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Considering that it's based on Mozilla Thunderbird, it was a bit of a surprise that add-ons weren't available for Postbox when it debuted. That's now been remedied in Postbox beta 13 for Windows and Mac. Given Postbox's emphasis on social-networking technology and Mozilla's own success with add-ons, this move puts the e-mail client in an excellent position to attract more users.

A Webware 100 winner, the list of supported extensions isn't long at the moment, and notably it doesn't include Thunderbird's calendaring tool Lightning. Since Postbox doesn't have its own supported calendar, this could prove to be a deal breaker for some. However, the list does include several plug-ins that Thunderbird users should be familiar with, including ReminderFox, QuickText, and MinimizeToTray. MozBackup and Zindus are listed as "coming soon." There's new support for localized dictionaries from Mozilla, too.

Users who wish to install Postbox add-ons while running Firefox can either save the XPI file to their desktop and then install it manually, or drag-and-drop it into Postbox's open Add-ons window.

Other changes include fetching profile pictures from your address books in Postbox, Mac OS X, Twitter, and Facebook for the Inspector Pane. Settings can be imported from Mail.app. Multiple attachments can be dragged to your desktop. Along with a large number of stability and usability fixes, the security improvements made to Firefox 3.0.10 have also been folded in. Full release notes can be read here.

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Twitter is in the process of rolling out a new user interface update to its users.

This update focuses on Twitter's Following and Follower pages. In addition to a better looking list, Twitter has added more social actions to the page, including @replies, direct messages, and mobile update subscription. An extra collapsed "List View" has also been added to the traditional "Expanded View" and makes for a much more readable and quickly scannable page.

Due to the lack of a good way to browse, filter, and search through these lists, they are largely underused. This update is the first step in making Twitter's Following and Follower lists into much more usable and functional tools. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if Twitter continued to build out these features more in the future, bringing in some of the functionality that third party applications have long included, such as TweetDeck's groups.

Click through to see what Twitter's new List View looks like.

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Twitter is in the process of rolling out a new user interface update to its users.

This update focuses on Twitter's Following and Follower pages. In addition to a better looking list, Twitter has added more social actions to the page, including @replies, direct messages, and mobile update subscription. An extra collapsed "List View" has also been added to the traditional "Expanded View" and makes for a much more readable and quickly scannable page.

Due to the lack of a good way to browse, filter, and search through these lists, they are largely underused. This update is the first step in making Twitter's Following and Follower lists into much more usable and functional tools. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if Twitter continued to build out these features more in the future, bringing in some of the functionality that third party applications have long included, such as TweetDeck's groups.

Click through to see what Twitter's new List View looks like.

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Skype is certainly on roll this week. Just yesterday it converted the latest beta of its Windows Mobile phone software into a full-fledged release. On Tuesday the VoIP company did it again for Skype 4.1 for Windows. In addition, Apple okayed Skype 1.1 for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which you can download now.

Skype 4.1 for Windows

Skype 4.1 beta brought back features like accessibility, birthday reminders, and the ability to send along a contact record to another contact. These had been left out when Skype first updated its interface to the 4.0 style, citing a wish to get core features out the door before piling on the extras. It's these extras that users nevertheless clamored for. This minor point update also contains a major new feature that was first introduced in Skype 4.1 beta, screen sharing.

Screen sharing initiates a video call, using the technology to broadcast a recording of your screen--either a portion or the full screen--to one other viewer. Screen sharing has some limitations. You can't simultaneously see a video of your buddy, and since one viewer at a time can peep your screen, you can't use it as a free, makeshift replacement for collaborative Web conferencing. It doesn't help that the picture quality is still choppy and fuzzy, in both partial screen and full-screen view modes.

Make no mistake, it's a great feature that we're happy to see added, but we'll be even happier to watch it improve.

In addition to screen sharing, Skype 4.1 lets you feed a search for contacts from outside address books, including Gmail, AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Microsoft Outlook, and a school of other players. If you've got it installed, the Web toolbar will highlight toll-free numbers and of contacts' names so you can call through Skype.

Skype for iPhone

Skype 1.1 for iPhone and iPod Touch reintroduces the ability to listen to Skype voicemail and to send and receive SMS messages. These features had been available on the desktop version, but were not activated when Skype first came out for iPhone.

There are a few visual tweaks in addition, which gloss up the look and feel of a few screens, most notably the dial pad. To top off the changes, this iPhone update pours on multilingual support, making it available in Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish and Traditional Chinese.

It still has far to go if it's to get all the of the extra features and featurettes that round out the Skype experience--games and conference calling are but two. We're already looking forward to seeing what Skype will do with video calls now that the iPhone 3GS has its shiny new video recorder.

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The social aggregation service Digg got two changes Tuesday that could make the jobs of Web site marketers better.

First, the company is tweaking its submitted story duplicate checker. As before, Digg blocks re-submissions of the exact same URL within a 30-day window. Now it's also got improved algorithms to identify when a duplicate story is submitted, even if it has a different URL. Furthermore, stories on completely different sites that are the same "or similar" now get flagged as potential duplicates.

Digg has been improving duplicate detection for months, and it's important work. Stories flagged separately on Digg that are actually the same can suffer diluted community impact, lower Digg counts overall, and give those stories less exposure than they deserve. Collecting all the appropriate Diggs under a canonical entry helps the good stories surface.

Speaking of surfacing stories, Digg now has a site search option in its search engine. If you want to see what Diggs your site is generating, just search for the site with a query structure you're already used to from Google: "site:sitename.com." You can sort the results by recency to see the latest Digg activity your site is generating. You can also get these results in an RSS feed, which is a very useful way to monitor what's happening on sites you care about.

If you're responsible for keeping a site in the public eye, these two improvements will make that easier, and easier to track.

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It's once again safe to fire up Windows Desktop Search if you're a Google Apps user.

Google's App Sync for Outlook allows fans of Outlook to keep the familiar interface even if their company switches to Google Apps on the back end, but it debuted with a flaw: Windows Desktop Search couldn't find e-mails created with the new software installed. Google got together with Microsoft to work on a solution to the problem--which must have made for a few interesting meetings--and a fix has been released, Google announced Tuesday.

There are a few other outstanding bugs, such as the lack of support for the Adobe's Acrobat PDF Maker Toolbar, but Google made it a priority to fix the bugs that were impeding normal use of e-mail first, a representative said. Along with the restoration of Windows Desktop Search, Google also made it possible to turn autoarchiving on or off during installation and improved synchronization of the little notes attached to contact records.

Those who are currently using App Sync for Outlook will have the updates automatically applied to their software, and a new version can also be downloaded directly from Google.

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Yahoo has released a feature that lets people post Flickr photos to their Twitter accounts.

The Twitter2Flickr feature requires that you enable Flickr as an approved application that can tweet under your username.

Then, when you click the "blog this" link above a photo at Flickr, you're presented with the option to twitter it. The tweet will come with a "flic.kr" shortened URL.

Flickr has a large number of users, and its use is amplified by the fact that other sites can make use of Flickr data through an API (application programming interface). The Twitter integration is a modest example of Yahoo's attempt to make its sites less of a walled garden by working better with other Web properties.

A Twitter search for Flickr photographs indicates that a lot of people are making use of the integration, which had been in beta testing since earlier in June.

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Update: Updated 6/30/09 at 5:55 p.m. with more extensions details. Updated at 12:42 p.m. with more add-on details and a statement about Google Gears.

Like you, we've been hotly anticipating the launch of Firefox 3.5 for Windows and Mac. Yet every time a browser receives a major update, it ghosts out a good chunk of those favorite, ingenious, and time-saving extensions we've come to rely on. That is, until the lagging publishers update their add-ons to make them compatible once again.

Google is one high-profile example with Gears. "We're working on pushing out a new Gears version that support FF 3.5," Google's Aaron Boodman wrote to Gears users Monday online. "We typically wait until the official 'gold' release of Firefox is pushed, because otherwise, we keep having to do new builds every time a new RC is pushed."

We've compiled what is by no means an exhaustive list of extensions that we find do and do not work in Firefox 3.5 at launch. Add your insights to the comments--we'll be updating this post throughout the day. Mozilla also has a compatibility report that takes the 95 percent most-used add-ons and matches them to their version numbers. A quick glance will tell you if your favorites are a go.

If you want to attempt to force Firefox to accept old add-ons, there are ways, but prepare yourself for consequences: bugs, stability breakdowns, and tampering with advanced settings. Two Firefox 3.5-ready add-ons that often correct incompatibility are Nightly Tester Tools and MR Tech Toolkit. CNET Executive Editor Tom Merritt shows you another way to teach the new 'Fox old tricks. Both methods essentially override the maximum version number rule that keeps Firefox from loading an add-on that's been approved for a previous version build, like 3.0. Nightly Tester Tools, for instance, is cleared for versions 3.0b5 through 3.6a1pre.

Works with Firefox 3.5:
Adblock Plus
All-In-One Sidebar
AVG Safe Search
ColorfulTabs
CoolIris (requires manual redownload or reinstallation)
Customize Google
FireFTP
Flagfox
FlashGot
Forecastfox Enhanced
FoxyTunes
Greasemonkey
Googlepedia
Google Preview
Google Toolbar
IE Tab
iMacros
Java QuickStarter
McAfee Site Advisor
NoScript
Personal Menu
Read It Later
Roboform (PC only--requires manual redownload or reinstallation)
Select-n-Go by Cleeki
Session Manager
Shareaholic
Site Launcher
SmarterFox
SmoothWheel
Ubiquity
XMarks

Doesn't work with Firefox 3.5:
Better Gmail 2
Drag & DropZones
gDocsBar
Google Gears (read above)
Headup
Minimize To Tray Enhancer
Open in Google Chrome
Prism
Searchery
Tab Mix Plus
Tab Minus

Update Notifier

Note: Windows links for Firefox add-ons should also work on Macs.

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