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I decided to upgrade my Firefox, work is s little slow and I thought a software headache was better than just walking into traffic on the highway. Firefox is my primary browser at work and I am using the latest patch of the 2.0 build.

I installed, allowed the Firefox 3 beta 4 to overwrite my old version and lo and behold I have a bunch of non working extensions.

I found the following fix to get security cut down on the beta of Firefox thanks to Lifehacker so that it could at least try my extensions:

    * Type about:config into Firefox’s address bar and click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
* Right-click anywhere. Choose New>Boolean. Make the name of your new config value extensions.checkCompatibility and set it to false.
* Make another new boolean pair called extensions.checkUpdateSecurity and set the value to false.
* Restart Firefox.

Well I am not any farther and most of my extensions still do not work.

The interface for the latest beta of firefox seems good, it remembers pages in the address bar instead of juist in the history and seems to be quicker although that may be due to most of my extensions and themes/skins being missing.

Great trying out hte new build and another one is apparently right around the corner. Firefox 3 Beta 5 is going to be released soon as the deadlines for bug fixes passed last week.

Try it out today and go through my pain, we can commiserate together about insignificant bumps in the road.

I have been working on a computer for the last few days that is a few years old but would be used for playing Microsoft Flight Simulator X and it has been a bit of a battle.

First of all when I looked at the requirements it looks like it does not take much to run Microsoft Flight Simulator but in reality it takes a great computer and the best video card that you can get to run Microsoft Flight Simulator with the highest settings.

I started thinking that I could use a year old HP desktop but in the end that desktop had not slot for a new video card and as unacceptable as that seems I think it is a fact that many home users would never get a new video card for their computer so I guess I can ccept that. I found another machine, a Dell Optiplex GX 260 with a half gig of ram, a 2 gig P4 processor and an AGP slot. This better or worse is what I have sued for the Microsoft Flight Simulator install. Read the rest of this entry »

A couple of years ago I tried to do the national novel writing month contest. The contest does not really have judged winners and losers but it is actually a month long race in November to try to write a 50,000 word novel. Thousands of people try and quite a few actually do complete it. This year I was smart enough to know that I would not be able to find enough time to write 5o,000 words in the month for my novel “Hooker”.

I still look at the message boards at the Nanowrimo site occasionally and found a neat couple of pieces of free writing software.

The first piece of freeware is called Q10 and after either installing or running the portable version of Q10 you get a black screen that just has plain type on ot. This is a full screen text editor and it designed to be simple and uncluttered. The great thing about Q10 is that it has absolutely no distractions, not even menus. To find out how to use it you need to get the keyboard shortcuts by pressing the F1 key while running the software.

One other great thing about Q10 is that you can drop some sounds in there that are supplied on the website and these will allow you to have electric typewriter sounds while you are typing. I have not heard these sounds in years so it was really great to use.

The second piece of freeware that I found is called YWriter3 this software is for storyboarding and scene creation when you are writing a story or novel. I checked out YWriter last year and it was OK but this new version is even better. You can imagine if I am mentioning a piece of storyboarding freeware on a tech blog that it must be good to mention. If you are writing or want to write a book I think that YWriter is probably indespensible.

Microsoft today announced the first Release Candidate of the Windows Home Server. This is going to be the hub of peoples home networks.

Right now, for most people the center of the home network is the wireless router in the basement or living room and all of the computers are basically their own entities. I have tried to go a bit beyond that by sharing out the favorites between machines as well as my wifes scrapbooking folder but otherwise we still have the same as most people. Three computers are in my house and each of the computers has it’s own shared folders, it’s own data and it’s own applications. This is disjointed to say the least.

Windows Home Server is going to centralize all of the file serving with central storage of all files and backing up of all machines on the network. There will also be the ability to share pictures over the internet.

All of these features are doable now with a Windows 2003 server but this server system is streamlined and is the kind of thing that any family should be able to use and configure for the safety and convenience that most people do not have the knowledge of or the interest to learn.

Microsoft has a public beta available now so that you can try the windows Home Server out.

Many people are under the mistaken impression that Adobe owns the PDF format. If you have ever used Linux then you may know differently but there are many readers and writers to create Acrobat type PDF files and one was just upgraded and released today.

If you have ever looked for an alternative to Adobe Acrobat Reader then this is it.

Foxit Software

Foxit has a very small and fast reader that is free to use and includes almost if not all of the features that you would expect in a PDF reader.

powered by performancing firefox

I first heard about and used Acronis True Image a couple of years ago. I used the desktop imaging software as an option to Norton Ghost and PQDI I had used PQDI Image Center in the past and was pretty happy with it so at the time I did not really care much about Acronis although it seemed to work well.

No I see that Acronis has released version 9 if True Image and the software is a great piece of software that is full of features. I especially like the idea of doing differential backups os that you do not need to do a full backup every time you want to back up a desktop PC. another great feature is the ability to replace the Windows XP System Restore by using the Acronis built in system restore features. Here is what Acronis says about their software:

Acronis True Image 9.0 Home provides you with two backup options in one software:

1) Our original disk imaging backup option which enables you to create an image of your entire hard disk drive, including the operating system, applications, user settings, and all data. Use the image to restore your PC to a known working state without any reinstallation.

2) A new file-based backup option which enables you to backup and restore individual files and folders, like your My Documents folder or a specific file, like your latest tax return. A software wizard walks you through all of the steps.

And then Some!

Acronis True Image 9.0 Home makes restoring your system even faster with the exclusive new Acronis Snap Restore feature. It also provides several additional enhancements.

If you have ever been interested in using opensource, that is applications that are free and free to change then there are a few places to find them here is one site that I discovered today…

Open Source Alternative - Find Open Source Alternatives to commercial software

There is another more obvious site and that is sourceforge. Sourceforge has thousands of applications for just about every platform, including Windows of course. Here is a list of apps that are opensource that I use on a daily , or near daily basis.

Notepad++
FileZilla
Ultra VNC
PHP Myadmin

powered by performancing firefox

Flock is an amazing new web browser that makes it easier to share media and connect to other people online. Share photos, automatically stay up-to-date with new content from your favorite sites, and search the Web with the most advanced Search Toolbar available today.

Flock — the social web browser

Well that is what the guys at Flock say. Flock is a web browser that is really built for blogging and photo sharing and is built on the Firefox engine so it has all of those features that we love from firefox.

Well I did not really know where to categorize this stuff But i was just listening to the announcements from Apple and wanted to driop the highlights somewhere on the blog….

Well there are some updates but most exciting is a new set top box coming out in the first quarter of 2007

Nano

All models are 52% smaller in volume than previous nano. new charger, new armband, new lanyard
8GB is $249 in all colors
4GB is $199 in all colors but black
2GB is $149 in silver only

iTunes 7

3 different views of iTunes
iTunes will give you cover art for free if you are missing cover art
TV shows are now encoded at 640×480 (h264), up from 320×240
New Cover Flow view. (LOOKS LIKE FLIPPING THROUGH YOUR CD RACK)
You can update your iPod from right inside iTunes

Movies from iTunes

Near DVD quality. Same encoding as TV shows at 640×480. If you have a 5mb/s broadband connection, it will take approximately 30 minutes to download a movie
New releases 12.99 preorders and first week, after that up to 14.99
most titles will be 9.99
films from Walt Disney, Pixar, Touchstone, Miramax
75 films online today, more every week and month
Dolby surround audio in videos

iTV

Apple is releasing its long-rumored set-top box in Q1 2007. It will be Wireless
1/2 size of Mac Mini, built-in power supply, USB, Ethernet, 802.11 “wireless component video”, optical audio and HDMI ports, plus old RCA stereo audio ports. Works with Apple Remote
Like a Mac Mini… iTV is its name
Apple is now in your den, living room, car, pocket works with iTunes on PC or Mac. price will be $299
iTV lets you get access to trailers and itunes store selected content from internet

I was just looking throught the forums at Neowin and found a great list of freeware. You should go and sign up over there as well as they have a lot of great content on that site as well as a lot of information in the forums. so if you are looking to burn some time you can really do a lot of reading in the forums on that site.

I have only included the freeware here that I have used in the past and really like:

Anti-Virus:
AVG - http://free.grisoft.com/

Anti Spyware:
Ad-aware - http://www.lavasoft.de/software/adaware/
CWShredder - http://www.intermute.com/spysubtract/cwshr…r_download.html
Hijackthis - http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html
Microsoft AntiSpyware - http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx
SpyBot Search & Destroy - http://spybot.safer-networking.de/