Heratech

gollum123 writes "US regulators may dedicate spectrum to free wireless Internet service for some Americans to increase affordable broadband service nationwide, the Federal Communications Commission said on Tuesday. The FCC provided few details about how it would carry out such a plan and who would qualify, but will make a recommendation under the National Broadband Plan set for release next week. The agency will determine details later. One way of making broadband more affordable is to 'consider use of spectrum for a free or a very low-cost wireless broadband service,' the FCC said in a statement." Nobody has more than a couple of paragraphs on this story. None of the press coverage mentions the obvious likelihood that any such free network would be heavily filtered, censored, and monitored.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

newVideoPlayer( {"type":"video","player":"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/uJxbEQGWpeA&hl=en&fs=1&fmt=22","customParams":[],"width":500,"height":412,"ratio":0.824,"flashData":"","embedName":null,"objectId":null,"noEmbed":false,"source":"youtube"} ); Google just launched a new Google Apps Marketplace where users can discover and deploy third-party cloud applications that integrate with their existing Google Apps accounts.

Give the video above a watch for a full overview of how Google Apps Marketplace apps work, or, summed up from the Google Apps Marketplace homepage:

The Google Apps Marketplace offers products and services designed for Google users, including installable apps that integrate directly with Google Apps. Installable apps are easy to use because they include single sign-on, Google's universal navigation, and some even include features that integrate with your domain's data.

We've detailed how to trick out Google Apps in the past, but the Apps Marketplace brings an entirely new set of potentially useful tools to your Google Apps account—everything from accounting and finance apps to project and customer management.

And while the current set of offerings might seem like overkill unless you're a business running on Google Apps, the integration that these tools provide with Google tools like Mail, Calendar, Docs, and Contacts might be well worth it for the right app, and in time, Apps Marketplace sets the stage for all kinds of awesome third-party integration that could potentially take place with any outside application and the Google applications you use every day. (Time will tell on that front.)

We've been paging through the offerings since the site went up, but if you stumble onto a particularly snazzy looking Marketplace app, share a link in the comments.

Right now most of the apps look like they come with a recurring subscription fee, but we've found a few interesting looking options (some free), like:

• Aviary, the web-based creative suite.
• Shared contacts, which, as one might expect, lets you share contacts with your colleagues (something that's always been a little difficult in Google Apps). [Has a free trial]
• Gbridge, a "free, instant VPN for everyone" that can sync folders, share files, and share screens remotely between computers—and it's free.

Google Apps MarketPlace [via Official Google Blog]

eldavojohn writes "A new report from Games Industry indicates that MMO gamers in the United States paid $3.8 billion to play last year, with an analysis of five European countries bringing the total close to $4.5 billion USD. In America, the report estimated that payments for boxed content and client downloads amounted to a measly $400 million, while the subscriptions came to $2.38 billion. Hopefully that will fund some developer budgets for bigger and better MMOs yet to come. The study also found that roughly a quarter of the US population plays some form of MMO. Surely MMOs are shaping up to be a juicy industry, and a market that can satisfy people of all walks of life."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dear Lifehacker,
I've read about how HTML5 will change the way I use the web, but it seems like the biggest example of HTML5 in action is on sites like YouTube—which don't support my favorite browser, Firefox. What's the deal?

I find myself, and I'm sure tons of others, caught in the Adobe Flash Player vs. HTML5 battle. Flash Player runs terribly on my iMac. Videos on different sites either tell me to install Flash components, show up as blank white areas, load perpetually (CNET TV) or tell me to adjust global storage, and so on. If they do play, I often get the stuttering/buffering that drives me crazy. I had the latest version of Flash Player, uninstalled that and installed the latest 10.1 Beta3, and it's just as bad.

I considered signing up for YouTube's HTML5 beta test, but that only works for Safari, Chrome, and IE, not Firefox. I've read about Mozilla's stance on this issue, too.

I apologize for the long intro to my question, but do you know of any Firefox add-on or plug-in that installs the H.264 codec? We already have to install a plug-in for Flash Player, so perhaps it's possible someone can do this for H.264.

Thanks for any help,
Fighting with Flash

Howdy Fighting,
That's a good question, and unfortunately one to which there's no great answer. It actually is technically possible to play HTML5 YouTube videos in Firefox, but it's extremely convoluted (details below)—and Mac users like yourself won't have any luck. First, for those who aren't familiar with why Firefox is excluded from YouTube's (and some other video sites') HTML5 support, here's why:

The Problem

In order to move to HTML5 from Flash, video sites like YouTube need to host their videos in formats friendly to Flash-free HTML5 embedding. Unfortunately there's no default standard for the format HTML5 videos should use.

As a dedicated open-source, open-standards browser, Firefox chose to support the Ogg Theora video format for HTML5 video. Like Firefox, Ogg Theora is free and open; it's not covered by any patents, so it requires no licensing and is completely free to use for everyone involved.

Other browser makers, like Chrome and Safari, support H.264 for HTML5 video. Unlike Ogg Theora, H.264 is patented, and would theoretically require browser makers to pay licensing fees to use it (though the company that owns licensing rights to H.264 have said that they'll offer it royalty free until 2016). Additionally, the issue isn't just about licensing.

Some tests have shown H.264 to perform better than Ogg Theora in side-by-side comparisons. Apple's stance on the matter, via Wikipedia, is that "H.264 performs better and is already more widely supported." For video sites like YouTube, the main concern is likely which format can deliver the highest quality video with the greatest compression rates. Unfortunately for Team Firefox (and supporters of free and open web standards), it's looking like H.264 might deliver the best results.

It's worth nothing that browsers can support multiple video formats for HTML5 support, but currently Chrome is the only browser that supports both H.264 and Ogg Theora (though through the Frankenstein efforts of Google Chrome Frame, Internet Explorer also gets support for both). The chart below (from Wikipedia) lays it all out:

As you can see, unless either Firefox changes its stance or sites like YouTube decide to support a free alternative like Ogg Theora, Firefox fanatics don't have a clear way to watch HTML5 YouTube videos.

The "Solution"

If you're extremely desperate to watch HTML5 YouTube videos but you absolutely do not want to switch to another browser, you've got one simple-yet-absurd solution that'll only work on Windows:

Watch HTML5 YouTube Videos in Firefox (on Windows)

1. Install the IE Tab Firefox extension (or one of the other IE-in-Firefox extensions).
2. Install Google Chrome Frame for IE.
   
   
3. In the IE Tab preferences inside Firefox, set YouTube to always open inside an IE Tab (see image below).
   
4. Visit the YouTube HTML5 Video Player opt-in page (if you've set up IE Tab correctly above, it should open in an IE Tab inside Firefox) and click the Join the HTML5 Beta link at the bottom of the page.
   
5. Go watch an HTML5-supported YouTube video.

And... that's it. Ridiculous, but I've tried it, and it seems to work. (Though, unsurprisingly, it seemed buggy, and worked much better in straight Chrome than it did in either IE with Chrome Frame or Firefox with IE and Chrome Frame.) Unfortunately it doesn't help Mac users like Fighting with Flash much, but it's the best we could do.

More than anything, the convoluted process involved in watching an HTML5 YouTube video in Firefox only serves to underscore the problem. It's not something that'll likely be solved overnight (though I guess if Mozilla decides to cave into H.264, change could come pretty quickly), but it's a good reminder that important, web-changing technology almost always comes with a few speed bumps.

Love,
Lifehacker

Got a better method you're using, or want to weigh in on this whole H.264 vs. Ogg Theora battle? Let's hear it in the comments.

Think you've got what it takes to join Team Lifehacker? That's good, because we're on the hunt for a new writer to join the crew.

You could be a great fit if:

• You love and understand a lot about technology, and have a knack for tinkering with software and bending gear to your will. (Bonus points for command line/programming junkies in general.)
• You know how to slap together nouns, verbs, and the occasional em dash and enjoy a good href.
• You can deliver clean, crisp, and informed takes on everything from software and web sites to food and personal finance.
• You're creative, and you've got all kinds of ideas that would make for great Lifehacker features. (We particularly love a good how-to feature.)
• You're ambitious, looking to make a name for yourself, and are prepared to work hard.

I'm emphasizing the hard work aspect because Lifehacker is a job that does require some serious hours and dedication, and if you don't have the time or aren't interested in a job that requires a lot of hard work, it's probably not for you. But if you're a good fit, it's also an extremely rewarding job.

If you think you may be a good fit, send an email to tips at lifehacker.com with "Lifehacker Job Application" in the subject. Don't include any attachments. Do include your Lifehacker commenter ID if you have one, along with anything else you've written, Lifehacker-y ideas you have that you think would make you a good fit, or anything else you think might wow us.

The position we're looking to fill is part-to-full time and pays accordingly. We're expecting a lot of submissions, so we won't be able to respond to each email individually; rest assured that your interest is much appreciated.

ElectricSteve writes "It's been a long time coming. While Arthur C. Clarke's geosync satellites have taken to space, and James Bond's futuristic mobile technology has become commonplace, still the dream of sustained personal flight has eluded us — until now. At $86,000, the Martin Aircraft jetpack costs about as much as a high-end car, achieves a 30-minute flight time, and is fueled by regular gasoline. A 10% deposit buys you a production slot for 12 months hence." Here's a video of some indoor test flights. This isn't Buck Rogers's jetpack — it's about 5 by 5 feet and weighs more than the average human. You won't be able to commute with it (the FAA has not certified this class of device) so it's recreational only for now.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google dips its toe into TV programming searches, netbooks' market share is growing, Twitter and Facebook gear up for geolocation, and researchers make the case for fat as a sixth taste sense.

• The Rise of Netbooks
  Think netbooks are a dwindling fad? GigaOM's infographic designers look at the last three years and disagree. [GigaOM]
• Readability
  The very handy, text-focused reformatter we all know as a bookmarklet has arrived as a Firefox add-on, with a few unique features like auto-scrolling. [Firefox Add-Ons via gHacks]
• Google Testing TV Search Service On Android-Enhanced Set-Top Boxes
  Google employees with DirecTV are trying out a search app that scans TV programming and web video. It's powered in part by Android, and we're kind of hoping makes it to a wider market. [Business Insider]
• Just In Time For The Location Wars, Twitter Turns On Geolocation On Its Website
  Just in time for SXSW, Twitter opens up geolocation embedding from its main site. It had previously been available through its API. [TechCrunch]
• Facebook Will Allow Users to Share Location
  Upping the arms race, Facebook might launch its own geo-smart status updates at its f8 conference next month. [Bits Blog]
• Parallels Desktop update adds support for Chrome OS
  It's not clear whether the $80 Mac virtualization suite means Google's unreleased, official Chrome OS or the open-source Chromium OS builds floating around, but either way, Parallels is on it. [Yahoo! News]
• So Fat, You Can Taste It
  The presence of fat in food may be a kind of sense, or at least a distinct taste, and researchers suggest those with less fat on their bodies can taste more fat in foods. [Slashfood]

gollum123 sends an excerpt from the NY Times on how Google has taken a lead in language translation, in one of the company's few unqualified successes as it attempts to broaden is offerings beyond search. "...Google's quick rise to the top echelons of the translation business is a reminder of what can happen when Google unleashes its brute-force computing power on complex problems. The network of data centers that it built for Web searches may now be, when lashed together, the world's largest computer. Google is using that machine to push the limits on translation technology. Last month, for example, it said it was working to combine its translation tool with image analysis, allowing a person to, say, take a cellphone photo of a menu in German and get an instant English translation. ...in the mid-1990s, researchers began favoring a so-called statistical approach. They found that if they fed the computer thousands or millions of passages and their human-generated translations, it could learn to make accurate guesses about how to translate new texts. It turns out that this technique, which requires huge amounts of data and lots of computing horsepower, is right up Google's alley. ...Google's service is good enough to convey the essence of a news article, and it has become a quick source for translations for millions of people."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mac only: Multiple monitors do great things for your desktop space, but your menu bar sticks to one screen. If you're looking for more menu access, free utility SecondBar puts one at the top of each monitor.

As veteran Mac users know, each application's menu fills in the menu bar at the top of the desktop, not the window of the app itself, as in a Windows desktop. When you have a lot of apps open in different spots, it becomes inconvenient to access an app's preferences or deeper features with a mouse. SecondBar adds a customizable menu bar to your second, third, or tenth monitor, letting you keep your focus on one screen at a time.

SecondBar has all the features of OS X's built-in menu bar, along with being drag-able and having the half-and-half resizing features of Windows 7's Aero Snap. The app is still in its super-early development stage, but it seems stable enough for regular use at the moment, and more features appear in the works.

SecondBar is a free download, Mac OS X only. Thanks, Douglas!

SecondBar

blozza2070 notes the news that Jeff Jaffe has been appointed CEO of the World Wide Web Consortium. Until January Jaffe was CTO at Novell and, while his name hasn't come up very often in this community, he is one of the architects of the Novell-Microsoft patent deal. A reading of Jaffe's blog while at Novell tends to paint him as a software patent supporter, Microsoft apologist, and no fan of the FSF. This strongly worded page at Boycott Novell features copious links to support the above characterization.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last week we asked you to share your favorite VPN tool, then we rounded up the top five contenders for a vote. Now we're back with the results.

Leading the pack was OpenVPN with 29% of the vote, followed closely by LogMeIn Hamachi (28%). Both are notable for being free although only OpenVPN is open source. In third place, the built-in Windows VPN software grabbed 19% of the vote, followed by Cisco VPN with 13% and Shrew Soft rounding out the Hive Five with 4%.

Check out the full Hive Five for additional information about VPNs and contenders. As always, if you have a great idea for a Hive Five, shoot us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line.

adeelarshad82 writes "After originally rejecting the story, online retailer NewEgg confirmed that a shipment of Core i7s were indeed fake, and apologized for the affair. NewEgg has also broken off its relationship with IPEX, the supplier of the phony lot. The retailer said that it has already contacted affected customers and would continue to reach out and replace the counterfeit parts. We discussed the fake Core i7s over the weekend."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meetings don't have to be the bane of the workday existence. Try scheduling them in 22-minute blocks to get more out of them and spend less time hating them.

Photo by brianpobuda.

Blogger Scott Berkun recommends latching onto Nicole Steinbok's 22-minute meeting idea as a good metric for sticking to agendas and keeping meetings from becoming a time-sink.

Of course, even abbreviated meetings won't work if you don't make good use of the time. Do not, for example, show up at a meeting with a batch of handouts for everyone to dig into.

Send required readings 3 days beforehand – The burden is on the organizer to make this small enough that people actually do it. Never ever allow a meeting to be "lets all read the documents together and penalize anyone diligent enough to do their homework". (note: I think 24 hours is plenty).

Of course, there may be times when 22 minutes is just not enough time to get things done. The vast majority of meetings, though, could probably be blasted through in even less time.

How do you keep your meetings from spiraling into three-hour marathons? Share your hard-earned tactics in the comments.

The 22 minute meeting [ScottBerkun.com]

Windows 7: Hailing from the camp of "software that does exactly what its name implies", Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Customizer fine-tunes the size, spacing, and margins of your Windows 7 Superbar previews.

If you're unhappy with the size and spacing of application and folder thumbnails on your Superbar (less enthusiastically dubbed the taskbar in some circles), Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Customizer adjusts them. Vertical size, spacing between the icons, and margins on the top and bottom of the icons are among the parameters awaiting your obsessive attention. This application won't change the spacing of icons on the actual bar itself, it alters the size and spacing of the preview thumbnails.

See the two images below for comparison. The top is the default settings and the second is with the size of the thumbnail doubled to 400:

Don't worry about remembering your initial settings—if you're not happy with your Superbar's new look, hit "Restore Defaults" and everything will return to its default. Have another application or trick for customizing your Windows interface? Let's hear about it in the comments. Thanks Saudrapsmann!

7 Taskbar Thumbnail Customizer [Deviant Art via #Tips]

netbuzz writes "When the NASDAQ stock index hit its all-time high of 5,133 on March 10, 2000, it had more than doubled in a year and the dot-com bubble was already leaking in a big way. A week later the NASDAQ had fallen 9 percent. A year later it was below 2000. Gone were such poster children of the era as Pets.com, Kozmo, and — who could forget? — Whoopi Goldberg's Flooz. Here's a look back."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The FCC is considering dedicating a portion of the wireless spectrum to "free or a very low cost wireless broadband service," according to Reuters. They didn't offer much in terms of details, and you can file this one under the believe-it-when-we-see-it category, but it's a nice thought. [Reuters via Gizmodo]

Workplace distractions are nothing new, but if you can't seem to find time to do some serious distraction-free work for any significant chunk of time, consider time blocking an appointment with yourself.

Over at business site Fast Company, our own Gina Trapani continues her Work Smart video series with a great piece on Time Blocking (embedded above). Recounting the days when she worked as a low-on-the-totem-pole programmer in a distraction-heavy office, Gina remembers:

It got so bad that when I was on deadline, I'd book hour-long meetings in a conference room where I was the only attendee. I'd put the meeting in my calendar a day or two ahead of time so that I showed up as "busy" in Outlook. When the time came, I'd steal off to the conference room with my laptop to work uninterrupted. When I confessed to another programmer that I was holding fake meetings with myself just to get work done, he asked if he could join me—under the condition that we would not distract one another. I got the most work done in the shortest amount of time during those blocks.

Ever try something similar, or have your own methods for carving out distraction-free blocks of work time? Let's hear your tips in the comments.

Work Smart: Avoid Office Distractions With Time Blocking [Fast Company via Smarterware]

If bold colors, a big desk, and plenty of well lit storage sounds like your kind of office, you'll definitely want to check out today's featured workspace.

Sometimes after making do with an office that just doesn't fit, you have to dig in and commit to an overhaul. Lifehacker reader Vincent Vega was sick of an office with old carpet and eight years worth of mismatched furniture:

After quite a bit of searching online I settled on IKEA for most of the furniture.The desk legs are Vika Annefors with a 78" Vika Amon tabletop.

The cabinets are from the EFFEKTIV system. The EFFEKTIV stuff is all modular and has tons of options. I looked at several different lighting options but settled on the Inredia bookcase lights because they are so darn adjustable.

Now I just need some art! Comments are appreciated!

You can check out additional photos of Vincent's workspace in the gallery below:

gawkerGallery(5489361,7);

If you have a workspace of your own to show off, throw the pictures on your Flickr account and add it to the Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool. Include some details about your setup and why it works for you, and you just might see it featured on the front page of Lifehacker.

Red and Black: An Office Makeover [Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool]

bjb writes "While helping a somewhat computer illiterate person figure out a problem recently, they mentioned that PDF files had recently stopped working. Upon investigation I found something installed called 'PDF Suite.' Never having heard of it, I Googled it with 'malware' and other key words, but nothing turned up, though my suspicion remained (and was somewhat confirmed by WOT.) So my question is, where can you go to find out if something is legitimate? Because the person I'm helping is on a dial-up connection, downloading malware detection applications (and updates) is too heavy consider. And I don't maintain a USB stick with such apps, since I don't do this kind of thing very often. Where can you quickly find information?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hey there Lifehacker RSS readers! Starting today, as passed down from above, Lifehacker's default RSS feed is switching from a full-item feed to an excerpt-only feed. Don't panic! You can still get the full feed back.

We fully understand the hypocrisy of a productivity site with an excerpt-only RSS feed, and the last thing we want is to require you to visit the site to read every single post if that's not what best fits your time. So if you're not keen on the new excerpt-only feed, the new full RSS feed for VIPs (that's all of you) is available here:

http://lifehacker.com/vip.xml

If you want to continue getting the full-item Lifehacker feed, just swap the feed above with your current Lifehacker feed in your newsreader of choice.

For what it's worth, the new default feed was made to look more like the Lifehacker front page, so some of you may actually prefer its scan-ability. For everyone else, the full "VIP" feed above should do the trick.

Thanks for understanding, and our apologies for the inconvenience.

Update: Some people are seeing excerpts in the VIP feed and the full feed in what will be the default excerpts feed. If that's the case, be patient—the switch isn't quite instantaneous, and there may be a few hiccups while the feeds switch.