Download Squad

Those of you that are fortunate enough to primarily surf the web on a desktop machine, you probably won't notice just how much of a resource hog web browsers can be. But if you use a laptop -- or any kind of portable really -- you have probably experienced the full 100%-CPU-ow-ow-my-thighs-are-burning-and-my-fingertips-are-sweating experience. It turns out that the issue is so pronounced in some cases -- generally ultra-lights/netbooks with less heat dissipation -- that laptops are overheating and shutting down!

For whatever reason, web browsers and portable computers just don't go well together. Whether it's the constant hard-disk swapping or the heavy use of Flash, something causes laptop CPU usage to spike -- a lot.

Fortunately, there's a neat support page on the Mozilla site that details a few ways to reduce CPU usage, if you're one of the few that has an overheating laptop.

Over on CNET they're suggesting that Firefox suffers more than other browsers. Whether that's true or not might be anecdotal, but a support bod at Mozilla did say that 'Safari is possibly better at optmizing Flash-based sites compared to Firefox.'

And I'll pipe in and say that I get CPU spikes using every browser on my laptop. But I'd love to know if Firefox actually munches up more resources than other browsers, or if it's simply a matter of configuring your browser correctly. Perhaps we can expect to see a 'performance version' of Firefox that looks uncomfortably like Safari...?

The Google Chrome Extensions gallery is currently in limited beta release to allow developers to upload their extensions. If you are a developer, you can upload your extension here. If you are looking to find and install extensions, please check back here soon!

Are you a developer? If so, the add button will allow you to upload your project. The developer agreement offers a few words about the gallery itself:

The Gallery is a publicly available site on which Developers can publish Products for distribution and use in connection with Google Chrome. In order to publish Products on the Gallery, you must acquire and maintain a valid Google account.

Most of the agreement is pretty standard redistribution/liability/takedown-related policy, though it does reveal that Chrome users will be allowed to rate extensions on the Gallery site. I think we expected that, since you can do it on the Firefox add-ons site.

The full gallery policies are available on this page in case you plan on submitting an extension.

It's apparent that the push is on - it's just a matter of time before the Chrome Extensions Gallery opens its doors to the public.

"Wordoids", which are words that are made-up, but sound right. They follow the rules of phonetics, and if done properly, roll off the tongue. The need to have an online presence has increased the need for unique product and company names and has led to these wordoids. Yet, even with a made-up name, it's important for the name to convey something about what the product or business actually is. Now you can do it very quickly using a website called, appropriately enough, Wordoid.

For example, I gave Wordoid the shortened acronym we use for Download Squad when talking on our internal mailing list, which is DLS. The first option Wordoid presented is dlsident, and it informs me that the related domain dlsident.com is available. While it doesn't look like much, if you spell out the first three letters as we do when using the acronym, this name actually rolls off the tongue quite nicely. It's like a subversive version of the name. Other options it came up with are dlsider, dlsidad, dlsidends, and dlsidanila. Certainly, they're not all winners, but I bet they're better than you expected.

You can tell Wordoid where to place your seed word - at the beginning, end, or anywhere including in the middle of the text string it returns. This gives you a ton of flexibility to guide your wordoid's creation to include useful information, but still come up with something unique, easy to say, and with an available domain name.

Seesmic have released their 'Seesmic Mobile' Twitter client for Android and Blackberry on their respective application stores. Available for download free of charge, the clients are slick, feature packed and refreshingly free of advertisements.

The Android client (pictured above) has a great design that utilises a standard tab-based user interface with a red accent, providing virtually every feature (bar multiple account support) that a Twitterer could desire. Included are the ability to scroll without limits back through your timeline, photo and video upload (either from your device camera or from the gallery) via a variety of online services, the ability to add your location to your tweet, URL shortening, saving tweets-in-progress as drafts, switchable full name / username display and very granular notifications.

The Blackberry application also features a native-feeling UI and adds lists and saved search support, albeit at the expense of video and location features.

If you give Seesmic Mobile a try, let us know how you get on and - of course - don't forget to follow @downloadsquad!

The SEVEN Beta setup is an interesting one.

As a company, Seven (enough capitalising already!) sell their excellent push e-mail products only via mobile operator channels, however their Beta program is an excellent way for users on unsupported carriers (that's likely you and I) to enjoy their software.

Available in a variety of editions on a variety of platforms, Seven's software allows you to receive push mail on your device from a variety of services - Exchange, Yahoo, GMail, AOL Mail, HoTMaiL and standard POP and IMAP services are all supported. A Beta release it might be (with the usual associated disclaimers), but the application is a supremely useful piece of software that i've been using for many years to push synchronise GMail with my Windows Mobile devices.

I happened to visit the Seven Beta site earlier today to download the latest Windows Mobile client and I was intrigued to notice that an Android download option had appeared. Obviously I had to download the application and take a look!

As expected, it's a Seven client for the Android OS that includes all of the goodness that i'm used to - push mail across a host of platforms, 'quiet times' when push can be automatically disabled, multiple accounts, server contact search, customisable notifications and more! Although the currently version of the software is missing a few features i'd like to see (primarily HTML mail), for Android users it can often be a trying task getting mail set up and working as desired if you are using something other than GMail, and Seven is making that story easier. I've been pushing an additional e-mail account and a HoTMaiL account all day without any issues!

If you'd like to try out Seven on Android (or indeed any of their other support platforms, which include WinMo Standard / Professional, Symbian S60, Palm OS and even J2ME!) then head on over to the Seven Community Forum to sign up for an account.