Firefox extensions are often lauded for the additional features and functionality that they bring to the browser. Some of them can save you crazy amounts of time, while others are more about beautifying Firefox.

Win; Mac; Linux Flock 1.2 Beta is now available, and as hard as it is to believe this version is even more social. This Beta makes it possible to keep up with your friends' activity on Digg or Pownce, and get AOL email notifications instantly as new messages come crawling in.

If you've ever purchased a domain name you know what a hassle it can be to find one that's available. So many of them are not available that it often takes dozens of searches to get one that you actually want. Domize is an excellent free service that might just take the pain and frustration out of searching for the domains though.

For whatever reason I frequently find myself needing to resize and measure things on my computer screen. I'm normally measuring some images, trying to figure out how much space I have to work with, or want to make sure things are spaced evenly. It's taken me a little while to find the tools that are just right for the job, but I think I've done it!

One of my favorite additions to the Firefox 3 browser (currently in Beta) are Smart Bookmarks. There's a good chance that you've played with things in other applications that are similar to Smart Bookmarks.

Yahoo, just like Google, has decided that they need to start taking steps to protect users from malicious search results that they might be serving up. They're calling the new feature SearchScan, and it is powered by McAfee's SiteAdvisor.

One of the features in Mac OS X that often gets some attention is what's called "hot corners." It's a simple concept that gives the user an opportunity to assign actions that are performed whenever their mouse hits a corner of the screen. With the help of some free Windows apps you too will also be able to bask in the goodness known as hot corners!

Mac only Last week we covered an amazing free application called Weather Watcher, and it's hands down my favorite way to keep up with weather developments on my Windows computer. When it comes to Mac's I think most people stick with widgets to do the weather watching, but a free app called WeatherDock might be just what the doctor ordered.

Windows only You know that scroll wheel on your mouse? It's pretty handy to have when you're navigating around documents quickly and whatnot. But did you know that there is a lot more that you can use it for other than just scrolling?

This article might seem familiar to some of you because we've covered shutdown utilities quite a bit in the past, but rest easy knowing that this is going to be different than anything you may or may not have read. We're going to cover some of the best shutdown programs and tips out there since, as Ashley has pointed out, this coming Saturday is Shutdown Day.

Weather is an important part of our daily lives, and can drastically affect any plans that we have. Lucky for us the Internet is making it easy to stay on top of weather developments as they happen, and the newest Beta of Weather Watcher for Windows lets you do it in style.

If you're using Firefox there is a very good chance that you've heard of the IE Tab extension. For many of us it helped ease the burden of switching to Firefox as the primary browser back when developers didn't see Firefox as a viable alternative. That is not nearly as big of a problem as it once was.

One thing that I'm always careful about backing up is my browser's profile. There is a lot of information stored in there, and it would be a real shame if I lost it all. If you're running Opera then you're in for a real treat with this backup utility. OperaFly is a nifty little free program that runs on Windows.

Last year we took a look at a sweet PDF reader called PDF-XChange Viewer. One of my favorite things that it includes is a tabbed system for managing multiple PDF's. It seems like everything is getting tabs these days, and there's no doubt that they fit very well into a PDF reader. It sure beats having ten different windows open and trying to switch between them all, doesn't it?

Stardock has released a new application called MyColors that will really appeal to college students/alumni and sports fanatics. The program itself is a free download, and it's goal is to completely skin your Windows XP or Vista operating system. It changes the theme, background, icons, gadgets, media player, and more.

I was starting to become skeptical as to whether it was possible to have an Aero Glass theme for Firefox much like that of Internet Explorer 7, but there is now proof that it can be done. One top-notch developer took it upon himself to create an extension that would create a fancy eye-catching interface . The result is the Glasser extension.

Do you find yourself using the right-click/context menu in Firefox rather frequently? If so you might benefit from having the menu automatically appear whenever you highlight some text on a site. For some people, including myself, that can be a huge time saver.

Sometimes it's hard to grasp just how valuable something as simple as a screenshot can be. When we first started writing on CyberNet we didn't always focus on providing screenshots of the things that we wrote about, but it didn't take long for us to see that they often got our point across more than words ever could. And that is part of what's made our site as successful as it is.

You might remember the freeware application Pitaschio that we covered last year which includes a "snap to windows" feature that I really love. Basically how it works is when you're dragging a window around the screen it detects when you're near another window based on a tolerance you specify. It would then snap the two windows together so that they line up perfectly.

A few weeks ago we demonstrated an extremely simple backup solution called IdleBackup. It was nothing too fancy, and this time around we wanted to go to the other extreme with a freeware Windows backup application that will really knock your socks off. The program is called Cobian Backup, and I wouldn't have found it without Leland's help.