Yes you did read that right! Snoop Dogg has teamed up with Virus protection gurus Symantec to “raise awareness” about online cybercrime threats and malicious software and how to best protect your PC and its data from intruders, viruses and the like. Wannabe rap stars have 2 minutes to prove their skills  and spit a text about anti-cybercrime, record it on video and submit it at hackiswack.com. The prizes are substantial, the idea perhaps daft, but fun to watch, as the first 4 posted videos would lead to believe. read more

The two big words in the recently launched fourth beta release of Mozilla’s Firefox 4 are “Panorama” and “Sync”. Panorama, A.K.A Tab Candy, is slick picture device alloing users to simultaneously view all tabs open at one time and sort them into groups by simply dragging and dropping them. The other new addition, namely Sync, lets users keep track, manage and move their browsing history, passwords, bookmarks, awesome bar and so on from PC to PC (and to iPhone with Firefox Home), encoding all stored info, protecting it from the prying eyes of others looking to trace users’ footsteps. read more

Google has announced its US initiation of Google Voice, with UK users surely not too far behind, depending on its success. Google Voice and the Video Chat platform offer Gmail users the chanced to call landlines, mobiles, send texts, leave and pick up voicemail from several numbers in box… basically everything Skype does. Google is enticing Us users away from Skype by offering free calls within the US and Canada, according to the official Gmail blog http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/, for the rest of the year. read more

The new beta version of HM Goverment’s central website for government data and general info point, data.gov.uk is up and running. Apart from receiving a hefty facelift, data.gov.uk opens up a completely fresh and user-friendly approach to open access data. The new design and structure of the data.gov.uk should now enable the public to keep track of resources and local data readily available to them, embodying Hm Goverment’s website slogan Transparency is at the heart of this Government. Data.gov.uk is home to national & local data for free re-use”. read more

@tweetalondoncab is the perfect solution for Twitter addicts that need a cab in London. Richard Cudlip, Karl James and friends have established and increased their black cab service on Twitter, easily identifyable on the London streets thanks to their @tweetalondoncab window sticker. Roughly 100 self-employed cab drivers have signed up to the tweetalondoncab initiative and with nearly 7,000 followers definitely brings in a fair amount of custom. read more

Microsoft has announced the planned launch of its Internet Explorer 9 beta version on the 15th September. Microsoft blogger James Pratt commented on the release taking place in combination with a VIP release event in San Fransisco, celebrating “the Beauty Of the Web”. The invite itself of course was sent by email containing a special HTML5 website link, where in order to complete their RSVP, invitees had to unravel the jumbled letters VEANTI and type them in the correct order into the sentence “Unlock the _ _ _ _ _ _ web”. read more

Mozilla has released its third beta version of their latest web broser, Firefox 4, with 10 additional languages (bringing the count up to 30 in total!) and large focus on compatibility with Windows 7 multi-touch support. The all new hands on Firefox also has made substantial improvements to its JavaScript handling functions, although after so much redesigning taking place in the first two beta releases over the past months, the interface remains pretty much the same as mentioned in our last post about beta 2. read more

Here are some handy tips for using Google’s browser, Chrome. Chrome (at least for now) is substantially different in its design to other browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer 8, with a “less is more” approach to browsing. Here are however a few pointers as to all those things that you now can’t find in the minimalistic Chrome layout. read more

A nice little trick for you to try out on a lazy Sunday is provided by YouTube. For those of you interested in sending a YouTube video link to friends, family and the like that you’d like to start from a specific position (i.e. not from the beginning) can be done by simply pasting #t=AAmBB to the end of your video tag in the URL bar at the top of your browser. BUT WAIT!!! Before sending it off, be sure to replace “AA” and “BB” with the time in minutes! For example, should you want your friends to start watching the vid as of 2 minutes 24 seconds then your tag should look like this: #t=2m24 . but there’s even more….. read more

Are you interested in cheap international calls? then Foocall is definitely worth having a look at! The service is pretty simple – sign up online (hence the Softwareload blog!), check the online tariffs for your desired country, type in the allocated number over your landline, or mobile phone and away you go! Whether it be to check up on the kids on their hols in Spain for just 1.4p a minute, loved ones in the services in hotspots abroad for around 20p, or relatives across the pond for 1.2p a minute, Foocall really does boast the best international prices and call quality too. read more