Ever have the urge to change a headline or rewrite the text of a web site? Edit this page is a browser bookmarklet that makes any web page instantly editable. Well, kind of. Here's how it works. Drag this bookmarklet to your bookmark toolbar. When you're on a page you'd like to rearrange, just hit the bookmarklet and you can edit any text area.
Of course, nobody else will see the edits you've made unless you take a screenshot and share it with the world. But in completely unrelated news we are particularly proud of the distinction Time Magazine gave us earlier this year, so we thought we'd share that with you.
Ok, ok, we know that when something is as powerful and useful as Google that looks shouldn't matter, but come on. Would it really be too much to ask for her to doll herself up a little? Just a little. Throw us a bone!
Fortunately, Yoozila has arrived on the scene, all AJAXed up, and shiny web 2.0 graphics to top it all off.
The results page can be quickly - and usefully - customized. Turn thumbnails on or off, filter your results by region, language, file type and license type (though it doesn't work that well on some searches yet), and of course you can search within your results.
The thumbnails can be incredibly useful; they're a good way to spot scam sites before you get suckered in to visiting or give you a visual reminder of sites you're visited before.
It's built on Google code, so you'll get the same web, image, blog, news, and other results either way. Yoozila's done an excellent job updating the old, saggy Google interface.
Need to reinstall Windows but you misplaced your driver disks? Not sure you have everything you need? DriverMax has you covered. Backing up and reinstalling your drivers couldn't be easier.
After installing DriverMax, go into Driver Operations and click on Export drivers. A list of all your installed drivers will be displayed and you can pick and choose which ones to export, or simply export the whole lot in one go. Once you've reinstalled Windows, go back into Driver Operations, click on Import drivers, and point to the folder containing your saved drivers. The import can take a while, but in comparison to manually installing each driver individually, this is a walk in the park.
DriverMax is also useful even if you don't need to perform a complete reinstall - you can use the program just to make sure that your drivers are up to date or export a list of your installed drivers as an html or text file.
DriverMax is compatible with Windows 2003, XP and Vista and you have to supply your email address in order to receive a registration code.
Bricksmith brings Lego building to your Mac. And in a big way. Sorry PC folks, Mac only.
When we say a big way, we mean this isn't just a drag and drop of lego parts, this is full modeling. You don't have to have a degree to do it, but you definitely have to have some time on your hands....but the payoff could be awesomesauce.
This sucker is like Photoshop for lego designs.
You have thousands of parts to choose from, some of which we've never seen in our lego pails.
There's a full color palette, copy/paste/undo, drag and drop modeling and more.
Best part is, you don't have to step on them in your bare feet in the middle of the night!
We used it for 5 minutes and it hurt our heads, but we bet you can come up with something great. Take a screenshot and put the link to it in the comments.
Adobe Reader 9 is out, and while the latest version of Adobe's popular PDF reader offers faster launch speeds and native support for Flash content, it still takes forever to run Adobe Reader on some computer systems. If you've ever come across an unexpected PDF link on the web, you know what we mean.
While there are plenty of alternative PDF readers (some of our favorites include Foxit and Sumatra), if you want an application that can handle pretty much any PDF file in existence, you're still best off running Adobe Reader, even if it has a ton of features you'll never need. Fortunately, there's a stripped down version of Adobe Reader called Adobe Reader Lite.
Adobe Reader Lite is maintained by a third party developer and isn't officially supported by Adobe. But version 9 was released last week, hot on the heels of Adobe Reader 9. AR Lite contains all of the basic functions you'd need from Adobe Reader, but none of the extra junk like autorun, desktop shortcuts, or some of the less frequently used plugins.
Yahoo has officially rolled out its updated personal start page to all My Yahoo! users. My Yahoo! 2.0 has been in beta for the last year or so. But now there's no more annoying little beta label, and users can't switch back to the classic page anymore. If you don't see the new page when you login, just wait a few days. According to PC Magazine Yahoo! plans to migrate all users by July 14th.
So what's new in My Yahoo! 2.0?
Modules are easier to reorganize and modify thanks to a drag and drop interface
There are new custom-designed modules with content from partners like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal
New modules add support for third party services like Netflix, Gmail, Facebook and POP mail
New page layout options
The new page is also available now for users in additional countries including Asustralia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the UK.
Passpack is an online password manager application that lets you store all of your passwords for web sites, bank accounts, or pretty much anything else in one place. The advantage of storing this info on a web site is that you can access it from any computer. So if you're used to relying on your web browser's password manager to login to your Yahoo!, Google, eBay, and other accounts, you might run into some trouble when using a friend's computer.
But if you're a bit paranoid about storing all of your most important passwords online, we don't blame you. Fortunately, Passpack has recently released a desktop application built on Adobe AIR that lets you manage your passwords without opening a web browser. You can choose to synchronize Passpack Desktop with the web version of Passpack. But you don't have to. In fact, you don't even need to sign up for an account to use Passpack Desktop. All you have to do is install the application, choose a username and a security phrase and start entering data which will be stored on your computer.
The password manager is easy to use. Just enter a title, user ID, email address, and password for each site or service. You can add links, tags, or notes. When you need to find the correct password, you can just search for the site name or a keyword and you should be able to find the correct password. It's not quite as convenient as browser-based password manager that automatically fills in forms for you. But the optional synchronization feature almost makes up for the lack of the browser integration.
PCIncubator aims to help you find the right parts at the right prices to build your dream PC.
We've all built a PC at some point. It's fun, isn't it? Pick our your case, the mother board, memory, GI Joe Stickers.
What?
The pain in the neck part of the process is finding the right parts that you need and not paying too much for them...or buying really crappy parts as a default because you don't want to break the bank.
The parts are all out there, the internet is vast, but PCIncubator keeps tabs on the stuff that you need, the prices that are right, and does so very nicely if we may say.
They use NewEgg which is the geek chic place to shop for parts. They also keep a price history of all items so you can wait for prices to go back down if they go up. It's kind of like shopping for airline tickets. It also gives you that Dell and Apple builder feel
Once you've picked your perfect PC parts, you can toss them all into a NewEgg cart and away you go!
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.
Firefox is great on its own, but we love us an addon that makes it even more powerful. Wikilook fits the bill, making it a snap to look up definitions for unfamiliar words.
Sure, you can just google a term or head over to Wiktionary and key in a search, but Wikilook will do it for you without ever leaving your current page. It's dead simple to use: hold down shift and hover over a word, wait patiently for a second or two, and the definition appears right before your eyes.
Quick links are presented for the Wikipedia match and key terms in the definition itself are also linked for you, and yes - you can even shift-hover text in the definitions if there are words in them you don't understand.
Some of us aren't good with numbers. The whole addition, subtraction, division, it's just not our forte.
Sure Windows and Macs have built in calculators but we're web people so we need something on the web to make us not feel like we're totally mathstupid.
Ecalc to the rescue. It's not just any calculator though.
It's pretty and webified.
They also have a scientific calculator for those who are past just trying to add up this months shopping list with the rent, which is as far as some of us go.
All kidding aside, scientific calculators are expensive...so it's pretty cool to have this tool available online.
They also have a rundown of all types of calculators if you're really into that.
So go be a mathematical genius...we're counting on you.
We've tried plenty of Gnutella clients that just aren't any good, and usually end up back with Frostwire or Limewire by default. Thankfully, Cabos has an excellent alternative for Windows and Mac users.
Cabos doesn't support torrents, and it doesn't have a built in media player, but who needs that anyway? Most of us have favorite apps for handling those files anyways, and Limewire probably isn't either of them. It simply searches the Gnutella network, displays your results, lets you filter and sort them six ways from Sunday, and downloads them quickly. It even offers basic iTunes integration.
There's no lime green splashed around the UI, just a tranquil, muted gray, and 21 languages are supported. It's totally ad-free and there are no nags - Cabos just does what you want it to and doesn't get in the way.
It's no secret that we install a lot of programs here at Download Squad to review. And when the review is over most of them get un-installed. For the our Mac apps, it's just a matter of dragging the application to the trash as well as the associated preference files. But some of the programs we review are utilities that run in the background so when it comes time to emptying the trash, we'll get an dialog box warning us that the file is currently in use. So we'll have to track down the file and make sure that it is no longer running before we can completely delete it. Tracking down these files is time consuming but programs like What's Keeping Me help to make it as painless as possible.
Simply put, when you're given the warning that a file can not be deleted enter the name in What's Keeping Me and it will search your computer for the file/application. Once it does you'll have 1 of 3 options to chose from: Quit, Relaunch or Kill. Since we're more interested in deleting the file, the Kill button will do just nicely freeing up the file so that it can be properly deleted.
While you can certainly use Activity Monitor to kill the offending application as well, those not familiar with it or those just wanting a more streamlined way of killing the application for deletion may find What's Keeping Me more helpful.
What's keeping me is a universal binary application and works on both PPC and Intel based Macs running OS X 10.4 or higher.
Facile is a Facebook desktop app for Mac, modestly described by the developer as "like Twitterrific for Facebook, but uglier." We don't think it's particularly ugly, actually, and it's a neat way to track friends' status updates. It even supports Growl notifications.
With Facebook Chat being integrated into more desktop apps, there seems to be a demand for access to Facebook features without the website (and the ads). Facile makes Facebook status updates more meaningful and useful, because you can get them as they happen. If apps like this are widely adopted, we'll definitely think of keeping our Facebook status more current. Heck, with Twitter's current API limitations, maybe we'll just feed our tweets into Facebook and let Facile do the work.
Who doesn't like Legos?
PCIncubator aims to help you find the right parts at the right prices to build your dream PC.
Some of us aren't good with numbers. The whole addition, subtraction, division, it's just not our forte. 
It's no secret that we install a lot of programs here at Download Squad to review. And when the review is over most of them get un-installed. For the our Mac apps, it's just a matter of dragging the application to the trash as well as the associated preference files. But some of the programs we review are utilities that run in the background so when it comes time to emptying the trash, we'll get an dialog box warning us that the file is currently in use. So we'll have to track down the file and make sure that it is no longer running before we can completely delete it. Tracking down these files is time consuming but programs like What's Keeping Me help to make it as painless as possible.
Facile is a Facebook desktop app for Mac, modestly described by the developer as "like Twitterrific for Facebook, but uglier." We don't think it's particularly ugly, actually, and it's a neat way to track friends' status updates. It even supports Growl notifications. 
