Filed under: Weekend Review

It's been a busy week at Download Squad HQ. We've been busy covering the releases of several new web browsers, updates to several operating systems, and we've been continuing our never-ending quest to find as many ways as humanly possible to waste time while using a computer.

We're also expanding the Squad a bit. You may notice posts from some new bloggers over the next few days. Feel free to say hi, and please don't haze them. You know, unless you really have to.

And without further ado, here's a list of some our favorite stories from the past week:

• Firefox 3 is pretty much ready
  After years of working, testing, and tweaking, Mozilla plans to officially launch Firefox 3 on June 17th. This week saw the release of Firefox 3 RC3, which is basically identical to Firefox 3 RC2 if you're using Mac or Linux, but the latest version fixed a critical bug on Mac systems.
• Mozilla shows off Firefox mobile interface concept video
  But it's not all about desktop browsers over at Mozilla HQ. The developers of Firefox are also hard at work on a project to craft a mobile version of Firefox that will run on cellphones. The company unveiled a concept user interface this week that might make its way into the final release. Or it might not.
• Microsoft TownSquare: A social network for business communications
  Microsoft may own a stake in Facebook, but it looks like the company's not putting all of its social networking chickens in one basket. Microsoft is also working on a social network for internal use by businesses who want to faciliate communication and collaboration among employees.
• TidalTV: Web video doesn't get much more TV-like
  Tired of internet video looking more like video stuck on a web page than TV? TidalTV is a new video site that looks almost exactly like an interactive program guide from a cable or satellite network. And it features a combination of live video streams and on-demand programs from several networks including HGTV, National Geographic, and CBS.
• Viewzi visual search engine gives you a dozen ways to search
  Ever find yourself staring at Google Images wondering why it's so hard to find images? Viewzi can help. This highly customizable search engine lets you flip through images about a dozen different ways, and tries to predict which views will be the most helpful depending on your search terms. It's a bit overwhelming, but also extraordinarily cool.
• Opera desktop browser 9.5 is final - Take your stuff with you
  Mozilla's not the only company with a new web browser to promote. Opera 9.5 went gold this week, and the latest version of the browser is faster than ever, has a nifty new skin, and has a new Opera Link service that lets you sync your settings across browsers on multiple machines.
• HotPads shows real estate rents, foreclosure rates, and demographics heat maps
  HotPads is a real estate search engine with more eye andy than you can shake a stick at. Not that you typically shake sticks at real estate search engines. But HotPads lets you search by location, price, and number of bedrooms like any other real estate listing site. But HotPads also shows you heatmaps with information like the average rent, foreclosure rates, age, or income levels in a given area.
• Parallels for Mac hits 1,000,000 users
  No matter how much you love your Mac, the truth of the matter is that there are still some programs that are Windows only. So it's probably not surprising that Parallels, a program that lets you run Windows on a Mac without rebooting is so popular. Whether you use it on a daily basis or just on the rare occasion when you really want to fire up MS Paint, we're betting there's a decent chance you've got Parallels or another virtualization program if you've got a Mac.

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Filed under: Internet, E-mail, Social Software

Tired of getting email notifications letting you know that someone wants to be your friend, poke, or wink at you? Webmail provider Orgoo wants to bridge the gap between email and social networking. That means you'd be able to receive all of your email notifications without leaving the social networking site. TechCrunch reports that Orgoo hopes to convince social networks like MySpace and Facebook to integrate the Orgoo email interface, which will also encourage users to spend more time on the web page.

While most social networking sites have some sort of private messaging feature, they tend to lack the features you'd find in a full fledged email service like Gmail or Yahoo! Mail. Orgoo supports POP and IMAP, which means you wouldn't necessarily be stuck with an @orgoo.com or @myspace.com email address. You could link any POP or IMAP-enabled account to the service.

Last year Yahoo! made some waves by claiming that email itself could be the basis for the next generation social networking. The implication is that Yahoo! may add social features to its email and IM services to make Yahoo! Mail a bit more Facebook-like. Orgoo's solution seems to achieve the same goal by taking the exact opposite approach.

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Ever wonder what changes an application is making to your Windows registry? RegFromApp is a simple utility that lets you pick a process and track any registry changes it initiates.

All you have to do is download and unzip the tiny application (just over 50KB unzipped), click the executable file and select a process to track. In other words, you don't need to install RegFromApp, and obviously it makes no chances to your registry.

You can also save any registry changes to a .Reg file which you can use to replicate (or possibly undo) the registry changes.

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Filed under: Windows, Microsoft

Microsoft has released the Origami Experience 2.0. In case you missed out on the first version of the Origami Experience, it's basically a suite of software designed to make it easier to navigate on Ultra-Mobile PCs, or tiny tablets like the Samsung Q1.

The new version requires a touch panel display, 100MB of disk space, and 1GB of system memory to work properly. The new version includes a built-in RSS reader, a new picture password utillity, and a new home screen application called Origami Now.

Users can create custom tiles in Origami Now to make it easier to access information like weather, email, and RSS feeds from one central location. There's also a new web browser called Origami Central that's basically a customized version of Internet Explorer 7 designed for touchscreen devices. It supports ActiveX, Flash, and Silverlight. Origami Central's toolbar auto-hides to maximize screen real estate on small UMPCs with 1024 x 600 resolutions.

[via Ian Dixon]

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Filed under: Audio, Fun, Macintosh, Commercial

Working seamlessly with your iTunes library, djay 2.1 allows you to mix both MP3 and AAC songs in real time and record your performances to share with others. In addition, djay offers the ability to scratch and beat matching.

One feature that we enjoyed was the Automix mode. Select an iTunes playlist, set djay to shuffle and it will mix song after song using a variety of transitions from fading one song to the next to spinning a record backwards.

A Mac only download, djay is free to try for 10 days and is available for purchase for $49.99.

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Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Troubleshooting

Besides having one of the coolest names for an app that we've seen in a while, CookieThief is pretty handy if you're thinking about switching to the sexy, lightweight Mac browser Camino. Sure, a lot of people prefer Camino's speedy, no-frills browsing experience to flashier, more bloated browsers like Firefox and Safari, but Camino apparently forgot one handy little feature for switchers: moving your cookies over from your old browser.

Retyping those passwords is a pain, so you can use CookieThief to steal all your login cookies from Safari and put them right into Camino. No fuss, no muss, just cookies. We'll admit this is an app with a pretty limited scope, and you'll probably only use it once, but if you can't be bothered to do it yourself, it might be just what you're looking for. (Oh, and if you happen to be going from Camino to Safari, CookieThief can copy your cookies that way, too!)

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