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"> />

Only 2 years ago, Google has released the very first build of Chrome web browser. Now, two years later, company is celebrating its browser birthday with two new releases: stable and beta.

Google Chrome then


Google Chrome now

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.

Google is celebrating the second anniversary of its Google Chrome browser with the release of new stable and beta versions that have a cleaner and simpler user interface and increased speed and performance.

As the Google Chrome Blog points out, Chrome 6 is years beyond where most imagined browser technology would be when Chrome was first introduced just two years ago.

The Google Chrome Blog takes a retrospective look at how much browsers have changed over the past two years, remarking that when Chrome was first introduced in August of 2008, "JavaScript was 10 times slower, HTML5 support wasn't yet an essential feature in modern browsers, and the idea of a sandboxed, multi-process browser was only a research project."

In addition to some cosmetic changes, the new version of Chrome brings form autofill features, making it so you don't have to type in again and again that ridiculously long email address you now regret choosing. It also brings extension and autofill synchronization, meaning that your autofill data will remain the same from desktop to laptop to netbook.

Among the myriad features, the user interface seems to have an impact in the browser market. The soon-to-be-released Internet Explorer 9 looks like it stole a page from Chrome, adopting the clean and simple design that lets the browser step out of the way. Chrome's design manages to portray what we find most appealing about Chrome (which replaced Firefox as the default browser months ago now) - its lightweight operation. Just as it steps out of the way of the page, in terms of design, the browser manages to step out of the way of other programs, managing to run well (even on a netbook) without hogging all of the processing power.

If you haven't yet, we highly recommend giving Chrome a spin.

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.

As Google Chrome 7 (dev) now includes hardware acceleration, guys from DownloadSquad decided to test it along with Internet Explorer 9 (developers preview) and Firefox 4 (beta).

What are the results?
Google Chrome 7 utilized the most of the hardware resources, delivering better FPS (frames per second) than Internet Explorer 9 or Firefox 4, which took the last place.

However, as those are not the final builds, don’t draw your conclusions yet, things might change in the future.

Thanks to geek for the news tip.

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: