Scott Hanselman has a very extensive list of his favorite developer and power user tools and utilities. I haven’t had a chance to get through all of them but I’m already a big fan of Notepad2, Cropper and Slickrun. Scott also has a nice list of registry tweaks as well as a list of “Things Windows Forgot”. He includes a number Internet Explorer add-ons but he doens’t forget about us Firefox fans either.

This UK Honda commercial for the Civic is amazing. I especially like the sounds of the raindrops and wipers.

From BoingBoing

What would it take for you to switch from Google to another search engine? Unlike switching from Windows to OSX (or vice versa), switching search engines takes little effort. You don’t have purchase or learn new programs. You don’t have to reinstall anything. Ditching Google would be very easy. If someone could add a few of these features to their search engine I’d probably switch.

Thumbnails – I’d like to be able to mouse over a search result and see a thumbnail of the page before I click on it. Something like Tab Preview for Firefox but within the page.

More details – I’d like to option to have fewer but more detailed results returned.

Better Organization – Would be nice if someone could categorize the search results in a manner that makes sense. For example, I search for ‘Logitech Z-5000” and the results page is organized by say, retailers offering the speakers, blogger comments, and website reviews.

Learns my search habits – This would be the search holy grail for me. I’d love a search engine that made me a better user of its engine. One that could suggest different options for getting better results. One that would recognize my spelling mistakes and still find what I’m after.

So far, I don’t like the idea of mixing internet search with local drive search like Google Desktop and MSN Search Toolbar seem to think we all want. I’ve tried both and I didn’t like the amount of CPU cycles they consumed. Maybe future versions will be less intrusive.

For now I’ll stick with Google although I’d quickly switch it something better came along.

Now this must be embarassing.

As a means of protecting its data contents from inadvertent deletion, even by an operating system process, Norton Protected Recycle Bin hides the “NProtect” directory using the apparently same Windows API system call diversion technique as Sony BMG’s XCP copy protection scheme used to deflect system access to the directory containing its drivers.

from TGDaily

Some his predictions are brainers like Sun to remain on life support. It also sounds like he’s predicting we won’t see Windows Vista in 2006.

Microsoft still sucks at security and users suffer for it. My best guess is they are planning on putting all this new technology in the “next” operating system, which seems to be yet another year behind schedule. The important question the world will soon be asking — “Do we need another Windows operating system?” In 2006, Windows XP gets another service pack and/or facelift. Nothing more.

I hadn’t noticed this Firefox feature until today. Under the HELP menu there’s a link to report a broken website. A little window pops up and allows input to get sent back to the Firefox team concerning any site you come across that’s not rendering correctly.

IE has a similar “send feedback” link but it’s not implemented as well.

Kevin Rose from Digg mentioned these very funny videos on TWIT. I especially like the cropped pictures of Bill Gates in Video 3.

Video 1
Video 2
Video 3

Apple has posted the ad it showed at Macworld this week announcing Macs with Intel chips. I first heard it on a podcast without seeing the video and it almost seems more powerful without the video now that I’ve seen both.

You can find the Job’s keynote address here as well.

I’ve had a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 for a couple of years and it’s worked well till about a month ago when my mic port went out. It still sounded pretty decent but I had no idea what I was missing until this evening when I plugged in a new Sound Blaster X-Fi card.

I am stunned at good my mp3s sound. I plugged in my Grado 80s, launched Q-player and listened to the Sunday’s, “Here’s where the story ends”. Holy crap! I’ve used Sound Blaster products for years going back to the 8 bit cards and have never noticed this much difference from one generation to the next. I’m extremely impressed.

Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML (“user scripts”) to any web page to change its behavior. In much the same way that user CSS lets you take control of a web page’s style, user scripts let you easily control any aspect of a web page’s design or interaction. (from mozdev.org)

My favorite script so far is one that allows me to download video from Google Video called Google Video Getter. You can find many other useful scripts at Userscripts.org.