Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

You hear so much tough-talk and blustery grand-standing these days over data capping that it’s hard to take any of it too seriously. A recent announcement by Comcast, however, is sending chills down the collective spine of Engadget (and seriously threatening to put a crunch on Thomas Ricker’s… er, “movie” downloads). The company recently confirmed that it will begin capping its residential broadband service at 250GB per month (or roughly 124 SD movies) come October 1st, and could simply terminate customers who violate the cap more than twice. Of course, 250GB is a pretty large chunk of bandwidth, so you’ll have to be entertaining some pretty hefty habits to break that bank. Then again, who likes the Man breathing down their pipeline?

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Six months after Beta 1 hit the streets, Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 to brave testers. The new beta includes features that make it look like a viable choice of modern browser, like a smart address bar (sound familiar?), tab grouping, private browsing, find in-page, suggested sites related to the current page, and more. Let’s take a look at what’s coming out of Redmond in the browser arena.

IE8 Beta 2’s Most Useful Features

Smart Address Bar: IE 8 beta 2 includes a Smart Address Bar, that, like Firefox 3’s “AwesomeBar,” drops down suggestions as-you-type a web site URL gleaned from your favorites, feeds, and history. Unlike Firefox, IE 8 includes headers so you can see where each suggestion comes from.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Tab Grouping: Ever open a bunch of links from a single page in new tabs, and then lose track of which tabs came from what page? IE8’s got a nifty “tab grouping” feature that colors your tabs based on their source. Here’s what a few tab groups—one from Lifehacker, one from the MSN homepage—look like.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

InPrivate Browsing: What with the Smart Address Bar pulling up every site you’ve visited recently in plain view in its History suggestions, there may be times when you visit a site and have the browser forget it ever happened. IE 8 beta 2’s “InPrivate” browsing mode adds an icon to the address bar, and forgets you were ever at a web page when it’s enabled.

Updated!Tab Crash Resolution: Several commenters point out that IE8 offers a feature no other browser has—the ability to restore a crashed web site on a tab by tab basis. In my tests, no site crashed so I didn’t see this in action; Here’s more on the tab crash isolation feature.

IE8 Beta 2’s Sort-of Useful Features

Favorites Bar: Getting to your bookmarks and feeds is a little easier with a button to expand your Favorites bar, a one-stop bookmarks shop. In the Feeds tab (not shown), any feeds you’re subscribed to with new items show up in bold, and any “Web Slices” with new content also appear in bold.

Suggested Sites: When you enable the “Suggested Sites” feature, an item on your toolbar drops down a panel of web sites like the one you’re on. This feature is great in theory, but in practice not so much. Lifehacker’s suggested sites were totally off the mark.

Find on Page: This one’s a yawner for anyone who’s used to Firefox, but apparently IE doesn’t already have “find on page,” the ability to hit Ctrl+F, type a keyword, and see any instances of it highlighted on the current page.

All in all, IE 8 beta 2 sucks a lot less than one might expect, given IE6 and IE7. It feels like the product is truly catching up to the current state of the browser art, and the fact that my brother-in-law will get advanced features on his IT-lockdown Windows desktop is exciting. The IE8 beta 2 is a free download for Windows only. (Installation requires a computer restart.)

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Sometimes technology can be put to really great use. Sometimes it can just be used to spy on us.

Researchers Nitesh Dhanjani and Akshay Aggarwal are developing a tool which allows them to create a real time picture of how an Internet user is feeling, based on their profile on a series of social networking sites.

“It will tell you what’s going on in your brain,” says Dhanjani.

I know super-geeks can be a bit clueless about emotional stuff, so I’m going to spell this one out: I already know how I’m feeling. (I know a lot more about myself than Facebook does).

So if you want to know how I’m feeling, ask me. And if I want you to know the answer, I’ll tell you. Otherwise, stop the stalking. Sorry, I mean ‘profiling’…

Via CNET news.

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