AllPeers is a free extension which combines the strength of Firefox and the efficiency of BitTorrent to transform your favorite browser into a media sharing powerhouse.

visit

This is really a freakin cool. Checkout this link.Use RumorMaker to generate a rumor, or create one for yourself.

Finally mihai had got time update the Greasemonkey scripts for Gmail. I had been using these on Firefox 1.x but somehow they never worked right for me on FF 1.5. He has added a couple of new scripts too.

• This add preview bubbles for conversations in Gmail, as shown in the screenshot.
  

• Persistent searches (a.k.a. smart folders or saved searches) seem to be the feature du jour of email clients.
  

• This adds additional keyboard shortcuts to Gmail. Some are obvious (and have been done by other scripts) such as “t” for move to trash and “r” for mark as read.
  The one I liked the most is pressing “g” brings up a Quicksilver-like display that allows you to begin typing in a label name to go to it (special names like “Inbox” and “Trash” work too).

  

• This script add the color-coded label support for Gmail.
  

Visit

In news that certainly is not making the existing RSS Aggregator companies happy, Microsoft Outlook program manager Michael Affronti has soft announced that RSS will be integrated with Outlook 12.

This will not only hurt the NewsGators and Attensas of the RSS space (those that have Outlook plugins to display RSS feeds). It will also impact Bloglines and others as users inevitably move their reading habits to the email client. The ability to drag stories right into subject folders, that may or may not contain emails as well, is just too useful to ignore.

A little tutorial found on the italian site www.manuali.net inspired bigthistle for this hack. That tutorial suggests to translate a webpage, using Google translator, to access it even if restricted.

ZDNET noticed Google updated the terms and conditions for Google Video. Video rentals are now mentioned:

Use of Content. By entering into this Agreement and uploading, sending or otherwise making available Your Authorized Content to Google, you are directing and authorizing Google to, and granting Google a royalty-free, non-exclusive right and license to, host, cache, route, transmit, store, copy, modify, distribute, perform, display, reformat, excerpt, facilitate the sale or rental of copies of, analyze, and create algorithms based on the Authorized Content in order to (i) host the Authorized Content.

Interesting to say the least. A number of video hosting sites have sprouted up this year, but advertising is still seen as the way to make a buck. Micropayments and rentals haven’t hit mainstream.

Google Video has been collecting videos to sell since its launch, but has not yet actually put any up for sale (videos people wanted money for just haven’t shown up in the index yet).

Francisco Javier Ocasio Gotay (aka KoL) is one of the best and well-known artists in the theming community and has been for years. 5 months ago he released the first version of his VistaXP theme which mimicked the look of Vista/Longhorn on Windows XP. On Monday he received a legal request to remove the theme from all sites, which he has now done.

The theme was originally released on 17th July 2005 and is arguably the best Vista port to date. The thread here at Neowin generated more than a 1000 comments and had nearly 300,000 visitors. It has taken the company nearly 5 months to contact KoL to ask him to remove the theme. Third party law firm, Seed IP contacted KoL 2 days ago. [source: neowin]

So let’s get the legal bit out of the way. KoL’s theme did contain Microsoft UI artwork, fonts and images that are subject to copyright, trademark, etc and as such Microsoft have every right to request that the them be removed. However, theming communities such as Neowin, WinCustomize, ThemeXP and deviantART are rife with ports of Microsoft’s Vista style to the Windows XP platform either as an MS Style or to the popular WindowsBlinds package by StarDock. Most, if not all, of these Vista themes draw from the same resources that KoL did to produce their themes. So, it would seem that KoL’s theme received attention from Microsoft because of it’s popularity.

So, a themer got busted by Microsoft for using copyright material, so what? Apple have been doing it for years. What’s the problem? Well I think Microsoft are going about it all wrong. Back when Windows XP was released it support themes and Visual Styles, but it only supported 3: Luna, Silver and Olive. Since then Microsoft have only released one extra official theme: Royale. To this day Windows XP does not directly support the addition of user-created visual styles, it requires a hacked uxtheme.dll or an application such as StyleXP or WindowsBlinds.

Here is a link to download this theme.

Aero Glass features translucencies and animations.

Aero Basic is more XP-like.

Build 5270 adds a new scalable user interface.

Extra large icons on the Vista deskop.

Small icons on the Vista desktop.

A few days after the release of the Windows Vista December CTP (build 5270) Paul Thurrott has put up a comprehensive review of it and claims as expected to already know most -if not all, the features in the build before anyone else.

Visit