One thing about laptops that drives a lot of my customers nuts is the touchpad. If I had a nickel for every time someone brought a laptop in complaining that their mouse pointer suddenly jumped somewhere else on the screen and messed up their typing, I'd have at least $10.15.

Hey, I'm in a small town - that would nearly count as an epidemic.

TouchFreeze is a tiny, open source program designed to fix this problem once and for all. Once you install it, TouchFreeze sits your in your system tray and waits for you to begin typing. When you do, it temporarily disables input from your touchpad.

Be forewarned: TouchFreeze may not work with your laptop's touchpad. It worked on my two Acer test systems just fine, but certain brands may be a bit less cooperative.

You can download TouchFreeze over at Google Code.

[via Addictive Tips]

There's little to add to my glowing review of the Livescribe Pulse smartpen I wrote for TUAW last year. This is one of those gadgets that you show people and it looks like magic. It kinda is magic, I think. But this year's model introduces an app store for the pen (plus some nifty paper products), making it a desirable platform for anyone who takes their notes seriously.

Read my review for the hardware scoop; the newer models now have an improved cradle. You can now charge and keep your computer asleep, for example. The desktop software, which allows you to sort and annotate your notes (plus many other tricks covered in that earlier review for the Mac version of the software) is similarly the same but slightly upgraded. What matters is what's in the pen, since that's what you'll be using every day.

The pen runs Java applications specifically made *for* the Pulse smartpen. Now, earlier there had been some tech demos for 3D audio (the pen records in 3D, and it is very cool) and what amounted to built-in utility apps. Stuff like calculators and a simple piano that you draw and tap to play. Like Apple launching the iPhone with a limited set of pre-built applications, the Pulse had only a few "apps" but that was fine. The app store for the pen opens the doors to a huge variety of other applications, much like Apple's store does for its mobile platform.

The Livescribe Store also looks and feels nearly identical to Apple's -- at first. There's more than just apps here; there are paper products (you use special paper with the pen) and pens themselves. When you go to check out, you notice the lack of polish. Every purchase, even the free stuff, requires about three times as many clicks at it takes to buy something on the iTunes App Store. I'm not sure why people don't understand this seemingly obvious notion that consumers want to consume quickly. Especially for a pen, you know? But the entire store is a website, really, so perhaps app purchasing can be streamlined later. For now, it is catering to the physical side of the store by requiring shipping info with your orders.

With the aid of a tiny little program -- of the juicy, sub-100-kilobyte freeware variety -- you can get those cute little blinking-blue screens back onto your system tray in Windows 7.

In yet another case of inspired naming, Network Activity Indicator for Windows lets you re-attach the network activity indicator to your system tray. It's been sorely missed in both Vista and Windows 7 by many users, and now... you can have it back! Yay! No longer must you wonder if your router has crashed -- you can see it right there on your desktop!

I wish I had more to say, but... that's it really. You can set a blink duration (though it doesn't seem to make much difference), and you can tell it to load at startup... and that's it. Quick and simple, just how I like my, er, apps.

Visit the site, if you really need more information -- or download it directly (57KB).

Opera have released version 10 of their browser, now with Opera Unite and Opera Turbo included.

Opera Unite gives your web browser the ability to deliver content as well as consume it. The standard download includes a number of Unite applications, with more available for download from the application directory. The bundled applications include a file sharing server that allows you to make files available to the world (as well as allowing the world to upload content to your machine), a virtual fridge door for you to share notes with friends and family (pictured), a media player that allows you to play content from your Unite equipped machine remotely, an instant messaging server, a photo sharing application and a web server for serving your own web content.

The inclusion of Opera Turbo in the new browser marks the migration to the desktop of a technology that has long been a key feature of Opera's Mini product. Opera Turbo speeds up your browsing session by compressing content at Opera proxy servers before delivering it to your machine - particularly useful for those on low bandwidth connections.

Opera 10.10 is available free from www.opera.com for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

We're intrigued to hear what you, our lovely readers, think about Opera's advancements. They have an excellent, solid browser base and some truly unique additional features... are you tempted to make the switch?

Gladinet is an excellent way to plug your Windows desktop in to a number of cloud storage providers - like Amazon, SkyDrive, Google Docs - as well as your own FTP and WebDAV servers. They also recently added a nifty cloud-to-cloud backup feature.

In the update to version 1.4, Gladinet has built in the ability to selectively back up specific file types to your remote storage. Want to make sure you have a current set of your local files at the ready on Google Docs? Maybe zip all your photos up to LiveDrive? It's a breeze in the new version.

From your system tray, just right-click the Gladinet icon and choose backup my files online, and in addition to folder and Google Docs backups you can now select Documents/Photos/Videos/Music as options.

Pick one, and Gladinet quickly scours your hard drive for the appropriate files. You can exclude anything you want - for example, stray .GIF images that might be selected by default.

The new task options make backing up your most essential personal files a breeze.

If you're a believer in the cloud, Gladinet is a must-have free download and the pro version is well worth a look at $39.99 (home) or $59.99 (commercial).

John Haller is pretty well-known in software circles - he's the guy behind PoartableApps.com. What you may not have known is that he's a big Billy Mays fan. And like a lot of Billy Mays fans, John was a little misty when Billy shuffled off this mortal coil earlier this year.

What better way for a coder to commemorate a fallen icon than with an awesome app? Enter BILLY MAYS CAPS LOCK!

While it won't make your whites whiter or fix the broken handle of your coffee mug, it is one of the greatest remedies I've ever found for computer-induced boredom. Need a quick, random jolt to break you out of your ennui? Hit your caps lock key, and virtual Billy Mays will chime in with one of his trademark catch phrases.

It's probably worth noting that the app does override your caps lock's real functionality, but only overexcited douchebags on Twitter use it anyway, right? Haller does build in shift + caps lock as a workaround in case you do need to enable cruise control for awesome.

HERE'S HOW TO ORDER:

Sorry, I got caught up in the moment there. It's a free download and is available as an installer or in PortableApps format - so you can take Billy with you and fire him up wherever you've got Windows and a CAPS LOCK key.

Microsoft has finally made downloads of Office 2010 beta available, for both Windows on your desktop and Windows Mobile 6.5. Project 2010, Visio 2010, and SharePoint Server 2010 are also available on the Office 2010 download page, and you can get the mobile version of Office via the Windows Mobile Marketplace. Microsoft says the portal for all things 2010 is http://www.microsoft.com/2010/, but the first live download links I've found are right here.

Because we apparently need social networking in every app these days, one of the things Microsoft is pushing about Office 2010 is the new Social Connector, which "brings communications history, business collaboration and social network feeds directly into Outlook, with support for Windows Live and SharePoint Server." LinkedIn has been announced as the first social network that will plug in to this new feature.

More on Office 2010 soon, as Microsoft is getting ready to demo it at their Professional Developers' Conference as I write this. Happy downloading!

Adobe has done a lot to improve Reader in recent versions. I'm more than happy to run an open source alternative, however. Sumatra PDF is ridiculously small (a 1.2Mb download), lightweight, and handles the PDFs I throw at it without skipping a beat.

Today, Sumatra has finally hit version 1.0. Sumatra's a pretty bare-bones application, so don't expect any mind-blowing changes. What the new update boils down to is better compatibility, bug fixes, and performance tweaks.

Installed, Sumatra barely makes a dent in your drive space (not that you're counting at a few cents per gig), and it's very light on memory usage as well. The 277-page ebook I've got open is using just under 20Mb.

There's also a portable version available - an excellent way to make sure you've got a slim, speedy PDF reader with you wherever you take your flash drive. Both the installer and zip file are available for download from the author's site.

Seesmic sure picked a weird time to announce a new Windows-native Twitter client. It's one of the most popular clients running on Adobe's cross-platform AIR platform, which just hit version 2.0. AIR was everyone's biggest complaint about Seesmic, so it makes sense that they'd want to ditch AIR on at least one OS. Creating a native app also allows for drag-and-drop Twitter list management and plug-ins for various third-party Twitter services.

Plugins so far include the user recommendation service MrTweet and the index of popular links, Tweetmeme. Other Twitter-like services will also be able to integrate with Seesmic through the new service. This doesn't necessarily mean the end of development for the AIR version of Seesmic, unless they come out with a native Mac client too. The Mac Twitter space already has a lot of great apps, though, so I'm not sure that'll happen.

To get beta access to the new Windows client, you'll have to sign up for Team Seesmic.

We've had a love-hate relationship with Adobe Air since it arrived on our desktops. Ram-hungry apps had us seeing red. Still, a few killer apps helped drive adoption - apps like TweetDeck, Times Reader 2.0, and DeskTube. As Air continued to develop, it got leaner and meaner and now version 2 has arrived in beta. Adobe Air 2 is now here, and it's ready to get down to business.

Air 2 features a number of tweaks, updates, and feature additions. For starters, the Air 2 ships with Flash 10.1 beta - which adds GPU acceleration support and so far seems to kick my CPU's ass less often. Air 2 also boasts tighter integration with operating systems and can now access certain mass storage devices like USB flash drives, digital cameras, and flash memory cards. Air 2 can also tap into your computer's microphone.

Webkit has been updated, as has the SquirrelFish Extreme Javascript engine. Those two changes combine for a reported 50% gain on SunSpider benchmarks. There's also added multi-touch and gesture support and better printing and networking (including the ability to listen for incoming socket connections). Got a gigantic display? Air 2 supports a maximum window size of 4095x4095 - a 42% increase, though likely not one you'll benefit from at home.

Processor usage and memory consumption have been addressed, with many Air apps reporting about half the CPU utilization of Air 1. TweetDeck on my system is using about 20Mb less RAM. More efficient use of my hardware? Now that you can enjoy at home.

For more details about Adobe Air 2 check out the embedded clip of Kevin Lynch's presentation from MAX or head over to Adobe Labs, where you can also download the new version. Downloads are available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

So far, the Air 2 beta feels like a major step in the right direction for Adobe. As more developers begin taking advantage of the possibilities now available and optimizing their apps for the new version, you may just see some pretty cool things happening on Air 2.

[via Adobe.com]

It feels like it's been years since Microsoft released SyncToy 2.0. That's probably because it has been. But when you have a utility that's dead simple to use that lets you synchronize files between two folders, hard drives, or other storage media, why bother updating it? But SyncToy 2.0 wasn't exactly perfect, so Microsoft recently pushed out version 2.1 which features a handful of bug fixes and improvements.

Like earlier versions, SyncToy 2.1 lets you create folder pairs and decide how data will be synchronized between those two folders. In Synchronize mode, when changes are made in one folder they'll be reflected in the other. If you add a file to folder A, it will be added to folder B. Delete one from B and it'll disappear from A.

Echo mode makes sure that folder B is always up to date with folder A. But if you make changes to folder B, they won't be reflected in the first folder.

In Contribute mode, files will copied from A to B and any files that are renamed in A will be renamed in B. But no files will be deleted. So if you delete a file from folder A it will still live on in B.

All three modes are pretty handy for making sure you have a backup of your important data. You can backup your files to a local drive or a shared network drive for safe keeping.

Probably the closest thing to a new feature in SyncToy 2.1 is the ability to backup your folder pair configurations. Microsoft also says that version 2.1 features better performance, faster copy speeds, and more resilience against network and file system errors. A few bugs have also been fixed, including one that could lead to data corruption when using NAS drives.

SyncToy 2.1 is available as a free download for Windows computers.

[via Lifehacker]

It seems like just yesterday that Yahoo! Messenger 10 entered beta, showing off new video chat and social networking features. Now it's all grown up, out of beta, and replacing Y! Messenger 9 as the default version on Yahoo's download page. Folks upgrading to version 10 get the benefit of several nice new features, including video calling and integration of streams from social sites.

Yahoo! has made some big improvements to its webcam feature, adding better video quality, synched audio and a full-screen mode. You can also move your video call windows around and place them side-by-side. It also supports video effects. To make video calls, both sides need to be on Yahoo! Messenger 10.

The other big addition is a social streaming view called Y! Updates, which lets you see your contacts' updates from several social sites, including Twitter, Last.fm, and Yahoo!'s own Buzz. Of course, it also shows your friends' Messenger status messages. However, CNET suggests you do a custom install of Yahoo! Messenger 10 rather than the default installation, so you have more control over toolbars and other additional junk that comes with Messenger.