Windows only: Freeware application Xentient Thumbnails replaces all image icons on your desktop or in Windows Explorer with a thumbnail preview of the image. Of course Windows Explorer has the Thumbnail view and Filmstrip views dedicated to image thumbnails, but after you install Xentient Thumbnails and restart your computer, all image icons in every Explorer view will be replaced with actual image thumbnails. Xentient Thumbnails is freeware, Windows only.
Xentient Thumbnails [via FreewareGenius]Wired offers a primer on portable apps, but if you’re serious about living the portable life, check out our guide to your life on a thumb drive or to running a PC-on-a-stick, Windows or Linux versions.
With the release of the much anticipated Firefox 3 looming just around the corner, we got our hands on the latest beta build of your favourite browser to get a closer look at exactly what changes and exciting new features you can expect from the upcoming release of the ‘fox. From a snazzy design update and stability improvements to smart folders and bookmark tagging, you won’t be disappointed with what you’re getting.
The community at Ask MetaFilter is listing the recurring calendar events they’ve got set up to remind them of work and life events—beyond the usual suspects, like birthdays and oil changes. Some good ones you’d never thought of include having your chef’s knife sharpened before Thanksgiving, changing the Brita filter, reviewing magazine subscriptions for possible unsubscriptions, changing the furnace filter, half birthdays, donating blood every eight weeks, local elections, and replacing your toothbrush. What else do you have on your calendar reminder list? Let us know in the comments.
Brilliant recurring calendar events [Ask MetaFilter via 43 Folders]Want to add a TV capture card to your PC yourself? Two years ago, Adam ran down how to install a PCI card.
Fedora 8, the newest version of Red Hat’s publicly-released Linux distribution, is available for download as a live or install CD or DVD in both the GNOME and KDE desktop flavors. New in this release, code-named “Werewolf,” are a Codec Buddy feature that helps users find and install support for MP3s and other media formats, improvements to laptop compatibility—key function, power management and suspend modes in particular—better sound control through the PulseAudio server and other improvements. Fedora 8 is a free download and runs on Intel, AMD or PowerPC-based systems.
Fedora 8 [Fedora Project]Buzzword, the online word processor acquired by Adobe earlier this month, is now open for a public “preview.” There isn’t a wealth of features not available in Google Docs or Zoho, but there are a few noticeable differences. The most obvious is the minimalist, Flash-based interface that swings toolbar menus around as you select them. The fonts are also unique—Buzzword uses seven smoothed-out Adobe varieties that venture outside the standard set. The webapp offers all the document saving/printing/sharing features of its brethren, but adds a commenting system for shared documents. Buzzword requires a free sign-up to use.
Buzzword [via Download Squad]Experience Windows XP users likely know how to manually alphabetise their Start menu’s programs list, but doing so after every single new install gets old pretty quickly. The Elder Geek offers a solution that keeps your programs alphabetised at all times—even if you try to re-sort it. The trick involves making a registry hack, and the Elder Geek points out that this one in particular could do some damage if done incorrectly, so make sure to back up your registry before venturing in.
Sort Menus Alphabetically [The Elder Geek]Find yourself constantly sifting through “new music” and “artist alert” emails from certain unnamed online music retailers? New website Music-Alerts helps you keep tabs just on your favourite artists’ new releases through a custom RSS feed. Type in the artists you want to keep on top of and you’ll get pings whenever new albums show up on Amazon.com. The site says it checks Amazon every three days, so true fanatics might still do better to sign up for an official newsletter, but everyone else can push their fandom out of mind and into their feed reader.
Music-Alerts.com [via MakeUseOf.com]Java-enabled phones: Opera Mini 4, a mobile browser that brings full web pages to your phone screen, is out of beta. New features (at least new to non-beta users) include the Opera Link bookmark synchronisation function, a two-click switch to “landscape” views, and a virtual mouse for easier scrolling. And like its predecessors, this version of Opera compresses content before it reaches your phone, saving the pay-by-the-kilobyte crowd a few bucks. Opera Mini 4 is a free download and requires a Java-enabled phone. Photo by Kai Hendry
Opera Mini 4 [via OSNews]
