Whether you want to design a dream home or figure out how to cram a new couch into your living room, Floorplanner can help. The site, which we first covered last year, lets you design, share, and export floorplans. The site recently launched a new beta version with a bunch of updates, including support for 3D objects. In other words, your couch, bed, table, or dresser might show up in 3D. Not every item in the library is available in 3D yet, but the company is working on adding more objects.

Here are a few of the other changes you'll find in the new beta:

• Improved drawing of surfaces
• Faster loading speeds
• Option to hide the sidebar and maximize your work area

Floorplanner is free to use, and you can try it out without registering for an account. Eventually Floorplanner will offer free personal accounts plus paid professional and enterprise accounts.

Having a hard time deciding where to live? StreetAdvisor makes those decisions a little easier for renters and buyers. TechCrunch posted about an array of new features added to the website, but since DLS has not yet covered this helpful product that launched earlier this year, and the fact that its starting to generate more street reviews we'll give it a little rundown.

StreetAdvisor plain and simply gives reviews on countries, states, cities and of course streets, sharing information and details that are important to anyone making the hard decision on where to call home. StreetAdvisor's content includes anything from details on community noise levels, traffic, entertainment options and information on local services and businesses. Members on the site can share and rank their street information, as well as upload any photos they might have of the area. They are also encouraged to share such details as life in that area, what the public services, such as what school and healthcare are like, real estate activities, and what there is to do close by.

It's going to take a while we presume, but StreetAdvisor is slowly adding to its database of areas since its launch in private beta in February of this year.

There are many task-list applications out there, but not many with the impressive feature set that Toodledo has. Its deceptive simplicity of task entry using inline editing via AJAX makes for lightning fast tasking and better productivity, while providing integration with Google Calendar, Google Personal Homepage, Firefox, and IMified.

One of the best features of Toodledo is the distinction between folders (for projects) and contexts (the many hats you wear). Contexts allows only your current frame of mind for work, and doesn't show you your home tasks. This keeps the honey-do list away from your work list, so you aren't thinking about that darn swing-set you have to put up in the middle of working on Mr. The-man's presentation.

If that isn't enough to make you jump over and check it out, they also have a printable tasklist, email alerts for your top tasks (called a hotlist), but also the ability to import/export tasks to iCal, Palm OS, XML, CSV, and text. Task lists can be published to the web if you want to share your inner-workings with the world, and with a non-free but reasonable price ($14.95/year) you can have others edit and append to your task list among other things. Toodledo offers a free 7-day trial of their pro account for your enjoyment.

Wait, there's even more. There is a developer API, it fully supports GTD, tags, history and stats, a scheduler, some goal-setting functions, RSS support, SMS support, WAP support and more. Tasks can be imported from Outlook, Apple iCal, and Remember The Milk. Seldom is there such a complete feature set in a free application. It is a major time-saver for the quick-and-dirty type task person who doesn't want to spend 8 years filling out a task form. If you don't have a solid task-list manager yet, this is the ticket.

If you're looking to move your family to a new abode, an important consideration is often the quality of the schools in the areas you are looking for.

To help with the decision, Yahoo! Real Estate has added a nationwide school search feature to it's service. The schools are displayed on the embedded Y! Map, so you get all the zoom \ pan \ images that you'd expect.

Each school is linked to more information such as Student \ Teacher Ratio and even Parent Reviews. The data it uses comes from a partnership with GreatSchools.net and gives you the ability to search on District \ Level or Grade. Also, a neighborhood map of the school is displayed with easy access to local amenities - Grocery stores \ Parks \ Gas Stations, etc.

Combine this with the Zillow data that's available from the same service, you have a powerful way to research your next home.

Microsoft's just announced Windows Home Server (WHS) receives what are mad props from long-time Microsoft critic and beta tester Paul Thurrott, which is encouraging. He says a lot about WHS and prov ides some great details on the system. Mostly that it will make backing up, restoring, file sharing and media distribution easy and almost fun for even the average consumer. Contrary to the buzz, the box is not primarily for media, though it is one of the features you can use it for via Media Connect. HP will be offering specialized hardware for the WHS software from Microsoft, or you can buy your own hardware to put the software on, if you want. If WHS is as simple and useful as Paul says, I can see a lot of non-techies buying a home server.

WHS software is built on Windows 2003 R2 and allows the home PC user to add hot-swappable storage, remotely access any PC on your network, backup all PCs on your network, whether they are wired or wireless, and automatically keeps track of all the files stored as well. There are no drive letters, just one big storage pool. Several Microsoft research technologies are used to bring many features not seen before in this type of device. Read Paul's full review for a lot more detail and the whole idea behind the Windows Home Server.

Microsoft has unveiled a Vista upgrade matrix, detailing which present versions of Windows are eligible for upgrading to one of the four relevant versions of Vista (Starter and Enterprise are targeted for specific markets and therefore not included in this matrix). To make matters a bit complicated, however, some editions (such as XP Pro or Win2K) are only eligible to upgrade to a "corresponding or better" version of Vista, i.e. - Business or Ultimate. As icing on the cake, some ugprades will require a fresh wipe and install, while others can be upgraded 'in-place', retaining your applications and settings.

To be clear, however: all present versions of Windows listed in this chart are eligible to purchase upgrade editions of Windows Vista. Previous versions, such as Win98 and ME, will have to purchase a full edition of Vista.

Reader Mark wrote in to let us know that Google has released a Google Calendar widget for Google Personalized Home. It looks pretty standard, showing a calendar view on top and events for the selected day (and the following day if there's room) down below. It also features Quick Add and Create event buttons.

[Thanks, Mark!]

Thanks to Frank K. for sending us a link to Emongoo in the comments of our Google real estate mashup post. I have no idea what Emongoo is supposed to mean (except for a formerly-available URL with a .com extension), but I can tell you it's pretty cool for what it does. Emongoo is a home listing site that gives you a place for your home, 20 images, and will send you a "For Sale" sign. All of this is free, except for the shipping and handling on the physical sign. As someone who is not looking forward to selling his house in the next year, I can tell you this is awfully nice... Unfortunately, Emongoo isn't very popular yet. Homes in my area aren't really available on the site, but again, that's a result of the newness (and relative backwardness of my location). There are handy links to a mortgage calculator, an actual mortgage company, map info, and Zestimate, which is a decent house estimator so you can compare the asking price with the estimated price. You can do a map search, and there's live support available. How do they do it? Well, Emongoo does all this for free but wants to upsell you on their services. The main service is a coaching feature, where they'll work with you on selling your home. The coaching starts at a little over $600. Another service, called e-vision, takes video of your home (which you shoot with a provided camera) and an "aesthetics professional" will suggest some ways to make the home show better. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a price for this service.

According to ZDNet's Ed Bott, the retail version of Windows Vista will include four of the OS's six-plus flavors on a single DVD.  The versions included on the DVD will be Vista Business, Home Basic, Home Premium, and Ultimate, and which version gets installed depends on how much the purchaser spends and what product key they use to install Vista. This is a good move on Microsoft's part because it prevents retailers from having to stock four versions of the same product and promises an easy upgrade scenario called Windows Anytime Upgrade. If a user has Vista Home Basic installed and wants to upgrade to Premium, for example, they can just buy a product key for an upgrade fee and install the beefier version of Vista from the disc they already have. Perhaps not so good for Microsoft is the fact that it's going to take hackers a couple weeks, tops, to figure out how to get those upgrades for free. However, Microsoft is used to piracy and has no doubt made ample room for it in its business model, so I doubt we'll see Redmond struggling at the hands of such hackers any time soon.

First they were, and then they weren't, but now BBC News is reporting that, Microsoft has really, officially confirmed that it will be shipping Windows Vista, to quote our own Victor Agreda, Jr., in "a rainbow of flavors." Ready? Start counting:

• Vista Business
• Vista Enterprise
• Vista Home Basic
• Vista Home Premium
• Vista Ultimate
• Vista Starter

You can head over to BBC News for all the deets, but here's the gist: It's pretty much what we've been expecting. Vista Business and Enterprise are pretty much what you'd expect. Home Premium does everything Home Basic does but tosses in the Aero GUI that we've seen in all the screenshots and "will also be able to connect their machine to an Xbox 360 gaming console"--expect it to be the version that ships on most OEM PCs. Vista Ultimate combines the features of all the other versions and, finally, Vista Starter is intended for low-end PCs in developing nations. Additionally there will be "versions made specifically for Europe that, in accordance with an EU mandate, remove the Windows media player," which are analagous to the "N" versions previously rumored. So that adds up to... yep, a rainbow of flavors.

Users of the Home edition of Windows XP can breathe a sigh of relief: Microsoft, which intended to discontinue support for Windows XP Home edition at the end of this year—mere months after Windows Vista's expected release—has extended its support for the aging OS for "two years after the next version of this product is released." If Vista hits its release date (big if, I know), then all versions of Windows XP, including Home, will see mainstream support until the second half of 2008.

[Via Digg]