As MP3 players and mobile devices become very common, more and more people are beginning to convert their audio CD collection to music files so they will listen to them while on the move. In Windows and Mac, the conversion can be done automatically with Windows Media Player or iTunes. What about Linux? Let’s take a look. /> id="more-20023">

Rhythmbox

Rhythmbox is the default player in Ubuntu. Like many other media player, it comes with the capability to import audio CD into your library.

Open your Rhythmbox. Before you start to import your audio CD, it is best to configure the location of the imported files and the song format.

Go to Edit -> Preferences. Click on the Music tab.

In the “Music Files are placed in” field, select the location of the folder where the imported music will be stored.

Next, you may want to configure how the folder hierarchy of the album.

We all know that Firefox 4 comes with plenty of interesting and useful features. However, there is one feature that really annoy me out of hell – the tab preview feature (only available for Windows 7).

Here’s what happen: Let’s assume that your Firefox browser is opened with plenty of tabs, but it is not currently your active application (you might be doing some work in Ms. Office). When you hover your mouse above the Firefox icon in the taskbar, it will show a preview of all the opened tabs. This is good and fine as I can now pick the tab that I want to go to. The bad part is, I don’t want to manually select the tab everytime. When I click on the Firefox icon, I would expect it to switch to the browser immediately and load my last active tab, not to make me select the tab. /> id="more-20681"> />

Two years ago, I was introduced to Google Chrome, one of the fastest browsers I had ever used for a while and it still continues to be one of the fastest. You can read my first impressions of Google Chrome.

Google Chrome also has one of the fastest development cycles, and has quickly reached version 6.0 for their stable version and version 7 for their development cycle. Chrome 7 is exciting in several ways with the introduction of hardware acceleration and voice translation along with Chrome Labs which should be part of dev channel shortly.

Today, Chrome has celebrated its 2nd birthday with the introduction of the stable version of Chrome 6 for the masses. Chrome 6 is 3 times faster than the first version of Chrome, which shows leaps and bounds of improvement.

The thing I have liked about Chrome is the simplicity and speed. Over the past two years, Chrome has definitely made simple more simpler with subtle changes that have made using the browser a delight. Since it’s initial release, Google Chrome has added Chrome Extensions, auto-correction and several other features which make the browser one of the best available today.

If you haven’t used Chrome yet, I would definitely suggest you give it a go by downloading it at http://www.google.com/chrome. Don’t forget to read about all the Google Chrome Extensions we have talked about in the past too.

Happy 2nd Birthday Google Chrome.

Windows/Mac/Linux: Two years after its inception, web browser Google Chrome reaches version 6 in its stable release today, bringing with it the much sought-after extension syncing, form autofill and autofill syncing, and an even more streamlined UI. More »

Chrome: TabRocket is a small Chrome extension that allows you to shuttle open tabs between remote Chrome sessions. If you've ever wanted to send a tab to your home computer or your laptop across the room, TabRocket can help. More »

Have you ever wanted to design your own catapult? How about a toy robot, or maybe a more complex machine you’ve been layout out in your head? If so, you might already be familiar with Google Sketchup. It’s a simple to use 3D modeling program for Windows and Mac that has been popular for years, and is used in such other products such as Google Earth to create the buildings. What you may not know is that you can add a plugin to Sketchup which will enable physics, turning your sketches into simulators. /> id="more-20642"> /> Rather than try to describe exactly what it can do, I’ll give you this video to see for yourself.

Windows only: If you keep a copy of Chrome's bleeding-edge Canary build on hand, you can check out Chrome's optional Side Tabs feature right now. Update Canary, activate a "Labs" feature, and you're a right-click away from vertical tabs. More »

I enjoy using Google’s Chrome Canary build so that I can try out the latest features of Google Chrome. Today, Canary’s update included the Chrome Labs page. This feature has been available for a few days, but only in the Chromium code base. To bring up the Labs page, you have to open a new tab and type: “about:labs” (without the quotes).

Google may say that it’s “Some crazy experimental stuff”, but so far, it’s not that crazy. The only experiment available right now is “Side Tabs”. Once enabled, you can right click on any tab to enable or disable it. Here are two screenshots below to show you what it looks like.

As you can see, the Side Tabs really change the look of the browser. I miss the rounded tabs and I’m guessing that I won’t use this new feature often. The reduction in screen width isn’t worth the ease of navigation unless you have lots and lots of tabs open.

While I’m not excited about the Side Tabs lab experiment, I am happy to see the Labs page in Chrome Canary. At least I can hope they’ll stop using those stupid command line switches now.

Labs Extension: If you don’t like having to type “about:labs” in a new tab, there’s a Labs Chrome Extension that let’s  you click on a Labs icon to bring up the Labs page.

More New Features: Be sure to check out three other new features in Chrome 7, Chrome Web Apps, Voice Recognition and Hardware Video Acceleration.

As much as I love Mac, there are things that I still miss from my old Windows days. One of them is the ability to quickly cut and paste items from the Finder. It’s not because Mac doesn’t have the ability to cut and paste, but it’s because some things work differently in the different world.

Recently, I’ve stumbled upon an app called moveAddict that will give Mac users the ability to mimic Cut and Paste feature of Windows. If you are one of the switchers from the Windows land, you might want to check this one out. /> id="more-20593">

The Mac Way To Cut And Paste

But before we discuss the app, let’s look at how Mac OS X handles the cut and paste problems.

First of all, the process is called “move” in the realm of Mac. You can do this simply by selecting the files that you want to move then drag and drop them to the new location that you want them to be.

Installing applications in Ubuntu is as easy as the app store in iPhone. Hit the Ubuntu Software Center, find the application you want and click Install. Due to this convenience, most of the time, you won’t need to backup the applications itself.

However, there are times when you want to restore the newly formatted machine to the original state and you find it a chores to manually install all the applications again. This is when the backup is useful.

When we say “backup” in this case, we don’t really mean backing up the actual application. What we are going to do is to export the list of all your installed app onto a text file. Next time, we can just get the system to reinstall the apps listed in the text file. /> id="more-20622">

Backing up your Apps

(Optional) To list all your installed applications, open a terminal and type:

sudo dpkg --list

To backup your list of applications to a text file:

sudo dpkg --get-selections > app-backup-list.txt
 

This will create a text file of the name “app-backup-list.txt” in your Home folder.

Chrome only: If there's an app, a link, or anything else on the web you want to quickly pull up on a smartphone, or send to friends, QR Code Generator gets you there with just a right-click from Chrome. More »

The concept of activities is a new feature introduced with KDE 4. In the old desktop model of KDE 3, the desktop was a program called “kdesktop”, which gave users the ability to have a number of virtual desktops. Although other tools like Superkaramba could be used to add more features, the essential KDE desktop ended there.

When activities were introduced into KDE 4, they did not make much sense in isolation. In addition to having virtual desktops, there were activities, which the user could create and configure to have different wallpapers and different widgets. Much of the virtual desktop functionality of KDE 3 was absent and not directly connected to Plasma activities.

With the release of KDE 4.5, Plasma has reached a much higher level of maturity, and activities can now be integrated with virtual desktops, dual monitor screens, and with the Dashboard feature. /> id="more-20579">

I am sure you have heard the big news of the week. Yes, the new Digg v4 has launched.

We have got our own Digg account up and running, so get your mouse click over here and follow us now!

The new Digg is updated with a new user interface and has evolved to a more social platform than it used to be. While many have complained and revolted, I am impress of all the changes and the fact that it is no longer the power Digger’s game (or it still is? We’ll see). You can follow other’s Digg accounts and have their news stream to your main page. Users can also import their feeds and have it automatically submit to Digg.

If you have not checked out the new Digg, do it now. At the same time, don’t forget to Follow us at Digg.

Last week, we show you how to jailbreak iOS 4.0.2 for iPhone 3G in Windows. As promised, here is the how-to for Mac users. While this tutorial is very simple, I will need everyone to follow every step conscientiously. Before you start, here are some things that you have to consider: /> id="more-20520">

• Backup your iPhone before doing the jailbreak. Restoring the data is easier to do after the jailbreak process.
• Jailbreaking may void the warranty of your iPhone; you should know that after doing the following steps, you cannot just go to Apple stores and proclaim your iPhone is not working.
• You must be responsible for securing your iPhone after the jailbreak.
• This tutorial is for Mac users only.
• RedSn0w, the tool used in this tutorial to jailbreak your iPhone, is NOT used to UNLOCK your iPhone.
• Make sure your iPhone 3G runs on iTunes 9.2 before you proceed.
• RedSn0w will never work on iPhone 3Gs and iPhone 4.

Here are the steps you should follow to jailbreak iOS 4.0.2 for your iPhone 3G.

Step 1. Download the following files:

We’ve all seen them – those ads on nearly every software website that offer to clean your registry or speed up your downloads. Many of us have learned to ignore them. Occasionally, however, you come across such an application that actually does what it says. It really cleans the registry, and it really can help repair your system. Such a program is IObit Toolbox. It’s a general purpose repair package reminiscent of the old Norton Utilities. It’s useful, portable, works on several versions of Windows, and to top it off, it’s free. /> id="more-20468"> /> Note: IObit Toolbox contains many applications. Many of them are small, simple tools that perform a single task. As such, those will be mostly ignored in this review in favor of the less common, or simply more interesting tools.

Mozilla has recently released the fourth beta of the Firefox 4 browser. I have been testing it since the first beta and I am happy to see the progress and the addition of new features with each beta. I have held on the review of Firefox 4 because most of the features are still unstable or not in place. With the release of beta 4, things are becoming more stable and plenty of new (and revolutionary) features are added to it, so it would be a great time to do up a review. There will probably be another one or two more beta before we see the release candidate and the final version. /> id="more-20478">

New Interface

Firefox 4 has gone through a big design change. The first thing that you will notice is the replacement of the menu bar with a menu button (currently only available in WIndows and Mac version). The new big orange menu button is located on the very top left corner of the browser, and when clicked, will open up a compact menu window. While I don’t really like the orange color and the location that it is situated, I do welcome the idea of replacing the menu bar with the button. It makes the browser more clean and compact.

One of my favorite parts of my Macbook is the set of media keys across the top of the keyboard. For a music, movie, TV and general media junkie like myself, these keys make things quick and easy. What I do hate though, is when I switch to an external keyboard and mouse, which I generally do pretty often with the way my home office is set up, I lose that functionality. When this happens, the only option you’re left with is going all the way in to iTunes, or at least up to the menu bar, to change tracks, volume, etc. This wrecks your workflow. Another problem with them is that they take up useful function keys. These keys are used for different things in different scenarios on different machines, but on a Mac, they’re useless as anything besides media keys. I know a lot of professionals in the computer industry that rely heavily on the function keys on their keyboard, and I can see where they’re coming from when they say they hate a Mac’s dedicated row at the top.

It's only available in the Dev and Canary builds of Chrome, and very few pages support it—for now. But if you want to get hardware acceleration running in Google's browser, it's just a simple command line switch away. More »

In this week wrap-up, we reviewed Qimo – the Linux distro for kids. If you have kids at home, do not miss out this excellent distro. We also covered how you can use Conky Wizard to easily configure Conky (we all know how difficult it can be to get it working right?) and how you can jailbreak your iPhone 3G to iOS 4.0.2 and upload photos to Facebook from Ubuntu.

Last but not least, if you have accidentally locked up your Gmail Call Phone while upgrading your account, we also have a simple and effective trick to unlock your account.

Enjoy! /> id="more-20429">

It’s no secret that Google sees the browser as a central part of future computing devices. The Chrome OS is just one of the many manifestations of this particular vision of the future. In Chrome OS, the browser (Google Chrome) is used to do everything from listening to music to editing documents and creating spreadsheets.

While Chrome OS based devices are still a few months away, Google is working hard to get its browser ready for various form factors. Just yesterday, we reported that future versions of Chrome will future GPU Acceleration that will enable it to do heavy duty computing (like scaling videos) with ease. Now DownloadSquad has discovered that speech recognition has been enabled in the latest Chromium builds. Of course, Chrome isn’t the first browser to get voice recognition. Opera received voice navigation support as far back as 2005 with Opera 8. However, this feature works only on Opera for Windows, and since its initial release there has been very little further improvement.

Google has also uncorked a few other handy features in Chrome, including support for device orientation and Google Labs. The former is an essential feature for netbooks, tablets and other accelerometer enabled devices. The latter on the other hand will enable curious users to get a taste of the latest features being cooked up by Google. To access it simply type about:labs in the omnibar (address bar). For now, Windows users can enjoy tabs on the left, while Mac users can play around with Google’s implementation of Tab Expose.