Tumblr, the popular micro-blogging platform, has released the Tumblr BlackBerry App to allow blog updates on the smartphone.

Tumblr BlackBerry App support all the post type (text, photo, video, etc) of Tumblr. You can upload photos, record voices, record videos using the app and then upload to your Tumblr blog.

Click here to download Tumblr app for BlackBerry. It’s free. [link]

iPhone user? You can download Tumblr for iPhone here.

Do you have a Tumblr blog?

OK. The title should be “How to browse privately using Opera 10.5″.

Opera 10.5 has been released to be the fastest browser on Earth. One of the new features is the Private Browsing.

Private Browsing allows you to surf web privately without leaving any trace of the websites you have visited.

It is useful when you are surfing using public computer, do online banking, surf sites that you want to hide from other people.

How to turn on Opera Private Browsing mode?

Opera 10.5 private browsing support both private tabs and private windows.

Open a private tab: right click the “+” icon on the tab bar, then select “New Private Tab”. Private tab got a lock like icon at the right side of the tab icon. Any browser activity within the tab is private.

Open a private windows: Click “File” menu, then select “New Private Window”. The Opera 10.5 private window is in red colour. Any tab opened in the private window is a private tab.

My two cents

Regarding the “fastest browser on Earth”, my friends and I do not agree. The speed benchmark might prove it but user experience says differently. I don’t “feel” Opera 10.5 is faster than Google Chrome on PC.

Private browsing is the feature you can find on every modern web browser nowadays. But the Private Tab in Opera, which allows open a site privately in normal browsing mode, is not found in other browsers.

I only use Private Browsing when using not-mine-computer.

Over to You

Have you updated to Opera 10.5 yet? Do you agree that it is the FASTEST browser? When will you use the private browsing mode, or not using it at all?

Please tell us in the comment below.

Have you downloaded free Microsoft Office 2010? Don’t know how to use the Office 2010? Worry not! Here is another freebie from Microsoft Press, the free book on Microsoft Office 2010!

Tip: Click here to scan for Windows Registry Errors and Optimize PC performance

The free Office 2010 book in PDF consists 14 chapters and 183 non-colored pages.

• Chapter 1: Welcome to Office 2010
• Chapter 2: Express Yourself Effectively and Efficiently
• Chapter 3: Collaborate in the Office and Around the World
• Chapter 4: Create and Share Compelling Documents with Word 2010
• Chapter 5: Create Smart Data Insights with Excel 2010
• Chapter 6: Manage Rich Communications with Outlook 2010
• Chapter 7: Produce Dynamic Presentations with PowerPoint 2010
• Chapter 8: Organize, Store, and Share Ideas with OneNote 2010
• Chapter 9: Collaborate Effectively with SharePoint Workspace 2010
• Chapter 10: Create Effective Marketing Materials with Publisher 2010
• Chapter 11: Make Sense of Your Data with Access 2010
• Chapter 12: Putting It All Together
• Chapter 13: Security in Office 2010
• Chapter 14: Training Made Easy

Click here to download the free Office 2010 book [PDF, 10.6 MB]

[via digital inspiration, hat tip: @liewzy]

Google Chrome 4.0 stable [Windows] has been released and supports extensions.

Google Chrome extensions

Tip: Click here to scan for Windows Registry Errors and Optimize PC performance

The extensions are little programs to add functionality to your web browser. The addons for Firefox is the same concept.

Visit Google Chrome extension gallery to find and install the ones that interest you.

Unlike Mozilla Firefox, install and uninstall Chrome extensions do not need to restart web browser. Great! You can view and manage the extensions settings by clicking on the “Tools” menu and select “Extensions”.The following video shows you how to install extension to Google Chrome:

The Google Chrome bookmark sync feature is also moved out from beta. It allows you to keep your bookmarks synchronized and up-to-date in between several computers.

On performance improvement, Google Chrome 4.0 stable is 42% faster than Chrome 3 stable in the Mozilla’s Dromaeo DOM Core Tests.

Download Google Chrome

Linux & Mac version?

Google Chrome for Linux is already support extensions on the beta version. Mac users can download the Dev Channel of Google Chrome to install extensions.

My two cents

I always like the speed and simplicity of Google Chrome. The reason which stop me from switching from Mozilla Firefox is the browser addons/extensions. The addon or extension helps to create your own version of powerful web browser. I can’t live without them.

I have been playing around Google Chrome extensions in the past few weeks. I love Google Chrome that install/uninstall extensions do not required to restart browser. It has been annoyed me pretty much on Firefox.

Maybe, I will switch to Google Chrome when the stable channel for Mac has been released. Sorry, Firefox.

By the way, one problem with Google Chrome extensions is that you cannot arrange the extension icons on tool bar, which is quite annoying.

Over to You

Have you try Google Chrome extensions? Do you like it? Have you switched to Google Chrome as your main web browser?

(image credit: nois3lab)

Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate (RC1) is now available for download.

Firefox 3.6 is build on the Gecko 1.9.2 platform (3.5 uses Gecko 1.9.1) with the following new features:

• Users can change the browser’s appearance with a single click using Personas.
• Firefox 3.6 alerts users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
• Changes to how third-party software integrates with Firefox to increase stability.
• Improved automatic form fill provides better options from your form history.
• Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
• Support for the WOFF font format.
• Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
• The ability to run scripts asynchronously to speed up page load times.
• Support for the HTML5 File API
• Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

I installed Firefox 3.6 RC1 and “feel” (no serious testing done) that it is much faster than Firefox 3.5.7. The loading speed of Facebook homepage, which use A LOT of Javascript, is improved quite significant.

All the Firefox add-ons that I am using (20+ of them) are either support or compatible with Firefox 3.6 RC1. Great!

Have you installed Firefox 3.6 RC1 yet? Download it here.

This is a review of Panda Cloud Antivirus Free Edition 1.0, which won Editor’s Choice award for Best Free Antivirus from PC World.

Panda Cloud Antivirus

Panda Cloud Antivirus is the first FREE cloud-based antivirus. It connects in real-time to PandaLab’s online database for protection against virus and malware.

Therefore, Panda Cloud Antivirus could detect the latest virus faster than the traditional signature-based antivirus.

And, it does NOT need to download updates, because the virus signature database is online!

Installation

Panda Cloud Antivirus is a lightweight antivirus. The download size is only 21.9MB. The installation is very simple, all you need to do is click on the big “ACCEPT and INSTALL” button and you are done.

Install Panda Cloud Antivirus

To launch Panda Cloud Antivirus, you need to sign in your Panda Cloud Antivirus account. You can create your free account here.

Simple user interface

The main window of Panda Cloud Antivirus is very simple. By default, it shows current security status. Beside the Status button, there are only 3 other buttons on the window: Settings, Scan, and Report.

For “Settings”, you can set enable/disable automatic management of possible viruses and send anonymous information to Panda.

Under “Scan”, there is only a big “Quick scan” button to do full system scan, and another smaller button to scan selected folders/files.

Panda Cloud Antivirus – Report

The “Report” shows all the detected threats in the last month, last week, last day, or all.

A small blue color “Recycle Bin” icon is at the bottom right for you to recover a false positive.

Virus scan performance

Panda Cloud Antivirus uses only less than 500KB memory when idle in background. When scanning, it only uses around 8MB of RAM and almost no CPU resource! Very impressive!

Panda Cloud Antivirus – Quick Scan

The first full system Quick Scan took around 23 mins to scan 18,424 files (10GB).

According to PC Mag review, Panda Cloud Antivirus is “extremely effective at keeping malware out of a clean system” but “failed to remove huge amounts of malware traces from threats it detected” (but still better than other free antivirus software).

My two cents

If you do not want to pay for an antivirus software, Panda Cloud Antivirus is the simple, lightweight, effective free antivirus for you.

Recommended by LiewCF!

(Just make sure you install Panda Cloud Antivirus on a clean system, then you would be well protected from most of the future threats.)

Download Panda Cloud Antivirus now

Also, check out Best Selling Anti-Virus Softwares on Amazon.com for great discount prices.

If you can’t wait for the final release of Google Chrome OS (read: Google Chrome OS in plain english), now you can download Chrome OS VMWare/VirtualBox image and run it as virtual machine on top of your current operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux).

The Chrome OS image (300MB compressed / 700MB uncompressed) is compiled from the Chromium OS source code (developer preview 0.4.22.8) by Jon Ursenbach (gdgt.com engineer). You can use it in VMware, VirtualBox, and on a USB drive.

Please note that the Chrome OS is still in its VERY early development. It could be very buggy and very limited functionality.

Download it at your own risk! (although it can’t do much harm by running in virtual machine)

For geeks who installed Chrome OS, How is it? What do you like/dislike about Chrome OS? How’s the performance? Super-FAST?

Google Chromium OS (Chrome OS) login screen

Update: I downloaded the Google Chrome OS VMWare image and load it on VMware Fusion (Mac). But I can’t log into the OS because it cannot detect the network connection. A Google Account (Gmail) and Internet connection are required in order to login Google Chrome OS.

Get your FREE Microsoft Office 2010 now! The free download version is Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Beta.

It is a beta version, therefore software bugs are expected.

The free Office 2010 download is available now here. Registration is required to get the Office 2010 product key and the downloads.

image: Office 2010 serial key

Buy Office 2007 today, download Office 2010 free

The free Office 2010 beta included: Word, Powerpoint, Outlook, Excel, OneNote, Access, Publisher, InfoPath, SharePoint Workspace, and Communicator.

Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Office 2010 are available for downloads. The Office 2010 (English version) download size is 685MB (32-bit) and 750MB (64-bit) respectively.

Office 2010 supports Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003/2008, and Windows 7.

Before you install Office 2010, make sure you have BACKUP your data and UNINSTALL previous version of Microsoft Office before installing Office 2010. To install Office 2010, you need to have at least 3GB of free disk space.

Download free Microsoft Office 2010 Beta

Buy Office 2007 today, download Office 2010 free

Is your screen full of dust, smudge marks, maybe even potato chip grease? Clean it today for free!

It is cute, isn’t it? Seriously, you don’t want a puppy to lick your screen, do you?

Anyway, you can download the screen saver and install it (I can’t make it work on Mac OS X Leopard), then it will pop up whenever your computer left idle.

Prefer cats? Here is the cat version.

[via linein designs, hat tip: liewzy]

Google Chrome is the open source web browser developed from scratch by Google. Available in beta in more than 40 languages, Google Chrome is a new approach to the browser that’s based on the simplicity and power that users have come to expect from Google products.

Features of Google Chrome

At the first launch, you will notice that Google Chrome has a very simple user interface. It has no menu bar, no status bar, and no search bar. All you got is a window frame and a tab at the top of address bar.

Screenshot of Google Chrome with multiple tabs and most visited sites (click to enlarge)

What’s inside Google Chrome is the Webkit web browser engine (same as Apple Safari) and the fast javascript engine, V8. Here are some of the features of Google Chrome:

Address bar — the address bar is combined with search and history quickly takes you where they want to go in just a few keystrokes.

New tab page — when you open a new tab, you will see a page that includes thumbnails of your most visited sites, searches, recent bookmarks and closed tabs.Dynamic tabs — you can drag tabs out of the browser to create a new windows, gather multiple tabs into one window or arrange the tabs as you wish.

Crash control — In Google Chrome, every tab is an independent computer process. You can close the no responding tab and other tabs are not affected.

Incognito mode — use this mode if you want porn private browsing. In incognito mode, no track will be leave on the computer.

Safe browsing — web browsing is safe using Google Chrome. It protects you from malware (sandbox) and phishing sites. The browser continually downloading list of harmful sites from Google server to keep you protected.

Download Google Chrome

Google Chrome is available for free download here. The first beta version is for Windows Vista/XP only. Mac and Linux versions will be coming soon.

Micro-blogging become more popular nowadays. There are more than 10 micro-blogging platforms for you to choose. Anyway, twitter is still the best micro-blogging platform that suits my need. Why? Because it has lots of way to tweet!

I’m going to show you 7 ways that I use to update my tweet. Although some of them are not so useful, you might take it as an alternative way (always think for backup plan!).

7 Ways to Tweet

I’m just simply list out few famous apps in each way. You may discover more from Internet but I think it should be enough for you to tweet in any way. Here I am not going to discuss further for installation or configuration for each app. Try it out and you’ll know. It’s pretty easy!

1. Desktop client – Third party software that needs installation. Twitteroo and Twhirl are two of the famous ones. Twitteroo is windows version of Twitterrific. While Twhirl is a social desktop client built on Adobe AIR that connects to multiple micro-blogging platform. Make sure you have installed the latest Adobe AIR before installing Twhirl.
2. Web – This is quite straight forward. Login to Twitter or HelloTxt and tweet in your browser.
3. Email – I don’t know why people need to tweet via email. The only reason I can think of is a scheduled tweet. Browse to TwitterMail, insert your twitter username and password to get your TwitterMail address instantly. You may schedule email to tweet when you are on travel.:)
4. Firefox Plugin – My favourite way to tweet. Don’t need to close Firefox. Surf internet and tweet whenever you like. Get FoxyTunes and TwitBin for your Firefox. FoxyTunes plugin not only allow you tweet your own words. But also tweet what you are browsing, watching, reading, etc. URL shortener has been included.
5. Instant Messenger – I just discovered this new way to tweet recently. You may use most of the IM to tweet. Just add in particular Twitt’d id as your IM friends (for eg: twittd@live.com). It is available for Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, Jabber and Yahoo! Messenger user. After add in Twitt’d, chat with the twitt’d robot. It will ask for your twitter’s username and password to activate your account. Quite fun!
6. Mobile phone – This is perfect feature for traveling tweet. Login Twitter > Settings > Devices. Turn on your device update. After getting verified, you may tweet anywhere using SMS (without a Wifi or 3G connection).
7. Blog Plugin – The last method is tweeting via your own blog. With Twitter Tools wordpress plugin, you can tweet from front page or admin page. It is quite similar to Web tweet, but from your own blog.

My two cents

I believe micro-blogging will become mainstream blogging platform in future. But I noticed that there are still many bloggers who do not use it. Maybe they haven’t found the comfortable way for them to tweet. Some even don’t send a tweet in days.

Hopefully everybody here start to tweet with these 7 ways! I believe for sure there will be one or two ways that suits your need. Follow my twitter @tim_un.

Do you have anymore ways to tweet? Or have I left something behind? Please leave your comment, I would like to hear your opinion too.

This guest post by AhTim. Make sure you subscribe his RSS feed to get free daily updates. You can win cash $50 just for doing so!

On Mac OS X, you can easily save any document as PDF format. It is a built-in feature. We do not have the useful feature on Windows Vista (or any other versions of Windows) but it can be done with external software. I recommend doPDF to save your documents to PDF format on Windows.

doPDF is a FREE PDF converter that allows you to create PDF files by selecting the “Print” command from virtually any application. With one click you can convert your Microsoft Excel, Word or PowerPoint documents or your emails and favourite web sites to PDF files.

After installing doPDF, you will get a virtual printer named “doPDF”. Simply select the printer from the “Print” menu and it will convert and save your document to PDF format. No nag, no watermark and it’s free!

The following video is the demo of creating PDF file with doPDF:

Some features of doPDF:

• FREE for both commercial and personal use
• Support 64-bits Windows
• Small setup file, do not require 3rd party program (GhostScript) to create PDF
• Customisable resolution – you can choose any resolution from 72 to 2400 dpi
• Predefined/custom page sizes – choose a default page size or enter your own custom page size.
• Searchable PDFs — you can search for text within the created PDF file

Download doPDF (1.42MB)

My two cents

I installed doPDF on my Vista box and it works great! The setup file is extremely small compared to other PDF creator such as CutePDF or PDFCreator. CutePDF requires PS2PDF converter such as Ghostscript (over 10MB) in order to work. PDFCreator has big size setup file (15MB).

If doPDF can do the same (or better) job at its smaller size (1.42MB), I see no reason why we want to install the other big size PDF convertor.

By the way, saving documents to PDF format means consuming less papers. Quote from doPDF: “save paper. save trees. save planet.”

Yahoo Messenger is one of the most popular instant messengers of today. When you download Yahoo! Messenger(YM), you actually only download a small size installer which will download the full size Yahoo Messenger when it is loaded.

But, the YM installer restarts the installation when your line is unstable or the YM download site is busy. It is rather irritating. I once spent 30 minutes to see it keeps restarting the installation!

Here is the solution! We can skip the small YM installer and directly download the full Yahoo! Messenger standalone installer.

Here are the download links for YM standalone installer:

• Yahoo! Messenger 8.1 full standalone installer
• Yahoo! Messenger 9 BETA standalone installer

Hopefully this tip will solve your problem. It is useful too when you need to install YM on multiple computers. BTW, my YM id is liewcf1980

Now you can download Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) via Windows Update or Microsoft Download Center. Windows Vista SP1 is an update to Windows Vista that addresses specific reliability and performance issues, supports new types of hardware, and adds support for several emerging standards.

How to install Windows Vista SP1?

You can manually check Windows Update on your Windows Vista for Windows Vista SP1. If Windows Vista SP1 is not listed, there could be several reasons. Here are the most common reasons:

• You have not yet installed all the prerequisite packages you need for Windows Vista SP1. Click “check for updates” on Windows Update control panel to install them, before you can install Windows Vista SP1.
• You have a pre-released version of SP1. You need to uninstall it before installing the final release of SP1.
• You already have Windows Vista SP1.
• Windows Vista SP1 released in 5 languages (English, French, Spanish, German, and Japanese). If you have ANY other language installed, SP1 will not yet be offered to you.
• Windows Update detected drivers that may be problematic when updating to SP1 and will not offer the service pack until an update has been installed.

“Windows Vista: The Missing Manual”

Download standalone Windows Vista SP1

Beside getting Windows Vista SP1 via Windows Update. You may also download the Standalone version of the service pack. The standalone version of Windows Vista SP1 is a big size (434.5MB) executable file named “Windows6.0-KB936330-X86-wave0.exe”.

The standalone version is useful when you need to install Windows Vista SP1 on several computers (save total download time on each computers). If you are only install Vista SP1 on just one computer, you should get a smaller size download (~65MB) on Windows Update.

What’s new in Windows Vista SP1?

Basically, Windows Vista SP1 adds hardware support, improve reliability, performance, power consumption, security, supports new standards, etc. Here are some notable changes:

• Adds support for Direct3D 10.1
• Adds support for exFAT
• Adds support for creating DVD disc that boots on PC
• Addresses many of the most common causes of crashes and hangs in Windows Vista
• Improves reliability by preventing data-lose while ejecting NTFS-formatted removable-media.
• Improves wireless ad-hoc connection success rate.
• Addresses the problem of the Video chipset not allowing the system to stay asleep.
• Improves the speed of adding and extracting files to and from a compressed (zipped) folder.
• Improves speed of moving and copying folders and files.
• Improves the time to read large images by ~50%
• Improves the effectiveness of a Windows ReadyBoost device in reducing the time to resume from standby and hibernate.
• Improves overall media performance by reducing many glitches.
• Adds full support for the latest IEEE draft of 802.11n wireless networking.
• Enhances Windows Firewall and IPsec to use the new cryptographic algorithms that are Suite B compliant.
• Updated drivers are delivered primarily via Windows Update and directly from hardware vendors, not as part of a service pack.
• Allows users and administrators to control which volumes the disk defragmenter runs on.
• Enables support for hotpatching, a reboot-reduction servicing technology designed to maximize uptime.
• Improves overall install time for updates by optimizing the query for installed OS updates.
• With SP1, Windows Vista will report the amount of system memory installed rather than report the amount of system memory available to the OS.
• Upon scanning a photo with the Vista scanning experience, SP1 will open Explorer rather than opening Windows Photo Gallery.
• Users are now required to enter a password hint during the initial setup of Windows Vista SP1.

You can get a full list of notable changes in Windows Vista Service Pack 1 at Windows Vista TechCenter.

Google has released a free tool called Google Calendar Sync for users to sync between their Microsoft Outlook calendar and Google Calendar. No more missing meeting when you have no access to office PC.

The windows only tool that allows you to sync events between Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook Calendar. You can choose the sync direction and the frequency.

The main advantage of sync between calendar is that you can access your calendar events anytime anywhere on Google Calendar (as long as you have Internet access). The new events you added on Google Calendar when you are not in office will be added to office PC’s Microsoft Outlook Calendar after sync.

How to use Google Calendar Sync?

1. Download Google Calendar Sync (windows only)
2. Install the tool.
3. Configure the Google Calendar Sync’s settings

Google Calendar Sync will stay in your Windows System Tray, and automatically sync your calendar on sync time interval. You can also right-click on the calendar icon to sync manually or access Google Calendar Sync Settings window.

Have you tried Google Calendar Sync? What do you think?

Blogging is hard work. As bloggers, we would have to show our appreciation towards open source world and other fellow bloggers who create and distribute very useful tools to ease our job. Here are top five most essential blogging tools that had saved me a lot of time. My blogging world would be miserable without these applications:

Filezilla – The Open Source Free FTP solution

FileZilla is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface. You can use it to upload and download files from your hosting server.

When you need to upload a bunch of files or images to be used in your blog content, FileZilla can handle the job easily. You don’t have to manually select certain files and upload via your blogging platform. You can also change the folder and file access permission easily.

Google Analytics – The Free Web Traffic Analyzer from Google

Google Analytics give you free analysis of your blog’s traffic. You will be able to know the visitors’ origin, length of stay, bounce rate, browsers used and other details such as the size of screen resolution and referral sites. It even let you track your conversion rate if you are using pay per click service to drive traffic. All you need to do is to copy and paste some codes onto your blog pages.

Google Reader – Web-based Reader Feed Aggregator

Google Reader is capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds, released by Google on October 7 2005 through Google Labs.

I use it a lot to keep track of other blogs. I also access Google Reader via my PDA phone. Now I can read update blog posts anywhere, anytime, even I am traveling overseas.

There is a search function in Google Reader in case you can’t find certain blog post that remembered that you read somewhere.

The new Google Reader also allows you to “share” the post feed you like. Moreover, you can see what your friends (other people in your Gmail contact list who are also using Google Reader) had “shared” as well.

Fast Stone Capture v5.3 – Free Screen Capture and Image Editing Software

FastStone Capture v5.3 is a freeware. But the later versions are shareware which you need to pay a small fee to use. However, I am still using the free version because it is already powerful enough to carry out simple image editing tasks.

It lets you capture what you see on your monitor, resize the image, add watermark and do some other simple editing.

ScribeFire – Free Firefox Addon Blogging Text Editor

ScribeFire is a Firefox Addon. You will need to use Firefox browser to be able to use this convenient tool. Before I use ScribeFire, I need to open my text editor and browser separately. It is troublesome to always switch between different windows when I need to refer to something on the Internet. With this tool installed, you can pull up Scribefire within Firefox.

Right-clicking on the page and select “Blog this page” from the ScribeFire submenu, it will create a link using the page title. Your highlighted text will be quoted too. This is the function I like the most.

When you had completed a blog post content, you can post it straight to your blog by setting up API access.

What are your favourite and most essential blogging tools? Please share with us in the comment.

This post is written by KCLau, who blogs about personal finance topics especially useful for Malaysians. He had published the Top Money Tips for Malaysians ebook which is free for download.

blog, filezilla, googleanalytics, scribefire, googlereader, faststone

We know that domain name is a branding, so do logo did. I would like to design a logo that could express my blog’s name and my blog niche. I am not an art guy, so I do not have much experience on how to design a logo.

How to design?

I know design is not an easy job, but there are few factors that you must consider before design a logo. The 4 main factors are simplicity, meaningful, creative and impressive.

Of course, to digitize your logo, you need a free vector graphics editor software called Inkscape to help you. You can download Inkscape here.

Ink your Logo

With the help from Inkscape software, I start to draw my logo and it just took me few minutes to complete. Inkscape is not a image editor like photoshop, but is an excellent free vector graphics editor. It is very useful when come to create logos that need to be printed on big banners. With this tool, you can not only create fine details, but also can scale the images to any size you want.

So, you want to see my first logo ?

I have designed a simple logo as picture above by using calligraphic line for LiewCF.com. It looks artistic, simple and match with harmonization colors.

As for myself, I used sharp colors that integrate with iPod touch in my logo. The large “T” and iPod touch in the logo represent its tech related blog.

These are my first artworks. How do you think?

[Contributed by: AhTim , the author behind AhTim.com, is an IT techie that have a dream to become a full time blogger. He blogs for dream, for fun and hopefully for life!]

*** Click here if you would like to write a guest post for LiewCF.com (and get a permanent bank link), too. ***

A month after Firefox 3 beta 1, Mozilla has released Firefox 3 beta 2 and available for download here.

What’s new about Beta 2?

Compared to Beta 1, the Firefox 3 Beta 2 has improved location bar that makea the search result easier to be identified. The results for the location bar are shown in 2 lines: page title and web address, in different colors. The matched keyword is bolded and underlined.

Image: Firefox 3 location bar search

You also notice that the Go button at location bar is hidden until you enter a website address in the location bar.

Firefox 3 beta 2 also has a better search panel that allows you search for history, tags, and bookmarks. You can add as many search rules as you like, and save the search as a dynamic folder, much like Thunderbird’s email search.

For more details, check out Firefox 3 beta 2 review.

Firefox Add-ons on Firefox 3 beta 2

Previously, I complained about the Firefox add-on compatibility on Firefox 3 beta 1. It has been improved on Beta 2. Many popular Firefox add-ons added support to Firefox 3.

For incompatible add-ons, I use Nightly Tester Tool to force them work with Firefox 3 and they work!

Now, I can stick with Firefox 3 beta, instead of switching back to Firefox 2.

Bonus: IE8 is coming!

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer development team has reached a milestone where IE8 renders the “Acid2 Face” correctly. Acid2 tests web browser with different web standards to see if it rendered correctly. IE8 will be the Microsoft’s most web standard compliant web browser.

P.S. I tested Firefox 3 beta 2 on Acid2, and it does NOT render correctly…

IE8, Firefox3, Microsoft, Mozilla

Christmas day is approaching, have you decorate a Christmas Tree at your house? Don’t forget your PC desktop. Download a free animated Christmas tree for your desktop. There are 6 different Christmas tree themes to be chosen. You sure get the one you like.

The desktop Christmas tree can stay on top and you can adjust the transparency. How many days left till Christmas? Move your mouse over the Christmas tree to find out!

[hat tip: Dmitriy G.]

christmas tree, software

Have you download your FREE Camtasia Studio? SnagIt is another product of TechSmith. it s a great screen capture and image editor. Like the Camtasia Studio promotion, TechSmith is also giving away SnagIt version 7.2.5 for FREE!

How to get SnagIt for FREE?

1. Download (FTP, 11.3MB) the free trial version of SnagIt 7.2.5
2. Register at the promotion page and the registration key will send to you by email.
3. Install SnagIt and register it with your software key to have a full working version of SnagIt!

If you want to upgrade to the latest version of SnagIt, you can use your free version 7.2.5 to get the upgrade for only $19.95 (full price: $39.95).

[hat tip: Sally]

download, serial, snagit, techsmith