Download Squad Week in Review

Filed under: Weekend Review

Been so busy trying to think of world records that aren't in the Guinness Book yet that you haven't had time to read about this week's software news? Don't worry, we've got you covered. Here are some of our favorite stories from the past week:

• Whipping your website into shape
  You run a small business. And you have a small website. And no offense, but it kind of looks like you let your 6 year old design it. We've collected some of our favorite tips for making your web site a thing of beauty. Oh yeah, and it'll be far easier for people to find what they're looking for too.
• Do you know what your hard drive has been up to?
  CrystalDiskInfo is a handy little Windows utility that spits out all sorts of information about your hard drive state, including its temperature, the number of power cycles, and even how many hours you've been running the drive. So if you run this free application every now and again and save the data, when your hard drive inevitably fails, at least you'll have an idea why.
• Mozilla breaks non-existent world record, nobody cares
  Look, we hear what you're saying. Mozilla scored a world record for the largest number of downloads in a 24 hour period when the company launched Firefox 3. That's be pretty awesome, except nobody had ever bothered to compete in this category before. So it's not exactly shocking that Mozilla holds the record now, is it? And no, we have no plans to fire Drew Olanoff for writing this post which has been the subject of much debate.
• Windows XP goes by bye
  This week saw the retirement of Windows XP. Kind of. Microsoft will no longer let end users pick up a standalone license. But you can still get a copy of the venerable operating system if you really want it. Some of them are even legal!
• Trillian turns 8, no astra beta birthday gift quite yet
  Multi-protocol chat client Trillian turned 8 years old this week. The program has been downloaded over 35 million times so far. And while we were crossing our fingers hoping that the new version, called Trillian Astra, might poke its head out for the anniversary, the upcoming version of Trillian is still in private alpha.
• Windows Steady State bulletproofs your system
  Ever wish you could throw caution to the wind and click on obviously dangerous links, download files that are likely to contain trojans, and otherwise muck up your system without actually mucking up your system? Windows Steady State creates a large cache file that essentially lets you save all of your activity in a temporary location. When you reboot your system, anything you did while running Steady State should be removed.

Download Squad Week in Review originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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