Upon start-up, The Filter scans your entire music library, which takes considerable time if you have more than 10,000 tracks. It compares the metadata for those files against the All Media Guide database, as well as your own playing history to compose new playlists based around various parameters. A lot of its success will depend on your library, of course, and how well your tracks are tagged. You'll need a username and password to access The Filter service, and, in fact, you can't finish the registration process without rating at least three musicians and three movies.

The interface has been improved so it's no longer buggy, although there is a bit of a delay--one or two seconds--while it coughs up a new playlist. Its icon lives on the Quick Launch bar. Right-clicking accesses a context menu, and from there users can jump to Preferences, thefilter.com, or change the default playlist generation from being based on the song to the genre. Double-click on the icon and it automatically generates a playlist, as long as a track is currently playing. Playlists are generated from Bayesian mathematics algorithms and evidence models, and you can configure how much your playlists are influenced by album sales.

The Filter offers a strong alternative to iTunes' Genius playlist, as well as giving recommended playlists to jukeboxes that otherwise would have none.

Linux has moved more rapidly than Windows or Mac OS X to support 64-bit processors, in part because the developer-friendly compile-your-own-software ethos that prevails makes it easier for the technically savvy to make the switch. But one of the obstacles in the switch is that people could only use the 32-bit Flash plug-in, which meant that they only could use the 32-bit version of Firefox.

The company plans to release the software at its Adobe Max conference in San Francisco.

The 64-bit support will arrive on other operating systems later, Adobe said, but Linux fans get it first because they were the most vocal in their desire for it.

"Release of this alpha version of 64-bit Flash Player on Linux is the first step in delivering on Adobe's plans to make Flash Player native 64-bit across platforms," Adobe said in a statement. "We chose Linux as our initial platform in response to numerous requests in our public Flash Player bug and issue management system and the fact that Linux distributions do not ship with a 32-bit browser or a comprehensive 32-bit emulation layer by default. With this prelease, Flash Player 10 is now a full native participant on 64-bit Linux distributions. We are committed to bringing native 64-bit Flash Player to Windows and Mac in future releases. We expect to provide native support for 64-bit platforms in an upcoming major release of Flash Player. Windows, Macintosh and Linux players are expected to ship simultaneously moving forward."

Lockdown sounds a loud alarm and prevents your Mac from being put to sleep or muted, and it can also take and e-mail a picture using your iSight camera. Lockdown is most effective by far when combined with an Apple Remote, which lets you quickly activate and deactivate Lockdowns alarm with the Menu button. Lockdown requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later.

This flexible program lets you search for specific junk file types and easily exclude folders or drives from the scan. Results can be sorted a number of ways, with buttons to select (or deselect) all items for deletion. One oddity: Instead of going back to the main interface Baku completely closes if you cancel a search.

This freeware clean-up tool is powerful enough for system administrators but easy enough for the intermediate or Registry-savvy user.

One of the first criticisms people had about the iPhone was that it was too hard to type effectively using the touch screen. It was all over the tech news sites and even here at CNET. Of course, as time went on and anyone who had the iPhone for a while figured out, you eventually got used it. Now, I can rattle off text messages and e-mails faster than I ever could using a regular mobile phone. But there are still some who find the keys on the touch screen too close together (or have large fingers) and no matter how much time they spend on the iPhone, messaging and e-mailing is still a chore.

Wider touch-screen buttons and more room mean faster typing.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

EasyWriter is a new addition to my iPhone that definitely helps with faster typing. There isn't much to this app beyond being able to turn the iPhone sideways and type messages using a larger landscape keyboard, but that might be enough for those users having trouble. When you're done typing, hit the send e-mail button and EasyWriter pastes your text into a new e-mail message. Another useful feature is you can change the viewable text size using a pinch or reverse-pinch on the screen. Something else you might try for long messages is setting your iPhone on a table in landscape mode and use the two-handed hunt-and-peck method for typing even faster--it worked pretty well when I tried it. Hopefully landscape typing will make it into the next iPhone software update, but for now, you can use this free app.

Just like regular pool, you'll need to line up your ball just right for the perfect shot.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Adrenaline Pool Lite is my most recent game addition and even though it requires you play online, it's pretty fun. You have the choice of playing 8-ball, 9-ball, Snooker, and Straight pool. An automatching system matches you up with another player online. I had some hiccups looking for opponents, but once I found one it was smooth sailing. In the game you use your touch screen to angle your shot, then use the power bar to adjust how hard you want to hit the cue ball. You also have the option to put spin on the ball. It offers nice graphics, and the game physics are pretty true to life. One feature I really liked was the ability to chat with the other player. He was a nice guy, but of course, as with any online game, your mileage may vary. The paid version lets you play single player and filter your opponents--one option is to search for female opponents only. I love the ladies, but why would you put an option for that in an iPhone pool game? In any case, it's worth the free download.

What's the latest app you've downloaded? Does EasyWriter help your iPhone typing skills? Have you banked the 8-ball for the win? Let me know in the comments!

Watch more than 100 live streaming video sites right on your desktop with StreamDesk.

If you've ever wanted to watch streaming video right on your desktop, and organize all your favorite streams in a single bucket, it's worth checking out StreamDesk. This cross-platform desktop application plays video streams from a variety of sources in a simple player that cuts out the browser completely and turns each show into a small, floating window.

Included are more than 100 various streaming video shows from a small handful of providers. If you come across one that isn't live, you're out of luck, otherwise live shows begin to stream in almost instantly. Shows you like can be bookmarked into a favorites list, and each has its own button that takes you right to its source page.

There's currently no way to add your own shows via URL, however the catalog is updated frequently and you can make suggestions for new streams by e-mailing the developer. Also, on StreamDesk, you're missing out on the integrated live chat on videos that are coming from UStream.tv.

If you're a Mac user you'll need to be running OS X 10.5 (Leopard) along with the latest version of Flash 10. Windows users need Flash 10 as well, along with .Net Framework 3.5.

(via FriendFeed)

Billing itself as "the Internet for kids," it turns out that KidZui is anything but a standard kids' browser, and what makes it so unique is precisely why it's such a safe tool for children to use.

What you see when you log in to KidZui.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

KidZui is a closed system of pre-approved content, and although it seems to function like a browser, there's no way to use it to access the Internet directly. Instead, all the content that's available from KidZui has been approved by a group of editors. These moonlighting parents, teachers, and retired teachers started from a database built by a spider that checked dmoz directories across the Internet--similar to how Yahoo searches the Web. From there, they looked at each video, image, and Web site that KidZui lets children see, and then added the safe ones to an age-delineated whitelist. Four-year-olds, for example, can not see content that 10-year-olds can.

When KidZui launched in March 2008, the list of approved content included around 500,000 sites that, according to KidZui's chairman and CEO Cliff Boro, took two years to build. Eight months on, that's now expanded to more than a million pieces of content, with 50 editors still contracted to review new material and purge links that have changed or are dead.

Being closed doesn't mean that that the KidZui experience is limited. More secure than a haphazardly-applied algorithm from a Web blocker, but less limiting in part because it includes kid-appropriate social networking, KidZui in many ways seems to offer a more comprehensive Internet experience to children.

The Zui, the KidZui avatar, features customizations that draw kids in.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The basic version is free, and includes a solid core of features for both children and their justifiably worried parents. Remember the old use of Whitehouse.com, and how easy it was to get there by mistyping whitehouse.gov?

Since KidZui is closed to actual browsing, accidentally or intentionally reaching improper content means that's no longer an issue. There are three main tools for kids to explore the Internet with. There's a search bar at the top, a left-nav sidebar organized by topics including science, movies and TV, games, sports, and animals, and a bottom scroll bar that shows your most frequently-viewed Web sites. KidZui's URI bar includes predictive text similar to Firefox, Chrome, and Opera, but only for the pre-approved content. Below the URI bar are tabs for your default Welcome page, Games, New, Most Popular, and Most Tagged.

Once you start looking at content, three new tabs replace the default five. The Photo and Video tabs work much like Google's Image and Video searches, where you type into the URI bar what you're looking for and the tab automatically narrows it down to the specific type of content that you want under that topic. The Web tab allows for more open, Web browser-style exploration of the whitelisted content.

The right-side nav is taken up by the social-networking features, but again there's little cause for concern by parents. Kids can not e-mail or instant message each other, and there is no personal information that gets revealed when your child "friends" another. They can only see each other's avatars, known as Zuis within the program, usernames, and recently viewed or recently tagged content. By emphasizing the sharing of likes and dislikes as they pertain to videos, photos, and Web sites, and eliminating the ability to communicate directly, KidZui is able to keep the kids who use it focused on positive experiences.

KidZui also hopes to keep kids from being distracted by other local content on the computer by always running in a maximized, full-screen window. It also requires two clicks on the Exit button on the bottom right to fully log out, and parents can require that they enter in their username and password to prevent kids from accessing the rest of the computer.

After the parent has registered KidZui, the child needs to create an online identity. Kids can customize their avatars clothing, skin, face, and hair to a limited degree in the free version, with more options available if you upgrade. The more kids explore via KidZui, the more choices get unlocked, including background options, additional emoticon tags, and Zui customizations. Parents get weekly updates on all the sites that their kids have been looking at.

MyZui pages let kids create their own channels and see where they've been.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Free KidZui is fully functional, but the paid version definitely offers more to both parents and kids. Among the additions, children get more tags for rating content, more avatar clothing, and more backgrounds, while parents get the ability to block individual sites, and can view an unlimited history of the child's browsing. Parents who upgrade can also add Web sites, such as a personal family site, that they approve of on their own through the parental control panel. Upgrading also gains access to a Homework Helper feature, too, divided by subject and academic level from pre-school through eighth grade.

There's no such thing as perfect software, and KidZui is no exception to the rule. I noticed that when you're using the program in Windows, you can use the ALT+Tab hot key combo to access other concurrently running programs. On Vista, this can be used to gain access to the desktop. Walt Mossberg found a somewhat circuitous way to turn up a story on the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal when he looked at the program when it launched.

Even with these holes, KidZui looks as effective as anything I've seen at balancing the dual concerns at play when trying to educate kids with and about the Internet. It's important and difficult to give them the freedom to explore and learn how to use the Web while creating an environment that parents can feel they have control and influence over. KidZui beautifully manages to navigate those concerns and their implications, and is a must for any parent with children under the age of 13 to check out.

Mozilla has put out a road map proposal for the next version of Ubiquity, the company's user interface project that aims to mash up user-controlled shortcuts with information from the Web. Besides the promise of an interface overhaul, the plan's big hope is to integrate Ubiquity with Mozilla's Firefox and Thunderbird products, along with user desktops.

In Firefox's case, Ubiquity integration for everyone (not just testers) could come as soon as version 3.2, due sometime next year. According to the road map specifications, the upgraded Firefox implementation would integrate Ubiquity into the "awesomebar," removing the need for users to learn a new keyboard shortcut to toggle it on and off.

The big caveat here is that any Firefox implementation would not allow third party commands for the sake of security, meaning you couldn't just start typing a new Gmail e-mail from your address bar. In such a case, users would be related to Firefox-specific shortcuts, and be required to use a separate instance of Ubiquity to take advantage of third party commands.

As for Thunderbird, Mozilla's e-mail software, the company hopes Ubiquity integration could change the way people search and manage their in-boxes. The spec says there's a need to "extend Thunderbird in ways that provide compelling advantages over Web mail." This could include things like deep integration with your system files and applications, to the point of being able to search for and add an attachment with just a few keystrokes--all without leaving the application or diving through a sea of nested folders in a pop-up menu. There's also a mention of having Ubiquity share the same set of command feed subscriptions, so if you subscribed to a new feed in either application it would be transferred over transparently in the background.

Of all of the proposed items, one that holds the most potential is integration with the user's desktop. This takes Ubiquity out of the walled garden of the browser and into user work-flow in other applications. It's the one area of the proposal with the least amount of detail, however it notes proper implementation would be in existing launcher services such as Quicksilver (for Mac) and Enso (for Windows). Presumably, when integrated with either of these, users would be able to begin to mash up items from their machine with Web services that much faster.

You can read more about the proposal on Mozilla's wiki page. See also our previous Ubiquity coverage, and Mozilla's demo video of what the product is capable of.

San Francisco's forecast today.

(Credit: CNET)

The free Weather Channel Interactive Interactive makes use of tabs to cram in localized weather, extended forecasts, and video. There's a tab for severe weather advisories and an e-mail function to send a weather notice to a friend in your address book.

The Weather Channel is making much ado about a feature in the Explore Map tab that lets you add "map layers" and neighborhood points, essentially a combination of radar and clouds, the UV index, and rainfall watches that show up on the map alongside personal points of interest.

The weird yellow glow is a temperature map, with a highlight over a local airport.

(Credit: CNET)

The idea is to dot your iPhone's map with as much detailed data as you need so you can track specific weather conditions at the airport, park, golf course, and so on--but only one map layer and neighborhood point at a time. It's a toss-up if that restriction is for the best--when zoomed in, the map crowds quickly.

Videos for local and international daily forecasts are a smart addition, and something that really sets this app apart. The Video tab will play the local forecast for the current location that The Weather Channel Interactive picked out using GPS, or for other favorites you saved. More videos by region and country are tucked into the More menu, though they're limited to the US, UK, France, Canada, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean.

While there's a lot of good information in here, the weather home screen that most people will check in with most often is blanketed with a dull blue that's very blah compared to the iPhone's native weather widget that's designed by Yahoo, but which grabs data from The Weather Channel. However, the biggest problem facing the Weather Channel's proprietary application, is stability. The app crashed on me four times during testing in an area with moderate signal.

Otherwise, this app is a good start for The Weather Channel, and one that brings tangible value with its video and e-mail extras.

Howcast, the how-to video host and platform, on Friday released its iPhone application, bringing its entire catalog of short-form informational videos to the popular device.

Much like YouTube's iPhone application, the Howcast app lets users search for videos, find them in a small selection of featured clips, or pick them by popularity or publication date.

Browse and view the latest how-to videos on your phone.

(Credit: Howcast; CNET Networks)

It's wonderfully entertaining--including the option to shake the phone (or iPod Touch) and go to a random clip, no matter what part of the application you're using.

Where the mobile experience falls short of its Web counterpart is in lacking an integrated wiki system and wonderful custom Flash player.

The wikis, in particular, make the Web product far more compelling, since you can get the gist of any video in a few simple paragraphs that can be edited by the Howcast community.

For something like a food recipe, the wiki descriptions can be immensely handy, especially if you're planning to take your iPhone into the kitchen or use Howcast when you're out shopping.

Likewise, the lack of the Web service's video player, which lets you skip to different sections of the video, is a real bummer. It's something that's possible with QuickTime chapter markers, but it's not currently implemented in the iPhone app. In future versions, I'd love to see that change.

Howcast is free and available in Apple's App Store. If you're a fan of the site, it's definitely worth a download, despite its shortcomings.

• Windows 7 Feature Focus
• Windows Live Wave 3, including the Windows Live Essentials application suite
• Windows Small Business Server and Essential Business Server 2008 are available now
• Is Windows Mobile making a comeback?
• Is Microsoft porting the Zune UI to Windows Mobile?
• New Windows Mobile devices: Sony Xperia, HTC Fuze
• Xbox 360 update: Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty World at War

Tips of the week:

• Get Windows 7 functionality in Windows Vista
• Unlock all hidden features in Windows 7 M3

Software of the week:

• Ultimate Boot CD
• Ultimate Boot CD for Windows

Audible pick of the week: Death in Paradise, Unabridged, By Robert B. Parker, Narrated by Robert Forster. For a free audiobook, visit Audible.com/windows.

Check out Paul's blog at http://www.internet-nexus.com and the SuperSite for Windows http://winsupersite.com for more information.

Thanks to Cachefly for the bandwidth for this show. The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Derek K. Miller.

Running time: 1:16:58

Guest: Kenn Bell of The Dog Files

Google Video Chat, MarsPhoenix, Twuffter, Star Wars, The Dog Files, and more.

• Google adds video and voice chat to Gmail
• Interview with MarsPhoenix Writer
• Schedule your tweets: Twuffer Beta launches
• Song of the week: “Star Wars” - An a capella tribute to John Williams
• Podcast of the week: The Dog Files

Audible pick of the week: True Story: A Comedy Novel, Unabridged, By Bill Maher, Narrated by Bill Maher. To sign up for a free book, visit Audible.com/night.

Bandwidth for net@night is provided by AOL Radio.

Running time: 58:06

• WinHEC 2008: Continuing the Windows 7 news explosion
• Google/Yahoo! deal falls apart: Microsoft to the rescue?
• Lets Talk Xbox 360
• Friday: Gears of War 2
• Next week: Call of Duty 5 World at War
• Paul’s Zune 120 Gears of War 2 Special Edition Give-away. Play GOW2 with me this weekend and win a Zune (US, Canada only)

Tip of the week: Virtualization on the desktop.

Don’t forget that Virtual PC and Virtual Server are still free. VMWare Workstation 6.5 just shipped, too.

Plus: The first Windows 7 tip!

Software of the week: Secunia PSI

Audible pick of the week: Timeline, Unabridged, By Michael Crichton, Narrated by John Bedford Lloyd. For a free audiobook, visit Audible.com/windows.

Check out Paul's blog at http://www.internet-nexus.com and the SuperSite for Windows http://winsupersite.com for more information.

Thanks to Cachefly for the bandwidth for this show. The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Derek K. Miller.

Running time: 1:10:57