I'm a little disappointed in Microsoft right now because they almost included an outstanding feature in Windows Vista. The other day one of the Firefox nightly builds crashed which wasn't a shock to me. And when a program crashes in Vista it always checks with Microsoft to see if other people are experiencing the same problem.

Have you ever been on a page with a ton of animated GIF's, and all you're trying to do is read the content? It can get quite distracting, but if you're using Firefox or Internet Explorer just hit the ESC key. Doing so will immediately pause all of the animated GIF images on the page. Go ahead, try it with this image:

Want to know how to make (and unlimited) national or international calls to friends and family? The answer is Talkster.  Of course you're probably thinking that they have to pay for it somehow, so "what's the catch?" There is a catch, but it's a small one and one that won't take away from the usefulness or attractiveness of the service.

I absolutely love Google Talk because of its simplicity, and the fact that I've got all of my friends using it is a huge plus. There is only one thing that I really dislike with the instant messenger, and it's that I can't change my status to away.

One of the things that I really love with Google is it's support for recognizing calculations and conversions in the search box. We've already demonstrated how many different ways you can use the Google calculator, but I was disappointed to find out that no one had made a Vista Sidebar Gadget for it yet.

Last week Gmail launched free IMAP support, which was one of the most user-requested features. We were fortunate and got the IMAP access to show up in our account simply by logging out and logging back in, but some of my friends are still sitting around waiting for it to show up in their accounts.

When NBC Universal and News Corp announced that they were teaming up back in March, most people assumed that they were doing so to take on YouTube by launching a video sharing site. As it turns out, they had no intention of competing with YouTube and instead had their eyes set on creating a place where people would be able to view video content online.

Mac OS X Leopard has been freed from captivity and is now in the hands of keyed-up Apple fans.

Welcome to Daily Downloads brought to you by CyberNet! Each weekday we bring you the Windows software updates for widely used programs, and it's safe to assume that all the software we list is freeware (we'll try to note the paid-only programs).

One of Vista's shining points that often gets looked over is the amazing parental controls that are included with it.  Microsoft certainly spent some time thinking this feature through because it's thorough and gives parents control over nearly every aspect of their child's computer use.