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Posted by Chris Sacca, Special Initiatives

In Wi-Fi terms, I can go just 19 steps from my front door and still get coverage. The nearest coffee shop seems within reach -- but signal strength-wise, there's not enough power to pick it up. And the signal def­in­itely isn't strong enough to get to the res­taur­ant kitty-­corner from my place. Frankly, my home Wi-Fi connection works just enough to let me use it in the middle of oncoming traffic (especially dangerous considering that I live on a Muni line). As soon as I take that 20th step, I either lose signal altogether, or have to pay some crazy amount of dough to jump onto the Internet at a paid hotspot.

So when I'm out and about, how am I supposed to stay current on the filming of M.C. Hammer's latest videos in downtown San Francisco? Of course, I also need constant connectivity to keep tabs on the inventory of pirate supplies at 826 Valencia. And without Wi-Fi, how else can I check in on craigslist missed connections in real time?

This is why I am especially excited to hear that the City and County of San Francisco just chose the bid from EarthLink and Google to offer citywide Wi-Fi access. If all goes well, construction will commence this year on a network that would provide it for free to virtually the entire city at speeds up to six times dial-up.

I can't wait for Wi-Fi everywhere. Who knows? Pretty soon I might even be able to wirelessly place an order with the Tamale Lady. But first, I need to dodge this streetcar bearing down on me -- yikes!

Update: Revised first 3 sentences for clarity.

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Posted by Justin Voskuhl, Software Engineer

Here in the Kirkland, we've had one of the rainiest winters in a long time, giving me extra time to work on the latest release of the Google Toolbar for Firefox. Today, we're happy to release the beta version of Google Toolbar 2 for Firefox. If you were wondering what we were doing with that extra time indoors, Toolbar for Firefox is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux -- and in 16 languages.

This new release includes feed integration with the Google Personalized Homepage and a number of other feed readers. We've made searching better by including previous queries, spelling corrections, and suggestions for popular choices. Gmail fans might appreciate having the mailto: links in Firefox open a compose window in Gmail -– no more copying and pasting email addresses. And to combat the ever-increasing threat of phishing, we've integrated the Safe Browsing extension into Toolbar to alert you when a page is trying to steal sensitive information. Check out everything in the new Toolbar here.

As a dedicated Firefox user, I think that the latest version enhances an already innovative browser. Meanwhile, you IE Toolbar 4 fans may notice that the feature sets aren't identical. That's because Firefox and IE users have different needs. Rest assured that we're working to get the most popular features in both versions.

Here's my new customized Firefox Toolbar, showing my Google Personalized Homepage (built from feeds I discovered using the feed feature). It also gives me history, popular queries, and query corrections in my search box, which I moved to the upper right with the new custom layout.

Reuters - European Union regulators said on Thursday they were taking legal action against several EU member states for failing to apply four of the 25-nation bloc's climate change laws.