There’s already been some highly visible protests about proposals to try and filter Australia’s Internet feed, but a new survey from Netspace clarifies that opposition to this poorly-thought-out scheme is widespread. Phil Sweeney at Whirlpool reports that almost 80% of customers surveyed by ISP Netspace were opposed to the scheme, and only around a quarter said they would sign up to a clean feed if it was available, whether compulsory or otherwise. While there’s been some speculation that the government will cancel the plans after the trial (using the inevitable performance degradation as an excuse), that’s far from a certainty.
Netspace customers rail against ISP filtering [Whirlpool]Thunderbird only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Experimental Thunderbird extension SendVia changes your outgoing SMTP mail server on the fly while composing a message. Using the extension is as simple as opening a new message window and selecting your SMTP server from the list, or adding a new one on the fly with the handy New SMTP Server item, which saves to your account settings for next time—a feature the more well known SmtpSelect extension doesn’t have. This extension is useful for anyone that moves their laptop around, as SMTP servers are often blocked by internet service providers to combat spam, and taking a trip to account settings each time is a serious annoyance. SendVia is a free experimental add-on (meaning you will need a username and password to download it from Mozilla Add-ons).
SendVia [Mozilla Add-ons via gHacks]If you’re looking to keep a closer eye on your finances this year and you live and breath Gmail, reader Nick Espinosa has developed a clever method that may be up your alley.Using Google Docs, Espinosa creates an expense form designed to quickly and painlessly gather expense information and save it to a Google Spreadsheet. He then emails that form to himself and bookmarks that email in Gmail using Gmail Quick Links.
A few months back we gave you a sneak peak at Fennec, the innovative version of Firefox for mobile devices, and now it looks like the mobile browser could hit your Windows Mobile device as early as next week. On the first alpha release, Mobile Firefox will target the HTC Touch Pro, so it may not be up to snuff for most WinMo devices, so if you’re really aching to test drive Fennec, you can always install and test it on your desktop. [via Download Squad]
The excitement over the Kogan Agora, a non-network-locked phone running the Google Android operating system, took a serious beating when the original release plan was effectively cancelled. However, as I’ve reported over at APC, the cancellation of the Agora doesn’t mean that Kogan is abandoning Android altogether. As founder Ruslan Kogan explained:
We think we’re a few months away from it now. It relies on a lot of external factors, but we’re going to work as hard as we can to try and launch an Android phone.
Are you still hanging out for an open Android phone, or will you be happy to wait for the rumoured local Optus launch? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Defiant Kogan plans for future Android, netbook releases [APC]Apple has just released the 2.2.1 update for iPhones and iPod touches today, complete with various bug-fix promises for Safari, Mail, and the Camera app. The update applies to all versions (iPhone and iPhone 3G) and most likely to both generations of the iPod touch. (Just plug in your device and hit Update to find out for sure.) It’s not a terribly exciting update, so don’t expect any cool new features. (Sorry to all you unreasonable folks wanting MMS and copy-and-paste.) If you’ve jailbroken your iPhone, you should hold tight on the upgrade until we see whether or not 2.2.1 is jailbreakable.
[via Gizmodo]Firefox/IE only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Browser extension Select-n-Go integrates inline search results into any page for quick research without all the tab clutter. Once installed, select any text on the page and a small icon will appear near the mouse that, when clicked, will display an inline framed window with search results from multiple search engines. You can navigate between results from different search engines without leaving the page, handy for quickly doing research on a topic. Since pictures speak better than words, we’ll go through a quick screenshot preview of how it works.
Mac OS X only: Most good calendars apps have some sort of natural language quick-add feature so you can type “dinner tomorrow w/jerry at 8″ and expect semi-accurate results. QuickCal is like that, but much, much better. QuickCal integrates with iCal, so each time you enter a new event, it’ll show up in its respective spot in iCal (and, if you’re syncing Google Calendar with iCal, it’ll go there, too). Probably the best thing about QuickCal is that it analyses the appointment as you type, so you get a preview of the accuracy of the natural language interpretation before you create the appointment. (I’ve run into a lot of natural language failures when creating events using other tools, but I never knew it until after the bum event hit my calendar.) Its translation—in my tests, at least—have been dead on, but it’s nice to verify the outcome of your event before you create it.
Mac OS X only: Disk image encryption software SecureFiles creates AES-128 encrypted volumes for securing sensitive files without a lot of hassle. Installing the application is as simple as any OS X application—just drag it to your Applications folder. Once installed, open the main window to create a new disk image and choose whether to allow Spotlight to index the files (they will only show up if the image is mounted). As noted in the Switching to Mac tutorial, you probably will want to uncheck the box for remembering the password since that would make encryption pointless. Using the encrypted disk images is as simple as double-clicking on the image file to mount it. Security-focused and more tech-savvy individuals will probably want to stick with the previously mentioned cross-platform, open-source TrueCrypt to encrypt their data, but SecureFiles is a great solution for the everyman. SecureFiles is a free download for Mac users only.
SecureFiles [via Switching to Mac]CrunchBang, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that sports a snappy, low-drag interface and is perfect for thumb drives, live CDs, or speed-obsessed Linux fans. Check out how it looks and runs in our screenshot tour.
