Yahoo! has launched a new application that lets you keep track of trends and search terms in Twitter from your desktop. While Yahoo! Sideline is based on Adobe AIR, it's not a full fledged desktop client for Twitter like Twhirl or Tweetdeck.It doesn't let you send messages or keep track of tweets from your friends. Instead, Sideline lets you enter search terms and see messages from all Twitter users using those terms.

You can also create Search Groups with multiple terms. For instance, say you wanted to track everything said about Download Squad. You could create a group called Download Squad and then enter "download squad," "downloadsquad," "bradlinder," "leematthews," "film_girl," "grobertson," "strutting" and other terms. Sideline displays messages matching all of those terms and refreshes the search at regular intervals.

There's also a Trends area where you can see topics that are popular across the Twitter network at the moment.

Overall, Sideline is kind of cool, but it doesn't feel like something that needs to be a desktop application. You can create the same searches using Twitter's Advanced Search tool. I suppose if you really, really want real-time notifications alerting you whenever someone mentions your name, your web site's name, or a dozen other search terms, Sideline can come in handy. But for the rest of us, a normal Twitter client that lets you send and receive messages seems more useful.

[via TechCrunch]

Joke's over. This was a hoax, gang. For one thing, nobody releases every single build of their OS, not even major Linux distros. On top of that, I've got serious doubts that Microsoft would ever post their files on the same trackers that host pirated software.

Apparently Microsoft has had enough.

In response to all the Windows 7 build leaks that have been spreading via torrent sites like Pirate Bay and Mininova, Microsoft has announced that all builds will now be posted to a public torrent tracker for anyone who wants to download them.

It's a smart move. After all, build 7068 leaked in just under a week and currently has thousands of seeders worldwide. Not a single kilobyte of that transferred through Mirosoft's servers, which amounts to a substantial cost savings.

"At this point, a more transparent process makes sense. We know users like the way Windows 7 looks and functions, so at this point it's becoming more about stability and performance. Sharing the builds via peer to peer networks is a great way for us to reach a larger testing base," said a Microsoft employee speaking on the condition of anonymity.

With Windows 7's popularity still on the rise, Microsoft wants to do all they can to "leverage that popularity." Details about the tracker will be posted on TechNet tomorrow morning, and all builds after 7075 will be made available - including the RC when Microsoft puts that stamp on a particular build.

April Fools' day is upon us, so it's only right to share a few harmless programs you can use to make things more interesting around the office tomorrow. Remember to check your usage policy and bring a pair of latex gloves so you're not leaving fingerprints at the scene.

Don't forget to swap the M and N keys on someone's keyboard. It's subtle, annoying, and timeless.

Fun with Short URLs
With so many people sharing so many links on Twitter, the most obvious prank (and easiest to pull off) is a Rickroll or some variation. Tweet something intellectual sounding - heck, post it as an RT of something else and insert a short URL that points to something immensely annoying like any one of the YTMND Hobo Cruise videos (pictured above).

Set a coworker's wallpaper to an animated GIF
Again, YTMND clips are an excellent choice. Set an obnoxious animated GIF as your pal's wallpaper - tiled, of course. It's not only an assault on the eyes, but on the CPU as well - you may well bring their system to its knees, or at least make it painfully sluggish to change their wallpaper back to something more business-like.

Schedule all manner of mayhem with nircmd
Nir Sofer makes a ton of really, really useful applications. Seriously. He probably never intended them to be used as juvenile pranks, but nircmd just lends itself so well to harmless hooliganism. Schedule a task to open and close the CD tray, randomly turn the system volume all the way down and then crank it up full blast moments later, kill all IE process, display the start button on the system tray - the list goes on and on.

This one is pure gold, and it's actually quite handy the other 364 days of the year as well.

My beloved Firefox seems to have gotten kind of bloated and slow lately, particularly when starting it up. If you've experienced a similar decrease in Firefox's startup performance, check out this quick tip from Mac Tricks and Tips. One of Firefox's default settings is to remember 90 days of history. This means that Firefox is maintaining a list of every site you've visited along with the date and time of the visit for every day from the last three months. If you're anything like me, this can be a pretty huge list.

The tip is to simply go into the Privacy tab of your Firefox preferences and lower the history setting from 90 days to something much smaller, like 5 days. To realize immediate gains, ensure your Clear Private Data settings are set to clear history, then have at it. It may take a few moments, but once your history is cleared, Firefox should start to feel like its sprightly self again.

While the tip originated at a site focusing on Macs, there's no reason to think it wouldn't also help when running Firefox on Windows or Linux.

[via Lifehacker]

Microsoft Encarta is a digital encyclopedia that used to come on a CD-ROM, and eventually graduated to a web-based service. But in the age of Wikipedia, where even the Encyclopedia Brittanica allows users to suggest edits, it looks like Microsoft either can't or choose not to compete. The company is pulling the plug on Encarta later this year.

On October 31st, the company will turn off all of its Encarta web sites except for Encarta Japan for some reason, which will shut down a few months later. Microsoft will stop selling Encarta software by June. Microsoft will continue releasing updates for the software versions of Encarta until it shuts down the internet service.

Users who have paid for Encarta subscriptions will be refunded for the unused portion of their subscription.

[via Ars Technica]

Google Calendar may be a handy tool for keeping track of upcoming appointments because you can open it from any web browser. But sometimes a desktop tool can be more effective, because you don't need to open a web site to glance at your upcoming meetings.

GMinder is a desktop utility for Windows that hangs out in your system tray and sends you an alert when a Google Calendar appointment is nearing. You can also click the button to bring up a window with a list of upcoming appointments.

You can configure GMinder to work with any calendars linked to your account. In order to set up GMinder, just enter your Google username and password and click the download button to grab a list of available calendars. Click the check boxes next to the ones you want to see. You can also assign each calendar a color to make it easy to tell which calendar each appointment is linked with.

[via Lifehacker]

In need of a simple way to back up your browser and email profiles? It doesn't get much easier for Windows users than MailBrowserBackup.

Check the boxes, click backup, and choose a destination. That's it. The process itself is equally speedy and dumps each program's data to a separate file. Currently, MBB handles Firefox, Chrome, Iron, Thunderbird, and FileZilla.

MBB is also open source, completely portable, and exactly the kind of tool any good USB toolkit needs, though you might want to wait until next version to download it. Why?

This is the developer's first release, and some of the programs listed aren't supported yet (Opera, Safari, IE, Windows Mail, Incedimail, and eMule). They'll be available in v0.2, which he will also be porting to Linux.

Right now, it's great for systems like my home computers - which are running Firefox and Chrome. My customers, however, are mainly using Internet Explorer and Windows Mail, so for now I'll be sticking with KLS Mail Backup on my workbench.

Come version .2, the tiny, portable MailBrowserBackup will be ready for full-time use.

NirSoft makes a ton of free and incredibly useful applications for Windows. There are password storage and recovery tools, registry editing utilities, networking apps, and a ton of Windows Explorer add-ons. But there are so many useful programs at the NirSoft web site that it would take forever to download them all.

That's where the NirSoft Installer comes in. This app can install every single NirSoft utility in one fell swoop. Or you can pick and choose the ones you want to download and install. There are also options for downloading just the top 10 apps, all the programs designed for Windows 2000 or newer, or just the utilities for Windows 95/98/ME.

[via gHacks]

Desktop Twitter clients are a dime a dozen. But Twittastic Beta has a few features that really make it stand out from the crowd. This Twitter client for Windows does all the usual things, allowing you to see the latest updates from your friends, check direct messages or replies and send your own replies. For some reason there's no button for sending direct messages.

But Twittastic really shines when you want to share pictures or other files with your friends. The program features integration with Twitipic for image uploads and Drop.io for everything else. Want to share a document? Just click the Stuff button and select "Send a File." It will be uploaded to Drop.io and a link will be added to the text box. "Send a Picture" will do something similar, but using Twitpic. You can also drag and drop any file from your desktop or Windows Explorer into the desktop to upload it.

You don't have to stop at just sending images already saved on your PC. If you choose to send a screenshot, Twittastic will bring up a utility to let you capture a screenshot from your computer and automatically upload it to Twitpic. Or you can send an image from your webcam.

Twittastic also features integration with tweetshrink, which is a service that will help you stay within Twitter's 140 character limit by shortening certain words the same way the TweetDeck Twitter client does.

[via Technix Update]

Chances are good that almost everyone download and installing the freshly-leaked Windows 7 build 7068 ISO is installing Ultimate Edition - after all, it's the one our product keys work with and it'll run for over year with a valid key. Paul Thurrott, however, has taken the pains of installing each version- including Starter - to get a feel for what's coming.

We already knew that Starter would be extremely feature-limited. How full an experience would you expect from an OS that can only run three programs at once?

Regardless, one feature has been crippled that has a lot of people confused. In Windows 7 Starter Edition, the personalization option on the context menu isn't available. Worse yet, users can't even change their wallpaper.

Granted, Starter is only available in emerging markets and will probably only be used on very low-cost PCs (like netbooks) on which OEMs still want to provide a taste of the "Windows 7 experience." Taking that into consideration, letting manufacturers lock users into an OEM-branded wallpaper almost makes sense. Almost.

A little bit of permanent advertising in exchange for dropping the one desktop customization nearly every user wants to use seems like a poor trade-off.

We should remember that all Windows 7 versions are still in beta testing and we don't know for sure what Microsoft's plans for the RTM will be. With all the ruckus the Starter wallpaper lockdown has created, Microsoft will have to either make it customizable or stick to their guns and tell us all that personalization was never part of the plan for the most limited feature-limited version of Windows 7.

Fear not, future Starter Edition users. Rafael Rivera has already figured out how to circumvent the lock.

Do you ever have to design or have input into software user interfaces? If not, you might want to skip this post, but if so, Balsamiq Mockups might be of interest to you. The concept of the program is quite simple: create a bare-bones version of the user interface in question. So bare bones, in fact, that it almost looks like it was sketched.

The hand-drawn style might seem a little funny at first, but it serves a couple of very real purposes. Firstly, it makes it extremely clear that what you create with it is nothing but a mockup; nobody you show it to is actually going to expect that it be able to do anything. Second, it strips away all of the more subjective elements of design like color and shading, so you can focus on the usability of the layout of your user interface.

Balsamiq Mockups is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux, but unfortunately that flexibility comes with a price, in more ways than one. The first price is that it's a Flash application, so to run it on your machine as a desktop app requires Adobe Air. The second price is, well, the price: $79 US to be exact. Well, that's not entirely true. Yes, it is $79US for the full desktop version, but if you're not worried about being able to save your mockups or export them as PNG files, you can install a feature-limited desktop version for free.

[via John Watson]

Windows users that are fans of the OSX dock have plenty of options - RocketDock is usually the one that gets recommended. XWindows Dock is one I hadn't heard of before, and it offers some features that might give it an edge over the competition.

However, one small failing right off the bat is that XWindows Dock doesn't support drag and drop - which might be a deal breaker for some users. I don't change my dock icons all that often, so I wasn't put off by the few extra seconds required to browse for my go-to programs.

PNG icons are supported, and the dock's effects are configured in myriad ways. Icon size, transition effects, transparency, zoom level, reflections, shadows, and much more can be precisely tweaked. You can also choose to display your dock in a 2D or 3D view.

Leopard's stacks feature is also built in, and the Dock will automatically choose the best viewing style. You can specify manually of course, with grid, fan, gallery (pictured), and list views available.

One other shortcoming of note is that you can't change the location of XWindows Dock - it sits at the bottom of your screen. Development is very active, though, so maybe we'll see drag-and-drop and repositioning options soon.

The developer states "no other Windows application of this class has so many graphical subtleties such as reflections, transparencies, shadow and blur in a single package," and I'm inclined to agree. If you're using RocketDock, try XWindows Dock and let us know how you think it stacks up [insert groans].

[via AskVG]

Carsten Knobloch - who previously put together the first portable version of Google Chrome - had created a portable version of Digsby several months ago. Updates, however, caused it to stop functioning, but it looks like he's managed to solve the problem with some help from a friend.

On Monday, he posted an updated version of the popular multi-protocol instant messaging app (for which he thanks Stephan) that you can take with you on your flash drive. Better yet, he's been testing Digsby's update feature on the portable version and it's now applying them without issue.

The link above is for the German-to-English translation via Google, which will mess with your download. To get the Portable Digsby self-extracting archive, view the original page and click the link.