I’m a firm believer that most of the innovation in browsers is coming from the open-source players. This week brings a number of interesting developments from the browser arena, especially if you use either of the two most popular open source browsers: Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Firefox is slated to come out in a new version 3.6 next week, with several improvements, and I’m hoping it will iron out a few of the instabilities I’ve experienced in Firefox 3.5. Meanwhile, the Google Chrome team has announced a new collection of Artist Themes for enhancing your browser’s look.  The themes come from a diverse list of well-known designers and artists, ranging from Dolce & Gabanna to pop star Mariah Carey. They’re very slick. And finally, the Arora browser, which is based on the open source WebKit rendering engine,is out in a new, cross-patform version that makes it especially easy to block ads.

As PC World notes, Firefox 3.6 will have a number of enhancements, including faster JavaScript handling, better Bookmark synchronization, page load enhancements, a better approach to restoring sessions, a way of checking for outdated plug-ins, and more. The Mozilla team has steadily been working on some of version 3.5’s stability issues, and there will be lots of bug fixes in version 3.6. Mozilla has also confirmed that a much overhauled Firefox version 4.0 will arrive next year.

The Google Chrome browser’s new Artist Themes are quite eye-popping. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that they could make good conversation starters when you’re working around other people. You can get a sense of how they work and look from this OStatic post. The theme seen atop this post was produced by fine artist and poster maven Yulia Brodskaya, while Wes Craven has supplied a spooky theme. To add a theme to Chrome, you just open Chrome and go to the Chrome Theme Gallery, pick one you like, then click “Apply theme.”

While it’s unlikely to become your primary browser, if you have a need for a very lightweight browser, Arora is out in a new version .10. It’s based on the open source WebKit engine, and you can use it on Windows, the Mac, and Linux. Download Squad notes that you can easily enable ad blocking in Arora with one click. I also think it’s lightweight and snappy enough to make sense as a portable browser to carry on a USB flash drive.

Which open-source browser do you use, and why?

Google has apparently made enough progress with its pre-release Google Wave project that, starting today, the company is rolling out a preview version, although it’s only available to some users. Wave has been available for a small group of developers already, but now more than 100,000 invitations to try Wave in its newest incarnation will go out to active preview developers, the first users who signed up and offered to give feedback upon Wave’s announcement, and some customers of Google Apps.

Wave was first introduced in May, and caused many people to hail it as a next-generation, cutting-edge communications tool. It combines email, instant messaging, wiki features and more, into a splashy-looking unified stream of messages, images and thoughts, as seen in the screenshot here. There is also a video of Wave in action available here. Google has served up some interesting examples of how Wave might be used, and although I choose to reserve some skepticism about it, it is without a doubt attracting interest.

Upon Wave’s announcement in May, Jordan over at GigaOM questioned whether it will really be “what email would be if it were invented today,” as the project’s development team refers to it. Most attempts that I’ve seen over the years at “universal inboxes,” incorporating streams of messages and media from multiple sources, haven’t been as useful as their creators thought they would be.

But there are some interesting potential applications. Here, journalist Andy Ihnatko imagines using Wave in conjunction with his column editor for a new spin on speeding a piece of writing into published form. Filmmakers have also weighed in on how Wave might be used for collaboration purposes and co-editing. And ZDnet makes the case that enterprises may find novel uses for Wave.  When I’ve seen Wave in video demos, it’s looked to me like it might be useful for jazzing up and diversifying the way people comment on blog posts and online articles.

Wave’s developers concede that it is still a work in progress. Still, you may be one of the Google Apps users or people who expressed interest in Wave to get the preview version this week. It’s definitely an application to watch. If you’d like to learn more about Wave, check out the GigaOM Pro report “Google Wave Explained” (subscription required).

If you’ve received a Wave invitation, let us know what you think of the service in the comments.

If you happen to work for a small startup business, and have the need for web development and tools, you may want to look into a new program that Microsoft has launched: WebSiteSpark. The specifics of the program are in this announcement. Essentially, Microsoft is offering a number of its widely-used development tools to small startups for free, or essentially for free. Here are more details, and some of the restrictions that apply.

WebSiteSpark offers software licenses for Microsoft’s widely-used development tools that startups can use for three years at no cost. Support is included with the licenses, as is free online training. The program is especially aimed at independent web developers and web development companies that build web applications and web sites on behalf of others. Startups with fewer than 10 employees can qualify for the freebies, and Microsoft will track the progress of companies that qualify. Some observers are noting that these are fairly tight restrictions, but the program is likely to represent cost savings for some of the qualified companies.

If you do qualify for the free offerings, you get:

• 3 licenses of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
• 1 license of Expression Studio 3 (which includes Expression Blend, Sketchflow, and Web)
• 2 licenses of Expression Web 3
• 4 processor licenses of Windows Web Server 2008 R2
• 4 processor licenses of SQL Server 2008 Web Edition
• DotNetPanel control panel (enabling easy remote/hosted management of your servers)

CNet’s Matt Asay makes the good point that there are many free, open source development and platform tools that don’t come with any strings attached, and they compete directly with the offerings above. He points to the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) stack in particular, but WebSiteSpark should be a good program for many companies. It’s one of several “Spark” programs that Microsoft has recently launched, including BizSpark, which also provides free software to startups.

Will you be taking part in the WebSiteSpark program?

Last week, the IEEE’s Standards Board ratified the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard, which will increase the number of certified compatible products based on the standard, and is likely to encourage many businesses and users to upgrade from previous 802.11g Wi-Fi technology. Of course, many people, myself included, have been using pre-ratification Draft-N technology for a long time; I wrote last year that the Draft-N technology was worth upgrading to. Many Mac users have been using it by default for a long time via Apple’s Airport Express routers. If you are still using 802.11g, though, now is the time to upgrade. Here are some tips for getting the most out of this faster wireless technology.

Much Faster and More Dependable, But Test It. The primary advantage of 802.11n over previous Wi-Fi standards is speed. It takes advantage of MIMO (multiple-input, multiple-output) antenna technology for much faster performance than 802.11g offers. If you are upgrading to 802.11n on a Windows network, I highly recommend the free application Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector for managing and troubleshooting connections, and monitoring your signal performance.

Better Range, But Optimize It. In previous posts I’ve done on Wi-Fi, I’ve been surprised at how many readers use a router only for their home Wi-Fi setups, and no access points. Access points, including 802.11n access points, extend your roaming range while preserving a strong Wi-Fi signal, and can be bought for under $75 — often much less. If you install new 802.11n Wi-Fi technology, and were planning on using just a router, you may want to experiment with at least one access point (I use several at home). You can get a good 802.11n router for under $100, so there is room to optimize the components on your network. Of course, whether you need access points will depend on the size of the space you want covered, how many floors you want covered, etc. The range is good enough with 802.11n that I know people who have a router on the bottom floor of a home and get a good signal upstairs and far away.

Experiment With Access Point Placement. It’s surprising how finicky Wi-Fi components are, including 802.11n components. As you put in a new Wi-Fi network, try different placements for your router and access points. The smallest change can make a big difference in the performance and range that you get. Remember that Wi-Fi is radio technology, so it tends to work best away from obstructions, and away from metal.

Security Matters. While this point pertains to Wi-Fi networks of all stripes, it’s also well-known that one of the biggest mistakes people make when putting in a new Wi-Fi network is not establishing proper security. It used to be that to secure your wireless network you had to know your way around complicated acronyms and the like, but now you can just follow the steps on your router’s installation CD to lock your network down.

Keep Track of Upcoming 802.11n Offerings, and Certification. The Wi-Fi Alliance is the main body that certifies Wi-Fi products for interoperability and performance. The logo above is the one that the organization uses in certification — look for it. Also, many businesses don’t upgrade their Wi-Fi networks until the IEEE ratifies a standard, which just happened for 802.11n. As businesses upgrade, there are likely to be new products and good deals appearing, which should be worth keeping track of.

Are you using a 802.11n in your home network?

Sometimes, technologies that are ready for prime time don’t arrive in official, finalized form for ages. For example, although many of us have been using high-speed Draft 802.11n Wi-Fi technology for years now, it was only a few days ago that the IEEE officially ratified the 802.11n spec. Likewise, USB 3.0, or SuperSpeed USB has been working technically well for a long time now, but hasn’t arrived for widespread use in products. (If you want to learn more about USB 3.0, see Stacey’s post over on GigaOM, “Everything You Need to Know About USB 3.0.“) There are some strong signs that that is about to change, and the true arrival of USB 3.0 could change the way you work in many ways — for the better.

All the way back in August of last year, I wrote a post on the delivery of the final specification of USB 3.0, and how it would soon usher in many new conveniences. “Soon” turned out to be jumping the gun, and I’m still waiting for some of the USB 3.0-enabled devices that I want to arrive. Now it looks like we’ll see product development start in earnest.

As CNET reports, next week’s Intel Developer Forum will include several USB 3.0-capable devices. They include a Fujitsu laptop that will exchange data with an external USB drive from Buffalo Technology, and a high-performance  digital video camera from Point Grey Research capable of streaming 1080p high-definition video at 60 frames per second to a computer.

It’s easy to underestimate how much impact a connectivity technology like this can have on all of us. I clearly remember when USB 2.0 took off, suddenly ushering in many new types of audio, video and storage devices. However, the data transfer speed improvements in USB 2.0 over the original USB technology were not tremendous.

That’s hardly true for USB 3.0, which boosts data transfer rates 10 times over current USB technology. Cameras — video and still — will take on many new conveniences, allowing users to stream content very quickly to computers. Backing up data to external USB storage devices will speed up tremendously, and there are even other benefits expected from USB 3.0. For example, simple downloading and uploading will speed up significantly. USB 3.0, unlike version 2.0, is bi-directional, meaning that it can send and receive data at the same time. Additionally, USB 3.0 is targeted to allow peripheral devices plugged into, say, a laptop to suffer fewer charge drains. Devices being charged while plugged into a USB port will also charge faster.

CNET and others expect that a big wave of USB 3.0 devices could be upon us before the end of the year — worth keeping in mind as you start preparing your holiday wish list.

What benefits are you hoping USB 3.0 will bring?

This week brings several pieces of significant news on the browser front, about Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 8. As covered on the OStatic blog, Google has announced a new, stable version 3.0 of Chrome. It’s downloadable here, and if you’re already using it, you’ll get an automatic update. Meanwhile, Mozilla announced new tools, and Internet Explorer — which has been steadily losing market share, to Firefox in particular — bested all other browsers in an interesting set of tests.

Chrome 3.0. Google’s announcement post on Chrome 3.0 provides walkthroughs of several of the new features in the browser. There are improvements to the Omnibox, which is the combination search/address bar in Chrome. You can now get drop-down lists in the Omnibox that show not only URLs, but also bookmarks, search options and more. Themes are also now supported in Chrome, and there are also HTML5 enhancements, which could make working with video and audio much more flexible.

Probably the biggest news about Chrome of all, though, is that the JavaScript performance is much improved. Below are Google’s own benchmark charts showing JavaScript tests (bigger is better in the first chart, and smaller is better in the second one).

Internet Explorer 8. I rarely use Internet Explorer any more, and I feel that most of the meaningful innovation is going on in the open-source browsers, with Firefox and Chrome leading the way. However, AnandTech came out this week with a very interesting browser face-off, which focused entirely on which browser preserves battery life the best on portable computers. The surprise winner was IE 8. The tests involved constantly loading and unloading various browsers and tracking battery life. I would have thought Chrome or Opera would win in these kinds of tests, but no.

Firefox and SeaMonkey. Mozilla released its Jetpack project a few months ago, and this week it updated Jetpack to version 0.5. Jetpack is an API and framework designed to make building extensions for Firefox easy enough for non-developers. You can get the new Jetpack here, and create your own extensions. Meanwhile, Mozilla has also released a second beta of version 2.0 of its SeaMonkey project, which is a collection of Internet apps. At the core of the collection, there is a speedy browser based on the same engine that Firefox uses. You also get a simple HTML editor, IRC chat functions, and more.

Is IE8’s apparently low power consumption enough of a reason to use it?

I noted with interest that Microsoft has announced a new feature in its Bing search engine, focused on visual searches. You can try it here (note that it requires you to have Silverlight installed). Like some of the dedicated visual search engines, it presents a way to do web searches by clicking through collected visual images, instead of entering keywords. Initially, it’s only available for certain types of search categories.

To perform searches, you start with a category such as “Digital Cameras,” where a search will present you with a large tapestry of individual photos of camera; a portion of the digital camera-related results is shown below. Clicking on any camera in the tapestry will take you to dedicated search results for that camera. This seems, in particular, to be a good search metaphor for, say, shopping for tech products online, where the look of the product might matter a lot to you. For general use, though, there are some other visual search engines that I favor.

As Webware notes, the new visual search feature in Bing “showcases the real value of having a search engine that blends structured data into the results.” As long as you perform visual searches on topics that are mainstream, for which Bing will tend to have a lot of structured data pre-indexed, you’ll tend to get rich sets of results back. The digital camera shopping example I supplied above is a good example of that. You can identify the camera you might like by its design, then jump immediately to lots of specific data about it. For less mainstream topics, though, the visual metaphor won’t be so useful, which is probably why Microsoft only supplies a limited number of topic categories as it beta tests the new feature.

There are a few other visual search engines that I think I’ll probably continue to use more regularly than I’ll use Bing’s new feature. Two of my favorite ones, which I wrote about here, are Viewzi, and RedZ. The best way to get a sense of what these do is to try a search, but Viewzi essentially lets you toggle between many types of visual presentations for any search topic, and RedZ gives you a rotatable set of web page thumbnails, as seen below for a search on digital cameras. You can then cycle, or rotate, through the results just as you would cycle through album art on an iPod with the Cover Flow feature.

If you haven’t tried it, I also recommend giving SpaceTime3D a try. It’s a little like RedZ, in that it presents you with arrays of web page thumbnails that you can cycle through to see what may interest you, but it presents bigger and nicer representations of the pages, and has a very slick interface.

I don’t rely on visual searches all the time, but for tasks such as shopping for new technology products online, researching people and news stories, and anything else where a picture can be worth a thousand words, these tools are useful.

What do you think of Bing’s Visual Search feature?

The Google Chrome browser has been in existence for a little over a year now, and has close to three percent market share, according to NetApplications. Many people attribute its relatively low market share thus far to lack of availability of finished Mac and Linux versions, as well as a lack of of the kinds of very useful extensions that are available for Firefox. On that last front, Google is taking a bold step forward, and making support for extensions turned on by default on versions of the browser obtained through the Dev channel, which anyone can subscribe to. The news was announced on the Chromium blog, and is a strong sign that a healthy ecosystem of extensions is on the way for one of the speediest and most innovative browsers.

Google’s Dev channel has been the way to get new versions of Chrome that are in development at the earliest opportunity, and while the versions aren’t final or always totally stable, many Chrome users stay updated through it to get the latest features. Until now, access to support for extensions for Chrome has been available only for developers.

If you subscribe through the Dev channel, you can now begin using quite a few useful extensions with Chrome. Several of the sample extensions are shown here, and will ring a bell if you happen to use the analogous extensions in Firefox. There is a Gmail Checker extension, an extension for quickly grabbing RSS feeds as you browse, and an extension for checking on Chrome’s latest builds. XMarks and other popular Firefox extensions are also headed for availability on Chrome. In addition, Google confirms that “we’ve also enlisted some help to get extensions up to speed on Mac and Linux.”

For those who would like to develop Chrome extensions, there is some documentation. And, if you’ve already written an extension, you should check this update. Lack of extensions has been a shortcoming for Google’s browser, which is based on an open source core and designed for extensibility. It’s good to see this new chapter unfolding for the browser.

Which Firefox extensions would you like to see made available for Chrome?

A much-improved version is out of uberVU, a site that helps you track the flow of conversations on the web, whether they’re taking place on Twitter, Digg, Reddit, in the comments sections of blogs, or elsewhere. There are many tools available for searching specific social sites (including lots of them for Twitter), but uberVU is particularly useful for checking on what people are saying all over the social web. In this post, I’ll look at some of the improvements to the app, and what you can get done with it.

If you do any blogging, you may be familiar with going to various sites or search engines to keep track of what’s being said about a particular post you wrote. Or, if you’re following a particularly newsworthy development, you may do the same just to see what the social web’s reaction is to the news. uberVU aims to provide one-stop shopping for that type of task.

AltSearchEngines lists uberVU’s new features, including:

• Search – You can now search for keywords and URLs instead of just adding URLs.
• Faster tracking – You can track links on Twitter, Digg, Reddit and many more in close to real time.
• Analytics – You can view graphs and summaries for a big picture of a web conversation.
• Public – uberVU is now in public beta, with no invitation code required to register.

uberVU is definitely faster at gathering conversation threads from sites such as Twitter and Digg than it was before. Previously, if an event had just happened, and you went to search, you got very sparse reactions from a limited number of sites. That’s changed in the updated version.

The analytics are also useful, especially the graphics you can generate. While she isn’t a tech story, one of the big stories of this past Labor Day weekend was Melanie Oudin, the 17-year old tennis player who is competing at the U.S. Open. I searched on her name at uberVU, and discovered that there was actually a bigger spike in web conversations about her prior to the tournament than during it, as seen in late August, below:

You can also use uberVU’s analytics features to pull up distribution charts showing where conversations are taking place. Below is one for Melanie Oudin showing that Twitter is where most conversations are taking place:

If you haven’t tried uberVU before, give it a go. It can keep you from hopping between many search sites, and is greatly improved in its new version.

How do you track conversations that are happening across the web?

If you’re an iPhone user who needs remote access to one or multiple computers when you’re on the go, the folks at LogMeIn have a new application that will do the trick: LogMeIn Iginition. The application is actually specifically intended for IT personnel who need to monitor, access and provide support solutions on a remote basis, but it’s accessible and usable for any iPhone user with remote access needs.

You can get LogMeIn Ignition from the iTunes App Store for $29.99 — a bit pricier than most paid iPhone apps. As is true for most of LogMeIn’s applications, you must first have an account at LogMeIn’s web site and download LogMeIn itself, which is free, and which I consider to be the best remote control application for general purposes. You also need to install LogMeIn on any computers that you want to be able to remotely access, which is a quick process.

You can view a video demonstration of LogMeIn Ignition here. A centralized page in LogMeIn Ignition displays all of your accessible PCs and Macs, and it also stores all of the relevant passwords. The page shows you which computers are on and accessible, and which are not. By clicking on a particular computer, you can take control of the desktop, access files, perform diagnostics and more. If you’ve used LogMeIn before, you’ll recognize the process as being very familiar.

Of course, if you carry a laptop or netbook around, they’ll be better platforms for remote access, due to the small screen size of the iPhone. But if you’re away from your laptop and require remote access in a hurry, LogMeIn Ignition could be just what you need.

Let us know what you think of LogMeIn Ignition in the comments.

Many of us are increasingly working with multimedia online, including video and audio applications for everything from podcasts to video tutorials. While well-known tools such as Audacity and Blender can help you deliver slickly produced online audio and video content, really good producers make use of pre-production tools before they even start recording. Celtx is a free, open-source multimedia pre-production application that is very popular for organizing and scripting everything from screenplays, to audio/visual tutorials, to webcasts. You can download it here for Windows, Mac and Linux, and take advantage of an accompanying online Studios environment to collaborate with others on multimedia pre-production.

When you first begin with Celtx, you’re presented with several types of pre-built project templates for filmed content, audio-visual content, and more, as seen below:

Once you’ve chosen what type of content you want to produce, Celtx lets you build a Project Library, where you can house scripted materials, graphics, video and audio content, and more. If you click on the “My Studio” icon seen at right below, the application will take you to Celtx Studios, an online environment where you can collaborate on your pre-production with other people online.

Using Celtx Studios, you can track who you’re working with, and point each other to shared projects:

As you build your pre-production in the Celtx application, you’re gradually building the components in your Project Library on the upper-left of a multi-pane screen, a collection of scenes just below that (with your current scene on the right), and pop-up dialogs for adding materials to all of these repositories. The multi-pane view is seen below:

Celtx has an excellent reputation among professional storyboarders, screenwriters and producers of commercials. Many of us who have been thrown hurly-burly into producing multimedia online don’t have academic pre-production and production backgrounds. Celtx is a good, free way to get help with the pre-production part, which is important. If it interests you, I recommend beginning with these video walkthroughs.

What tools do you use to assist with storyboarding and pre-production?

Of the many Firefox extensions that I use on a daily basis, the one that remains the most useful to me is iMacros, which you can see screenshots of and download here. I reviewed it a while back, and you can also find a visual tour of how to use it here. It makes the process of saving and recording multi-step repetitive tasks about as easy as operating a DVD player. You can keep a library of your recorded macros in a Firefox sidebar, or within your bookmarks. The maker of this extension, iOpus, recently supplied a collection of case studies of ways that users are getting productivity benefits from it, and a look at the examples is eye-opening.

I use iMacros to automate many types of repetitive tasks each day, including using “Smart Bookmarks.” These are macros that I’ve saved within my Firefox Bookmarks list that, with one click, will perform tasks such as opening up a collection of web sites that I visit for news and reviews. I provided an example of creating a Smart Bookmark here.

The iOpus collection of examples of how people are using iMacros includes some applications similar to the ones I’ve created, but also includes many interesting uses that I wouldn’t have thought of. Here are some of them:

Automating data entry. The Office of Enrollment Services at Indiana University Bloomington reports that it has been using iMacros to automate data entry tasks into PeopleSoft, and saved hundreds of hours of data entry time doing so. Any form of data entry you do that is repetitive in nature can be reduced from a multi-step process to a one-step process with iMacros.

Automating online testing. Steve Thue, a Motorola employee, reports that he had a set of manual tests of wireless modems and web pages that took 10 minutes whenever he executed it. He used iMacros to automate the manual process, and reduced the test time to 90 seconds.

Populating spreadsheets and databases with data. A financial services employee reports that he uses iMacros to retrieve price data from stock exchanges on an automated basis. iMacros integrates with Microsoft Excel and popular databases for this kind of task.

Automating online response time monitoring. A person associated with an e-commerce site reports that she uses iMacros to capture response time data for pages on her online store, and compiles the data for tasks such as uptime monitoring.

There are more case studies at the iOpus site, but these examples show that most anything you do online that is repetitive in nature can become faster and easier with iMacros. It’s a free extension, and worth spending some time with. You can find a number of animated online demos of it here.

How do you use iMacros for automating repetitive tasks?

Many of us use Google Docs, and many of us also collaborate with others who speak different languages. As announced on the Google blog, you can now translate documents in Google Docs into 42 different languages. The supported languages include Arabic, Chinese and Japanese, and you can execute the translations almost instantly. Here’s how easy this is is to do.

I created a new document in Google Docs using Firefox 3.5. I then went to the “Tools” menu and chose “Translate Document.” This presents a pop-up list of 42 languages available for translation; I chose Japanese. At first, the document didn’t translate, but that was because of a pop-up blocker issue. I held down the Ctrl key on my keyboard to allow pop-ups and went through the process again. Almost instantly, the document appeared in Japanese.

The screenshot above shows what my original document looked like in English.  And here’s what it looked like translated into Japanese:

You can do this just as quickly with long documents. The translations are based on Google Translate, which you previously had to copy and paste text into in order to get translations. Once you create a document, you can choose to have it replace the original document, or save both documents, although I wish the interface seen in the translated documents provided a more intuitive way to see that you can save both documents.

As always, automatic machine translations are never perfect, which Google’s blog post concedes. Still, I looked at some translations in Spanish, which I speak moderately well, and the translations were mostly accurate, with a few examples of awkward syntax.

There are also many other tools for doing translations on-the-fly. I reviewed one of the most popular ones, Babylon, here. Also, the other day on the OStatic blog, we wrote about a brand new Firefox extension that focuses on translation, which was a very early beta at the time. Since then, it has been added to Mozilla’s official collection of Firefox extensions, and is available here. The nice thing about this extension is that you can use it to instantly translate entire web pages to and from many languages.

What translation tools do you use? Do you find they work well enough for you?

Last October, we published a post about Aviary, a suite of graphics-focused online applications that, at the time, consisted of three basic tools. Aviary has expanded since then to become a very popular, award-winning graphics suite — much more than the simple photo editor that it started out as. There are quite a few new modules in the suite. I’ve been using all of the tools recently; it’s one of the best graphics suites you’ll find. It’s also free, although a Pro version is available.

Because it’s a hosted, online application suite, Aviary not only lets you use its photo and image editing tools, but also allows you to share creations with others online. When you sign up to use the suite, you even get a prompt to find friends who may be online, which you can choose to skip if you want. The screenshot above shows some images created and edited in Aviary’s image editor, dubbed Phoenix.

As seen in the menu to the right, which greets you when you begin using Aviary, there is much more than just photo editing built in. There are also more than twice as many modules in the suite as there were in October. You’ll find a vector editor, a color palette editor, a tool for creating visual effects, and more. All of the tools are available for you to use within your browser.

Aviary also comes with many tutorials, similar to those found online for Photoshop. You can browse many of them here. The tutorials are categorized from Beginning to Advanced, and provide instructions on shadows, adding saturation to photos and images, enhancing eyes in photos, and much more.

Using Aviary’s effects editor, dubbed Peacock, you can save image effects that you create and import them into the Phoenix image editor. This means that the number of effects you can use is essentially unlimited. There is also a module called Toucan for doing color management, and Raven is a vector editor that can translate bitmap images to vector images. It’s also a very useful screen capture tool, as Thursday wrote about previously.

My most-used image editing application remains IrfanView, which I wrote about here. It’s free to use, as Aviary’s tools are, although if you want to use all of Aviary’s functionality you need to sign up for a Pro account, which is $24.99 a year — significantly lower than the previous monthly pricing plan. I’m currently using both Aviary and IrfanView, and Aviary strikes me as quite powerful. It’s also adding modules and features at an impressive rate. If you haven’t tried it, definitely do so.

Let us know your thoughts on Aviary in the comments.

Some of the biggest hardware efficiency boosts we can get are either completely free, or nearly so. Sure, a maxed-out new laptop would be great to have, but these are tough times. If you spend a little time with the hardware you have or pick up some very inexpensive peripherals, you can immediately start working smarter. In this post, you’ll find five hardware devices and tweaks that you can put to work with good results almost immediately.

Optimize Your USB Flash Drive. Many people own USB flash drives that they got as gifts or were passed on from someone else, and high-capacity versions have become very cheap. Even on drives with relatively low capacity, you can put entire suites of freeware and open-source applications on your flash drive, keep it in your pocket, and have useful applications to use no matter where you are, even if you need to work on someone else’s computer. PortableApps is my favorite site for downloading a suite of Windows apps optimized for a flash drive, while MacLibre is a good equivalent for people on Macs.

Next-Gen Note Taking. Recently, I’ve been using the Livescribe Pulse smartpen (shown above), which you can get for $149 to $199, for capturing digital notes. It’s a writing instrument, but it has a computer and camera onboard. As you jot down notes on special paper (it has millions of dots embedded in it), every move you make is digitally captured so that you can take handwritten notes right into software applications. What makes it better than other similar digital pens is that it also records audio, and creates a time line so that you can jump to various parts of a recording and review anything you were taking notes on at that point. Highly recommended.

Better Battery Life. Low battery life remains a chief complaint among users of portable computers, but there are a number of simple steps you can take to radically improve it. In this post, you’ll find nine tips that can make a big difference. Also, this post illustrates how much juice the display on your portable computer consumes, which is an incredible amount. One of the quickest and easiest ways to get much more battery life is simply to turn your brightness down.

The Lowly Mouse. In my post, “Nine Ways to Make Your Mouse Roar,” I made the point that many of us spend more time sitting with a computer and a mouse than we do with any person. The post details a number of ways to get more out of your mouse (not many people read mouse documentation), including using a scroll wheel directly within productivity applications, scrolling horizontally, and speed scrolling without using the scroll wheel.

Get More From Wi-Fi. Many of us rely on Wi-Fi all day long, but I am constantly surprised by how many people there are who don’t optimize their Wi-Fi setups. As just one example, a couple of years ago, I wrote this post, recommending using access points around a home, and many commenters responded that they use a router only for home Wi-Fi, and haven’t considered access points. That’s fine in some homes, but in others, especially larger ones, an under-$50 access point can provide huge performance and range benefits. Check out more tips on inexpensive Wi-Fi hardware upgrades here.

Share your hardware tips in the comments.

Many of us are consuming video and audio content as part of our working lives; some of us are broadcasting it and encoding it, too. For both types of tasks, one of the best applications that you can get is the free, open-source VLC Media Player. It recently came out in a significantly updated version 1.0, and is now out in a stable version 1.0.1. I’ve been using the new version, and highly recommend it, whether you’re running Windows, Mac OS X or Linux.

Open source blogger Matt Asay captures a big part of why VLC Media Player may be the best player on the planet:

“One of the amazing things about VLC is that it can play anything that you’ve ever even thought about playing. That random media format that one site in Ecuador requires–VLC likely plays it, while Windows Media, Apple QuickTime, etc. likely will not. This is, in part, a natural result of VLC’s open source heritage.”

Because a global community of users iteratively improves VLC Media Player, it can handle many obscure video file formats. I almost never trip VLC up by throwing a new type of file at it.

It’s also true that because of the widespread open-source community that contributes to VLC Media Player, and all the plug-ins that extend it, it’s easy to miss many of the under-the-hood features it has. You can use it to broadcast your own video and audio content; you can use it as a video transcoder for converting video file formats,;you can listen to and manage podcasts with it, rip DVDs, watch DVDs and much more.

I addressed how to get up to speed on many of the non-obvious nice features that VLC has in this post on OStatic.  There, you’ll find tips and tricks on doing logos and effects for videos, instructions on how to broadcast your own media, and a free online guide that takes you from installation to advanced tasks in a visual tour. These can be particularly helpful for an open-source application, because good documentation is often a weak point in the open source arena.

I also previously covered the new portable version of VLC Media Player here. This is a lightweight version of the application that you can use to view and work with video and audio anywhere, perhaps toting it on a USB flash drive or a netbook.

If you haven’t used VLC Media Player, and especially if you’ve stayed tied to default media tools such as Windows Media Player, give it a trial run. The price is right, and you may agree with me that VLC is outstanding.

Share your VLC Media Player tips in the comments.