(image courtesy of Lifehacker!)

Now that Firefox 2 has been released and the masses rejoicing, it’s time to get down to business doing what Firefox is definitely the best browser for: customization, tweaking, and personalization! No other browser on the market offers you the ability to tweak, hack, change, and add features like Firefox does, and over at Lifehacker they’ve produced an amazing list of top-tweaks and tips for Firefox 2 fans to get the best out of the brand new browser and make the most of their internet experience.

The story was subequently submitted to Digg, where it’s up to 2344 diggs at the time of this story-and hopefully many many more. From some tips on how to use about:config to tweak settings internal to Firefox to changing the default tab width, from forcing the tab-behavior back to Firefox 1.5 style to turning off chrome tooltips, this is a pretty solid list.

For example, I much much preferred the tab behavior from Firefox 1.5 to the new “close button on every tab” and tab “scrolling” behavior in Firefox 2, and was definitely hoping there’d be ways to turn it off with the new version, and thankfully there are! Check out these tips:

* Key: browser.tabs.tabMinWidth
* Modified Value: 75 (fit in more tabs before overflow enables scroll)
* Alternate Modified Value: 0 (disable scroll entirely)
* Default: 100

…

* Key: browser.tabs.closeButtons
* Modified Value: 3 (revert to Firefox 1.5 behavior)
* Alternate Modified Value: 2 (don’t display any close tab buttons)
* Default: 1 (display close buttons on all tabs)

For more context on how to apply those tips, and for a few screenshots, as well as many more tips and tweaks, click the link below!

[ Lifehacker :: Top Firefox 2 Config Tweaks ]

Apple announced today that under the hood of the MacBook Pros from here on out will be Core2 Duo processors, starting at the 2.16GHz that topped off the Core Duo lineup and coming in at the top with 2.33GHz, the fastest Core2 Duo processors on the market today. A pleasant surprise right before the holidays, the new Core2 Duo MacBook pros will be shipping in the next week or so, making a rather fitting potential holiday gift for many would be new MacBook Pro owners who have likely been waiting for an announcement just like this before buying their new notebook computers.

Another interesting tidbit about the new notebooks is the return of the Firewire 800 port, markedly missing from the previous generation of MacBook Pros. Apple may just have heard the complaints of Firewire fans who bemoaned the loss of the high-speed data transfer port, and just as well they managed to fit the Firewire controller back on the motherboard without having to expand the size or power requirements of the notebook.

At the same time, would-be MacBook owners will have to wait a bit longer for their upgrades; it seems Apple left the consumer-end notebook out of the announcement today, and will likely not recieve a similar upgrade this year. At the same time though, this makes the difference between the professional line of Apple notebooks and the consumer line of Apple notebooks all that more distinct, and it might be the extra oomph needed to push a few more professionals over the edge. Still, this makes for a non-trivial revision of the notebook line for Apple, as the Core2 Duos require less power, run cooler, and provide more processing power than their predecessors. It’s definitely not a “sell my MacBook Pro and buy a Core2 Duo MacBook Pro” kind of upgrade, but definitely more incentive for those considering a purchase.

[ AppleInsider :: Apple Introduces Core2 Duo MacBook Pro Notebooks ]

Jennifer DeLeo, of GearLog and PC Mag fame, is sometimes referred to as the “wierd hunter,” since she always manages to turn up the most odd and interesting gadgets and gear that seem to be on the market. This time, she’s found a ton of crazy iPod accessories, from the OhMiBod iPod vibrator accessory above to the specialized gloves that have electrically conductive tips on the fingers (which really means they’re special so you can keep the gloves on your finger but still use the clickwheel), Jen’s list this time is a doozy.

Among the more interesting options are the iPod-holding bra, the iPod breathalyzer, that iPod bag that you remember from a few MacWorld Expos ago, and more. Definitely some wierd winners there, but never fear, if they’re wierd enough that you absolutely have to have one, Jen includes links and pricing information so you can get the wierd accessory of your dreams!

[ PC Mag :: Weirdest iPod Accessories... Ever ]

(image -and links below- courtesy of Lifehacker!)

The Mozilla Foundation is officially going to release and announce Firefox 2.0 tomorrow, but the downloads and installers are already prepped on the ftp servers and ready to go! Only a few days after Firefox 2.0 RC3 was released, and with essentially no real changes, Firefox 2.0 is finally ready to make it’s official appearance on the scene, especially now with Internet Explorer 7 starting to take back a little market share. Firefox remains my personal favorite, with essentially limitless customizability in the form of themes and extensions, and in the light of security vulnerabilities that arose with IE7 in its first day in public, is still measurable secure by virtue of the open source community having all eyes on it.

Firefox 2.0 is perhaps the most compatible with old extensions that I’ve seen yet, and incorporates an entirely new tab-navigation style, allowing for scrolling between tabs with arrows on either side of the window, and a redesigned interface and theme. Extensions and addons are in a more central location, and checking for updates is a one-click process now. Having trouble with your previous extensions, try the tips here: [ 3 Ways to Make Old Extensions Compatible with Firefox 2 ]

[ Mozilla.org :: Firefox 2.0 Setup (.exe; Windows) ]
[ Mozilla:org :: Firefox 2.0 Setup (.dmg; Mac OS X; Universal Binary) ]
[ Mozilla.org :: Firefox 2.0 Source (.tar.gz, Linux) ]

Microsoft has finally released the final version of Internet Explorer 7, the long anticipated upgrade to IE6, which has been around since 2001. The new version of IE sports tabs, cool tab-views (try pressing cntrl-q to see thumbnails of your tabs), customizable toolbars (to a point) and many many security and functionality improvements, like a phishing filter, native popup blocking, and built-in warnings to users that they may be viewing sites that are masquerading as trusted websites.

IE7 is a free download, and is available through windows update to Windows XP computers with Service Pack 2, but no systems running an earlier OS, not even Windows XP SP1 users, and even though IE7 reportedly shares approximately half of its code with IE6, the version available now is supposedly a lightwieght version of the browser that will ship with Windows Vista early next year. IE7, at first glance, still feels cumbersome and lacking in features and functionality that really puts it over the edge as a serious competitor to browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Opera, but it’s definitely a significant improvement.

The problem, though, is that because it shares so much code with its predecessor, within the first 24 hours of the browser being available, a security vulnerability has already been found. Tsk.

[ PC World :: Final Version of Internet Explorer 7 Now Available ]

And personally, good riddance! I could never, ever stand Eudora as a mail client, I found the way it handled mailboxes prone to error, inconsistent, and unintuitive, and I found the way it handles configurations bulky and clunky, and I thought it’s silly “hot pepper” method of flagging messages with “heated language” in it a silly feature whose development time could have gone towards coming up with a better way to handle attachments, IMAP caching, and make the interface something that didn’t scream Windows 3.11. But that’s just my opinion.

And I’m vindicated! The developers of Eudora have officially announced its death-I mean, that they’re planning on ending the development of the commercial version of the software that’s been draining money from institutions for far too long through site licenses and a user-base that swears by Eudora as if it were their first born child. Seriously, Eudora fans would probably poke holes in all of the points I made above, and they absolutely adore their favorite mailer, even if its impossible to troubleshoot and support. Still, Qualcomm has made its declaration, and the very least thing that it could do, the right thing to do, is exactly what it’s doing: Eudora will live on as an open-source application:

In a surprise announcement today, Qualcomm says it will be ceasing development of the commercial version of the once-popular Eudora mail client. In its stead, the company says it will collaborate with the Mozilla Foundation and base future versions of Eudora on Mozilla Thunderbird. The release of the open source Eudora is scheduled for the first half of 2007.

This is absolutely the best thing that they could do. Qualcomm could learn a lot from the Mozilla Foundation about how to make a decent mail client (and I’m not just saying that because Thunderbird is my mail client of choice) and the Mozilla Foundation could learn a lot about feature inclusion and expansion from the Eudora folks at Qualcomm. This could be an interesting partnership.

[ Newsforge :: Eudora is Dead, Long Live Eudora ]

With a tagline Put a different kind of change in your pocket, Apple has unveiled the red iPod Nano as a special promotion to help fight AIDS in Africa. From Apple’s website:

Choose the iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED Special Edition and Apple will give $10 of its purchase price to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa.

…

You make choices every day, from the clothes you wear to the music you play. Now making a choice means making a difference. The iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED holds up to 1,000 songs, 25,000 photos(1), and a little hope. That’s because $10 from every iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED sold goes directly to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa. Which means your iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED sounds good and does good at the same time.

Apple has always been a socially concious company, and this is another example of both effective marketing, selling more iPods, and helping a worthwhile cause all at the same time. Apple seems to have this balance down pat. Still, the iPod Nano Red is absolutely gorgeous, and worth considering if you’re in the market for a new iPod Nano, especially with the holidays coming up.

[ Apple :: iPod nano - (PRODUCT) Red ]

The big news of the week really is that even though last week rumors flew that Google and YouTube were in talks, no one expected Google to actually pull the trigger on YouTube, and no one expected that much money to fly when the deal flew. The $1.65 Billion USD deal will be all stock, meaning the founders of YouTube are now stockholders of Google, and Google’s stock soared on the news. Those owners could very well cash out Google’s stock, but something tells me they won’t.

The pundits are flying about it as well, with YouTube having massive bandwidth bills and little revenue by comparison to pay them with its massively popular free-video model. The site has garnered incredible popularity over recent months for being the go-to website for free video on the net, easy to upload and easy to share with friends and post on blogs and other websites, and for being the centerpiece of net news like the LonelyGirl15 flap, government whistleblowers whose bosses wouldn’t listen to them posting their tell-alls on the site, and more. YouTube surged past MySpace to be one of-if not the-most viewed site on the internet. The trouble though is that because the site doesn’t charge for video viewing and has few sources of income, it was spending tons of money on the bandwidth required to serve those videos to the public but not making any money in turn.

Google Video, by contrast, was a similar model, first on the block (before YouTube and Yahoo Video and the likes) but wasn’t nearly as popular. Why, who knows, but Google apparently wanted to bring the talent and brains that made YouTube so popular in house to Google. What this means for Google Video as we know it, or for YouTube as we know it is uncertain, some people have suggested some kind of unholy mating (GooTube!) of the two services, but that remains to be seen.

[ PC World :: Google Buys YouTube for $1.65 Billion ]

(image courtesy of Kotaku)

If you’ve ever listened to the music to the Halo series of games and thought it was astounding, you’re not alone. A lot of people, including me, are absolutely stunned at the quality and calibur of the orchestral score to Halo and Halo 2, part of what made the games so incredibly successful, and part of what’s making us look forward to eagerly to Halo 3.

Last week, Kotaku editor and gaming journalist extraordinare Florian Eckhardt sat down with Hanah Stuart, perhaps one of the most well known and loved violinists (if not the only well known and loved violinist) in the gamer world. Even if you know her music and not her name (like I did prior to reading the interview) the interview itself is an insightful and hilariously entertaining way to learn more about her, about the composition of the score for Halo, what it’s like to be at the heart of making beautiful music, even if (especially if) that music is destined for video games, and it’s incredibly amusing watching Florian try to get his game on with Hanah. That alone nearly sells the interview for me.

Careful, it’s a long one, so get a cup of coffee and prepare to snort it through your nose with laughter.

[ Kotaku :: Feature: Hanah Stuart, Halo Violinist ]

I had to share this one. The folks at Penny Arcade [ http://www.penny-arcade.com/ ] put up their take on Microsoft’s supposed “iPod-killer,” this week in the form of a comic that had me laughing out of my seat, partially because it’s incredibly funny (as PA usually is) and partially because it’s oh so true. I simply had to share.

Click the image below for a larger view:

The image is at the courtesy of the fine folks at Penny Arcade. Hit the link below to view the comic in it’s native habitat, on their site.

[ Penny Arcade :: Zune and Very Zune ]