Daily Crunch: Happy Bear Edition

The White iPhone, She Is Dead Angry Birds Plush Toys go up for pre-order, will ship in December Review: Kirby?s Epic Yarn Video: Musician/Comic Reggie Watts Improvises Song About Pancakes Using Only His iPhone During Sirius XM Interview Next Nolan Batman Movie To Be Called ?The Dark Knight Rises,? Fans Upset At Riddler Snub

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Top 30 Android Apps Of All Time

With the ubiquitous media coverage surrounding the iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) app market, it's important to remember that Android also is making huge headway. More than 100,000 apps are now available in the Android Market. Within the last six months, Android devices have reigned supreme, comprising 32 percent of all new smartphone purchases. There is finally a larger selection of models being manufactured and more carriers offering them. When the first Android device launched, I predicted that the OS would surpass iPhone in the coming years. While this looks to be true, those of us involved in the app industry are concerned with something more specific: Who will have the most active app marketplace? Currently, iOS is still the definitive winner. There is not enough app interest on the Android consumer front to warrant a mass exodus just yet. I have a pretty simple metric for determining the potential of an app market: Is PopCap involved? If the answer is no, then the market is still too green. While PopCap has yet to enter the Android space, they have noted plans to port some of their game titles in the coming months. This supports the notion that Android has big potential, but it's still too early. Nevertheless, Android does have serious potential, and there are some fantastic apps already available! Without further ado, here are my top all-time picks for the Android platform, broken down by top free apps, top paid apps, and top games

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Google Instant (sorta) comes to Firefox courtesy of an extension

Filed under: Mozilla, Browsers

File this one under "a screenshot doesn't do it justice," but if you've been wanting Google Chrome's Instant integration in Firefox, a new extension may be exactly what you're looking for.

It's called InstantFirefox, and it does precisely what you'd expect. Start typing in the Awesome Bar, and InstantFirefox refreshes the Google search results below in real time. The InstantFirefox experience isn't as smooth as what Chrome offers, but it's certainly a capable alternative for Firefox users.

Download InstantFirefox

[via Lifehacker]

Google Instant (sorta) comes to Firefox courtesy of an extension originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 26 Oct 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TiPb Picks of the Week: Halloween Edition

Every week a few of us from team TiPb will bring you our current favorite, funnest, most useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they?re iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch related, they?re fair game. To see what we picked [...]

TiPb Picks of the Week: Halloween Edition is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

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Firefox Friday: Mozilla refuses to ban Firesheep, a more-Awesome Bar, delayed Firefox 4, and more

Filed under: Features, Mozilla, Browsers

This week has been a busy one for Mozilla, and not in a here-are-lots-of-awesome-toys-to-play-with way.

First of all, Firefox 4 was pushed back to 2011. We had originally hoped to see it launch before the end of 2010, but in all likelihood we probably won't see before March or April 2011. There are still a bunch of Beta releases to get through, and then the Release Candidates. On the flip side, FF4 is already very fast and a joy to use -- as long as you don't mind the occasional hiccup, it's well worth the upgrade from FF3.6!

Then there was Firesheep, a sidejacking add-on that gets its name from Firefox, which Mozilla has decided not to ban. Mozilla retains the ability to blacklist add-ons, but generally only blocks add-ons that cause browser crashes. There have been a few add-ons blocked for 'security issues', though, which raises the question: is Mozilla simply looking at the bigger picture -- a Web made all the more secure because of awareness-raising add-ons like Firesheep?

Finally, the Nobel Peace Prize website was hacked to exploit a 0-day Firefox vulnerability. The hole was summarily patched and new versions of Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 were released.

It wasn't all bad this week though! Mozilla Labs threw out a few of very fun toys to play with (an auto-complete Awesome Bar!), and I've found a few other goodies to show you, too.

Mozilla Labs brings you Awesome Bar word completion

This add-on, which is the first deliverable from Mozilla Labs' Prospector experiments, is all about enhancing the search experience inside Firefox. If you thought the Awesome Bar was good -- this will blow your mind! It's hard to explain exactly what 'word completion' does, but essentially it means you have to type less while searching -- just like Google's search suggestions!

Incidentally, this is yet another Chrome-like feature -- but hey, I don't think anyone's complaining.

Combine your address books and friends lists with Mozilla Labs' Contacts

Mozilla Labs has been quietly plugging away at the Contacts add-on for a while, and with release 0.4 it's definitely starting to become usable.

Contacts is part of Mozilla's continued efforts to make the browser a tool, rather than a portal. While Google's Chrome tries to get out of your way as quickly as possible, Mozilla wants Firefox to be part of the browsing experience. With Contacts you can import contacts and friends from a variety of services (Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, Yahoo, etc.) into your browser.

Having your contacts in your browser is great for two reasons: a) you always have an offline backup handy, and b) when registering for new Web services, you'll be able to give those sites access to your contacts directory. You won't have to give up your Facebook, Google, Flickr and Twitter credentials every time a site asks you to 'look for friends'!

[At the time of writing, this add-on doesn't seem to work -- I don't know if it's an issue with Contacts, or the latest builds of Firefox -- either way, I guess you just have to bookmark this one and hope Mozilla fixes it ASAP.]

Grab a faster, optimized version of Firefox 3.6 for Windows and Linux

The tenacious Mitch over at Firefox Facts dug up two gems this week: The Pale Moon Project and Swiftfox, which provide optimized versions of Firefox 3.6 for Windows and Linux respectively. Documentation for Swiftfox is lacking, but fortunately Pale Moon provides tons of details for why its build is faster than Mozilla's. The memory management runtime library has been custom-compiled for faster operation, and overall complexity has been reduced by removing unnecessary features (like accessibility and ActiveX). In general, it sounds like the Pale Moon build is angled towards speed, while Mozilla builds for compatibility.

The only real problem is that these are builds of Firefox 3.6. No matter how hard you tune it, 3.6 still languishes some way behind 4.0. Still, if you're not quite ready to transition over to the beta builds of Firefox 4, these two optimized builds should definitely give you a bit of a boost. Pale Moon also says it will build an optimized version of Firefox 4 when it's released -- and when that happens, Download Squad will be sure to review it.

Of course, neither of these optimized versions are overseen or ratified by Mozilla, so use them at your own risk!

Firefox Friday: Mozilla refuses to ban Firesheep, a more-Awesome Bar, delayed Firefox 4, and more originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Will Resolution Independent Interfaces Ever Come to the Mac?

Resolution independence, or the lack of it, is one of those nagging problems most users don’t even realize have a name. But the concept is simple: user-interface elements like icons, buttons and window borders on the same OS should be the same physical size no matter what screen you’re using.
From the 1980s until just a [...]

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Is Samsung About to Unveil a Google Nexus Two?

If you didn’t get your fill of the Google Nexus phone, there may be a second chance. Google may have tapped Samsung to create the Nexus Two, a new smartphone that could debut early next month, according to a report on an Android news site.
Samsung will announce the Nexus Two on November 8, claims Androidandme.com. [...]

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