Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on May 14, 2008 by CyberNet.

I can’t say that I was expecting this today, but I’m happy to report that Mozilla Thunderbird 3.0 Alpha 1 (codenamed Shredder) has been released. This version does of course have tabs, and as seen in the screenshot above you can open new messages in tabs for easy navigation. That’s definitely a feature I’ve been waiting for, but now I wish you could actually compose a message in a new tab as well.

Mozilla Links also pointed out that this version uses Gecko 1.9, which means you’ll get the same performance improvements that can already be found in pre-release versions of Firefox 3. That is definitely some great news because Firefox 3’s memory usage and performance are much better than any previous release.

Here are some of the other things that are new in Thunderbird 3 Alpha 1:

• The new Add-ons Manager (Tools > Add-ons) can now be used to download and install a Thunderbird customization from the hundreds of Add-ons available from our community add-ons website. When you first open the Add-ons Manager, a list of recommended Add-ons is shown.
• The address book can now read data from Mac OS X’s system Address Book, but that feature is currently disabled by default. To enable it, see this blog entry
• New Crash Reporter (Breakpad) to report crashes in Thunderbird.
• Searching bodies of messages no longer produces as many false positives and has become more accurate in some multilingual situations.
• Improvements to our JavaScript engine have resulted in continued improvements in performance.
• On the Mac, Thunderbird is now a native Cocoa application.

One thing I was shocked to see was that the Lightning calendar add-on hasn’t been integrated yet, which is something they are planning to do. I’m sure a future version will incorporate it, and it will make the email client even more valuable for those who don’t go hunting around for add-ons. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that this doesn’t get yanked from their to-do list.

Now it’s full steam ahead for Thunderbird 3.0 Alpha 2, which is slated for release in July 2008.

Note: If you plan on setting up a Gmail account you should know that the “Gmail account type” in Thunderbird 3 uses POP, not IMAP. If you want Gmail IMAP access you’ll need to manually configure it.

Thunderbird 3.0 Alpha 1: Windows | Mac OS X | Linux
Thunderbird 3.0 Alpha 1 Release Notes

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Nothing beats finding just the right application to fill a common need, fix a problem, or boost your productivity. Give yourself an early present this holiday season with 15 of the most popular Mac downloads of 2009.

Like last year’s most popular Mac downloads, this list is based on the popularity of apps we’ve covered in 2009, regardless of the original release date of the app. Many were brand new this year, while others were solid updates to popular software. If you took a look at yesterday’s Most Popular Free Windows Downloads of 2009, a few of the cross-platform favorites may look familiar. (I’ve rounded up the most popular cross-platform downloads at the bottom of the post.)

Snow Leopard: The Feisty Kitty That Could (and No, It’s Not Quite Free, Either)

The release of Snow Leopard was nearly as big a deal for Mac users this year as Windows 7 for Windows folks, and while it was never strictly a download (unless you grabbed it from less reputable means), it’s worth highlighting. Over the course of the year, we helped out by prepping your Mac for Snow Leopard, highlighted its biggest improvements, and held your hand while upgrading. If you didn’t want to pony up for Apple hardware, we even showed you how to install Snow Leopard on your Hackintosh PC, no hacking required—and luckily for the frugal among us (no, this one’s not free, but it was a big deal in the OS X world so we figured we’d include it), the $29 upgrade disc worked whether or not you were upgrading from Leopard.

2009 Was Still a Year of the Jailbreak

The iPhone hardware may be getting better and better, but Apple still hasn’t gotten any better at opening up the app store to, oh, competition. As long as that’s the case, jailbreaking apps like PwnageTool and QuickPwn will still be extremely popular. Read more >>

Magnifique Customizes Your OS X Theme

The release of Snow Leopard didn’t do all that much to change Leopard’s spots, but Magnifique certainly does. This free skinning app is full of user-generated Leopard-customizing goodies. Note: Magnifique does not support Snow Leopard, so you’ll want to steer clear of it if you’ve upgraded. Unfortunately the Magnifique development seems to be at a standstill at the moment.

DoubleTwist May Be the Coolest Universal Media Manager Ever

People fed up with iTunes’ restrictive stance on non-Apple devices (see Apple and Palms’ dance, for example) were very interested in doubleTwist, a universal media manager that automatically converts files to the appropriate formats and seamlessly syncs them to your PSP, Android device, BlackBerry, and more.

Google Quick Search Like Quicksilver from Google

A lot of people were disappointed to learn about Quicksilver’s grim future a while back, but many of you were heartened to learn that Quicksilver’s creator had released a similar tool working with Google called Quick Search Box. Then again, it appears Quicksilver’s not entirely dead just yet (see below).

Pollux Automatically Cleans and Tags Your iTunes Library

For all the access to track metadata contained in the iTunes store, iTunes is a slouch at cleaning and tagging mislabeled or poorly labeled tunes. Pollux was an absolutely killer iTunes supplement that grabbed song, artist, album, and other metadata names, along with lyrics and album art, quickly and accurately. The problem? Shortly after we highlighted it, Pollux was shut down because the APIs it accessed stopped letting it access them for free. We liked Pollux better, but if you’re looking for something similar, check out TuneUp (free and pay versions available).

Picasa for Mac Beta Released, First Look

After years of Windows-only support, Google released the first Mac version of Picasa at the beginning of the year, and it didn’t take long before the majority of our Mac readers preferred it to iPhoto. You go, Google.

Quicksilver Releases Update, Improves Performance

Just when we thought Quicksilver was no more, it turns out that several contributors are continuing occasional development over at social coding web site GitHub. Their latest release brought on some solid performance improvements, and it worked well (for us at least) with Snow Leopard.

Glims Turns Safari into a Browser Worth Using

Free Safari plug-in Glims adds a handful of new features to Safari, giving it the kind of features one might expect from a more, ahem, customizable browser—for those of you who still prefer Safari to its more feature-rich counterparts.

Popular Cross-Platform Apps:

Google Chrome—Dev Releases and Beta At Last

Google Chrome is just over a year old, but it’s actually much younger for Mac users. We got our first glimpse at Chrome on OS X back in April, and it wasn’t until last week that Google released the first beta for Macs. Be sure to check out our power user’s guide to Google Chrome if you’re just getting started.

Namebench Helps You Find the Fastest DNS Server for Your Computer

Google very recently announced a free DNS service they boasted as fast, but rather than take their word for it, we pointed you toward namebench (and several readers also pointed toward the excellent DNS Name Server Benchmark). It tests various popular DNS servers to find what’s really going to be the fastest choice for your system.

Google Earth 5.0 Released, Looks Incredible

We’re sort of junkies for maps and 3D, so when Google Earth 5 was released, we were pleased as punch. The update featured historical imagery, ocean maps, and improved world touring capabilities. Maybe we just like saving ourselves some dough in these tough economic times with a little Google Earth sightseeing.

And Then There Was Firefox

The notorious Firefox memory slow-downs may have some of us down on the reliable old ‘fox, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t all still eager to grab the latest and greatest releases and stick with it as our default browser—whether it’s the big Firefox 3.5 release or the Firefox 3.6 beta (1, 2, 3, or 4). We’re looking forward to more great Firefox’ing in 2010.

Thunderbird 3 Officially Released with New Features, Improved Look

Sure it was two years since Thunderbird‘s 2.0 release, but at least they didn’t disappoint. Thunderbird 3.0 comes with solid new search and filtering tools, better looks, and a great new tabbed interface.

HandBrake Updates to 0.9.4 with Over 1,000 Changes, 64-Bit Support

Free, open-source DVD ripping and encoding tool HandBrake released a pretty saucy update last month with a ton of fixes and improvements. It’s no coincidence that it’s always been our readers’ favorite video encoder, and this year’s big-ish (but still not 1.0) update should only help keep it there—even though several users aren’t thrilled that the HandBrake devs have dropped AVI/XviD.

Now, because we like a good polling:

Got a favorite Mac download from 2009 that you’d add to your list of favorites? Let’s hear about it in the comments. If you’re craving still more popular Mac downloads, you can also take a look back at the most popular free Mac downloads of 2008.

We’ve featured hundreds of free Windows applications over the course of 2009 that we hoped might bolster your productivity, workflow, or your PC usefulness in one form or another. Here’s a look back at the most popular Windows downloads of the year.

As with 2008’s most popular free Windows downloads, keep in mind that the apps featured here are chosen by the popularity of the associated post we published in 2009. Many were new, some were improvements to already loved apps, and others were simply new-to-us. Here’s a quick look back at the 19 or so most popular Windows downloads of 2009:

Windows 7—from Beta to Release Candidate and So On

2009 was a big year for Windows, and Windows 7 was the most important ingredient in Windows’ solid year. (In fact, you’ll notice that several of this year’s most popular downloads are related to Windows 7 in one way or another.) Sure it’s not exactly an application but rather a full-blown operating system, but it only makes sense that a new version of Windows would top the list of Windows downloads for the year. It started with the Windows 7 beta download in January, which had a ton of hiccups. It was released, then pulled, then released again, then extended because of the trouble Microsoft had handling the demand. (Actually, we just think they underestimated the web.) Later, in May, Microsoft released the Windows 7 release candidate. You even jumped on the chance to try Windows 7’s beautiful new themes.

Folks who were still using Vista also flocked to Vista’s Service Pack 2 (32-bit; 64-bit) to keep their PCs secure and up to date.

Enigma Desktop 2.0 Released, Adds Installer, Widget Manager, and Templates

One of our very own readers released his popular desktop configuration as a installable utility that brings a handful of great customization and productivity tools to your desktop. It’s called Enigma 2.0. Then Rainmeter, another very popular desktop customization tool, set Enigma as its default desktop. Fancy pants.

Portable Ubuntu Runs Ubuntu Inside Windows

Ever wish you could enjoy some of the finer tools available to Linux but stay comfortably in your Windows desktop? Sure you could run a virtual machine, but Portable Ubuntu for Windows runs an entire Linux OS as a Windows application. Better yet, it’s portable.

Seven Remix XP Makes Windows XP Look Like Windows 7

The release of Windows 7 left a lot of XP users wishing they could get in on some of that snazzy new eye candy. Seven Remix XP is a free utility that does its best to bring Windows 7’s comely looks to XP.

Ninite Bulk-Installs Great Free Windows Apps

Another result of the Windows 7 launch: A whole lot of us were rebuilding systems from the ground up, which often means a lot of tedious downloading and installing one app at a time. Ninite makes it easy, streamlining the download and installation processes for tons of the most popular free Windows apps, including most of our 2009 Lifehacker Pack.

Windows 7 Shortcuts Enables the Best Win7 Shortcuts in XP or Vista

Apart from all the new eye candy, Windows 7 really tickled our fancy with tons of incredible new keyboard shortcuts. For folks still chilling out with XP or Vista, we released Windows 7 Shortcuts, a lightweight utility written to bring some of the best new shortcuts of Windows 7 to previous versions of Windows.

Computer Repair Kit Packs Dozens of Tools in One Portable Package

By virtue of reading Lifehacker, you’re more likely than not the most schooled person among your friends and family when it comes to fixing a bum PC. It’s a dubious honor, because it also means you generally are the person who gets called when something goes wrong. Computer Repair Utility Kit puts a handful of useful PC repair utilities in one handy, portable suite. Update: It appears the surge of readers looking to download this one brought down the server; luckily helpful reader Richard offers a mirror of the download on his own server here.

Fences is a Seriously Awesome Desktop Icon Organizer

Like to keep items you want to access frequently easily accessible on your desktop but don’t want to deal with the added clutter? Fences arranges your cluttered desktop icons into containers so you can clean up the mess into useful groups of shortcuts—or optionally hide them altogether.

AVG 9 Free Antivirus

We’re of the mind that Microsoft’s security tools are good enough—including the new and impressive Microsoft Security Essentials antivirus app—but that doesn’t mean many of you don’t get excited when the AVG 9 Free update is available. It’s still the favorite antivirus app of Lifehacker readers (who doesn’t love free), though we’re sensing a slow but steady sea of change on this one.

Google Chrome—Stable, Beta, and Dev Releases

Google Chrome is just over a year old, but it’s made huge strides among early adopters. Chrome came out with its stable 2.0 release in May, then followed up with a Chrome 3.0 release in September. Early adopters willing to try their luck in the beta and dev channels get more features, which we detailed in our power user’s guide to Google Chrome. Whichever version of Chrome interests you most, it’s clear that it was a pretty good year for Chrome.

Hulu Video Downloader Saves Your Favorite Shows for Offline Enjoyment

Hulu Video Downloader was a fun little app that lasted about as long as you could say Hu… that is, it doesn’t work anymore. But when it did, it grabbed videos from the popular video service for your offline viewing pleasure, and you were eager to try it out.

Safari 4 Tempts with Good Looks

Safari‘s 4.0 beta release for Windows came with a lot of bugs and some serious eye candy, but despite the interest at release, we can’t imagine many people still stick with Safari on Windows over, say, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc.

Namebench Helps You Find the Fastest DNS Server for Your Computer

Google very recently announced a free DNS service they boasted as fast, but rather than take their word for it, we pointed you toward namebench (and several readers also pointed toward the excellent DNS Name Server Benchmark). It tests various popular DNS servers to find what’s really going to be the fastest choice for your system.

Google Earth 5.0 Beta Released, Looks Incredible

We’re sort of junkies for maps and 3D, so when Google Earth 5 was released, we were pleased as punch. The update featured historical imagery, ocean maps, and improved world touring capabilities. Maybe we just like saving ourselves some dough in these tough economic times with a little Google Earth sightseeing.

And Then There Was Firefox

The notorious Firefox memory slow-downs may have some of us down on the reliable old ‘fox, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t all still eager to grab the latest and greatest releases and stick with it as our default browser—whether it’s the big Firefox 3.5 release or the Firefox 3.6 beta (1, 2, 3, or 4). We’re looking forward to more great Firefox’ing in 2010.

Motion Detection Is an Effective, Dead Simple Security Camera App

If your webcam is sitting around collecting dust, try out Motion Detection, a free, motion-detecting security camera application. It’ll snap pics and video when it detects movement, can upload the results via FTP, and more fun at-home security stuffs.

Thunderbird 3 Officially Released with New Features, Improved Look

Sure it was two years since Thunderbird‘s 2.0 release, but at least they didn’t disappoint. Thunderbird 3.0 comes with solid new search and filtering tools, better looks, and a great new tabbed interface.

HandBrake Updates to 0.9.4 with Over 1,000 Changes, 64-Bit Support

Free, open-source DVD ripping and encoding tool HandBrake released a pretty saucy update last month with a ton of fixes and improvements. It’s no coincidence that it’s always been our reader’s favorite video encoder, and this year’s big-ish (but still not 1.0) update should only help keep it there.

DeskHedron Adds 3D Virtual Desktop Eye-Candy to Windows

Linux users have a killer desktop management tool called Compiz Fusion that puts multiple desktop management on a 3D cube that we’ve always been jealous of on Windows. Open-source application DeskHedron brings a similar three-dimensional desktop management tool to Windows users.

Now, for fun:

Got a favorite Windows download from 2009 that you’d add to your list of favorites? Let’s hear about it in the comments. If you’re craving still more popular Windows downloads, you can also take a look back at the most popular free Windows downloads of 2008.

Google’s extension gallery for its Chrome browser opened for business this morning. We’ve taken a look around the offerings—most of them, anyways—and pulled out a few picks that deserve a spot in your formerly pristine browser.

Actually, rating these extensions by “worth the slowdown,” as is often the case with Firefox, doesn’t seem applicable here. Chrome renders pages just as snappily on a Linux install with eight extensions loaded, and the memory use seems not all that different. Your mileage may certainly vary.

We pulled out extensions from the gallery for highlighting that do something a bit different from widely-available bookmarklets, or at least fill a crucial need for those who use the web productively. You can disagree with our picks or tell us how blind we must be to miss a great one—do so in the comments, and if we missed a really great one, we’ll update the post.

You need to be running either the Windows dev version of Chrome, the just-released Linux beta, or a daily build that supports extensions. Mac users are, unfortunately, left out of the add-on party for the moment.

Google Mail Checker: Just what it sounds like. It sits in your address bar, keeps track of your unread messages, and opens Gmail when you click it. Take note that the author states it “does not yet work well” with Google Apps mail.

RSS Subscription Extension: Puts an RSS icon in the address bar when standard feeds are detected, and delivers the feed to a reader selection page when clicked. You can add custom readers beyond the standard five using URL syntax.

Xmarks for Chrome Beta: Just like the early Chrome alpha, this extension ties Chrome into your Xmarks bookmark account, synchronizing you between Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and across multiple profiles, if needed.

iMacros for Chrome: We haven’t had nearly enough time to discover what this cool tool is capable of, but it seems like a nice solution for anyone missing their crucial Greasemonkey scripts and other Firefox-only helpers.

Aviary Screen Capture and Picnik Extension for Chrome: We’ve already spilled some digital ink on the neat Aviary extension, but Picnik does the same type of instant web page capture—and also lets you pick a particular image from a quick list that pops down.

Flash Block and FlashBlock: Both do the basic task of turning off Flash on all web pages, until you turn it back on for all pages from that domain. FlashBlock uses a keyboard shortcut, while Flash Black has a settings dialog with a list you can edit.

AdThwart and AdSweep: As you might guess, they both block ads, though they use different blacklists to do so. We’ve previously covered AdSweep in its early days. At the moment, AdSweep’s gallery page returns an installation failure—from Linux, at least. AdThwart is proving more popular, perhaps due in part to AdSweep’s troubles.

Brizzly: The helpful, time-saving, at-a-glance Twitter/Facebook client for the web integrates smoothly into Chrome. Click the button, and you get a quick read on what’s happening in your social streams, with images automatically shown and videos embedded. You can, of course, also tweet or update Facebook from here.

Google Voice Notifier, Google Wave Notifier, and Google Alerter: The first two do just what you’d think they do, but make lots of sense for services you want right away and might only occasionally check, respectively. The last is a kind of uber-notifier that checks Gmail, Wave, and Reader for new items. If you’re a heavy Reader user, you’ll obviously want to turn those pings off in the settings.

Chromium Delicious Plugin: All your recent bookmarks from the Delicious bookmark service, as well as quick saving of bookmarks from selected text/links or manual creation.

ChromeMilk: There are many, many tools that bring to-do manager Remember the Milk into your browser, but this one’s notable for popping up your task list right from the address bar—and offering Remember the Milk’s very slick iPhone interface as an option for pro membership owners.

LastPass: As previously mentioned, this extension fills in the gap that Xmarks’ lack of password syncing leaves on Chrome.

Fittr Flickr: Adds keyboard shortcuts, additional photo information, lightbox-style galleries, and more to Flickr photo pages, in the style of Gina’s own Better Flickr for Firefox.

What have you foun that’s worth installing, and bragging about, in the Chrome Extensions Gallery? Share the links and love in the comments.

While having a netbook slightly decreased the hassle of whipping out your laptop to check for wireless nodes, it’s still a pain. If you keep your PSP in your gadget bag, put it to work as a Wi-Fi scanner.

If you live in a city you’re surrounded by free wireless nearly everywhere you go, the key is knowing what’s available and open for use. Much easier than stopping every hundred feet and busting out your laptop is using your tiny PSP as a scanner. At MakeUseOf they cover two techniques for using your PSP to sniff out Wi-Fi locations. The first can be done with a stock PSP. You simply go into the network settings on the PSP and tell it to look for new wireless networks. That will work, but it won’t look continuously just when you ask it to.

If you’ve set up your PSP to run homebrew software you have access to a superior option. Road Dog scans continuously, shows you the strength of the signal, and can even be set to alert mode where it will notify you on new finds even when you’re not paying attention to the scanner. You don’t need to write down the spots it finds, just press the NOTE button on the PSP and it’ll save the information of the network you’re looking at for later use.

If you’re looking for novel things to do with your homebrew-enabled PSP, check out previous articles on how to use your PSP as a universal remote and how to use your PSP as a additional monitor in Windows. Have a favorite PSP application or trick for finding Wi-Fi without the hassle of booting up your laptop? Let’s hear about it in the comments.