Earlier this week the first Beta release of Defraggler 2.0 was posted, which is a pretty big milestone for the software. This defragmentation utility is freely available, and this update serves as the first major milestone in nearly three years (Defraggler 1.0 Beta debuted back in November 2007).

As our regular readers know I am the developer behind the CyberSearch Firefox extension, and I wanted to say thanks to all of our users for their bug reports... and especially Ronin who pointed out a doozy. He keeps up with nightly Firefox builds, and is kind enough to point out when some of our extension's features break.

I've been using a Mac for nearly two years, and with as many screenshots as I take there was just never an app that quite matched the capabilities of SnagIt on Windows. I'll admit that Skitch was pretty close, but the screenshot editor lacked in a lot of different areas. My biggest pet peeve is the inability to manage/manipulate multiple screenshots on the same canvas... a.k.a.

A few weeks ago we wrote about a free audio converter that was pretty nice, but when installing the app it tries to also put a bunch of third-party software on your machine. I made sure to point this out, but our readers stepped up and mentioned several other apps that are both free and clean. One of them, called winLAME, was recommended by Ian and really caught my attention.

I've been using Windows 7 Media Center as my dedicated media hub for the last few weeks, and it's been a nice upgrade from Vista Media Center. Some improvements include support for up to 4 tuners for each type (QAM, ATSC, etc...), a lot of interface improvements, and HD support to name a few. It can even play AVI/DivX files natively without needing any add-ons.

In our WrapUp earlier this morning we talked about how a new build of Office 2010 Beta had been leaked, and in this build Microsoft included new icons for each of the applications. It didn't take long for someone to extract all of the icons from the release and assemble them into an icon pack, which is exactly what one DeviantArt user did (our download mirror).

Mouse gestures are something that I've gotten into the habit of using for years now, and giving them up would almost be like giving up the ability to use keyboard shortcuts. Some gestures have become second nature to me, and when I'm on a computer that doesn't have that capability I get rather frustrated.

Today Apple kind of took everyone by surprise when they released a big milestone for the Safari browser. The new Safari 4 Beta from Apple borrows some ideas from their competition, and they spiced it up a bit with some fancy graphics. This is most notably seen in the "Top Sites" screen as seen in the image above.

Big news came Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) when Steve Ballmer said that they would be releasing a copy of Windows 7 Beta today that the public can actually get their hands on.

I've been waiting to see what Opera had in store for us in version 10, and it looks like everyone is finally getting a peak. In fact I'm a bit surprised by what has been revealed so far, but in a good way. For awhile it seemed like other browsers were trying to find their own ways to adopt features that were first introduced in Opera, but the opposite never really happened.

ESET NOD32 and Smart Security have always been my favorite security products because of their performance and high detection levels. There's some good news for current owners! ESET is getting ready to move to the next level with version 4 of their security suite and antivirus software.

If you like to stay on the bleeding edge of technology (and you're running Vista) you may want to consider modifying two registry keys on your system so that you can participate in the Vista SP2 Beta program. To join the program all you have to do is download this batch file, and run it on your Vista machine as an administrator.

Microsoft unveiled Windows 7 today at the Professional Developers Conferences (PDC). There wasn't anything too unbelievable, but they did show off a revamped Taskbar that some are saying is inspired by Mac's Dock. Windows 7 will use what looks like oversized quick launch icons. Don't be fooled though. Those icons are used to not only start apps, but also switch between them.

Last week we saw a revamped version of Paint in the third Windows 7 milestone. At the time there weren't any other screenshots available, but it looks as though someone who got their hands on Windows 7 M3 has decided to post some screenshots showing off more of the enhancements.

Here you thought that Windows 7 wasn't going to bring that "killer" feature we've all been waiting for. Well, you were wrong... big time! The third milestone of Windows 7 has been shown off to what appears to be a small group of people, and in it users are noticing that apps like Paint and Wordpad are adopting the Office 2007 Ribbon style interface.

When Mozilla launched Firefox 3 there were some people who weren't fond of the changes they made to the address bar. With it they decided to intermingle results from the user's history, bookmarks, and typed addresses to provide a long list of sites they might be trying to find.

Mozilla has released a new prototype extension that attempts to bring the command line to the browser. The extension, called Ubiquity, uses a set of predefined commands to do things like map an address the user has highlighted, shoot off an email, and more.

Mozilla is looking to drastically improve the JavaScript performance in Firefox 3.1 when it is released later this year. When Firefox 3 was released back in June it included a significant boost in the JavaScript performance arena, but will they be able to do it again?

The Opera team is pushing on after a big milestone release of their browser just a few months ago. Late last week they unveiled a pre-release version of Opera 9.60 for those of you who want to assist in the bug hunt, or just want a glimpse of what the future holds.

The open-source file sharing application Shareaza has been going through some tough times lately. They had their domain hijacked by a company called Discordia Ltd. back in December 2007, which is the same company who turned Bearshare and iMesh into paid services. On the Shareaza.com site they then started offering an app called "Shareaza 4" that promotes legal downloads.