Ads that track your online behavior using cookies aren't the worst problem on the Internet, but they are one of the more annoying ones. Internet Explorer 9 offers a tracking ad blocker similar to Firefox's AdBlock Plus add-on, except this one's built in.

In this video, we show you how to enable the list, how to tweak it to your liking, and how to download extra lists to customize it even further.

There's no doubt electric scooters offer increased mobility to the elderly, but the 99-cent iOS/Android game Turbo Grannies takes that concept to an absurd level.

In Turbo Grannies, the main protagonist is a geriatric hell-bent on going like the wind through side-scrolling levels--in a powered three-wheeled scooter. With unlimited lives, gone are the days when Grandma needed to say, "I've fallen and I can't get up!"

Players can ride through three areas (mountain, suburbia, and desert) that have some layout differences, but the concept is essentially the same: get Grandma to the end of the level by successfully jumping over obstacles.

Speed is controlled by pressing your finger on the right side of the screen, while braking/reverse is on the left. Gameplay is easy, but after several levels the jumps become much more challenging. I found myself stuck at one part of a level for 5 or 10 minutes, having to frustratingly restart at a checkpoint since crashing the vehicle is commonplace.

Balance is difficult to maintain in the air, as the game uses your phone's built-in accelerometer to lean the scooter back or forward. Sounds simple, but even after playing for a while the balance controls felt exaggerated and led me to feel irritated.

If there's one thing Turbo Grannies has going for it, it's the sound effects (which, be warned, some will likely find tasteless). There's nothing like going airborne and doing flips with a bobble-headed grandma, only to have a spine-snapping crash and hear an "Ow!" followed up with a splatter that sounds like someone jumping into a vat of lard. Ouch.

Despite Turbo Grannies appearing polished on first glance, the experience is severely lacking. This is quite odd considering the game is a total hit in Sweden (one of the top paid apps), and is optimized for the iPhone 4's Retina display, gyroscope, etc. The real problem is that there are no achievements, power-ups, jump distance bonuses, or other incentives to keep someone truly rolling.

We'll have to put Turbo Grannies back in the retirement home for now.

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Originally posted at Crave

Taking a page from its competitors but putting its own spin on it, Microsoft has introduced a new way to search in Internet Explorer 9. Called One Box, it combines the search box with the location bar.

You can navigate to a site, search for sites, look at browsing history or favorites, and change search providers on the fly. Check out how to use the One Box in this how-to video. You can also download Internet Explorer 9 here.

Internet Explorer 9 has a lot of cool new features. "Pinned sites" lets you create site-specific browsers on your Windows 7 desktop. Pinned sites by default recolor IE9's Aero glass-style interface based on the color schemes in the site's favicon, which is a neat little trick, and use the site's favicon as the Windows 7 taskbar icon.

If coded properly by the site's developers, a site can customize the jump list links, integrate player controls for streaming media sites such as Pandora, or have a counter display the number of unread e-mails in your Web mail account. Any site developer can implement the feature by using Microsoft's pinned site API. Check out this How To video to see how it's done.

Ever feel like the stock iOS Calendar app has room for improvement? Like, a lot of room? It's a pretty rudimentary tool, without so much as a week view or the option to sync with Google Calendar.

Needless to say, there are alternatives. I've rounded up three apps that make scheduling and agenda management a whole lot easier. Take a look:

Calendars Readdle's Google Calendar client ($6.99) does it all, syncing with all your calendars and letting you manage them both online and offline. It features day, week, month, and list views, drag-and-drop event management, and one-tap appointment creation. My only complaint with the app is that it's slow at times, but if you're a GCal user, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better solution.

Cozi Family Organizer Cozi is a Web-based calendar manager for families. It's pretty awesome--and so is this companion app. Although the calendar limits you to a list view, it effortlessly stays in sync with the Web version, thus giving you a color-coded, at-a-glance look at who's doing what and when. For busy families, there's no better solution. The app is free, just like the service, and it's available for Android as well (great for cross-platform families).

Easy Calendar Been pining for a week view? Easy Calendar gives you one, and integrates seamlessly with the native Calendar app (meaning events created in Easy Calendar show up in Calendar, and vice versa). Plus, true to its name, it makes appointment scheduling much faster and easier: just three taps to create a new event or two taps to edit one. It's absolutely worth the $3.99 price of admission.

OK, those are my picks for must-have calendar apps. But the App Store is home to countless others, so hit the comments and let me know which app(s) you like best for managing your schedule.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas

Firefox may be under fire from Microsoft's newly competitive browser, but with more than twice the downloads in its first day, Firefox 4 today soared over its rival by one measurement.

Microsoft, not without reason, boasted that IE9 was downloaded 2.35 million times in the first 24 hours after its release last week. And that is indeed a big number, especially for a browser that tech enthusiasts had scoffed at for years.

But less than 24 hours after its own launch, Firefox 4 cleared 4.7 million, according to the Mozilla Glow site that logs downloads.

That's a lot less than the 8 million copies of Firefox 3 downloaded in that version's 24-hour debut in 2008, but that event was a heavily promoted "Download Day," and it should be noted that Firefox 4's full day hasn't finished yet.

And it does signal that at least a very sizable chunk of the Net-connected population is, in Firefox's apt phrase, choosing to "upgrade the Web." New browsers bring new Web standards, new performance, and often a new auto-update ethos that likely will lead to browsers staying continuously updated. That could simplify lives for Web developers who constantly wrangle with the difficulties of supporting old browsers.

Firefox 4 brings a raft of new features--new security and privacy options, faster loading and JavaScript, support for a variety of new standards including WebM video and WebGL 3D graphics, and 3D acceleration that extends even to Windows XP.

Mozilla expects that its arrival will lead to an increase in usage. The browser maker said it has 400 million Firefox users and counting, but as a percentage of worldwide browser use it has lost share to Chrome, which now accounts for more than 10 percent of usage worldwide.

Originally posted at Deep Tech