Opera has decided to take the route that other software companies are taking to improve the user experience. They are now asking people to download an experimental build of Opera (version 9.12) that will test a new reporting function that they have implemented. Like most other usage reports, this one is not designed to steal any personally identifiable information from you.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) just wrapped up about at week ago in Las Vegas.  This is a chance for companies to show off all of their latest and greatest products among other things.  Several handy gadgets perfect for the traveler were on display, and here's a look at some of them:

Now before I get started I want to say that I use openSUSE as my choice of Linux distribution and couldn't be happier with it. They always seem to be on top of implementing new technologies that are easy-to-use and really appealing to those who want the latest and greatest.

Following along with the bird theme, Flock has announced that their code name for the Cardinal successor (Cardinal is the current 0.7.x release) is Cormorant, a medium-to-large seabird. Originally, the next big release was supposed to be Danphe, however they've taken a step back to evaluate where they currently are, and where they'd like to be.

There is no doubt that the Wii causes enough damage as it is from arms being whipped through the air as excitement builds in a game. Heck, there is even a site, Wii Have A Problem, that is dedicated to sharing everyone's stories on how they got injured or what objects they have broken. All of this commotion comes from one little video game system that has motion sensitive controllers.

Wikipedia is taking new steps to help prevent "indirect" vandalism.  Software has been created and is in use on the main page.  It's called "Cascading Protection" and it applies to local images and templates which are typical targets for vandalism. Andrew Garrett created this, and on his blog explains in a simplified way how it works:

Going along with our recent poll, here's another question for you.  How many of you that own an Xbox 360, also own or owned at one point the original Xbox?  According to Chris Satchell of Microsoft, he's saying that so far, 10.4 million Xbox 360 units have been sold.  But, even more interesting is that he says over half of those have come from people that never owned the original Xbox.

Last week we asked "When was the last time that you used a floppy disk." Apparently, the floppy disk is becoming a thing of the past! For 53% of you, it's been a thing of the past for at least five years! In second place with 22% of the votes was the response, "it's been a few years," and third place was "during the last year" with 8 percent of the votes.

We had just released a great new feature yesterday where registered users can pick and choose which sidebar items they want to show up. That's when CoryC made a comment with the first request for the first optional sidebar add-on:

It's Free for all Friday, and thanks to a couple of tips from our users, I have a new service for you to try.  It's called Secunia Software Inspector.

Today I have been working on a new feature for the site. It allows registered users to customize which sidebar items appear and which ones don't!

If you use BitTorrent search isoHunt.com, you've probably noticed that the site is now offline. This happened yesterday, and  according to their website, it says And in the mean time, they were recommending using Google by searching for "Search Terms ext:torrent."

When Internet Explorer 7 was released, there was speculation that it would end up taking some of the market share away from Firefox who had been experiencing growth at the time.  Well, 100 million installations of IE7 have occurred and Firefox hasn't lost any of their market share.  In fact, they have continued to grow over the last three months.

Google has updated their AdSense policies, and I thought there were a few interesting changes worth pointing out. Their policies continue to get more defined with more restrictions and rules to follow.

With all the hype focused on Firefox 3 and Thunderbird 2, we tend to forget about some of Mozilla's other great applications.

More new announcements from the Windows Vista team today!  With the launch of Windows Vista and Office 2007, consumers who live in the United States will be able to go online to purchase and download both pieces of software.  They're clearly catering to the more tech-savvy crowd with this option, who would prefer it over going to the store to purchase it.  If you're wanting to do this, you'll definitely need a great Internet connection, because it will be a large download.

The Windows Command Prompt (found by going to Run and typing in CMD) is actually a tool that I use quite often.

In October of 2006 we saw one of my favorite Linux releases get unveiled: Fedora Core 6. It was a significant improvement in speed over the previous versions which I found to be nearly unusable with my hardware. Actually, what I've been playing with lately is the Fedora Core 6 Live CD that was just released toward the end of December, and this is a great way to see how much you like Fedora.

In our Object Desktop 2007 review, we mentioned that WinCustomize is a great place to get themes for the various applications that are a part of Object Desktop.  Just yesterday, they launched their WinCustomize 2007 with a completely different look.  It appears that a lot of time went into the design, making it easier for users to navigate.

Ubuntu, and nearly all versions of Linux are fairly easy to install aside from some terminology that Windows users may not be familiar with during the installation process. Of course, that is with a fresh install on a new hard drive...if you want to run Ubuntu on the same hard drive as your Windows installation there is always the possibility that you may mess up your existing Windows partition.