In today's earlier list of five extensions you won't need in Firefox 3, we said you won't need any special toolbars, third-party apps, Greasemonkey scripts, or extensions to get Firefox to use webapps like Gmail to open certain types of links—like email mailto links. This means that when you click on an email address that uses the standard mailto: link, Firefox 3 itself can launch Gmail instead of a desktop app. By default, the Firefox RC 1 only comes with Yahoo! Mail as a possible mailto: link handler, which leaves Gmail users out in the cold—unless you know how to set it up by hand, that is. Here's how to set up Gmail as your default mailto: webapp.

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There was a time in the not-so-distant past that launching a new application was a tedious, unpleasant task. Luckily, thanks to a handful of fast and powerful application launchers, our days of digging through the Windows Start menu or hunting for a needle among an enormous haystack of applications are over. If you aren't already using an application launcher to speed up your daily computing, it's about time you start. If you are dedicated to your app launcher, then we want to know about it. For this week's Hive Five, we're tackling the ever-popular and divisive topic of application launchers. Hit the jump for more details and to cast a vote for your favourite application launcher.

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You've been talking to (or screaming at) your Windows PC for years, but unless you were willing to shell out hundreds of dollars on pricey software, chances are it wasn't listening to a word you were saying. With Microsoft's new freeware tool, Windows Speech Recognition Macros, the days of you talking into your computer's unsympathetic ear are over. Not only is it listening, but it's up to the task of doing whatever you want it to.

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If you've been following author Michael Pollan's simple eating philosophy—"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."—you're trying more than ever to incorporate vegetables in your diet. What you may not know, however, is how to best prepare those vegetables so you're getting the most nutritional value. From the New York Times:

"There is a misperception that raw foods are always going to be better," says Steven K. Clinton, a nutrition researcher and professor of internal medicine in the medical oncology division at Ohio State University. "For fruits and vegetables, a lot of times a little bit of cooking and a little bit of processing actually can be helpful."

Though the article emphasises that no cooking method is best, it does explain the trade-offs you make when you make the decision to cook or not to cook.

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The Dumb Little Man blog has a suggestion for all of us who can't help but feel the shameful pull of the drive-thru lane when we're hungry or just pressed for meal-planning time. Every night, empty your fast food (or candy, soda, or other junk food) receipts into a jar by your bed. Then ...

Round that up to the nearest $10 and cut it in half. That's how much you'll spend a week from now on ... Take that money and put it in a ziplock bag that you keep in your car. All your fast food will be paid for out of this fund, and when it dries up, that's it until next week. This will force you to ration and make choices.

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Now that Mozilla's locked down Firefox 3's feature set, it's clear the new browser iteration will render some extensions obsolete. Firefox 3 will include functionality out-of-the-box that you could only get with add-ons before. Let's take a look at five extensions you might not need when you switch to Firefox 3.

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Estimating how much time it takes to get a task done is never easy; in fact, most of us are optimists and underestimate how long that to-do will take us. Personal development writer Steve Pavlina says the key is to know just how optimistic you are—he calls this your "fudge ratio"— and build it into your estimates. Pavlina writes:

I tend to be consistently optimistic when estimating the time required for certain tasks. Knowing my fudge ratio has NOT made my initial estimates more accurate. My off-the-cuff estimates are just as inaccurate as they've always been. However, when I multiple my estimates by the fudge ratio, the estimates come pretty close to the time required. This helps me budget my time better.

Figuring out your fudge ratio means you've got to jot down estimates for a few tasks, do them, and then compare actual time to estimated time. Pavlina's fudge ratio is about 1.5, which sounds just about right for overachieving optimists.

Windows only: Freeware application HP Smart Web Printing combines clips from any number of web pages into one page, so you don't have to print five different pages of filler to get one page worth of information. The tool—which despite its HP origins works with any printer—integrates directly with both Firefox and Internet Explorer, so clipping text, images, or any part of a page is as simple as clicking a button. Before you print, you can edit, resize, and adjust all of your clippings to your liking. The result is more useful printouts and less wasted paper. If this freeware, Windows only download tickles the environmentalist in you, check out other easy ways to go green and save money with your computer.

Windows only: DupliFinder, a free Windows utility, compares digital photos by their name, size, and actual image information to find duplicates you can delete without worrying about. Brought to you by the coder of Vista Battery Saver, DupliFinder has a slightly rough interface at this point—you have to drag and drop in a folder to search if it's not "My Pictures," for instance—but its comparison engine works just fine, giving percentage ratings and quick delete buttons for duplicates. Looks like a great tool for finally tackling that picture clean-up project you keep putting off. DupliFinder is a free download for Windows systems only.

Windows only: Freeware application iContact downloads your Gmail address book to your desktop for quick access to all your contacts' information. Searching contacts in iContact is very fast, but the main benefit of the application is its built-in support for other tools. For example, you can make a phone call with Skype or map a contact's address with Google Maps with just a couple of clicks in iContact. The application is very young, and it was a little buggy in my tests—for example, contact names didn't show up in the sidebar until I started searching. Aside from that, it's a promising app for integrating your extensive Gmail contact list with your desktop. If you give it a try, let's hear how it performed for you in the comments. iContact is freeware, Windows only. Thanks Khash!

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The Modofly artist collaborative etches your favourite designer notebook—the Moleskine—with beautiful and eye-catching artwork. The Moleskine won best designer notebook by a landslide in a recent faceoff, but to differentiate yourself from all those other Moleskine toters, you want one of Modofly's creations. The bad news is that Modofly's Moleskine's are even more expensive than the original at 36 bucks a pop, but good looks don't come cheap. The Silver Bullet robot is pictured here; hit the jump to check out a few more of our favourite geeky Modofly Moleskine picks.

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Mac OS X only: Rename large groups of files—like that batch of photos fresh off your camera's memory card—using simple or complex rules with Name Mangler. Simple options include numbering files sequentially, adding a prefix or suffix, or changing case. In advanced mode, you can script any number of those actions and save them. Name Mangler also produces reusable droplets you can add to Finder; then, whenever you want to batch rename a set of files, simply drag them onto the droplet without even starting up the application. Name Mangler is a free download, donations requested, for Macs running Leopard only.

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Why waste time schooling clueless email senders one by one when you can build a web site to do it for you? A recent trend among email-overloaded web developers who don't want to explain the basics of email etiquette to frequent senders is to set up a web page that does it instead—then reply to senders with a link to the page, or just include it in their signature. Merlin Mann's Thanks, No turns down unwanted email; Mike Davidson's five sentences explains why his email messages are so short; and now Brett Kelly's BCC, please asks that bulk senders use the BCC field to hide his address from everyone else on a big list. The question is: would you ever actually use any of these explainer pages?

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Windows only: Visual Controls is a super-tiny, stand-alone application that does just one thing—modify which applications can show icons inside your Control Panel—and does it very well. The changes you make are instant and permanent, so even if you only download Visual Controls just to get rid of the ubiquitous QuickTime button and then delete it, it will have been worth your time. The program, however, can also make a nice addition to your thumb drive system-fixing tools. Visual Controls is a free download for Windows systems only, and requires the .NET 2.0 or higher framework.

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Linux only: Flyback, the previously mentioned Linux backup utility that aims to mimic Mac OS X Leopard's Time Machine for set-and-forget usability, has a cutting-edge 0.5 version available in its Subversion repository that adds a good number of great things. Choosing what to back up, which external drive or server to place it on, and when exactly to do it, is a lot easier to grasp for those not schooled in rsync. The Ubuntu Unleashed blog has detailed instructions on getting the cutting-edge SVN version installed on your Debian, Ubuntu, or Red Hat-based system.

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The Workers' Edge blog points out that a macro written by Dave Rado back in the days of Word 97 to back up and restore time-saving, typo-fixing AutoCorrect settings in Microsoft Word still does the trick for the most modern Word 2007 installation. It's simple to use and a lot easier than tracking down your AutoCorrect file yourself. Simply install the macro (with detailed instructions offered at the via link below), launch it, and choose where to save a Word document with your custom AutoCorrect settings, and hit "Restore" to import settings from a different installation. Of course, you could always switch over to app-neutral text substitution utilities like Texter, but this macro should be a real time-saver for those who have finely tuned their Word.

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US only: Napster debuts its brand new DRM-free MP3 store today. Like Amazon MP3, the songs will play on any device and any number of computers, and cost $.99 per single, and $9.95 per album. [via]

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Next time you need to give a presentation from afar, fire up Zoho Show, invite a few attendees, and give the presentation in real-time with Zoho Show's Remote feature. You invite participants, and as soon as everyone shows up and you start the remote presentation, what they see matches exactly what you're doing. You advance a slide, their browser advances a slide. Even if you don't plan on using Zoho Show to deliver the final product, it could still come in handy to review and collaborate remotely on PowerPoint presentations (which Zoho Show imports seamlessly).

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