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Web-based email clients tend to evoke passions not dissimilar to those that govern which browser you use to check them. If Gmail is your fave, and you use Firefox to check it, Better Gmail is must-have extension.

Properly called Better Gmail 2 to distinguish itself from the previous version of the plug-in which had been designed for the older version of Gmail, Better Gmail introduces a highly useful collection of Greasemonkey scripts bundled into one convenient package.

The features come fast and furious, but should appeal to users looking for everything from skins to keyboard shortcuts. It can force an … Read more

It may seem as if the whole world is using Firefox, but surveys indicate that nearly 75 percent of Netizens still use Internet Explorer. If you're part of that 75 percent, you need to check out this First Look video for the one plug-in you absolutely must have: IE7Pro.

IE7Pro powers up Internet Explorer with many of the features and functions that were once limited to other browsers, including a session manager, prefetching, and mouse gestures.

Kent German, CNET's cell phones guru, answers your questions about cell phones, services, and accessories and reports on the state of the industry. Send him a question!

Starting with this edition of On Call, I've transitioned to a blog format. On Call will continue to run every two weeks, alternating between answering your questions and discussing hot-button issues for cell phone users.

Q: I would like to know how secure conversations on cell phones are? Can your office IT department tap into your calls on your company cell phone? - Lor

A: Unlike with the older analog cell … Read more

On Monday, I described Vaita's free Outlook Duplicate Items Remover, an add-on that finds duplicate copies of Outlook messages, contacts, calendar entries, and tasks. Now, I'll continue to trim my bloated Outlook in-box by using another freebie: the Kopf Outlook Attachment Remover created by Bruno Marotta.

After you download the program and restart Outlook, you see a floating Attachment Remover toolbar that you can drag and dock at the top of the screen along with all the other toolbars to keep it from blocking your view. Click the toolbar's one-and-only button to open the program's one-and-only … Read more

Web site owners might be amazed to learn that one of the biggest sources for duplicate content isn't externally, but rather internally.

Certainly, popular sites and blogs that syndicate a lot of content have to deal with external duplication, but as I already touched on external duplicate content, we know that there are steps to minimize those challenges and to establish your site as the canonical source.

Internal, or on-site, content duplication tends to come in a few key ways, the first of which is within the key page elements. The second is from the content itself; similar to e-commerce sites using stock product copy, you may be using your own copy over and over again on your site. Third, it simply may come from too little differentiated copy.… Read more

These days you can't be too careful about what you download. A new Firefox add-on from Florian Queze called View Dependencies takes some of the guesswork out of knowing the content of a Web page, and the source of that content.

After you download the free add-on and restart Firefox, you'll see a Dependencies tab when you click Tools > Page Info to view information about the page that's currently open. The tab lists the files on the page, their URL, and their size. (Note that on at least one page I tested the file size was … Read more

If the industry press is to be believed, Tuesday's announcement that Sony would be producing TVs with Tru2way compatibility was a watershed event--the electronics world equivalent of the Magna Carta or the Treaty of Versailles. But let's step back a bit and examine what this really means.

Tru2way is a digital cable technology developed by CableLabs that's designed to be built directly into TVs, eliminating the need for an outboard set-top box. In theory, you'd be able to buy a Tru2way-compatible TV, bring it home, connect it to your coaxial cable, and instantly be able to … Read more

TiVo is gearing up to dish out Disney movie rentals, as the digital video recorder company expands its lineup of movies from major studios.

Under an agreement with Disney-ABC and CinemaNow, TiVo subscribers can download the movies for 24-hour rental. TiVo expects to offer the Disney rentals later this year to its broadband-connected TiVo Series2 and Series3 subscribers. Price for the service was not disclosed.

The Disney movies will add to TiVo's more than 30,000 titles from Amazon Unbox, Music Choice, and other content providers.

TiVo's efforts come as Blockbuster is reportedly looking at set-top boxes for … Read more

The one must-have add-on for Internet Explorer is IE7Pro. It gives Microsoft's browser many of the features that Firefox aficionados consider essential, such as mouse gestures, ad blocking, user scripts, and other basic tweaks. Now IE7 users can add a session manager and prefetching to that list.

Using IE7Pro is a snap. The add-on installs an icon on your IE status bar at the bottom, and you right-click it to access the IE7Pro options. Think of it as a context menu for your plugins. The Settings panel is accessible from that menu or using CTRL+F7 hotkeys.

The session … Read more