Those of you who use Google Toolbar on Firefox are probably pretty familiar with the many features Toolbar 5 (beta) has to offer — from bookmarks to buttons and search box to «send to.» We've added a couple more features to the Firefox Toolbar, so feel free to download this «second beta» to get all the latest and greatest Google Toolbar has to offer.

One of the features I'm really excited about is the new tab page. Now, when you open up a new tab, instead of the blank white page you see by default in Firefox, you will instead see small thumbnails of your favorite sites (up to 9), as well as recently-closed and bookmarked pages based on your browser history. You can edit the thumbnails, and all this data remains locally on your browser, which means none of the information about your most viewed sites or recently closed pages will be sent back to Google. If for whatever reason you don't like this updated new tab page, you can always change it back to a blank page or to the website of your choice through either your Toolbar or Firefox settings. Some tab extensions may conflict with this feature, and it currently isn't compatible with Firefox 2, so make sure you check your settings or visit the Google Toolbar help center if you are having any problems.



Next time you want to go to your favorite site more quickly or restore an accidentally closed tab, you don't need to type out the URL. Typing Ctrl + T or double-clicking to the right of your open tabs will open up the new tab page with all your favorite sites right at your finger tips.

In addition, this release now provides the ability for Hebrew- and Arabic-speaking users to access Toolbar 5 with robust right-to-left text support. We've also fixed some of the most reported bugs to give you a faster and more stable experience with this update.

If you’re like me, you do your Android development outside Eclipse and therefore rely upon the full range of the Android toolkit, from activitycreator through DDMS. And, if you’re like me, you just plopped a 64-bit Linux (Ubuntu 8.10 “Intrepid Ibex”) on a multi-core PC for development work.

Which means, if you’re like me, you ran into a problem trying to get DDMS to run.

DDMS appears to be written using the Eclipse’s SWT GUI toolkit. The version of the SWT that ships with Android 1.0r2 is written for a 32-bit Java runtime. If you try running it on a 64-bit Java VM, you get a nasty error like “wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS32 (Possible cause: architecture word width mismatch)” coming out of one of the RCP libraries (tools/lib/libswt-pi-gtk-3236.so).

I am sure there are any number of elegant ways to get around this that allow DDMS to run as 32-bit Java while the rest of your environment is 64-bit Java. However, I couldn’t find any. So, here’s a brute-force way to do it.

First, you need a 32-bit Java runtime. In Debian/Ubuntu, this is in the ia32-java-6-sun package. Install that using your favorite packaging tool (Synaptic, aptitude, apt-get, etc.).

You can then use update-java-alternatives –list to confirm that your 64-bit JDK is there, but the 32-bit JRE is also available. It should also have left alone your default Java (the one invoked when you run java at the command line).

Next, you need to teach DDMS to use the 32-bit Java instead of the default. Use update-java-alternatives –list to determine the path to your 32-bit Java runtime (e.g., /usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-6-sun/bin/java). Then, make a copy of tools/ddms from your Android runtime and modify it, changing the value of java_cmd to match your 32-bit JRE location (e.g., java_cmd=”/usr/lib/jvm/ia32-java-6-sun/bin/java”).

Try it out, and DDMS should fire up just fine. Since it coordinates with devices and emulators using sockets or USB drivers, the fact that it is 32-bit does not affect its ability to interoperate with your other tools.

Of course, you have to remember to use your modified DDMS (e.g., set up a launcher for it on your desktop or a GNOME panel). And, you may need to repeat these steps, or ones like them, in future Android SDK releases, until DDMS is shipped in a way that works out of the box for both 32-bit and 64-bit Java.

Have a cleaner way to fix this problem? Post a comment and let us know!

QuickOffice have revealed a version of it’s Microsoft Office editing software for the Android platform.

QuickOffice for Android will allow users to edit various Microsoft Office documents including Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

Thanks to a partnership QuickOffice and SoonR (a company providing remote-access technology), users will also have the ability to access documents on home PC systems via the internet.

Here’s some screenshots from the QuickOffice for Android software




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Current G1 owners are licking their chops at the prospect of getting some much desired updates to their Android phones. Features like video recording, stereo Bluetooth, and an on-screen keyboard are the only things missing from an otherwise robust OS. But will the G1 ever see the icing from cupcake’s features? Ask around and you’re likely to get varying answers.

Here’s what we’ve pieced together so far.

Cupcake is a different version, or image of Android. Carriers and handset makers are free to take whatever is available from Android and bend it to their liking. If the hardware you have doesn’t support stereo Bluetooth, then obviously the device won’t either. No software is going to override the hardware and get it to do something it can’t.

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This is great news! DataViz, makers of the uber-popular and uber-good suite, Documents To Go is bringing their award winning mobileOffice suite to Android! So if you’re a productivity beast or heavy business user, there’s one more reason to test out Android! You’ll have access to Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files on the go with Documents To Go. We’ve heard nothing but good things from Documents To Go so be ready to download their software in 2009!

Also, DataViz is bringing their Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync client RoadSync to Android as well, so users of Exchange take note! Everything is expected to release in 2009, which coincides with Android Market being capable of paid applications. We don’t know exact pricing yet, but one can expect a price near $29.99–a price that’ll surely be worth it for any heavy business user.