Good Morning once again- we are already at the end of June! And here in the states is Independence Day on the 4th- making it a short week for some. But never-the-less, it’s Monday- time for some tech news.

• An era ended at Microsoft this week, as Bill Gates officially went into retirement.
• The iPhone turned 1 years old yesterday- already, one year.
• Canadians, on the other hand, are despising Steve Jobs and Apple over the iPhone.
• That said, iPhone 2.0 could go Gold this week.
• And does iTunes 7.7 include a iPhone remote feature?
• And Me.com is alive and kickin’.
• Moving on, the MPAA lost another lawsuit, and now owes money to the defendant.
• New MetroPCS will allow any carrier’s phone on their network.
• Jeff Bezos of Amazon has invested in Twitter. Maybe it’ll stop going down…
• And Nokia has bought Symbian.
• Looking for a 108″ LCD? Only $185,000.

That’s this week’s Manic Monday. I plan to have normal posting this week, with something special on Friday for Independence Day.

Editor’s Note: Yes, even as much as I despise and make fun of Microsoft, it is only fair to acknowledge Bill Gates- the technology world would be where it is today without him.

This is Wired For Gadgets, afterall- so let’s talk about a gadget. I’ve come across what I think is the Ultimate Hard Drive Docking Station.

This device supports both SATA 2.5″ HDD and 3.5″ HDD, and connects over USB 2.0. It has a 2-port USB hub and a 4-Slot Card Reader. What’s more is it’s One Touch Backup function- one buttons and it’s uses the drive as a backup. And it standup with a trendy design.

With all those options for connectivity, I don’t think you’d need anything else. You can either snag one yourself for $53 or wait for something better (which there might be).

Product Page [via Engadget]

Sorry for not posting yesterday- I was doing some server upgrades last night

Time for a quick Mac Tip. When you need to do a litle math, and a calcuator takes too long to get at, Spotlight can come to the rescue. Spotlight can be used to perform simple calculations, such as 190 x 42. Just type it in, and it spits out the answer.

The Catch-22 here is that you need to know your symbols. So:

* is multiplication
/ is division
^ is to the power of (exponents)
! is factorial, and of course
+ and – for addition and subtraction, respectively.

Add away!

Use Spotlight for Quick Calculations [MacTips.org]

Sure, the Disk Cleanup tool in Windows is handy, but it is so hard to get to. The solution? Put it in the right-click menu. Here’s how to do it:

1.) Go to Start >> Run >> regedit.exe.

WARNING: Make sure you have backed up your registry- if you don’t and something goes wrong you’re outta luck.

2.) Navigate to: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell
3.) Create a new key called “diskcleanup” and set the default value to “Disk Cleanup”.
4.) Now, create another key underneath it called “command” and set the value to “cleanmgr.exe /d %1″ (without the quotes).

The change should be immediate, just right-click on the drive and you should see the new menu item. If you don’t like fooling around with the registry, you click here to to download an install file that will do the same thing. Enjoy!

Downloadable Registry Hack
Add Disk Cleanup to the Right-Click Menu for a Drive [How-To Geek]

Good Morning once again- hope you enjoyed your weekend, and the longest day of the year. Let’s cut to the chase and start the news: It’s Manic Monday.

• Firefox 3 launch a success: 8 million downloads in 24 hours
• It was so big, Steven Colbert mentioned it on his show.
• Would you pay $500 for 5 feet of Ethernet cable? Someone sells it.
• Moving on, The MPAA Says It Doesn’t Need Evidence to Convict Pirates. Good luck with that.
• Canada’s attempt at an equivalent DMCA, and why you should fight it.
• An iPhone running Windows XP? Why would someone do such a thing!
• On to Apple stuff, they announced ZFS on Snow Leopard.
• Hey, there’s even Snow Leopard screen shots.
• And the world’s favorite BitTorrent client, Azureus, is Dead.
• Word of the wise to the IE8 Development team: Learn from Apple and Mozilla.
• Out of desperation, The Pirate Bay Pledges ISPs to Block Sweden.
• And The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals says Your boss shouldn’t read your text or e-mail messages without an OK. Good Luck.

That’s this week’s Manic Monday- stay tuned for great tech content. Oh, and this week’s title I stole from Paul J. Johnson- check out his music! Enjoy!

The only thing more important that visiting Wired For Gadgets is making sure you are secure. Windows download DecaffeinatID is helping you along in the area.

DecaffeinatID is a simple little app that acts as an Intrusion Detection System (more of a log watcher really) to notify the user whenever fellow users at their local WiFi hotspot/ LAN are up to the kind of “reindeer games” that often happen at coffee shops and hacker cons.

In other words, this program will notify you whenever there’s an attempted remote login to your computer, and it detects changes in your firewall log, or your ARP changes. Keep in mind that this program is in Beta, which means (A.) there will be bugs, but more importantly, (B.) this is to not replace a full Firewall. DecaffeinatID is freeware and Windows only.

DecaffeinatID [via Lifehacker]

As most of you know, I use a MacBook for most of my daily computer use. But there are sometime when, believe it or not, you need Windows. You could do the boot camp thing, but the requires reinstalling and repartitioning- things that I’m comfortable doing, but would rather do if I don’ have to. So what do you do? Enter a Parallel Dimension.

I’m talking Parallels Desktop for Mac, what I think is the coolest thing since sliced bread. First off, what do you need to run it? All you need is an Intel Mac with at least a 2.0GHz processor, at least 1GB of RAM and lots of hard drive space. READ MORE »

Today’s post is very time sensitve- especially since you only have until 2:16pm to participate. I’m talking about Firefox 3, but more specifically, Download Day 2008.

All you have to do to help us set the record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours is get Firefox 3 now – it’s that easy. We’re not asking you to swallow a sword or to balance 30 spoons on your face, although that would be kind of awesome.

That, indeed, would be awesome. Their goal was to beat Firefox 2, which within the first 24 hours was 1.6 Million downloads. Presently (at 1am CDT Wednesday), they are at just over 4 Million Downloads. This is your chance to be part of a world record! Go ahead and download Firefox 3- available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

UPDATE, 3:00 AM CDT” Firefox 3 has hit the goal of 5,000,000 downloads! With 10 hours to go, how far will they make it?

Download Headquarters [SpreadFirefox]

It’s time once again for a Windows Tip. You can use today’s tip to keep your sanity — or to pull a stunt on someone by changing their homepage and preventing them from changing it back. I take no responsibility for the latter option if they get really mad at you (but I’d love to see pictures of the tantrum).

You’ll need to edit your Registry for this tip.

1. Changes to the Registry are permanent. Back it up or you’ll be outta luck if something goes wrong.
2. Navigate to this string:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel

If the keys for Internet Explorer and Control Panel are not present, add them manually.

1. Right-click the Microsoft key folder and choose New Folder.
2. Name it Internet Explorer.
3. Right-click the Internet Explorer key folder and choose New Folder.
4. Name it Control Panel.
2. Right-click the Control Panel key folder and choose “new DWORD value.” Rename the value “Homepage.”
3. Right-click the Homepage value, choose Modify, and change the value from “0″ to “1.”

And presto! You can no longer change your home page. If you want to unlock your homepage, change the value in step four from a “1″ to a “0.” Keep in mind that this is for Internet Explorer, not Firefox or any other browser. That said, Enjoy!

Okay, I know- I’m about 12 hours late. I had to work late last night and early this morning- sooo sorry. That said, here we go:

• iPhone 3G is finally official, starts at $199, available July 11th
• App Store has size and price caps, opening with iPhone 3G
• MobileMe announced for iPhones, Macs, and PCs — .Mac is dead
• Next version of OS X will be called Snow Leopard
• And Mahalo Daily recapped the keynote in 60 seconds.
• Moving on, Firefox 3 comes June 17th.
• And Firefox 3 and Safari 4 are in browser speed race
• And be part of download day for Firefox 3- get a World Record!
• Moving on, Canada Proposes Draconian Anti-Piracy Law
• And Dell launches some ultra-slim MacBook Air killers.
• And How to Get and Keep Windows XP After June 30.

And that’s this week’s Manic Monday. I do apologize for the wait, and I hope you stay tuned for more stuff to come this week. Enjoy!