Back in September, we tested out the Starbucks Card Mobile app, then a BlackBerry app that kicked off a pilot program for a digital prepaid Starbucks loyalty card on your mobile phone.

Today, Starbucks is expanding the program past its pilot retail stores, including kiosks at Target. Now the Starbucks Card Mobile app (for iPhone, iPod Touch, and BlackBerry) is a digital version of your prepaid card that you can actually use in 7,500 stores instead of cash or your plastic card to buy those frothy cappuccinos and extra-hot venti decaf skinny hazelnut lattes.

We tested out the app again just for fun, and found it worked smoothly. You have to already have a Starbucks card, which we do, and it helps to have your credit card or PayPal information already added to your account. Virtually topping up the digital card was a snap, and paying was as easy as pressing a button and waiting for the app to generate a bar code.

The store location feature is another bonus; it uses Google Maps to help you find the source of your next caffeine fix.

The Starbucks Card Mobile app is free, and available through BlackBerry App World and the iPhone App Store. We expect to see a version for Android next.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

It can be a challenge to maintain a pristine music collection once you've migrated to a digital library. With all the moving, copying, downloading, ripping, and transferring files that sometimes goes on, many of us are bound to end up with some duplicate tracks scattered around our hard drives. If you want to get things all nice and tidy again--not to mention clear up some space on your computer--Similarity is here to help. This fairly basic utility scans your system for music files and helps you locate and delete dupes.

Check out Similarity on Download.com to continue reading the review and get access to a one-click download.

The upcoming release candidate of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 browser is said to include a new feature that will let users selectively pick which parts of Web pages can load ActiveX elements.

According to blog WinRumors, which is citing its own sources, the security-focused feature will be included inside the first release candidate for IE9, which is expected to arrive later this month. The filter will come in the form of a toggle that sits alongside the recently announced tracking protection feature--the one that blocks third-parties from tracking user behavior from site to site. Together, the two features would give users more control over what can be done by individual pieces of the page.

When asked about the arrival of the feature, Microsoft declined to comment beyond saying, "Microsoft has not released this Internet Explorer 9 code to the public and we caution consumers and businesses that downloading software (including workarounds) from a non-genuine source can pose risks to their environment."

ActiveX has had a long history as an integral part of Internet Explorer. Since its introduction in the mid-'90s, the technology played an important part in giving site makers ways to build increasingly interactive Web applications. But at the same time, ActiveX also became a means for sites and individuals to run exploits and other malicious code through the browser. Microsoft responded by beefing up IE's default security settings for ActiveX content, requiring user approval to run plug-ins, and implementing a blacklist to keep known malicious controls from loading. If implemented, this security feature would be another layer on top of these protective measures.

IE9 has been in beta since mid-September of last year, and has proven to be a popular download among users, with the most recently released numbers pegging downloads north of 20 million.

Originally posted at News - Microsoft

It's hardly the only multifeatured download enhancement add-on in Firefox's deep add-ons catalog, but DownThemAll is one of the best. It just got better with an upgrade to version 2 that supports Firefox 4, can customize download speed limits, and sniffs out media including support for HTML5.

While support for Firefox 4 was essential to the add-on's continued life, the granular controls over download speeds are a welcome surprise. You can now set different maximum download speeds by individual download, by server, or as a global preference. Separately, you can also set download limits by server.

Firefox's trackless browsing option receives support in DownThemAll 2. This means that even if you're running in Private Browsing mode, you can run the add-on and get the increased download speeds it provides.

The media-sniffing option will discover and download audio and video embedded or linked in a Web page for you, as long as you're looking at a site on HTTP or HTTPS. Of course, this is the case for the vast majority of users and ought not to pose a problem.

DownThemAll's queue control has been improved as well, with new filters available to help clear the line of in-progress and completed downloads that have been set up; and DownThemAll now offers official, developer-sponsored integration with the Firefox add-on Video DownloadHelper. HTML5 support includes both < video > and < audio > tags, at least as far as they've been documented and integrated into the browser itself. The HTML5 standards have yet to be finalized.

Other changes of interest to the add-on include better context menu integration; a rejiggering of how the average download speed gets calculated to favor more recent downloads; and support for third-party download services such as RapidShare without having to enable third-party cookies when cookies have been disabled. Some add-on defaults have been changed, too, including making five auto-retries spaced 5 minutes apart before marking a download a failure; upping the number of concurrent downloads from four to eight, although concurrent downloads from the same server remain restricted to four; and granting read permissions to the user group for new downloads.

Another change to DownThemAll comes from a savvy fan of the add-on who found that it works much better on Windows 7 when a Microsoft bug fix has been applied to the operating system, and so the add-on publisher recommends that Windows 7 users make sure they've installed the fix for more stable downloading.

Got a favorite downloader? Tell us about it in the comments.

Windows' disk defragmentation tool is an old workhorse that recent upgrades haven't really improved. In fact, more than a few users were disappointed that the strangely mesmerizing block-by-block progress display had vanished from newer versions. You can get the old view back and much more with O&O Defrag, an automatic utility that can not only improve your system's performance by defragmenting data but also keep it running smoothly by preventing data fragmentation before it happens as it chugs on unnoticed in the background.

Today, the developer has announced a brand-new version of its Defrag software: the Free Edition. Home users can grab either the 32-bit version or 64-bit version exclusively on Download.com for the next 24 hours.