Mozilla Labs releases Weave and Personas

Modern web browsers are extremely customizable. Mozilla Labs, an incubator of Firefox browser projects, recently released two interesting software programs: Weave and Personas.

Weave is a program that allows user data like bookmarks, history and passwords to be synchronized across multiple browsers. This program can be very useful to users who have personal web data scattered between mobile browsers and desktop browsers. If this project becomes successful, it may boost the adoption of Fennec, Firefox's mobile browser.




Personas is a Firefox plugin that allows easy look-and-feel customization. After installing the plugin, users can dress up their browser with "skins" from the Personas gallery. So far, all skins are free of charge. I won't be surprised if we see pretty Personas skins selling for $0.99 in the future.

Technorati Tags: Firefox, Personas, Mozilla

Free Google music downloads in China

Google launched a new venture in China that allows free downloads of licensed songs over the internet. Free music downloads is a basic service currently offered by Baidu.com, Google's Chinese competitor.

The new service offers some 350,000 songs, and the number is expected to rise to 1.1 million in the coming months.

Fact: more than 99% of all music files distributed in China are pirated.

Reasons to visit your public library

Public library is one of the most important civic service created in the modern society. It's a place where citizens, regardless of their income level, social status and age, can have free access to books and other media. Some claimed that public library is an American invention. But, for certain that Benjamin Franklin and his friends created the first public library founded in the United States (source).

Reasons why we should visit public libraries more often.

First, our public library is an ocean of knowledge, which we can utilize to improve ourselves through continuous learning. Some people stopped learning from books after completing their formal education. Frequently visit the public libraries can trigger our desire to learn.

Second, unlike buying books, borrow books from the public library is usually more economical and eco-friendly. Unless we have a large monthly budget for purchasing books, it's simply too costly to buy a large number of books for continuous learning. Furthermore, finding a good home for old books is challenging -- should they be donated, sold or trashed? Not able to recycle old books is bad for the environment. By borrowing books from the public libraries can indirectly help to reduce our carbon footprint.