Mobile phone operating systems and a reheated web browser war: that's how we'll recall the year 2008 when it comes to software. From brand new to revamped browsers and mobile platforms and apps,...

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/bestof2008_01.png" width="494" height="290" Mobile phone operating systems and a reheated web browser war: that's how we'll recall the year 2008 when it comes to software. From brand new to revamped browsers and mobile platforms and apps, 2008's been good to technophiles who like their data in the cloud and accessible wherever they are. Let's take a look back at this year in software, and some of the best new and improved applications, web services, and mobile platforms that were born in 2008. Looking back at the last 12 months, these are the apps that get a gold foil-wrapped chocolate coin from us this year. iPhoto by a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaetanlee/1947414336/"Gaetan Lee/a./i/p pbr clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Firefox 3/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/firefox3-sq-thumb_01.png" width="135" height="135" align="right" class="right" Not only did you swoon over the release of Firefox 3 because of a href="http://lifehacker.com/392160/top-10-firefox-3-features"the "AwesomeBar" and the rest of the "Had no idea I needed this but now I love it!" features/a it offers, but because the launch itself was a grass-roots community-driven effort towards making software history. Indeed, on June 17th of this year, the makers of Firefox a href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/press/mozilla-2008-07-02.html"set a new Guinness World Record for most software downloads in a given day/a, at more than eight million downloads of the new browser iteration in 24 hours. If you haven't dug into the advanced functionality Firefox has to offer, check out our a href="http://lifehacker.com/396312/power-users-guide-to-firefox-3"power user's guide to Firefox 3/a.br clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Google Chrome/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/thumb160x_gchrome.png" width="135" height="135"While Mozillians and Firefox users celebrated across the globe over the summer, no one knew that search powerhouse Google was in the software development lab cooking up their own lean, mean browsing machine that would forsake all of the fox's bells and whistles (and extensibility) to run Javascript-based applications lightening-fast. On September 2nd, Google released the first beta of a href="http://google.com/chrome/"Chrome/a, their new web browser which they hope you'll make your window to the web and all its apps. Our own in-house a href="http://lifehacker.com/5055406/browser-speed-tests-the-compiled-up+to+date-results"browser speed tests show that Chrome is indeed speedy/a, and we're seeing a significant uptake on Chrome usage by Lifehacker readers. (Last month's browser breakdown for Lifehacker readers was 62% Firefox, 22% IE, 8% Safari, and 6% Chrome. Not bad for a browser that's been out only a few months.) For more Chrome goodness, see our a href="http://lifehacker.com/5045904/the-power-users-guide-to-google-chrome"power user's guide to Google Chrome/a.br clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"iPhone 2.0 and the App Store/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/iphone20-sq-thumb_01.png" width="135" height="135" align="right" class="right" Yeah, yeah, the iPhone launched in 2007, but this year the iPhone 2.0 software and the new iPhone 3G model with a faster data plan and GPS came out to hype almost as big as the original iPhone launch. The combination of an operating system that finally ran third-party apps officially plus pinpointy GPS goodness set the bar for what users can expect to get from the next generation of smartphone with a fast internet connection, full-on browser, and spot-on location-awareness. Plus, dozens of the apps available for the phone are free. At first, we were a href="http://lifehacker.com/395171/how-your-location+aware-iphone-will-change-your-life"in/a a href="http://lifehacker.com/398338/iphone-20-gets-you-laid-and-more"love/a. Later, a href="http://lifehacker.com/398658/why-youre-better-off-avoiding-the-iphone"we had our doubts/a. The iPhone 2.0 launch did start to show some of the cracks in the Apple armormdash;several of the earliest versions of the software were crash and freeze-prone, requiring many users to uninstall apps and reset their phone software to fix maddening keyboard delays and application crashes. Meanwhile, Apple's approval-only App Store left a few applications out in the cold. Still, the iPhone 2.0 software created a compelling mobile platform and app marketing campaign that made Aunt Bertha really want to try that Neil Diamond song out on Shazam.br clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"iPhone 2.0 Jailbreak Utilities and Apps/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/cydia-thumb.png" width="135" height="135" align="right" class="right" What with the App Store limitations and Apple's insistence on ruling over what you can and cannot do on your phone, it's not surprising the enthusiastic "jailbreak" community soldiered on this year, continuing to offer installers and non-Apple-approved applications for your iPhone even in the face of the mainstream iTunes App Store. We take our hats off to these intrepid hackers, who offer such lovely functionality as the ability to SSH into, theme, and download video clips to your phone; if you haven't jailbroken your iPhone or iPod touch, here are a few of our picks of best a href="http://lifehacker.com/400148/iphone-20-jailbreak-apps-you-cant-find-in-the-itunes-store"iPhone 2.0 jailbreak apps you can't find in the iTunes Store/a.br clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Google Android/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/android-logo-sq.png" width="135" height="135" Google's answer to Apple's proprietary iPhone hardware and software came in the form of their very own touch mobile phone operating system, Android, which launched this past October. Unlike the iPhone, this new mobile platform is open source and will run on various handsets going forward. Right now Android's first release is only available on the HTC G1 handset; you can see our a href="http://lifehacker.com/5064117/a-hands+on-first-look-at-google-android"hands-on first look at Google Android running on the G1 here/a. As an iPhone user frustrated by limited apps, crashiness, and lack of copy and paste, Android is like a breath of fresh air. Even though the mobile OS is still very new, its open-source nature has led to hundreds of new apps. See our pick of a href="http://lifehacker.com/5075332/best-android-apps-to-boost-your-mobile-productivity-so-far"best Android apps to boost your mobile productivity/a.br clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Digsby/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/digsby-logo_01.png" width="135" height="135" align="right" class="right" One of the few software apps on this list that's not open source or made by a ginormous company, new instant messenger client Digsby took chatters by storm with its ability to a href="http://lifehacker.com/354345/consolidate-im-email-and-social-networking-with-digsby"consolidate your IM, email, and social networking in one place/a. Even though the Digsby beta only went public in February, by April it was already a href="http://lifehacker.com/375391/five-best-instant-messengers"one of our readers' top five favorite instant messaging tools/a.br clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"XBMC and Forks/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/xbmc-logo-sq_01.png" width="135" height="135" We were really late to the Xbox Media Center (XBMC) party when we showed up last year and a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/transform-your-classic-xbox-into-a-killer-media-center-299809.php"installed it on our old classic Xbox/a, but since then we've been hooked on this rich, open-source media center. Luckily, just because those old black boxes are becoming obselete doesn't mean the XBMC software project has died off. Just the opposite: XBMC has forked into several neat branches that run on various hardware platforms so you can enjoy the same media center goodness without hacking an old Xbox. Check out a few launches from various factions of XBMC developers this past year that have warmed our hearts:/p ul lia href="http://lifehacker.com/5051874/xbmc-atlantis-beta-1-released-for-all-platforms"XBMC 'Atlantis' Beta 1 Released for All Platforms/a/li lia href="http://lifehacker.com/5095241/plex-7-adds-itunes-and-iphoto-support-and-more"Plex 7 for Mac Adds iTunes and iPhoto Support and More/a/li lia href="http://lifehacker.com/396382/boxee-is-xbmc-with-newer-look-and-social-flair"Boxee Is XBMC with Newer Look and Social Flair/a/li /ul br clear="all" h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Ubuntu Hardy Heron/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/hardyheron-logo.png" width="135" height="135" align="right" class="right" Another year, another Ubuntu release, and they just keep getting better. Seriously, you have to love the free, open source operating system that manages a new major release on a yearly basismdash;something Apple and Microsoft, companies you pay hundreds of dollars to for the privilege of using their software, don't pull off. If you've tried Linux on your desktop before and killed the partition in frustration, only to slink back to Windows, it's time to give it another go. This year's flavor, a href="http://lifehacker.com/383769/hardy-heron-makes-linux-worth-another-look"version 8.04 Hardy Heron makes Linux worth another look/a.br clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Gmail Labs, Gadgets, and Themes/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/thumb160x_thumb160x_thumb160x_thumb160x_smallish_smallish_smallish_smallish_gmailenvelope.png" width="135" height="135" Our favorite web application on the internet, Gmail, continues to burn down barns and rip up the competition with continual iteration and feature adds. This year, Gmail added a "Labs" section to your account, a safe way for power users to enable "experimental" power features to their email while keeping everyone else's safe from harm. Truthfully, when I a href="http://lifehacker.com/395211/gmail-gets-13-experimental-new-features"attended the Google press event announcing Gmail Labs/a back in June, I had my doubts about whether or not the featureset would ever expand beyond the initial 13, and if it would go beyond eye-candy games like Snakey to, you know, actually useful stuff. Turns out it did. Six months later, a href="http://lifehacker.com/5052060/what-gmail-labs-features-do-you-have-enabled"ten more Gmail Labs features/a are available in your account, including a super-useful Gadgets feature that lets third parties embed their apps into your inbox. (Like a href="http://lifehacker.com/5101139/bitly-offers-in+gmail-url-shortening-gadget"Bit.ly/a or a href="http://lifehacker.com/5084502/add-your-basecamp-projects-to-gmail"Basecamp/a.) Later, Gmail launched a href="http://lifehacker.com/5093536/gmail-updates-its-look-adds-themes"themes/a as well as a href="http://lifehacker.com/5100649/gmail-google-desktop-gadget-now-available"a Google Desktop gadget/a. In the midst of all this, the Gmail security team took the time a href="http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2008/11/gmail-security-and-recent-phishing.html"to respond to a breach/a that several users had experienced and blogged about online. Clearly there's someone home at Gmail; this is a rapidly-evolving product that any webapp developer should use as an example on how to iterate quickly.br clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Honorable Mentions/h3 pMaking best-of-year lists is always difficult because you risk leaving off really deserving items. At least two that go in our honorable mentions bin are the a href="http://lifehacker.com/5042312/ubiquity-prototype-offers-a-natural-language-web-command-line"Firefox keyboard interface prototype Ubiquity/a, and photo-sharing site a href="http://lifehacker.com/377598/flickr-adds-video"Flickr's launch of short video clips/a in April./p pNow, you tell us which one of these apps impressed you the most in the year two thousand and eight./p pscript type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://static.polldaddy.com/p/1160637.js" /scriptnoscripta href="http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/1160637/"Which new or improved app impressed you the most in 2008?/abr span style="font-size:9px;"( a href="http://www.polldaddy.com"polls/a)/span/noscript/p pIf you can't get enough of best-of lists, hop into the time machine and see our a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/lifehacker-top-10/top-10-new-and-improved-apps-of-2007-332617.php"top 10 new and improved apps of 2007/a, and our a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/best-of-2006/geek-to-live--the-best-apps-of-2006-221920.php"best apps of 2006/a and of a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/geek-to-live-best-apps-of-2005-144388.php"2005/a./p pAnything you would have included on this list that we left out? Tell us about it in the comments./p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=c25b27e9cc47fec6e2837e6756c1da79p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=c25b27e9cc47fec6e2837e6756c1da79p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=c25b27e9cc47fec6e2837e6756c1da79" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=cDx19c1S"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=ZTEOZvTR"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=6Kfin5AZ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=6Kfin5AZ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=Sg3nuEAr"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=Sg3nuEAr" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/TRlejqKX0-0" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/bestof2008_01.png" width="494" height="290" style="display:block;" / iframe src="http://digg.com/api/diggthis.php?u=http://digg.com/software/Lifehacker_Best_New_and_Improved_Software_of_2008" align="right" frameborder="0" height="82" scrolling="no" width="55"/iframe Mobile phone operating systems and a reheated web browser war: that's how we'll recall the year 2008 when it comes to software. From brand new to revamped browsers and mobile platforms and apps, 2008's been good to technophiles who like their data in the cloud and accessible wherever they are. Let's take a look back at this year in software, and some of the best new and improved applications, web services, and mobile platforms that were born in 2008. Looking back at the last 12 months, these are the apps that get a gold foil-wrapped chocolate coin from us this year. iPhoto by a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaetanlee/1947414336/"Gaetan Lee/a./i/p pbr clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Firefox 3/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/firefox3-sq-thumb_01.png" width="135" height="135" align="right" class="right" Not only did you swoon over the release of Firefox 3 because of a href="http://lifehacker.com/392160/top-10-firefox-3-features"the "AwesomeBar" and the rest of the "Had no idea I needed this but now I love it!" features/a it offers, but because the launch itself was a grass-roots community-driven effort towards making software history. Indeed, on June 17th of this year, the makers of Firefox a href="http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/press/mozilla-2008-07-02.html"set a new Guinness World Record for most software downloads in a given day/a, at more than eight million downloads of the new browser iteration in 24 hours. If you haven't dug into the advanced functionality Firefox has to offer, check out our a href="http://lifehacker.com/396312/power-users-guide-to-firefox-3"power user's guide to Firefox 3/a.br clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Google Chrome/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/thumb160x_gchrome.png" width="135" height="135"While Mozillians and Firefox users celebrated across the globe over the summer, no one knew that search powerhouse Google was in the software development lab cooking up their own lean, mean browsing machine that would forsake all of the fox's bells and whistles (and extensibility) to run Javascript-based applications lightening-fast. On September 2nd, Google released the first beta of a href="http://google.com/chrome/"Chrome/a, their new web browser which they hope you'll make your window to the web and all its apps. Our own in-house a href="http://lifehacker.com/5055406/browser-speed-tests-the-compiled-up+to+date-results"browser speed tests show that Chrome is indeed speedy/a, and we're seeing a significant uptake on Chrome usage by Lifehacker readers. (Last month's browser breakdown for Lifehacker readers was 62% Firefox, 22% IE, 8% Safari, and 6% Chrome. Not bad for a browser that's been out only a few months.) For more Chrome goodness, see our a href="http://lifehacker.com/5045904/the-power-users-guide-to-google-chrome"power user's guide to Google Chrome/a.br clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"iPhone 2.0 and the App Store/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/iphone20-sq-thumb_01.png" width="135" height="135" align="right" class="right" Yeah, yeah, the iPhone launched in 2007, but this year the iPhone 2.0 software and the new iPhone 3G model with a faster data plan and GPS came out to hype almost as big as the original iPhone launch. The combination of an operating system that finally ran third-party apps officially plus pinpointy GPS goodness set the bar for what users can expect to get from the next generation of smartphone with a fast internet connection, full-on browser, and spot-on location-awareness. Plus, dozens of the apps available for the phone are free. At first, we were a href="http://lifehacker.com/395171/how-your-location+aware-iphone-will-change-your-life"in/a a href="http://lifehacker.com/398338/iphone-20-gets-you-laid-and-more"love/a. Later, a href="http://lifehacker.com/398658/why-youre-better-off-avoiding-the-iphone"we had our doubts/a. The iPhone 2.0 launch did start to show some of the cracks in the Apple armormdash;several of the earliest versions of the software were crash and freeze-prone, requiring many users to uninstall apps and reset their phone software to fix maddening keyboard delays and application crashes. Meanwhile, Apple's approval-only App Store left a few applications out in the cold. Still, the iPhone 2.0 software created a compelling mobile platform and app marketing campaign that made Aunt Bertha really want to try that Neil Diamond song out on Shazam.br clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"iPhone 2.0 Jailbreak Utilities and Apps/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/cydia-thumb.png" width="135" height="135" align="right" class="right" What with the App Store limitations and Apple's insistence on ruling over what you can and cannot do on your phone, it's not surprising the enthusiastic "jailbreak" community soldiered on this year, continuing to offer installers and non-Apple-approved applications for your iPhone even in the face of the mainstream iTunes App Store. We take our hats off to these intrepid hackers, who offer such lovely functionality as the ability to SSH into, theme, and download video clips to your phone; if you haven't jailbroken your iPhone or iPod touch, here are a few of our picks of best a href="http://lifehacker.com/400148/iphone-20-jailbreak-apps-you-cant-find-in-the-itunes-store"iPhone 2.0 jailbreak apps you can't find in the iTunes Store/a.br clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Google Android/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/android-logo-sq.png" width="135" height="135" Google's answer to Apple's proprietary iPhone hardware and software came in the form of their very own touch mobile phone operating system, Android, which launched this past October. Unlike the iPhone, this new mobile platform is open source and will run on various handsets going forward. Right now Android's first release is only available on the HTC G1 handset; you can see our a href="http://lifehacker.com/5064117/a-hands+on-first-look-at-google-android"hands-on first look at Google Android running on the G1 here/a. As an iPhone user frustrated by limited apps, crashiness, and lack of copy and paste, Android is like a breath of fresh air. Even though the mobile OS is still very new, its open-source nature has led to hundreds of new apps. See our pick of a href="http://lifehacker.com/5075332/best-android-apps-to-boost-your-mobile-productivity-so-far"best Android apps to boost your mobile productivity/a.br clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Digsby/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/digsby-logo_01.png" width="135" height="135" align="right" class="right" One of the few software apps on this list that's not open source or made by a ginormous company, new instant messenger client Digsby took chatters by storm with its ability to a href="http://lifehacker.com/354345/consolidate-im-email-and-social-networking-with-digsby"consolidate your IM, email, and social networking in one place/a. Even though the Digsby beta only went public in February, by April it was already a href="http://lifehacker.com/375391/five-best-instant-messengers"one of our readers' top five favorite instant messaging tools/a.br clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"XBMC and Forks/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/xbmc-logo-sq_01.png" width="135" height="135" We were really late to the Xbox Media Center (XBMC) party when we showed up last year and a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/transform-your-classic-xbox-into-a-killer-media-center-299809.php"installed it on our old classic Xbox/a, but since then we've been hooked on this rich, open-source media center. Luckily, just because those old black boxes are becoming obselete doesn't mean the XBMC software project has died off. Just the opposite: XBMC has forked into several neat branches that run on various hardware platforms so you can enjoy the same media center goodness without hacking an old Xbox. Check out a few launches from various factions of XBMC developers this past year that have warmed our hearts:/p ul lia href="http://lifehacker.com/5051874/xbmc-atlantis-beta-1-released-for-all-platforms"XBMC 'Atlantis' Beta 1 Released for All Platforms/a/li lia href="http://lifehacker.com/5095241/plex-7-adds-itunes-and-iphoto-support-and-more"Plex 7 for Mac Adds iTunes and iPhoto Support and More/a/li lia href="http://lifehacker.com/396382/boxee-is-xbmc-with-newer-look-and-social-flair"Boxee Is XBMC with Newer Look and Social Flair/a/li /ul br clear="all" h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Ubuntu Hardy Heron/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/hardyheron-logo.png" width="135" height="135" align="right" class="right" Another year, another Ubuntu release, and they just keep getting better. Seriously, you have to love the free, open source operating system that manages a new major release on a yearly basismdash;something Apple and Microsoft, companies you pay hundreds of dollars to for the privilege of using their software, don't pull off. If you've tried Linux on your desktop before and killed the partition in frustration, only to slink back to Windows, it's time to give it another go. This year's flavor, a href="http://lifehacker.com/383769/hardy-heron-makes-linux-worth-another-look"version 8.04 Hardy Heron makes Linux worth another look/a.br clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Gmail Labs, Gadgets, and Themes/h3 pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/thumb160x_thumb160x_thumb160x_thumb160x_smallish_smallish_smallish_smallish_gmailenvelope.png" width="135" height="135" Our favorite web application on the internet, Gmail, continues to burn down barns and rip up the competition with continual iteration and feature adds. This year, Gmail added a "Labs" section to your account, a safe way for power users to enable "experimental" power features to their email while keeping everyone else's safe from harm. Truthfully, when I a href="http://lifehacker.com/395211/gmail-gets-13-experimental-new-features"attended the Google press event announcing Gmail Labs/a back in June, I had my doubts about whether or not the featureset would ever expand beyond the initial 13, and if it would go beyond eye-candy games like Snakey to, you know, actually useful stuff. Turns out it did. Six months later, a href="http://lifehacker.com/5052060/what-gmail-labs-features-do-you-have-enabled"ten more Gmail Labs features/a are available in your account, including a super-useful Gadgets feature that lets third parties embed their apps into your inbox. (Like a href="http://lifehacker.com/5101139/bitly-offers-in+gmail-url-shortening-gadget"Bit.ly/a or a href="http://lifehacker.com/5084502/add-your-basecamp-projects-to-gmail"Basecamp/a.) Later, Gmail launched a href="http://lifehacker.com/5093536/gmail-updates-its-look-adds-themes"themes/a as well as a href="http://lifehacker.com/5100649/gmail-google-desktop-gadget-now-available"a Google Desktop gadget/a. In the midst of all this, the Gmail security team took the time a href="http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2008/11/gmail-security-and-recent-phishing.html"to respond to a breach/a that several users had experienced and blogged about online. Clearly there's someone home at Gmail; this is a rapidly-evolving product that any webapp developer should use as an example on how to iterate quickly.br clear="all"/p h3 style="font-size: 120%; margin-top: 20px;"Honorable Mentions/h3 pMaking best-of-year lists is always difficult because you risk leaving off really deserving items. At least two that go in our honorable mentions bin are the a href="http://lifehacker.com/5042312/ubiquity-prototype-offers-a-natural-language-web-command-line"Firefox keyboard interface prototype Ubiquity/a, and photo-sharing site a href="http://lifehacker.com/377598/flickr-adds-video"Flickr's launch of short video clips/a in April./p pNow, you tell us which one of these apps impressed you the most in the year two thousand and eight./p pscript type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://static.polldaddy.com/p/1160637.js" /scriptnoscripta href="http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/1160637/"Which new or improved app impressed you the most in 2008?/abr span style="font-size:9px;"( a href="http://www.polldaddy.com"polls/a)/span/noscript/p pIf you can't get enough of best-of lists, hop into the time machine and see our a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/lifehacker-top-10/top-10-new-and-improved-apps-of-2007-332617.php"top 10 new and improved apps of 2007/a, and our a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/best-of-2006/geek-to-live--the-best-apps-of-2006-221920.php"best apps of 2006/a and of a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/geek-to-live-best-apps-of-2005-144388.php"2005/a./p pAnything you would have included on this list that we left out? Tell us about it in the comments./p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=c25b27e9cc47fec6e2837e6756c1da79p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=c25b27e9cc47fec6e2837e6756c1da79p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=c25b27e9cc47fec6e2837e6756c1da79" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com:80/~f/lifehacker/full?a=cDx19c1S"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com:80/~f/lifehacker/full?a=ZTEOZvTR"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com:80/~f/lifehacker/full?a=6Kfin5AZ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=6Kfin5AZ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com:80/~f/lifehacker/full?a=Sg3nuEAr"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=Sg3nuEAr" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/TRlejqKX0-0" height="1" width="1"/

Publication Date: 2008 Nov 28 PMID: 19040729br/Authors: Tautenhahn, R. - Bottcher, C. - Neumann, S.br/Journal: BMC Bioinformaticsbr/br/ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (LC/MS) is an important analytical technology for e.g. metabolomics experiments. Determining the boundaries, centres and intensities of the two-dimensional signals in the LC/MS raw data is called feature detection. For the subsequent analysis of complex samples such as plant extracts, which may contain hundreds of compounds, corresponding to thousands of features - a reliable feature detection is mandatory. RESULTS: We developed a new feature detection algorithm centWave for high-resolution LC/MS data sets, which collects regions of interest (partial mass traces) in the raw-data, and applies continuous wavelet transformation and optionally Gauss-fitting in the chromatographic domain. We evaluated our feature detection algorithm on dilution series and mixtures of seed and leaf extracts, and estimated recall, precision and F-score of seed and leaf specific features in two experiments of different complexity. CONCLUSIONS: The new feature detection algorithm meets the requirements of current metabolomics experiments. centWave can detect close-by and partially overlapping features and has the highest overall recall and precision values compared to the other algorithms, matchedFilter (the original algorithm of XCMS) and the centroidPicker from MZmine. The centWave algorithm was integrated into the Bioconductor R-package XCMS and is available from http://www.bioconductor.org/.br/br/post to: a href = http://www.citeulike.org/posturl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Fcmd%3DRetrieve%26db%3DPubMed%26dopt%3DAbstract%26list_uids%3D19040729title=Entrez+PubmedCiteULike/a

a href="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126945/logo_eidos_interactive_qjgenth.jpg?689790" rel="lightbox[article126945]" title="Eidos 20Interactive 20- 20Image 201 20 26nbsp 3B 20 20 26nbsp 3B 20 3Ca 20href 3D 22http 3A//img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126945/logo_eidos_interactive.jpg 3F689790 22 20target 3D 22_blank 22 3E 3Cimg 20src 3D 22/img/newwindow.png 22 20title 3D 22Open 20in 20new 20window 22 20border 3D 220 22 3E 3C/a 3E"img style="margin-bottom: 3px; margin-left: 3px;" alt="Eidos Interactive - Image 1" title="Eidos Interactive - Image 1" src="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126945/logo_eidos_interactive_qjgenth.jpg?689790" align="right" border="0"/aa href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/tags/sci-entertainment/13422" id="tag" title="entertainment software publisher and developer"SCi Entertainment/a has announced its intent to change its name to Eidos. To this end, they have already filed an application with the Registrar of Companies. There is no announcement yet as to when the name change will be implemented but I assume it won't be too long.brbrYou may recall a a title="Rumor: EA, Ubisoft to take over SCi Entertainment" href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/Rumor-EA-Ubisoft-to-take-over-SCi-Entertainment-Eidos/pg/49/aid/126910"previous article/a of ours reporting a rumor that EA and Ubisoft have entered talks with SCi over a possible buyout. A name change to its better knownspan style="font-style: italic;" /spanspan id="iTxt"span style="font-style: italic;"Tomb Raider: Underworld/span (a title="Tomb Raider Underworld PS3" href="http://ps3.qj.net/Tomb-Raider-Underworld/cid/4621"PS3/a, a title="Tomb Raider Underworld 360" href="http://xbox360.qj.net/Tomb-Raider-Underworld/cid/4621"Xbox 360/a, a title="Tomb Raider: Underworld" href="http://wii.qj.net/Tomb-Raider-Underworld/cid/4683"Wii/a, DS)/span publisher, Eidos, certainly sounds like the kind of thing SCi would do if the rumor was true.brbrFurther evidence that suggests a possible buyout in the near future is SCi's dramatic restructuring over the past year. To date, they've cut about 25 percent of their staff and have dropped 14 game titles. They've also previously spoken with Warner Brothers to amend their "stand still" agreement so they can buy more SCi shares.brbrhr style="width: 100 ; height: 2px;"brspan style="font-weight: bold;"Related Articles:br/spanullia title="Eidos announces new Hitman, Tomb Raider and more in 2007 report" href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/Eidos-announces-new-Hitman-Tomb-Raider-and-more-in-2007-report/pg/49/aid/119360"span style="font-style: italic;"Eidos announces new Hitman, Tomb Raider and more in 2007 report/span/abr/li/ulbrbrdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?a=0DirBa4C"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?a=WcGLgvbj"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?d=50" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?a=Mtr3ItPb"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?d=43" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/QJ/PSP/~4/CrxdeGEX0yo" height="1" width="1"/

a href="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126945/logo_eidos_interactive_qjgenth.jpg?689790" rel="lightbox[article126945]" title="Eidos 20Interactive 20- 20Image 201 20 26nbsp 3B 20 20 26nbsp 3B 20 3Ca 20href 3D 22http 3A//img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126945/logo_eidos_interactive.jpg 3F689790 22 20target 3D 22_blank 22 3E 3Cimg 20src 3D 22/img/newwindow.png 22 20title 3D 22Open 20in 20new 20window 22 20border 3D 220 22 3E 3C/a 3E"img style="margin-bottom: 3px; margin-left: 3px;" alt="Eidos Interactive - Image 1" title="Eidos Interactive - Image 1" src="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126945/logo_eidos_interactive_qjgenth.jpg?689790" align="right" border="0"/aa href="http://wii.qj.net/tags/sci-entertainment/13422" id="tag" title="entertainment software publisher and developer"SCi Entertainment/a has announced its intent to change its name to Eidos. To this end, they have already filed an application with the Registrar of Companies. There is no announcement yet as to when the name change will be implemented but I assume it won't be too long.brbrYou may recall a a title="Rumor: EA, Ubisoft to take over SCi Entertainment" href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/Rumor-EA-Ubisoft-to-take-over-SCi-Entertainment-Eidos/pg/49/aid/126910"previous article/a of ours reporting a rumor that EA and Ubisoft have entered talks with SCi over a possible buyout. A name change to its better knownspan style="font-style: italic;" /spanspan id="iTxt"span style="font-style: italic;"Tomb Raider: Underworld/span (a title="Tomb Raider Underworld PS3" href="http://ps3.qj.net/Tomb-Raider-Underworld/cid/4621"PS3/a, a title="Tomb Raider Underworld 360" href="http://xbox360.qj.net/Tomb-Raider-Underworld/cid/4621"Xbox 360/a, a title="Tomb Raider: Underworld" href="http://wii.qj.net/Tomb-Raider-Underworld/cid/4683"Wii/a, DS)/span publisher, Eidos, certainly sounds like the kind of thing SCi would do if the rumor was true.brbrFurther evidence that suggests a possible buyout in the near future is SCi's dramatic restructuring over the past year. To date, they've cut about 25 percent of their staff and have dropped 14 game titles. They've also previously spoken with Warner Brothers to amend their "stand still" agreement so they can buy more SCi shares.brbrhr style="width: 100 ; height: 2px;"brspan style="font-weight: bold;"Related Articles:br/spanullia title="Eidos announces new Hitman, Tomb Raider and more in 2007 report" href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/Eidos-announces-new-Hitman-Tomb-Raider-and-more-in-2007-report/pg/49/aid/119360"span style="font-style: italic;"Eidos announces new Hitman, Tomb Raider and more in 2007 report/span/abr/li/ulbrbrdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?a=3TkkyUhC"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?a=NPUMbVpB"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?d=43" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?a=mFPzTIFO"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/qj/wii/~4/YmRssYpoHaY" height="1" width="1"/

a href="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126945/logo_eidos_interactive_qjgenth.jpg?689790" rel="lightbox[article126945]" title="Eidos 20Interactive 20- 20Image 201 20 26nbsp 3B 20 20 26nbsp 3B 20 3Ca 20href 3D 22http 3A//img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126945/logo_eidos_interactive.jpg 3F689790 22 20target 3D 22_blank 22 3E 3Cimg 20src 3D 22/img/newwindow.png 22 20title 3D 22Open 20in 20new 20window 22 20border 3D 220 22 3E 3C/a 3E"img style="margin-bottom: 3px; margin-left: 3px;" alt="Eidos Interactive - Image 1" title="Eidos Interactive - Image 1" src="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126945/logo_eidos_interactive_qjgenth.jpg?689790" align="right" border="0"/aa href="http://ps3.qj.net/tags/sci-entertainment/13422" id="tag" title="entertainment software publisher and developer"SCi Entertainment/a has announced its intent to change its name to Eidos. To this end, they have already filed an application with the Registrar of Companies. There is no announcement yet as to when the name change will be implemented but I assume it won't be too long.brbrYou may recall a a title="Rumor: EA, Ubisoft to take over SCi Entertainment" href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/Rumor-EA-Ubisoft-to-take-over-SCi-Entertainment-Eidos/pg/49/aid/126910"previous article/a of ours reporting a rumor that EA and Ubisoft have entered talks with SCi over a possible buyout. A name change to its better knownspan style="font-style: italic;" /spanspan id="iTxt"span style="font-style: italic;"Tomb Raider: Underworld/span (a title="Tomb Raider Underworld PS3" href="http://ps3.qj.net/Tomb-Raider-Underworld/cid/4621"PS3/a, a title="Tomb Raider Underworld 360" href="http://xbox360.qj.net/Tomb-Raider-Underworld/cid/4621"Xbox 360/a, a title="Tomb Raider: Underworld" href="http://wii.qj.net/Tomb-Raider-Underworld/cid/4683"Wii/a, DS)/span publisher, Eidos, certainly sounds like the kind of thing SCi would do if the rumor was true.brbrFurther evidence that suggests a possible buyout in the near future is SCi's dramatic restructuring over the past year. To date, they've cut about 25 percent of their staff and have dropped 14 game titles. They've also previously spoken with Warner Brothers to amend their "stand still" agreement so they can buy more SCi shares.brbrhr style="width: 100 ; height: 2px;"brspan style="font-weight: bold;"Related Articles:br/spanullia title="Eidos announces new Hitman, Tomb Raider and more in 2007 report" href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/Eidos-announces-new-Hitman-Tomb-Raider-and-more-in-2007-report/pg/49/aid/119360"span style="font-style: italic;"Eidos announces new Hitman, Tomb Raider and more in 2007 report/span/abr/li/ulbrbrimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/qj/ps3/~4/lkfznItbPMQ" height="1" width="1"/

a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/577ed3f0-c011-11dd-9222-0000779fd18c.html"img vspace="16" hspace="4" border="0" align="right" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/12/12-2-08-canon-sed-tv.jpg" //aWe're hard pressed to think of a display-related story that has a href="http://www.engadget.com/2005/01/05/toshiba-ces-sed-tv/"lingered on longer/a than a href="http://www.engadget.com/2004/09/29/he-sed-she-sed-toshibas-new-sed-tv/"SED/a (well over four years at last count), and believe it or not, this still isn't apt to be the last a href="http://www.engadgethd.com/category/sed/"you hear/a of it. If you'll recall, Canon recently declared victory after a href="http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/08/06/canon-wins-sed-lawsuit-can-produce-sed-displays-again/"winning a lawsuit/a against Applied Nanotech that was previously holding it back from making progress, and now Applied Nanotech has waved the final white flag by giving up its right to appeal. Comically enough, it may actually be too late for Canon to even salvage the win, with president Tsuneji Uchida noting that "at times like this, new display products are not introduced much because people would laugh at them." Shh... nobody tell him the world's been a href="http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/25/sed-televisions-delayed-again-possibly-forever/"laughing at SED/a for emyears/em.br /br /[Via a href="http://www.oled-display.net/canon-clear-to-launch-cost-competitive-sed-tvs"OLED-Display/a]pFiled under: a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/displays/" rel="tag"Displays/a, a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/hdtv/" rel="tag"HDTV/a, a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/homeentertainment/" rel="tag"Home Entertainment/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/02/canon-cleared-to-resume-work-on-sed-tv-now-that-the-world-doesn/"Canon cleared to resume work on SED TV (now that the world doesn't care)/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.engadget.com"Engadget/a on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:35:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/577ed3f0-c011-11dd-9222-0000779fd18c.htmlRead/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/02/canon-cleared-to-resume-work-on-sed-tv-now-that-the-world-doesn/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/forward/1388879/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/02/canon-cleared-to-resume-work-on-sed-tv-now-that-the-world-doesn/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/K31VYiPZP8kp-EGJcPChRz6X19Q/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/K31VYiPZP8kp-EGJcPChRz6X19Q/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=gOjIKkuN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=gOjIKkuN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=RZ7CV0hE"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=RZ7CV0hE" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~4/RayU0Jyrj6c" height="1" width="1"/

We're hard pressed to think of a display-related story that has lingered on longer than SED (well over four years at last count), and believe it or not, this still isn't apt to be the last you hear of it. If you'll recall, Canon recently declared victory after winning a lawsuit against Applied Nanotech that was previously holding it back from making progress, and now Applied Nanotech has waved the final white flag by giving up its right to appeal. Comically enough, it may actually be too late for Canon to even salvage the win, with president Tsuneji Uchida noting that "at times like this, new display products are not introduced much because people would laugh at them." Shh... nobody tell him the world's been laughing at SED for years.

[Via OLED-Display]

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Canon cleared to resume work on SED TV (now that the world doesn't care) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Who can frown at these round, bouncy, smiley, critters? Apparently, some people can. Crispy Gamer puts span style="font-style: italic;"LocoRoco/span game designer a href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/tags/tsutomu-kouno/11806" id="tag" title="LocoRoco director"Tsutomu Kouno/a in the spotlight and got some info about his cute creations, and critics that call them racist, even going as far as claiming they look like penises.brbrSo what exactly are they? Called a "yellow garbage bag" by a Crispy Gamer interviewer in jest, Kouno clarifies that his funny creation isn't a waste receptacle. "No. He's not a garbage bag. He's nothing," he says, adding that it's alright if span style="font-style: italic;"LocoRoco/span is seen that way.brbrApparently, a yellow garbage bag is not the only thing that these guys look like. Critics have gone as far as claiming that the innocent little blobs are "racist" and they look like penises. "Honestly? I haven't thought about that at all. In fact, the characters that some people have said are racist are among my favorites," he said. "If the characters make people uncomfortable, I feel sorry for them. Me, I just think they're really cool."brbrAs far as the market goes, Kouno doesn't mind that a href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/tags/sony/880" id="tag" title="Father of PlayStation"Sony/a'sspan style="font-style: italic;" LocoRoco/span has cute competition out there, saying, "I think that there should be more simple games like this out there. We should have a lot more of them." It's also possible that span style="font-style: italic;"LocoRoco/span can come to the PS3, but that hasn't been decided yet.brbrp style="text-align: center;"a href="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126939/locorocobanenr_qjpreviewth.png?775095" rel="lightbox[article126939]" title="LocoRoco 20- 20Image 201 20 26nbsp 3B 20 20 26nbsp 3B 20 3Ca 20href 3D 22http 3A//img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126939/locorocobanenr.png 3F775095 22 20target 3D 22_blank 22 3E 3Cimg 20src 3D 22/img/newwindow.png 22 20title 3D 22Open 20in 20new 20window 22 20border 3D 220 22 3E 3C/a 3E"img style="margin-top: 3px; margin-bottom: 3px;" alt="LocoRoco - Image 1" title="LocoRoco - Image 1" src="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126939/locorocobanenr_qjpreviewth.png?775095" align="" border="0"/abr/pbrInspiration-wise, Kouno recalls that there was really no basis from his life experiences that led to the creation of a href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/category/Loco-Roco/cid/1196"span title="Read more on LocoRoco" style="font-style: italic;"LocoRoco/span/a. When asked if there was anything at all that might've contributed, this was his reply:brbrp style="padding-left: 40px; padding-right: 40px;"You know, honestly, I don't think so. I've just loved games since I was very small. I started writing little programs when I was very young. I think maybe the only constant outside influence for me has been music. And my love of music came from my mother, so maybe that would qualify. Ever since I was a child, I've loved to create things. So every time I create a game, I get that same sense of satisfaction. My two goals are to feel that sense of satisfaction, and to surprise people. Whenever I make something, my goal is always to surprise people with something new. /pbrThere you have it - span style="font-style: italic;"LocoRoco/span is a fun game born out of fun, and a gamers love for video games. To me, they look like blobby smileys with ears. As far as penis-resemblances go, well, don't blame the game if your member is yellow and swollen. brbrhr style="width: 100 ; height: 2px;"brspan style="font-weight: bold;"More on LocoRoco:br/spanullia href="http://www.qj.net/Video-LocoRoco-2-Japanese-Spills-trailer/pg/49/aid/126740"span title="LocoRoco Japanese spills trailer" style="font-style: italic;"Video: LocoRoco 2 Japanese Spills trailer/span/a/lilispan title="LocoRoco Japanese spills trailer" style="font-style: italic;"a title="LocoRoco 2 squeezes into Europe today" href="http://www.qj.net/LocoRoco-2-squeezes-into-Europe-today-four-new-gameplay-vids-to-roll-into/pg/49/aid/126530"LocoRoco 2 squeezes into Europe today, four new gameplay vids to roll into/abr/span/li/ulbrbrdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?a=vJLc1qeI"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?a=D7pPMCGD"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?d=50" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?a=LEA49FB0"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?d=43" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/QJ/PSP/~4/KAtd3zlsPdY" height="1" width="1"/

Seeing as it's fudging cold just about everywhere north of Cairo I thought I'd share a soup recipe I made last night. Now I've made alot of different soups in my time but this is one of my favourites. I can't recall where I got the original recipe from but obviously credit to them!


You will need:


2 tbsp of olive oil or 1oz of butter
1 1/2lbs of Tomatoes (Skinned, deseeded and cut into 1" chunks)
2 tbsp of tomato puree
2 Cloves of garlic crushed
1 Decent sized onion, diced finely.
1 1/2 pints of good vegetable stock.
150-200g of haricot beans (either tinned or dried (if dried hydrate overnight as per pack instructions))
2 tbsp of fresh mint leaves (chopped finely)
Salt & Pepper to taste


Ok once you have prepared and chopped the tomatoes and onions...


...put large pan on medium heat
...add oil or butter to a large pan
...once oil is heated add oinions.
...sauté for about 4-5 mins until soft (do not allow to brown).
...add the crushed garlic and continue to cook for 3 more mins.
...add the chopped tomatoes and tomato puree and cook for another 3-5 mins until everything is nice and soft.
...add the stock.
...add plenty of pepper and a bit of salt (taste it and add more if necessary).
...(if using dried haricot beans add these now too as they take much longer to cook than tinned)
...bring to a rolling boil, then reduce to a simmer.
...if using dried beans simmer for 40-50mins until the beans are tender.
...if you are using tinned simmer for 25 mins, then add the beans and simmer for 5-10 more mins.
...Five mins before the end add the chopped mint.


Serve in warmed bowls with some thick crusty bread and chuck a couple of mint sprigs on top to make it look pretty!


I think this soup tastes great and makes a warming, hearty meal.


Feel free to add your own recipes!

h4Old kit no longer safe/h4 pPanasonic, JVC and Sharp have asked Japanese punters to return 16,500-odd LCD projectors in case the machines catch fire..../p

Bryce Fitzpatrick was working at the Cheesecake Factory at Chandler Fashion Center when he was promoted from server to food expeditor, a step toward management. One day, while he was inside the produce walk-in to hunt down watercress, the door suddenly swung open. nbsp; nbsp; About 10-plus cooks and dishwashers shut the lights out, Fitzpatrick recalls. A guy grabbed me from behind and made me put my butt on top of his genitals. One cook grabbed Fitzpatrick's right leg and held it up in the air. Another held his left leg. Two other men grabbed Fitzpatrick's arms. A cook would stand in the middle and rub his genitals into my genitals, Fitzpatrick said. nbsp; nbsp; During his tenure at the restaurant, he suffered the attacks more than 20 times, he said. In interviews with The Arizona Republic, two other former employees of the restaurant chain described being similarly grabbed and held down by co-workers while men simulated sex with them.

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Enjoy Part 1 of this British documentary series.

New series. Celebrities who rose to fame in the 1960s, including Cilla Black, Lulu, Tom Jones and Simon Dee reflect on the cultural changes of the past 40 years as they watch interviews they gave TV presenter Bernard Braden in 1968, which were never broadcast. They recall the music and the fashions of the decade that launched their careers and influenced culture for ever.

Links: TVRage

Sex.Drugs.And.Rock.N.Roll.The.60s.Revealed.Part1.WS.PDTV.XviD-REMAX
43mins | 640×352 - 29.970 - XviD VBR 999Kbps | MP3 VBR 128Kbps | 350MB
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divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/26248?ns=guardianpageName=Comment+is+free%3A+A+late+calling+to+accountch=Comment+is+freec3=The+Guardianc4=Banking+sector+%28Business%29%2CCredit+crunch+%28Business%29%2CEconomics+%28Business%29%2CMortgages+%28Money%29%2CBorrowing+and+debt%2CMoney%2CBusinessc5=Personal+Finance%2CInvestments%2CCredit+Crunch%2CBusiness+Markets%2CProperty+Mortgages+and+Interest+Ratesc6=Will+Huttonc7=2008_12_02c8=1127135c9=articlec10=GUc11=Comment+is+freec12=blogc13=c14=Comment+is+freeh2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FComment+is+free" width="1" height="1" //divpA rare silver lining in this recession is that a veil of mystery is being lifted from the longstanding lending practices of British banks. Suddenly they are understood as not necessarily always in the best national economic interest./ppMortgage and business borrowers alike are newly empowered by the pound;37bn bank bail-out, and change is afoot. Yesterday the Royal Bank of Scotland, now 58% owned by the taxpayer, promised it would give distressed homeowners six months' grace before it moved to repossess their property. Last week it said it would guarantee the level and price of its overdraft commitments to small business until the end of 2009 - providing, it qualified, the risks of their situation did not substantially change./ppThese are concessions of the sort that have not been made in any postwar recession. They make it impossible for Lloyds-TSB/HBOS not to follow suit. HSBC will not want to be outdone. Only Barclays, suffering the burden of the bail-out terms from its sovereign wealth fund investors, is likely to cling to the banking tradition of being providers of umbrellas except when it is raining. It will no longer be politically acceptable./ppBankers, in fairness, are the custodians of other people's money. They have to provide cash to their depositors whenever they want it, even as they tie it up in loans to homebuyers and business. This confidence trick requires careful managing. British banks' approach has been to keep their lending as short-term as possible, to have it collateralised against bricks and mortar, to keep tight control at headquarters and to recall loans at the first sign of trouble./ppIt works, but it is brutal. It does not favour long-term investment. It biases lending towards property rather than business innovation. It does not favour manufacturing industry that needs most support in downturns. It makes home ownership high risk for working-class families. And it exacerbates recessions./ppThere is another approach, more widely used in mainland Europe and Japan. It is best illustrated by a story from yesterday's Financial Times about the Reading-based Magal Group. Owner Gamil Magal wants a pound;1.5m loan from RBS to tide over his engineering firm during the recession, collateralised against pound;12m of assets. The company is solid but now losing money; properly supported it might survive. In Europe and Japan, banks tend to be supportive of their Magals, with whom they have long-term relationships. They certainly demand restructuring and redundancy, but they shepherd the scaled-back firms to recovery, offering not just finance but advice and business knowledge./ppIn Britain banks do not support such relationships. But they do know British financial protocols. RBS, says Magal, responded to his request by sending him an insolvency expert. When RBS was privately owned, he would not have dared complain and tempt such awesome power of life and death. In today's climate, he feels he can go public./ppIf the banks together support all the firms in the manufacturing value chain then each individual firm is more likely to pull through. Magal needs supporting, but so do his customers. RBS cannot have an open chequebook, but unless it and other banks are more collectively accommodating to firms' requests, they create the very risks RBS is alert to./ppUK banks have never been properly accountable for their actions, hiding behind the myth that, as their decisions are taken in markets, they are necessarily efficient. They are not. If more businessmen speak out, and the government has some guts, the next 18 months could see a transformation in British finance. It is long overdue./pp· Will Hutton is executive vice-chair of the Work Foundation a href="mailto:will.hutton@observer.co.uk"will.hutton@observer.co.uk/a/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/banking"UK banking sector/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/creditcrunch"Credit crunch/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics"Economics/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/mortgages"Mortgages/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/debt"Borrowing debt/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/n9llmbmU7O2cqsuftgw_d1pg-Qw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/n9llmbmU7O2cqsuftgw_d1pg-Qw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p