There's a new recipe book out in the States called Food 2.0: Secrets from the Chef who fed Google.
I have to admit that when I saw the title, I wondered who the hell would want to buy a recipe book for food served by an IT company  - especially when that company is famous for fattening up its programmers. But I read on out of interest.
Of course, being a Google chef, author Charlie Ayers isn't just any chef, but the former caterer for the Grateful Dead (ah, California).
The CNET review describes Food 2.0 as "a ridiculously healthy cookbook in the most Northern California sense possible" but it sounds like it strikes a balance between fresh, healthy ingredients and being tasty enough to appeal to finicky programmers. :)
 By the time I reached the end of the review, I have to admit I was kind of tempted - more for the Jade Smoothie recipe (sliced cucumber, mint leaves, apple cider, and lemon sorbet) than the Google hot sauce. Now I feel like a Google tragic. :)

Social bookmarking tool Del.icio.us has had a Firefox extension for a while, and now Yahoo has released a beta version for Internet Explorer too. You can download the extension here.
Features include a del.icio.us Sidebar and Toolbar which will already be familiar to users of the Firefox version.
It promises "near instantaneous" searching with very large accounts of over 10,000 bookmarks. Other features include full del.icio.us sidebar and toolbar implementation with bookmark sync and typedown search.
It is just in beta at the moment, so the usual warnings apply. The Del.icio.us Internet Explorer Extension works with Internet Explorer 6 and above.[via]

Previously mentioned service DailyLit, which breaks down classic books into small chunks and emails them to you one piece at a time, has started distributing Wikipedia tours. Get DailyLit email instalments of Wikipedia topics, like major world religions, wine 101, or world capitals delivered to your inbox each day. [via]

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US-Centric (for now!): Google Maps now makes it easy to check out real estate listings in a certain area: click on the "Show search options" link next to the Search Maps button, and choose "Real Estate" from the drop down. Your search will map homes for sale, with photos and prices. Search blog Google Operating System reports that the results come from real estate site feeds, not Google Base. You can also refine your search by price, number of bathrooms and bedrooms. Looks like Google Maps is giving Zillow a run for its money, though Zillow offers home valuations for property that's not necessarily for sale.

If you spend any amount of time on the web, you're doing yourself a disservice if you haven't found a decent RSS newsreader to keep on top of your favourite web sites. If you aren't using one, it's time you start; if you are, the question remains: Are you using the best newsreader for your needs (and feeds)? So for this week's Hive Five, we want you to tell us all about your favourite RSS newsreader. Hit the jump for more details and to nominate your favourite newsreader—be it web- or desktop-based—in the comments.

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Despite the fact that most of you prefer XP to Vista and would rather Microsoft extended XP's shelf-life, several new and improved features available in Vista would be great to have in XP. This new functionality may not be enough to get you to switch to Vista, but that doesn't mean you're out of luck. Let's take a look at a few ways you can incorporate Windows Vista's best features into your current XP PC for free.

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The New York Times' Well section has reassuring news for anyone hitting the gym and not seeing results. Many researchers agree that muscle size and definition are not as important to your long-term health as those muscles' endurance and strength, which prevent atrophy and weakness in old age:

To maintain endurance, you should engage in activities that pump blood to the muscles, like walking. For strength, you need to lift weights, concentrating on what Professor Fitts calls the antigravity muscles, those of the back and legs. And, he adds, you should also maintain arm strength.

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Windows only: Microsoft Research releases astronomy application WorldWide Telescope, software which offers "terabytes" of detailed telescope images of the night sky for exploration right on your desktop. Zoom, pan, and explore the solar system, galaxies and more using WorldWide Telescope. The BBC reports:

Collections include pictures from the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes, as well as the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. ... "Users can see the X-ray view of the sky, zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then cross-fade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago," explained Roy Gould, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics.

Via Gizmodo, here's a demo of WorldWide Telescope at the TED conference back in February.

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If Google Maps' integration of geotagged photos piqued your interest, Wired blogger Charlie Sorrel focuses his lens on geotagging photos, the practice of adding location to a photo's metadata that will tell you where a photo was taken. He highlights several options for the budding geotagger, from for-a-price solutions, like the new Eye-Fi Explore SD card and GPS cameras, to no-cost solutions, like Flickr's integrated geotagging tools. We've also covered a couple of no-cost geotagging options in the past that might do the trick, but for the not-that-high price of $US130, the Eye-Fi Explore is an excellent upgrade to my beloved Eye-Fi memory card.

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When Firefox's bookmarks are a scattered mess of links, you can restore order instantaneously by alphabetising them. Simply reordering the column in the Bookmarks Manager won't do it though—you've got to invoke the context menu. Macworld explains:

Select a folder full of bookmarks in the left pane of the Bookmarks Manager window. The right pane will fill with that folder's contents. If you want to sort all the items in the right pane by name, just Control-click (Ed: Windows users, right-click) on an item in the right pane and choose Sort By Name from the contextual menu. Firefox will first organise folders alphabetically, and then follow those folders with alphabetised items that carry URLs.

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Failing to listen during an important conversation not only requires you to ask questions later, it can give off the impression of not caring, even if it's really just bad habits. Workplace consultant Gretchen Neels tells the New York Times' Shifting Careers blog that subtly "mirroring" the gestures of the person you're listening to—they lean their head to the left, you lean to the right—can push your brain into listening and leave a reassuring impression.

While this might sound odd, apparently this kind of activity puts you into the same groove. Ms. Neels says that if you are with friends and feeling very connected, you are probably mirroring each other's body language since it's something people automatically do in situations where they are comfortable.

Not a bad trick, but you might want to practice it on a spouse or a friend who can laugh at you first. How do you force yourself into receptive listening if it's not in the cards for that moment? Share your tips in the comments. Photo by b d solis.

Google Maps has integrated Wikipedia articles and geotagged photos so you can see points of interest and images of any geotagged photo on a Google Map. The data, accessible through a new More dropdown button next to Traffic, can be toggled on or off by simply ticking the check box. Once turned on, Wikipedia points of interest show up on the map as a "W" and images show up as small thumbnails. Clicking either will give you a closer look at the object. Both tools promise to bring an excellent layer of information to the already impressive Google Maps, and who knows—soon Street View may be overshadowed by a wealth of geotagged pics.

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If you've been tinkering with (or just thinking about) Adobe's multi-system AIR platform and wondering if any apps are worth your time, James Whittaker has made the answer much easier to find with freshAIRapps. The directory offers ratings and reviews of many new and new-to-AIR apps, including:

• Twhirl, a desktop Twitter client.
• Doominow, a slick-looking to-do list.
• MuxMaster, a Cover Flow-inspired browser for web mixtape builder Muxtape.

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The busy folks working on XBMC for OS X just dropped beta 2, which fixes several bugs I listed in yesterday's feature story, XBMC Turns Your Mac into the Ultimate Media Center. Most notably, scripts and live weather forecasts now work.

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The latest version 9 of the Fedora Linux distribution is now available for your downloading and installation pleasure. The Fedora-lovers at Ars Technica report:

Fedora 9 delivers a cutting edge desktop stack with the latest software and version 2.6.25 of the Linux kernel. This release includes GNOME 2.22, which has some significant improvements like the GVFS virtual filesystem abstraction layer.

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The Ubuntu Unleashed blog has an excellent guide to the ins and outs of the Uncomplicated Firewall (ufw), a new feature in Ubuntu Linux 8.04, or Hardy Heron, that makes it easy to control the traffic into and out of your system. While turning on the firewall is as simple as typing sudo ufw enable, you can do a lot more with ufw, including:

• Check the status of ufw with the ports in the listening state: sudo ufw status
• Block a single host: sudo ufw deny from {IP address}
• Allow all access to port 80 (for web serving): sudo ufw allow 80/tcp

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Mac OS X only: Freeware application iTunesVolume is an attractive iTunes controller for your Mac desktop. Like many before it, iTunesVolume offers playback control and displays album artwork (and it looks great doing it), but iTunesVolume sets itself apart with a very simple always-on-top control: a volume slider. Through this simple slider, you can access and control everything else the app does, which is virtually everything you can do in iTunes. iTunesVolume takes a little time to wrap your head around, but once you do, it offers a really nice way to interact with your music. iTunesVolume is freeware, Mac OS X only.

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Free travel guide site Schmap has crafted a pretty nifty interface for iPhone and iPod touch users looking for spots to hit while travelling. Navigate to the city you're travelling through, pick a category like restaurants or banks, and scroll through the vertical list of results. Flip your iPhone/touch sideways, and points from the section of the list you were scrolling through are mapped out, and contact and directions info are provided when tapped. Pretty handy for finding notable spots nearby without having to cross over applications. Point your iPhone or iPod touch to the link below to access the web app (but regular browsers can head there as well).

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Web site Uploadjockey takes the shotgun approach to uploading and sharing files on the web, sending your file to multiple file sharing services in one click. The downside of Uploadjockey is that the services it uploads to are some of the dinosaurs of the online file sharing game, like Rapidshare and Megaupload. That said, if you need that shotgun approach—say your ISP is blocking one service but may not be blocking another—it's a handy one-stop shop for sharing files up to 100MB in size. If not, you'd be better off going with one of the five best online file sharing services.

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US-centric - Free fuel-tracking service FuelFrog provides a service you could technically do yourself, but it's a lot more convenient than keeping a paper journal and doing monthly division work. Whenever you fill up your car, you can Twitter FuelFrog with your miles since the last fill-up, price per gallon, and gallons pumped, and your data will be graphed and tracked to show you how many miles per gallon you're getting. It can serve as visual reinforcement to start driving for fuel efficiency, or just a confirmation of your car's real-world mileage.

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