Windows only: Small utility Minime clears your taskbar by minimising windows to its single icon in the system tray. With Minime running, hit Ctrl+Shift+Z to send a window to the system tray instead of the taskbar. Right-click on the Minime icon to restore any (or all) of the windows stowed there with a click. Minime is a free download for Windows only. Thanks, Jason! Minime [SaphuA]
Neuroscientist William Fishbein says that deep, “slow-wave” sleep can help us commit information to memory, learn new skills, and extrapolate information. Science news site Physorg reports that Fishbein and a graduate student studied English-speaking students’ ability to remember Chinese characters they were taught just before a nap (and some without a nap): Upon awakening, they took a multiple-choice test of Chinese words they’d never seen before. The nappers did much better at automatically learning that the first of the two-pair characters in the words they’d memorized earlier always meant the same thing—female, for example. So they also were more likely than non-nappers to choose that a new word containing that character meant “princess” and not “ape.”
Add this latest study fuel to the fire of our unabashed pro-nap agenda; and while you’re here see our top 10 ways to sleep smarter and better. Photo by Tina Keller. Nap without guilt: It boosts sophisticated memory [Physorg.com]
Conventional wisdom holds that in times of economic crisis, people like to hunker down at home and watch movies and spend up big on entertainment. Unfortunately, that lack of money also makes it harder for new platforms like movie download services to get going. Andrew Colley at AustralianIT reports that EzyDVD has stalled its previously-announced plans to launch a download rental and ownership service, citing financing issues. While there are still other options in the market, most notable BigPond Movies and iTunes, each has various restrictions in terms of operating systems and playback devices. iiNet’s plans for an IPTV service offer another glimmer of hope, but for now YouTube and the ABC’s iView are looking more appealing than ever (and remain helpfully free).
Movies on PC plan put on hold [AustralianIT]Windows only: Foxit Reader—the PDF viewer that introduced most of us to the good life sans Adobe’s bloated Acrobat Reader—has just updated to version 3.0. Among the handful of new and improved features, the most notable update for Firefox users is support for inline viewing of PDFs using Foxit Reader’s new Firefox plug-in. That means that you can quickly view any PDF directly in a Firefox tab when you don’t feel like opening a separate app to view a linked PDF (a feature common to Reader but not to Foxit). Beyond that, the full list of new features includes:
Web site keyboardr is an as-you-type search mashup of Google (including blog and image search), Wikipedia, and YouTube with blazing speed. Once you see a result you like, just use your arrow keys to navigate to the result, then hit Enter to open it. The speed of keyboardr is perhaps the most impressive feature, and if you’re a big fan of keyboard navigation, it’s got a lot to offer. Keyboardr’s integration with YouTube, Wikipedia, and multiple Google search types brings a nice feature-set to a simple but well thought-out webapp. Keyboardr has plans for more features and search service integration in the future, so it’s worth keeping an eye on. Keep reading for a look at how keyboardr works in action.
Windows only: Free application Lunascape is a web browser capable of running any of the three major web rendering engines—Gecko (Firefox), WebKit (Safari/Chrome), and Trident (Internet Explorer). That means that each time you open a new tab or follow a link, you can tell Lunascape which engine you want to use to render the page. The idea, in theory, is that Lunascape gives you the benefits of each popular browser in one. For example, Lunascape gives you IE support for the few IE-only sites still out there and no-nonsense speed from WebKit or Gecko.
Crafty Firefox user Alex customised his own Firefox Portable installation to tightly integrate with Google Apps. He calls his creation “FoxGLove,” and uses it as his own Google-powered productivity portal instead of Microsoft Outlook. Along with his pick of add-ons that enhance and integrate Google Apps in Firefox, Alex tricked out this portable Firefox version with a Chrome-like theme, custom homepages (that auto-load in tabs), web site favicons, and even slapped the FoxGLove name and icon onto the whole shebang. Best part? You can download and try it out right now without disturbing your current Firefox setup. Download FoxGLove below to give it a spin on your own desktop, and get the rundown of what comes with it.
iPhone/iPod touch only: If you’ve been waiting to upgrade your iPhone or touch to the recently released iPhone 2.2 software until you could jailbreak the update and run your must-have jailbreak apps, you’re in luck: The iPhone Dev team has already released QuickPwn for both Windows and Mac and the PwnageTool for Mac. Not only will jailbreaking your phone with one of these simple-to-use apps add both Cydia and Installer to your home screen, but it’ll also give you access to a few other very cool iPhone 2.2-only hacks.
Firefox only: At one point or another, every power surfer has filled out a long web page form, then lost all the time and effort when Firefox crashed before you could submit it. The Lazarus Form Recovery add-on is out to keep that from ever happening. Each time you fill out a web page form (whether it’s name and address or blog comment), the Form Recovery extension auto-saves the information and makes recovering or re-entering it a one-click deal. With Lazarus installed (Lazarus rose from the dead—get it?), after you’ve filled in a web page form, right-click inside a text box to access the “Recover form” menu item and re-enter lost text. Firefox has gotten a lot better about re-filling in form data after a crash or accidental page departure, but Lazarus offers extra insurance. Lazarus is a free download which works with Firefox. Thanks, Shane! Lazarus: Form Recovery [Firefox Add-ons]
Windows only: Turn off Windows clinks and clanks while you click around your computer in one shot using the simple SoundOff utility. When you want to listen to music without hearing the sounds of your operating system, click the SoundOff system tray icon to switch Windows’ sound scheme or turn Windows sounds on or off. Of course SoundOff’s only useful if this is something you do often; otherwise you can hit up Control Panel, go to the Sounds and Multimedia applet, select the Sounds tab, then change to No Sounds. SoundOff is a free download for Windows.
SoundOff [via Life Rocks 2.0]
