Tech Olive

Want to see the Earth as it looks right now and have it show on your desktop? Well, you can with a little nifty application called Desktop Earth. It automatically downloads snapshots of the Earth from NASA every few minutes and turns it into a desktop wallpaper. It shows the night-and-day cycle, as well as clouds. It also has a few different options like the frequency of updating the wallpaper and how much cloud cover you want, as well as what to show on the night cycles. Despite it being an actual program that runs in the background, it really doesn’t take up a lot of resources. Give it a try!

[Desktop Earth]

I’m a man of multiple browsers and I’m sure many of you are too. Sometimes Firefox doesn’t always cut it and I have to move over to Chrome for a while. A big downfall with using multiple browsers is that your saved passwords and bookmarks on your favorite browser aren’t with another browser that you might switch over to every once in a while. This becomes a huge pain in the rear end, but the guys over at Tested mention a quick and painless way to sync your bookmarks and saved passwords using Xmarks. This powerful, yet simple plugin can sync bookmarks, saved passwords, and even opened tabs over multiple browsers and even over multiple computers. The plugin currently works with Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Safari. We recommend you give it a try.

via [Tested]

We all know that Microsoft is a pretty big corporation, but exactly how big are they, really? Take a look at some numbers that Microsoft posted:

• 150 million Windows 7 licenses sold

• 7.1 million projected iPad sales in 2010
• 58 million projected netbook sales in 2010
• 355 million projected PC sales in 2010

• less than 10% of US netbooks ran Windows in 2008
• 96% of US netbooks ran Windows in 2009

• 16 million subscribers to the largest 25 US daily newspapers
• 14 million Netflix subscribers
• 23 million Xbox live subscribers

• 173 million Gmail users
• 284 million Yahoo Mail users
• 360 million Windows Live Hotmail users

• $5.7 billion Apple net income for fiscal year ending in Sept 2009
• $6.5 billion Google net income for fiscal year ending in Dec 2009
• $14.5 billion Microsoft net income for fiscal year ending in June 2009

Say what you will about the company, but you have to admit they are freaking huge and successful.

via [Official Microsoft Blog]

There’s a new update for the all-powerful VLC Media Player and this time we get GPU acceleration in the mix for smoother HD playback, as well as a bunch of other improvements. If we were you, take it for a spin and let us know what you think.

[Download]

The Bargain Bin is a weekly feature that helps out gamers in the tough economy. How does it help? Once a week, it offers a great and cheap game ($10 or less) to keep you going until your next paycheck.

The fine gentlemen over at Direct2Drive have BioShock on sale for $9.99. Any gamers that have not yet experienced this game’s amazing atmosphere and gameplay should definitely grab themselves a copy. And, if you’re still unconvinced, then head over to Steam and grab the demo for a little teaser.

With all the glorious Quarter 4 games just around the corner, it’s hard to contain all the excitement, and it’s all slowly building as the release dates grow nearer. More often than not, there’s that one game that stands above the rest. That one game that we’re all counting the days until its release. No other game quite compares to this one’s anticipation in your mind.

Today we offer you a way to count those days without having to scratch hash marks into your wall, with the use of your very own lightweight and customizable desktop countdown timer! With just a few minutes, we’ll show you how to create an awesome and fully customizable desktop countdown timer that will count the seconds to any date you wish.

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A public beta of the first Service Pack for Windows 7 will be coming later in July, according to Microsoft’s Windows Blog. However, there’s nothing too exciting about this one. It will only include some minor performance improvements and updates, as well as a combination of existing updates. Plus, Windows 7 doesn’t really absolutely need a Service Pack as Vista did, but any updates for the better are always welcome.

via [Maximum PC]

After being in beta for what seems like forever, Google has finally released a stable version of Chrome 5.0. This means that both Mac and Linux users also get a long-awaited stable version of the Google browser. Version 5 obviously has a faster JavaScript engine and updated WebKit components, but it also has more bookmarks, preferences, and themes features, as well as HTML5 features like geolocation and drag-and-drop file support. If you’re not updated yet, just open up Chrome and navigate to the little wrench icon and hit About Google Chrome. From there you can update your browser.

[Google Chrome Blog]

4 billion people in the world watch TV. That’s a lot of people. However, more and more users are watching TV right on their PCs, whether it’s streaming episodes or purchasing them off of iTunes. So, it’s really no surprise that Google is storming into the television market in a big way by combining the web and TV. The company has officially unveiled Google TV, a new way of watching television. You can simply search for a show that you want to watch and it’ll bring up TV listings of that show, as well as where to find episodes on the internet.

Google’s blog has all the details, as well a quick intro video. Check it out here.

Image Credit: Download Squad

Firefox Director Mike Beltzer presented his plan of the next big version of Mozilla’s browser, Firefox 4, on his personal website. According to the presentation, Mozilla will focus on simplifying the browser’s UI and make it easier to personalize and customize the browser. They’re also going to take some ideas out of Google Chrome’s book by putting the tabs above the address bar. Now, before you call copycat on Mozilla, both Opera (in 10.5) and Safari (4.0 beta) have done this.

For all the devs out there, Mozilla will improve support for HTML5, including CSS3, SMIL and CSS Transitions. Firefox 4 will also include more developer tools that can be used for debugging and analyzing webpages. The new version will also offer hardware-accelerated Direct2D rendering and obviously a faster JavaScript engine.

Mozilla’s plan is to start the beta program in late June with a release candidate in October and a final version shortly following. However, Beltzer made clear that this schedule is subject to change.

via [CNET]