Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – April 14, 2010

ZDNet Readers’ Choice: Top 25 free, lightweight apps – In February, I asked ZDNet readers for the free, lightweight applications they simply can’t live without. After tallying the suggestions in the comments and via e-mail — and there were an awful lot of good suggestions, believe me — here are the 25 most popular.

Lifehacker: Set Up a Geeky Media Center that Non-Geeks Can Actually Use – Set Up a Geeky Media Center that Non-Geeks Can Actually UseI love messing with settings and geeky file-sharing programs. My spouse doesn’t, but digs Hulu and appreciates free. So I set up a media center that satisfies my geek cravings but is actually easy-to-use for non-nerds. Here’s what I pieced together.

Firefox Tips: Fix Print Size, Add Personality, Refresh Tabs – Learn how to change the print size in Mozilla’s browser, dress it up with Personas, set tabs to refresh automatically, and more.

Google is obsessed with phishing, thankfully – Google has a significant stake in the Internet and whether it survives or not. Could that be why the search giant has declared all out war against the phishers of the world?

100 Amazing Firefox Add-ons for Homeschoolers – From subject-specific tools to tools to help with research and productivity to tools that give parents control over the safety of the family computer, there are sure to be plenty of great options for you.

Universal Viewer Saves You The Headache of App Hunting – Opens Almost Any File. Universal Viewer, as its name implies, aims to be a universal file viewer capable of opening almost any file, without making you hunt down required programs for unusual file types.

Major update to Google Docs aims to bridge Apps and Office – At yesterday’s Atmosphere event on the Google campus, the company unveiled a major upgrade to Google Docs.

Off Topic:

The future of security: Will our brains host botnets? – What does the future hold in store for us and how does IT security fit into the picture of things to come?

There’s a way to change moral judgments: a magnet – The part of your brain behind your right ear controls moral judgment. Scientists have discovered that a magnet can alter them.

Smart meters have security holes that could allow hackers access to grid - Smart meters used to deliver electricity more efficiently have flaws that could let hackers tamper with the power grid, according to a new report.

Steve Jobs: The Lost Emails – Apple’s dictator for life didn’t just start spewing out terse emails yesterday. He’s been doing it for years. Here, collected for the very first time, are the lost missives of the Jesus CEO. An eSarcasm exclusive… (submitted by Dar)

Today’s Quote:

“I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.”

-     Carl Sagan

Today’s Free Downloads:

FreeMind – Though it lacks a lot of the buttons, tabs, and other flashy user interface elements commonly found in commercial mindmapping tools such as Mindjet MindManager or 3D Topicscape, FreeMind is still a gold-standard mind mapping application. What makes it so powerful is its readily accessible controls and its cross-platform compatibility.

PersonalBrain Free Edition – PersonalBrain is quite possibly most intuitive mind mapping utility on the planet, and it looks like it came straight out of Star Trek. It can import a range of data sources–including Microsoft Word outline files, or Firefox and IE bookmarks–and turn them into mindmaps.

Comodo Dragon: A Chromium Browser With Extra Armor – Browse the Web in ultra-secure fashion with Chromium-based browser variant Comodo Dragon.

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