Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope is kind of like Google Earth for the sky, allowing you to explore the outer reaches of space from your browser. If the WorldWide Telescope sounds vaguely familiar, you may remember that it used to be a Windows-only desktop application. Now, provided you’re running an operating system that supports Microsoft’s Silverlight browser plug-in, you can enjoy the same star-gazing fun from any browser.
Microsoft WorldWide Telescope Web Client [via Download Squad]Linux, Mac, or Windows with Cygwin: If you have ever wanted to show a list of subdirectories underneath the current directory while at the terminal prompt, there’s a simple command that can help. Simply run the following command from the bash terminal prompt, which filters the file listing to only show folders:
ls -l | grep ^d
Since typing that whole command every time you want to show a list of directories might get a little tiring, you can use the alias feature to assign it to something you can more easily remember:
alias lsd="ls -l | grep ^d"
Now when you type “lsd” at the prompt, you will see a list containing only the directories, which can be very useful when you are trying to navigate through a messy set of folders. For more on using the command prompt, check out our top 10 command line tools, get your own drop-down Yakuake terminal, or learn to use cron from the command line.
Windows only: Avira AntiVir is one of the most popular antivirus applications available, and the latest upgrade to version 9—which adds anti-spyware and anti-adware features to the free version—makes it that much better. Anti-spyware and anti-adware support are nothing new to paid users, but if you’ve been enjoying the free version of AntiVir, it’s always nice to get a few more features. If you’ve been using Avira up until now, the new download probably won’t look all that different, but the new under-the-hood features will obviously be a welcome addition. Head on over to CNET for a more detailed look at the new features. Avira AntiVir is a free download for Windows only; the premium version costs $US26 and throws in email scanning, rescue CD creation, and a few more features.
Avira AntiVir 9 [via CNET]Dear Lifehacker, I would like to be able to select some text, and then use a shortcut key to search Google for those keywords, regardless of which application is active. Is this possible? Sincerely, Tired of Copy/Paste
Yesterday’s announcement of the new Google Chrome Beta brought with it some good news for Firefox extension lovers eager to move to Chrome: A first glimpse of extension compatibility.
The Chrome Developer Documentation has released a guide to creating and installing Chrome extensions in their most simple form. Right now the “extensions” aren’t really much to speak of, and the process of installing an extension still seems very much like running Chrome with user scripts, but it’s great to see that they’re making some progress on the extensions front. As Google Operating System is quick to point out, these “extensions” are in fact “just fancy wrappers for user scripts, but there are plans to make them more useful by exposing browser features and allowing developers to create interfaces.” Hit the link below for a quick guide to installing your first (not terribly useful) Chrome extension if you’re eager to try it out. (The extension in the example just replaces Google’s homepage logo with another picture.)
Chrome Extension HOWTO [Chromium Developer Documentation via Google Operating System]Windows only: You don’t want to watch YouTube videos in the browser window or waste your screen space by going full screen. What to do? Break it out into a separate viewing window. DetachVideo is a simple stand alone application. You run it, it sits in your system tray and from there out whenever you put your mouse over an embedded video and press F12 the video will break out of the browser into its own little window. The hot key can be changed from F12 if that conflicts with your current hot key setup. DetachVideo is freeware, Windows only.
DetachVideo [Elite Freeware]Apple’s releasing some hot new features in iPhone 3.0 mid-year, but will it be better than Google’s Android? Let’s take a look.
Mozilla’s Firefox-like mobile browser, Fennec, has reached its first beta release, with TraceMonkey-backed JavaScript, better support for add-ons, “gestures” and no-button browsing, and a few other neat developments. The full release notes show what’s new in Beta 1, but most people will want to know how to get it on their phones. And the answer is, still, not quite yet—this release is only officially supported on Nokia N810 tablets, or in a kind of emulator for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Most of the changes between the alpha releases and this beta are faster, faster, and faster—panning, zooming, start-up, and other performance tweaks. Check out the video walkthrough of the Beta1′s new features. Fennec is a free download for Nokia N810 tablets and Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Fennec M12 (Beta 1) for Maemo release notes [Mozilla via Gizmodo]
Songbird’s developers are telling users to disable or uninstall the iPod support add-on, normally recommended and installed at first start-up, because it can erroneously delete music from your music device. It’s a pretty unfortunate setback for Songbird, which just shipped its lighter, faster 1.1 release, and had cleared up many of the nagging bugs and quirks that made its (unofficial) claim to being an iTunes killer seem far-fetched. If you found out the hard way that Songbird didn’t respect your iPod’s contents and don’t have the tracks backed up on your system, grab one of our recommended free software tools for recovering deleted files and point it at your iPod. The random-delete problems of Songbird’s iPod add-on will be tracked at this Bugzilla post, and we’ll update on this blog, of course, when it’s fixed. Thanks (but also sorry!) to Steven. iPod Add-On Woes [Songbird Blog]
Ubuntu 9.04, the next version of the popular Linux distribution due out April 24, has a new package (gnome-themes-ubuntu). Inside are three of the most popular themes created by users—all of them, incidentally, are a bit darker than the standard orange/beige window scheme. Check out screens and details of all three themes, and a few other visual changes, at Softpedia’s run-down. [Mike's Ubuntu Blog]
