Among new features, PhraseExpress 6 supports HTML formatting, faster load times, advanced options for triggering text replacements, application-specific replacements, and autocompletion of words. As an added bonus, the new version can also run off your thumb drive, so you can take advantage of your PhraseExpress timesavers no matter what computer you're using. I'm partial to Texter for obvious reasons, but PhraseExpress is undeniably awesome. PhraseExpress is free for non-commercial use, costs $50 for a professional license.

First, let's begin with a number of disclosures. Something that you would think the $100 million-valued Huffington Post would require of their authors but apparently that's not the case. Calacanis' company Mahalo has received funding from Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk. In addition, Jason's brother-in-law and Mahalo investor Ryan Scott is also a Tesla Motors investor. Boy that's something the readers of the Huffington Post piece should know, right?

As many of you know, I am a public transportation junkie. My belief is that all (or most) government funding should be used towards pushing mass transit. Creating cars powered by batteries, water, or anything else won't fix our growing traffic issues. Take the millions and billions of dollars and create better transit systems in cities across this country. There's so much that can be done with transit to create real environmental and human savings.

If we are going to look at ways to save oil, why not spend the money creating more efficient air travel? I have to imagine that the savings up in the sky would be larger than those on the ground but yet I never hear anyone talking about fixing air travel.

Ok, now let's talk about cars and what appears to be the hot trend now, battery-powered cars. I am no expert in battery-technology but if the concensus is to move forward building batteries for cars, I am all for it. However, instead of dropping hundreds of millions into Tesla, put it into the great universities across this country. Create a cross-university research center where students, scientists and industry professionals can work together to create the battery technology. Once it's perfected, then it could be sold/leased/provided to companies like Tesla. This would be a much safer investment than giving money to frankly any auto-company at this time. I bet this type of research project could even draw in some of our worldwide allies and help slowly regain some of our lost status in the worldwide community.

I haven't seen anything from Tesla that speaks to the average American family. A $60k sedan isn't for the average American family. Calacanis' math is interesting -- a person making $80k should be able to easily afford a $60k car. Boy that's exactly how we got into the mortgage hell we are in now - people living beyond their means! And Tesla hasn't displayed the leadership that would be needed for me to believe that they would be able to remain a going concern long enough to repay any loan. How many CEOs have they been through so far?

At the end of the day, we need better ways to move people from place A to place B. All transportation options should be considered and creating expensive cars isn't the way to accomplish what we're looking for.

Update: Philip James points us to this illustration of why we need more transit:

We see a lot of hard disks in the market today that come in large sizes. We see 80 gigabyte hard drives up to 160 gigabyte. That is quite a large storage capacity if you compare it to the old ones we have some years back and one thing you should be aware of is that the larger the storage, the risky it is as far as perhaps losing data once the hard disk crashes or breaks down.

The best way to go about it is to partition the hard drives into smaller parts. For example, you can partition an 80 gigabyte hard disk into 2 40 gigabytes or even 4 20 gigabyte drives. As you can see, even in smaller partitions, they are still big and normally for most operating systems like Windows Vista or Windows XP, the most you would need would be about 4 gigabyte at the most.

When it comes to installing software, you can install it on the other drive letters assigned. For example, you can install MS Office in drive D or an anti-virus software in drive E. This helps ensure that you are

We see a lot of hard disks in the market today that come in large sizes. We see 80 gigabyte hard drives up to 160 gigabyte. That is quite a large storage capacity if you compare it to the old ones we have some years back and one thing you should be aware of is that the larger the storage, the risky it is as far as perhaps losing data once the hard disk crashes or breaks down.

The best way to go about it is to partition the hard drives into smaller parts. For example, you can partition an 80 gigabyte hard disk into 2 40 gigabytes or even 4 20 gigabyte drives. As you can see, even in smaller partitions, they are still big and normally for most operating systems like Windows Vista or Windows XP, the most you would need would be about 4 gigabyte at the most.

When it comes to installing software, you can install it on the other drive letters assigned. For example, you can install MS Office in drive D or an anti-virus software in drive E. This helps ensure that you are balancing the applications you are installing which in the end can save you the trouble of losing space.

For documents, you don’t have to always follow the usual My Documents on the C drive. You can configure it in a way that it is saved on the other drives. Or if you are lazy to configure, the beauty of partitioning is that you can easily transfer in between drives so that if crashes occur you can retrieve the files and transfer them via DOS or Windows.

Partitioning can be done on the setup menu during your first installation of Windows. Decide and then assign what partition size you want and then install from there.

Dr Pepper promised a free soda bottle to people in America if the the new album of Guns n’ Roses was released this year. To get the free soda, users had to register for a free coupon on the site of Dr Pepper. People love free stuff and it does matter. The offer was for a larger number of people and the time was limited to just one day, this caused the problem for site. The site was overcrowded with visitors and became unavailable for most part of the day. This made the company extend the offer for another day. Rich Miller examined the situation by saying:

How do you plan for capacity when you make a free offer to 300 million people? Perhaps limiting it to a one-day offer was not such a great idea in the first place.

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Related Articles at Startup Meme:

Blockbuster will start renting movies and television shows through a new device that relies on a small box that connects to television sets and stores video after it’s downloaded over high-speed Internet connections.

Netflix also has been trying to create a video-streaming service that can be watched on TV sets through a variety of devices, including a $100 box introduced by Roku Inc. six months ago.

Blockbuster had previously been selling video downloads through Movielink, a service that it bought for last year. But Movielink option was primarily aimed at consumers who don’t mind watching movies on personal computers or portable gadgets with small screens.

With its latest step, Blockbuster is appealing to the larger audience that prefers watching entertainment on big-screen TVS.

To help get its next downloading box into homes, Blockbuster is selling it as part of a $99 package that includes 25 on-demand rentals. After that, Blockbuster will charge at least $1.99 for each downloaded video.

The pay-per-view pricing differs from Netflix’s “instant watching” service, which gives unlimited access to a library of 12,000 titles to any subscriber paying at least $8.99 per month for a DVD rental plan.

Blockbuster’s on-demand service is starting out with just 2,000 selections, but Keyes promises the movies will be of more recent vintage than Netflix’s instant-watching service.

Blockbuster’s on-demand service is starting out with recently released DVD titles such as “Get Smart, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2″ — none of which are available through Netflix’s instant-watching channel.

Netflix streams the video over high-speed Internet with the clarity of a streamed video can vary depending on the speed of the Internet connection being used.

Once a dominant force in home entertainment, Blockbuster has been wounded by Netflix’s DVD-by-mail service, which has 8.7 million subscribers, as well as the on-demand options included in cable subscription packages.

Over the last couple of months, Yahoo Buzz has slowly built up its features, seemingly setting its sights on top player Digg. Likewise, StumbleUpon has also upped the ante, adding new features to further court the growing social browsing market. While Yahoo Buzz may not yet be “Digg”-able, will it trip over StumbleUpon? Let’s take a look!

First Impressions

Quick glances at the splash pages show big difference on focus.

Yahoo Buzz is definitely a news-oriented site. The topics resemble those you’d find in a newspaper, with Entertainment, Sci/Tech and Politics being the default categories. Clicking on “More” also gives you access to Business, Health, Lifestyle and more.  It’s also easy to browse the “Up & Coming” news stories.

StumbleUpon’s splash page can be a little overwhelming–too many topics across the menu bar and way too many images.  Not really sure where to start.

Sorting based on interest doesn’t really clear the clutter.

Although sorting on list view cleans it up a little, StumbleUpon’s overload is just too much to handle. This round goes to Yahoo Buzz.

Shareability

More and more news sites are incorporating the Yahoo Buzz and Stumble chicklets for easy sharing.  But what happens if the site doesn’t have integrated sharing?

From the Yahoo Buzz splash page, you’ll need to scroll down the page to find the “Submit a Story” button.  Yeah, you have to go back to the Buzz page and copy and paste the link. The original web toolbar, the Yahoo Toolbar, does link back to the Buzz Page, but it doesn’t include a “Submit” option. LAME!

StumbleUpon, on the other hand, has a fully-integrated Stumble bar. The bar allows you to review sites, tag them, share with friends or look at other reviews of the site.  Translation: Uninterrupted browsing!

Submitting to each is pretty easy.  Both offer similar forms: Title, review/summary, category, etc.  StumbleUpon stands out here by offering more than five hundred categories, as well as tagging.

By The Numbers

According to company spokespeople, Yahoo Buzz saw 7.7 million unique visitors to StumbleUpon’s 6.3 million unique visitors in October 2008. Based on traffic alone, Yahoo could be considered the winner–but don’t judge too quickly. These are social sharing sites. Looking at the number of stories or sites submitted tells us a different story.

In October 2008, Yahoo Buzz averaged roughly 20,000 stories submitted per day. Even though it has one million users less than Yahoo, StumbleUpon’s community shared roughly 35,000 per day in October. This landslide in sharing is a testament to StumbleUpon’s easy-to-use toolbar. With more than half a million more submissions per month, Stumbleupon is the true winner in this category!

Final Thoughts

Overall, we prefer the look and feel of Yahoo Buzz.  Its clean design and easy-access menus make it easy to find news stories.  By narrowly defining the types of stories and defaulting to Entertainment, Tech and Politics, Yahoo Buzz is definitely in the running to appeal to a mainstream audience.  Plus, with Yahoo finally linking its properties to create a social network, there is no need to create another profile.

That said, StumbleUpon’s encyclopedia of topics and highly engaged community make it a great place to discover new sites that might appeal to niche interests.  If you have a personal blog, add StumbleUpon bookmarking chicklets.  Because the community is based on a narrower-scope of interests, you are more likely to attract its active members.

Put simply: Yahoo Buzz is like Target and StumbleUpon is your local boutique.  You might go to Target to get the larger items, but you’ll always end up at a boutique if you really want that hard-to-find item.

Which do you prefer and why? Let us know in the comments!

Image courtesy of iStockPhoto, bns124

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Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

Yahoo Buzz: Upcoming Competitor to Digg or Google?
StumbleUpon Adds New Look to Profile Pages
Yahoo Buzz Introduces Widgets and RSS Feeds to Take On Digg
Yahoo Buzz Is Bigger Than Digg, According To comScore
Yahoo Buzz Gets More Social and Continues its Assault on Digg’s Mainstream Ambitions
Yahoo! Tech Buzz Game Tests Wisdom of Crowds
Sneak Peek: Yahoo Buzz

Windows only
ESET NOD32 and Smart Security have always been my favorite security products because of their performance and high detection levels. There’s some good news for current owners! ESET is getting ready to move to the next level with version 4 of their security suite and antivirus software.

NOD32 4.0 and ESET Smart Security 4.0 are currently in a public Beta phase, and include numerous enhancements. One such improvement is that they will now be bundling the SysInspector tool that they have been, and still do, offer as a free download. Here are some other features new to version 4.0:

• Tasks can be postponed when the machine is running on battery, and a notification can be displayed if a larger update is going to be downloaded.
• Improved scanning of removable media (used maximum settings when running files from removable media, allows blocking/allowing USB ports)
• Improved cleaning and self-defense
• Added statistic graphs and information about the currently scanned object
• Added an option to use advanced heuristics on file execution
• Added an option to control the level of archive scanning or maximum scan time of objects
• Added option to supress notifications when applications are run in fullscreen mode
• Scanning of encrypted HTTPS/POP3S protocols
• Website management allowing to block/allow access to user-defined sites
• New Document protection module for scanning MS Office files
• Password protected uninstallation
• Notification about missing operating system updates
• Works with Windows Live Mail and Mozilla Thunderbird
• Antispam now uses a user and global address books
• Potentially unwanted/unsafe applications are now reported in a yellow alert window which requires a user interaction

There’s no word on a release date yet, but the current Beta applications don’t expire until 02/03/2009… so I wouldn’t expect to see a final release before then.

ESET Beta Homepage
Thanks Storytellerofsci-fi!

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ESET Smart Security & NOD32 4.0 Beta

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Yahoo has begun offering a new variety of its BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) called vertical lens technology that lets partners show a subset of search results relating to a particular area.

BOSS lets people repackage, reorder, blend, and otherwise change Yahoo's search results; academics and smaller sites may do so for free, but larger ones must show Yahoo search ads or sign a deal with Yahoo to share revenue. The vertical lens technology lets partners "create a truly comprehensive vertical search engine that complements their core user experience," according to Yahoo.

So far, only some partners can use the vertical lens technology. TechCrunch is one, using the vertical version of BOSS to show technology-related search results. "We're working to share the technology more openly through the BOSS API," or application programming interface, Yahoo said.