1. ColorfulTabs: Turn your installation of Firefox into an artistic statement with ColorfulTabs. It makes every tab you open a different color, so they're easier to tell apart at a glance—and a major part of a more vibrant, attractive Firefox window.
2. Cooliris: Surfing the Web can be informative and fun, but even the most dynamic Web sites look pretty much the same. Not anymore. Install Cooliris to view search results on sites like Google, YouTube, and Flickr, and photos from Facebook, Picasa, and your PC as an infinity-spanning 3D wall of windows.
3. Echofon: Love Twitter, but hate having it open on your PC all day or running a separate program to follow your friends? Echofon sends notifications of your followees' updates right to an icon in your status bar, so you can click and see them anytime you want, no matter what you're doing. Echofon supports multiple accounts and direct messages, too.
4. ForecastFox: Never again be caught without your umbrella or sunglasses just because you forgot to check for clouds before you left the house. Install ForecastFox to view AccuWeather.com weather forecasts from all over the country and the world right in the toolbars section of your browser window.
5. GooglePedia: The wealth of information available in Wikipedia is staggering, but it can be a pain to head over to it anytime you want to look up one little thing. GooglePedia solves this problem by displaying a related Wikipedia article along with your Google search results. The links in the Wikipedia article will automatically start new Google searches using those terms.
6. LastPass Password Manager: Keeping your various online log-ins secure is hard enough; remembering them all can be even bigger challenge. That's what's great about LastPass, which can keep track of your usernames and passwords for you, so you only need to remember a single log-in (the one you use for LastPass). It also fills in forms for you, helps you manage data across multiple computers, and can help you track down passwords you may have lost on your computer. (Check out our full review of LastPass.)
7. Morning Coffee: It happens to all of us: We want to check our favorite Web sites in the early mornings before work, but while we're still groggy from sleep we can't quite get the mouse or keyboard to work the right way. Morning Coffee saves you the trouble by letting you organize Web sites by day and open all that day's sites when you fire up Firefox. This addon could save you so much time, maybe you can catch a few more Zs before you log on.
8. StumbleUpon: The Web can be overwhelming and finding really interesting sites next to impossible. StumbleUpon can help: Click the "Stumble" button on the toolbar it adds to be taken to a site. If you like where you end up, click the "I like it!" button; if you don't, click the thumbs-down button. StumbleUpon learns from your answers (and those of millions of other users) to serve you better sites in the future.
9. Tab Mix Plus: Tired of the same old boring tabs? Load up Tab Mix Plus, and start duplicating them, closing multiple tabs at once, controlling when and why they open, and much more. You'll never go back to traditional tabs again.
10. Xmarks: If you're a compulsive bookmarker and you regularly use multiple PCs, Xmarks could save you a lot of frustration. It can back up and synchronize your bookmarks and passwords, and even can help you discover new sites you might be interested in (based on what other users are bookmarking).
Thanks to http://www.pcmag.com for the info …
When Seagate first demonstrated SuperSpeed USB 3.0 in January at CES, we were promised that USB 3.0-compatible devices would be appearing by the end of 2009.
Bang on time (a phrase not often uttered in the technology industry), the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) has announced that the first USB 3.0 products are now ready to roll.
USB is a hugely successful interface – over three billion devices featuring it were shipped in 2008 alone.
So do we really need another wired USB standard? Quite frankly, yes.
So here's everything you need to know about USB 3.0 and why we'll all be using it by 2012.
What is USB 3.0?
Dubbed 'SuperSpeed USB', USB 3.0 represents the next generation of connectivity between computers and peripherals (digital cameras, portable media players, mobile phones, external hard drives, and so on). It replaces the current 'Hi-Speed' USB 2.0 standard.
As the USB-IF explains: "SuperSpeed USB brings significant performance enhancements to the ubiquitous USB standard, while remaining compatible with the billions of USB enabled devices currently deployed in the market. SuperSpeed USB will deliver 10x the data transfer rate of Hi-Speed USB, as well as improved power efficiency."
Just how fast is USB 3.0?
The new specification is rated 10 times faster than USB 2.0, which has a maximum transfer speed of 480Mbps.
In comparison, USB 3.0 has a theoretical peak throughput of 5Gbps. This means that USB 3.0 is capable of transferring a 25GB file in approximately 70 seconds.
If that doesn't warrant a shout of "whoosh!" then what does? In contrast, USB 2.0 would take around 14 minutes to perform the same task. And you'd be twiddling your thumbs for around 9 hours if you used USB 1.1.
This speed boost makes USB 3.0 ideal for the sort of large-scale file shunting we all do today, such as copying large images, MPEG-4 video clips, or making data backups to portable hard drives.
USB 3.0 isn't just fast, it's bi-directional
Unlike USB 2.0, where data can only be piped in one direction at a time, USB 3.0 features the ability to read/write data simultaneously.
This is achieved by adding four new connections to the old USB 2.0 connector – two for transmitting data and two for receiving data. This brings the total number of connections on a USB 3.0 connector to eight (compared to four for USB 2.0).
USB 3.0 is more power-efficient
USB 3.0 has also been designed to be more power efficient than its predecessor. For starters, the USB-IF has upped the maximum bus power (from 500mA to 900mA).
This will enable high-power devices to be powered by your computer and USB hubs to support more peripherals. There's even the bonus that battery-powered devices should charge faster.
USB 3.0 also ditches its device polling protocol for an interrupt-driven approach. This ensures that the USB host controller doesn't continually access a connected USB device (in anticipation of a data transfer) and waste power. Instead, USB 3.0 devices will send a signal to the host controller when a data transfer is initiated.
USB 3.0 will work with your USB 2.0 gear
While USB 3.0 will obviously require new hardware and cables, the standard has been designed to be effortlessly backwards compatible with USB 2.0.
This has influenced the construction of the USB 3.0 connector, which incorporates the new SuperSpeed bus alongside the existing Hi-Speed USB 2.0 bus.
If you've got a USB 3.0-equipped PC, USB 3.0 cable and USB 3.0 digital camera then you'll be able to take advantage of significantly faster speeds. Swap out the camera for an older model with USB 2.0 and the data rate will fall to the maximum that the USB 2.0 standard can deliver.
Who's doing it?
Right now, there are only a few products featuring USB 3.0 – the NEC xHCI host controller, Point Grey's HD video camera, a SuperSpeed USB hard drive from Buffalo, an external USB 3.0 hard drive from Freecom, and a sample USB 3.0 motherboard from ASUS.
All are being showcased at the Autumn Intel Developer Forum (IDF). These is just the beginning for USB 3.0. InStat researchers expect that the new standard will "represent over 25% of the USB market" by 2013.
FIRST OUT: A pat on the back for NEC, which released the world's first commercially available USB 3.0 product – the xHCI host controller
Thanks to http://www.techradar.com for the info .. ^^
FlightGear is a free flight simulator project. The goal of the FlightGear project is to create a sophisticated flight simulator framework for use in research or academic environments, for the development and pursuit of other interesting flight simulation ideas, and as an end-user application. We are developing a sophisticated, open simulation framework that can be expanded and improved upon by anyone interested in contributing. The FlightGear flight simulator project is an Open-Source, multi-platform, cooperative flight simulator development project. Source code for the entire project is available and licensed under the GNU General Public License.
Download FlightGear Project from here …
Thanx to freewarehome.com
AlarmClock is a small desktop clock. You can save alarms and set most types of audio files to play (mp3, wav, aif, wma, etc.). This is an alpha release and requires python to run.
Download AlarmClock from here …
Thanx to freewarefiles.com
