The last time Download Squad took a look at MyMediaPlayer, Christina praised the concept of an Adobe AIR-based Hulu viewer, and the ability to watch shows and search for new ones at the same time. She also knocked MyMediaPlayer because it only showed the embedded versions of Hulu videos, which meant a serious restriction on viewing quality.

MyMediaPlayer 2 fixes that issue, adds Linux support, and is visually more appealing than the previous version.

Some of the new features in MyMediaPlayer 2 include a guide page for quick browsing of shows and movies, a full-screen TV listing mode, and, most importantly, full-screen video.

Since MyMediaPlayer shows Hulu content uncut and with all the ads, the main incentive to use it over your browser is the addition of nice little UI touches like these. It also only shows only full-length movies and shows, so you don't have to browse Hulu's endless clips for full episodes they don't carry.

I like to keep things in my Firefox UI to a minimum, though for some reason I don't like to utilize the full-screen view. What can I do? Why, go find some addons and combine, compress, and tidy things up a bit. Here are four handy addons that help get the job done - if you've got some others, share them with us in the comments!

Personal Menu

Nix that needless file-edit-view menu with this addon. Personal Menu can take the whole mess and cram it into three (or fewer, if you like) tiny icons on Firefox's navigation toolbar. I wrote about it recently, and it's become one of my must-install addons.

Stop-or-Reload

Combines the two buttons so that stop is displayed while a page loads and reload once it's fully displayed. This addon is old - it hasn't been updated since November 2006. Nevertheless, it works as well as or better than other FF addons designed to do the same thing, it's not experimental, and it works just fine in new versions.

Back to Close

Suppose you've backed up as far as you can go in a particular tab's history. A grayed-out back button really isn't that useful anyway, so why not replace it with a close button? That's precisely what this addon does, and it also works with mouse gestures and the alt + left arrow hotkey.

Fission

Firefox addon irony, thy name is Fission. Contrary to what the dictionary tells you about fission splitting things into smaller bits, this addon takes your Firefox status bar and merges it with the address bar. Fission also provides you with a few customization options like selectable color or background image. One downside: it may ugly up your theme a little bit by spilling outside the borders of the address bar.

Sure, Google has put a lot of time and effort into developing a graphical user interface for its Android operating system. It's designed for cellphones and provides quick and easy access to the features you need the most, like the phone dialer and web browser. But if you want some real geek cred, you might want to think about installing a desktop-style window manager on your Android-powered phone.

Ghostwalker at Android Fanatic has posted instructions for loading IceWM, LXDE, or other Linux desktop environments on Google Android. This requires installing a Debian Shell and a series of other utilities including an X server. It's not for the Linux newbies. Or for people who just want to use their phone the way Google intended.

In theory, you should be able to install GNOME or KDE following similar steps, but they'd probably be as slow as molasses on a phone like the T-Mobile G1. IceWM and LXDE have lower memory footprints and are designed to run on machines with slower processors.

Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth has announced the codename for Ubuntu 9.10, which is scheduled for release in October: Karmic Koala. Sure, the team still needs to put the finishing touches on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope which will be out in a April. But it's never too early to start planning for your future, right?

Shuttleworth says one goal is to speed up the boot process in Ubuntu 9.10, while possibly using a new splashscreen. Canonical will also be refining the Ubuntu Netbook Remix interface for mini-laptops like the Dell Inspiron Mini.

The server edition of Karmic Koala will feature support for Amazon's EC2 APIs, and will also use the Eucalyptus project to allow you to host cloud based apps in your own data center.

Canonical will host an Ubuntu Developer Summit in Barcelona, Spain in May to determine other priorities for Karmic Koala.

[via OStatic]

GeeMail is a desktop client for Gmail based on Adobe AIR. In other words, it can run on Windows, Linux, or OS X as long as you have Adobe AIR installed. At its most basic level, GeeMail is a standalone application that you can use to check your email, send, or sort messages without opening a web browser.

But GeeMail also supports offline Gmail access. In other words, you can compose messages while you're away from an internet connection. When you go online again, GeeMail will send them. Google also provides limited offline support to users who install Google Gears.

GeeMail lacks a search box, which is a bit limiting. But what it does provide is super-fast access to your Gmail inxbox.

[via CNet]

Version 2 of Alert Thingy may have just been released last month, but version 3 is here now.

V3 has been tweaked to include features that make it an excellent addition to your work desktop, including support for Basecamp, Yammer, and Huddle.

Alert Thingy also works with TwitPic and Twitter Search now, making it one of the most complete desktop Twitter clients around. Ping.fm has also been added so you can easily keep all your status and microblog sites up-to-date. Just visit ping.fm/key and paste in the resulting code.

To run Alert Thingy, you'll need to have Adobe Air installed. If you're looking for the original FriendFeed only version, it's still available from their site as well.

When you run across a Quicktime, MP3, Real Media, or other media link on a web site, Firefox typically offers to download the file, open it in an external player, or opens a new tab and starts playing it if you have the proper plugins installed. But what if you like to open all of your files using Windows Media Player or VLC, so that you can close Firefox without interrupting playback?

Media Player Connectivity is a Firefox plugin that lets you assign external media players to file types. So any time you click on a media file, it will be opened in the correct player. The plugin supports a ton of file types, including OGG, MP3, AAC, RAM, WMV, WMA, and playlist files like PLS and M3U.

The latest versions of Media Player Connectivity work best with Windows, but Mac users can download older versions of the plugin which should work with OS X.

[via gHacks]

Microsoft's newest operating system may be in beta, but it's already getting a lot of praise for providing a good mix of performance and eye candy. Features like the new taskbar, Aero Shake, and Aero Peek make the operating system both visually attractive and easy to navigate.

But you know what? Windows 7 isn't the only operating system with a flashy new desktop interface. The KDE 4 desktop environment for Linux also offers some pretty nifty features like enhanced support for widgets, a new menu, and animations.

So the folks at ZDNet Australia decided to see what people thought of KDE4. Only taking a cue from Microsoft's Mojave campaign, they didn't tell anyone that they were looking at a Linux desktop. Instead they said it was Windows 7. And people seemed to be impressed. Of course, they also only got to look at it for a few moments and didn't know that it wouldn't run MS Office, Outlook, or Adobe Photoshop. But hey, first impressions matter, right?

[via Slashdot]

Hewlett Packard has released a custom version of Ubuntu Linux designed for netbooks. For the HP Mini 1000 Mi Edition, to be exact. Under the hood, the operating system is based on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. That means it can run pretty much any application that runs on Ubuntu including OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird and Pidgin. In fact, it comes preloaded with all of those applications plus a few more. It's also fairly easy to install other Linux staples like image editor GIMP.

But what makes the Mi Edition software stand out is the graphical user interface which looks nothing like Ubuntu or even Ubuntu Netbook Remix. When you first boot up the Mi Edition software you're greeted with a screen with a web search engine, a list of favorite web sites, and shortcuts to your music and photos. If you click the Start New Program button, a program launcher will open that separates your applications into Internet, Media, Utilities, Work, Play, and All tabs. The settings manager shows you everything you'd find in the typical Ubuntu settings screens, but it's arranged in a new way that makes it easier to find what you're looking for with fewer clicks.

HP has also added a custom media player called HP MediaStyle that looks a lot like Apple's FrontRow. MediaStyle provides you with a simple full screen interface for navigating music, videos, and photos.

I've read about moblin before, but when it resurfaced in my newsreader this morning I decided it was time to take a look at the project a bit more closely. The moblin OS is built on Linux and optimized for Intel-based notebooks, netbooks, and MIDs. It is currently in alpha testing, but already looks very promising.

Most of the other Linux distributions I've tested on my MSI Wind were "customized" for netbooks, but they ultimately ended up feeling like a standard desktop distribution with an interface tweaked for small displays.

One thing immediately sets moblin apart from the others.

After installing it to the hard drive and rebooting my system, it took a mere 16 seconds to get from the Grub menu to the XFCE desktop. Holy boot times, Batman! That's impressive.

I'm aware that users have gotten times like this before with distros like Arch, but Moblin will be easier to deal with for most netbook users.

The pre-installed applications are kept to a minimum - Firefox is included and you'll be able to enjoy your music and videos with Movie Player. There are also lightweight GTD apps for managing contacts, tasks, and a calendar. You can, of course, add whatever other packages you like through yum or add/remove software.

If you want to take moblin for a test drive you can download an iso file, or a virtual machine for VMware or KVM. Keep in mind this is an alpha release. Moblin's finished form may look nothing like this, but it's an intriguing project even at this stage of the game.

The Firefox "awesome bar" in Firefox 3.0 is a location bar, search box, and history box all one package. But if that's not enough for you, UrlbarExt is a add-on that adds even more features to the awesome bar.

The plugin adds a bunch of icons to the right side of the bar, which let you do things like copy the URL of the site you're on with a single click, shorten the URL using TinyURL or a similar service, go up one level or all the way back to the root web page, tag or bookmark a page, or use a proxy server to surf anonymously. You can also search the page using Google or another search engine.

There are a bunch of customization options allowing you to change your default search engine, URL shortener, or adjust which icons show up in the awesome bar.

On the other hand, if you think the awesome bar is less than awesome and you just want an old fashioned URL bar, you can always disable it.

[via Lifehacker]

According to the introduction on their own web site, the developers behind CrunchBang Linux have built the distro to offer a "good balance of speed and functionality." After running the latest release for a few days, I'm confident in saying that they've achieved their goal.

On the functionality side of things, it's worth knowing that CrunchBang is built on Ubuntu. Finding additional applications and support is an easy task, thanks to Ubuntu's popularity and its enthusiastic community.

Instead of a bulkier window manager like Gnome or KDE, CrunchBang utilizes the more minimalist Openbox. Though Openbox is highly configurable and capable of the same kind of eye candy as other WMs, CrunchBang's default setup is lean and mean.

Those who, like me, are still getting their feet wet with Linux will appreciate the "cheat sheet" on the right side of the desktop. It contains a list of handy keyboard shortcuts to help you get started.