Our analytics, the software that shows us statistics on GearCrave visitors, shows that barely 40% of GearCravers use Internet Explorer.  The rest of you are loyal to Firefox and Safari for the most part.  For those who have moved beyond IE and tried a few new things, we suggest you add another browser to your list: Flock, the social web browser.  Flock integrates social media like Digg, email and IM into your browsing experience so you can instantly share pictures, video and other content with your friends.  Inversely, you’re just a click away from your other friends on Flock, who can share their cool finds with you on demand.  Check it out, its worth trying out and seeing it for yourself.

Visit: Flock.com

Its no secret that GearCrave is green in spirit.  We love sustainable living technologies, alternative fuels, clean electricity and carbon neutral lifestyles.  This week on GearCrave, we’re running a week-long feature of Green Condo developments in the U.S.  For those who share this interest, we always suggest the recommended reading of our friends at Inhabitat and TreeHugger.  Until recently, however, we missed out on another daily must-read, the “consumer’s guide to the green revolution” at TheDailyGreen.com.  TheDailyGreen is a guide to making your own life more eco-friendly.  Every day, TheDailyGreen provides tips, how-tos and features on how you can trim your carbon diet, your electric bill, your fuel costs and more.  As rising energy costs and global warming threats continue to grow, sites like TheDailyGreen allow we, the progressive web, a way to make an individual difference in our own lives and the life of the planet.

Visit: TheDailyGreen

Our friends Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the people that brought you Skype and Kazaa, have a new service for us webophiles.  Where Kazaa was public enemy number one to the music industry and Skype scared the TelCos, Joost takes aim at cable providers.  Joost is a free software tool that streams cable-quality TV over the web with peer-to-peer technology.  They’ve signed content deals with Viacom, Warner and others, providing shows from Comedy Central, Adult Swim and WB and classic TV like GearCrave favorite MacGuyver.  As more networks get involved, Joost could become the top destination for TV without paying for cable.  Want to give it a shot?  Download the Joost software now.

Visit: Joost.com

The bookcase is usually for holding all things besides your lazy butt. Not so anymore. Wacky Canadian designer Fishbol has killed two birds with one stone. The Fishbol Bookseat is a double-wide plywood take on the lounge chair (it also happens to have the ability to hold an entire set of encyclopedias, and then some). The fluid design is surprisingly light and easy on the backside, which means you might actually use the thing besides being a great conversation piece. So grab a partner, take a seat and reach down for a book.

Buy: contact for a price quote.

Mother’s Day is right around the corner. And when you care enough to just hit send, SomeEcards.com has your back. We’ve been fans for quite some time now, and have sent more SomeEcards than we probably should have. These brutally blunt, painfully funny eCards are inarguably the coolest thing to happen to the greeting card industry since… well now that we think about it, greeting cards have ALWAYS sucked– until now. Take some time, scroll through SomeEcards, and prepare to laugh your ass off. Many of these cards have colorful language, but that’s what we GearCravers live for. We’ve got four of our favorite NSFW cards after the break…

Visit: SomeECards.com

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Looking for the ultimate summer project? Sure, you could paint the house, clean the basement or hell– start a band. Why not think about a project that could ease your finances and your carbon footprint at the same time? EcoModder.com has the details on how to modify your car to run more efficiently, increase its MPG performance, even run on alternative fuels. Surprisingly, its not as difficult as you think. For example, you could buy a simple kit for nearly any production car of the last ten years that would take minutes to install and allow your engine to run on Ethanol. The possibilities are nearly endless, and the EcoModder community is a testament to this. Check them out, learn more about what you can do with your car, and find a way to save money and keep your conscious as green as can be.

Visit: EcoModder.com

May 11th, GearCravers. Remember that date: Mother’s Day is May 11th. With just over two weeks to go, its time you start thinking about a gift. Of course, GearCrave is going to make it easy on you– and we’ll start by showing you a great gift for the culinary Mom in your life. Today’s website pick is TasteBook.com, a cook book publisher with a unique spin: its cookbooks are completely personalized to each cook. Members can add their own recipes, use those suggested by TasteBook editors, choose their own cover images, titles, even add their own photos. The result is a professional cookbook that is customized to your own taste. If this is something your Mom would adore, here’s what we suggest. Pay her a visit, and when she’s not looking, snag her personal cookbook. Borrow a few of the recipes you loved as a kid, then add them some of the editor’s picks from TasteBook. Voila, you’ve got a gift that’ll melt her heart like butter. Your siblings will be furious they didn’t think of it first…

Buy: $34.95

Do you absolutely love accounting? Like, passionately? Neither do we. We hate it, actually. That used to mean that we didn’t have an easy, effective way of managing our own money that didn’t put us to sleep. Before you run away screaming, “No, kill it with fire! Death to accounting!”– we suggest you clear your mind and give a fresh new option some thought.

Enter Mint.com. Mint is a web service dedicated to making your personal finances easy, intuitive and virtually effortless. Best of all, Mint is free. Since we just passed tax season, many of us are making new tax year resolutions to get financially fit. Unless you have a private accountant, you may want make Mint your personal assistant to getting those finances on track. Give it a shot, try a free account, and let us know how Mint works for you.

Visit: Mint.com.

Thirsty?  You’re looking at an alocholic’s super-encyclopedia.  ExtraTasty.com is a social networking web service that lets its users share drink recipes and create new ones with ingredients as tags.  Take a look through your home bar, see what liquors you have, enter them as tags in the ExtraTasty system.  Say all you’ve got at home is gin and juice.  Fair enough, enter those two items as tags in the ExtraTasty search engine and voila– here are 33 recipes to make starting with gin and juice.  Should you invent something new and tasty, share it with your ExtraTasty friends from your profile.  As you’d expect, drink recipes on ExtraTasty are boundless, they range from the straightforward cocktails to the very strange.  Either way, you’re in for one hell of a good *burp* time.

Visit: ExtraTasty.com.

If you like Digg and love sports, you’re going to feel right at home at BallHype.com. But to say that BallHype is a digg clone is selling it short. Sure, it does operate on a similar “democratic news” voting technology, but BallHype takes this another step further. BallHype uses a technology that scans RSS feeds of major sports news sites and blogs and recognizes stories on the same subject. So when Wizards star Gilbert Arenas returned from injury last night and the story ended up number one on the site, BallHype’s technology found 12 other stories on the same subject and added them to the “links” section.

Due to the amount of basketball news from the NBA and NCAA of late, much of the front page stories at BallHype are on this subject. But football, futbol, NHL, Golf, MMA and racing fans will love the content here. Just visit your favorite category at the top and begin voting the stories you find relevant. For sports news social media, there is no one doing it better than BallHype.com.

Visit: BallHype.com.