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Welcome back to another Yuletide Mini-sode of CNET's The 404 Podcast. We'll be keeping you company all season with fresh episodes, year-end wrap-ups, CES 2010 previews, and much more!

We're all a little torn up about the top 50 highest grossing movies of 2009. Films like Watchmen, Bruno, and Star Trek blew us away and easily lived up to the hype; it's too bad that flops like Hotel For Dogs and Paranormal Activity had to ruin it for the rest!

In typical 404 fashion, we run down the list and pick out the movies that we love, and of course the movies that we love to hate.

Enjoy, and have a fun (and safe!) New Year!

Firefox has a CPU usage issue and, consequently, can cause overheating problems in some laptops, particularly ultraportables. That's what I've found over the last couple of years.

But don't take my word for it. This is documented on a Mozilla support page entitled "Firefox consumes a lot of CPU resources." The page states: "At times, Firefox may require significant CPU [central processing unit] resources in order to download, process, and display Web content." And forum postings like this one about a Dell Netbook are not uncommon: "Mini9 would get way too hot.&… Read more

I have a theory about folks who appear on TV. Those who seem very nice are probably not so nice in real life.

And those who seem like those mindless, destructive winds that blow through small towns and make a lot of people miserable and destitute are probably rather charming when the red light isn't on.

On this basis, I would like to invite Fox News' Glenn Beck to dinner.

One of the things I hope he will chat with me about over a fine glass of Miner Family viognier is why he reportedly is continuing with legal action … Read more

FastestFox (formerly SmarterFox) is one of the more powerful add-ons to enhance Firefox browsing. It displays a clean-looking bubble filled with customizable search engine shortcuts when you highlight a word or phrase. Type a query into the Firefox address bar, and FastestFox will offer up suggestions as you type. It will also place alternative search engine icons on a results page (like Google, Yahoo, and Bing), and will repeat smaller version of those icons on Wikipedia pages, along with a list of related articles. To open a new Web page faster, there's the qLauncher. One hot-key combo brings it … Read more

SmarterFox, one of my favorite Firefox productivity add-ons, recently updated to version 3.0. In the process, it added a new feature, fixed some miscellaneous bugs, and changed its name to FastestFox.

For a major version upgrade, changes are slim. The most notable new feature is the ability for FastestFox to automatically surface related search results from Amazon and OneRiot at the top of a Google results page. The related search results show up in addition to an original SmarterFox bar that lets you repeat a search on OneRiot, Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter, and Delicious. The FastestFox release notes are quick … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--With both MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta and News Corp. chief digital officer Jonathan Miller taking the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit this week, there was naturally plenty of talk about the social site's attempt to reverse its ill fortune of late. Once the biggest name in social networking, it's long since lost that title to Facebook and is trying to reinvent itself as a destination for music and entertainment.

"I think that what you see in the space more than anything else is if you don't keep innovating and moving forward you … Read more

Roughly a week ago NASCAR representatives announced the members of the inaugural class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame at the Charlotte Convention Center. The inductees into the 1st HoF class included NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., his son Bill Jr., Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt and Junior Johnson. One name not included on this list was the NASCAR legend David "Silver Fox" Pearson. The 74 year old Pearson took the denial in stride, but many fans and critics perceived it as either an oversight or an outright snub. Regardless of HoF status, Pearson is a classic racing hero, … Read more

Microsoft on Tuesday plans to announce a deal with News Corp.'s Fox that will see Microsoft sponsoring a TV show that will merge a pitch for Windows 7 with the comedic stylings of "Family Guy" voices Seth MacFarlane and Alex Borstein.

The show, dubbed "Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show," will air Sunday, November 8, at 8:30 p.m. (ET and PT). There won't be any commercial breaks; just Windows 7 built into the story line.

In a statement, Microsoft and Fox said they hope to "bring … Read more

Yesterday's show with guest host Alli went so well that we ask her to help us out again! Today we show off some beautiful fan artwork, run through outdated tech terminology, dispel "Batman 3" rumors about Megan Fox, and more!

We want to give a huge shout-out and thanks to Joe from Honolulu for sending us these two amazing woodcarvings of The 404! We're still blown away by the level of detail in the paintings and the ridiculous amount of time it probably took to make. Best of all, we love that it's a collaborative effort between two 404 fans: Blake Stevenson helped design our logo and Joe just took it to the next level. Cheers to both of you!

We're all a little worried about Chris Nolan's next "Batman" movie. We've been hearing a lot of rumors about the follow-up to last year's "Dark Knight," and even though we think Megan Fox is next level hot, we just can't imagine her as Catwoman. First of all, there are one thousand other characters in the Batman universe, why resurrect the same ones over and over? Let's see a Killer Croc! In other Megan Fox news, gamers will be excited to hear that she will be on Xbox Live on Saturday, August 29 @ 3 p.m. PT to play Gold Members in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen the Game. Cross your fingers and let us know if you actually play her!

Many more crazy stories from the Web in addition to an "Ask The 404" segment on today's show. Thanks for listening, all!