Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2's (Familiar) New Features

Six months after Beta 1 hit the streets, Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 to brave testers. The new beta includes features that make it look like a viable choice of modern browser, like a smart address bar (sound familiar?), tab grouping, private browsing, find in-page, suggested sites related to the current page, and more. Let's take a look at what's coming out in the browser arena.

IE8 Beta 2's Most Useful Features

Smart Address Bar: IE 8 beta 2 includes a Smart Address Bar, that, like Firefox 3's "AwesomeBar," drops down suggestions as-you-type a web site URL gleaned from your favorites, feeds, and history. Unlike Firefox, IE 8 includes headers so you can see where each suggestion comes from.

Tab Grouping: Ever open a bunch of links from a single page in new tabs, and then lose track of which tabs came from what page? IE8's got a nifty "tab grouping" feature that colors your tabs based on their source.

InPrivate Browsing: What with the Smart Address Bar pulling up every site you've visited recently in plain view in its History suggestions, there may be times when you visit a site and have the browser forget it ever happened. IE 8 beta 2's "InPrivate" browsing mode adds an icon to the address bar, and forgets you were ever at a web page when it's enabled.

IE8 Beta 2's Sort-of Useful Features

Favorites Bar: Getting to your bookmarks and feeds is a little easier with a button to expand your Favorites bar, a one-stop bookmarks shop. In the Feeds tab (not shown), any feeds you're subscribed to with new items show up in bold, and any "Web Slices" with new content also appear in bold.

Suggested Sites: When you enable the "Suggested Sites" feature, an item on your toolbar drops down a panel of web sites like the one you're on. This feature is great in theory, but in practice not so much.

Find on Page: This one's a yawner for anyone who's used to Firefox, but apparently IE doesn't already have "find on page," the ability to hit Ctrl+F, type a keyword, and see any instances of it highlighted on the current page.

All in all, IE 8 beta 2 sucks a lot less than one might expect, given IE6 and IE7. It feels like the product is truly catching up to the current state of the browser art. The IE8 beta 2 is a free download for Windows only. (Installation requires a computer restart.)

Download Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/worldwide-sites.aspx

Quarkbase Tells You Everything About a Web Site

Web site Quarkbase offers an organized and detailed overview of any web site, complete with summary, popularity, ownership, traffic information, and even recent blog posts and tweets about the site. In a nutshell, it's sort of like Whois.net on steroids. Quarkbase's accuracy and wealth of information varies based on the popularity of a site, but if you want to know more about a web site, it's a great place to start your search.

Website: http://www.quarkbase.com/

Zimbra Desktop Takes Yahoo Mail Offline for Free

Windows/Mac/Linux: At the very least, the free, just-released Zimbra Desktop client gives non-paying Yahoo Mail users IMAP-style offline access to their messages. More than that, though, Zimbra adds a few features to Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, or any other POP/IMAP account that could be pretty useful--at least at some point down the road. Message tagging and nested conversation arrows are pretty nice features for any services that don't already have them, but they don't sync back, or work with Gmail's labels. There's also a bare-bones word processor/spreadsheet, a (non-syncing) calendar, and more search options, including attachment filtering. Overall, though, the real benefit is Zimbra's ability to synchronize your outbox and mail folders before you go offline. Zimbra Desktop is a free download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux systems.

Download Link: http://www.zimbra.com/products/desktop_download.html

EncryptOnClick Makes Securing Files Really Simple

Windows only: Have you ever wanted to lock down a few files behind passwords, but don't want to jump into a full-featured encryption system with multiple keys, virtual drives and whatnot? Free encryption utility EncryptOnClick is a dead-simple utility that gets the job done. Open the program, choose a file or folder to secure, and type in your password. The files or folder will get an encrypted icon, and you'll be asked for the password to open them--and that's it, at least with the freeware version. The app uses 256-bit AES encryption, so for hiding stuff from the average snooper, it's a tight and light solution. EncryptOnClick is a free download for Windows systems only.

Download Link: http://www.2brightsparks.com/onclick/eoc.html

How to Transfer iPhone Voicemail to Your Computer

When your five-year-old nephew sings "Happy Birthday" to you on your voicemail, you want to keep that message to play back to his friends when he's in college. If you've got an iPhone, there are a few ways to save voicemail audio files to your computer. If you've jailbroken your iPhone, you can SFTP into it and transfer the files to your local hard drive. If not, you can use your computer's line in and free recording software to manually record the message. Here's how.

File Transfer

1. First, if you haven't already,

jailbreak your iPhone 2.0 (here's the Windows method). This will install an OpenSSH server on your device that lets you transfer files from it to your computer.

On the iPhone, under Settings->Wi-Fi, select the network you have joined to view connection details. Write down the phone's IP address.

Fire up your favorite FTP client.

Using your FTP program, connect to the device's IP address with username root and password alpine (unless you've changed your password). You'll need to use SFTP (secure FTP), not plain FTP.

Once you're connected to the device, browse to /private/var/mobile/Library/Voicemail/ to view the list of VM files. They're saved as .AMR files, which QuickTime can play. Transfer them to your computer and you're done.

Manual Record

If you're not rockin' a jailbroken iPhone (or an iPhone at all), you can also utilize your phone's headphone jack and your computer's line in. Connect the phone to the computer using an audio line and fire up recording software like Audacity. Play the voicemail and record the result with Audacity.

Note, however, that not all phones have standard headphone jacks out—the first generation iPhone has the recessed jack, and other phones often use non-standard headset jacks, too.

MakeInstantPlayer Converts Videos to Executables

Free application MakeInstantPlayer converts any video file into an EXE file complete with the player and codecs needed to play it. If you've ever shared a video with a non-tech-savvy friend just to get reports back that they couldn't get it to play, this application offers a simple solution: Just run your video through MakeInstantPlayer and send the resulting EXE instead (which in my test is about 5 MB bigger than the original). Your friend can simply run the EXE--which bundles the MPlayer media player and everything else they need to play back the file--and start watching. It may not be an application you'll use every day, but under the right circumstances, this clever app might be just what you need.

Download Link: http://mulder.dummwiedeutsch.de/home/?page=projects&browser=ie

UltraExplorer Manages Your Files On the Go

Windows Explorer alternative UltraExplorer offers dual pane and tabbed browsing, plus a handy "Drop Stack" staging area where you can drag files to temporarily park them, for easy batch operations. Command line lovers will like the Command Line box at the bottom of the UltraExplorer window; you can even set the command prompt to stay synced to whatever folder you are browsing. You can make UltraExplorer portable after its initial installation, too--copy the files from the /APPS/ directory in the installation folder to your USB drive to do so.

UltraExplorer is a free download for Windows only.

Download Link: http://www.mustangpeak.net/ultraexplorer.html