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- Celebrate the Fourth of July with a New Desktop WallpaperYesterday
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If ever there were a holiday that yields colorful and flashy desktop wallpaper, it's definitely the Fourth of July. Celebrate the Fourth on your desktop with these swanky fireworks wallpapers.
If you're not going to be shooting your own stunning Fourth of July pictures this weekend, you might as well take advantage of the great photos other people have taken to properly decorate your computer screen for the holiday.
The following gallery is a collection of Fourth of July-themed wallpaper we plucked from collections across the web. Each photo has an attribution link that'll take you back to the source of the image for your full-size desktop needs. If you know of a stash of Fourth-themed wallpapers online, share the wealth in the comments below!
Photo by esens.
Photo by Joe Penniston.
- Maximize Your Coach Seat Without UpgradingJuly 2
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Most air travelers can't afford the comforts that come with a first class or business ticket, but just because you fly coach doesn't mean you can't maximize your flying enjoyment. Travel site Condé Nast Traveler shows us how.Photo by Robert Scoble.
Apart from taking advantage of your seat's personal TV and AC power ports (where available), the article also details how best to snag an extra seat by focusing your search on middle seats. (As we've previously mentioned, you can also score some extra leg-room by booking with low-fare carriers.)
Middle seats tend to be filled starting from the front of the aircraft and moving toward the rear—which means that if your flight isn't full, you're likely to get an empty seat next to you if you request an aisle seat in the center section in the back.
If you happen to be flying solo this holiday weekend or in the future, you can also up your comfort level by selecting carriers with the fewest number of middle seats. 767s, for example, only have one middle seat per row, which lessens the odds that you'll get stuck between two people.
If you want to get really specific, we'd suggest trying someth
- Firefox 3.5 Portable Available for DownloadJuly 2
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Windows only: Firefox lovers have no doubt already updated to the recently released Firefox 3.5 for its amazing new features, but if you're more the portable type, Firefox 3.5 Portable Edition is officially available for download.This portable version comes to us from the reliable folks at PortableApps.com, makers of the popular, previously mentioned Portable Apps Suite, and brings all the goodies of Firefox 3.5 to your thumb drive. You may still need to perform a little about:config tweaking to get your extensions working with Firefox 3.5, but apart from that the portable version looks like it's ready to go.
- Illustrated Chart Makes Coffee Drinks EasyJuly 2
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Whether you've got a fancy new espresso machine at home or you just want to get a better idea of how drinks are prepared at your local coffee shop, this handy chart can help.Designer Lokesh Dhakar wanted a visual way to represent the composition of different styles of espresso preparations:
I‘m new to the world of fancy coffee drinks. With the vast number of ordering options and new words with accented characters to pronounce the coffee shop ordering experience can be intimidating. I've created a few small illustrations to help myself and others wrap their head around some of the small differences.
Scouring various sources to get the low down on espresso drinks he put together a handy visual chart showing everything from straight espresso through the multi-ingredient caffé mocha, seen in the picture here. The entire chart is available at the link below and features nine espresso-based drinks. If you have your own nifty coffee-centric resources to share, sound off in the comments below.
- Google Voice Is Cool, But Do You Need It?July 1
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You've read about the features, you saw the invites going out, but you might be wondering what, exactly, Google Voice could do for you. Here's our guide for the curious and uninvited on whether your phones need some Google juice.We're not going to explain every feature, quirk, and option in the Google Voice service, which is slowly giving out invites to those who request them. We've already taken a first look at Google Voice, and Google Voice's own Getting Started guide does a nice job explaining the service's ins and outs. We're looking to answer the question we seem to hear most often from commenters, friends, tech pundits, and just about everyone: What would I get out of it?
The wild card: number portability
If the rumors prove true, Google will, at some point this year, allow you to "port," or at least integrate, your existing cell phone number with its service, requiring none of the millions of phone numbers the search giant is supposedly securing. That would eliminate three of the service's biggest barriers to entry:
- Having to call Google Voice, and then dial a number, to place a call "with" your Google number, so it shows up on caller ID as such
- Having to store and reply to a separate SMS number for each of your contacts so that, again, your Google number shows up
- The time and hassle of getting your contacts to call you at your new Google Voice number, despite the fact that your old numbers still "work"
You might like Google Voice if you:
Regularly use two or more phones: If you've heard about one feature of Google Voice, or its GrandCentral predecessor, this is it—and for good reason. Google excels at giving you one phone number for others to have, then letting you fine-tune which phones that number rings to an OCD level. If you want your wife to ring through to your work line between 9am and 5pm, but not your chatty, unemployed friend, you can do that. If you want your home landline to ring along with your cell during the hours your carrier charges for minutes, you can do that, too.
Loathe standard voicemail: "Please enter your passcode, followed by the pound sign!" "You have ... two ... new messages. To hear your"—You know what we're talking about. Using cell minutes and precious time just to hear your friend say "Try you again later" is almost as annoying as trying to wipe the voicemail icon off your phone screen. Google Voice makes it easy to play voicemail audio and read semi-correct transcriptions from a single web page, and it's a good bet it'll be integrated into Gmail for even easier access. When you're away from your browser, Google Voice sends voicemail notifications through email or text message, making it easy to know that you really don't need to step outside and call your sister back just to confirm you prefer Diet Dr. Pepper to Diet Coke.
Enjoy text messaging, but not phone keyboards (and fees): For anyone whose friends chide them about short or nonexistent text message replies, this is a game-changing feature. When sent to your Google Voice number, text messages are organized on the Google Voice site like chat conversations, with back-and-forth dialogue and options to reply or mark as read and archive. Writing a new message is also easy—hit "M" or click the SMS button, start typing a name or phone number, then choose the contact and type away. You'll still be charged for texts you receive on your phone, but it can be a real money saver when you're near your plan's limit for the month. Those with iPhones, Android handsets, or other smartphones can also make use of Google Voice messaging on the go with apps like the previously mentioned GV (Android) and GV Mobile (iPhone).