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It's been quite a while since we visited the subject of best themes for Mozilla Firefox. It took a little while for some developers to catch up with the release of Version 2, but now there's a large number of cool add-ons for spicing up the look and feel of your your browser.

There's also a lot of crap. Luckily for you, I've waded through the morass and found what I consider to be the best themes for Mozilla Firefox. Of course, one of the greatest strengths of Firefox is the ability for every user to … Read more

Reuters reported on Monday afternoon that social-networking site MySpace.com plans to launch a "news feed" feature in the near future.

The statement was made by Peter Levinsohn, president of MySpace parent company (and News Corp. division) Fox Interactive Media, at the Reuters Media Summit on Monday. "The concept of a news feed is something we are very focused on, and we'll be well down the path in the next 30 to 45 days," Levinsohn said at the summit.

The news feed, which provides a user with updates from the people on his or her … Read more

The New York Times reported last week that led by robots, roaches abandon [their] instincts. Specifically, when left to their own devices, groups of cockroaches followed their instincts and natually preferred a darker hiding place to a lighter hiding place virtually all the time. And when a minority group of robotic cockroaches replaced some of the bugs in the cohort and followed natual cockroach rules, again virtually all cockroaches sought the darker hiding place. But when the robots were programmed to seek the lighter, rather than a darker hiding place, fully 60 percent of the wild cockroaches teamed with the robots rather than obeying their instincts, thus demonstrating that even cockroaches are susceptible to bug peer pressure.… Read more

The Writers Guild of America can keep up its strike--there's plenty of unscripted comedy on the fledgling Fox Business Network.

On its morning show, Money for Breakfast (full disclosure: I have been a guest on Money for Breakfast), anchor Alexis Glick accidentally reported that Apple had taken an 8 percent stake in chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices.

"There's some news coming across the tape right now," Glick said on the live program. "We're seeing from Wall Street Journal that Apple is buying an 8 percent stake in AMD."

In fact, it was the government of the United Arab Emirates state of Abu Dhabi, not Apple, that had purchased the stake in AMD. Yes, yes, I know Steve Jobs' Cupertino empire really could be mistaken for a cash-flooded sovereignty sometimes. But let's be serious. Apple? Abu Dhabi?

When the mistake became clear, Glick's co-host, Peter Barnes, said, "Oh, the Arabs. OK." To make matters worse, the program even referred to the country incorrectly, as "Abu Dubai," not "Abu Dhabi."

Even funnier, contributing analyst Charles Payne--the founder and CEO of Wall Street Strategies--had gone right along with the gaffe. "That's real smart by Apple because AMD is in trouble right now," he had said to Glick. "AMD has always had two problems: either it had a great product that was either sometimes superior to Intel but not the distribution, or it would have a terrible product that obviously they couldn't compete."

Never mind the fact that Apple has been stocking its computers with, um, Intel chips, and has been doing so for over two years. If Jobs & Co. had bought a stock in AMD, that'd be beyond huge news.

It doesn't look like any video of the snafu has surfaced (yet), but check out the transcript, courtesy of the Silicon Alley Insider. It literally reads like something out of Anchorman or a Saturday Night Live skit:… Read more

Updated 12:30 p.m. PT

A coalition of major media and technology companies that notably does not include Google appears to be getting serious about copyright on the Internet.

A who's who of media companies--CBS, News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group, NBC Universal, Viacom, and Disney--as well as Microsoft and the News Corp.-owned MySpace, along with video-sharing sites Dailymotion and Veoh Networks released a set of guidelines Thursday designed to halt online piracy.

Notably absent from the list is Google, which unveiled filtering technology for its YouTube video-sharing site on Monday. Sources familiar with the coalition plan … Read more

The announcement has been made--read CNET News.com's full coverage here.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that an impressive cast of major media and technology companies plans to announce a high-profile list of joint guidelines for preserving copyright and fighting piracy online. Sources told The Journal that the companies involved include media moguls CBS Corp., NBC Universal, News Corp.'s Fox (and its MySpace social network), Viacom, and Disney, as well as tech icon Microsoft and French video-sharing site DailyMotion.

It's unclear whether these are the only parties involved in the deal. Inquiries to several of … Read more

With NBC and ABC both making free downloads of their shows available this week, Fox jumped on the trend with free downloads of new shows available on iTunes.

The Los Angeles Times reported Friday that Fox and Apple have reached an agreement to offer free downloads of the shows Fox is trying to promote this sweeps season: that is, the ones people aren't watching as much as they'd like. No Simpsons or Family Guy clips are among the five shows currently available for free on the iTunes Store. But episodes of shows sure to be forgotten in the … Read more

College football is back, and so is fall television. If you're looking to pick up some free TV shows (legally), the Internet is your friend and is a great place to go for digital versions of TV shows, sans a TV or the need for a VCR or DVR to watch shows when you want to. Note that several of these sites are walking a fine line of what's legal and what's not, which was outlined in yesterday's post about legal suicide for start-ups. We don't condone piracy or encourage it; this guide is for entertainment purposes only.

Free (and paid-for) downloads:

iTunes. iTunes is worth mentioning here because you can often get the first and last episode of any show for free. You can then put it on your iPod, iPhone, or watch it full-screen on your computer. While the iTunes Store is now lacking shows like The Office, because of NBC pulling out of its renewal deal, you can still find shows from ABC, CBS, and Fox--which incidentally is offering free pilots of all of their series, which you can find here (link opens up in iTunes).

Editor's Pick: Kitchen Nightmares--it's like Dinner Impossible, but with more volatility and endive.

Amazon Unbox. While we may not have had the best experience using this service in the past, if you're looking for legal digital copies of NBC's newest shows, you're stuck with Unbox until Hulu launches next month. Like the iTunes Store, you'll find all the big players here, although keep in mind that you can't watch these shows on any portable media players, which makes the $1.99 price tag a little harder to swallow.

Editor's Pick: MythBusters

Joost. There is an absolute ton of content on Joost, including entire seasons of the original Transformers from the 80s. The only catch? You've gotta download and install the client, and get a private beta token, which these days is about as easy to get as it was to get a Gmail invite a few years back.

Click the "read more" link below to continue reading, and find out about free, streaming options.… Read more