The latest full version of Firefox, the sexy open source browser from the fine folks at Mozilla, has been released.

I’ve discussed some of the changes to the search bar in this version in the past, but there’s a lot more new stuff to play with.

Here is a list of all the new features.

• I really like that spell checking is integrated in the browser now. In previous versions I used an extension to handle that, but it always felt kludgey and not very stable.
• The new theme struck me as a bit too “pretty” at first, but I got used to it quickly. The way the Go button is tethered to the address bar is nice.
• The built-in phishing protection will be nice for protection less savvy users from scams. It’s based on the Google Safe Browsing extension for previous versions of Firefox.
• The tabbed browsing changes seem useful for some, but I’m a huge control freak about that kind of thing and I use the Tab Mix Plus extension. Although it hasn’t been updated officially for 2.0, their development build is working perfectly for me.

Here are the full release notes for those of you that like all the details.

Don’t forget to go to Firefox Add-ons to check if there are new versions of your extensions.

I went on a bit of a hiatus from 8seek when I started posting over at 2BG more often, but now I have time to do both blogs again. It’s a shame that I went away from 8seek when I did because there’s just been a ton of Google news to post about. I’ll have to do a massive catch-up post.

If you enjoy cool gadgets, inventions and new toys, though, do check out 2bloggadgets.com.

Yotophoto is a search engine that specializes in finding freely licensable images. In that aspect it’s not too different from other search sites such as Creative Commons Search. For example, I wanted to find a picture of a very intense monkey (don’t ask why) and it was very helpful.

(Image CC by OskarN)

But what if I wanted to find something more specific like, say, a bright red car? Not all people tag or label their images based on color, so Yotophoto’s color search feature is pretty handy. Here are the search results for cars with the added hex code for red, which is #FF0000.

Even with their little color picker, though, it’s a little hard sometimes to pick a hex code that will give good results. They’re blog explains how the color matching algorithm is implemented, but I really don’t think it works as well as it should. I hope they continue working on it, though, because it could be quite useful. You know, for finding more pictures of monkeys.

If you ever find yourself in need of non-restrictive sounds for a multimedia project or a similar endeavor, The Freesound Project might be what you need. They offer a user-contributed database of Creative Commons-licensed sound files.

As with all Creative Commons materials, I would suggest you go over the licensing rules and understand when and where you can use the sounds. The Freesounds Project uses the Sampling Plus 1.0 which specifically restricts usage in advertising. It’s really not all that complicated, but proper attribution is what makes these licensing schemes work and attracts creators. Just take a quick look at their Rules and Legal pages and you’re good.

I searched for all sorts of random things and came up with really nice results. The files are of good quality and not noisy and scratchy like you’d expect from some random Joe with a crappy Walmart mic.

And just in time for Halloween, there’s a wide assortment of screams and other scary sounds.

Google has extended its Google Transit experiment to include five other cities besides the initial city of Portland, OR.

Now you can now also plan your public transportation treks in:

• Eugene, Oregon
• Honolulu, Hawaii
• Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Seattle, Washington
• Tampa, Florida

I was quite pleased to see that Tampa, my town, was added. A shame that I pretty much swore never to use public transportation again after the horrible experiences I used to have in Miami, FL. On those rare occasions that I do need to take the bus somewhere, though, it’s nice to have a handy helper like this.

And to make it easier for other cities to add their own transit data to Google Transit, they have developed and released the Google Transit Feed Specification.

If you’ve been feeling left out of Google Talk because of the requirement that you have a Gmail account, then worry no more. Google has opened Google Talk up for everyone.

There are certain draw backs to using Google Talk without a Gmail account. Features like saving your logs to email and voicemail messages will not be available.

I’m actually a Trillian man, foremost, but I do keep Google Talk around for certain things. It’s a nice client, but it just doesn’t give you enough control. I’m eager to see what future updates bring.