We just wrote about how Gmail 2 breaks a lot of the Greasemonkey scripts that are available, and Gina from Lifehacker turned right around and released Better Gmail 2. As expected this version only has a fraction of scripts that the original extension had, and it still lacks some of my favorites: Google Calendar integration, Google Reader integration, and Folders4Gmail.

Just yesterday my Gmail account was upgraded to the new Gmail 2.0, and I can say first hand that there are definitely some speed improvements. Opening up emails only takes a split second, and the new contact manager is uber sweet. The coolest thing, however, is the new ability to bookmark emails, labels, and locations. For example, bookmarking:

I think Apple needs to start taking some of their cues from hackers because they are truly demonstrating what the masses want. When the iPhone was originally released hackers were forced to find a way to get real third-party applications onto the device, and it didn't take long for that to happen. Now Apple is trying to make amends by releasing a true SDK in February for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Microsoft has decided that they want to limit the Vista SP1 Beta download to a select group of testers while they work out some of the kinks. I'm sure as the development cycle progresses they will make a pre-release download freely available to the public, but there is a hack floating around now that will let you "join" in the Beta program.

I’m a huge fan of coming up with cheap hacks that replace otherwise expensive solutions. I thought I would use this article to discuss creating a low-cost laptop sleeve from various items, as well as picking up a nice laptop stand at the store for under $5. Hopefully these instructions will save you some time and money...

We all resize images quite frequently, but more times than not the result is not what we want. Either the image doesn’t scale correctly, or we are forced to crop off content that we would otherwise want to have. A solution for this problem might be just around the corner.

When Netflix started their streaming video service, dubbed "Watch Now," the first thing that popped into the minds of some people was saving the video to their hard drive. The problem is that the videos are plagued with DRM, as is most digital media these days, and you need to do some things in order to get around it.

Opera is a free web browser that is available for the Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems. One of the things that Opera is best known for is being highly customizable out-of-the-box, but I think that some people overlook how customizable the toolbars are.

One of Vista’s features that I use all of the time is the new Alt-Tab for switching between applications. Unlike Windows XP, Vista actually shows thumbnails for each application that you are running so that it is easier to identify what you’re looking for.

When we mentioned the Vystal software a month ago I was pretty excited. It was the first solution to come forward which offered Vista-like visual effects in Windows XP.

What do you do when AOL takes away your accounts? Hack into their network of course! A 17 year old teenager was angry that AOL took away his accounts, so to solve the problem on his own, he hacked into their network to try and get them back.

Hack a Mac was an offer that was put out to anybody who thought they could do it.  The prize? A new MacBook, and potentially $10,000. The point? Macs aren’t as secure as everybody thinks and Apple needs to pay more attention to this.

Anyone running the Aero Glass theme in Windows Vista has the option of choosing between multiple color schemes: default, graphite, blue, teal, red, orange, pink, or frost. The color scheme you choose, however, does not affect the color of your Taskbar.

Microsoft will be releasing a critical security update tomorrow (via Windows Update) to patch what is being referred to as the “Windows animated cursor” vulnerability.

Firefox is known for having its inline spell checker that underlines misspelled words as you type them. I truly believe that this feature in Firefox has helped the Internet as a whole become more readable by reducing the number of misspellings in even the simplest things, like comments.

While I have a tendency to use the Firefox browser most of the time, I do use Opera quite a bit as well. Opera is kind of my casual browser because it is slim, efficient, and yet powerful while Firefox offers the extensibility that I need when plowing my way through hundreds of different sites I visit everyday.

The day after Vista was released to consumers, we presented you with a workaround that would allow you to postpone Vista activation for up to 120 days.

There are all kinds of Firefox tips and tricks available on the Web, and when I come across some of the cool ones (many in forums) I jot them down real quick. That way I don’t have to post about just one of the tricks, and instead I can show you a whole compilation of them.

The other day we mentioned a key generator for Windows Vista that would randomly generate product keys until it actually found one that worked. This method might work, but the author has actually admitted that the success rate is far too low for it to work for anyone.

There was no doubt that hackers would develop cracks to get Windows Vista illegally, but as it turns out a crack isn’t really needed. That’s because a new brute force method has been found that will continuously try product keys until Vista accepts one of them. At a rate of 20,000 keys per hour (480,000 per day) it might take a few hours or days to find one that works.