If you're sick of reading about Firefox 3 and want to try it yourself—without letting go of your trusty Firefox 2 setup—head over to PortableApps.com. Those quick-on-the-draw folks have released a portable, self-contained edition of Firefox 3 RC 1 for your risk-free testing pleasure.
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Great news for Yahoo Mail users: The big Y has stopped automatically including advertising taglines at the bottom of your email messages. About time!
In addition to its new ability to automatically detect what language you're trying to translate, Google Translate adds 10 more languages to its capabilities: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, and Swedish.
One not-so-great outcome of the Federal budget this week was that the fringe benefit exemptions have been tightened on laptops. So the practise of salary sacrificing to get a laptop is on its way out, unless you use it "primarily for work". If you were thinking of rushing one through before June 30, apparently that's not an option either - the changes have already taken effect. Thanks, Mary, for that tip.
Looking to do some PC gaming but the price tag of commercial games conflicting with your money-saving goals? Check out Wikipedia's list of commercial games released as freeware. It's bound to be a bit hit-or-miss, but with games released as recently as 2008, it may be worth a look.
The first alpha release Thunderbird 3 (for extremely early adopters) is now available, and it's got tabs! T-bird 3 can open several messages in tabs rather than popping new windows—great news for your clean desktop.
Trying to kick a bad texting habit? Here's some news that should help you say no to SMS: The SMS data rate is four times as expensive as sending data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Ouch.
Here's a twist on the tale of the Windows XP phaseout - Microsoft has confirmed it's going to keep selling XP on certain ultraportable computers, including the ASUS Eee PC, until 2010. Microsoft had already extended the XP phaseout once, to June this year, but it will be sold on the Eee and similar form factor products until 2010. Interesting!
The security of your personal information is so supposedly tenuous on social networking sites that one legal expert has described it as: "like the situation in East Germany - you never know who's spying on who". Wow. It's not Godwin's Law, but I think I can see it from here. Do you think your info is that exposed?
Data portability seems to be the buzzword of the moment. We've already heard that Facebook and MySpace will let users take their profile data to other sites. But if you're a Google-head, you will probably be excited to learn that the Big G has been tipped to announce something similar, called Friend Connect. Tech Crunch has speculated that Friend Connect will be "APIs for Open Social participants to pull profile information from social networks into third party websites."
Web-based image editor Photoshop Express adds Flickr to its list of importable sources. Now you can grab images from your Flickr account, edit them in PS Express, and put them back all prettified without downloading a thing. It's not full-on Photoshop, but still a great web-based editor for your Flickr photos.
Microsoft warns Internet Explorer 6 stragglers users that upgrading to Service Pack 3 with IE7 installed eliminates the ability to uninstall IE7, so wait until after SP3 installs to put it on. (Phew.)
Argh! The Engineers over at Google Australia have launched a treasure hunt for geeks - they'll be releasing four puzzles "drawing from computer science, networking, and low-level UNIX trivia", with prizes for the first people to solve them. The blog post is scant on details but it's enticing - check it out to see the first clue.
Before you head to Aunt Martha's house to do tech support over her dial-up connection, save yourself hours and burn a Service Pack 3 disc before you go. The gHacks blog offers direct links to SP3 burn-ready ISO's and EXE's in several languages. (Here's English.)
News just in from Australian Macworld - Vodafone has announced it will be bringing Apple's iPhone to Australia. Mixed feelings - at least it's not Telstra, but couldn't Apple have gone with a network that supplies, you know, decent network coverage? :)
Here's some fun for the starry-eyed amongst us -
NASA has invited people to submit their names to be transported to the Moon onboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Visit the website to add your name, and you can print out a certificate of participation. Nice one for the kids.
Today the Associated Press launches an iPhone-friendly mobile news site at apnews.com.
A new study shows that most Facebook applications are "just for fun", which shouldn't surprise anyone. But, there are at least a few Facebook apps that help you get stuff done.
The Moleskine won the battle of the fancy designer notebooks by a mile last month here at Lifehacker. If you want to measure your existing Moleskine addiction—or just get an intro to the fabled leather-bound notebooks—the Put Things Off weblog offers the ultimate guide to the Moleskine, featuring the various models, mods, and accessories to feed your fetish.
Hey, you big comic book nerd! Today's free comic day, which means your local shop may have a freebie or two with your name on it. Locate a store near you that's participating, and before you go, check out io9's recommendations on which comics you should try to nab.
