In order to boost its Wave product, Google has acquired AppJet, which makes the EtherPad real-time workgroup collaboration application.

“AppJet is a team of highly-talented entrepreneurs with deep expertise in real-time Web collaboration. Google and AppJet have a shared vision of how Web collaboration can benefit users, and we’re excited to have the AppJet team contribute to the success of Google Wave,” a Google spokesman said on Friday.

The AppJet team will join the group developing Wave, an ambitious hosted collaboration application Google unveiled in May and that is still in limited availability by invitation only.

Wave boldly consolidates e-mail, instant messaging and document sharing, and is considered a potential game-changer both in the consumer online services market and in the enterprise collaboration space.

EtherPad, described by AppJet as a “Web-based word processor that allows people to work together in really real-time,” will keep operating until the end of March 2010, at which point all existing hosted accounts will be deleted, AppJet said on Friday in its official blog.

Existing users are already complaining about these plans in comments to the AppJet blog posting. “This is the worst news ever. Google Wave is NOT an alternative to EtherPad. The clean design and, above all, the task specificity of EtherPad makes it vastly superior. I’ve been using Google Wave for over a month now and it just doesn’t compare to the months of wonderful service and growth from EtherPad. Boo,” wrote one disenchanted EtherPad user.

Users of the EtherPad “professional” edition will be able to export their “pads” as a ZIP file archive. This edition used to cost $8 per user per month, but became free on Friday. Users of the starter edition, which has been free since the beginning, can export their “pads” to various formats. Both the starter and “professional” editions are hosted by AppJet.

The company also provides a Private Network Edition, which can be downloaded to customer servers and run on-premise for $99 per user. Users of that edition will be able to continue using the product beyond March. AppJet will honor existing support and maintenance contracts, but will not renew them when they expire.

As of today, people won’t be able to create any new free public “pads” nor any new EtherPad accounts.

1. Go to the root directory of Winamp which is usually in C:\Program Files\Winamp\
2. Now create an empty file (Right click the mouse -> New -> Text document), so the default file would be like “New Text Document.txt”.
3. Goto Tools in Menu Bar, select Folder Options, click on View and uncheck the box “Hide extensions for known file types”
4. Rename the file “New Text Document.txt” to “winamp.m3u”
5. Close Winamp and Google Talk.
6. Now open Winamp and Gtalk again. You can set your current music track in Gtalk without any problem.

Note : You can now re-check the box “Hide extensions for known file types”

Mozilla Labs has announced the Raindrop project today – a new open-source, experimental email and communication platform. Raindrop aims to be a sort of intelligent inbox filtering system, which separates your personal messages, the actual conversations, from the bulk of notifications, updates and all types of emails that clutter up your inbox.

But Raindrop isn’t just an email client, it will also gather messages from other communication platforms, Twitter, blog comments, etc., and will sort them based on their authors and their importance. It will include all types of messaging, including IM, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube and basically, any communication with an open API.

David Ascher, one of Raindrop’s lead engineer and the CEO of Mozilla Messaging, says that Raindrop doesn’t really aim to replace your Gmail account but add to it with an intelligent way to understand your communications. Mozilla will be encouraging the addition of front-end widgets and third-party code as well.

Raindrop is currently only open to developers. Hopefully we’ll see a full downloadable installer in the near future. Still, we look forward to seeing what comes of Raindrop. Like Google Wave, it’s an attempt to re-imagine web-based communication for the modern era.

Dexpot 1.4 is a free utility and it allows you to create up to 20 virtual desktops. It creates and manages virtual desktops. The program enables you to work with many simultaneously opened windows on a variety of MS operating systems beginning with Windows 95/98/ME and NT4/2000/XP/2003/Vista (incl. x64) and Windows7. You can personalize each workspace–change the background, icons, and screen resolution. You can configure hotkeys to switch between virtual windows and even set your desktop to automatically switch workspaces on a preset interval. The application gives you extraordinary flexibility over the way your virtual desktops are set up and how you switch to them. You can move between desktops by clicking the app in the taskbar or you can switch between them by assigning a hotkey.

Dexpot isn’t the first application to bring virtual desktops to windows but it is easiest to use and configure and it works well with every version of Windows and moreover, it uses minimal system resources. It forms a great addition to Windows 7.

To download Dexpot, click here

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If you are dual booting Windows and Ubuntu, you will find that Ubuntu does not auto mount NTFS partition by default. Everytime you login, you have to mount it manually. There is a simple way to fix this problem. You can use the application PySDM. It provides a friendly user interface and is very simple to work with.

PySDM is a Storage Device Manager that allows full customization of hard disk mountpoints without manually access to fstab. It also allows the creation of udev rules for dynamic configuration of storage devices

How to install it?

Open terminal and enter the following command:

sudo apt-get install pysdm

Auto mount your disk

1. Goto System > Administration > Storage Device Manager

2. This will open the application. The left panel shows the list of partitions. Select the desired partition.

   

   Note: The partitions are labelled as sda1,sda2,sda3,etc. To identify which is the required partition, open GParted (System > Administration > Partition Editor). All the partitions will be displayed alongwith their size, file system and labels.

3. Once you have selected the partition, click on the Assistant button on the right pane.
4. Check the box The File system is mounted at boot time.
5. Uncheck the box Mount file system in read only mode.
6. Click on OK button and apply the changes

Now your NTFS partition will auto mount on startup.

Deskbar applet provides a versatile search interface. You type a web address, or an email address, or a file name, or an application or some keyword, and it shows a popup with possible choices from there. You can simply think of it as the search dialog box that pops up in Kubuntu when you press ALT + F2.

With this utility you can access any of the following services:

• Applications: Launch an apllication by its name ot description

• Files, Folders and Places: View your files, folders, bookmarks, drives, network places by name

• Computer Actions: Logoff, shutdown, restart, suspend and related actions

• History: Recognize previously used searches

• Recent Documents: Retrieve your recently accessed files and locations

• Web: Open web pages and send emails by typing a complete address

• Web History and Bookmarks: Open your web history and bookmarks by name

• Google Search: Search Google directly from Deskbar

• Yahoo! Search: Search Yahoo! as you type

• Twitter: Post your updates in twitter

• Window Switcher: Switch to an existing window by name

• Dictionary: Look up word definitions in the dictionary

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One notable feature of Deskbar applet is its Pluggable backend architecture, which allows us to add custom backends in home/system dir. It also allows third parties to add a backend.

How to install it?

1. Open terminal and type in the following command

   sudo apt-get install deskbar-applet

2. Now you have installed Deskbar applet. To add it to your panel, just right click on the panel, select “Add to Panel” and add “Deskbar”

Now the applet icon will appear on your panel. When you click on it, the search dialog box will pop up.

The search dialog box will also pop up on hitting ALT + F3

To enable more searches, you can select them in the preferences page for the applet. Right click on the applet icon and choose “Preferences”.

Back in February, there was a Microsoft Windows Update that installed the add-on Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant into Firefox. It was silently installed into the browser without the consent of the user. Earlier this week, Microsoft’s security engineers acknowledged that this plugin poses a critical security threat to the browser. This update adds to Firefox one of the most dangerous vulnerabilities present in all versions of Internet Explorer–the ability for websites to easily and quietly install software on your PC. Since this design flaw is one of the reasons you may’ve originally choosen to abandon IE in favor of a safer browser like Firefox, you may wish to remove this extension with all due haste.

“While the vulnerability is in an IE component, there is an attack vector for Firefox users as well,” admitted Microsoft engineers in a post to the company’s Security Research & Defense blog on Tuesday. “The reason is that .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 installs a ‘Windows Presentation Foundation’ plug-in in Firefox.”

Many experts complained about this security threat when Microsoft pushed the .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1) update to users back in February. They also stated that Microsoft made it very difficult for common users to remove the .NET plugin. The “Disable” and “Uninstall” option in Firefox’s plugin list was grayed out. The only way by which you can remove the plugin is by editing the registry, a very risky job since one wrong step can cripple your Windows.

However in May, Microsoft issued an update which made it possible to disable this plugin. But it did not mention anything about the dangers of this plugin.

This week, Microsoft did not make any reference to the origin of the .NET add-on, but simply told Firefox users that they should uninstall the component if they weren’t able to deploy the patches provided in the MS09-054 update.

How to disable or uninstall the add-on?

For Firefox users with .NET Framework 3.5 installed, you may use “Tools”-> “Add-ons” -> “Plugins”, select “Windows Presentation Foundation”, and click “Disable”.

Also, if you would like to uninstall the “Windows Presentation Foundation” plug-in from Firefox, please refer to Microsoft’s KB article How to remove the .NET Framework Assistant for Firefox

Mozilla developers have launched a new service called Plugin Check to help Firefox users keep a select number of popular browser add-on components up-to-date. Plugin Check takes the form of a web page and tests for more than 15 popular plugins right now, however Mozilla developers claim addtional coverage of plugins shortly.

Firefox can already check if the plugins installed through the website “addons.mozilla.org” are up-to-date. But this cannot be done for some plug-ins like RealPlayer, Flash or Silverlight. The purpose of the new Plugin Check is to check the update status of such independent plugins.

Keeping plugins up-to-date is becoming increasingly important. According to Mozilla, 30 percent of all Firefox crashes are caused by obsolete third party plugins. Besides, outdated plugins also pose a security threat. That’s because out-of-date plugins are increasingly exploited by hackers in Web-based attacks that place malicious software on the victim’s computer. Says Mozilla’s Johnathan Nightingale, “This is a really important project for us, because old versions of plugins can cause crashes and other stability problems, and can also be a major security risk.”

When Firefox 3.6 is released(expected by the year’s end), it will include built-in support for plugin update tracking. When visiting a Web page with Firefox 3.6, users will be notified if any if the plugins used by the site have been updated. Till then, Firefox users can use the Plug Check site to keep themselves secure.

Here’s a screenshot of the Plugin check site….

OpenMoko, known from building the first fully open source phone, released its new device, WikiReader. Priced at $99, the new wikireader delivers the joy of information by packing every Wikipedia article into a pocket-friendly travelling companion and it works completely offline.

The WikiReader measures 3.9-by-3.9-by-0.8 inches and weighs 4.5 ounces. It has two AAA batteries, a low-power CPU and a large monochrome touchscreen, and standard microSD cards to house all the articles. According to OpenMoko, the two AAA batteries can last for 500 hours for a regular use of about 15 mins a day. It’s not a connected device, either. The article database is stored on a MicroSD card. You can update the SD card through your computer using the WikiReader’s website or — if you’re less technically inclined — Openmoko will send you new SD cards four times a year for a $29 annual fee.

The WikiReader has got four buttons: one at top to turn it on, and three on the face to bring up the search, see your history or find a random article (much like hitting “shuffle” on a music playlist). All of the typing is handled by way of a virtual keyboard that pops up on the unit’s monochrome touchscreen. And the touchscreen lets you scroll through articles and click on hyperlinks. Its exceptional simplicity also makes it suitable for elderly people and children. Unfortunately, the device can’t display images on screen.

If you dont already own a internet capable smartphone or travel often to places where there is no internet connectivity, the WikiReader is definitely worth considering.

To view videos of WikiReader, click here

The WikiReader is available now from OpenMoko’s WikiReader store and Amazon.

Wondering how to schedule messages and status updates to your social networks???? Well, you can use an application called Sendible for this purpose. It lets you schedule your social network messages and updates ahead of time. Sendible supports Twitter, Facebook (messages and status), MySpace, Orkut, Friendster, hi5 and Blogger. In addtion to this, you can also schedule messages and updates for email and SMS. Besides this, Sendible supports many more features:

• It offers reminders to remind yourself and others of upcoming events such as your friends’ birthdays

• It gives you access to all your email and social network contacts from one place

• It also has a calendar, which shows you upcoming and previously scheduled messages sent out across various services

Click here to go to the homepage of Sendible.

Here’s a screenshot of Sendible……