represents everything you need to run your small business or freelance practice, from tracking your expenses, to invoicing clients, to managing your contacts. Check out this interview to learn more about what Shoeboxed, Freshbooks, Outright and Batchblue can do for you.

UPDATE: Check the comments on this post for some excellent clarification from Ben Curren of Outright about how all these services work together. Thanks, Ben!

Seesmic releases Facebook client, Twhirl integration coming

Seesmic's Twhirl is one of the most widely-used desktop clients for Twitter, and now it's got a sibling. Loic Le Meur announced on Saturday that the company has released the first version of a similar application for Facebook.

The app requires Adobe Air, and does seem a bit intense on memory use for what it's doing (currently using about 65Mb on my Windows 7 x64 system). Once it's installed, you'll just have to click through the usual Facebook authorizations to get it running.

It's a lot like taking a slice out of the middle of your Facebook home page, minus the handy threading. At this stage of development, most users will likely opt to stick with the web interface.

Remember, this is a preview release. More important than how Seesmic's Facebook app functions right now is Le Meur's statement that they " will soon have a client with both Facebook and Twitter integrated into one." Combined with Twhirl's support for Twitter, Identi.ca, and Friendfeed, that would make for a very intriguing desktop app - especially for users needing to manage multiple Twitter accounts.

Make shiny buttons at Da Button Factory

If you need a button the web in a pinch, Da Button Factory has you covered. It's a quick and easy "shiny" button generator with lots of custom options that are easy to control. You can change colors, fonts, shadow effects and borders with a few clicks, and there's a gallery of decent-looking example buttons to get you started.

The main problem with Da Button Factory is the limited font selection. You can match every other element up with the design of your site reasonably well, but with only a handful of typefaces to choose from, it's hard to get the font you want. However, Da Button Factory scores points for ease of use and the ability to export as a CSS background.

SXSW 2009: Rudder is not Mint, here's why

Grant talks to the team from Rudder, a new financial-tracking service that sounds a lot like Mint.com. The Rudder guys tell him how they distinguish themselves from Mint by focusing on planning for the future instead of tracking the past. Learn about the cool features that let Rudder turn finances into a game that you play with yourself. Can financial management seriously be fun? Find out in this video.

WeFollow: user-tagged Twitter directory

A lot of Twitter directories have tried and failed to catch on, but WeFollow has two things that they don't. One, it promotes itself automatically, because users need to publicly tweet @wefollow to add themselves. And two, Kevin Rose. The Digg dude and one of the most-followed people on Twitter is behind WeFollow, which gives it an automatic boost in name recognition.

On the other hand, here's why I don't care about WeFollow. It's top-loaded, in a kind of leaderboard format. The front page displays the most popular people in the most popular categories. So, although the category list is deep, all the good stuff is hidden. Sure, you know Shaq's on Twitter, and you know who @ev is, but a front page that shows all the folks you're already most likely to follow doesn't seem the best way to make people's Twitter streams richer. It does seem to be a good way to get Kevin Rose more followers, though. In WeFollow's defense, though, I'll admit that the user-tagged system of adding yourself is cool and convenient.

SXSW 2009: building web communities, Threadless-style

Threadless is more than a t-shirt company, as Grant Robertson found out when he chatted with Jeffrey Kalmikoff. Jeffrey explained how Threadless works, and how they've managed to build a community of nearly a million people who submit and vote on awesome new shirts. And that's just registered users, not including the thousands who just use Threadless to buy the hottest new designs. Stay tuned to Download Squad for more interviews straight from our team at SXSW.

SXSW 2009: talking about blog-fueled search with Lijit's Micah Baldwin

Download Squad's Grant Robertson has been interviewing up a storm down at South by Southwest. He just hooked up with Micah Baldwin of Lijit to talk about how blogs and trusted friend networks can lead to more relevant, more personal search results. The biggest surprise to me was that Lijit isn't supported by Wordpress yet. Micah's encouraging everyone to email Automattic and get them to change that.

Jaiku micro-blogging client goes open source

Google has released the source code for micro-blogging service Jaiku. The company announced earlier this year that it would cease development of Jaiku. But instead of shutting Jaiku down altogether, Google has moved the project so that it now runs on Google App Engine.

Meanwhile, now that JaikuEngine is avialable to the public, anyone can set up their own version of Jaiku. And developers can help contribute to the project. It should be interesting to see how the project fares. While Twitter certainly dominates the micro-blogging space, it's possible that the new open source nature of Jaiku will make it attractive to open source enthusiasts. There's also the possibility that by making the project open source, developers will contribute new and exciting features more quickly -- but only if a strong developer community grows around JaikuEngine.

SXSW 2009 : Take back your inbox with OtherInbox

We're bonkers about our email. We sort it, we massage it, we organize it. Or, really.. we don't. We'd like to, but who has the time? OtherInbox, a service we've written about in the past, is live and open for business.

I caught up with Joshua Baer to talk about what makes OtherInbox so useful, and why I'm so excited to ditch my filters and find email bliss.

FriendFeed Notifier brings real-time updates to the desktop

Sometimes it seems that we're so plugged in to Twitter here @downloadsquad -- rather, at Download Squad -- that we don't even know FriendFeed exists.

Not true! In fact, I noticed that FriendFeed just released an official desktop notifier, built on Adobe AIR. It's pretty rough so far, but a lot of users are commenting with feature requests and improvements.

The main issue people have with the notifier so far is that it's a bit overwhelming. Right now, it just displays a pop-up for every new item in your feed. Useful, sure, but that can be a lot of items. Without customization settings to narrow down what you're seeing -- or slim down the size of the pop-up -- it's very obtrusive.

You also have to click through to take certain actions (like responding to comments) in a browser window, even though it looks like you should be able to do it right in the notifier. Despite these little annoyances, the desktop notifier is a good first step, and seems likely to improve in the near future.

How to fix the Windows 7 7057 desktop.ini startup bug

Based on some of the things you've read about Windows 7, it's sometimes not so apparent that we're still talking about a work in progress. Not so with build 7057 - there's a little reminder right in the middle of the desktop when Windows starts up. Notepad will be there, unabashedly displaying the contents of desktop.ini.

It's easy enough to remedy - here's one simple method.

1. Open the run dialog ( windows + r ) and type shell:startup and press enter.

2. Set your Explorer options to display protected operating system files - pressing alt then T then O will get you to the screen quickly. Click the view tab then uncheck hide protected operating system files.

3. Delete desktop.ini from the folder. [edit] As posted by Chris123nt, you'll also need to navigate to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup and delete desktop.ini there as well.

4. Log off and then log back on, or reboot to verify that it's fixed.

5. Repeat step 2, but this time put the check mark back in hide protected operating system files (to prevent accidentally deleting something important later).

Amnesty Generator puts iGoogle gadgets on your Windows 7 desktop

You may have

SXSW 2009: Blinging your blog with JS-Kit

Chris Saad tells Grant how JS-Kit works as an advanced commenting system for your blog, including stuff like OpenID and Facebook Connect. But it's also more than that: it provides widgets for comments, ratings, polls and chat across a network of 600,000 blogs. Basically, JS-Kit is an all-purpose system to cross-pollinate your comments and other info across sites in the network. These aren't all small sites, either: I Can Has Cheeseburger and Jetblue are some of the well-known sites that are on board with JS-Kit.

TweetDeck beats Twhirl to the punch, adds Facebook support

If you've been using TweetDeck without a dual-display setup, it's just about time for you to make a purchase. With newly-announced support for Facebook, you're going to need some more real estate. The release comes two short days after Twhirl frontman Loic Le Meur announced that Seesmic had released a standalone Facebook app which, like TweetDeck, is built on Adobe Air.

Setup involves logging in to Facebook and the usual two or three clicks afterwards. Once completed, you'll have a new panel showing your Facebook friends' updates and a checkbox next to the update field to enable posting to Facebook. Curiously, TweetDeck includes the ability to email or tweet Facebook updates, something which doesn't necessarily jive with Facebook's TOS.

For now, that's about it for functionality. You can't, for example, send replies. With TweetDeck's history of Twitter kung-fu there will likely be plenty of enhancements in the coming months.

New social app Foursquare is Dodgeball Part Deux

Dodgeball was legend amongst Internet social junkies. This cool mobile app let you know where your friends and crushes were, and made meeting up easy. It was so beloved that there was a farewell party in San Francisco when the site shut down. Something with that much community support can't stay dead for long, though, so now there's Foursquare, a Dodgeball "sequel" from one of the guys behind Dodgeball.

So, what does Foursquare do? Like Dodgeball, it lets you check in from your phone when you go somewhere. Foursquare has several ways to do this, via iPhone, a mobile web interface, or good old text messaging. Foursquare also has Twitter integration, so you can get/send checkins through Twitter's direct message interface. It's launched in 12 cities so far, so go check if yours is supported. Dodgeball is dead, long live Dodgeball.

SXSW 2009: Catching up with DataPortabiity

Grant Robertson catches up with the Data Portability project to see what they've accomplished in the past year. Turns out it's quite a lot. Internal governance mechanisms are in place, so the project can go forward and get more sites on board with its vision of interoperability and user control of data. If you don't know what Data Portability is and does, this video is a good primer.

Calibre looks like the essential app for eBook fans

If you're starting to amass a large collection of eBooks, formatted for all kinds of different readers, Calibre might be just what you need to help organize them. It's a cross-platform app that can read and tag eBooks from Kindle 1 and 2, iPhone, and readers from Sony and Cybook. It can also convert text from all kinds of sources into eBook format, and function as its own server of sorts, so you can access your library online.

Calibre also looks great, with a display mode similar to the Cover Flow in iTunes -- can someone explain what's up with Cover Flow being so hot right now? -- and a more practical list mode that just shows cover images on the side. You can also edit or fill in information about your books from Calibre, to make sure your library is accurate and organized. Oh, and if you're a fan of the Stanza reader on the iPhone, Calibre's hosting feature makes your books accessible through that, too.

Internet on TV updates: Pandora for Vudu, iPhone Boxee remote

For the last decade or so people have been talking about how eventually the TV screen and computer monitor will merge. Over the last year or two, we've actually started to see that happen. More and more people are watching TV on their computers either using TV tuner cards or internet video from sites like Hulu. And computer apps like Boxee and set top boxes like Vudu are making it easier for people to watch internet content on their televisions.

Today both Boxee and Vudu announced new services. Vudu is partnering with internet radio station Pandora to allow users to stream personalized music stations over their TV/home entertainment system. And Boxee has launched an application for the iPhone that lets users turn their phone into a remote control for Boxee.

The Boxee iPhone Remote is available in the Boxee App Box, which was launched a few weeks ago. Boxee has been in the news a lot lately due to the company's battle with Hulu. After a bit of back and forth over whether Boxee users should be able to watch Hulu videos using the full screen Boxee browser for the TV (instead of visiting Hulu's web site using a computer), the folks at Boxee seem to be focusing on building a larger community of developers and applications around their platform. This weekend Boxee also announced support for Blip.tv content through a plugin available at the Boxee App Box.

SXSW 2009: Meet the small business web with Shoeboxed, Freshbooks, Outright and Batchblue

Download Squad's fearless lead blogger, Grant Robertson, has got his hands full in another interview from SXSW. Grant gathered a group that represents everything you need to run your small business or freelance practice, from tracking your expenses, to invoicing clients, to managing your contacts. Check out this interview to learn more about what Shoeboxed, Freshbooks, Outright and Batchblue can do for you.

UPDATE: Check the comments on this post for some excellent clarification from Ben Curren of Outright about how all these services work together. Thanks, Ben!

Seesmic releases Facebook client, Twhirl integration coming

Seesmic's Twhirl is one of the most widely-used desktop clients for Twitter, and now it's got a sibling. Loic Le Meur announced on Saturday that the company has released the first version of a similar application for Facebook.

The app requires Adobe Air, and does seem a bit intense on memory use for what it's doing (currently using about 65Mb on my Windows 7 x64 system). Once it's installed, you'll just have to click through the usual Facebook authorizations to get it running.

It's a lot like taking a slice out of the middle of your Facebook home page, minus the handy threading. At this stage of development, most users will likely opt to stick with the web interface.

Remember, this is a preview release. More important than how Seesmic's Facebook app functions right now is Le Meur's statement that they " will soon have a client with both Facebook and Twitter integrated into one." Combined with Twhirl's support for Twitter, Identi.ca, and Friendfeed, that would make for a very intriguing desktop app - especially for users needing to manage multiple Twitter accounts.

Make shiny buttons at Da Button Factory

If you need a button the web in a pinch, Da Button Factory has you covered. It's a quick and easy "shiny" button generator with lots of custom options that are easy to control. You can change colors, fonts, shadow effects and borders with a few clicks, and there's a gallery of decent-looking example buttons to get you started.

The main problem with Da Button Factory is the limited font selection. You can match every other element up with the design of your site reasonably well, but with only a handful of typefaces to choose from, it's hard to get the font you want. However, Da Button Factory scores points for ease of use and the ability to export as a CSS background.

SXSW 2009: Rudder is not Mint, here's why

Grant talks to the team from Rudder, a new financial-tracking service that sounds a lot like Mint.com. The Rudder guys tell him how they distinguish themselves from Mint by focusing on planning for the future instead of tracking the past. Learn about the cool features that let Rudder turn finances into a game that you play with yourself. Can financial management seriously be fun? Find out in this video.

WeFollow: user-tagged Twitter directory

A lot of Twitter directories have tried and failed to catch on, but WeFollow has two things that they don't. One, it promotes itself automatically, because users need to publicly tweet @wefollow to add themselves. And two, Kevin Rose. The Digg dude and one of the most-followed people on Twitter is behind WeFollow, which gives it an automatic boost in name recognition.

On the other hand, here's why I don't care about WeFollow. It's top-loaded, in a kind of leaderboard format. The front page displays the most popular people in the most popular categories. So, although the category list is deep, all the good stuff is hidden. Sure, you know Shaq's on Twitter, and you know who @ev is, but a front page that shows all the folks you're already most likely to follow doesn't seem the best way to make people's Twitter streams richer. It does seem to be a good way to get Kevin Rose more followers, though. In WeFollow's defense, though, I'll admit that the user-tagged system of adding yourself is cool and convenient.

SXSW 2009: building web communities, Threadless-style

Threadless is more than a t-shirt company, as Grant Robertson found out when he chatted with Jeffrey Kalmikoff. Jeffrey explained how Threadless works, and how they've managed to build a community of nearly a million people who submit and vote on awesome new shirts. And that's just registered users, not including the thousands who just use Threadless to buy the hottest new designs. Stay tuned to Download Squad for more interviews straight from our team at SXSW.

SXSW 2009: talking about blog-fueled search with Lijit's Micah Baldwin

Download Squad's Grant Robertson has been interviewing up a storm down at South by Southwest. He just hooked up with Micah Baldwin of Lijit to talk about how blogs and trusted friend networks can lead to more relevant, more personal search results. The biggest surprise to me was that Lijit isn't supported by Wordpress yet. Micah's encouraging everyone to email Automattic and get them to change that.

Jaiku micro-blogging client goes open source

Google has released the source code for micro-blogging service Jaiku. The company announced earlier this year that it would cease development of Jaiku. But instead of shutting Jaiku down altogether, Google has moved the project so that it now runs on Google App Engine.

Meanwhile, now that JaikuEngine is avialable to the public, anyone can set up their own version of Jaiku. And developers can help contribute to the project. It should be interesting to see how the project fares. While Twitter certainly dominates the micro-blogging space, it's possible that the new open source nature of Jaiku will make it attractive to open source enthusiasts. There's also the possibility that by making the project open source, developers will contribute new and exciting features more quickly -- but only if a strong developer community grows around JaikuEngine.

SXSW 2009 : Take back your inbox with OtherInbox

We're bonkers about our email. We sort it, we massage it, we organize it. Or, really.. we don't. We'd like to, but who has the time? OtherInbox, a service we've written about in the past, is live and open for business.

I caught up with Joshua Baer to talk about what makes OtherInbox so useful, and why I'm so excited to ditch my filters and find email bliss.

FriendFeed Notifier brings real-time updates to the desktop

Sometimes it seems that we're so plugged in to Twitter here @downloadsquad -- rather, at Download Squad -- that we don't even know FriendFeed exists.

Not true! In fact, I noticed that FriendFeed just released an official desktop notifier, built on Adobe AIR. It's pretty rough so far, but a lot of users are commenting with feature requests and improvements.

The main issue people have with the notifier so far is that it's a bit overwhelming. Right now, it just displays a pop-up for every new item in your feed. Useful, sure, but that can be a lot of items. Without customization settings to narrow down what you're seeing -- or slim down the size of the pop-up -- it's very obtrusive.

You also have to click through to take certain actions (like responding to comments) in a browser window, even though it looks like you should be able to do it right in the notifier. Despite these little annoyances, the desktop notifier is a good first step, and seems likely to improve in the near future.

How to fix the Windows 7 7057 desktop.ini startup bug

Based on some of the things you've read about Windows 7, it's sometimes not so apparent that we're still talking about a work in progress. Not so with build 7057 - there's a little reminder right in the middle of the desktop when Windows starts up. Notepad will be there, unabashedly displaying the contents of desktop.ini.

It's easy enough to remedy - here's one simple method.

1. Open the run dialog ( windows + r ) and type shell:startup and press enter.

2. Set your Explorer options to display protected operating system files - pressing alt then T then O will get you to the screen quickly. Click the view tab then uncheck hide protected operating system files.

3. Delete desktop.ini from the folder. [edit] As posted by Chris123nt, you'll also need to navigate to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup and delete desktop.ini there as well.

4. Log off and then log back on, or reboot to verify that it's fixed.

5. Repeat step 2, but this time put the check mark back in hide protected operating system files (to prevent accidentally deleting something important later).

Amnesty Generator puts iGoogle gadgets on your Windows 7 desktop

You may have

Symbian moves to a 6 month release schedule

The Symbian Foundation is planning to move to twice a year release schedule, which means user -- and more importantly, cellphone makers -- will be able to plan for updates. The Symbian operating system is found on millions of cellphones.

Symbian won't be the first operating system to be released on a regular schedule, as opposed to "when it's ready." The folks at Canonical have been releasing a new version of Ubuntu Linux every six months for the last few years. It's true, that not every new build is loaded with dramatic changes from earlier versions. But that's a good thing. Can you imagine using a cellphone or desktop operating system that launched an entirely new interface every six months? There's a reason Windows has been using some form of the Start Menu for years, while Apple has adopted the Dock. It makes the learning curve a lot simpler when users simply have to get used to minor tweaks and changes and not a whole new paradigm.

That's not to say that Symbian, Canonical, or any other groups putting out software on a regular schedule won't occasionally have releases that proide a major shakeup. Those are important too. But when you're shooting for a six month release schedule, the most important thing is to make sure that all the features work by the time a new version is unleashed on the public.

[via Techmeme]

Search Cloudlet for Firefox brings tags to Twitter search

Search Cloudlet is a plugin for Firefox that adds relevant tag clouds to searches you conduct using Yahoo! or Google. We first looked at the program a few months ago and were impressed with the way it helps refine your searches.

Now there's a new version of Search Cloudlet that works with Twitter search as well. When you conduct a search using Twitter, a tag cloud will pop up with relevant terms. For example, if you search for "Jim Cramer," you'll find a lot of results for "Jon" and "Stewart."

You can also filter your results by clicking ont he Authors, @To, or #Tags buttons. Or if you'd rather not see the tag cloud at all, just hit the Off button.

Opera 10 Alpha now includes Opera Turbo compression

Today on the official Opera blog the company announced the release of Turbo in the newest version 10 alpha build. Turbo is a server-side technology designed to compress data before sending it to your computer, resulting (hopefully) in a bandwidth savings and speed increase.

You'll notice a few differences with turbo enabled, such as reduced quality on images and some missing content like Flash - which is supported but may not load unless you click on the element first. SSL-protected content does not get passed through the compression servers for obvious privacy and security reasons.

After giving it a try on my desktop, I found that several pages actually loaded more slowly, likely due to the additional processing by Opera's servers. Using NetLimiter as suggested in the blog post, however, Turbo definitely improved Opera's performance.

Turbo is an interesting feature to keep an eye on, especially if you find yourself dealing with constrained bandwidth from time to time.

More head-in-hole fun with Masterpiece Yourself - Time Waster

So it's Friday afternoon and you're looking for a way to avoid that last menial task of the day. Why not dig up some photos of your coworkers and immortalize their faces in famous works of art?

At Masterpiece Yourself you can do exactly that - it's yet another fun head-in-hole site. Select a classic painting like Van Gogh's self portrait or Miachaelangelo's Boy with a Basket of Fruit. There are six others avaible as well, just waiting for you to utilize in your intra-office shenanigans.

The editing controls are basic, but good enough to get the job done. Files can either be uploaded from your machine or directly from a URL. As with similar sites, your image can be scaled, rotated, or flipped.

Your results aren't likely to end up in the Louvre any time soon, but you can email them to your friends of send a link to your Facebook page once they're done.

Thanks, Lara!

Download Squad are in the house at SXSW!

It's that time of year again when the techworld descends on Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest Interactive festival. Our crack team of bloggers (Grant, Christina, Chris Ullrich, Victor Agreda, Chris Clark and yours truly) will be going to as many sessions, parties, after-parties and panels as humanly possible, bringing you news and videos throughout the next six days.

If you're in Austin for SXSW, be sure to come say hello and grab a pint of Shiner Bock with us - you can keep up with what we're doing on Twitter (links below) - and if you've got any interesting tips be sure to get in touch and let us know!

Twitter Links: Download Squad - Grant - Christina - Victor - Nik - Chris Ullrich - Chris Clark

Microsoft to shut down adCenter Analytics Beta

Microsoft is ending its adCenter Analytics Beta. The company is no longer accepting new users, although existing users will be able to access the service through the end of 2009. You'll probably want to export your data by December 31st though, unless you're cool with watching it all disappear.

Microsoft adCenter Analytics Beta was a bit of an answer to Google Analytics and other web analytics software although, as the name suggests, it was designed with advertising analytics in mind.

If you were an adCenter Analytics user, or even if you weren't, Microsoft has provided a rather lengthy list of companies offering similar services, including Google Analytics, Omniture, and Yahoo! Web Analytics.

[via paidContent]

SXSW 2009 : The ceremonial unbagging of the swag

We're in the thick of it at SXSWi 2009! Our own Nik Fletcher unbags and disects the official South by Southwest bag full of goodies. Keep your eyes peeled from more from Austin and, if you happen to be here with us, hit us up on Twitter and meet up with us in person!

StumbleUpon to offer short URLs with su.pr

Hot on the heels of Digg's new short URL feature StumbleUpon's founder has announced - albeit somewhat cryptically - that they may be working on their own truncation tool. "su.pr is coming," reads the Twitter update, though the link currently redirects to StumbleUpon.com.

The moves definitely make sense for both sites. With so many Twitter users sharing links via shortened URLs, it presents an excellent opportunity for Digg and StumbleUpon to drive more traffic back to their sites.

It remains to be seen if su.pr will stand out from the pack - there are so many good truncators available already that StumbleUpon will need to offer something unique. Of course, simply adding a button to their wildly popular toolbar is a good place to start.

[via TechCrunch]

Eight great Userscripts for Twitter users

Not using a desktop Twitter client? Maybe you're quite happy to use the Twitter site to post updates and monitor those you follow. Just because you do doesn't mean you don't have access to more powerful interface options than the bare minimum Twitter provides.

Grab some Userscripts, and use your browser give your Twiter / Home some handy new features! I've gathered eight of my favorites - feel free to share yours in the comments!

Troy's Twitter Script - provides several additional functions, like short URL expansion, inline media viewing, and nested replies. Also adds a search box (for those of us who can't use the real deal just yet), retweet link, and an @mentions link to see who's been talking about you.

Continue reading Eight great Userscripts for Twitter users

Twitter Suggested Users: problem and solution

Plenty of swirl this week about the Suggested Users page that Twitter newcomers see after sign-up. Jason Calacanis (co-founder of Weblogs, Inc., which publishes Download Squad) made a splashy offer of $250,000 to be installed near the top of the suggested list for two years. Dave Winer refuted that ploy, and the list generally. But Winer's complaint with Twitter's list misses the mark.

Suggested Users is meant to be a starter kit for new Twitter users. It is well-meaning but misguided, and surprisingly, seems to misunderstand and misrepresent what Twitter really is. Dave Winer's complaint is that Twitter is misusing its network power by applying editorial discretion to single out a tiny handful of its users. But in my view, Twitter is exercising the same sort of newbie service that My Yahoo! and Google Reader do: give unsteady new users a toehold by recommending some content.

There is no problem in principle with Twitter lending users a helping hand as new consumers of Twitter content. The issue with Suggested Users is that it shines the discovery spotlight in the wrong direction, ignoring Twitter's rapidly manifesting future as a global information matrix.

Continue reading Twitter Suggested Users: problem and solution

Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 6 out today, final build due next month

Microsoft isn't the only company that's busy pumping out operating system updates like there's no tomorrow. Canonical is busy putting the finishing touches on Ubuntu 9.04. The next version of the popular Linux distribution is due out in April (the 9.04 stands for April, 2009). Today the team released Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope Alpha 6.

So what's new in the latest build? There's a new version of X.Org, an updated Linux kernel, and support for the Ext4 file system. There's also a new style for notifications, and a whole slew of updated packages including the latest versions of Firefox, Pidgin, and The GIMP.

The folks at SoftPedia have put together a screenshot tour showing some of the changes. To be honest, Alpha 6 doesn't look much different from Alpha 5. But as with each release, there have been a bunch of bug fixes, and at least a few new bugs have probably been introduced as well. If you're more comfortable with stable, well-tested software, you'll probably want to wait until next month to try Jaunty Jackalope. But if you want to help test the pre-release version of Ubuntu 9.04, it's available for download today.

Kideo player: curated YouTube for kids

I don't have a good history with YouTube sites for kids. My first experience was with TotLOL, where I found the selection of videos lacking and had my wits nearly destroyed by that green gummi bear video. Today I decided I had recovered enough to brave the wilds of the kid-vid genre and check out Kideo Player.

I have to admit, it totally won me over.

Kideo Player is curated by a father of two, and his taste is videos is a lot better than the spotty results you get from community moderation. The curator has a stake in the videos he selects, because his own kids watch them. Minimizing parental annoyance seems to be a priority, too: think Sesame Street, not nightmarish gummi bear. The library of videos seems to lean heavily toward educational material: I saw sign language, Spanish lessons, and animal vids when I was watching.

Kideo Player also has a more attractive, more kid-friendly design than Totlol (the dog and cat mascots are seriously adorable), and controls that even a two-year old can use by himself. Hitting spacebar skips to the next video. That's the only thing a kid has to learn to use the site. All in all, this is exactly the video site I would have wanted if YouTube had been around when I was a little kid, and probably the site my parents would have wanted, too.

Microsoft reveals more changes from Windows 7 beta to RC

With the recent leaks of builds 7048 and 7057, some of you may have already gotten a taste of what's been tweaked as Microsoft continues working toward an official WIndows 7 release candidate. Today, the E7 blog released another list of changes - some subtle, some not so much.

Surprisingly, one of my favorite changes - being able to add the download folder to your start menu - wasn't metioned. Some noteworthy changes include:

• The parent folder's button always appears in explorer. Remember how we complained about the missing up arrow in Vista, then again in 7? It hasn't been put back, but backing up one level is now just as easy since the parent's breadcrumb always shows up.
  
  
• Invert selection is back in the Explorer edit menu. I don't use it often, but sometimes I want to select all but two or three files in a massive directory. It's much easier to pick the two I don't want and then invert, and now that's possible again.

Continue reading Microsoft reveals more changes from Windows 7 beta to RC

Twitter IM support coming to Adium

What a joy to see the two apps I have open all day coming together! I'm an IM and Twitter junkie, and Twitter hasn't had IM support in some time. Fortunately, the developers behind my IM client of choice, Adium, are working to put together their own version of a Twitter IM service.

Your Twitter contacts would show up in your Adium list, and you can follow, unfollow and presumably group them from there. Opening a new chat will allow you to exchange direct messages. Displaying your timeline will be handled through Adium's existing group chat interface, with @replies to you highlighted. All in all, this looks like a promising project to restore a Twitter feature that a lot of people found useful. Now, if only they could figure out how to bring back tracking ...

[via TUAW]

Firefox 3.1 beta 3 released

Firefox 3.1b3 is out today, and the release notes list a few important improvements: faster Javascript with Tracemonkey, improvements to the new private browsing mode, faster rendering and native JSON support. Anecdotal evidence from folks on Twitter and some testing here on my MacBook says that 3.1b3 is noticeably faster than 3.1b2, but still not quite up to speed with Safari 4.

One small-but-welcome improvement in the latest beta is a much better looking "new tab" button in the default theme. I don't know what they were thinking with that ugly plus-button all the way over on the right of the toolbar, but the new one looks more like a regular tab, and it sits near your existing tabs, where you're likely to be clicking anyway. As usual, updating to a new Firefox beta will disable some of your plugins until they're updated. You can force-enable them (at your own risk) with the Nightly Tester Tools add-on.

5 iPhone apps for old school computer geekery

There are all kinds of fancy modern things that you can do with your iPhone, including all the techno-superhero things Jay covered in his post.

What if you like things that are a little bit more nostalgic? Here are five apps packed with old-timey computing goodness!

These are all available through iTunes - no jailbreaking required!

Fortune [iTunes link] - Ever wish you could tap into the wisdom of Fortune's terminal quotes no matter where you are? This app is a faithful port for the iPhone, right down to the monochromatic fixed-width font.

Chip-8 Emulator [iTunes link] - It's no surprise that a computer system considered cutting-edge in the 1970s can now be emulated on a handheld device like the iPhone. Geardome's app allows you to play all the Chip-8's vintage public domain games in their full-on low-fi glory.

Sid Player / Sid Player Lite [iTunes Link] - The iPod started out as audio-only, so this one's sort of doubly-old school because it plays Commodore 64 SID files. The full version ($2.99) provides access to more than 35,000 songs from the High Voltage Sid Collection and includes soundtracks from classic games and musicians. The free Lite version provides more limited access.

HAL 9000 [iTunes link] - What are you doing, Dave? Why, he's installing HAL-9000 on his iPhone, of course! Take history's best-loved demented computer with you everywhere. Launch it and cackle any time you want to reassure people that you're not all there yourself.

iMud [iTunes link]- Apple loves to flaunt all the shiny, new games you can play, but what about classic text-based gaming? iMud (from the developer of Metal Mudder for Mac) is $4.99, but it's a great mobile interface for playing all your favorite classic MUDs like Wheel of Time and Mozart. Don't forget to visit MUD Connector to search for a MUD that's to your liking.

Sequential: fantastic comics viewer for OS X

Sequential started life as an image browser, and it's still a nice way to view batches of images, but it's also turned into the best Mac comics reader out there. I've tried other apps like Jomic and Comical, and found that they don't measure up to sequential in terms of speed, stability, and Mac-like feel. For whatever reason, large .cbr and .cbz files tend to crash most Mac readers. Not Sequential, though. It handled a 400-page collection of files without even a beachball.

On top of being fast and crash-free, Sequential is also just plain pretty. It displays EXIF data for photos in nice, Leopard-style bezels, and has all the resizing options you could want for either photos or comics pages. Navigating entire folders is no problem, and there are even next folder / previous folder controls. There's also a slideshow mode, which might not be that useful for reading the latest manga, but comes in handy for batches of photos. Bottom line: if you read comics digitally, Sequential is well worth the download.

Littleshoot updates browser plugin, now supports torrents

Back in December 2008, Brad wrote about Littleshoot, a browser-based peer-to-peer application created by the developers of Limewire. A little over two months later, and the .90 beta release has seen several updates and the addition of one major feature: the ability to download .torrent files.

Install the Littleshoot plugin, visit any torrent site, and click on a torrent file and a new tab like the one pictured above will open in your browser. While savvy p2p-ers probably won't prefer Littleshoot to their current torrent manager, it's an excellent option for less experienced users (like the ones you provide with free troubleshooting).

Littleshoot also makes it easy to share what you're downloading on social sites, with quick links to popular ones like Twitter, Facebook, and Digg.

And don't forget, Littleshoot is also a great way to search Flickr and YouTube - you know, in case you want to check out some interesting photos or videos while your downloads finish.

The memory footprint has been reduced, at least on the Littleshoot plugin itself - it's currently using about 60mb on my Vista x64 machine, which isn't out of line with other combination Gnutella/torrent applications. Firefox, however, seems to be having some trouble coping: its ram usage is up to about 430mb.

[via TorrentFreak]

10 iGoogle themes that actually look good

Hell is other people's iGoogle themes. I love the custom Google homepage as much as the next person, but the selection of user-submitted themes is, frankly, atrocious. The list ranges from photos of Angelina Jolie to photos of some guy's dog, with very few options that actually hold up over weeks and months of being in your face whenever you open a new browser window. Instead of subjecting you to the worst of the worst -- maybe we'll save them for a Fugly Friday -- I've collected my top 10 well-done iGoogle themes.

Gallery: iGoogle themes that actually look good

Google Reader adds comments, risks wrath of web publishers

Google Reader has added a new feature that makes reading RSS feeds a more social experience: You can leave comments on other users' shared items. In other words, if your friend clicks the share button next to a blog post or news item in Google Reader, it will show up in your Friends' shared items section along with any comment they've left. Now you can also comment on their comment. If multiple friends have shared the same item, you'll see multiple conversations.

All told, the feature looks and feels a lot like FriendFeed. But there's one major difference: Google Reader displays the full text of any articles that make their full length items available via RSS. So if your'e someone who only clicks through to articles you've read in your RSS reader to see what comments other people have left, this new feature could keep you from ever clicking through to the original web site. And that might be fine for you, the reader. But web publishers who rely on advertising might not be nearly as happy about this development.

Right now Google doesn't import comments from blogs, so there's still original content on the original web site. But there's also currently no way for blogs or other web sites to import comments from Google Reader, as they can from FriendFeed. That may change in the future.

What do you think? Are you likely to use the new commenting system? Would you rather use FriendFeed? Or do you just visit web sites when you want to read and participate in the comments?

[via The Inquisitr]

Microsoft unveils Windows 7, releases early developer preview

Microsoft is officially introducing Windows 7 today at the Professional Developers Conference. The company will also be making an early build of the next generation Windows operating system available to developers, but it will probably be a little while before the rest of us can get our grubby little paws on it.

As expected, Windows 7 looks a lot like Windows Vista so far. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I don't know too many people who take issue with the way Windows Vista looks. It's performance, especially on older machines with slower processors and less RAM than newer computers, on the other hand, has been less than stellar. It looks like Windows 7 will carry many of Windows Vista's design elements, while tweaking a number of things below the hood.

You can find a boatload of new screenshots of Windows 7 at ZDNet, Ars Technica, or on Flickr. Feature-wise, Windows 7 adds support for multi-touch inputs, has an improved task manager, and uses fewer system resources than Vista.

As you can see from the image above, Windows 7 also has a new taskbar which combines features that are currently divided between the taskbar, and quick launch menu. You don't get text descriptions of items in the taskbar anymore, but clicking on an item brings up a list of actions you can perform with that program. Window management has also been improved. You can maximize any window just by dragging it to the top of your screen.

And if you have multiple windows open but want to read something on one of them without actually switching windows, you can just sroll your mouse over the icon in the taskbar to "peek" at it. This turns any other windos that are blocking it transparent. This comes in handy when you just want to read something quickly, or if you want to see the weather, clock, or other gadget hanging out on your desktop without minimizing all of your open windows.

[via] Download Squad

Microsoft to launch web versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint

It looks like Microsoft is finally prepared to launch its answer to Google Docs, Zoho Office, and ThinkFree Office. About a year after launching Office Live Workspace, which is really just a service for people to store and share documents created using desktop apps, Microsoft has announced plans to go ahead with true web-based versions of MS Office applications including Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.

The Office Web applications will reportedly be stripped down versions of the desktop apps. And it looks like Microsoft will offer at least two tiers of service, with an ad-supported version and a subscription based option for business customers.

The next version of Microsoft Office for the desktop will include the ability to synchronize documents over the web for access on the go. So Microsoft clearly expects customers to continue paying for the offline version of Office. Somehow I suspect the company will also set aside at least a few special features that are only available in the desktop version.

[via

[via] Download Squad

Walmart MP3 store adds 74 cent tracks, Mac, Linux support

I love a good price war. And it looks like Walmart is challenging Amazon and Apple to one by offering select MP3 downloads from Walmart's online music store for just 74 cents. Not every song will go for that price, but standard tracks start at 94 cents per song, which is still cheaper than music on iTunes. Amazon typically sells MP3 music for between 89 and 99 cents per song.

Walmart is also rolling out improved support for web browsers that aren't Internet Explorer and operating systems that aren't Windows. You can now download MP3s from Walmart's web store using OS X, Linux, or Windows, Firefox, Safar, or Internet Explorer.

Walmart has a library of over 3 million DRM-free MP3 tracks from the four major lables and a number of independent artists.

[via Electronista]

[via] Download Squad

World Map geography tester

I'm not entirely sure if I should call this a time waster or an educational tool. I guess it can be both. If you're stuck in 9th grade geography (or know someone who it) it could certainly help.

If you're past all that school stuff and want to see how much geography you remember, check out the World Map by Game Design. You are given a world map and the names of 20 countries. You have about 10 seconds to find each country on the map.

If you are lucky to get some of the bigger countries it's quite easy, but once you have a few small African nations things become much more challenging. I'm not going to share my score. It's too embarrassing!

If you're good at naming countries but not finding them you can try the 192 UN recognized states in 10 minutes. Basically, once you load the page a timer starts to count down. You have 10 minutes to name as many UN recognized countries as you can.

When you type in a correct answer it is added to the list. So if you type something in and it doesn't disappear, it's not right. My biggest challenge was spelling some of the country names. I got about 70 countries entered before I ran out of time and had about 10 that I just couldn't figure out how to spell properly.

So, DLS readers, how are your geography skills?

[Via Eco Worldly]

[via] Download Squad

Open Google Calendar in Firefox from any page

GCal Popup is a Firefox extension for Google Calendar users too lazy to open a new tab when they want to enter a new appointment or check their calendar. Once the plugin is installed, you'll see a little calendar icon in your status bar. Click it and your Google Calendar will pop up, over the top of whatever page you happen to be visiting. Click the close button and it will go away.

If you're already logged into your Google account you won't even need to login to Google Calendar when the window pops up.

This is listed as an experimental plugin, which means you'll need to register for a Mozilla account and login before downloading. But the add-on seems to be stable enough and hasn't caused my computer to burst into flames. Yet.

[via gHacks]

[via] Download Squad

PMS Buddy - don't get caught using this site

I struggled briefly with whether or not to write a post about PMS Buddy, due to the fact that it could possibly offend some people. But I'm not here to tell you you should support or use it, or that you shouldn't - I'm just saying, "hey, look at this."

PMS Buddy is a website with a cute slogan and a simple goal. The slogan, "saving relationships, one month at a time!" refers to PMS Buddy's only function: to remind you when significant women in your life might be experiencing PMS. Used appropriately, i.e. to remind you to be extra understanding (not condescending) of any abnormal behavior exhibited by the women in your life. They also suggest that the site could be a useful resource for women wishing to help the men in their life understand why they seem to get unreasonably intense for seemingly no reason at all, without having to have an uncomfortable discussion with them every month.

While I can't say that I use it, I can certainly see how some people might want to. Or not. I mean, if it offends you, I think it's terrible too. And if you like the idea, yeah, it's pretty cool. Just tell me what you want to hear, okay?

But the one thing I can't understand is how or why you might want to install a PMSBuddy Facebook App (they have one). "Hey friends and family, I track someone's PMS!" Uh, no thanks.

[via Darren Barefoot]

[via] Download Squad