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Ever wanted to see what your friends are typing to you as they type it? You’ll get your chance with latest AIM Beta. Now at version 6.8, the newest version of AIM includes support for real-time IM. Unfortunately, Freudian slips are no longer a vocal problem.

The new feature is incompatible with iChat, Pidgin, and other third party IM clients, but if this catches on, it’s likely they’ll add support to for real-time IM soon. For now, if you’d like to use this feature, you’ll need to use the official AIM client.

Real-time IM requires one of the users to activate a direct connection. The other party may choose to decline, so at least it’s optional. Though it may seem “regular” and “bland”, the ability to edit instant messages is a blessing. Maybe we’re just a bit geekier and a little more old-fashioned than the average person, but we’ve been caught in way too many awkward, verbal situations because of something as minor as a forgotten name (it’s hard to remember everyone from high school, dammit).

In the past we’ve covered how to put Google Notebook and Google Personalized Home in your sidebar. And although you were able to see your calendar through iGoogle in the sidebar, there’s a better alternative that is cleaner, better, and most importantly, all about the calendar.

Mitch from Firefox Facts came up with this solution by tearing some code out of the iGoogle gadget. Nicely enough, it comes without the extras of iGoogle and is better than Google’s mobile calendar site. You can select to view any of the upcoming appointments from any of your calendars, all below the month overview. And best of all, obviously, it loads in your sidebar.

Clean, sharp, simple. Here’s how to make it happen:

1. Bookmark this link: Google Calendar Sidebar
2. Go to your bookmarks, find the bookmark you just made, right-click and select “Properties.”
3. In the “Properties” pop-up, select “Load this bookmark in sidebar” and hit “OK.”
4. Click the link and your calendar should load up in the sidebar (as long as you’re logged into your Google account).
5. Rinse and enjoy.

Web video is hot and getting easier and easier to use. Grant and Christina talk to Vimeo’s dalas verdugo about techniques to make web video look its best and garner attention.

The Squadcast’s “The Five” takes a look at Download Squad’s five favorite applications/web services for editing, exporting and uploading web video.

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Take the jump for show notes and links to items discussed in this episode.

If more than one person uses your home computer, odds are you’re constantly logging in and out of your Gmail, Flickr, YouTube, and other online accounts. Sure, you could set up separate profiles for each person who uses your operating system, but who wants to take the time to switch user logins just to check their email?

That’s where CookieSwap comes in. This lightweight Firefox extension lets you create several distinct cookie profiles in Firefox. Just right-click on the profile button and choose the profile you want to use for each session. Any cookies you download during your browsing session will be saved to your current profile. So for example, if you sign into Gmail and check the box for Firefox to remember your login information, it will be saved to the current profile. You can then switch to a different profile if you want to login as a different user.

CookieSwap works reasonably well, but it’s a bit rough around the edges when it comes to tweaking or adding profiles. If you click the “manage profiles” button all you’ll get is the directory where your profiles reside. You’ll have to navigate to that directory to manually rename your profiles or to add extra profiles if you need more than three.

PC running sluggishly? We know the feeling. Enter Advanced WindowsCare v2 Personal, another new entry in the “one-step scan and optimization of your PC” arena. Similar to CCleaner (though lacking a few of CCleaner’s extras), Advanced WindowsCare v2 will scan your machine for spyware, incorrect registry entries, browsing history, and junk files, with the ability to delete said files quickly and easily.

Our initial scan took about five minutes, and found a bevy of things to fix on our test machine. Advanced WindowsCare Personal allows you to look into the gritty details of each problem and repair them with a single click.

You can also check out Advanced WindowsCare v2 Professional, the always-on upgrade to the free Personal edition. For a limited time, you can get the Professional version for “free” (with the completion of one of 100 “free” offers; we’ll let you decide whether it’s worth it).

Advance WindowsCare is designed for Windows Vista, XP, and 2000.