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Google Chrome: If you’re a frequent Chrome and Dropbox user, this unofficial Dropbox extension puts one-click access to your Dropbox files right on the Google Chrome toolbar.

Once installed, the Dropbox extension places a small Dropbox icon in your Google Chrome toolbar. After your initial sign-in, clicking on the icon presents the menu seen here. You can select between your recently updated files and your folder structure to quickly navigate to the file you’re looking for. Clicking on any given file will either display or play the file in your browser or download it to your computer for local viewing.

Dropbox extension is a free and unofficial extension for accessing your Dropbox files and works wherever Google Chrome does. Have a favorite extension or tool for getting the most out of cloud-based services? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

If you want to spice up your desktop easily in Windows 7 a good method is changing the Theme. If you’ve already exhausted the default Themes included in the OS, you might want to download new ones. Here we take a look at easily downloading new Themes from Microsoft’s Personalization Gallery.

To download new Themes right-click on the Desktop and select Personalize.

Then under My Themes click on Get more themes online.

That takes you to Microsoft’s site where you can select from a variety of New and Featured themes from the Personalization Gallery.

Now you can open and apply the theme right away, or save a bunch of them for use later.

I just received my Dell Mini 10 netbook, and I testing all the aspects of the netbook craze. Upon opening the package and I started fresh with a Windows 7 Ultimate install. I like what I have so far. It has 1GB of RAM, 160 HDD, integrated webcam, and I have to say a pretty good keyboard for a netbook. I have been using skype to talk with my family in Florida, and the sound and video have been pretty good also. The only downside so far is the sensitivity of the touchpad.

More to come after some testing….

Linux: Skype doesn’t update its Linux beta too often, but good things arrive when it does. This go-round, screen sharing gets added to the mix, interfaces can be styled, and a lot of annoyances were chopped down.

If you were irked about being unable to quote IM sections from Skype conversations, that got fixed in Skype 2.1 Beta 2. If you’re amazed at how irksome connecting Skype through PulseAudio, the default audio engine in Ubuntu and a few other distributions—you’re not getting much help here. With that out of the way, your Linux-friendly editor will point out the big list of improvements and fixes in this release.

Skype for Linux 2.1 Beta 2 is a free download for Linux systems only. If you’ve discovered a few smart Skype fixes on your Linux system, or want to see something else fixed up, tell us about it in the comments.

Apple on Monday finally added Windows 7 support to its Boot Camp software, which allows Mac users to run Microsoft’s operating system.

Windows 7 requires an Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, according to Apple’s Web site. There are two versions of the Boot Camp upgrade: one for installing a new copy of Windows 7, and one for upgrading to Windows 7 from Vista.

Microsoft officially released Windows 7 on Oct. 22 – it took Apple three months to support the new operating system. The new version of Boot Camp, v3.1, supports both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7.

Apple indeed will show off some sort of new product on Jan. 27. Members of the media on Monday received invitations to the Cupertino, Calif., event that’s been expected for that Wednesday.

“Come see our latest creation,” the invitation says.

That’s about it. Are we going to finally get the rumored Apple iTablet, iSlate, iPad or whatever it’ll be called?

One reason I’m writing about the iTablet (or whatever) on The Microsoft Blog is that Apple is all but creating a new market for a new device. The company is famous for making products that fix problems we didn’t even know we had.

Two weeks ago, at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed off a number of Windows slate PCs during his keynote. Slates have been around for years – the early models in the 1990s bombed – but consumer interest in them finally is picking up.

Ballmer shows a new HP slate computer Jan. 6 at CES 2010 in Las Vegas. Click to enlarge
As Ryan Kim of The Tech Chronicles points out, the big question around the Apple tablet is its price. Expectations are that if the tablet costs around $600, it’ll be a hit. But with a price point around $1,000, it might just be the techies lining up at Apple Stores.

What do you think is a reasonable price for a tablet computer? How about one made by Apple?

Verizon and AT&T, the two largest cell phone carriers in the U.S. are gearing up for a price war over cell phone service fees.

And frankly, it’s long overdue: Consumers have been radically overpaying for their cellular service since the dawn of time, with carriers protecting those rates through a series of mergers that has left the U.S. with just four major networks to choose from. Until now, only T-Mobile has seemed interested in trying to be competitive when it comes to pricing while the rest of the market has sat on its collective hindquarters.

Verizon fired the first volley on Friday, announcing major cuts to its unlimited family talk and text plan, from $230 to $150 per month, and its unlimited voice plan from $100 to $70 per month. Other plans combining unlimited talk and text are also going down in price. The new rates go into effect today.

AT&T is following suit, lowering the prices of its individual unlimited plans by $30 as well, putting the two companies back into pricing parity. (Today, smaller carrier U.S. Cellular joined the club, too.)

What’s not changing? Prices for anyone with a minutes-based plan, or users who have a limited plan with a set number of minutes a month. I don’t have any information on what percentage of users that might comprise, but I imagine it’s still the vast majority of them.

The question now becomes if and when these price cuts will spill over to the rest of the market, particularly in the fiercely competitive world of smart phone plan pricing. So far the carriers have been reluctant to start hacking away at these highly lucrative plans — although a few iPhone competitors undercut the cost of that phone’s plan by a few bucks a month as an enticement.

The other concern raised by CNN in the linked story is what will now happen to smaller players like Leap and MetroPCS, all of which are known for rock-bottom pricing and the primary movers in forcing the big carriers’ prices down. Without much room to cut, will we see them try to squeeze a few more pennies out and skirt with financial losses? Or could some of these players actually be forced out of business?

Fewer than 10 percent of available IP addresses remain and we’ll run out in a couple of years, says the organization that oversees the ID registration of devices that connect to the Internet.

The Web will melt and we will all die of boredom.
That’s right – the Internet’s gonna break soon.

Unless companies get off their behinds and start registering their devices under IPv6 instead of IPv4. The Number Resource Organization, which oversees the five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) that distribute IP addresses allocated by the international Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, is trying to prod them.

“Many decision makers don’t realize how many devices require IP addresses – mobile phones, laptops, servers, routers … the list goes on,” Raul Echeberria, secretary of the NRO, said in a statement Tuesday. “The number of available IPv4 addresses is shrinking rapidly, and if the global Internet community fails to recognize this, it will face grave consequences in the very near future.”

IPv4 and IPv6 are the two current versions of IP, or Internet protocol. After the widespread expansion of the Internet through IPv4, it’s time for things to get going on IPv6. There are far more IPv6 addresses available.

The NRO said it and its RIRs have been encouraging – “through grassroots outreach, speaking engagements, conferences and media outreach” – the deployment of IPv6, the organization said.

“With less than 10 percent of the entire IPv4 address range still available for allocation to RIRs, it is vital that the Internet community take considered and determined action to ensure the global adoption of IPv6,” NRO Chairman Axel Pawlik said in the statement. “The limited IPv4 addresses will not allow us enough resources to achieve the ambitions we all hold for global Internet access. The deployment of IPv6 is a key infrastructure development that will enable the network to support the billions of people and devices that will connect in the coming years.”

One of the most persistent myths about Windows is that you need to reinstall the operating system regularly to keep it running at top performance. Let’s take a look at the real problem and how to fix it.

Today we’re talking about the myth that Windows slows down over time, and how to solve the problem. The reality is that Windows doesn’t slow down if you just take care of your PC a little more. Follow these procedures, and you won’t have to wonder if spending hours backing up data, installing from disc, and re-installing your essential applications is really necessary.

What Does Slow Windows Down Over Time?
I’m not going to sit here and tell you that your Windows PC will never slow down—because for many people, they almost always do. What actually slows your PC down are too many poorly written applications that stay resident in memory and waste CPU cycles, having too many badly written low-level applications that hook into Windows, or running more than one antivirus application at a time. And of course, if you’ve run your PC’s hard drive out of space, you can hardly blame Windows for that.

If you aren’t getting the picture, the problem is usually the person behind the keyboard that installed too many junk applications in the first place. More gently put, it’s often that (very well-meaning) person’s gradual easing of their safeguards and cleaning regimens as time goes by.

Stop Installing Junk Applications
Installing software should be thought of like feeding your PC. If you constantly feed your PC garbage apps, it’s going to get sick and won’t be able to run fast anymore. These poorly written applications clutter your drive with unnecessary DLL files, add always-resident Windows services when they don’t need to, bloat up your registry, and add useless icons to your system tray that waste even more memory and CPU cycles. Usually you can get away with using a few terrible applications, but as you continue to install more and more of them, your PC will slow down to a crawl.

Be Smarter About What You Do Install
We feature and recommend a lot of software applications around here, but you should keep in mind that we aren’t trying to tell you to install every single one of them at the same time-just install the applications that you actually need and you’ll generally prevent the dreaded format and reinstall.

Here’s a few tips to help you know what applications you should be careful with:

Apps that function as an Explorer plug-in, because they directly hook into the shell and any problem will make your entire PC slow or in the worst case, crash repeatedly.
Antivirus applications are notorious for slowing your PC down, and you should never, ever, ever use more than one real-time antivirus application at a time. We recommend Microsoft Security Essentials as a free, fast, and awesome antivirus tool.
Anything that says it will “Speed Up Your PC” or “Optimize Your RAM” will most likely slow it down, or best case, do nothing at all. Avoid these like the plague.
Make sure to install official system drivers from the manufacturer website. Drivers have a huge impact on performance, and you want to have stable, updated drivers.
Registry cleaners are a mixed bag, and really aren’t going to speed up your PC in most cases. The biggest problem, however, is that too many of the commercial registry cleaners set themselves to run at startup in the system tray, wasting your memory and CPU cycles.
You should strongly consider the idea of using portable applications wherever possible, since their self-contained nature means they won’t clutter up the rest of your PC with things you don’t need.
Keep Your Computer Clean and Trim
Once you’ve rid yourself of your junk application habit and resolved to only use healthy, useful applications, you’ll want to make sure to keep your PC clean of any remaining clutter that doesn’t need to be there. You can set up a shortcut to manually run CCleaner silently with the push of a button, but your best bet is to set up CCleaner to run automatically on a schedule, so you don’t have to remember to do it.

Since CCleaner is only going to clean up temporary files, you’ll still need a good solution for keeping the rest of your PC clean-and Lifehacker’s own Belvedere can help you automate your self-cleaning PC or automatically clean up your download folder.

With all of this automated file deletion going on, your hard drive is likely to get a bit fragmented. If you’re already running Windows 7 or Vista, automatic defrag comes out of the box and probably shouldn’t be messed with, but Windows XP users will need to use Windows Tasks to setup a schedule and automatically defrag their drives.

Use a Virtual Machine or Sandbox to Test Software
If you still want to test out all of the latest software, including apps that look a bit rough around the edges, your best bet is to use a virtual machine to test out anything before putting it onto your primary operating system. You can install all of your software in an XP or Windows 7 VM just like it was a real PC, and with the latest VMWare player releases, you can even enable Windows Aero in a guest VM. If you are new to the idea and need some more help, you should check out our beginner’s guide to creating virtual machines in VirtualBox, or Windows 7 users can check out our guide to using XP Mode. If you don’t want to go the virtual machine route, Windows XP and Vista users can alternatively use Windows SteadyState to protect their PC and roll back all of the changes on a reboot.

Santa Claus was over Japan early Thursday and heading south toward Guam, the Marshall Islands, New Guinea, and ultimately Australia, according to a special, Google Earth-powered Web site established by the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
From Australia, Santa was expected to head east to cover Asia and Europe, before arriving in North America Thursday night.

In addition to the tracking maps, the Web site, NoradSanta.org, also features interactive tools that allow children to explore Santa’s village at the North Pole, play holiday-themed card games, and see what’s going on at Santa’s bakery and workshop.
NORAD has been tracking Santa ever since 1955, when a Colorado newspaper ad misprinted a phone number that was supposed to connect kids with the jolly Christmas elf. Instead, the number was the NORAD (the agency at the time was known as the Continental Air Defense Command) Commander-in-Chief’s hotline.

Not wanting to disappoint children who called in, then operations director Col. Harry Shoup instructed his staff to “track” Santa’s progress on radar and provide children with updates over the phone.

NORAD’s official position is that, yes, there is a Santa Claus. “Based on historical data and more than 50 years of NORAD tracking information, we believe that Santa Claus is alive and well in the hearts of children throughout the world,” the agency said.

NORAD, a bi-national organization, consists of U.S. and Canadian military personnel tasked with monitoring and protecting North America’s air sovereignty.

Each year at Christmas, the defense agency gives Santa Claus the green light to pass through Canadian and American air space so he can deliver presents to children who’ve been nice, and not naughty, throughout the year.