Google on Wednesday announced more ways for Android users to discover fresh applications on its Android Market website. A new “Top apps” chart is now country specific and provides the newest content across top new free, top new paid, and top grossing lists. Google also added an “Editor’s Choice” section that displays the best applications as chosen by the Android team. Other enhancements include a “Top Developers” section, improved recommendations of related apps, and a “trending apps” feature on the home page that shows applications that are particularly hot based on the number of daily installs. The changes are live now at http://market.android.com.

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Verizon Wireless has announced that it will issue a software update for the HTC ThunderBolt on May 3rd. The update will enhance the connectivity to Verizon’s 3G network – when a 4G signal isn’t available, of course – and will also fix some email and SMS bugs so that messages are stored properly in your inbox. Verizon also said that, after the patch is applied, the Backup Assistant application will display properly in the applications menu. Other fixes include faster loading of GPS updates and stability improvements for Facebook, KAYAK, Yahoo! Mail, My Verizon, and others. Unfortunately, the update doesn’t appear to offer any improvements to the ThunderBolt’s notoriously bad battery life.

[Via Mobile Burn]

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Following word that the release of Nokia’s E7 smartphone has been delayed, some uplifting Nokia news comes from Beijing Tuesday morning. IDG reporter Mikael Ricknäs is in attendance at the 2010 International Mobile Internet Conference, and he has relayed some tasty tidbits from the show. First, Nokia apparently has some big things in store for the Symbian OS in 2011. The somewhat stale UI will be a primary focus, which is of course great news for Symbian users. Of course we’ve known that the Symbian UI would be overhauled in 2011 for quite some time now — Symbian^3 was intended to be a major behind-the-scenes update, while Symbian^4 and S^5 would address more user-facing issues. The only difference now is that the S^4 and S^5 monikers have wisely been dropped.

Getting into specifics, an update in Q1 2011 will include more than 50 enhancements, such as an overhauled Web browser UI. Second and third quarter updates will bring “a new look and feel for the user interface, a more flexible home screen, an updated HTML5 browser and an easier software update experience.” Nokia will also issue more powerful hardware next year as it reportedly prepares to release 1GHz and dual-core devices. Finally, Nokia is planning to release hardware with “true zoom camera” technology in late 2011 or early 2012. While Nokia did not clarify what this new camera technology is, it could very well bring optical zoom to Nokia’s smartphones.

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Search giant Google has announced a new labs feature for their Gmail web-based email client called “video chat enhancements.” As Google explains:

Visit the Gmail Labs tab under Settings, turn on “Video chat enhancements,” and right away, you’ll see higher resolution video and a bigger video chat window.The higher resolution video uses a new playback mechanism which enables widescreen VGA and frees up valuable resources on your computer. For it to work, both you and the person you’re chatting with will need to have the lab turned on.

If you find yourself frequently using the video chat feature of Gmail, take the new feature for a spin and let us know what you think.

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Reduce the amount of RAM Firefox uses for its cache feature

1. Type “about:config” (no quotes) in the adress bar in the browser.
2. Find “browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewer”
3. Set it’s value to “0“;(Zero)

Increase the Speed at Which Firefox loads pages

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit Enter.
(Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.)

2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 10.

This means it will make 10 requests at once.

3. Lastly, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0“;.(Zero)

This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. If you’re using a broadband connection you’ll load pages faster now.
Optionally (for even faster web browsing) here are some more options for your about:config (you might have to create some of these entries by Right Click –> New– > Interger or String

network.dns.disableIPv6: set “false”
“content.notify.backoffcount”: set “5“; (Five)
“plugin.expose_full_path”: set “true”.
“ui.submenuDelay”: set “0; (zero)

Reduce RAM usage to 10MB when Firefox is minimized:

This little hack will drop Firefox’s RAM usage down to 10 Mb when minimized:

1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter “config.trim_on_minimize”. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.

Thanks, Mel!

[Via Unplggd]

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