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Unofficial Better Gmail for Chrome Bends Gmail to Your Will [Downloads]

Posted on February 22, 2010
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Chrome: We love Gina’s Better Gmail Firefox extension, a bundle of user scripts that improves the Gmail experience. Now that Google’s beefed up support for Chrome extensions, reader Dimitar Gruev has taken a shot at bringing an unofficial Better Gmail to Chrome.

Almost a year ago our own How-To Geek put together a version of Better Gmail for Chrome, but that was way back when Chrome didn’t even have extensions (his were all bundled into a single user script). This new Chrome extension is an unofficial Better Gmail for Chrome that was inspired by Gina’s Firefox extension and our earlier Better Gmail for Chrome bag o’scripts.

Once installed, access Better Gmail's options by clicking the wrench -> Extensions -> Better Gmail Options. Tick the boxes of the features you want activated and you're good to go. You can choose to hide little used fields like "Invite Friends," remove ads, show the number of unread emails in the favicon, and more.

Gruev says future versions of Better Gmail will hide spam count, move to next message on delete or archive, and include support for POP3 email. A big round of applause goes to Gruev for putting this together. What kinds of features do you hope for in future versions of Better Gmail? Share your ideas in the comments.

Better Gmail for Chrome [Chrome Extensions Gallery]






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Sweet Home 3D Models Your Home, Rearranges Your Furniture Without Breaking a Sweat [Downloads]

Posted on February 18, 2010
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Windows/Mac/Linux: Next time you get the urge to rearrange your furniture, don’t strain your back randomly shoving your sofa around the room. Download Sweet Home 3D and do the heavy lifting on your computer screen before moving a stick of furniture.

This slick free interior design app recreates the dimensions of a room, and displays the furniture you add in 3D. Drag and drop tables, chairs, and plants around the room until you find an arrangement you like. Drop in windows, doors, and even change the color of the walls to replicate your room as closely as possible.

If you happen to have a blueprint available of the room you're redecorating, Sweet Home 3D will accept an import of the file in BMP, JPEG, GIF or PNG formats. Sorting through the furniture is easy—it's arranged in a tree view, just select the room you're decorating and drag what you like onto the 2D room grid. The app displays a 3D representation in real-time in a pane directly underneath. Check out an overhead view, or walk through the room as a virtual visitor for another perspective.

If you want to try out Sweet Home 3D before you download, there’s an online version you can try out for free. Register to save any plans you create, or play with the app without signing up. Check out the video below to see Sweet Home 3D in action.






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Pinta Brings Paint.NET’s Just-Enough Image Editing to Every Computer [Downloads]

Posted on February 9, 2010
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Windows/Mac/Linux: If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the coders of Pinta love the heck out of the Windows-only image editor Paint.NET. Luckily, they also want to make it available on every OS, and are faithful to its just-enough interface methodology.

If you’ve read Lifehacker for a bit, you know we’re admirers of Paint.NET. It’s lightweight, free, and does most of what the average home user would want out of a photo editing and painting application, without making them learn an entire realm of commands and advanced photography terminology. It opens Photoshop files, it touches up images nicely, and it doesn’t cost $500, so we dig it.

Pinta is an open-source, multi-platform attempt to recreate the Paint.NET experience. It’s described as “early in development,” but for a 0.1 release, feels majorly on its way. It supports multi-layer editing, runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows (with some additional support installed), and a lot of the interface is already in place. I tried it out to edit, crop, and tone some images for this morning’s Lifehacker posts, and I could see working it into my rotation, as it’s a bit lighter and easier to get around than the GIMP, the other cross-platform image editor of note.

Pinta is a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Ubuntu and Fedora readers should hit the via link for a quick tip on making installation easier than compiling from source.






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TabJump is a Smart, Organized Tab Manager for Google Chrome [Downloads]

Posted on January 28, 2010
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Google Chrome (Windows/Mac/Linux): If you tend to have tons of small, hard-to-read tabs open at a time, navigate through them with TabJump, a Chrome extension that lets you open recently closed tabs, jump to open tabs, and group related tabs together.

We've all been there before—you open up Wikipedia for a five-minute break, and two hours later you have 30 tabs open. TabJump is a great tab manager for Google Chrome, that sits in the address bar and organizes all your open and recently closed tabs, so you can easily navigate through your sea of open pages. Your open tabs are organized into two columns, one of which shows the tabs related to the one currently in focus, so you can quickly jump between open pages from the same site. You can also lock certain pages, protecting them from accidental closure. If you try to close a locked tab, you'll get a popup message from Chrome asking you if you are sure, preventing you from losing what was really important out of all those open tabs.

TabJump is a free download, works wherever Google Chrome does (Note: You’ll need to be running the beta channel for extension support on Linux, and the dev channel for extension support in OS X). Thanks, MPS!

TabJump – Intelligent Tab Navigator [Google Chrome Extensions]






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OpenShot 1.0 Is an Actually Usable Linux Video Editor [Downloads]

Posted on January 25, 2010
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Linux/Live CD/DVD: It’s one of the five features we desperately want in Ubuntu: a video editor that the average user can stitch together simple movies with. OpenShot 1.0 is mostly there.

That’s not to say the interface has much polish, or that you don’t have to install non-free multimedia codecs in your Linux system beforehand. Then again, unless you’re a FLAC/OGG music purist, you probably already installed your MP3 and other file supports.

I had a video project to assemble over the weekend—combining a recorded audio file and still pictures into a video file that could be imported into iMovie, or watched on a standard PC laptop. I dropped an audio file into the left-hand sidebar, and it automatically dropped into one of the two default tracks. I dragged in a batch of pictures, and I could then drop them onto the timeline. From there, you can use the really simple tools—resize, razor, marker, and moving tool—to adjust and arrange the clips. For my purposes, that was perfect. It was a return to earlier versions of iMovie, a basic non-linear video editor for the rest of us.

If you're looking to make very complex transitions or pull precise transformations on your video, you're still better off with a more advanced suite on another platform—one of our six best video editing applications, perhaps. If you’re a Linux user and looking to stitch together a small-scale video project, OpenShot is definitely worth a look.

OpenShot is a free download, available as a live CD or DVD, as an Ubuntu/Debian repository, and pre-compiled for Ubuntu and Fedora systems. If you’ve given OpenShot a try and like it, or find it lacking a certain something, tell us about it in the comments.

OpenShot 1.0 Has Arrived! [OpenShot Video Editor]






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VUE Turns Your Mind-Mapped Ideas Into Presentations [Downloads]

Posted on January 12, 2010
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Windows/Mac/Linux: Sometimes the easiest way to make sense of a big project is to get its details out of your brain so you can visualize it. Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) helps you map your ideas, then make presentations out of them.

Mind-mapping tools are great for corralling snippets of information and brainstorming details into one place so you can see how they fit together in the big picture. If this is your first foray into the world of mind-mapping apps, you’ll find VUE easy to set up and use. (Our previous guide to mind mapping is a great resource to help you wrap your head around mind maps.)

You’ll need to register at the app’s web site for a free account before you can download the Windows, Mac, or Linux version of VUE at no cost. Once installed, you get get started right away setting up nodes containing ideas or concepts, then linking them with arrows to form relationships between them. You can also include clickable URLs, images, files, and more. Want to include videos and documents? Just drag them over and drop them on your map.

Unlike many other mind-mapping tools, VUE can go a step beyond the mind map, turning your brainstorms into slide presentations so you can share them with others. They’re laid out so viewers can walk through the information contained in your map in a way that helps them understand how the concepts are laid out. VUE has tons of features that are likely to appeal to novice and expert mind-mappers alike. Check out this demo video to get a better idea of what VUE can do for you.

VUE is a free download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.






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ChromiumOS Zero Boots Faster, Offers Automatic Updates [Updates]

Posted on January 11, 2010
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Chromium OS, the open source build of Google’s upcoming web-focused netbook system, was made into a thumb-drive-friendly build early on by a helpful hacker named Hexxeh. His latest build, ChromiumOS Zero, adds Chrome extension support, speed boosts, and other goodies.

Here’s the official list of updates at Hexxeh’s blog, with notable improvements in the delay suffered by Broadcom-based Wi-Fi and the Chromium browser at the heart of the OS. The build still fits on a 1 GB USB drive, surprisingly, can be updated in-system from this release forward, and is offered as a BitTorrent download from Hexxeh’s site.

Wanna give ChromiumOS Zero a go on your own laptop from the safety of a USB stick? Check out Gina’s human’s guide to running Google Chrome OS, which details running a Hexxeh-based build from a thumb drive.

ChromiumOS Zero is a free download, and boots (usually) on non-Mac systems.






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Chrome Dev Channel Updates for All Platforms, Adds Extension Support for Macs [Downloads]

Posted on January 6, 2010
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Windows/Mac/Linux: If you’re living life on the bleeding edge of Google’s Chrome browser, good news: Google just pushed out an update to the dev channel, improving HTML5 audio and video for all platforms, bringing extension and bookmark sync to Macs, and more.

The Windows build didn’t see many changes, but Mac users should be particularly happy with the update. Having been excluded from extension support when the Chrome extension gallery first opened, Mac users can now officially join in the fun. (See these 18 extensions worth downloading for Chrome to get started with Chrome extensions.) Mac users also gain support for much-needed bookmark sync and support for favicon-only pinned tabs.

Other changes across platforms are a little less exciting, but Mac users who’ve been waiting for Chrome to get the better features available on other platforms should be happy. Check out the dev channel blog post for the full changelog.

Early adopters can join the Chrome dev channel for Windows, Mac, or Linux here. Chrome is a free download.

Dev Channel Update [Google Chrome Releases]






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Enna is an Attractive Linux Media Center Application [Downloads]

Posted on January 6, 2010
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Linux only: Previously mentioned media center GeeXboX has finally released a stable version of their new interface, called Enna. Used with GeeXboX or as a standalone application, it handles all your music, photos, videos, and even ebooks—with style.

Enna features a very attractive interface, with direct access to all your hard drive's media in a very user-friendly way. It even automatically fetches covers, fanart, and information for you—and you don't have to switch in and out of a "Library Mode" to see them, making navigation a bit nicer than some of its competitors. It's also added books as a medium—and while one may wonder who would want to read books on their television screen, comic books are another matter. Enna currently supports GoComics and OneManga as content providers, meaning you can read your favorite comics in a whole new way.

Other than the bookstore, though, and an arguably more user-friendly interface, Enna is still relatively young, and it’s missing some of the more advanced features, such as UPnP and DLNA support, that front-runners like XBMC and Boxee have to offer. However, these and many other more advanced features are planned for the future, so Enna still has a chance of rivaling the top players one day—just not quite yet. If you do use Enna, let's hear what makes it your media center of choice in the comments.






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Set Up and Get to Know Your New Windows, Mac, or Linux Computer [Merry Christmahanukwanzaakkah]

Posted on December 25, 2009
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Good news! You woke up to find a shiny new computer waiting for you under the tree this year. Whether it’s a Windows PC, Mac, or Linux box, here’s a quick starter guide to getting it running on all cylinders.

Photo remixed with help from Shandi-lee.

We’ve separated this little get-up-and-running guide into sections depending on whether the machine you got is Windows-, Mac-, or Linux-based, so just find the section that makes sense for you and get going.

So You Just Got a New Windows Machine


Get to know Windows 7: Chances are pretty good that this is the first time a lot of people will be using Windows 7—and even if it's not, take this opportunity to get to know Microsoft's solid new offering with our Complete Guide to Windows 7. While you’re schooling yourself on Win7, you’ll at the very least want to check out:

  • The Master List of New Windows 7 Shortcuts:
    Windows 7 adds loads of great shortcuts for switching between apps, moving windows around your screen, moving them to another monitor altogether, and much more. Here’s a quick-reference master list of the best new Windows 7 shortcuts.
  • Windows 7′s Best Underhyped Features:
    It’s these less sexy, but very useful features, that make me think the more I use Windows 7, the less chance I’ll ever use Vista or XP again.
  • Set Up and Use XP Mode in Windows 7:
    Windows 7's new XP Mode lets you seamlessly run virtualized applications alongside your regular Windows 7 applications—so your outdated software will continue to work.
  • Turn Your Windows 7 PC Into a Wireless Hotspot:
    Everybody’s got a wireless network at home, but if you’ve ever wanted to get your iPod touch, iPhone, or other wireless device connected, but all you’ve got is a wired network at work, school, or elsewhere, Windows 7 makes this process trivial.
  • Master Windows 7 Jump Lists to Boost Your Win7 Productivity:
    For those of you that haven’t yet tried out Windows 7, when you right-click on a taskbar button in Windows 7, a menu slides out with recent documents and application tasks. You can even access it with the left mouse button if you choose. Here’s a rundown of our favorite Jump List boosters.
  • Dual-Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu in Perfect Harmony:
    Windows 7 and Ubuntu, despite their opposing missions, can get along like best pals on a single computer. Here’s how to set up a dual boot system that lets you enjoy the best of both worlds in perfect harmony.

Get rid of the bloat: There’s nothing like a fresh machine. It’s free from an overloaded system tray, bloated application installs, and disorganized file structures, right?

Unfortunately that’s not always the case. A lot of machines ship with a whole lot of pre-installed software that you didn’t ask for and surely don’t want. Our suggestion: Before you go nuts installing the software you really want, download Revo Uninstaller (a tool for getting rid of apps that’s superior to Windows’ default Add or Remove Programs tool) and get rid of all of the software that shipped with your machine that you don’t want or need.

Install your favorite apps in a snap: Now that you’ve cleared out the crap, it’s time to install the applications you really want. We’re huge fans of previously mentioned Ninite, a simple utility that lets you tick off checkboxes of your favorite apps, then downloads them and installs them in the background. That means no more hunting all over the internet to find and download the apps, and no more mindless Next -> Next -> Finish clicking. If you'd like a little help finding the best apps around to fill up your Programs folder, check out the following:

  • Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Windows Downloads:
    We feature downloads of all kinds every day at Lifehacker. Here, we’ve bundled all the best free downloads for new computer owners, re-installers, would-be geeks, or anyone who wants to save time installing the best stuff out there. This is our 2009 Lifehacker Pack for Windows computers.
  • Top 10 Tiny & Awesome Windows Utilities:
    It's the little things that make a Windows system great—like utilities that use less than 10MB of memory to make your life easier. Here are 10 apps that pack a lot of greatness into very little space.
  • 61 Free Apps We’re Most Thankful For:
    As we prepared to stuff our faces with a bountiful Thanksgiving feast, we turned our Thanksgiving spirit to the gobs of free software we love to say thank you to the developers, and to give our computers a feast of their own.
  • Top 10 Windows 7 Booster Apps
    Windows 7 is a big improvement over Vista, and a pretty convenient OS in general—but it's by no means perfect. These 10 downloads improve Windows 7's looks, functions, and make it easier, safer, and more convenient to upgrade to.

So It’s a Mac, Is It?


Dive into your Mac: Whether this is your first Mac or your first time in Snow Leopard, we’ve got you covered:

  • Hack Attack: A guide for switching to a Mac:
    If you're new to the Mac platform—fresh off the Windows world—this guide to switching explains how to make sense out of all the differences between Windows and OS X, highlighting how to accomplish the same things in OS X you're already completely familiar with doing in Windows.
  • Snow Leopard’s Four Best Improvements (for Civilians):
    Most of Mac OS 10.6′s changes are deep in its underpinnings for developers to put to good use. But what do the rest of us get out of Snow Leopard? Modest, but nice, improvements to the everyday Mac workflow.

Install some killer apps, make a few useful tweaks: Once you’ve got a better understanding of what’s going on with your new computer, you’re ready to go on an application installation binge and do a little tweaking.

Linux-Lovers, This One’s for You

An overview and a few handy Linux tweaks:

Now let’s get downloading: If you’re a Linux person, you can rest assured that your system is likely running lean and mean right out of the box. (That is, without the bloat of pre-installed crapware some Windows systems start off with.) So let’s get right to the downloading!

  • Top 10 Ubuntu Downloads
    From Ubuntu tweaking to desktop customization and productivity boosting launchers, these apps promise to seriously enhance your machine.
  • Allmyapps Bulk-Installs Your Favorite Apps, Makes System Rebuilding Less Painful
    One of the most irritating things about reinstalling your operating system is installing all the non-OS applications you love. Allmyapps lets you select all your favorite apps and roll them into a bulk installer to make rebuilding easy.
  • Top 10 Cross-Platform Apps that Run on Windows, OS X, Linux, and More
    Whether your important data lives in the cloud, on your laptop, or on a different operating system, you shouldn’t have to use sub-par tools to get at it. These cross-platform apps run on your Linux machine, but will also work when you’ve got to move to a Windows machine for work or wherever you may end up.

Happy holidays to everybody, whatever it is you may or may not be celebrating. Enjoy that new gear, and let us know what else has helped you get up and running in the comments.






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