Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware, Social Software, Browsers

Flock has released a second public beta of Flock 2, a web browser based on Firefox 3. What sets Flock apart from Firefox is the integration with a ton of social networking services including Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Digg, del.icio.us, YouTube, PhotoBucket, and more. There’s a blog editor for updating your web site from the browser, and a media bar for viewing images and videos shared by your friends without navigating away from your current web page.

Flock has always been based on Firefox, but what sets Flock 2 beta apart from Flock 1.x is that the beta version is built on Firefox 3. That means you get a redesigned location bar, a new bookmark manager, and a new rendering engine that helps most web pages load faster.

The Flock team has addressed over 175 bugs that were found in the first beta of Flock 2. Aside from bug fixes, there aren’t many new features in Flock 2 beta 2. But the browser is based on Firefox 3.01, which means it also includes some important security updates. So if you’re using Flock 2 beta 1, we’d suggest upgrading.

[via Mozilla Links]

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Filed under: Debt, Transportation

If achieving financial security is important to you — and it probably is if you’re reading WalletPop — the totally worst source of information is the Madison Avenue marketing genius. If you want to be rich and happy, you would do well to take a sledgehammer to your television.

But even by Madison Avenue standards, the message behind the funny FreeCreditReport.com commercials is bad. Here are the lyrics to catchy song I recently found myself humming:

Well I’m shopping for a new vehicle, which one’s me? A cool convertible or an SUV.

F-R-E-E-E, that spells “free”, credit report dot com baby …

I’ve stated before that I oppose the idea of automobile loans for the vast majority of consumers, and this commercial makes abundantly clear why they’re so stupid: mortgaging your financial future to prevent strangers from laughing at your posse is … well let’s just state that my thoughts on that one sentence would have to be edited considerably to qualify as merely vulgar.

Here’s my advice for automobile shoppers: pick them like upwardly mobile executives pick wives. First get the automobile you can afford, and then upgrade when your fortunes are improved.

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Filed under: Productivity, P2P, Social Software, Search

Attention, law-abiding citizens! If you believe in BitTorrent as a means of distribution for large files, but you’re concerned about the claims of piracy that are often associated with it, you should take a look at YouTorrent. Despite having to close down for a while because of legal issues, YouTorrent is back in operation, with a reported 67,170 torrents that are all legal to share.

YouTorrent is a meta-search that can find verified torrents across a number of popular torrent sites, including Jamendo, Vuze, BitTorrent, Legaltorrents, Legittorrents, Gameupdates, Wortharchiving, BT.etree and Mininova’s featured torrents section. With all those sites combined, you can use YouTorrent to search over 6TB of data. This is a very good thing for the torrent community in general, as it shows how widely BitTorrent is used for non-piracy purposes.

[via TorrentFreak]

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Filed under: Debt, Tax, Fraud

I’m all for the government cracking down on collecting child support payments, and taking the money directly out of IRS payment seems like a winning plan. But the $2 billion that the government has collected so far isn’t all from deadbeat fathers. I, for instance, am part of the 39% of those who had money withheld for an unpaid federal debt. And I still don’t know why.

I apparently owed the federal government $89.49 and they took it from my rebate check. I got a letter in the mail from the Department of the Treasury that told me, “As authorized by Federal law, we applied all or part of your Federal payment to a debt you owe.” Then it gave an address and phone number for a Birmingham, Ala. processing center.

I called, of course, and all they could tell me is that the Transportation Security Administration had taken my money. They said they could give me their main number. They might as well have offered to give me the number for the White House to ask President Bush what was up with my payment. I didn’t figure you could just call a mammoth government agency and get any kind of response.

Continue reading IRS confiscation of rebates isn’t just for deadbeats…it’s for me!

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