Soar Like An Eagle

Brighten up your Firefox for Christmas

seaeagle — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 05:07:52 +0000

If you want to add a great Christmas look to your Firefox browser for the festive season, why not brighten it up by using a Christmas theme? They are free to download & easy to install (all you do is click on the “Install Now” button on the page & Firefox will do the rest).

Here are 3 nice Christmas themes that really will give a festive look to your desktop while you surf the Net.

The first (and I’m using this one at the moment) is Tinseltown. I think it is the best of the three - it has a great Christmas look, with icons that animate as the page loads. It just looks fantastic - click on the thumbnail below for a full-sized screen-shot of it on my PC:

The next theme is X-Mas. This one is a bit lighter in colour, but it does have an animated background with snow falling. Unfortunately for me, it is not available for Linux, but Windows users certainly won’t have any problems installing it.

The third theme is a “lite” version of Xmas - X-Mas (Light). It still has many of the features of the full Xmas theme, but not the animated snowfall. This theme would be better for older PCs that might struggle a bit to run the full theme with all of it’s bells and whistles.

Of course, Firefox has more than just Christmas themes available. In fact, there are currently 264 different themes available to suit every user, from those who want just a basic, simple background to those who want a real piece of art for their Internet browser. To view the available themes, just visit Firefox Themes

The latest version of Firefox is v2.0.0.11. It fixes a few add-on incompatibilities that appeared in v2.0.0.10. If you have Firefox already installed, just set your browser to automatic updates to download the latest version, or do it manually via the Help menu. If you haven’t yet installed Firefox, then you probably don’t know what you are missing out on. The browser is fast, secure, free & has thousands of add-ons to make your web browsing experience even better. To install the latest version of Firefox just go to Get Firefox.

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Peace is much more precious than a piece of land… let there be no more wars. - Mohammed Anwar Sadat

Improving your web browsing with bookmarklets

seaeagle — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 04:10:49 +0000

I have recently written a few posts on improving your web browsing experience by using Firefox and it’s awesome free add-ons. But there is another free way to improve your web browsing enjoyment, and the best thing about it is that you do not need any specific brand of browser. It works on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Sea Monkey, Konqueror and any other browser that allows javascript.

You don’t need to install anything either - all it requires is adding the link to your bookmarks/favorites.

What I am talking about is bookmarklets. Bookmarklets are free tools that help with repetitive or otherwise impossible tasks in your web browser. They can do a myriad of things, such as changing page and link colours, removing redirects, zapping unwanted items such as Flash or GIF animations, opening pop-up search boxes, forcing links to open in the same window instead of a new one - the options with bookmarklets are endless.

The procedure to use a bookmarklet is very simple. I found a great bunch of free bookmarklets at Jesse’s Bookmarklets Site a couple of years ago, and I use them daily. All you need to do is find a bookmarklet that does a job you require, right-click on it’s link & add it to your favourites/bookmarks. I’ve got a bookmarklets folder on my Firefox toolbar, so when I need to make some changes to a page after it has loaded, I just click on the folder icon & select the bookmarklet I want to run from the drop-down list.

So if you are looking for something to improve your browsing experience, have a look at adding some bookmarklets. They really are a simple, free, browser & operating system independent, way to make some very useful changes to web pages you visit.

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One possible reason that things aren’t going according to plan is that there never was a plan in the first place.

Firefox Add-On Of The Day - Flashblock

seaeagle — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 06:45:45 +0000

If you’re like me when surfing the web, you probably want your pages to load as quickly as possible. Some of the biggest irritations I find on a lot of sites are huge Flash animations. They can be slow to load, chew up bandwidth, and are often pretty well useless. Some blogs also post a lot of videos from places like YouTube, and it can be a real pain to have several of them on the same page all opening at the same time.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could choose when you want a Flash animation on a page to play? Well - you can. Just install Firefox’s Flashblock add-on.

Flashblock blocks Flash animations from loading automatically. Instead, it puts a place-holder where the animation is that you can click on when you want the animation to load.

Flashblock allows you to white-list certain sites, so that Flash animations will play automatically when those pages load. It also has a toolbar button that enables you to disable/enable Flashblock with just one click.

I’ve found Flashblock to be one of the best Firefox add-ons I have ever installed. It is great for dial-up users who don’t want slow page load times due to big Flash animations, and broadband users - especially those on a capped plan - who don’t want extraneous Flash animations chewing up their valuable bandwidth.

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The first sign of a nervous breakdown is when you start thinking your work is terribly important. - Milo Bloom

Firefox Add-On Of The Day - Compact Menu 2

seaeagle — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:32:47 +0000

Is your Firefox menu bar getting a bit congested? Maybe you have lots of add-ons and they are causing a bit of a space problem. Obviously, you most likely don’t want to have to remove the icons for your useful add-ons from where they are easily accessed, but there is a great alternative way to clear up your menu bar. And that is to install the Compact Menu 2 add-on.

Compact Menu 2 changes your menu options (File, Edit, View, Bookmarks, Tools, Help etc) from a line across the menu bar into a drop-down list easily accessed from one button. I’ve been using it for a couple of years now, and it really has freed up a lot of space on my menu bar.

So if you are finding that you are running out of space on your Firefox menu bar, or just want to tidy it up by removing the text menu items from it while still having them easily accessible, then Compact Menu 2 is the perfect add-on to do the job.

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Things People Said - Bad Predictions:

“I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious sensibilities of anyone.” - Charles Darwin, The Origin Of Species, 1869.

Firefox Add-On Of The Day - UnPlug

seaeagle — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:00:36 +0000

Do you like viewing videos on sites such as YouTube, or ones embedded on blogs and other personal sites? Do you also find it to be a nuisance when you love the video, but there is no link to download the video to your hard-drive? Well, here’s a Firefox add-on that will get you the download links for most embedded videos so you can save them for later viewing.

UnPlug is a video download tool which scans web pages and tells you where media players are getting their data from. UnPlug will then display an HTML link to the file, which you can then save to your PC just as you would any other file.

The thing I really like about UnPlug is that it really tries hard to find the right download file. If there are a few possible source locations, it will present a list to you, including a recommendation of which ones are the most likely.

I’m finding that I can now download more than 90% of the videos I find on web pages - before I was lucky to be able to find the download link for half of them.

UnPlug really is an awesomely powerful Firefox add-on for those who like to not only watch embedded videos on web sites, but download and save those videos for later viewing.

The latest Firefox version (v2.0.0.11) was released a few days ago. It fixes a few add-on incompatibilities that appeared in v2.0.0.10. If you have Firefox already installed, just set your browser to automatic updates to download the latest version, or do it manually via the Help menu. If you haven’t yet installed Firefox, then you probably don’t know what you are missing out on. The browser is fast, secure, free & has thousands of add-ons to make your web browsing experience even better. To install the latest version of Firefox just go to Get Firefox.

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A little known fact:

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in W.W.II killed the only elephant in the Berlin zoo.

Firefox Add-On Of The Day - Organize Status Bar

seaeagle — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:08:20 +0000

Okay folks. If you’re keen user of Firefox Add-ons and have more than a couple of dozen installed, then you may be finding that your status bar (that’s the one at the bottom of the browser) is starting to look a little cluttered. Mine reached the stage where I had so many icons in the status bar that I could not even see the address of links when I hovered over them! I desperately needed a way to tidy up my status bar and get rid of some of the icons for those add-ons that I prefer to work in the background, and I found something that does the job perfectly.

Today’s Firefox Add-on Of The Day is Organize Status Bar.

Organize Status Bar is a simple little add-on that you open via the “Tools” menu. When opened, a window will pop up showing all of the elements, both showing and hidden, in your status bar:

Your status bar will also show every element while Organize Status Bar is open, and highlight the one currently selected. All you then need to do is choose to show or hide each element (and you can also re-arrange the order they are in). For example, I decided to hide the progress bar that shows how much of a page has loaded - that freed up a lot of space.

Organize Status Bar is very safe to use as it only hides elements from showing - it doesn’t delete anything. So, if you make a mistake and hide something that you want visible, all you need to do to fix it is re-open Organize Status Bar via the tools menu and select “Show” for that element.

Organize Status Bar really is a great Firefox Add-on for when you find that you have way too much stuff in your status bar. It’s a much better alternative to disabling add-ons to clear up space.

By the way, I just noticed today that there’s a new Firefox version out (v2.0.0.11). It fixes a few add-on incompatibilities that appeared in v2.0.0.10. If you have Firefox already installed, just set your browser to automatic updates to download the latest version, or do it manually via the Help menu. If you haven’t yet installed Firefox, then you probably don’t know what you are missing out on. The browser is fast, secure, free & has thousands of add-ons to make your web browsing experience even better. To install the latest version of Firefox just go to Get Firefox.

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Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. - Carl Sagan

Firefox Add-On Of The Day - Linkification

seaeagle — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 04:08:00 +0000

Today’s Firefox Add-on Of The Day is Linkification.

I find it irritating when I visit a web page and it has links on it, but they are written in text instead of HTML and can’t be clicked to open them. Normally the only way to open these text links is to copy and paste them into the address bar. But Linkification fixes this problem easily by turning these plain text links into clickable HTML links.

You can have Linkification automatically scan and convert text links (including email addresses) when a page loads, or you can choose to have Linkification convert links only when you press the icon in the status-bar (useful for very large pages with lots of links on them).

I’ve been using Linkification for several years now, and consider it to be a “must-have” Firefox Add-on. It really is a great little time-saver and shows just how much Firefox Add-ons can improve your Internet browsing experience.

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The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired warranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by changing the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped marker. - Dave Barry, “The Taming of the Screw”

Firefox Add-On Of The Day - Uppity

seaeagle — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 12:26:18 +0000

I’ve been a user of what I consider to be the best Internet browser in the world, Firefox 2 (it’s free and open-source) for about 5 years now, and I couldn’t be happier with it. As well as being a very fast, reliable browser, it has something else that really sets it apart from the rest - Add-ons.

Add-ons are small pieces of software that can add new features or tiny tweaks to your Firefox. They can add new search engines or dictionaries in other languages, change the look of Firefox with a new theme, or much more.

I currently have 93 add-ons installed for my Firefox browser, and they really make life easier. They can do everything from providing a weather report to downloading YouTube videos to monitoring my eBay auctions. So I thought I might help out other Firefox users by posting some of my favorite add-ons here.

Today’s Add-on Of The Day is Uppity. This is a really useful add-on that helps you to navigate up directory levels on sites. For example, you might be viewing an image on a page, and want to check out what other image files are in that directory (as long as the owner allows the directory to be listed). Without Uppity you would have to go to the address bar and manually delete the end of the address back to the “/” symbol. But with Uppity you just click on the up arrow on your toolbar to move up to the directory.

For people who browse a lot of sites where they are constantly moving up directory levels, Uppity really is a very useful Firefox add-on.

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I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn’t park anywhere near the place. - Steven Wright

$200 Linux PCs sell like hotcakes

seaeagle — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 10:11:31 +0000

It’s been a while since I did a post extolling the virtues of dumping the over-priced, bloated, and freedom-inhibiting Microsoft Windows for the free, lean, feature-rich Linux operating system. Today I celebrate having been Windows-free for 31 months, and to be honest I don’t miss Windows one single iota. My free version of Mandriva Linux does everything I need. I can type Word documents, create spreadsheets & databases using the OpenOffice free office suite. I can play all the common types of movie or music files using a plethora of players, I get free operating system upgrades (not just updates - but upgrades) every 6 months or so, I can have a 3D-desktop running without having to pay for a “premium” version, and I never have to worry about Microsoft’s restrictive licensing practices.

In other words, I have complete freedom with my computer and operating system. I own what’s on my desk - not Microsoft.

Linux has moved along in leaps and bounds over the past few years. What used to be difficult to install and set up by newbies can now be done on most distributions easily through software installation interfaces. Maintaining my system really is a dream. I’m far from being a geek - in fact I had never knowingly used Linux before I wiped Windows from my hard-drive and dove in the deep-end with Linux. It really surprised me just how easily I got everything up and running (and individually tailored - something I could never do with Windows).

One of the best things about Linux is that most (if not all) distros (that’s what the thousands of different versions (distributions) are called) come with a huge amount of free software included - and usually a good selection of software for each task. No bare-bones out-of-the-box Windows system and then having to pay for Office, anti-virus, a firewall for me. Everything I needed either came on the installation DVD, or was easily available for free from one of the many free software repositories that are available to Linux users.

Anyway, enough of the spiel - if you want to give the free Linux operating system a go, either visit the Mandriva link above, or choose from the thousands of distros available online from DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD. Alternatively (once new stock comes in), you can always pick up a $200 Linux PC from your local Wal-Mart. Apparently Wal-Mart underestimated the popularity of Linux, and their initial order of 10,000 sold out in only 2 weeks. But more are on their way:

Wal-Mart’s $200 Linux PCs sell out

Right after Halloween, Wal-Mart introduced Everex’s Ubuntu Linux-powered TC2502 gPC for a list price of $198. Two weeks later, they’re sold out. Everex tells DesktopLinux that more will be coming though.

Wal-Mart only bought an initial run of approximately 10,000 units. For once, Wal-Mart’s vaunted supply chain management system failed to predict just how popular an item would be. Wal-Mart offers a similar Everex model with more base memory and Windows Vista Home Basic called the Everex Impact GC3502 Desktop, for $100 more. Wal-Mart still has plenty of those.

Customers want the Everex TC2502 Green gPC and they want it badly. While there are a few units still available in Wal-Mart stores, you’ll need a lot of luck finding one. A search in your editor’s area, Asheville, NC, found there wasn’t a single one within a hundred miles.

But, there are more TC2502s coming. According to Paul Kim, Everex’s director of marketing, while “there are only a few units left on the Wal-Mart shelves we’ve noticed customers are having difficulty finding them since they’re so spread out. Walmart.com sold out within 48 hours and is trying to restock now.”

However, “We were originally reserving a second batch of gPCs for post-Black Friday [sales], but [we've] decided to release early because of the high demand,” Kim said.

Read the rest at: Wal-Mart’s $200 Linux PCs sell out

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Some people have parts that are so private they themselves have no knowledge of them.

Online Web Conferencing for Meetings

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 06:30:00 GMT

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Network Tools for Windows

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VMware and Parallels for Virtual Machines

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

It doesn't matter if you're running on Windows or Mac OS X - every power user needs either Parallels or VMware (or both). There's never been an easier way to test software without destroying your primary operating system's stability. Think of how many times you wish you could press a 'reverse' button on your computer. Plus, there's no easier way to try new Linux distributions - see what all the fuss is about. Run Windows in OS X, run Linux in Windows, but the best way to do either is with VMware and/or Parallels.

Coupons for Online Shopping

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:56:13 GMT

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