iPhone: Visual speed dial is a nice idea, but when you have to launch a separate app to make a phone call it’s a little annoying. Here are two ways to add visual speed dial to your home screen.

There’s an app called Custom Dial 6 ($1) that lets you add six custom speed dial icons to your iPhone home screen. There’s also a free version that lets you add just one. This is kind of limiting, plus there are some bugs—both things they intend to fix in a free update—so I figured there must be a way anyone can just do this themselves with a little light coding. That happens to be the case.

While the video up top will walk you through the process, but here are the basic steps:

1. Download these files to start you off. You’ll find two documents: html_prep.html and autodial.php.
2. The HTML Prep document is basically just a very, very simple HTML page with a photo and a link. You’ll want to make a PHP page with this HTML code in it. You can just copy and paste it into, say, your_friend.php and change the image to point to one of your friend and the link to go to your friend’s phone number. The img tag works just like any HTML img tag, but the link tag is a bit different. Instead of http:// it’s tel:// followed by the phone number of the person you want this speed dial icon to call.
3. Once you have that page finished, upload it to your web server and open it on your iPhone. Test the phone link to make sure it works. If it does, zoom in on your friend’s picture until it fills up the entire browser window. Then tap the + button at the bottom of the screen. That’ll bring up your bookmark options. You want to tap “Add to Homescreen.” Enter your friend’s name and save. Mobile Safari will close and you’ll see your friend’s face and name pop up on your home screen.
4. Right now this is just a link to a page with a phone number. We want to auto dial, right? Now you’re going to want to replace the page you just made with some simple PHP code. You’ll find that PHP code in autodial.php. Basically, you’re just using the header() function to automatically go to the tel:// link. All you need to do is replace all the HTML code in the document you just made with the code in autodial.php (using your friend’s phone number rather than 818-555-1234 of course).

It’s kind of a round-about way to make a home screen icon, but it’s easy to change the phone numbers later and you can add as many as you want. Put them all in a folder and you’ve got some handy visual speed-dialing on your home screen. This method isn’t perfect because you still have to accept an alert window after choosing a speed contact.

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If you haven’t learned to love Windows Media Player yet, free plug-in Windows Media Player Plus might change your mind. adding tweaks like find as you type, disabling group headers, a new tag editor, and the Explorer context menu within your library.

We’ve already learned that Windows Media Player’s performance is pretty darn good, but there are still a few things in the program that many count as annoyances. Thankfully, it allows plug-ins like Windows Media Player Plus to get rid of those for you.

Atop the list of great features this plug-in adds is find as you type searching, which is exactly what it sounds like—as you type your search query, Windows Media Player will narrow down the results in real time (plus it’s pretty snappy). It also comes with its own advanced tag editor, which allows you to edit a lot of metadata (including tags that Windows Media Player doesn’t usually show). The addition of the Windows Explorer context menu in the library is pretty handy too, so you don’t need to search tracks out on your hard drive to access those actions.

A number of smaller, but still cool tweaks include listing the currently playing track in the title bar, automatic restoration of media on launch, and restoration of plug-ins after a crash. You can also disable group headers, meaning your library will show up as one long list of files instead of sorted by artist or album with their names hogging all the space. You can turn any number of these tweaks on or off to fit your needs. It makes the player much more well-rounded, which is nice if you don’t have (or don’t need) another program on your computer

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Windows 7 only: System tweaking utility Alt+Tab Tuner customizes everything about the Windows 7 Alt-Tab dialog, from setting the transparency to increasing the size of the thumbnails.To customize the settings, all you have to do is unzip and launch the utility, drag the sliders to suit your preferences, and click the Apply button. You can even use the utility to switch back to the old XP-style Alt+Tab dialog if you were so inclined. Alt+Tab Tuner is a free download for Windows 7 only.

If you aren’t happy with the built-in Alt+Tab system, and even tweaking it won’t help, make sure to check out the awesome VistaSwitcher alternative, which even includes the Alt+` key combination to switch between specific application windows.

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If you’ve started using the Start Menu search box as your primary application launcher, you may have come across a weird annoyance: By default, you can’t open the Recycle Bin from the search box.

Over at the How-To Geek site (my home away from Lifehacker), writer Matthew writes up the quick and easy trick to opening the Recycle Bin from the start menu, through the search box or even just using the mouse; all you need to do is create a new shortcut to the Recycle Bin, which will then be searchable and launchable from the Start Menu search box.

To make your own shortcut, just open up the Start Menu folder (type Win+R, paste %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu, and hit Enter), create a new shortcut (right-click -> New -> Shortcut), and paste explorer.exe shell:RecycleBinFolder into the prompt. Give it a name (Recycle Bin Shortcut, perhaps?), customize the icon if you like, or even add a shortcut key. More importantly, you can now launch the Recycle Bin easily from the Windows Start Menu search box. You can use the same trick anytime you want to open something through the keyboard, by just creating shortcuts in the Start Menu to your favorite portable applications, documents, or scripts.

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One of the most powerful features in Firefox is also one too few people know about: the ability to create and use more than one profile at the same time. Here’s how to streamline and reap the benefits of multiple browsing profiles.

Instead of installing every single extension for every task into the same Firefox profile, why not separate them into separate profiles, organized by task? Think of Firefox like an Operating System for the web, and each profile as a separate application—one profile is used for basic web browsing, another for writing, another for web development, and so on.

Most of the writers at Lifehacker HQ use different profiles for writing, researching, and personal browsing on a daily basis. It keeps your Firefox instances running smoother, and each profile is streamlined for accomplishing the kind of things you want to accomplish with that profile.

Setting Up Separate Firefox Profiles

Creating a new profile is a lot easier than you might think, but there’s no default menu item that allows you to open the profile manager easily. If you install the ProfileSwitcher extension in the “Switching Profiles the Easy Way” section below, you can use it to create new profiles via a menu item; if you want to go that route, skip down to that section; either way, here’s how to do it without the extension:

You’ll need to pop open a command prompt, switch to the Firefox directory (cd %programfiles%\Mozilla Firefox\ should work), and then launch Firefox with a command line switch:

firefox -profilemanager -no-remote

If you don’t like using the command prompt, you can simply create a shortcut to Firefox.exe (or copy your current one), and then add the arguments to the end of the Target line.

The first argument clearly indicates that you want the profile manager, but the second –no-remote argument means that you want to open a separate copy of Firefox at the same time as having the first one open. This is the magic switch that will allow you to run more than one profile at the same time, and it also allows you to open the profile manager without closing your current browser window.

Once you’ve created a new profile, you can make a separate Firefox shortcut, and modify the Target line to include a few extra arguments, making it look something like this:

firefox.exe –P profilename –no-remote

Switching Profiles the Easy Way

If you’d rather not mess with command line arguments and new shortcuts, you can switch between profiles or launch the profile manager the easy way with the previously mentioned ProfileSwitcher extension.

Once you’ve installed the extension, you can simply use the File menu to access the new profile switching options and access the profile manager directly from there. Once you’ve chosen one of the other profiles, you’ll be prompted on whether you want to switch to that profile or keep the current profile open and open the second profile at the same time.

Sync Your Profile Passwords and Bookmarks

The biggest problem with maintaining multiple profiles is utilizing the same passwords, bookmarks, and settings across the various profiles, and previously mentioned Weave can do just that. Once you’ve setup Weave in each profile, you can sync your bookmarks, passwords, history, preferences, and even your open tabs if you felt like it. Weave isn’t the only game in town, though, as you can use Xmarks to sync your bookmarks and passwords across other browsers as well, but it comes with additional “discovery” services that you might want to turn off.

Create Profiles for Specific Tasks

Now that we’ve learned how to create profiles, switch between them, and sync your passwords across them all, it’s time to actually start creating useful profiles to separate out your tasks. Here’s a few suggested ideas for the profiles I use on a regular basis, but you aren’t limited to these ideas—you can more or less come up with a specialized profile for any task.

The Writing Profile
If you’re doing writing on the web, you’ve no doubt realized that it’s far too easy to get distracted by your other tabs, click on your bookmarks, or just type something into the search box. What I’ve done to keep myself focused on writing is create a separate profile specifically for writing, with almost all of the chrome elements removed to maximize the viewing area for writing and prevent myself from being distracted.

The Web Development Profile
If you spend any percentage of your time doing web design or development, Firebug is the single must-have extension that you cannot live without. It’s not just that it lets you debug Javascript, but it allows you to edit the page HTML and CSS on the fly, and even has extensions like YSlow and Page Speed to help keep your web site nice and speedy. Since you really wouldn’t want to have the hefty Firebug extension running all the time, it’s best to create a new profile specifically for web development.

The Social Media Profile
Let’s face it, social media can be a massive time suck, especially when you’re browsing around finding random stuff using StumbleUpon-so what I do is create a separate profile for random browsing and social media. This helps keep me from clicking that Stumble button while I’m supposed to be working, but also helps me separate my time. Your social media needs may differ, but the point is to keep them separate from your primary profile to keep yourself focused on a single task.

The Extension Testing Profile
Rather than install every new extension and bloat up your primary Firefox profile, why not create a separate profile specifically for testing new extensions? This way you can make certain that you’ve fully vetted an extension before unleashing it on your main web browsing experience. Here at Lifehacker HQ, we make extensive use of test profiles when we’re checking out extensions to recommend.

Secure Banking Profile
Why expose yourself by using your primary profile to access your banking sites? What I do is setup a clean banking profile with every plugin disabled, the NoScript and Adblock Plus extension to remove any danger of malware, and only my banking sites are allowed to use Javascript. I even go so far as to remove the search box to make sure I’m not using this profile for any quick Google lookups, and I create bookmarks for each of my banking sites, and make sure to never click a banking link in an email, since that’s a quick way to get yourself scammed online.

The How-To Geek has been using multiple Firefox profiles for years. His geeky articles can be found daily here on Lifehacker, How-To Geek, and Twitter.

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It’s not officially released, but a gallery-like site for extensions has made itself known into the latest development builds of Google Chrome for Windows and Linux. Take a peek at what’s coming, presumably very soon, in these development screenshots.

The Download Squad blog was the first to notice the new new thing in Chrome—namely, a jigsaw-like page corner in Chrome’s new tab page, next to a message at the bottom that reads “New! Chrome now has bookmark sync and extensions!”, with both the message and the corner piece linking to http://chrome.google.com/extensions

I saw the same link appear in the chrome://extensions page on my copy of Chromium, from a nightly build Ubuntu repository. Clicking that link, however, re-directs you to Google’s home page. But as many are guessing, Chrome/Chromium wouldn’t push out a new link to leave sitting dead for too long, so we’ll keep watching that page to see when a full-fledged gallery pops up.

TechCrunch’s MG Siegler dove into Chromium’s Code Reviews section, and finds screenshots and discussions indicating that Chrome’s extensions will be able to add icons to Chrome’s top toolbar, inside the address bar, and in the bottom-right status bar, and that developers will also be allowed to customize items such as Chrome’s new tab page. Right out of the gate, developers are also indicating extensions from Google itself tied to its Maps, News, and a Gmail checker.

Exciting stuff, and even more so if many of Firefox’s developers take notice and bring over some of the same functionality that hardcore Mozilla users could never imagine leaving behind. Top and bottom photos from TechCrunch; new tab page image from Download Squad.

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Windows only: AVG 9 Free—one of the most popular free antivirus apps on the market—is now available for download.

A couple weeks back, the popular antivirus maker AVG released AVG 9 with performance improvements and other updates, but on launch only the commercial version of AVG 9 was available. The fact of the matter is that most AVG users are probably using AVG Free, the freeware version of the app, so if that’s the case for you, good news: AVG 9 Free is now ready for download.

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Pandora’s streaming music app is officially available for Android phones, and it does just what you’d expect. It streams decent quality music over even shabby EDGE connections, and offers thumbs up or down buttons, track skipping, and bookmarking.

Normally, that would be all we have to say about the app—it just works, and it uses the same Music Genome Project base as Pandora’s iPhone, web, desktop (for Pro users), and other clients to bring you tracks based on what you already like. If you feel like you’ve got horsepower and memory to spare, Pandora also offers a desktop widget that can play tracks without having to launch the app, or a lighter folder shortcut to launch your favorite stations in the app.

We did, however, have to point out this warning screen from the first time you load the Pandora app. We can’t recall seeing a similar warning on the iPhone/iPod app, yet the Android app’s preference settings even feature an option to keep the audio quality turned up to “High” when you’re not on a Wi-Fi connection. By default, the quality is set to “Normal,” and it sounds fine, of an MP3-ish quality, for most walk-and-listen purposes.

Pandora is a free download for Android phones, requires a free account to bookmark and track music.

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Google, with its somewhat successful (not really) launch of the Chrome internet browser has just made it publicly known they intend to enter Microsoft’s realm with Chrome OS.  The operating system is scheduled for release mid 2010.  Interestingly enough, they will be releasing the source code later this year.  The good news for Microsoft is that development has only been connected to Netbook laptops so far. But Google does plan on running this OS on Desktops as soon as possible, and it’s free along with open-source code.

The official introduction from Google can be read here. – http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

According to Google current companies onboard with testing and implementing this OS for their Netbook production are “Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.”

So, what is Google’s real intention? Why create an operating system? And what happened to that open source Android project?
Read more on the original source.

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