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RockMelt,BlackSheep,Firesheep

What is RockMelt? Do We Need a Facebook Web Browser?

Yes, there’s a new web browser designed around the idea that you can share more, and share more quickly on Facebook and Twitter. That alone may turn some people away, depending on how much they value their privacy. However, after trying it for a short time, I can see how this browser could easily turn normal Facebook users into hyped up Uber-Facebook users.

RockMelt was founded by Eric Vishria and Tim Howes, and is backed by Netscape developer  Marc Andreessen.  It was released yesterday, mostly by invitation only. You can get a copy of this browser by visiting RockMelt.com and signing up via your Facebook ID.

After signing up late last night I received my invite and downloaded it. The install went fairly quick and here’s the first thing I saw … a Facebook login.

Yes, that’s right, it seems to be required. However, that makes sense.

It took me quite awhile to figure out most of the actions I could perform. If you open the “RockMelt” menu at the top right corner of the browser, and click the “Help” item, you’ll find help for a few basic tasks. Here’s the first thing you see there.

As some of you have already noticed, RockMelt is built on top of Chromium, which is the basis for Google’s Chrome web browser. Those using Chrome now won’t have a hard time getting around in the browser.

Rather than go into too many details, I’ll show you the  RockMelt video preview. It’s very well done.

RockMelt video

Techie Buzz Verdict:

I tried it, I like it, and haven’t found any major bugs yet. If you are already using Google Chrome, and you’re in Facebook often, there’s no reason not to give RockMelt a try. You don’t have to make it your default browser, and it won’t do anything to your current web browsers.  Farmville works very well in Chrome and RockMelt.

Download: http://www.rockmelt.com/

BlackSheep Thwarts Firesheep Intruders

Firesheep, a Firefox add-on for snooping on Twitter and Facebook logins on open Wi-Fi connections caused quite a storm when it was released. It went on to show how insecure your computer could be.

The exploit could snoop on unprotected Wi-Fi connections and retrieve login cookies for Twitter and Facebook, which could then be used to login to a users account and access their data. If you are using an open Wi-Fi connection, the first thing to do is to to secure your Wi-Fi connection. If you need help with it, read our earlier guides Wi-Fi Demystified I and Wi-Fi Demystified II.

BlackSheep is another Firefox add-on which is designed to combat Firesheep. BlackSheep drops fake session ID information on the wire and then monitors traffic to see if it has been hijacked. If BlackSheep finds that someone is snooping on you, it will display an alert as seen in the image above.

If you have a secure Wi-Fi connection, you have nothing to worry about, but if you don’t, the threat of Wi-Fi snooping by Firesheep is pretty high. You can circumnavigate the threat by using https instead of http while accessing the websites, but to be on the safer side, install the BlackSheep add-on too, which can be downloadedfrom here.

Top Extensions for Opera 11

Opera has always been a browser with a small (as compared to Firefox or Google Chrome) but devoted following that keeps increasing with each iteration of their browser. While their simple mobile version of the browser (Opera Mini) is vastly popular – they never saw a similar growth in the desktop market. The folks at Opera Inc. thought it was probably due to the unavailability of Extensions for their browser, and so they added the extensibility of extensions in Opera 11.

So without further ado, here’s a look at the top extensions for Opera 11.

NoAds: NoAds is a NoScript + AdBlock extension. In the words of its creator NoAds = (NoScript + AdBlock)/2. It blocks 99% of scripts on a site that originate from a different domain, blocks text ads and you can even import subscriptions from AdBlock as well as EHH! No more ads.

FastestTube: This simple and sweet extension just adds a drop-down menu on any YouTube video page where you can download the video that is playing in many formats. There are some minor problems with the integration with Redirect to HTTPS videos, but that should be fixed shortly.

Reddited: Are you an avid Redditor? Do you scramble up to submit a page to Reddit only to find that it’s already been linked to? Do you hang your head in defeat and rage at the trolls that are laughing at you? Then this is the extension for you. All it does is tell you if the page you’re looking at has been reddited or not. If it has been submitted, it shows you the comment count on the link as well.

Translate: If you’re one of those anime fans without a drop of Japanese within you, or if you’re the newshound who has to go to various foreign-language sites for news then this extension will do you a world of good. Translate auto-magically detects the language of the page you’re currently working on and will offer to translate the entire page for you. Built on top of Google Translate framework, the translation, although slightly grammatically off, works and works well.

Opera Mini Simulator: This one is for the web developers. The add-on loads your focused tab as how it would look under the Opera Mini environment. Though a little slow when simulating, the add-on is quite useful for mobile developers.

Gmail [iOS Mode]: Don’t want to wait for the Gmail page to open when all you need is to know if you have unread mail or not? Enter the Gmail [iOS Mode] extension that changes the UserAgent of Opera to an iOS device’s. So you can use the slick and lean Gmail interface on your desktop browser itself!

Do you have any favorite Opera Extensions? Do feel free to share them with me through your comments.

The Physics Behind Ball Design

Each sport is governed by different sets of rules, and those that use balls each have different specifications for their equipment. The baseball, basketball, golf ball and football are all essentially by-products of physics. Sports is big business, and hundreds of millions of dollars may hang in the balance when we are dealing with a few obscure physical laws. For example, at the recent World Cup soccer championship, the shape of the pieces making up the surface of the soccer ball was changed by the manufacturer, leading to charges that some teams received an edge over others.

Lots of sports equipment designers and even the franchises themselves have consulted with my colleagues to gain a better insight into the science of the game. You may be wondering why the sports industry would want to pick the brain of a physicist; well, let's take baseball for example. We all know that when you look at a baseball, it has threading woven through the leather of the ball in a particular shape. The threads of each section meet at the seam of the opposite thread on the other side of the cut. Tests, including time-lapse photography and wind-tunnel technology, have allowed us to determine that these threads play a huge role in the success of the fastball, curveball and even the famed knuckleball. Basically it boils down to: The faster a ball spins as it slices through the atmosphere, the more stable it is from point A to B. Since a fastball spins very rapidly for example, it is very stable and this is widely due to the layout of the threading.

But let's take a look at the knuckleball, which has been the topic of many a debate over the years. The movement on this pitch is caused by mini-vortices forming over the threaded/stitched seams which cause the ball to rapidly change it's position in the air. The ball can change direction, corkscrew, appear to take a dive, flutter, dance or even curve in two opposite directions during it's flight. The key to the knuckleball is the way that the pitcher holds the ball with his knuckles, releasing it straight out to completely avoid the normal rotational spin of a pitch. The immediate absence of the rotational spin causes an asymmetric drag that tends to deflect the trajectory towards the side of the stitches. This drag is essentially what gives the flight of the ball such an erratic motion on it's way to the catcher's mitt. This particular pitch is also very difficult to catch and some knuckleball pitchers have even required their own catchers.The art of a knuckleball:

Have you ever wondered exactly what's inside of a baseball?

Now also, if you take a look at football. It's true that the faster you throw your spiral, the better control you have over the delivery. The faster the spin, the greater reduction of eddy currents allowing it to slice through the atmosphere to deliver a touchdown. The mini-dimples on golf balls are also engineered to reduce eddy currents, allowing the ball to travel much further by reducing the drag on the ball as it flies through the air.

In 2006, a group of researchers at Arizona State University used a bit of aircraft science to try and design a better golf ball, which would be more efficient in all weather conditions, cost less and travel farther. One of the battery of tests they performed took 64 high-powered computers running for a full week to evaluate the flight of one ball under one set of conditions.

 So, this just gives you an idea of the thought and ingenuity that goes into the designs of such equipment. Think about all of that the next time you throw a baseball, football or swing the golf club to hit that dimple-covered golf ball.

So, this just gives you an idea of the thought and ingenuity that goes into the designs of such equipment. Think about all of that the next time you throw a baseball, football or swing the golf club to hit that dimple-covered golf ball. You might even find that a little physics will give you an advantage over the competition.

Addons/Extensions Must Have for Firefox

• ColorfulTabs – Having too many tabs open can lead to a lot of confusion. Still, this extension will assign your tabs different colors so you can tell them apart easier.
• Adblock Plus – The popular, yet controversial extension has been updated to work with the latest version of the browser, and it’s still doing what it does best: blocking ads.
• ChatZilla – Add an IRC client to your browser so you can chat in it directly without having to open any other applications.
• ColorZilla – An extremely handy tool for Web developers to let them see the RGB and Hex values of any color on a Web page.
• Del.icio.us Toolbar – Quickly add bookmarks to your Del.icio.us account, edit tags and access your account.
• Digg – Lets you know if the page you are viewing has been dugg, how many it has received, recent comments and more.
• DownThemAll – A popular extension that assists you in downloading multiple files from a page with just a few clicks.
• Facebook Toolbar – Gives you notifications of new mail and pokes on your Facebook account.
• Firebug – A mainstay of the developer community, Firebug strips down Web pages quickly. It lets you work on JAVA, HTML, CSS and more, directly inside the browser.
• FireGestures – Use five different mouse gestures to control various functions of Firefox.
• Flagfox – See a flag in the status bar that tells you what country the server is in for the website you are on. You can then look up more detailed information on the server, giving you some extra security in case the site is a fake.
• FlashBlock – Annoyed with Flash animations that play on sites when you launch them? FlashBlock will stop them from playing.
• Foxmarks – Have more than one computer? Then you have to have Foxmarks. It synchronizes your bookmarks across multiple computers and gives you access to them via their website.
• FoxyTunes – Gives you control over multiple media players directly from your browsers to save you the effort of changing windows.
• Forecastfox – Weather forecasts brought to you by the people at AccuWeather.com.
• Google Toolbar – Gives you the ability to search Google from a toolbar, access to your mail, auto fill forms and several other features.
• Greasemonkey – Greasemonkey is the necessary extension to run the ceaseless stream of Greasmonkey scripts that allow you to customize sites from Facebook to Gmail.
• GSpace – Gmail gives you nearly 7 GB of free storage. With Gspace, you can turn some or all of that into free online storage of files that you can access from anywhere.
• IETab – Sometimes you just have to look at some things in Internet Explorer due to coding issues. Well, using a tab inside of Firefox is a far sight better than having to open up IE itself.
• MeasureIt – An extension perfect for designers that allows you to measure the dimensions of any section of a page to figure out how much real-estate it is occupying.
• Meebo – Gives you a sidebar with all of your buddies from the various instant messenger services that Meebo supports such as AIM and MSN.
• NoScript is an essential extension in your security arsenal. It prevents scripts from running in the background of a website without your express permission.
• QuickRestart – One of the most annoying things about adding a new extenstion to Firefox is the down time while it restarts the browser to work properly. This extension speeds up the process.
• Reload Every – Allows you to set your tabs to reload every few seconds or minutes, handy for sites like Twitter.
• Sage-Too – A lightweight RSS reader you can integrate into your browser.
• StumbleUpon Toolbar – Allows you to stumble pages from a convenient toolbar, add comments, view what has been said and more.
• TwitterFox – A Twitter client that resides down in your status bar.
• Update Notifier – You’ve been adding all these extensions. Still, it’s easy to forget to check to see when they’ve been updated. This puts the notifications out front where it’s easy to keep track of them.
• Video DownloadHelper – Assists you in finding and downloading videos from over 500 websites all over the world.
• WebMail Notifier – Get notifications of new email in your status bar for services such as Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail and more.

Each Top 10 entrant is linked to the page where Firefox users can install them from. See if you can't find something new for your browsing routine below.

10. AutoCopy

We like it because we're bloggers, having to quote and copy links and code every day. Still, anyone who does a fair amount of copying to and from the web will dig AutoCopy. The primary use: It copies any text you select on the web as soon as you choose it—no Ctrl+C necessary. For pasting into text forms, you simply hit the middle mouse button rather than Control+V. If that's all it did, hey, we'd recommend it to anyone who writes, copies or pastes a lot. Still, we also have to point out that it fixes really long, wrap-broken URLs automatically. Three cheers for fewer pinky-finger stretches!

9. Google Gears

It's a bit more technical than most browser extensions. Still, for all intents and purposes, Gear is an easy-to-install add-on that unlocks an entirely new world to the internet. Primarily, it takes Google apps offline—Gmail, Google Reader, Docs, and Calendar—but a handful of other apps make good use of its mini-database powers, including Remember the Milk and PassPack. Still, given the kind of special implementation Offline Gmail received, we've only scratched the surface of the potential in them their gears.

8. Personal Menu

Personal Menu is kind of a next-generation version of the much-loved Tiny Menu, accomplishing the same basic but totally significant effect: Giving the web content you're actually looking at more space to breathe. It does this by stripping the screen-wide menu bar at the top of Firefox's windows and converting it into a single drop-down menu, then lets you choose which of those menus show up in it. Keyboard shortcut ninjas can enable an option to temporarily bring back the menu bar when Alt is pressed, and the extension auto-adds a history and bookmarks button to the main toolbar to compensate for the two most active menus.

7. Better Gmail 2

It's not a revelation that Gmail functionality is one of our pet obsessions. Better Gmail 2 fixes or answers a lot of our Gmail complaints and wishes in one neat package. You can individually enable or kill any of Better Gmail's more than a dozen fixes and improvements. Whenever a tremendous new Gmail user script hits the Greasemonkey realm, you can count on seeing it added to Better Gmail by our own Gina Trapani.

6. DownThemAll!

Not a tool you need every day, but really useful when you want it; DownThemAll is a selective, powerful download manager. It makes short work of snatching all the images on a page (including those links to the "bigger" or "zoom" versions), all the MP3s off a music blog, or any other kind of filter you can set up. Gina showed us how to do some intelligent tune-grabbing and Flickr downloading with her guide to supercharging your Firefox downloads with DownThemAll, but her walkthrough should work for any type of file on any page. Incidentally, DownThemAll isn't just one of our favorites—it's also the most popular download manager among Lifehacker readers.

5. Tab Mix Plus

Remember browsing before tabs? We kind of recall a faint smell of kerosene and words like "doubloon" still in use. In all seriousness, browser tabs are the key ingredient to how many of us multi-task on the web every day, and Tab Mix Plus is a master key for everything you like or loathe about tabs. It controls which links open in a new tab, new window, or the same window to an OCD-friendly level, adds critical features like italicizing the text on tabs you haven't viewed yet, and super-powers Firefox's undo closed tab feature. Of course, it gets way, way more intricate than that, but even for just the bare basics, it's totally worth the install.

4. Automatic Save Folder

This one is technically an experimental, non-Mozilla-approved download. Still, with the positive reaction received in our experimental extensions round-up and experimental extensions no longer requiring a sign-up and log-in, it's more than worth stepping out on the ledge. It's the smart-downloading companion to DownThemAll, placing the files you download in a specific folder on your system based on the file extension or the site you grab it from. So if you always want the .xls spreadsheets, you grab them from Gmail to go into your Reports folder. Still, a .xls you hold from anywhere else to show up on your Desktop like everything else, you set the rules. JPG files from your friends' Flickr page versus photo downloads of the rest of the net? Tell them where they should go. It keeps your folders and desktops clean and sets up rules you shouldn't have to tweak much after one go—indeed, an extension after our own geeky hearts.

3. Adblock Plus

You knew this would be here, didn't you? Ad-blocking can make the internet a more tolerable place to look around, and AdBlock Plus does this with a robust ad-blocking feed subscription you can pick at start-up. Alternately, any ads you find particularly distracting ("ONE RULE TO A FLAT STOMACH: OBEY") can be right-clicked on and killed in perpetuity with "Adblock Image." Ads can be brought back if you're feeling curious. Still, as many a commenter (and AdBlock-loving editor) has said: After getting used to AdBlock Plus, you forget what the internet indeed looks like until you turn this extension off. Lifehacker is, of course, an advertising-supported site, so we'd love it if you kept our ads displaying, opting instead to individually kill only the ones that make your eyeballs itch.

2. Greasemonkey

There are extensions for Firefox changes that require deep browser integration (like adding a new button to the browser's chrome). For everything else, there's Greasemonkey. Greasemonkey is a complex extension for the uninitiated to wrap their heads around, but once they do, it's a breeze. In essence, Greasemonkey is a meta-extension of sorts. When first installed, it does nothing by default; the power lies in Greasemonkey user scripts developed by JavaScript-wielding geeks fed up with under-performing sites or interested in bringing more power to the places they already love. If you don't like seeing labels on your Gmail messages but wouldn't mind seeing them when your pointer hovers over them, there's a fix. Want YouTube to acknowledge your bandwidth and load high-quality clips by default? Same deal. Those are just a few recent examples, but the list continues, and the fixes keep getting better. You can find Greasemonkey scripts all over the web. Still, if you're just getting started, you may also want to check out Userscripts.org—sort of like Mozilla's add-ons site but for Greasemonkey scripts.

1. Foxmarks/Xmarks

Foxmarks is gradually rebranding as Xmarks, but what we really like about Fox/Xmarks remains the same as the last time it claimed the Must-Have crown: It's nearly seamless at keeping your bookmarks and passwords synchronized between browsers on any platform and stores them on a site you can visit from any browser where you can't install an extension. If you're not down with the cloud, you can even tell this extension to store your stuff on your own server. Foxmarks is also available on IE and Safari. You can separate your work bookmarking from ooh-cool life stuff with selective bookmark profiles. It's the tool that lets you keep fleeting thoughts, IM links, and other temporary web stuff altogether, so of course, we dig on it. The transition to Xmarks adds a few semi-nifty, social-y features to your searching and bookmarking. Still, if you're not keen on those changes, you can easily disable them in the Xmarks preferences.

10 Addons Must-Have Of Firefox for Web Designers Among all web browsers, Firefox is an innovative and user-friendly browser. Because it is flexible and much and more quality compares to other browsers. Among web designers, the Firefox browser is popular because of its user-friendly interface and its various features. Add-ons make Firefox especially valuable to web designers. Here is a list of the top 10 must-have add-ons you’ll want to use if you’re a  web designer. That's why it is so much popular. 1. Firebug - This addon will allow you to watch the script of the webpage and also to modify it as u want at the client side. 2. Pixel Perfect – Pixel Perfect is a Firefox/Firebug extension that allows web developers and designers  to easily overlay a web composition over top of the developed HTML. 3. Web Developer –  With the help of this addon, you can add various tools menus toolbars to the multiple pages, and you can also customize each and everything. So this addon will also help the web developers  for easy and fast web designing. 4. IE Tab – This addon is for those who use the INTERNET EXPLORER. For the persons who are using internet explorer, this addon is very helpful. This addon will show the web content of the page displayed by the IE. You can also make changes and adjustments as you want. 5. FireShot – This addon will take a snapshot of the web page. Here you can add graphical annotations to each and every part of the web content where you want to add that for the reminder. So that if anyone will see this snapshot can be easily understood by them. (Image Taken From Official Mozilla Website) 6. Palette Grabber – This addon will help those persons who use Photoshop,paint.net and other image editing tools. This ad-don will create custom color patterns and much more functionality. 7. Firecookie – This is typically the firebug extension. It will manage all the cookies and also let you allow to manage and modify the cookie. 8. GridFox – This addon will help web developers to overlay or make or put the grid on the website.web developers also extract and create grids. 9. YSlow – Based on yahoo performance rules or the policy, if any website has some faults or is down or slow. Then you can report it here by this ad-don. It will see the survey and contact the official that website for this problem's solution. 10. Aardvark – Usually web developer cleans the pages by removing. For that persons, this tool will help them.

If you are looking for Firebug. You are too late: it is no more. However, we have other JavaScript debugging tools for you to try. Check the link here.