If you've just started using Ubuntu and you're the sort of person who likes to have 911 and poison control on speed dial, you might want to check out the Ubuntu Forums Menu extension for Firefox.

While Ubuntu is one of the easiest Linux distributions for new users to learn, we can pretty much guaranty that you're eventually going to run into an issue while trying to enable support for your hardware or when you're trying to install some application. Lucky for you, there's an enormous community of Ubuntu users and developers hanging out at the Ubuntu Forums who are more than happy to answer your questions. In fact, if you search the forums, there's a good chance you'll find out your questions have already been answered.

The Ubuntu Forums Menu extension adds an item to your Firefox menu bar to give you quick access to the forums. You can also access this menu via the right-click context menu.

[via Sizlopedia]

Though it is currently accessible only to a closed set of beta testers, it seems the 22 minds behind Polar Rose are trying to create a sort of "Google" for people pictures -- a system that is always indexing visual information. But that's only the beginning of the service.

Beta testers have recently been given access to an Internet Explorer and Firefox plug-in that will scan faces on a loaded web-page, placing an orange or red rose icon in the lower right-hand corner of every face on the page. The color of the icon depends on whether or not the system can stick a name to the face, and this is determined by whether or not the face has been registered with the system. Any unnamed faces can be registered with the system from there, though, don't expect miracles. The plug-in struggles with low-quality or poorly lit photos.

This is "cool," of course, and we tend to like advanced stuff like this even if it's not personally useful to us. But what happens if a web-user doesn't want his/her face indexed? As is often with new technology/services (stop-light cameras, Google, Facebook, RFID cards, etc.) this may one day begin to spark the paranoia of privacy rights activists -- assuming it gets big enough to get noticed by less nerdy common folk.

[via BLORGE]