Tech Week In Review: Firefox, Iran, Zemanta, Seesmic Desktop, FanFeedr

New Firefox Logo/Icon

In preparation for the first Release Candidate build of Firefox 3.5, the Mozilla team has finalized the design of their new Firefox icon, which also serves as their official logo as well. Not to be funny, but the logo looks the same as it did before at first glance. This isn’t even the first time they have made such a subtle change. Take a look at the differences below.

Support Iran

You may have noticed some of the folk you follow on Twitter tinting their avatars green or otherwise adding a bit of green. This color is in support of the Iran election. Some believe their votes did not count and there has been a lot of unrest and protesting there. Standard news channels have pretty much failed at covering what’s going on there, so social media has played a huge part in finding out the real story. Iran has actually blocked access to Twitter, FriendFeed and other services that could possibly have opposing opinions. They also “suggested” that foreign journalists leave the country. If you would like to support Iran, there are a few things you can do:

• Visit http://helpiranelection.com/ to tint your logo green in one click (like I did) and get more info and live updates on what’s going on in Iran
• Some have suggested changing your twitter location to Tehran and time zone to GMT +3.5 to help those actually in Iran escape detection and action from their government (yes, it’s that serious).
• Tell a friend.
  

Zemanta Bookmarklet for Chrome and Safari

Hadn’t noticed it before, but Zemanta has a bookmarklet that lets you to take advantage of their services without installing a plugin or anything. It works in Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. Basically, when you’re on a supported service (WordPress, Blogger, Gmail compose window, etc.), you click the bookmarklet to make the magic happen. Zemanta makes it easy to import photos and other stuff related to the content you’re creating. Just the thing you might need to spice up your blogging or add a little flair to your emails.

Seesmic Desktop 0.3

Not much to be said here. New features include:

• Multi-account posting with Smart Account Enabling – Basically, you can choose which account each update goes to (which is one of the features I love in PeopleBrowsr). Seesmic Desktop will also figure out what accounts messages should go to based on what you’re replying to if you so choose to enable that feature.
• Authenticated bit.ly integration – This is actually really cool and something that all other applications that integrate other services need to pay attention to. It’s pretty cool when an app shortens URL’s for you, but when it shortens those URL’s and also allows you to view your personal analytics on your links, that’s infinitely more useful.
• New Services Panel – It seems that Seesmic has take it’s bit.ly integration and applied it to a bunch of other services like Pikchur, Twitpic, Twitgoo, and yfrog. This new services panel will allow you to manage these and other integrated services to be added later.

Watch a video about the new Seesmic Desktop features, join their new Team Seesmic community site, and download version 0.3 here.

FanFeedr Launch

We talked about the private beta of FanFeedr a while back, and now they are open to the public. If you’re a sports fan get on the site and search for your favorite teams. The site updates every second, 24/7. Find all the latest news on the sports that matter to you, connect with your friends, see what the buzz is on Twitter. You don’t even need to create yet another account, just login using Facebook Connect. Be sure to provide any feedback you have using the tab on the side.

About the Author
Rahsheen has been a certified geek since before it was the thing to do. He started programming and tinkering in the 4th grade. Now, Rahsheen mostly writes on various sites about technology trends in social media and mobile. . He is also a musician, singer, rapper, writer, and producer. @rahsheen - +Rahsheen Porter - coachrah.com
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