My Technology Guide

Mozilla has released the second beta version of its improved and redesigned Firefox 4 web browser. The new version can be downloaded from the release notes or official beta download page. It available for all supported operating systems (Linux, Mac, Windows) and now available in 24 languages. This second beta release also gives Apple Mac's the same tabs-on-top look as in Windows. The one orange main button is still isn't there in the Mac version, but the new toolbar formations are available now.

The most "talked about" new feature in Firefox 4 Beta 2 is "App Tabs", which looks like Google Chrome's "Pin Tab" feature. This "App Tabs" mode lets you keep an eye on sites you want to. Now, every tab in Firefox 4 has this new option "Make into App Tab," on right-click to convert it into an "App Tab".

AnyBizSoft has recently released PDF Converter for Mac along with three new products for Apple Mac users. The product line-up includes PDF to Excel for Mac and PDF to PowerPoint for Mac. PDF to Word for Mac was already released. AnyBizSoft Studio provided us an evaluation version of AnyBizSoft PDF Converter for Mac for testing.

AnyBizSoft PDF Converter for Mac which normally retails at $69.95 (20% discount for My Technology Guide readers available, for more details see at the end of this review), is a 6-in-1 PDF converter application. PDF Converter for Mac provides Apple Mac users with a very good app for converting PDF files to any of the six document formats: Word (.doc), Excel (.xls), PowerPoint (.pptx), HTML (.html), Text (.txt) and EPUB (.epub).

Mozilla has finally released Firefox 3.6.4, the latest security and stability release for Firefox. This release provides crash protection for Windows and Linux users by isolating third-party plugins when they crash. The feature is like that in Google Chrome as it runs plugins in their own process to increase browser stability and security.

Out-of-process plugins are enabled by default and make sure that a crashing plugin will not crash the browser itself as well. Firefox can now prevents Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime and Microsoft Silverlight crashes from bringing down your entire browser on Windows and Linux computers just like Google Chrome does. Read the Crash Protection FAQ for more detailed information about this new feature.

AVG Technologies has unveiled AVG LinkScanner for the Mac operating system. AVG LinkScanner for Mac is the first free AVG product designed for Mac OS X Leopard or Snow Leopard and supports Internet browsers Safari 3.x, Safari 4.x, Safari 5.x and Mozilla Firefox 3.x and higher.

According to AVG research, 99 percent of all malicious threats are delivered through the web and cannot be stopped with traditional antivirus software. These threats can come and go within hours and can live on familiar, big-name sites and even on third-party applications on popular social networking sites, without users even noticing. And with the growing popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and others, the bad guys are using these sites as their main vehicle for spreading malware.

Users of 64-bit operating system who always wanted to use a 64-bit edition of the popular web browser Firefox were previously restricted to using only the builds provided by their operating systems or, the ones available through the Mozilla-x86-64 project. Mozilla Firefox 64-bit builds for Linux, Mac and Windows is now available on the official Firefox Nightly FTP server. Mozilla plans to distribute the final version of Firefox 64-bit editions with the release of Firefox 4 later this year.

If you install the experimental version of Firefox 64-bit you will notice that most of the browser plugins are not compatible and only Java and a non-final Flash version are being supported.

Google today has released the stable version of Google Chrome for Apple Mac OS and Linux users. This stable versions came after almost 6 months since the beta version of Google Chrome were released for Apple Mac OS and Linux platforms. Google, in their official announcement, has claimed that this stable version of Google Chrome web browser will be the fastest ever browser on Apple Mac OS and Linux platforms.

Today, we're bringing all this beta goodness to the stable channel so that it’s available to all Chrome users. We're particularly excited to bring Chrome for Mac and Linux out of beta, and introduce Chrome’s first stable release for Mac and Linux users.

Good news for all Apple Mac users! Freebie for Mac users is very rare, but Digiarty Software is showing the love by offering the WinX DVD Ripper for Mac, normally $35.95, absolutely free, with no strings attached. My Technology Guide readers must be already familiar with the name WinX. It's because Digiarty Software in the past has giveaway a few Windows-only freebies, most notably the Windows version of the same app and other WinX applications as well. (sorry, but those offer's are long gone).