The Daily Download

Just a simple hotkey combo away, Launchy is a handy tool that lets you open nearly any program, file, folder, or Web site on your system with just a few keystrokes.

Enter the first few letters of a file or program, and Launchy's small, skinnable interface automatically displays the rest of the name. You simply press Enter to open or launch it. If the displayed name isn't the item you want, a few seconds later the tool displays a drop-down list with other likely candidates from which you can choose. Configuring Launchy is as easy as using the tool itself, and it can be directed to look only at specific directories if need be. Easy to master, it performed without a hitch in all Download.com tests, and could easily replace the Start menu or Windows Explorer--as long as you know the name of what you're looking for. Recommended for all.

Adobe on Thursday is expected to launch a beta test program for the latest version of its Flash Player software.

Flash Player 10, developed under the code name Astro, includes better support for 3D animation and video hardware acceleration, among other improvements.

Adobe said that Flash Player 10 will now support custom visual effects, created with Adobe's free Pixel Bender tools. Developers can write code to create effects that can be rendered by Flash Player at runtime.

Developers can also now target code to render through graphics processors, speeding up performance and freeing CPU bandwidth, Adobe says.

The beta version of Flash Player 10 will be available from Adobe's Labs site.

Flash Player 10 will run on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Mac OS X and Linux.

Adobe said that some of the new features in Flash Player 10 will ultimately be incorporated into a future release of Adobe AIR and the Open Screen Project, Adobe's movement to create industry consensus around Flash-based technologies for mobile devices.

I had an interesting discussion today about Firefox with Mozilla's Mike Schroepfer and Mike Beltzner. One of the things we drilled into a bit was the address bar in Firefox 3 (download). It's being called the "awesome bar" at Mozilla, and while it will end up with an official name eventually (the "smart location bar"), what it does for users can fairly be described as awesome. And as it's probably the most important touchpoint in the browser, it's worth exploring not just what it means for users but for Mozilla as well.

The Firefox 3 address bar helps users auto-complete the URLs they type in, but it's smarter than it appears at first. The choices that pop to the top of the list as you type are not based just on best text match, but on your previous behavior. Sites you visit frequently pop up higher on the list. Bookmarked sites also get special treatment. And since Firefox now has a new high-performance database to record your behavior, it can track what you do over a long period of time; it doesn't have to flush your history every week or so to keep the performance up.

The "awesome bar" knows what I want.

A potential issue with the address bar, for Mozilla, is that it decreases users' reliance on the search bar. And it's the search bar that pays the rent: Mozilla makes money by sending traffic to Google. Schroepfer and ... Read more

The new chat function lets users talk to their friends about the music they're borrowing from them.

(Credit: Simplify Media)

As the self-imposed deadline of June approaches, Simplify Media remains in beta for Windows, Mac, and mobile users. The iTunes and Winamp plug-in that lets you share your music with friends has, however, added three new features: chat, a "now playing" message that displays what your friends are listening to from your collection, and a built-in password reset for the forgetful among us.

The chat feature is the strongest, allowing you to directly communicate with friends, family, and even enemies with whom you've shared your music. It's a great way to give and get some direct feedback on what you're currently listening to, almost like a personalized mixtape with live commentary.

The "now playing" message pops up in your Media List, and is a reasonable (if somewhat navel-gazing) way to see what your friends like from your list. It'd be better if it kept statistics, but it still dovetails nicely with the chat feature. Nothing like interrupting a friend getting their groove on by asking them what they think about the music.

ToneThis hails from the school of personalized cell phone content that errs on the side of simplicity. Not everyone wants or needs dozens of settings to produce a functional ringtone or wallpaper photo, and to that end, ToneThis is the perfect entree for casual customizers.

It's got a few basic enhancements for editing ringtone length and adding fades, but it could stand to gain a few more. Even novice users might like to reduce red-eye in a favorite photo. Still, for many, ToneThis will be the hassle-free vehicle of choice for getting their videos, music, and photos onto their cell phones.

Mac users may have it easy with iTunes, but Windows fans should look elsewhere for solid features, a customizable interface, and device syncing support that doesn't devour resources. That's why there's MediaMonkey, which juggles excellent library-management tools with skins, plug-ins, autotagging, links to the Amazon.com MP3 store, track encoding, podcast catching, and more.

Upon first launch, the program scans your drive for supported digital media files to add to the library. Files are sorted based on their ID3 tags, and the helpful Auto-Rename and Auto-Tag From Filename features keep untagged tracks from falling through the cracks. Party mode locks down your library while still allowing people to request songs. Third-party plug-ins are available from the site if you want to tinker with the playback and encoding engine or add additional sound-processing effects. Throw $20 at the Monkey to get advanced features such as sleep, scripting, previewing, and on-the-fly file conversion when syncing with a portable device, but all the best features come in the free version.

Sonic jumps onto cell phones for free.

(Credit: Sega Mobile)

Sonic the Hedgehog has seen a platform or four.

The spikey-furred rodent first brought to life by Sega in 1991 for proprietary consoles rolled with technology's punches onto TV, Xbox, PS3, and recently, onto mobile phones. April saw the spawning of Sega Mobile, when several flagship games, including Sonic the Hedgehog, were ported to mobile phone format and offered to cell phone gamers for subscription or sale through their carrier's Web portals. Now Sega Mobile is offering Sonic Jump, Afterburner II, and Golden Axe free of charge for U.S. residents.

The catch, as you may have guessed, is that the games are ad-supported, offered through a partnership with content distributor Greystripe. Sega's games are available for select cell phone models via GameJump.com or from the mobile Web at http://gjmp.tw. In addition to showing advertisements, the GameJump policy warns that users may be charged between 5 cents and 15 cents for the data transfer of each freshly-served ad; something to keep in mind if you're not on a data plan.

Taking a slightly different approach to solving the multimedia lover's dilemma of how best to download torrents is BitComet, which goes to great lengths to integrate familiar features like bookmarking with torrent management and discovery.

Although the program has moved on from the scandals of its past, it's still heavily reliant on advertising. Join me in this First Look at BitComet to help you decide if it's worth the download.

Yahoo now offers a beta version of its Delicious browser plug-in for online bookmarking functions.

(Credit: Yahoo)

Delicious, Yahoo's "social bookmarking" site that lets people archive, tag, and share Web site addresses, got its start closely tied to the Firefox open-source Web browser (download Delicious for Firefox). Now Yahoo is branching out to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, too.

The company released a beta version of the IE plug-in Tuesday (available on Download.com). Though there are differences, the IE version is similar, offering users the ability to add and tag bookmarks and to search their own bookmark collection.

"We're very excited about this release, as we have many users who use Internet Explorer as their primary browser," said Nick Nguyen, senior product manager for Delicious, in a Delcious blog postint Tuesday.

The software works on IE 6, IE 7, and the IE 8 beta on Windows XP and Vista, Yahoo said.

(Credit: Microsoft Research)

Last night, Microsoft Research released WorldWide Telescope--new, free software that enables users to explore the universe with impressive content from the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, and other famed ground- and space-based telescopes. Colorful nebulae, distant galaxies, black holes, and radiation clouds are all accessible from your desktop with a few clicks. The software has been released for free in honor of Jim Gray, a Microsoft researcher who was lost at sea last year.

Google Earth added a similar feature called Google Sky with its Version 4.2 release. Google also offers a browser-based version of Google Sky, while Microsoft requires the download and installation of the WorldWide Telescope software. Google Sky is a bit more user friendly right now, but Microsoft has the advantage of a wealth of content. For example, Google Sky offers infrared, microwave, and historical views of objects in the universe; WorldWide Telescope allows nearly 50 different types of viewing, including infrared dust maps and cosmic microwave background, along with a bevy of other options that I couldn't even begin to explain.

Google Sky has the advantage of being quite a bit easier to pick up and use immediately, but in actuality, WorldWide Telescope is a totally different beast. Google Sky is a bonus feature that Google added onto its Earth-imagery application; WorldWide Telescope's primary objective is to create a visual representation of the universe on your desktop. You can peruse telescope ... Read more