Volume V, Issue III 29th September 2008

SPECIAL EDITION

The BITS Herald

An Initiative to promote Free Open Source Software

Department of Journalism and Media Affairs

The big fuss about FOSS
OSS can be defined as computer software for which the human-readable source code is made
Did you know! available under a copyright license (or arrangement such as the public domain) that meets the
Open Source Definition. This permits users to use, change, and improve the software, and to
Linux is pronounced “Lee
-nucks”(not “Lie-nucks or redistribute it in modified or unmodified form. It is very often developed in a public, collabo-
“Lih-nucks”).You can hear rative manner. Open source software is the most prominent example of open source develop-
a recording of Linus Tor- ment and often compared to user generated content. The program must include source code,
valds himself clarifying
this in English and Swed- and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. The license may restrict
ish at the web site source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution
http://www.kernel.org/ of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time
pub/linux/kernel/
SillySounds There are many well known OSS projects such as Linux, Firefox, Apache, the GNU Compiler
Collection, and Perl to mention a few. Given the basic fact that OSS can be given away free, a
The name K Desktop or number of alternative models for funding its development other than from the basic profit
KDE was chosen to dis-
tinguish the software from from selling a software license, have emerged. Independent developers or companies may
CDE, Unix's Common benefit from consultancy fees or charging for services related to the end use of the software,
Desktop Environment. such as training for example :Red Hat Enterprise
When the project started
K briefly stood for kool (as
in CDE is common but
KDE is kool). K actually
doesn’t stand for anything

An Important clarification
Inside this issue:
Qs. Are all Open Source products “free” (no charge)?
Guest Editorial 2 Ans. Open Source, does not always mean 'free of charge'. There are several Open Source
commercial products available as well. The source code is available to the buyer, but there
Events 3 is a charge to the product. However, most open-source licenses allow free (no charge) use of
the software.
Career Opportunities 4
Qs. Is the learning of Linux and other open-source software difficult?
Software Freedom 5
Ans. Just as tough as learning any other 'Proprietary software'.
If you are already used to some other Operating System or another Proprietary
Interviews 6
software, then you will need to allow yourself some training time and some patience. You'll
be very pleased with yourself, in a few days.
Contd.. 7

Mozilla Tidbits 8 Contact us at [email protected] for any suggestions, ideas and feedback.
If you have an Idea, we have the Media.
 The BITS Herald

TRENDY TRENDS
by Ramprasad Joshi

The first Software Freedom Day celebrated in the Campus

It was a calibrated affair. There were quizzes and goodies, CDs and Mozilla Caps, talks and discus-
“It's about sions, but surely not the fierce debates that FOSS events usually are marked with. Well, the debates
freedom, not are what keeps the community going: FOSS is about Free and Open Source Software, and the FOSS
community believes that removing the fetters put on software by copyrights helps the society at
one that large in speedy improvement in technology and better customer satisfaction. A simple analogy: if
encroaches on you cannot afford a custom-made Rolls-Royce, it is likely that you would rather have the roadside
others' mechanic know the ins and outs of your car's engine than have the manufacturer put legal restric-
tions on the know-how. Incentive? The mechanic gets paid for his skill, labour, and time. You can
freedom, but venture out to Dudh Sagar taking only a wallet and no valet along. And the bill satisfies both, the
responsible mechanic and you. And, of course, the FOSS community does not believe in indulgence in piracy,
illegalities, and spite. Therefore, the FOSS community strives to convince one and all that getting
citizenship.”
benefits of and contributing to Free Software will work for the betterment of society and software.

So speaker after speaker spoke about the concepts behind and misconceptions about FOSS. And,
Ravikiran Aranke from Tactica backed the arguments with solid data, and proved that FOSS pays
for the developers, and pays grand. Dr. Sasikumar from C-DAC gave a pre-launch introduction to
BOSS (Bharat Operating System Solutions) (http://bosslinux.in). It was launched in Chennai on
Sunday 28/9/2008. It is Free (as in FOSS: without fetters) Indianised GNU/Linux. And Goa-LUG
members presented their favourite free softwares: DP (from Goa University, Bambolim) spoke on
LyX that makes distilling research documents as easy as licking ice-cream (of course after research
is carried out ;-); Bijon Shah (Director, CEDT Bambolim) encouraged freshers to play with the tre-
mendous flexibility of desktop management offered by FOSS; Prof. Gurunandan Bhatt (Former
head, Computer science & Technology, Goa University) spoke on FOSS web development tools.
Freelance journalist Frederick Noronha introduced the Goa-LUG to BITSians.

For starters, LyX (http://www.lyx.org) is a document processor following the self-coined "what you
see is what you mean" paradigm (WYSIWYM). It assumes that users are neither wizards nor dumb.
That is, it does not offer features that 95 % of the users don't need or use (as Ravikiran demon-
strated), at the same time it offers all the flexibility that a sharp, learning user might need in order to
keep increasing her productivity by adding features developed by herself or the FOSS community.
That is the idea behind FOSS again: instead of strapping users to a cradle or a tricycle, it allows
them to speed up with training on a bike. And FOSS has much more to offer to developers of appli-
cations ranging from systems software, embedded systems design, to web applications and servers.

Of course, without the debates, it seemed a little like a class. In a sense, most of the people present
there were already convinced that, for engineers, there is no short-cut but to learn to develop using
some Unix, and that too in the FOSS way. And then for administrators, too, some eye candy was
offered at the event last weekend. BITSians love intellectual friction, so some people tried starting a
debate by asking Bijon to suggest a choice of a window manager; but his scientific answer, that it
depended on what we were looking for, did not give the opportunity. Even when pressed to choose
for himself, he said he used more than one window managers, one each for each different purpose.
Well, that's FOSS again: neither choices are dictated, nor options are narrowed down by version
control. It's about freedom, not one that encroaches on others' freedom, but responsible citizenship.

The writer is a Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at BITS-Pilani, Goa Campus

Page 2
 Volume V, Issue III

My beautiful Linux
The problem statement asked the participant to make small videos flaunting the 3d effects and
abstract themes in linux on lines of the videos available on youtube. The rules required that the
video length be from one to four minutes. Videos could be submitted in the popular formats
such as .ogm, .mp4, etc. Addition of a song was allowed. It was also required that the video be
in a single stretch ann the extra effects were adviced to be kept to a minimum. The aim of this
event was to show the cool part of Linux where the desktop has advanced so much that in
terms of both functionality and eye candy, it is superior to other operating systems. The win-
ning entries were by Mantrala Hitesh and the other one by Swaroop and Dheeraj. Winners will
Open source university meet up.
get certificates from Sun Microsystems and CSA.

FOSS Quiz
As a part of the celebrations for
The quiz tested people's knowledge in the following fields- free software history and philoso- Software Freedom Day a gaming
phy, famous foss people, famous foss projects and companies etc. Teams of two, three teams competition was conducted on the
were selected by the prelims. Final Quiz had three rounds- first round was "mute" in which LAN. The game Sauerbraten is a
dumb charade was played (example enact the name of a linux distro.. the ones given to the cube 2 engine, similar to quake. Its
participants were names like puppy linux, damn small linux, mint linux). Second round was an open source FPS game.
"choices" where teams had to choose a category(out of a total of 9) and last was "nuts" where Basically it is a shootout game( on
they had to choose from three different types of questions (walnut - +30 for correct, -15 for in- lines of the immensely famous
correct), (cashewnut - +20,-10),and peanut (+10,-5). Counter Strike) but unlike Counter
The three teams were: A. Puneeth Chaganti. Roopesh Vaddepally Strike, there are no teams here.
Anybody can kill anybody else and
B. Omkar Bellare and Irani Mehrzad Cyrus
the one who kill the most (the top
C. Lynuz Vaz and Ajay Krishna R fragger) is the winner.
Team A emerged the winner after a tie breaker with team C After a session of grueling 80
minutes, Rohit Sambari was
declared the 'top fragger' (he had
Talent opens up at open showcase the maximum number of kills).

An event called open showcase was organized at campus on 27th September that is the
Software Freedom Day. This event served as a platform for many student to show their
technical talent in the field of computer science. To judge the talent of the participants
there were three imminent personalities Mr.Ravikiran Aranke (former MD REDHAT),
Mr. M. Sasikumar (CDAC Mumbai/Chennai) and Mr.Bijohn Shaw (ILUG Goa). The
event recorded many entries at the elementary round but the final round was among
three shortlisted teams .The final open opened up with team of Sarvpriye Khetrapal and
Sarvjyoti (both second yearites). They presented an open source software that could be
used for chatting in a LAN. This software was coded in java and packaged in UDP. They
named this software as Vchat1.1.The two features of this software were the chatroom
and the other that concentrated in peer to peer chat. The important aspect of this soft-
ware was that one could view the previous chats. The other participant was Rohan Anil
(a third yearite). He displayed face based authentication software. This software could
be employed in computer’s security for it had the property to only allow the user to login
by recognizing the face. It took picture of the user as its domestic password. This soft-
ware has been tested worldwide. Last participant was Lynus Vaz (fourth yearite). He
displayed a software that could easily solve complex mathematical equations and per-
form all types of typical calculations. The event concluded with Rohan Anil securing the
first slot, Sarvpriye and Sarvjyoti getting the second place and Lynus Vaz in third place.
 The BITS Herald

Life’s like FOSS A Talk about Career Opportunities in FOSS

“People look at the
3000+ images I've A talk about career opportunities in FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) was delivered by Mr.
shared on Flickr, and Ravikiran Aranke on the occasion of Software Freedom Day. Mr. Aranke, a B. Tech. in Computer
come to me whenever Science from IIT Bombay, is ex-MD RedHat India and a visiting faculty at Chowgule College, Goa.
they want to use some- He is currently working with Tactica Capital. He has been working in the IT field for over 17 years
thing commercially, and has worked with companies like Fujitsu, Sun and RedHat. His previous job profiles range from
offering some amount an engineer to a manager, a consultant, a venture capitalist and more. During the course of his can-
of compensation for did talk he busted several myths that people harbour regarding open source.
commercial use of my
photographs! Imitation He started off by explaining how one can work in open source and still get rich. He suggested to the
is the best form of audience, a book by the title “Stumbling on Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert, while stating how work-
flattery, so let us be ing in open source makes him happy. He compared the open source market to a bazaar where we get
flattered when our the best value for our money. He listed the various job opportunities in the open source industry.
work is copied. “ These include the Producers/Maintainers of open source, Prosumers (Professional Consumers) of
open source like users of Skype and the In-house consumers of open source like banks, telecommu-
-Frederick Noronha
nication companies, etc. The fact that all the software that one needs to start an internet business
today is available for free thanks to open source has significantly contributed to this steep fall. Later,
he used Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, to stress upon his point that students of premier colleges like
BITS and IITs should do work that gives them maximum satisfaction rather than worry about their
“The cost of starting physiological needs being met. Towards the end of the talk, Mr. Aranke focussed on the learning
aspect of open source. He discussed how open source enables one to learn fast from which one gets
an internet business
happiness also. Then he explained mental models, the numbers of which determine the difference
has fallen from between an amateur and an expert. Mental models in programming include algorithms
$10million in 1997 to (optimization, AI, etc.) and Data Structures (arrays, hash tables, etc.). He showed how feedback
$2million in 2003 and loops in the open source industry help in fast learning. He emphasised how insight comes from
finally to almost zero watching the masters and doing things yourself. The talk was very informative and the audience
exited LT4, more confident about open source.
in 2008”

Freedom– A means to an end

Credits
Pratik Mandrekar …from the perspective of a typical BITSian
Shilpa Garg
Rithika Ardeshir Arriving late for my very first lecture on linux! You bet I missed something… something very important.
Megha Ghildyal Well Fredrick Noronha had already finished with his cult intro, Bijon Shah was up with his Desktops and
Rithvic Rajah window managers in Linux and it was a chilly and by all means a lousy but active Saturday evening in LT-
Abhishek Agrawal 4. The first thing Mr. Bijon Shah said about Linux was (though a little bit annoying for a born-with-
Ojas Mehta windows-in heart kid like me) was that "LINUX WAS FAR MORE SUPERIOR TO WINDOWS IN
Jayshree S. EVERY RESPECT". Then there was a presentation on the myths about Linux (which might have proved
Dhashrath Raghuraman quite enlightening to the cent-strong audience present there). The intriguing part about it being the very
Abhishek Jain
common myths like "Linux is very difficult to be learnt by a beginner", " There aren’t enough applications",
Anurag Sharma
Saumil Srivastava "Being UNIX based its devoid of a GUI"; being answered in such a simple and convincing manner, even
Shekhar Iyer Bill Gates would fall for it. Then he came up with another presentation on the simple, high-utility, not to
Madhupurna Biswas overlook attractive Linux Desktops, followed by another mind-boggling one on window managers. He con-
Emaad Ahmed Manzoor cluded his informative yet interactive session with another awesome presentation on Desktop Environments
Nilesh Gaurav in Linux (try out KDE 4. The best one yet). All in all it made a perfect day's work for a total computer-
Anish Agarwal sucker. Bravo SFD! Cant wait for the next SOFTWARE FREEDOM DAY!!!

Dept. Of Photography

Page 4
 Volume V, Issue III

Freedom for software??

Freedom, this is probably one of those words in dictionary that has not been defined for the past 800
year of existence of dictionary. In an interactive session held in the campus on 26th September SOFT-
WARE FREEDOM DAY, Mr. Tapan Purkait made an attempt to probably define this term in the con-
text of using software.
Mr. Tapan Purkait is a MBA and is pursuing his PhD in Information Security. He has established a
teaching firm named NETTECH. This firm offers technical courses with regards to computer science
to students in different colleges all over India. The firm has offered the course for network security and
Linux in BPGC this semester .
The sessions opened with the question from Mr. Tapan asking what exactly we mean by freedom of
software. The students participated actively and came up with different answers and Mr. Tapan settled
with the definition of it being a software in which the user had access to the code and could play with
it by altering the code. He further went on to say that such software is not liable in MNC’s where they
emphasize more on data security than on the cost. He explained the commercial prospective of such
free software. He said that companies like FEDORA exploit the knowledge of people to improve the
code of this open software and then the companies brand them and sell out. He further told the stu-
dents that why the small companies like HP and CHIRAAG don’t go for open source software.
In his concluding words he summarized the talk quoting that freedom of software means different
things to techie guys like us and people in MNC’s. And it is because of this that MNC’s rely on
REDHAT rather than a free software.

Way to web development

To contribute to
Prof. Gurunandan Bhatt who is the former head of the Computer Science and Technology Department humanity the FOSS
of Goa University was at BITS PILANI GOA CAMPUS on 28th September to acknowledge the gath- way, check out:
ering of students and varied personalities on the occasion of Software Freedom Day.
Prof. Bhatt has been the head of “technology at synapses” and was involved in setting up of the earli- http://hfoss.org/
est fiber based campus wide computing network & Internet gateway in country. His specialty is in
designing efficient but inexpensive information systems. He enlightened the students by talking about
the development of websites and tools that help in it. There has been a drastic change in the usage of
web over the years. Presently the maximum utilization of a website is not through the users who surf
through it but by the various sites that have links to that site and are using that site. Thus to minimize
this ambiguity there arises a need to create a clean and simple javascript so as to involve user partici-
pation to the maximum. There are three main parts of a website which can be listed as MARKUP or
CONTENT,LAYOUT or PRESENTATION and BEHAVIOUR.
While the content is the basic semantics of the web development, behavior and the layout description
lies in the java script part of the web development. So basically what a web devoloper needs is a com-
bination of three main assets which are:
1:) Tools
2:) Library
3:) Documentation
The tools comprise the debugging software and the different integrated development environments
[IDE]’s which can be handful in preparation of a website. Some of these tools even provide custom
made solution to web developer’s problems saving his time and hard work.
A library is a tool that helps the web developer in his formulation of the javascript of the web page.
Advanced libraries not only provide good javascripts but also provide their own suggestions so as to
make the javascript simple and clean. Documentation refers to the content of your web page which
should be lucrative to the users.
Thus a good web developer must imbibe in him the act of clean and simple javascripts by using the
above mentioned techniques and step by step preparation of a web page.
Page 5
 The BITS Herald

“TECHIES SHOULD WRITE”

FREDERICK NORONHA | INTERVIEW
“There was this Hole
in the Wall Frederick Noronha: [Mr. Noronha is the head of Goa Linux Users Group and a member of in-
ternational SFD (Software Freedom Day) team. He is a freelance journalist and his articles are
experiment
published frequently in Linux for You magazine. ]
conducted at IIT
Delhi, where they DoJMA caught up with him after his talk at the Software Freedom Day event, here at BPGC
on the September. We didn't have to ask him too many questions before we got to know all
put up a computer that we wanted to know, and more!
next to a slum and
allowed kids to play Q. Where did you start?
with it “ Writing's not rocket science; it's just common sense applied. I'm not even a techie-guy; I come
from a commerce background. I started of very much into just general journalism in Goa in
“You techies are very 1983, spent seven years writing for the Herald; and I eventually got fed up.Then I went to Dec-
well placed to write. can Herald, where I was, again, a general journalist covering Goa. The job was good but bor-
One, you understand ing; Goa's is a small place and after a while you start repeating yourself, there's a limit to the
the issues. Two, your number of topics you can write about. After that I got into the environment field, and then
kind of training can around 1998-1999 technology caught my eye, so I moved to technology. And it's a very inter-
be used in any field esting field; you should promote more people to write on it. There are tons of openings in that
tomorrow. While your field; part-time, freelance, blogs...for student journalists which are perfect ways to get started.
learning may seem Once people see your work they actually invite you to write. India needs good technical writ-
very abstract now, ers.
what you gain is the
ability to think logi- Q. Frederick the journalist, or Frederick the founder of the Goa LUG?
cally, a kind of
method which you Journalist! I'm not capable of addressing a learned techie audience; my primary aim is to take
can apply to any sci- technology and bring it to the layman in a form he understands. When I started using Linux, it
ence. I'm not sug- took me a month before I figured out how to use it! I admit there is a steep learning curve. But
gesting that all of you it’s different for the younger generation. Give a kid a magazine, and he'll be implementing the
become full-time jour- contained ideas within no time! I think the open source model is perfect for implementation in
nalists! But do write our society; both technologically and as a culture in itself. Technology is not for technology's
once in a while; and sake, it’s for people's sake. We Indians are great at mastering technology, but not at applying
match your hobbies it. It's a major challenge for us to take every small little technological advancement and use it
with your work. After for something. We talk about IT when it's only T, we're not a very information efficient society;
you can't get a list of buses plying from Vasco to Panjim! Take for example, East Africa, where
25 years of being
they've got this service called MPacer, which is used to transfer money with the ease of an
a journalist, I still SMS. Now this system is slowly starting off in India, with a lot of restrictions crippling the entire
wake up and wait idea of convenience. This is where India lags behind, application of the technology we con-
to get to work. I'm tinually innovate.
having so much
fun!”

Enterprises started: I recently started this small publishing company, non-profit, that publishes books for a niche audi-
ence, like this one about journalists. I think it's very important to give people a voice, because you never know what'll
come out! Then there Bytes4All, which is basically a mailing list. It's run totally by volunteers and is based in cyberspace.
As of now we have around 1600 readers!

Bottomline: Basically, I want to underline that techie's should write. I got a chance to collaborate with a Pakistani guy
in a study on the open source movement in different parts of the world. He actually studied how free software and open
source can be applied to different spheres of life; like open source biology, or open source law! You might lose the ad-
vantage of keeping your cards close, but you will benefit from taking in the views of the entire audience before present-
ing the case. It's a neat example of how technological terms, and philosophies need not be restricted to hardware and
software. Page 6
 Volume V, Issue III

State of the Art—FOSS Pluggable Authentication Module …we believe in FOSS, Do

using Face recognition by Rohan
captivates the LT’s Anil ( 1 of 3 students from campus you?
selected for Google Summer of
Code)

EXCERPTS FROM M. SASIKUMAR , PROJECT LEAD, BHARAT OPERATING SYSTEM SOLUTIONS (BOSS)

1.Why is open source important for India?

i) Cost, affordability ii) Localization with respect to Indian culture (user interface)
iii) Vendor locking iv) For upcoming companies

2. Currently Microsoft is the dominant player in the market; all of us still buy the latest version of Windows that
comes to the market. How can open source be taken to the everyday community?

There are three angles to it: adoption, usability and financing

“. Most of the people who buy a 40k laptop do not mind spending say another 10k on windows, OR EVEN USING A PI-
RATED VERSION OF IT. If someday Microsoft decides to start an anti piracy drive, then a lot of users will switch over to
Linux. The only reason why most people are using windows is that it’s free for them anyway. Probably this is the reason why
Microsoft has not launched an official campaign.”

“We at CDAC found that e-learning has a very strong connection to AI, and to open source. It is almost like a bridge
between the two. E-learning is all about learning and sharing, which is exactly what open source is about. With the
help of AI, we can understand what's good for the students, what learning/teaching techniques should be adopted
etc.”

For all the software enthusiasts in BITS, what is the importance of doing a PhD?
I don’t look at software enthusiasts and PhD linked in any way. There is a research component in PhD which need not be
there in software development. Innovation is not equal to research. You can have an innovation in software that has no
research value, but research work would need some amount of innovation at least. But PhD is certainly useful because that is
the time when you actually start doing research.

You can read this and have it to*:

In Black And White: It's based on the free software model, of getting people to contribute and putting it together.
There are 22 chapters, written by 22 journalists in Goa. It's basically an open source book! Which is very coherent
with Frederick's aim to promote the free software philosophy beyond the boundaries of technology, and into the
realm of society. Coming soon, to the BPGC Library!

Plenty of other FOSS literature is available. Try Googling or using one of the most popular Open Source project-
The Wiki. Besides our very own P2P network on campus offers an excellent repository of FOSS stuff.

Page 7
 The Godzilla of the Internet - Mozilla firefox

The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support

Did you know: and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. The organiza-
Mozilla has an interesting family
tion sets the policies that govern development, operate key infrastructure
tree .Mozilla was the code name
used by Netscape for their
and control trademarks and other intellectual property
Navigator Web Browser. Mosaic Firefox add-ons are small pieces of software that add new features or func-
was a competing web browser from tionality to your installation of Firefox. Add-ons can augment Firefox with
1994.Mosaic spun off from the new search engines, foreign-language dictionaries, or change the visual ap-
university of Illinois at Urbana- pearance of Firefox. Through add-ons, you can customize Firefox to meet
Champaign into a company called your needs and tastes.
Spyglass which was later to be This article covers the two types of add-ons: extensions and themes.
bought by Microsoft and form the
Themes change the visual appearance of Firefox.The Mozilla Foundation is
basis of the Internet Explorer
(IE). The name Mozilla is the
a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for
combination of “The Mosaic Killer” the open source Mozilla project. The organization sets the policies that
and “Godzilla Monster” govern development, operate key infrastructure and control trademarks and
other intellectual property
Mozilla Theme of the month Firefox add-ons are small pieces of software that add new features or func-
Chromifox tionality to your installation of Firefox. Add-ons can augment Firefox with
A look alike theme giving the friendly Firefox new search engines, foreign-language dictionaries, or change the visual ap-
an interface much like that of Google chrome
pearance of Firefox. Through add-ons, you can customize Firefox to meet
your needs and tastes.

Some interesting Addons

1. FireFTP: FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to
FTP servers.Along with transferring your files quickly and efficiently, FireFTP also includes more advanced features such as: direc-
tory comparison, syncing directories while navigating, SFTP, SSL encryption, search/filtering, integrity checks, remote editing,
drag & drop, file hashing, and much more!
2. FoxyProxy: FoxyProxy is an advanced proxy management tool that completely replaces Firefox's limited proxying capabilities.
3. WOT : Web of Trust, warns you about risky websites that try to scam visitors, deliver malware or send spam. Protect your com-
puter against online threats by using WOT as your front-line layer of protection when browsing or searching in unfamiliar territory.
WOT's color coded Icons show you ratings for 20 million websites - green to go, yellow for caution and red to stop – helping you
avoid the dangerous sites. Surf safer!
4. BlogRovr : RovR fetches posts from your favorite blogs about anything you're browsing, and shows you summaries you can
open read posts without leaving the web page you were on.
BlogRovR also suggests popular items AND lets you Twitter about any site you're on too.
5. Download Helper :DownloadHelper is a tool for web content extraction. Its purpose is to capture video and image files from
many sites. Just surf the Web as you are used to, when DownloadHelper detects it can do something for you, the icon gets animated
and a menu allows you to download files by simply clicking an item For instance, if you go to a YouTube page, you'll be able to
download the video directly on your file system. It also works with MySpace, Google videos etc.
6. Cooliris (formerly PicLens) Full-Screen, 3D -- Cooliris (formerly known as PicLens) transforms your browser into a visually
stunning experience for searching, viewing, and sharing online photos and
videos. The "3D Wall" lets you effortlessly search and zoom your way around thousands of images, videos, news feeds, sports
feeds, and more. To share stuff with friends, just drag and drop.
7. Flagfox : Flagfox is an extension for Mozilla Firefox that shows a flag icon in the address bar or status bar indicating the current
web site's server location. It uses relatively little resources, and works by accessing an IP address location database contained within
the extension rather than relying on top-level-domain roots like ".com" or ".uk". Clicking the icon loads Geotool, which provides a
map of the location as well as more detailed information such as the ISP, city, and local time. The context menu also provides quick
access to information about the country of origin, as well as the ability to lookup the domain's registrant via Whois.
8.SpeedDial :With Speed Dial, you can easily access your most used websites. To show the Speed Dial tab, use the Speed Dial
button (which can be added to the toolbar), or enter "chrome://speeddial/content" in your location bar.To assign one website to
Speed Dial, use the new "Set as Speed Dial" option in the bookmarks menu, or right click on the tab you want to add, and choose
"Set as Speed Dial". That option is also available in the contextual area menu. Speed Dial will be automatically loaded in blank new
windows. It can also load in blank new tabs. To configure this, and other options, use the extension settings panel.

For Command line Experience try Ubiquity from Mozilla labs (http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/ )