Load2All can upload files to multiple file hosting websites at once. The service currently supports 19 different file hosting services among them Rapidshare, 2Shared or File Factory. Each file host can be selected on the main page individually.

There are two options that make Load2All unique when it comes to file uploading services. It can split large files into multiple files if the size of the uploaded file should exceed the limit of the supported file hosting services. That’s very interesting for users who usually upload large files to these services. Load2All will automatically pack the files as rar files and split them into multiple archives if a file size limit would be exceeded by the upload.

Even better is the fact that it will do that only for the services where the limit would be exceeded. The other option is to make use of a Rapidshare or Megaupload Collector account to earn points from the uploaded files. The Rapidshare login information need to be entered in this case in the web form.

Finally it is also possible to enter an email address which will then be used by the file uploading service to notify the user about the created links at the selected file hosting websites. Load2All offers several interesting options to users who want to upload large files to multiple files hosts.

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Each add-on is tested if it can be used to download videos from the following sample video portals: Youtube, Dailymotion and Gametrailers. The main goal is to see if the add-ons can download Youtube videos, dailymotion videos and gametrailer videos including the way these downloads are offered. We will take a look at the video portals that are supported by the add-ons and possible usability issues.

The following Firefox add-ons have been selected for the test:

• Bbmao Video Downloader
• Flash Video Downloader
• Flash Video Resources Downloader
• NetVideoHunter Video Downloader
• Video DownloadHelper

All of these add-ons are highly rated and compatible with all versions of Firefox 3 even though some of them have to be forced to be compatible with the latest beta of Firefox 3.6.

Bbmao Video Downloader

This add-on was the only add-on in the test that was not compatible with Firefox 3.6. It was still possible to install and work with it after forcing compatibility with the Nightly Tester Tools.

The add-on places an icon in the Firefox toolbar at the top that will spin if a video has been discovered on a website. A click on that icon will open a popup window with links to all videos that have been discovered by the add-on. Links that are selected can be played right in the window or downloaded to the local computer system.

Bbmao Video Downloader worked well with both Youtube and Dailymotion but failed to recognize videos at Gametrailers. No information available on the amount of supported video websites.

Flash Video Downloader

Flash Video Downloader is the only experimental add-on in this test. It did install fine and display a download icon in the status bar. This download icon displays a license agreement after the first left-click which needs to be accepted. A left-click on the icon (which can also be placed in one of the toolbars of the web browser) will open a popup window with a download link and other information including add-on updates (somewhat confusing for users who are running the latest version) and an ad for a (free) video converter software.

Each new download will spawn its own popup window which can become somewhat messy for heavy downloaders. The add-on worked well with all tested video portals. The developers state that it is currently compatible with more than 200 different video sites and even some game hosting websites.

Flash Video Resources Downloader

The icon in the status bar that was supposed to be there after installation of the add-on did not appear. There was no option available to display the icon in another way or to use the add-on. Flash Video Resources Downloader is supposed to work with a few dozen websites including Youtube and Dailymotion but not Gametrailers. No rating for this add-on since it failed to install properly even though it was reported to be compatible with Firefox 3.6.

NetVideoHunter Video Downloader

Net Video Hunter is compatible with all versions of Firefox 3. It places an icon in the firefox status bar after installation that can be used to download videos from video hosting websites. The status bar icon will display a number that indicates the amount of videos that have been identified by the add-on.

Net Video Hunter makes use of a popup window to display all the videos that it has discovered in this browsing session. This is a very comfortable way of displaying those download links especially for users with enough screen estate to place both the web browser window and the Net Video Hunter video download window next to each other.

The add-on displays options to play or download each video that has been recognized. Another interesting detail is the display of the direct url to the video in the same interface.

The video download add-on was compatible with all three test video portals. The developers have not published a list of all compatible video websites but it is fair to assume that the add-on works with most “Youtube-like” video sites.

Video DownloadHelper

Video Download Helper supports all versions of Firefox 3 out of the box. It adds a single icon into the Firefox status bar which serves to purposes. It will for one indicate if videos have been detected on a website with options to download these. The other option is to display the list of supported sites which are opened in a small popup window. A right-click lastly will display a context menu with options to configure the add-on.

Youtube videos can be downloaded in various quality versions. This can be somewhat confusing to the user as it might not always be possible to identify the quality by looking at the download options of the Firefox add-on. It was also no problem to download videos from Dailymotion or Gametrailers using Video Download Helper.

Video Download Helper offers a very comfortable way of downloading videos from video portals. The amount of video portals supported goes even beyond the few hundreds that are listed in the add-on as it is able to detect videos on many (officially) unsupported websites. The download links are sometimes a bit confusing and the links in the supported list of video portals does not lead directly to those portals but to the homepage of the developer’s first.

The Verdict:

Out of the five add-ons that have been tested one failed completely, two were only compatible with two of the three test sites and two were compatible with all test sites. Video Download Helper and Net Video Hunter were the only add-ons that were able to download videos from these websites. Both add-ons have their uses. Net Video Hunter makes it easier to manage video downloads while Video Download Helper offers a list of supported websites which is interesting for exploration purposes.

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Switcher will display a configuration menu after installation which can be used to configure the program. This starts by choosing one of three view modes, animation and appearance settings or the window style over filters, keyboard shortcuts and detailed advanced settings.

The user should take a close look at the view modes available and at the keyboard shortcuts and adjust them for better personalization. A total of three view modes are available: Tile, Dock and Grid with Tile being the default view mode.

Tile will simply place all windows on the screen whereas dock places them on top and grid ordered and next to each other.

The settings window can be hidden afterwards and the application itself controlled by the keyboard shortcuts. All windows will be displayed in the selected view mode after the corresponding keyboard shortcut is put into action. The same key is then used to switch through the windows. The enter key will bring the selected window to the front.

All windows are numbered and it is also possible to press a number to bring the window to the front immediately without having to flip through individual windows first.

Another interesting feature is the multi-monitor support that is enabled by default. Switcher can be downloaded from the developer’s website where it is available as an installer and portable version.

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This new option made it possible for Microsoft to offer a multiple of the themes that they offered for previous operating systems. The Windows 7 Personalization Gallery over at the Microsoft website contains download links to dozen of themes from country specific themes to sponsored themes. Every Windows 7 user can create basic themes with custom wallpapers, sounds, mouse pointers or desktop icons.

Windows 7 News has published a comprehensive guide on theme usage in Windows 7 (read: Windows 7 Guides: Managing Windows 7 Themes (Part 1) and Windows 7 Guides: Managing Windows 7 Themes (Part 2)).

Part 1 of the guide describes the build in theme management options while part 2 deals with custom third party themes that require system file patching before they can be installed. The Windows 7 theme patcher for Windows 7 can be downloaded from the same website. Please note that the patcher will replace several system files in Windows 7 with different versions. Make sure to backup all important data before making any changes to the computer system.

A good resource for finding third party Windows 7 themes is the Windows 7 themes repository at the Windows 7 News website. There are however other places to look for new themes for the operating system including Deviant Art.

On a personal note: I’m pretty happy with the default themes that are provided with the operating system and have not yet felt the need to search for third party themes. What about you? Have you customized your theme in Windows 7?

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This question might have become insignificant in recent years as all three email providers have started to follow suite if one of them raised a limit or introduced a new service. But not everything is equal and some email users might be surprised if they take a look at the differences between these email providers.

Did you for instance know that a free Yahoo Mail account expires after four months of inactivity but is the only one to offer free unlimited storage space?

Gmail on the other hand is the only email service that is not expiring the account after a certain time of inactivity. It is on the other hand the email service that is offering the least amount of free storage space if you take Microsoft by the word that they increase the Windows Live Hotmail storage space automatically if the limit of 5000 Megabytes is reached.

Take a look at the following chart to see how the three email providers compare.

The chart should be up to date. If you spot an error let me know and I fix it asap.

Back to the original question: Which email provider are you using primarily and why? Here is my answer..

I mainly use email accounts that have been created for my web projects. I also use a Gmail account; Primarily because it is linked to other Google services that I need to use. I do have a Yahoo Mail and Microsoft Live Hotmail account but I barely use them. Mostly for services that require such an account.

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UPDATE: BGR has another (alleged) image of Apple’s Black Friday sale. Check it out after on the other side [read].

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Opera users who have already been working with beta versions of the release will not find many (if any) changes to previous builds in this final versions. That’s however different for Opera users who have been waiting for the final version release before making the switch.

Opera 10.10 has Opera Unite build in. Opera Unite is probably the biggest change to previous Opera versions as it makes it possible to use the Opera web browser as a web server to use it for things like file sharing, photo hosting, media streaming, file synchronization or chatting. More than 30 applications for Opera Unite are already available and Opera is getting the community involved by running a competition for the best Opera Unite application where developers can win prices.

Opera 10.10 does make use of Opera Turbo as well, a compression based data transfer option to retrieve websites faster which works quite well for users with slow Internet connection. Opera 10.10 final can be downloaded from the main Opera website where it is available for download for all supported operating systems.

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Of course one might think such a technology would be difficult at best to use. Not so. The developers of Ksplice have created an incredibly easy to use system that allows the administrator to handle critical updates, normally requiring a reboot, as easily as those updates that do not require a reboot.

Getting such a system working does requiring the installation of third party software. This tutorial will walk you through installing Ksplice as well as how to go about updating a currently running kernel with the new system.

Installing Ksplice

Figure 1

To install Ksplice navigate your browser to the Ksplice Uptrack page and click on the link for your particular distribution. If you are using Ubuntu the Gdebi installer will be an option to select from (see Figure 1) . Select Open with and then make sure GDebi is selected. Click OK and the installation will commence.

During the installation a new window will open specific to Ksplice. In this window you will have to agree to a License and then click Forward. Once you have done this the installation will complete.

Using Ksplice

Figure 2

After install is finished Ksplice will automatically open up the update window (see Figure 2) and reveal to you if there are any updates for your currently running kernel. This might very well remind you of the average Linux package management front-end.

In order to install the update(s) click the Install All Updates button to take care of any updates pending.

You will also notice a new icon added to your Notification Area (see Figure 3). This Icon will not only allow you to launch the

Figure 3

Ksplice tool, it will also keep you informed if there are any updates available. Figure 3 shows the Ksplice icon with a pending update.  When your system is up to date the “!” will disappear and leave you with a clean “K” icon.

Command line

What Linux tool is complete without a command line component? Ksplice includes four command line tools for your terminal pleasure:

• uptrack-upgrade: This command will download and install the latest kernel updates available for your system.
• uptrack-install PACKAGE: Will install a specific update (Where PACKAGE is the package name to update.)
• uptrack-remove PACKAGE : Will remove a specific update (Where PACKAGE is the package name to remove).
• uptrack-show PACKAGE: Will show more detail about a specific update (Where PACKAGE is the package name).

Final thoughts

I have been using Linux (and computers) for quite some time. I never thought I would see the day when such a major update to the underlying sub-systems could be pulled off without a reboot. And not only that, it is done as simply as using a GUI interface.  But now we are looking at something special. Ksplice is only now beginning to make serious inroads into reaching that goal of 100% uptime. And now, without having to reboot after a major upgrade, that 100% number is looking closer and closer every day.

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A user wanting to lockup these icons would need to make them visible which can be easily done from the available customize link.

All visible system tray icons will be listed on the custom web page. Each in its own row with information that include the name, system path, description, company and its icon.

A click on an item will open a detailed overview of that application (if available) that contains actions at the top, descriptions and technical information at the bottom of the page. The actions listed at the top can be used to perform various task including terminating the process responsible for the system tray icon and uninstalling the application.

System Tray Cleaner is an easy to use system manager that can assist the user in identifying system tray icons. The majority of Windows users on the other hand might prefer the manual way of researching system tray applications due to a number of reasons including privacy concerns. Users who want to test the application can download it from the developer’s website. It is compatible with most versions of Microsoft Windows including Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

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The only way to overcome this restriction temporarily is to press F8 during system boot.But this would have to be done on every boot which can become quite a nuisance.

Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider is another option. The software program makes use of a developer test option in both operating systems to load drivers which would otherwise be rejected by the operating system.

These drivers still have to be signed but not digitally which means that the operating system will accept the signatures that are provided by the software.

This option does come at a price though as it is required to disable UAC, the User Account Control, to run the program in Windows Vista and Windows 7.

How to use the program:

So how do I use it?
First and foremost; you are using this software at your own risk, we do not take responsibility for any damages to your system, but we do not believe it can harm anyone anyway. Secondly, User Account Control (UAC) must be disabled in-order to use this tool as well.

1. Go ahead download and launch the application from the link below. Inside its main menu, press on the “Enable Test Mode” button and follow the instructions on the screen. This will enable TESTSIGNING mode, which allows unverified system files to be loaded.

2. Now all you have to do is to add the unverified signature to the required system files. To do so press on the “Sign a System File” button from the main menu, and enter specific filename including full path. For example: if ATITool64.sys from C:\Windows\System32\drivers refuses to load due to driver signature enforcement, you should type: “C:\Windows\System32\drivers\ATITool64.sys”, and if you would like to sign more than a single file, just repeat this procedure until you’re done, and finally reboot.

After you enabled Test Mode and added signatures to the required system files, they should bypass Windows’s driver signature enforcement and load without any issues.

Is it worth disabling UAC for it? This has to be answered by everyone individually. Windows Vista and Windows 7 users who want to give the software program a try can download Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider from the developer’s website.

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Sort Tabs offers another option. The Firefox add-on adds the option to sort all open tabs in the Firefox web browser. The tab sorting option is added to the right-click menu when right-clicking the tabbar. The option provided is to sort the tabs by url. There is unfortunately no option to change the sorting criteria to another value like page title or age.

This will sort all open tabs in Firefox. It did even move locked tabs (locked with App Tabs) to their appropriate place based on their url. It could therefor also affect other add-ons that lock tabs in the Firefox tabbar.

The only other options that are provided by the Sort Tabs add-on are to close blank tabs and duplicate tabs when the tabs are sorted by the add-on. It is also possible to reverse the sort order in the options.

Sort Tabs is available for download at the Mozilla Firefox website. It is compatible with all Firefox 3.x versions.

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Avira made an announcement a few days ago where they addressed that problem somewhat. They mention that they have realized that “users of the free Avira AntiVir Personal had issues fetching the Updates in time recently”. This is not exactly the same issue but it could very well be related.

Avira therefor decided to implement the following two changes: Change the virus definition file format and use a content distribution network.

First, we switch from our current virus definition files (called iVDF) to a new format called nVDF. iVDF consists of 4 VDF files, while nVDF uses at least 32 files – we need to transfer less data for updating our virus definitions effectively in the future.

This means that we need to deliver about 25 MByte to every Avira installation starting today for switching to the new update system. This might lead to some delays for some users, especially for the users of our free version Avira AntiVir Personal. Just to get an idea about what we’re talking here: More than 100.000.000 Users are trying to get the update more or less on the same day. That is more than 2.5 Petabytes (or 2,500 Terabytes) of traffic.

The previous format used four files that contained all the virus definitions of the program. The new format splits those virus definitions in at least eight times that number so that it will take less data transfers to update the virus definition files (it theoretically could slow down as well if a majority of the files need to be updated as this would mean that more files need to be transferred than in the old update system, but that’s just speculation as there are no technical information available about the process at this point).

To ease the bandwidth bottleneck, we decided to additionally use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). We were first testing a CDN built up by our current Internet service provider. Shortly after activating the CDN, the redirectors – which redirect the update requests to servers close to the users location – were overloaded and couldn’t answer the requests anymore. The situation was solved a little later on, but the CDN isn’t big enough yet to spread this huge update in time. So we decided to switch to a global player in the CDN market to deliver the update.

The second change is the use of a content delivery network. Avira is building up their own CDN but had to contract a global CDN company to spread the massive update to all Avira users. It is likely that they intend to switch to their own CDN at a later time.

It does sound like a good plan though although the massive data transfer to bring the update to all Avira users could prove to be quite a challenge. Did anyone already receive the update?

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Google Analytics users who can access it will find a display of their website’s traffic graph along with another bar below that is showing the alerts for the corresponding days. Alerts are color coded with automatic alerts using a light green and custom alerts a light blue color. There will only be automatic alerts in the beginning.

The automatic alerts will give a webmaster immediate information about traffic jumps. This includes major traffic changes to certain pages on the website, a change in a page’s bounce rate, pageviews or a higher or lower than usual visitor stream from a specific country, state or region.

This gives the webmaster a quick overview of traffic developments on a specific web project or website. There are certain possibilities where Google Analytics Intelligence module can help. Webmasters could for instance investigate traffic increases or decreases more effectively as it will for instance display a decrease in traffic to a very popular page on the website. The webmaster could then analyze the issue further.

It is furthermore possible to create custom alerts and this could be very interesting to some webmasters. Custom alerts are created from a list of available alert conditions. The webmaster selects a traffic type to be monitored. This can be all traffic, traffic from a campaign, keyword, medium and landing or exit page. This traffic type is then combined with a metric that is triggering the alert. This again can be pageviews, total visitors, revenue or pre-defined goals. The selected metric is then given a threshold value. An alert is then automatically created whenever that value is crossed.

Another interesting option is to look at weekly or monthly reports which even gives a better overview as day to day variations are something that every webmaster has to live with. Google Analytics Intelligence is available in the left sidebar menu of the Google Analytics account.

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Amazon.com not only has an outstanding collection of digital downloads in their music section (as covered by Martin in his insightful article “Amazon DRM Free MP3 Store“), they offer a completely cross-platform tool to make this process simple. The Amazon MP3 Downloader is a very simple (as well as required) tool that enables you to purchase music from Amazon.com and use it at your leisure. And since the files are DRM-free, you aren’t limited to putting them on one device and only one device. Instead you can download your music, burn it on to CD, copy it to your device, copy it to your friends device…what have you.

But in order to take advantage of this service, you MUST have the MP3 downloader installed. That’s where this tutorial comes into play. Here you will see how to install and use the Amazon MP3 Downloader on your Linux box.

Getting and installing

Point your browser to the download page and download the proper file for your distribution. As of this writing you have the choice of files for the following distributions:

• Ubuntu 8.10/9.04
• Debian 5
• Fedora 10
• OpenSuSE 11

Yes, Amazon is a bit behind the times, but you can get around this (at least on Ubuntu 9.10). Below you will find the steps to install the Amazon MP3 Downloader on Ubuntu 9.10.

Download the .deb file for Ubuntu.

Open up a terminal window and issue the command (from within the directory the file was saved) sudo dpkg -i amazonmp3.deb.

You will see a bunch of errors that will end with the warning: Errors were encountered while processing: amazonmp3.

• Issue the command sudo synaptic.
• You will get a warning that you have 1 broken package.
• Go to the Edit menu and select Fix Broken Packages.
• Click Apply in the new window.
• Close Synaptic when the packages have been fixed.

Using Amazon MP3 Downloader

There are two ways you can use the downloader. The first is to start up the application by clicking on Internet submenu of the Applications menu. From within this menu click on the Amazon MP3 Downloader entry.

When you first launch it your default web browser will start up with a “congratulations” page informing you that the Downloader will launch the next time you download a song from Amazon.com. You also will get the chance to download a free song. When you click on the button (on Amazon.com) to download a free song you will taken to the Amazon.com login page. Log in and then you will have the chance to download your free song.  Go ahead and download your free song.

What you will download is an .amz file that links to your download. Your browser, by default, will ask you what to do with the file. Go ahead and let the Amazon MP3 Downloader open that file and the download will being.

But where did that file go? The Downloader will, by default, download all files to ~/Music/Amazon MP3/. If you open up that directory (after you download your file) you will see the sub-directory containing your new download.

Figure 1

Another way to use the Downloader is to open up the tool and click the

Configuring the Downloader

There aren’t many options in the Downloader’s preference window.  From within that window you can click the button “Shop Amazon MP3 Store”. This will automatically open your default browser to the store.

In order to configure the tool click on the File menu and then select Preferences. From within this window you can configure the following:

• Download directory.
• Automatically check for updates.
• Proxy settings.

And that’s it. But what more would you need to configure for such a simple tool? The only option I always change, by default, is the Download Directory. I tend to change this to the directory used by my multimedia player so I don’t always have to add the new media to the player when I download something. Of course, in order to have this work you have to have your media player set up to automatically scan for new files.

Final thoughts

If you are a Linux user, and a purchaser of digital music, you should do yourself a favor and give the Amazon MP3 Downloader a try. If for another other reason, all Linux users should give it a go in order to show support for Amazon’s support for Linux.

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Next we have a flip phone, the S5150 Olivia. Olivia has a slim body, smooth interiors and a stunning face. Yes, I am talking about the phone. It has the same diamond shaped texture on its front as the S7070 and there it has a camera and a secondary (looks like OLED) display. Just look at the live photos gathered by GSMArena. The main display on the inside is 2.2inch with a QVGA resolution. The camera is 3MP. It is likely to appear around the same time as the S7070.

As you can guess from a name like Diva, these are phones that are designed to attract the fairer sex. Yeah so you might think about gifting one of these to your lady love. Or if you are the lady, just talk a lot about how much you like the phones. If he still does not get it, hit him on the head with your netbook with this webpage open. Let him figure it out with an icepack over his head. You got time though, the release does not happen till early next year. No word on the pricing yet but I have a feeling that they would be priced similarly. [read]

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Long term users of Google Translate know that it is possible to copy and paste text into the web form at the service right away. There are however other options including the option to paste an url into the form or to upload documents to get them translated.

The new interface is only displaying translated results immediately if text is pasted into the form or if a text document is uploaded using the upload form. Websites on the other hand are still loaded separately with Google Translate controls in the header. The new interface looks a lot cleaner than the old one and we had the impression that everything loaded faster.

Users who want to try the new Google Translate interface can visit the website to do so.

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It was a fine day in October and everything was humming along as usual. Then, a leak happened.

In October this year, an internal roadmap was leaked which showed Motorola’s plans for the next two quarters. It had the Sholes on it and the Motus too. Thus far, that leak has turned out to be quite accurate. [read]

And then, a day came early this month when a new Motorola phone hit the FCC. Of course, it made its way to the blog world like all other big findings before it. It is a triband HSPA device and it carries the name Motus. As we all know by now, the Droid was already already looming over us at that point. [read]

Then yesterday, we had the first leaked photo. So lets take a close look at it. It is a typical candybar smartphone with a slide-out full QWERTY keypad. The keys look flatter than even the Droid’s keys if anything. It reminds of the chemically etched keypads of the RAZR days. They used to be pretty flat out too. The picture is quite hazy, so there isn’t much more to talk about, except that it somehow looks pretty thin. [read]

And just a while ago, we had more news of this. The details have been leaked and it is apparently heading for AT&T. It is triband alright – 850/1900/2100MHz, 7.2Mbps HSDPA, 3.1” capacitive touchscreen display with 480×320 resolution. There’s also an expansion slot supporting microSD cards and a Qualcomm CPU clocked at 528MHz. And this is an Android phone. Motorola is on a roll here. I wonder what the Zeppelin is going to be like.

it also has been named as the Backflip, probably. There has been a tip off that the phone includes features such as a reverse flip keypad and rear directional touch pad. With all this ‘rear’ I wonder what it will look like in person. [read]

Still, I think Motorola has gotten stuck in a rinse-repeat routine. They are constantly bringing out phones that are not really all that different from each other. Some are just better made with better features (like the Droid) and some are simply stripped down versions of those better ones. The overall design concept remains the same – put in candybar form factor, add slideout keypad, use Android OS, decide on how expensive it will be, done. Droid, Cliq, Dext and now Motus/Backflip.

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The analysis will display the total number of files and the number of fragmented files on the PC system. Auslogics Disk Defrag can then defragment the selected hard drives. A new feature is the option to optimize the fragmentation by consolidating free space by placing all files on the disk contiguously.

The top menu contains several additional options, namely the option to defragment a file or folder and to change the process priority of the defragmentation.

The defragmentation can be paused and resumed anytime. One interesting option is the defragmented file view which makes it possible to take a look at all defragmented files of the selected hard drive. Most changes have been made to the core including performance improvements to the defragmentation process, better tie-ins with the Windows Task Scheduler or better processing of files that are locked by the computer system.

Auslogics Disk Defrag is available as an installer or portable version. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website where it is available for all Microsoft operating systems that have been released since Windows XP including Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Interested users can take a closer look at the release notes to read about all of the changes that have been added to the disk defragmentation software. (via Download Squad)

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According to the report published by Arrington, Google has been in the process of making a smartphone that follows the company’s directions to the T. That basically means they have a handset manufacturer who is working with them and following their specifications. In fact, the latest buzzword there is probably ‘Google Says’. So what does Google say?

That is something we don’t know yet but we do know that this new phone is not going to compromise on anything at all. It is being made to deliver what Google thinks a modern smartphone should be like. So this is not just a Google Experience phone but the true Android vision that Google has. It is meant to show their customers exactly what Google means by a smartphone.

But therein lies a problem. Google is not supposed to make an Android phone. They have too many partner companies who are making their own Android phones. Google’s handset would compete with theirs and that is not how you maintain a healthy relationship. So how do you maintain it and still get what you want?

Arrington has an idea. He suggests that the device will not be a true phone but merely a VoIP device. That way, it will get to have everything awesome that Android has to offer and yet will not compete with the offerings from their partner companies. If they are really making such device, why not just make a tablet? I am sure they see the vast potential in that. What is the use of giving someone a phone shaped MID that has VoIP instead of GSM or CDMA?

May be this is Google’s idea of the future – everything based on the Internet. It does tie in with what Google has to say about practically everything that involves technology and communication of some sort – move it online! Case in point – the Google Chrome OS. It takes your standard Linux OS and turns it into a mere client for all sorts of cloud services. As a result, you get to forget about backing up, maintaining, cleaning and generally thinking about how to get it to work and stay working.

However, the viability of such device depends greatly on one thing. This is that one thing that Google cannot move online – the very means to get online! You have many other carriers all over the world who have the fasted 3G network just like AT&T does and also the spottiest coverage, against just like AT&T does! And worst of all, they may be the best carrier in some countries! What use will be the phone then? We are still far away from a truly global coverage on mobile data networks, especially in countries that are no fully developed.

The current Android Super phone

However, if Google chooses to work with an existing partner who agrees to play ‘Google Says’ – will it harm them all that much? We already have Google Experience phones. So now we can have the Über Google Experience phone. In any case, Google has at least realized the age old truth – if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself. Dear old Steve knew that decades ago and now look where he is. Google has done things their own way so far (Search, Ads, Mail, Wave, etc.) and that has led to exponential growth. So why stop now? They have done it with the Chrome OS, where they will be strictly controlling what hardware it is running on. And I am sure they have been disappointed with some of the recent Android phones. So it makes sense logically to make their own version of the Android phone. Wouldn’t you agree?

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Martin has posted his concerns about Chrome OS in his insightful “Google Chrome OS: My concerns“. I am in full accord with Martins’ take on cloud computing. But instead of discussing my feelings on the cloud or why we need another OS, I thought it would be beneficial to take a look at a running instance of the Google Chrome OS. I will preface this by saying the OS is in the very early stages of development. But even with the early stages it is quite obvious where this fledgling operating system is heading.

Getting and “installing”

In case you are interested in trying Chrome OS out you can with the help of either VirtualBox or VMware. Since we’ve covered VirtualBox here on Ghacks (read my article “Install VirtualBox with USB Support” to learn how to install VirtualBox) I will show you how to get Chrome running with that application.

After you have VirtualBox up and running you will need to download an image file to use. I have tried both the Chrome OS VirtualBox image and the VMware image on VirtualBox. The results of the VirtualBox image was a black screen that wouldn’t boot. The VMware image, however, was able to successfully boot. So it is my recommendation that you hop over to the Google Chrome page on Gdgt and download the VMware image. You will have to register on the site in order to get to the downloads page.

The download is just over 300 MB and will come in zip form. After you unzip the file you will have a vmdk file ready to use. What you will need to do is move that file to your VirtualBox hard disk directory with the command:

mv *vmdk ~/.VirtualBox/HardDisks/

When that file is properly located you can then create a new virtual machine using that image as your hard disk.

What you get

Figure 1

When Chrome OS boots (and it does so fairly quickly) you will be at a login prompt. It shouldn’t surprise you to find out the login/password is your GMail username/password credentials. As you can see, in Figure 1, your Google Chrome OS experience will very closely resemble the experience you have in Google Chrome – the browser.

But what else can you do? So far not much. I have read about application panels, but it seems as if you have to have a google.com login to experience them. I am, sadly enough, only the holder of a gmail.com login so I can not witness, first hand, some of the other features of the OS. Without having that login there is so little to the OS, in its current state, that it seems nothing more than a web browser running without an apparent operating system (which I believe is the point).

One of the few features of the OS I have managed to find is the ability to pin a page to a tab. What this effectively does is allow you to create a tab dedicated to a page (or Google application). For example: If you use Calendar, Mail, and Documents frequently you could pin each of these tools to their own tabs so that, in order to use a tool, you only have to click that that tools’ tab.

It should be pretty obvious what the intention of the Google Chrome OS is – a foolproof, web-based, single minded operating system who’s experience will only be as good as the applications available to it. This type of operating system seems as if it wants to take the metaphor of the mobile OS and put it square in the middle of your desktop. But with the way the web experience is growing vs. the computing habits of the average user – it makes perfect sense. You have a stripped down OS that can do everything you need to do without having anything on the periphery to confuse or confound the user.

“Features”

Figure 2

After playing around with the OS I have found a few features in place that are usable. You can add a compact navigation bar (see Figure 2). By default this bar (text area to the left in Figure 2) is not there. You have to click on the Options menu and select “Compact Nav Bar” for this to appear. But where is the Options menu? Take a look in Figure 2. The downward-pointing arrow in the far right corner is clicked in order to reveal the Options. You will be surprised to see that this menu is very similar to the Google Chrome Options menu.

As I mentioned earlier, you can pin a page to a tab. Say you use Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Documents frequently. Instead of creating bookmarks for these pages, all you need to do is open that page up, right click the tab, and select Pin Tab. This will create a tab for that page (or App if you will). Now, as Google Chrome OS is very much in the early stages, these pinned tabs will disappear upon reboot.

Final thoughts

It’s only a start, but the Google Chrome OS has all of the underpinnings of something that could have remarkable impact on a very specific application. I wouldn’t necessarily suggest using this early release, but when it hits beta, it will certainly be worth a try.

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