Firefox has been steadily losing ground to Chrome and Opera in the past few years. I find this sad, as Mozilla were groundbreakers at the time and rescued us all from an IE-only world. I, myself, switched to Chrome a while back, but now that Firefox 8 is out, I decided to give it another chance. But Firefox is not perfect. So why not make it better?

This week, we’re giving away 25 licenses for Auslogics BoostSpeed. Stick around to read more about what BoostSpeed can do and to find out how you can win your own free license!

Last week we wondered what you think about alternative keyboard layouts. While not many of you voted, the majority who did are curious about alternative keyboard layouts, believe they might be better, but feel that the switch would be too hard. This might be so, but some readers still reported they managed to switch, permanently or for a while.

Following their interesting Windows Phone 7 launch, Spotify has released an update for its much-loved iOS app. Spotify’s app, while only available in a limited number of countries, is one of the most popular ways to listen to music on iOS devices, and if you were getting worried about the Facebook spam it creates, you’re going to love this update.

PDFs are quite common in everyday life. Be it books, papers, manuals and what not, you probably find yourself reading PDFs at least once every day. There is a built-in way to read PDFs on the iPad, but it’s not a very good one. But there are lots of free PDF readers in the app store, so how can you know what’s good?

Following the failed launch about 2 weeks ago, Google has once again launched the Gmail app for iOS. This time we think they’ve got it right. The last time Gmail for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch was launched, it was taken off the market the same day due to a bug in the notifications system. Now that it’s all better, let’s take a brief look at this long long awaited app from Google.

Lately I’ve been hearing it more and more – you’re a nobody in the online world if you don’t use Twitter. Surprisingly, I’ve been part of the online world for quite a few years now, and did not actually have a private Twitter account up until a few days ago. It wasn’t laziness or lack of knowledge, I just don’t like Twitter.

As rare as it is for Apple to publicly admit a malfunction, this one is too big to overlook. According to Apple, the batteries of some first generation iPod nanos may overheat and become a safety risk. While this is a rare occurrence, Apple has decided not to take risks this time. If you own a first gen iPod nano, check out Apple’s replacement program.

The Kindle Fire is planned to launch tomorrow, and Amazon is definitely preparing for it. Amazon’s App Store, until now just another app we had to download through the Market, will be the integrated and exclusive app store on the Kindle Fire. As such, it needed a major overhaul – and it got one.

Did you notice the changes to Google Reader? You must have noticed how the color scheme changed, how the spacing changed in list mode, and to top it all off, that you can’t share items anymore, unless you use Google+. Here are two add-ons that will help you restore some of these features and get your good old Reader back.

If you have a new Google+ Page, you can now also have a Google+ Badge. As you probably know, Google recently launched Google+ Pages, so brands, companies, websites, etc. can also have a Google+ presence. But as it is now, this presence is not very easy to find. To the rescue comes Google+ Badges.

A huge majority of computer users use Qwerty as their keyboard layout; it’s the default in almost every keyboard in the world, and everyone is used to it. But there are at least two more layouts out there, and according to the people who use them, they’re actually better. So what do MakeUseOf readers think of them?

Google is giving away 10 Galaxy Nexus devices with Ice Cream Sandwich over the next 10 days, starting today. The contest will involve daily Twitter challenges, and the ones who tweet the right answers may win the coveted Galaxy Nexus.

In a surprising move (or not so surprising), Adobe is discontinuing its development of Flash plugin for mobile browsers. According to Adobe’s official announcement, they will now focus their efforts on HTML5 instead, as it is “now universally supported on major mobile devices, in some cases exclusively”. They will also continue development of mobile apps based on Adobe AIR and of Flash for desktop.

Spotify and Microsoft have announced the release of Spotify for Windows Phone 7. This highly anticipated app brings Spotify’s music streaming services to Mango OS, and is another breakthrough for Microsoft’s mobile enterprise. According to Spotify, the app is available on a wide variety of WP7 mobiles, which together with their apps for Android and iOS makes them one of the most widespread music apps.