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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/valleywag/2008/10/rashid_610×406_02.jpg” width=”250″ height=”353″ align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ /At Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles today, Rick Rashid, the head of Microsoft Research, reminded the audience that he a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10077953-56.html”helped write the Mach kernel 25 years ago/a. That piece of code is now at the core of Apple’s OS X, the operating system which runs both the Mac and the IPhone. What he should be asking: Why didn’t his employer think of that? em(Photo by Ina Fried/CNET News)/em/p br style=”clear: both;”/
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/valleywag/2008/10/20081028_111525_28Sassess_300.jpg” width=”300″ height=”250″ align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ /Why did Google engineer Michael Frumkin pay $7.75 million for an oceanside house in Santa Cruz? It was ideal, he says, for boogie boarding. Frumkin is a href=”http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_10836558″contesting his tax bill/a for 240 Geoffroy Drive, claiming the property is only worth $3.5 million. When he purchased it from venture capitalist Gerard Casilli in 2006, he paid $4 million for the house and $3.75 million in “option money” mdash; essentially paying Casilli for the right to buy the house in the first place. Frumkin essentially overpaid for the place to entice Casilli to sell. Boil it down, and you have a classic tale of a VC screwing an engineer. Nice house, though. em(Photo by a href=”http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_10836558″Shmuel Thaler/Santa Cruz Sentinel/a)/em/p br style=”clear: both;”/
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/10/netflix-update.png” width=”305″ height=”250″ align=”right” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ align=”right” /Netflix has officially (and finally) added support for Macsmdash;well, Intel Macs at least. The update is rolling out to a small group of users at first, but the company promises support for the all Mac users soon. The unusual part of the announcment: Netflix is using Microsoft’s Flash alternative a href=”http://silverlight.net/”Silverlight/a to handle the streaming and DRM on the Mac instead of Flashmdash;despite the fact that Flash is what Netflix uses to stream movies to the Windows platform. No word yet on whether or not there will be browser limitations on the Mac. Unfortunately my account isn’t one of the lucky few that are already seeing support, so if yours is, let’s hear how it’s working for you in the comments. div class=”related”[via a href="http://gizmodo.com/5069026/netflix-streaming-video-finally-on-macs"Gizmodo/a]/div/p br style=”clear: both;”/
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a href=”http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=KZ3DM”img src=”http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=KZ3DM” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=a2UpM”img src=”http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=a2UpM” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=zJjmm”img src=”http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=zJjmm” border=”0″/img/a a href=”http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=0N8vm”img src=”http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=0N8vm” border=”0″/img/a
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/10/mucommander_file_browser_sftp_image_view.jpg” align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ width=”494″ height=”218″ style=”display:block;float:none;” /Windows/Mac/Linux: If you’re not a fan of your system’s tools for managing files on your computer, check out MuCommander. The free, open source download will run on nearly any operating system, including Windows, Mac OS X and your favorite flavor of Linux, and in 21 different languages. Drag and drop between two panes visually, or hack away in the command shell. It also supports most network file transfer protocols, such as FTP, and will even let you browse the contents of archives like ZIP and disk images like ISO without having to uncompress or mount them, respectively. Pictured is an image file viewed directly from an SFTP server mdash; handy! MuCommander is a free download for all platforms./p div class=”related”a href=”http://www.mucommander.com/”MuCommander/a [via a href="http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/10/24/mucommander-is-a-powerful-cross-platform-file-manager/"Download Squad/a]/div br style=”clear: both;”/
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/10/smultronlogo.png” width=”178″ height=”186″ align=”right” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ align=”right” / Mac OS X only: When TextEdit just doesn’t cut it for dealing with simple text files, and you don’t want to drop the cash for BBEdit or TextMate, free editor Smultron is a great option. Smultron can open multiple files at once (in tabs across the top, or thumbnails down a sidebar), display line numbers, save reusable snippets, format code for you scripters out there, search text across several documentsmdash;essentially, do all the things any self-respecting text editor can do, but without the price tag. Up until now, a href=”http://lifehacker.com/software/notag/textwrangler-free-full+featured-text-editor-35580.php”TextWrangler/a was my text editor of choice for the Mac, but Smultron’s giving it a run for its money. Smultron is a free download for Mac only, donations accepted. div class=”related”a href=”http://tuppis.com/smultron/”Smultron/a [Tuppis via a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_we_use_a_tour_of_rww_desk.php"ReadWriteWeb/a]/div/p br style=”clear: both;”/
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Mac OS X only: If you prefer to open certain links in certain browsers, or are testing web sites for cross-browser compatibility, or you’re just finnicky, Choosy will help you manage multiple browsers. Developed by George Brocklehurst, it’s available as a free, public beta (and helpful beta users will get the full release for free in the future). Set up a few preferences, and clicking on a link will bring up a choice of browsers in a system dialog familiar to users of Command+Tab to switch applications. Choosy is a free download for Mac only.

Today, October 22nd, is International Caps Lock Day, so share with us a moment of silence to reflect on screaming emails and ponder the mysteries of the most useless key on your keyboard. The Hack a Day blog offers a quick way to disable the key for Mac OS X users, and suggest fKeys to remap it into something useful. For Windows users, try reader-submitted script Handicapslock to make it less annoying, or turn it into a browser-triggering hotkey with TabsLock. Image by Mike on Maui.

Mac OS X/Linux: Open-source media center application Boxee has updated with a new interface and—more importantly—support for the most popular site to stream TV, Hulu. Based on XBMC, Boxee is the first media center to bring Hulu out of your browser and to your television, and hopefully the rest are quick to follow suit.

Boxee is currently in invite-only alpha, but we handed out tons of invites when we took you on a screenshot tour of Boxee, so if you’re looking for an invite, someone can probably help you out in the comments. Boxee is free, Mac OS X and Linux only; a Windows version is said to be in the works.

All platforms: Mozilla has just pushed out Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 to their servers, marking the first major step toward the official 3.1 release. They haven’t yet officially announced the beta release, so the What’s New page is a 404 as of this writing. Luckily we’ve already covered a lot of the features you can expect, so hit the jump for a closer look at what Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 brings to the table.

Faster JavaScript

We’ve shown you just how fast Firefox 3.1 is compared to other browsers, and most of that is due to the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. Despite the fact that TraceMonkey comes built into 3.1, you still have to know how to enable it to take advantage. Here’s how it works:

1. Open about:config in your browser.
2. Paste javascript.options.jit.content into the filter.
3. Double-click the remaining preference to set the boolean to true.

Location Awareness

Firefox 3.1 will introduce geolocation to the mix, streamlining the process required to get information from web sites based on your location. In the current release of Firefox, you needed to install the previously mentioned Geode extension to get this functionality, but it comes baked into 3.1.

Improved Ctrl-Tab 3D interface

We told you months ago that Firefox 3.1 would have a fancy new 3D tab-switching interface, but now it’s here and it looks great.

What’s Missing

From what I can tell so far, this beta release does not yet include Private Browsing mode or the smarter session restore, but it’s an exciting start. If you give it a try, share your experience with the new features in the comments.