Written by David DeFranza

Perhaps the most useful skill you can carry is knowledge of the local language.

It can open up a startling range of opportunities, ease the strain of logistics and planning, and allow you to develop a deeper connection with the place and, more importantly, the people you are visiting.

With a little advanced planning, and an introduction to the basics, it can be surprisingly easy to pick up a language on the road.

A good phrasebook, and the dedication to use it, are the first steps to mastering a new tongue. Beyond that, an organized set of study materials can make all the difference between stumbling though a few disjointed commonalities and articulately expressing your ideas and opinions.

While most travelers understand this, who wants to buy and carry around a pile of language books? Fortunately, there are a number of excellent internet sites devoted to language study, most of them providing their services for free.

1. BBC Languages

The BBC offers comprehensive online courses in French, Spanish, German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, and Greek, with slightly briefer introductions to several other languages.

This incredible, totally free, service is the best option for starting a new language from the beginning as the curricula are well designed, very complete, and easy to follow; all important features of a self-study program.

2. MIT OpenCourseWare

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has made a great effort to supply all of its course materials online for the free use of MIT students and the global internet community.

The Languages and Literatures department features courses in languages such as Chinese, Japanese, French, German and Spanish in addition to many interesting literature and culture topics.

While the usefulness of the materials provided varies depending on the course, they all include a detailed study plan to aid the self-learner in structuring a home course.

3. Internet Polyglot

The Internet Polyglot provides study materials for twenty-one languages. The unit-based materials available are ideal for a student already familiar with the basics of the language and interested in practicing specific areas and applications.

4. The Open University LeaningSpace

Similar to the Internet Polyglot, the LearingSpace provides unit-based study materials with a primary emphasis in French and Spanish.

5. Language Learning Podcasts

In the last few years, there has been an explosion of podcasts devoted to learning a language. These resources provide important sound cues and practical pronunciation guides, and are an invaluable tool for a self-study program.

To find podcasts, iTunes users can navigate to the “education” category of the iTunes Music Store. Other listeners can browse popular podcast databases like Odeo or The Podcast Directory.

A highlight of some of the more popular language podcasts includes Learn Greek, The French Podcast, ChinesePod, A Taste of Russian, and the Cherokee Language Podcast.

6. Madinah Arabic Language Course

For those interested in learning Arabic, the Madinah Course is the best online course available for free. Focusing on both spoken and written Arabic, this course takes the student from the first introductions through the advanced beginner level.

7. Livemocha

Livemocha is a social networking community focused on learning foreign languages. It provides free online courses in German, Mandarin Chinese, French, Spanish, and Hindi with plans to expand to other languages in the future.

In addition to the online courses, available from introductory to intermediate levels, Livemocha provides an active community of language learners and native speakers willing to work with you and give help when needed.

This community based approach makes Livemocha one of the most useful tools for the self-study of language.

8. Something Completely Different

Travelers interested in learning a more obscure, or even endangered language, should begin their research at the Ethnologue, an online database of all of the world’s 6,912 known living languages.

For more specific study, check out the Sanskrit Self Study program, an introductory course for learning Tibetan, Yucatec Maya language study materials, the great book Introduction to Zulu, or the Comparative Bantu Languages Dictionary.

Learning a new language requires time and dedication and can be a challenge no matter how good the tools available.

Still, these online resources are accessible anywhere you can find an internet connection and will make all the difference when trying to tame that new tongue, at home or abroad.

What are some your favourite online resources for learning a new language? Please share in the comments!

Written by Larry Getlen

I was in my mother’s belly as she sat in the waiting room of the abortionist’s office. Dr. Sunshine was his code name. I was fifty feet from the drainpipe, and she saw a painting on the wall that reminded her of her mother, who had recently died. She took that as a sign to have the baby. That’s what I call luck.

My father drank and was a bully. For the first five years of my brother’s life, my father beat him with a leather-heeled slipper. Had I been subjected to that kind of treatment, all bets are off. His absence saved my life.

My mother had great executive-secretarial jobs in the advertising business and raised two boys during the Second World War. She used to say, “I make a man’s salary.” That’s heroism.

I’m sure Hitler was great with his family.

I used to collect the most colorful curses I heard and write them down. I actually carried in my wallet things like “kraut cunt” and “burly loudmouth cocksucker” and “longhair fucking music prick,” which was a thing Mikey Flynn yelled at a Juilliard student that he was kicking in the head.

I don’t like authority and regulation, and I do my best to disrespect it, but I do that for myself. It’s self-expression only.

Sex without love has its place, and it’s pretty cool, but when you have it hand in hand with deep commitment and respect and caring, it’s nine thousand times better.

If it’s morally wrong to kill anyone, then it’s morally wrong to kill anyone. Period.

It’s amazing to me that literacy isn’t considered a right.

I was arrested for possession and cultivation of marijuana in the early ’70s, and it was thrown out. The judge asked me how I felt about it, and I said, “I understand the law, and I want you to know I’ll pay the fine, but I cannot guarantee I will not break this law again.” He really chewed me out for that.

Censorship that comes from the outside assumes about people an inability to make reasoned choices.

The first thing they teach kids is that there’s a God — an invisible man in the sky who is watching what they do and who is displeased with some of it. There’s no mystery why they start that with kids, because if you can get someone to believe that, you can add on anything you want.

I would die for the safety of the people I love.

I wish that we could measure how much the potential of the mind to expand has been stunted by television.

Because of my abuse of drugs, I neglected my business affairs and had large arrears with the IRS, and that took me eighteen to twenty years to dig out of. I did it honorably, and I don’t begrudge them. I don’t hate paying taxes, and I’m not angry at anyone, because I was complicit in it. But I’ll tell you what it did for me: It made me a way better comedian. Because I had to stay out on the road and I couldn’t pursue that movie career, which would have gone nowhere, and I became a really good comic and a really good writer.

I stopped voting when I stopped taking drugs. I believe both of those acts are closely related to delusional behavior.

There’s no morality in business. It doesn’t have a conscience. It has only the cash register. They’ll sell you crappy things that you don’t need, that don’t work, that they won’t stand behind. It’s a glorified legal form of criminal behavior.

If everybody knew the truth about everybody else’s thoughts, there would be way more murders.

There’s nothing wrong with high taxes on high income.

Lenny Bruce opened all the doors, and people like Richard Pryor and I were able to walk through them.

Given the right reasons and the right two people, marriage is a wonderful way of experiencing your life.

I think that the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King showed that all of the wishing and hoping and holding hands and humming and signing petitions and licking envelopes is a bit futile.

Blacks are deliberately kept down. Poor communities are deliberately underfunded.

I don’t think people should get credit for being honest and brave. I think there’s a lot of genetic shit going on there.

Someday they’ll find a gene for putting on your overcoat.

There’s a pulse in New York, even on the quietest street, on the quietest day. It’s full of potential.

If there’s ever a golden age of mankind, it will not include men over two hundred pounds beating children who are less than one hundred pounds, and it will not include the deliberate killing of people in a formal setting.

I did something in a previous life that must have been spectacularly good, because I’m getting paid in this life just magnificently, more than one would dare imagine or hope for.

Written by R J Evans

Interactivity is the name of the game at the moment. Here are 10 websites that are a combination of the fun, the weird, the educational or the simply bewildering. Prepare to be awed!

1. Alien Empire

   

   Although this website is primarily aimed at kids there is so much information here about the alien empire that is the world of insects that adults will want to explore it for hours! You may want to take a look at how insects are designed and how they go about the sometimes dangerous act of reproduction. There is a look at the wars that go on among insect communities and it also features the ways we and the bugs co-exist – or not!

2. The Universcale

   

   Size matters, or so this website will have it. This amazing site shows you scale as you have probably never seen it – from the smallest speck to the largest asteroid and beyond. Fantastic graphics will give you a real idea of your place on the planet – or indeed the universe.

3. Make a Flake

   

   Something a little less noisy and strenuous. If you like the myriad shapes that a snowflake can take and find it fascinating, then why not make your own? You are given a piece of paper and a pair of scissors – virtual ones of course! Then you can chop up the paper and create your own snow flake. Hugely enjoyable fun, you can even save the flakes you create so that others can view your handiwork.

4. The Mini-Mizer

   

   Have you ever wondered what you would look like in plastic and miniaturized? No, well, maybe you are reading the wrong web page! This site allows you to build up a picture of yourself as you would appear if you were three inches tall and made of the rubber stuff! You could even make little versions of your whole family to give them a momentary laugh from something that took you five hours to do!

5. Interactive Radio

   

   This is music to match your every mood and takes the shape of an astounding interactive radio station. You can choose the genre, the mood of the music and the era from which it should come. The website will then give you a very specific selection of the type of song that you have requested. So, whether you are looking for swinging tunes from the fifties, brooding jazz from the sixties, pop from the seventies straight up to contemporary music, this is the site for you!

6. Neave Television

   

   Click on to this sight only if your PC can take a little action! You will need broadband and a desire to be completely bewildered. If you enjoy channel hopping then this might be that ultimate experience you have been waiting for. Click on the screen to start hopping and when you are fed up of one channel click again to hop to the next. Utterly barmy and strange fun!

7. Kaleidoscope

   

   This could keep you busy for hours. The block on the left gives you a choice of shapes and colors which you drag in to the circle. A blue pie shape sweeps past the objects you have placed on to the circle. The block on the right then shows you the kaleidoscope effect that this sweep produces. Hypnotic and mesmerizing fun!

8. Neon Bible

   

   This will knock your socks off! A music video that is interactive? Possibly the shape of things to come, this will certainly have you scratching your head and wondering how on earth they did that!

9. Mr. Picasso Head

   

   Have you ever wanted to paint like Pablo Picasso? Here you get the opportunity, with a huge variety of permutations and combinations that can come together to give you your very own take on the great man’s style. Once you are done you can save the Picasso style drawing that you have created it and email it to your friends – or possibly some of your enemies too!

10. Autopsy

    

    This website is definitely not for the faint hearted or for those who do not like the sight of a little blood. It is a step by step guide to what happens during an autopsy procedure. Watch with glee or your heart in your mouth as the first incisions are made and the bodily organs removed. A superb guide to what goes on in the autopsy room, but don’t blame me if your dinner makes a reappearance!

Written by Ransom Riggs

Birds do it, bees do it (we think), even educated monkeys do it. So let’s do it, people. Let’s fall asleep. (The musical portion of this blog is over; thanks for indulging.) But seriously: we’ve talked about the whys of taking naps on the blog before – they improve mood, creativity, memory function, heart health, and so much else – but never, to my knowledge, have we discussed how to take a nap. In fact, whenever we write about naps, we always get a few comments from people claiming they’re unable to nap during the day; they just can’t fall asleep, or when they do nap they wake up groggy and unable to work. In that case, read on, my sleepy friends.

1.

The first thing you should know is, feeling sleepy in the afternoon is normal. It doesn’t mean you had a big lunch, or that you’re depressed, or you’re not getting enough exercise. That’s just how animals’ cycles work – every 24 hours, we have two periods of intense sleepiness. One is typically in the wee hours of the night, from about 2am to 4am, and the other is around 10 hours later, between 1pm and 3pm. If you’re a night owl and wake up later in the morning, that afternoon sleepiness may come later; if you’re an early bird, it may come earlier. But it happens to everyone; we’re physiologically hardwired to nap.

2.

Naps provide different benefits depending on how long they are. A short nap of even 20 minutes will enhance alertness and concentration, mood and coordination. A nap of 90 minutes will get you into slow wave and REM sleep, which enhances creativity. If you sleep deeply and uninterruptedly the whole time, you’ll go through a full 90-minute sleep cycle, and recoup sleep you might not have gotten the night before (we’ve all heard it a million times, but most of us don’t get enough sleep at night).

3.

Try not to sleep longer than 45 minutes but less than 90 minutes; then you’ll wake up in the middle of a slow-wave cycle, and be groggy. I used to hate taking naps during the day for just this reason – I would always wake up in a fog. My problem was I hadn’t yet perfected the art of the 20-minute catnap.

4.

Find a nice dark place where you can lie down. It takes about 50% longer to fall asleep sitting up (this is why red eye flights usually live up to their name), and be armed with a blanket; you don’t want to be chilly. You also don’t want to be too warm, which can lead to oversleeping. (There was a kind of urban legend circulating when I was a kid: don’t fall asleep in the sun, or you’ll never wake up. Not true – but you might wake up three hours later with a ripe sunburn.)

5.

White noise can help you fall asleep, especially during the day when construction crews, garbage trucks, barking dogs and other noisy awake-world things can conspire to destroy your nap. Keep a fan on, or turn on a nearby faucet for a pleasing rushing-river sound. (Just kidding about that last one.)

6.

Don’t nap too close to bedtime, or you might not be able to fall asleep later. Remember, your inbuilt sleepy window is sometime in the early to mid-afternoon – try to nap then.

7.

Quit that silly job where they don’t let you take naps during the day.

Written by blakeley

We’ve shown you their ridiculous pratfalls, their insane and wonderful on-camera meltdowns, and now we bring you the best of television news folks’ lip slips. You know those, they’re the terrifically awkward moments when an anchor says “blow job” instead of “block party,” or accidentally outs their station’s weatherman. They’re completely embarrassing, uncomfortable, and downright amazing. Above is our compilation of the breast. I mean best.

Written by Mitch Martin

Even booze hounds need to have goals in life so, I decided to come up with a list of the 10 things that every true drinker should accomplish before they die. Not every item on the list requires drinking massive quantities of alcohol. Once you have covered every item on this list you will be a well rounded drinker who should have a shit-ton of good stories to tell. Personally I can put a check mark next to six of these so it looks like I still have some work to do. Figure out where you stand and then plan your weekends accordingly.

Case In A Day – 24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? I prefer to think not. You need to sit down with a couple of friends and a couple of cases and power through the day and the case. People that have never done this think it’s easy and the people that have, know it’s not. Added Difficulty: Keep a hand written journal of what you are doing each time you crack a beer. Bonus Points: If anything is legible after beer 17.

Run The Taps At A Bar… Conditions: must have 12 or more taps. This is pretty self explanatory. Belly up to the bar and order a single pint of every beer they have on tap one after the other. You are going to get to try a lot of new beers and chances are you will be piss drunk before the sun goes down.

Century Club – Pretty simple, 100 shots of beer in 100 minutes without puking. Much like the case in a day challenge people always think this is easy until they actually try it. 60 seconds starts feeling like 5 seconds once you pass the 70 minute mark.

Brew Your Own Beer – Yeah it might not taste that great and you will be “that guy” that makes all your friends try their shitty brew but every true booze hound has to give it a shot at least once.

Pub Crawl Conditions: 12 or more pubs covering at least 1 mile. There is nothing better than getting a big group of friends together on a sunny day and catching a buzz while going on a walk. A beer at each stop with a short walk in between and you will be primed for a night of debauchery.

Go To An AA Meeting at least once you should see how the other half lives. Learn a lesson from Charlie Kelly, throw out your beer before you actually get into the meeting. If you don’t somebody will rat you out.

Learn Something About Wine And I don’t mean memorizing the flavors of Franzia, Carlo Rossi or Charles Shaw. Go on a wine tour and actually pay attention (without pounding Busch Lights between wineries) or go to a multi-course meal where they pair a wine with each course and explain why they go together. The knowledge will pay off each and every time you take a lady out for a nice dinner.

Black Out Before Noon – Just once get out of bed at 9 a.m. and crack a beer instead of having your morning Tropicana. There are a finite number of years in life where you can get drunk before noon and not feel like a total douche about it the next day. If you are a college football fan then this is easy to accomplish. If beer isn’t your bag first thing in the A.M. then I would recommend a Boones Farm Strawberry Hill. It’s slightly fruity, high in booze and fan-fucking-tastic.

Oktoberfest in Germany – As someone who’s been there twice, trust me in terms of a unique alcohol experience, it’s pretty unparalleled. Any place where you can puke on the floor under your table, and one waitress jokes with you while she cleans it up and another brings you another beer is unique in my book. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a girl throw up while making out with some dude so that it squirts out the side of their mouths. Gross but hilarious. -Mr. Wonka

Scotch – learn to drink scotch either on the rocks or neat. Much like golf, it is a pain in the ass to learn, but it will pay off in the business world. While you are at it, learn the difference between bourbon and whiskey so that you don’t look like a total fucking hayseed. If you really want to get a gold star on your chart learn the difference between a blend and single malt as well.

Written by James Wax

When iPhone was first released, just having one was enough to draw attention and establish hipness with beautiful women. Remember when girls crowded around for a demonstration of the magical touchscreen or to watch YouTube videos in the palm of your hand?

Their eyes widened with childlike wonder as you described the beauty and elegance of iPhone and its utter superiority to every device known to man.

Sadly, those days are gone. In the past year iPhone has become common place. With the coming price drop to $200 any goober will be able to get one.

Yet the iPhone is still a powerful tool. Here are the best ways to unleash the seductive power of iPhone.

1. Unlock it

Nothing tempts a girl’s wild side like a bad boy, and that’s exactly what an unlocked iPhone says: I don’t play by the rules, danger doesn’t scare me, and I have crazy skills you can’t even comprehend. Plus it gives you access to the 3rd party apps that are too cool for regular users.

Who cares if it can be done by any chump in 45 seconds. She doesn’t know that. Bonus points for using the term “hacked” and alluding to the danger of an iPhone being “bricked”.

2. All-Star Photo Album

So you just met a cute girl. How do you prove that you do amazing things all the time and have many cool friends? This is the ideal use-case for the All-Star photo album. Create a special album on your iPhone of all your most impressive pics: snow boarding in the Swiss Alps, you with your friends at the Radiohead concert, and pictures of you with other attractive women are all good candidates.

When you get her alone for a moment, say something like, “OMG you’ve gotta see this photo of me [insert cool thing here]” and proceed to go through the entire album, commenting about how great a time you had and how cool your friends are.

3. iPod Tunes Master

Dozens of targeted playlists in the palm of your hand. This needs no explanation. Create playlists to set different moods: chill, party-time, low key, and of course, romantic. To get the ultimate effect, invest in a set of portable speakers. When you bust out the tunes at the beach, park, etc. you will be the man. We highly recommend flipping through cover flow mode for maximum visual effect.

4. Contacts, the more the merrier

Make sure you have lots of contacts, because seriously, you are so freaking popular. To inflate your contacts count, import all of your email contacts into your address book and upload them to iPhone. She won’t know that 2/3 of those people have never seen you in person.

Expert tip: Complain about searching your contacts list saying, “I can’t stand looking for contacts on my iPhone — it only lets you search by 1 letter. How am I supposed to sort through 300 Johns?” Note: This is the only acceptable circumstance to complain about iPhone.

5. Stocks

Women like men with money and ambition. Show her you’re on the way to wealth by constantly checking your stocks. When you catch her trying to see what you’re looking at, casually comment on your gains and losses, throwing around buzz words like “credit crisis”, “oil bubble”, and “consumer confidence”. Assure her you will achieve superior returns by investing in commodities and precious metals that will be essential to the growth of developing nations.

6. Save the Day with Maps

Maps is the ultimate clutch iPhone feature. The best time to break it out is when you’re with a group of people and need to find something in an unknown area — pizza, hardware store, gas station, etc. As soon as the opportunity arises, execute a search in maps and lead the group to success. Even better if you can use iPhone to instantly call the place. By solving the problem and taking charge you’ll establish yourself as a resourceful leader — a quality highly regarded by women.

7. Look Smart with Safari

When an argument arises over a particular fact, look smarter than everyone else by finding the correct answer with Google. This is the only time you will wish to conceal iPhone use from females. It’s great for settling disputes about the proper definition of a word or the location of obscure African nations.

In case it’s not clear, using iPhone will make you look like a rich, smart, cultured, resourceful, exciting, and popular bad ass. We can’t wait for 3G.

Written by Michael Calore & Gina Trapani

Firefox 3 – available for download at 10am PDT Tuesday – is the culmination of a two-year quest to build the best browser ever. And while it’s not perfect, it comes pretty close.

The open-source web browser is the fastest and most secure version of Firefox yet. Significant improvements have been made to the way it uses your computer’s resources, so the memory leaks and other performance problems found in Firefox 2 have been stamped out. Text and image rendering have also been improved, and the underlying code for Gecko, the engine that draws the actual web pages on the screen, has been updated. There are also heaps of useful features that have been added for both power users and newcomers alike.

It’s faster than Microsoft Internet Explorer, but it’s not the fastest browser in the world – depending on who you ask, either Safari on the Mac or Opera 9.5 claims that crown. Firefox 3 is also incomplete by design – users can customize the browser, adding additional bells and whistles through downloadable extensions (see our list of recommended extensions for some ideas). But the basic version is powerful and fast enough for us to give it our highest recommendation.

Here’s why we think Firefox 3 is one of the most kick-ass software releases of 2008.

History, bookmarks and discovery

The most significant enhancement to Firefox 3 is also the most subtle. It’s the location bar, the text field at the top of the window where you enter the web address of your desired destination. Once a purely pedestrian feature, the location bar in Firefox 3 has been juiced up to the point where it is now central to the browsing experience.

Start typing a URL and the window leaps to your aid, searching the page titles and URLs in your browsing history and offering suggestions for the page you’re most likely looking for. Searches are instantaneous and happen as you type. Continue typing and your searches get narrower. Pick a URL from the list and Firefox will remember your choice. The next time you type that same term, your previous choice will appear near the top of the list, if not at the very top.

Early testers of Firefox 3 loved this new feature so much, they nicknamed it the “Awesome Bar.”

Much in the way Gmail’s powerful search box has replaced the old categorization paradigm of menus and folders for sorting and finding old e-mail messages, the Awesome Bar has largely replaced the need for a traditional bookmark filing system. Still, many users will continue to prefer the granular control and long term security afforded by a folder-based bookmark system. These users have not been ignored. With Firefox 3’s new bookmark manager, you can mark your favorite sites by “starring” them – click on the blue star in the URL bar and the page is automatically branded a favorite. Once favorited, bookmarks can be tagged and sorted into folders. You can also set up smart bookmark folders to display your most-visited sites, recently-favorited links or specific tags – just like similar smart playlists in iTunes.

Speed and performance

One of the biggest gripes about the previous version of Firefox was its often dreadful performance record. The browser grew so sluggish and unresponsive after a few hours of surfing that it became almost entirely unusable. The explosion of resource-sucking web applications over the last two years only made the problem worse. Wired.com addressed this stumbling block in an article in May of last year. At the time, Mozilla (the organization that makes Firefox) offered excuses ranging from outdated code to users running too many add-ons.

Whatever the wrinkles, they have been ironed out in the new release. Studies conducted by various sources over recent months show massive performance gains over previous versions of Firefox as well as competitors like Opera, Internet Explorer 7 and the Windows version of Safari.

We’ve been using the beta releases here at Webmonkey and Wired.com, and the consensus around the office is that speed, memory use and overall performance are all vastly improved in this version. Read the recent report by Mozilla’s Stuart Parmenter for the nitty-gritty details about the browser’s performance enhancements.

Security

Firefox’s user base has traditionally been made up by the power users of the web’s elite – developers, software geeks and early adopters. But as the popularity of the browser has grown, it’s attracted casual users who tend to be less net-savvy and therefore more prone to attacks by phishing sites, malware and scripting attacks. This shift has prompted Mozilla to raise the bar on Firefox’s default security measures.

Firefox 3 introduces a new visual language to the browser security game. The subtle tinting and the tiny padlock icon in the location bar denoting a site’s safety are being phased out in favor of stark iconography and clearly defined, color-coded cues. Security warnings come in the form of the passport officer symbol used in international airport terminals worldwide. He shows up as a different color based on the level of security of the site you’re dealing with, and that color is matched by the large button on the left end of the location bar.

Verified, secure sites make the button glow green. Sites with very basic identity information show up as blue, and unverified sites show up as the default gray. Click on the color-coded button and you can see how often you’ve visited the website (if at all), information about the company that owns it and the link to its identity certificate.

Sites with invalid identity certificates show a yellow passport officer and an on-screen warning. Visit a known phishing or malware website and the page is blocked from loading, with a red passport officer and an explanation being shown instead. The list of known attack sites is maintained by the community and updated regularly.

Native look and feel

It’s a small enhancement, but it’s a noticeable one that many users will welcome. Older versions of Firefox were dressed in the same gray clothes no matter which operating system you ran. In Firefox 3, each OS gets its own skin for the browser. Mac users will see buttons, scrollbars and tabs that finally look not just “Macish” but entirely Mac-native. The same goes for a Windows XP version with green buttons and a Vista version with that OS’s glowing blue appointments. Ubuntu users even get a version that’s, appropriately, boxy and orange.

Also, on the major OSes at least, the back button is larger. Mozilla ran its own user tests and found that most people miss the back button with their mice. So, the team made it about 50% bigger.

A better fit for your workflow

For advanced web users, especially those who favor webapps like Gmail or Yahoo mail over their desktop counterparts like Outlook, Firefox 3 provides a more seamless integration into their modern workflow.

Application-specific links on web pages can be set to trigger webapps. For example, you can set up the browser so that clicking on a mailto link opens up in Yahoo Mail rather than in Outlook, or that a calendar event gets added to Google Calendar instead of iCal. This is an extension of what we saw when Firefox 2 asked you how you like to read your RSS feeds – in a desktop app, with Live Bookmarks or in an online tool like Bloglines or Google Reader.

There’s also support for running your webapps off-line. If you go through a quick set up procedure, you can answer messages in Gmail and work on a document in an online word processor, then sync up later when your net access is restored.

Finally, search is everywhere in Firefox 3. Not only are your bookmarks accessible directly from the location bar, but recent downloads and Firefox’s add-on library now have a search box. Most web-based tools use search as an essential component, and it’s because of this emphasis on dynamic search capability that Firefox 3 feels much more in tune with the way we expect our applications to behave on today’s web.

Power User’s Guide to Firefox 3

You already know about Firefox 3’s marquee new features, but now it’s time to dig deep and unearth the shortcuts, tweaks, and even Easter eggs that Mozilla marketing doesn’t mention. In honor of today’s official release of Firefox 3—at 10AM Pacific Time—let’s dive in past Firefox 3‘s most talked-about feature-set into its lesser-known power uses, tricks, and customizations.

Shrink the Super-sized Back Button

The very first thing you notice in Firefox 3 is its extra large Back button. While it’s actually quite handy—less chance of missing your target!—if the Back button’s just too big for your tastes, it’s as easy as pie to reduce. Just right-click on Firefox’s toolbar, and choose Customize. In the dialog box, select “Use small icons.”

Adjust the Smart Location Bar’s Number of Suggestions

The Firefox 3 feature that you’ll get to know and love the most is the new smart location bar’s as-you-type suggestions that learn where you probably want to go as you browse. But if you’re feeling like the number of suggestions is too high or too low? Adjust it to your liking in Firefox’s configuration area. Here’s how.

1. Enter about:config into the address bar and hit Enter.
2. Press the “I”ll be carefull. I promise!” button. (Because you will be.)
3. Enter browser.urlbar.maxRichResults in the Filter field to reach this preference.
4. Set it to your desired number of suggestions. Three shown here.

Here’s another way to adjust the location bar behavior with an about:config tweak.

Shift+Delete Mistyped URL Suggestions

While the Smart Location bar is quite intelligent, if you enter an incorrect URL—say, to a page that doesn’t exist—Firefox 3 will still remember it and suggest it again later. (Garbage in, garbage out, as they say.) To remove a mistyped URL from your suggestion list forever, key down to the suggestion and type Shift+Delete. Update: This trick works for any form auto-complete entry, like if you mistype a username into a login form.

Ditch Obselete Extensions

Firefox’s philosophy seems to be “stay lean and mean and leave the extras to add-ons.” Nevertheless, Firefox 3 does bake in some functionality that makes some extensions you might love unnecessary. Here are five extensions you won’t need with Firefox 3.

Revert the “AwesomeBar” with Oldbar

Firefox’s smart location bar (a.k.a. “AwesomeBar”)—which drops down a suggestion list of destinations as you type into it—is extra verbose and extra-tall, since it includes both web site titles and URLs. If you’re missing Firefox 2’s classic one-line drop-down look, the Oldbar extension can revert the “AwesomeBar” to something less awesome—or at least something that looks less awesome.

Trick Out Your Smart Bookmarks

Like iTunes Smart Playlists and saved search folders in OS X and Vista, Firefox 3’s Smart Bookmarks are dynamic lists of URLs generated by certain search criteria. Here’s how to create your own collections of Smart Bookmarks using search parameters. Hint: Add the most frequent pages you visit on Lifehacker.com by bookmarking place:queryType=0&sort=8&maxResults=5&domain=lifehacker.com.

Set Gmail as Your Default Email client—Without an Add-on

Firefox 3’s filetype handling mechanism can now associate web applications as well as desktop applications with certain files. This opens the door to possibilities like automatically launching links to ical files in your web-based calendar app, or opening your webmail when you click on email links. While most webapps have to catch up to Firefox 3 to enable this functionality, one we already know and love is already there. Here’s how to launch Gmail when you click mailto: links on web pages.

Say Hello to the Firefox Robots

You already know about the age-old Firefox about:mozilla Easter egg. Well, Firefox 3 has a new Easter egg that pays homage to its robot mascot. Type about:robots into the Firefox 3 address bar to get a fun page with a list of robot pop culture references, from I, Robot to Blade Runner to Battlestar Galactica to Futurama.

Enable Spellchecking in One-line Input Fields

This tweak goes back to Firefox 2, but is still just as useful and functional in Firefox 3, especially if you’re a web writer. In about:config, set layout.spellcheckDefault value equal to 2 to enable spell-checking in single line input fields as well as textareas. (Less typos in your email subject lines and blog post titles!) Here are a few more Firefox about:config tweaks.

Mac Users: Add Favicons to Your Bookmark Toolbar

Mac users who are rockin’ Firefox 3’s new slick Mac-like theme—but who miss their bookmarks’ favicons—can easily add web site icons to their toolbar with a little tweak.

For a bird’s-eye view of Firefox’s evolution over the last four years, see the history of Firefox 1.0 to 3.0 in screenshots. Then, see how Firefox 3 stacks up in performance tests in comparison to Safari, Opera, and Internet Explorer.

How are you tweaking Firefox 3 today when you install it? Give it up in the comments.

Written by The-Minus World

With the recent success of LEGO video games, we at the-minusworld decided to come up with five movies we want to see get the LEGO treatment. Enjoy, because these are definitely never going to happen.

LEGO No Country For Old Men

How often does a game let you play as unlucky trailer trash, a crusty, pseudo-philosophical cop, and a deranged, air gun-wielding psychopathic killer with a bowl cut that would make The Beatles cringe? Not often enough.

LEGO Half Baked

A cult classic that made smoking weed cool. OK, smoking weed has always been cool, so that might be stretching it. Rumor has it that a LEGO dime bag comes free with purchase, which kind of sucks since you can’t smoke it (though I’m sure you potheads will try anyway).

LEGO Rocky III

Fight as the Italian Stallion before he was pummeled into dementia by Ivan Drago. Early word is that half the game will be a homo-erotic training montage, so when Apollo Creed asks you to “pound some meat,” he just wants you to use a dead cow as a punching bag, not rusty trombone each other after sprinting down a beach.

LEGO Juno

Unplanned teenage pregnancy has never been more fun! Lead Juno and her baby’s daddy (that falsetto-voiced kid from Superbad) on an epic quest to find a couple to adopt their unborn lovechild. Or just abort it and eat a case of orange Tic Tacs.

LEGO The Passion Of The Christ

You are the Christ. Battle your way through the New Testament to save Mary Magdelene from the evil clutches of Pontius Pilate. SPOILER WARNING: You die at the end, but not before paving the way for anti-Semitism, centuries of Catholic guilt, and Mel Gibson to make a shit-load of cash off the religiously insecure.

When it comes to InterNet(Hackz), the first thing which comes to our mind is the browser which we use to access the internet. In my case it’s Firefox but I’m sure there are people who prefer to use various other available browsers.

Those days are gone when a simple browser was more than enough for our daily tasks and as web has evolved, our demand from a web browser has also increased and in order to fetch maximum from a browser, developers create plug-ins and we are going to cover the best add-ons for the major browsers i.e. FireFox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera.

Let’s start the journey of these wonderful add-ons with my favorite browser and i.e. FireFox (if you like some other browser, please keep that secret with you only as I’ll not switch to that browser – So leave the comments away from another infamous browser war 🙂

1. GreaseMonkey: Without a doubt it has to be the most powerful plugin for FireFox as this plugin allows you to change the functionality, looks of the pages according to one’s needs. UserScripts.org is a huge repository of various scripts which makes browsing pretty simple.

2. WebMail Notifier: Why use Outlook Express, Outlook or Mail App (for OS X), when web based e-mail services have improved so much? Well, in order to ensure that you don’t miss out on any important e-mail, this add-on comes pretty handy. It instantly notifies you of incoming email and supports lots of web based email services.

3. Showcase : If you often feel lost in the amount of tabs you open up while surfing the web, then this add-on will help you find the tabs in a quick and easy way. This add-on showcases all the open tabs as thumbnails in a new tab or in a separate window.

4. Google Gears: Google gears is an excellent add-on and it’s more aimed towards developers so that they can provide you the ability to be offline with their web based applications. Zoho Writer & Google reader are few web apps which you’ll love to work on with the help of Google Gears.

5. StumbleUpon: Stumbleupon is an excellent add-on and takes you away in those times when surfing the web wasn’t as huge as it is today and you came across some really cool stuff. This add-on helps you in discovering some really cool stuff on the internet. Caution: Stumbling can be addictive and you shouldn’t use it while you are working as your boss won’t like your productivity reports.

6. Google Toolbar: If you love and live by Google search (like me) then you surely can’t miss this add-on. This toolbar gives access to all sorts of search provided by Google and lets you access the gadgets, Google bookmarks and notifies you about latest incoming Gmail.

7. Tab Mix Plus: If you are looking for more control over the FireFox tabs then this add-on will be your savior. The add-on lets you add mouse gestures, lets you position tab bar according to your preference and a whole lot of features which you’d like to do with the tabs.

8. IE – Tab: If you are a windows user and don’t want the hassle of opening up Internet Explorer again and again for those websites which strictly needs Internet Explorer. With push of a button you’ll be able to use Internet Explorer’s rendering engine in Firefox’s window only.

9. Download Status bar: If you prefer to download lot of files over the internet then I’m sure that you’ll hate that download window, which opens up every time when you are downloading a file. Download status bar add-on makes a small bar at the bottom of the window (just above the normal status bar) and shows you all the files you’ve downloaded and gives you easy access to the downloaded files.

10. Answers: This amazing add-on gives you all the knowledge of the world and that too at a click away. You just need to hold the Alt key and click on any word and you’ll get the quick access to it’s meaning, WikiPedia information. Comes pretty handy for non-English speaking users.

11. FireFTP: Forget the days when you had to download FTP software to ensure that you could upload the files to a FTP server. This add-on makes FireFox a fully featured FTP application and works flawlessly.

12. AdBlock Plus: If you are bugged with the ads present on various websites (although I prefer them for lot of reasons), then you can use this add-on to block them. It takes the ads away from the webpage and doesn’t break the webpage’s look either.

13. Sxipper: Sxipper completes FireFox! This add-on fills the forms in a snap, so as a heavy web user you’d fall in love with it. You can skip downloading any auto-fill applications.

14. FasterFox: You can easily tweak various network related settings of FireFox and it’s feature of Dynamic speed helps in caching of all the webpages and thus increases the surfing speed.

15. FEBE: Installing and uninstalling of extensions can sometimes break the FireFox and this add-on helps you in recovering the whole profile as this helps you in creating the back of the FireFox’s profile and thus can save your lot of time.

There are lots many add-ons for FireFox and you can fall in love with most of them, however these are such extensions, which take the simple & cool browser to a whole new level and shouldn’t be missed by anyone.

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