The latest development snapshot of Opera, 11.01-1179, has finally added support for portable installation into a Mac OS X environment. This effectively means that you can now install and run Opera for Mac from a USB stick or an encrypted disk image. Full instructions are available after the break, and keep in mind that you will still be able to install Opera into Applications as before -- it's ... Read more »

Facebook is riding the 'real-time' train hard these days. Following yesterday's release of real-time Insights for page owners, it appears Facebook has now rolled out live commenting. 'Live', as in comments now update in real-time, without the need to refresh the page. Discovered by mistake by developer Jesse Stay, it seems like this only happens on your Feed or Profile pages. Many people have ... Read more »

So... you've got a cute pet rabbit, and rabbits like carrots. That makes Carrot rabbit heaven, if there is such a thing: The game takes place on a long, lush lawn, with a line of carrots stretching into the distance, as far as the eye can see. Mmmm, carrots. But of course, this wouldn't be much of a game if you were just running along, eating carrot after carrot. That wouldn't be very ... Read more »

Google made a minor tweak to the Gmail navigation links recently -- moving Photos into a more prominent spot and Reader into the More drop-down. While I wasn't particularly concerned (I've got Firefox hotkeys wired to most of my bookmarks for fast mouse-free access), the change created quite a stir on Twitter. But as is usually the case, enthusiasts who don't want to accept changes on their ... Read more »

Web fonts have been available to Blogger users since late last year, when Google introduced 32 ready-to-use typefaces to spice up your blog's design. Now, Google has more than doubled that number -- bringing the total to a whopping 77 fonts, all of which render nicely in just about any Web browser. No, they don't work in IE6. You'll find the new fonts in the Blogger Template Designer behind ... Read more »

LauncherPro, the fan-favorite Android home screen replacement, has been updated! This is not the much-hyped complete rewrite of the codebase -- that's coming soon! -- but it does bring one of the most-requested features: home screen transitions. Rather than tell you all about them, we've made a video that shows off the four new Compiz-like transitions -- it's embedded after the break. Suffice ... Read more »

Google Chrome password sync has been a long time coming, first taking shape in May 2010 Chromium builds. It's popped up before in official Chrome builds, but never appeared to be functional. Now, however, password sync has come back to the Dev Channel -- and it seems to be working for some. On my own system, Chrome's status indicator spun endlessly and I was never able to authenticate -- forcing ... Read more »

We're not very big fans of browser toolbars to begin with, and today's news from Mozilla is a perfect example of why. The Mozilla team has decided to block the Skype plug-in, citing serious stability and performance issues. Skype will be added to Mozilla's plug-in blocklist, though users will be prompted and given the option to re-enable it if they wish. As Stephen Shankland points out over at ... Read more »

20-something firmware magician GeoHot (George Hotz) has already been sued by Sony for jailbreaking the PlayStation 3, and caused a major stir in the iPhone dev community when he released limera1n. So what next for the ambitious young hacker? How about taking a stab at Windows Phone 7? The invitation has been handed out, with WP7 lead Brandon Watson offering to ship Hotz a device so that he can ... Read more »

Wolfram Alpha is already very powerful; just the other day I used it to chart United States crime rates, because I wanted to see at a glance if they've been going up or down over the last few years. And now, Alpha has gone on to make all of its rich data freely available via a new API for developers. This means it's now easier than ever for developers to query Alpha and pull specific ... Read more »

Hold tight new Apple TV fans, this news may rock your ever-loving world: XBMC, the open-source media center software that spawned offshoots like Plex and Boxee, has just launched on the jailbroken second generation Apple TV bringing 1080p video playback with it. Sure, we've had aTV Flash (black) to play with, but until now, the full potential of your little $99 media puck has been difficult to ... Read more »

You may have tried to pin a document or file you work on frequently to your Windows 7 taskbar, only to learn that it's too smart for that. Instead, you wind up with a pinned item for the program associated with the file's type, with your file pinned to the jump list. After reading a writeup at Lifehacker earlier today, I couldn't help thinking there was an easier solution than what they proposed ... Read more »

Camino, the lightweight, open source Web browser for OS X, has just reached version 2.1 Alpha 1. This release contains significant new features, including improvements to autocompletion and plug-in management, a new offline mode, and the ability to hide the status bar. Camino has also been upgraded to version 1.9.2 of Gecko (Mozilla's rendering engine of choice). That means better compatibility ... Read more »

Cloud-based file sharing and collaboration service Box.net is getting a nice-looking revamp with additional features and better usability. The new Box starts rolling out tomorrow, but a rundown of the new features is up today on the Box blog. It starts with a cleaner UI that makes room to display more files at once, and more info about each file. The new UI highlights frequently-used sharing ... Read more »

While it might not have a huge share of the desktop Web browser market, Opera certainly knows how to score deals with OEMs. Today, Opera announced that it has entered into a partnership with Sony to deliver an embedded browser on TVs and Blu-ray players. As Opera states in its official post, the integration will bring "web applications, widgets, full web browsing and emerging standards such as ... Read more »