End your weekend with a list of our favorite news items from around the 'Web, as well as websites that we find interesting. Welcome to "The Friday Linker". Have any "cool" news items that you think should be here? E-mail Alex Morganis with your suggestions or visit his del.icio.us page to see even more links...

Tech News:

• 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic: I always enjoy reading about how to improve my blog, whether through better interaction with my readers or adding new features. SEOmoz has a great article up about using different techniques to increase blog traffic, including the decision to allow readers to comment and using images to intrigue readers.
• British Airways Flies With Google Earth: British Airways became the first airline company to allow users to book hotels and car rentals using Google Earth. Once you find what you're looking for, simply clicking on it brings up the details on the British Airways site.
• YouTube Stats Revealed: According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, people have watched 9,305 years worth of videos. The article also pointed that the total hosting being used is 45 Terabytes (That's equal to 5,000 home computers) and requires several million dollars in bandwidth costs to transmit. Ouch.
• New themes for Firefox and Thunderbird: Ever wonder why Mozilla wanted to switch to a different theme for the default in Firefox 2.0? Rakaz speculates that they might want to move away from the standard "Windows XP look" and into something more creative - screenshots and side-by-side comparisons given.

Pure Cool:

• Browzar: Browzar will keep your usage of the Internet private by deleting cookies, history, caches, and auto-complete forms. With support for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, this looks like a promising browser that will grant you even more privacy (And, it doesn't even require an installation or registration!).
• Test Your Web 2.0 Awareness: This new tool will determine which Web 2.0 services you have used or recently visited and give you a score based on that. Although you might be thinking this is a privacy issue, it's all done using simple JavaScript (Which can be used on almost every website on the Internet). Lets see...I scored a zero. Darn.
• AJAX Driven Website Screenshot Creator: This new tool will allow you to enter any URL and get a snapshot to place on any website. However, it's currently offline after being on the frontpage of Digg.
• Top 10 Firefox Web 2.0 Add-ons: It's no secret that Mozilla Firefox is the best browser for using extensions or add-ons, and now Read/WriteWeb has taken a look at some of the top 10 add-ons available for Firefox. I'm really starting to fall in love with how
  Richard MacManus writes and displays large amounts of information. Rock on!
• Which Image Format is Best: Jonathan Snook, a freelance Web developer, gives a great run-down about which image formats are better than others, as well as some backround information on each type. I personally prefer PNG images because they retain great quality, while not taking up as much storage (Such as .bmp does).
• Beautiful Hi-Res Vista Wallpapers: Don't you just love the new Windows Vista wallpapers? Now you can download them (Note: This website has a ton of ads on it and might take a few moments to load - Yes, even on a broadband connection).