plugins

Flash adds multimedia effects to Web sites, but not everyone wants that. Some people find Flash animations annoying or distracting, or they're concerned about privacy and security. And for some, it's all of the above. Developers have responded with a variety of tools designed to block all or some Flash animations from loading. We took a look at Flashblock, a free Flash blocker for Firefox and other Mozilla browsers as well as related browsers such as Netscape. It blocks Flash, Shockwave, and Authorware in both Macromedia and Adobe versions.

After we installed Flashblock and restarted Firefox, the first … Read more

Volkswagen jumped on the plug-in bandwagon and will produce a range of plug-in hybrid vehicles starting in 2013. Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn made the announcement at the Vienna Motor Symposium this week, but he didn't specify which vehicles will get the plug-in power-train.

"The plug-in hybrid offers precisely what many customers expect: unlimited internal combustion engine performance combined with attractive electric mobility ranges in everyday driving," Winterkorn said. The company acknowledges that electric vehicles will play a large role in the automotive future, but finds plug-ins to be a happy medium until infrastructure, technology, and consumers make … Read more

Xobni, the popular and highly rated plugin for Microsoft Outlook has today announced the Xobni Gadget Platform and Store, which offers apps that add on to your add-on. With close to 20 big-name partners, including Dropbox, Evernote, Google Translate, Salesforce, LinkedIn, and so on, Xobni hopes to boost your productivity by souping up your Outlook inbox to yet another level.

To give you an idea of some of the platform's possibilities, the Evernote gadget puts the popular note-taking service's functionality into the Xobni sidebar. With it, you can view and take personal notes on a contact right from … Read more

Two of the world's leading technology standardization groups have signed an agreement to partner on vehicle-to-smart-grid standards.

The memorandum of understanding has been signed by the IEEE-SA (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association) and SAE International (Society of Automotive Engineers). It is essentially a first step to both organizations agreeing on future standards related to smart grids and vehicle electrification, including vehicle-to-grid communications, the organizations said today.

The immediate effect is that the two groups will share draft standards on any technology relating to smart grids and "vehicle electrification," with the opportunity for each to … Read more

Folks who want to preregister for online ordering of the Prius Plug-in hybrid will get a chance on Friday.

Toyota today revealed that Earth Day will kick off preregistration for the Prius Plug-in on the company's Web site.

This is just the first step in ordering Prius Plug-in. A new online ordering system will launch later this year, which will offer customers the ability to configure their own vehicle online, select their dealership within 15 launch states (Arizona, California, Connecticut, Hawaii*, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington), and track … Read more

They don't go up for sale until 2012, but Zipcar has managed to snag eight Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles (PHV) for its members to rent as part of a testing program with Toyota for the prototype vehicles.

Zipcar locations in Boston and Cambridge, Mass., San Francisco, and Portland, Ore., will receive the plug-in Prius cars, which have an electric range of up to 13 miles on a full battery and can be charged from a standard 110-volt outlet in up to 3 hours. For longer distances, the plug-in Prius achieves an average of 50 mpg, according to Toyota. … Read more

Everybody knows how hard it is to quit smoking cigarettes, and how important it can be to succeed. Now there's an app for that, or an add-on, to be specific. Quitomzilla from Quitometro is a free Firefox add-on that can help smokers kick the habit by counting down the time until or since Q-Day; by telling them how much money they're saving or could be saving by not buying cigarettes; and by nagging or bragging on themselves with paste-in messages.

Quitomzilla installs and configures like any Firefox add-on. We installed it, restarted Firefox, and clicked Add-ons on the … Read more

Linky is a free Firefox add-on that increases your power over hyperlinks. You can use it open all or some of the links on a given page, including images--even links on different tabs.

Linky installs normally; when we restarted Firefox, it was listed among our add-ons. We clicked Options, which called up a dialog with tabs for General and Advanced settings as well as an About tab with links to the developer's Web site. We selected several General options, such as the ability to open both new tabs and windows, show all images, and copy links to the Clipboard. … Read more

Mozilla nudged Firefox 3.6.4 one step closer to its official release by pushing out the first release candidate version of the browser. Meanwhile, Weave Sync has been re-branded Firefox Sync in anticipation of its eventual inclusion in the Mozilla product. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, Firefox 3.6.4 Release Candidate 1 began rolling out to Firefox beta users on May 28th and is notable for locking down the features and fixes the browser maker has been working on since January. For its part, add-on Firefox Sync 1.3 introduces a menu option under History for automatically … Read more