What's New in Firefox 3.5
Published June 30, 2009 @ 18:22 in Technology

Firefox 3.5 came out today. I just updated, and so should you. Better yet, if you're still using Internet Explorer, this is a good time to test drive Firefox.

Sure, there's a new Firefox icon, but what else is new? The video below will show you.

I like how they talk about that present you're buying for somebody and need to delete from the browser history, so they've introduced Private Browsing. We all know they're really talking about porn. Now, when you're surfing for porn, nobody will be the wiser.

Thanks, Firefox 3.5!

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The New Firefox Icon: Can You See The Difference?
Published June 20, 2009 @ 10:10 in Technology

I still swear by my Firefox browser. I use a portable version of Firefox that's self contained, so it can reside on a USB key. Although Chrome is probably a little faster, I'm pretty attached to my Firefox add-ons.

The first Release Candidate build of Firefox 3.5, shipping this week, has a new Firefox icon. I stared at the new icon for quite a while, unable to see the difference. It was only when I compared the two side-by-side that I saw the changes. Here they are...

The New Firefox Icon

The Old Firefox Icon

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Vanity, Definitely My Favourite Sin
Published June 13, 2009 @ 09:10 in Technology

Although I didn't take to Facebook, I recognize it's the big daddy of social networking sites. About 9 hours ago, Facebook made it possible for regular folks like you and me to secure vanity urls.

I was up anyway after the awesomely fantastic game seven of the NHL Stanley Cup Finals, so I grabbed www.facebook.com/torontomike. I was disappointed to see www.facebook.com/mike was already gone at 12:01.

Don't be disappointed that your vanity url of choice is already gone. Facebook users, go to www.facebook.com/username/ now and get yours.

Vanity, definitely my favorite sin. - John Milton, The Devil's Advocate

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A Good Use For Bing
Published June 3, 2009 @ 16:58 in Technology

Remember Bing, the new Microsoft search engine?

Here's a good use for it. Click the pic to enlarge it.

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I Need a PHD in NHL 2K9
Published May 26, 2009 @ 12:38 in Technology

I play NHL 2K9 on the Nintendo Wii with my son. We've been playing for a few months now, and I'm still struggling with the controls. There's just too much to learn.

When I was a kid, I played Ice Hockey and Blades of Steel on the NES and our control pad was simple. You could pass and shoot, slap shots or wrist shots, there were one-timers and player movement, but that's about it. Below are the controller instructions for NHL 2K9 on the Wii.

No wonder I'm struggling, that's hardcore. You know what I miss? I miss this work of art...

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From the Blueberry to the Curve
Published May 14, 2009 @ 20:53 in Technology

Great laughter results when I pull out my BlackBerry 6230 in front of my brothers. Affectionately known as the Blueberry, this brick was durable, but not very fresh.

Today my employers took back their Blueberry and gave me a Blackberry Curve. The Curve has such modern conveniences as a camera and has a high res LCD screen.

It's not the newest Blackberry on the market, but it's new to me, and it should evoke less laughter from the peanut gallery.

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Inefficient, Socially Awkward, and Least User-Friendly Award
Published May 11, 2009 @ 17:28 in My 2 Cents, Technology

I hate voice mail. My voice mail at work tells the caller not to leave me a voice mail because I don't check voice mail. If it's important, send me an email. I'll check that, likely within the hour, but I'll leave that red light on my phone glowing for weeks and weeks.

I just read a Slate article that agrees with me.

The bill of particulars is damning. Unlike your e-mail inbox, voice mail is impossible to skim: If your phone tells you that you've got five new messages, you've got no choice but to listen to at least a bit of each one before you can decide what to do with it. In a user-interface decision that I suspect might violate some subclause of the Geneva Conventions, your voice-mail system insists on making you listen to the same instructional prompts between each message. But wait, is it 9 to archive and 7 to skip, or is that the way the work phone does it? I couldn't tell you, because every voice-mail system seems to have settled on different numbers to activate its main functions. It's an absurdly backward mode of human-computer interaction.

My biggest complaint about voice mail is that it forces me to leave my natural process. I have to leave the PC and focus on recorded speech, which I find to be very inefficient and not at all user-friendly. I'll take an Email or IM, thank you very much.

Voice mail is dead.

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Cleaning Out The Basement, Finding Floppies
Published May 9, 2009 @ 18:40 in Memories, Technology

I spent 7 straight hours today cleaning out the basement. I purged a lot of stuff collecting dust down there, including some old relics from years past.

For example, I found a bunch of old 3 1/2 inch floppy disks. Back in the day, I backed up all my digital pictures on floppies. Today, that almost seems laughable. In an age where 160GB external hard drives go for $50 and flash drives are practically free, the floppy reeks of the 1990s.

The floppy disk may be dead, but it's still the de facto save icon.

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Setting Up The New Laptop
Published April 9, 2009 @ 17:08 in Technology

I managed to leverage an issue with my work issued laptop into a new one. It's a LATITUDE E6500 from Dell, and since it's been a while since I've set up a Windows machine, I'm documenting what I do here so I can reference the details next time.

Firstly, it came to me with Windows XP and Microsoft's Office Suite installed. It also had the company install of McAfee and Power DVD DX. The rest was up to me.

I have licenses for three commercial apps I use regularly. These are Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Acrobat. I started by installing these programs.

I use portable versions of Firefox and Filezilla, my preferred browser and ftp client, so I simply copied these off of a flash drive and didn't miss a beat. I can't tell you how sweet this is. All my bookmarks, add-ons, preferences, passwords and cookies in tact. Damn.

All my music, pictures and source files reside on an external hard drive, so it was plug and play on that front. That just left me with a few free applications to install, like 7-Zip, µTorrent, iTunes, QuickTime, Audiograbber and Google Chrome.

That's it. More and more of what I do has moved into the browser. As apps move to the web, there's less and less to install.

What an age we live in.

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My Ten Favourite Firefox Add-Ons
Published April 7, 2009 @ 15:55 in Technology

I recently wrote about Adblock, the most necessary of all the Firefox Add-ons I use. In the comments, someone asked me which other Firefox Add-ons I use for work and/or play.

Here are my ten favourite Firefox Add-ons.

Adblock Plus - You know those ads you see all over the place when surfing the web? I don't. I haven't seen them in years and I don't miss 'em at all.

Web Developer - An absolute must for any author of web pages, this add-on lets me easily resize the browser, view the CSS, edit the CSS and HTML in Firefox and a billion other web author tasks. Irreplaceable.

Greasemonkey - What can I say about this one? There are many great scripts that customize the way a webpage displays.

TwitterFox - For reading and writing Twitter tweets.

IE Tab - Need to test a page in IE? This add-on lets you do that in a Firefox tab. It's also useful for those sites that just don't work in Firefox.

MeasureIt - Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.

ColorZilla - If I need to quickly know the hexidecimal code for any colour on any web page I visit, this tool tells all. It's awesome.

Forecastfox - Let's me know the current Toronto weather, the high for the day and tomorrow's expected weather.

Screengrab! - This is an old favourite that didn't work in Firefox 2 but was recently updated. It's nice to have it back as it lets me easily save or copy screen caps.

Tabbrowser Preferences - This gives you more control over Firefox's tab behaviour. For example, I have it automatically open _blank targeted links in a new tab.

Honourable mentions go to Extended Copy Menu, Google Gears, Firebug, FoxyTunes, LinkChecker and Better Gmail 2.

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