Having mentioned one useful browser keyboard shortcut for the BlackBerry Bold recently, here's another couple of options that may not be self-evident in the online help system. To switch the phone between vibrate and ringing modes, hold down Q; to lock the keypad, hold down A. This won't work in an application (like the browser) where those shortcuts have other meanings, obviously, but it still gives you the option of taking those functions off the two side keys (which is the default setting) and remapping them to other common applications, since you can always get back to the main screen by hitting the red phone button. Thanks David Flynn!

Over at PC World, I (Adam) have written up 12 sly tech tricks for beefing up your tech arsenal, from password cracking to inconspicuously reading on the job. Got a favourite trick of your own? Let's hear about it in the comments.

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Six months after Beta 1 hit the streets, Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 to brave testers. The new beta includes features that make it look like a viable choice of modern browser, like a smart address bar (sound familiar?), tab grouping, private browsing, find in-page, suggested sites related to the current page, and more. Let's take a look at what's coming out of Redmond in the browser arena.

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Read almost any blog or forum dedicated to the free, open-source operating system Linux and its diaspora of distributions, and you might assume that the users are almost exclusively haters of Microsoft or, occasionally, Apple. A system crash or price concerns might have led to a few "switches," but the truth must go much broader and deeper. So we ask our open-source switchers (and dual-booters): What made you pick up that first installation CD and give Linux a go? Was it an experiment with some older hardware? A killer app or idea you saw in action? The principals of open source? Or were you truly escaping from a restrictive system, like Mark Pilgrim? Post your story in the comments below, and we'll review them for a future post.

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It takes a lot of work to find a great job and make your resume stand out, but that all led up to the big moment—the one where you stop planning and writing and start actually talking to the people you may soon work with. We're offering up a few tips on staying cool, telling your story without bragging or boring, and being prepared for any curve balls, so take a look before you pick up the pinstripes from the dry cleaners. Photo by jeremyfoo.

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Microsoft has released the second beta of Internet Explorer 8, promising "anyone who browses or works on the web will enjoy IE8 Beta 2." There wasn't anything in the first beta that would make me switch from Firefox 3 for my day-to-day browsing needs, but I'll be curious to see if they've improved on the sluggish performance of that initial build and how the rather obvious AwesomeBar clone plays in practice.

Windows and Linux only: Free bootable image creator UNetbootin automates the downloading, imaging, and installing of Linux distributions onto USB thumb drives, creating a persistent, boot-anywhere desktop. We've previously featured rather involved guides to putting Linux on a flash drive, but UNetbootin does it all for you, from downloading the right ISO to setting up a USB stick as a bootable Linux drive. It can also convert almost any bootable ISO, so if you've got an old, smaller thumb drive not seeing much use these days, you can use UNetbootin to install a partition editor, a file-recovering live CD, or the Windows password-cracking Ophcrack. UNetbootin is a free download for Windows XP and higher and Linux systems.

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Firefox only: Mozilla Labs unveils the first iteration of a natural language web service connector called Ubiquity, a Firefox extension that adds a command panel to any web page. Ubiquity will look familiar to Quicksilver, Launchy or Enso users: you invoke Ubiquity using its key combination on any page and begin to enter your command in the suggest-as-you-type text field. Ubiquity's command set consists of "user-centric mashups" that let you perform tasks using various web services in one place using natural language. For example, you can look up a topic on Wikipedia in-page without switching tabs; you can insert a Google map into a new Gmail message (invoke Ubiquity and type "map [business name]"); you can send a web page to your friend John (hit the Ubiquity key combo and type "email to john"); you can select a paragraph of text in a foreign language and translate it in-page, or map a list of addresses from Craiglist by just selecting them. See these examples and more in practice in the introductory video.

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Windows only: BurnAware Free burns data, audio, and video CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs. Since we last mentioned BurnAware, it was bought up by a software company, turned shareware, and has now made the round trip back to freeware—so if you ran into the shareware version when you tried downloading it, BurnAware Free is worth a grab. There are still shareware versions that support advanced features like simultaneous disc writing, but chances are you'll be happy with the free version. This one could come in particularly handy if and when you actually get a Blu-ray burner on your PC. BurnAware is freeware, Windows only. For other great alternatives, check out previously mentioned ImgBurn or Totally Free Burner.

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If your love for Safari has kept you from making the jump to Google Gears, you're in luck: a beta version of Gears for Safari has just been released. It's a Mac only beta, so expect bugs if you download it. Thanks Josh!