Chrome OS draws near. Last night brought perhaps the more surefire sign yet: Google is openly talking to The New York Times about it. Perhaps that is in response to rumors that it was being delayed into next year. While details are still scant, NYT reports that before the end of the year, Google will release a lightweight netbook running Chrome OS. It will likely be branded as a Google product, but built by a third-party, similar to what the search giant did with their Nexus One phone, says the report.

Chrome/Firefox/Opera/Safari: If you're unhappy with Facebook's new small font size (or other annoyances), userscript Better Facebook gives you over 75 extra options with which you can tweak Facebook to your liking.

Every time Facebook redesigns their home page, the entire internet seems to erupt (usually unnecessarily) in anger. Recently, however, Facebook changed its default font size for the news feed to a smaller font that is significantly harder to read, and it's a pretty legitimate complaint. Luckily, user script Better Facebook has you covered with a new feature that allows you to force a certain font size.

There's a lot of work going on in the background, but Dev Channel subscribers of Google Chrome might not even notice they've been upgraded overnight to Chrome 9. Tweaks to the JavaScript engine, the off-by-default hardware acceleration, and some of the extension handling are present, but most of the work listed in the lengthy changelog relates to features not quite ready for primetime. Chrome 9 arrived for Windows, Mac, and Linux users running the Dev channel release. [Google Chrome Releases] More »

Chrome/Firefox: The SiteLauncher browser extension adds a one-stroke keyboard launcher to your favorite sites in Chrome and Firefox. More »

Chrome: We've shown you many ways to avoid the less appealing folk on the internet, but if you find some communities are just too troll-infested, Comment Blocker will hide all comments on a specific site with a quick shortcut. More »

Do you want to try the newest operating system for PCs? Ubuntu 10.10 has recently been released. Although many people would enjoy trying it, the need to make permanent changes to their computers may be stopping them.

There is a way to install Ubuntu 10.10 inside of Windows using the Wubi installer. If you decide you have no use for it, it can always be easily uninstalled later. Below, I’ll show you the details of a typical Wubi/Ubuntu installation.

First, you’ll need to download the correct Wubi file. The current Wubi at Ubuntu.com hasn’t been updated yet, so you’ll need to grab the file from a mirror location.

[Windows Only]

As many of you have learned by now, not all free screensavers are created equal. Many times, “free” means that you have to install stupid toolbars, adware and other unwanted junk along with the screensaver. That’s not true of the ones at NewFreeScreensavers.com. Here are the most recent additions to the site.

Google recently release Google Instant, a new feature that enables you to perform real-time search. If you are using Google Chrome and is planning to integrate the Google Instant functionality to the search bar (aka omnibar), here is the way to do it.

Note: The below method is currently available for Windows only. Mac and Linux version are not supported at the moment.

1. Download and install Google Chrome dev channel. If you have previously pin the Chrome icon to your taskbar, unpin it.

2. Go to “Start -> All Programs -> Google Chrome“. Right click on the Google Chrome entry and select Properties.

3. Enter “--enable-match-preview” at the end of the shortcut target. Click Ok.

4. Launch Google Chrome from the Start menu. The real time search preview page should appear once you start typing at the omnibar.

That’s it.

Chrome: Graph Your Inbox is a fascinating Chrome extension that takes Gmail search queries and returns a graph displaying email frequency over time. It may not sound sexy, but it can expose all sorts of interesting things about your communication. More »

Quanp, the online storage service that gives you a whopping 10GB of free storage space has now come up with another way for you to utilize your account – Microsoft Office Addin. If you are not aware, quanp has been pretty active in developing interactive widgets recently to get people to use their storage services. Widgets like quanp send, quanp.drop and quanp.on are useful stuff that you can make use of.

With this latest quanp Office addin, you will be able to download, edit, upload and share your document directly from your Office. /> id="more-20574">

Installation

The installation of the quanp addin is pretty straightforward. Simply download the exe file and double click to install it. If you have opened your Microsoft Office, you will need to close it for the installation to proceed.

When the installation is done, you will find the quanp icon in the ribbon of your office.

A touchpad is a common feature found in most laptops or notebooks which allows a better substitute of the normal computer mouse. If you have very less desk space and want to avoid wire clutters, you should know how to master the operation of a touchpad.

Anyone, who has used a touchpad as well as an external USB mouse would definitely prefer the latter one because  a normal computer mouse is easy to grip and recommended for quick operation. If you work for long hours with your laptop, it’s certainly not recommended to work with the touchpad because this may induce finger strain.

Touchpads are great when you are away from your desk but can come in the way of efficiency if not managed well.

One of the problems with laptop touchpads is the frequent typing errors encountered when your fingers accidentally slip in the touchpad area.  Suddenly, the cursor is misplaced to some other place and you find that the paragraph written a  few minutes ago is disturbed by misspelled words or characters.

This is very annoying and in this article I am going to describe how writers can manage their laptop’s touchpad for better productivity. /> id="more-20502">

Filed under: Design

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.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows

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.

With the evolution of cloud based file hosting services, more and more users are attracted to online file back up services which allows you to store files on the cloud.

This is because a 260 GB hard disk is not enough anymore. You need more and more space and most importantly, you want to access those files from any computer you want.

With an online file hosting service, you can sync all your computers and mobile devices with ease. One of the very popular services is Dropbox. The free plan of Dropbox allows you to store up to 2 GB of data in the cloud and the pro plan costs $9.99 a month for 50 GB while $19.99 for 100 GB of space.

If you are looking for a cheaper alternative of Dropbox, here is another web service called iDriveSync, which offers considerate plans with more space. /> id="more-20351">

The release of Apple iPhone 4 left an impression that the second generation iPhones will be out of the scenes for good. But no, iPhone 3G is always as good as the day it has been released. It may not have the same functionality as the fourth generation, but still, you will not be left behind, technologically, if you have it. Now, that being said, I have something here for iPhone 3G owners — a step-by-step guide to jailbreak iOS 4.0.2 for your iPhone 3G to, at least, compete with others who have the latest model of iPhones and enjoy the features that iOS 4.0.2 offers. This one’s for Windows users alone. Mac users, I will publish another guide for you, too, in the near future. /> id="more-20104"> /> Important Notes:

Before you carry out the jailbreak, go through these notes and see if you are ready to perform the process;

Windows/Linux (with Chrome): By default, Google Chrome exits the entire program when you've closed the last tab. Chrome extension Last Tab Standing prevents this from happening by opening an empty new tab page when you close your last tab. More »