Tag Archives: firefox

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Way too much traffic, anyone want to support me?

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So I’ve experienced quite a bit of traffic on this site in the last week or so.
And for anyone hosting their blog on their own space they know that is a problem as far as price goes. It hopefully won’t be much but I think the amount of traffic I’ve gotten and will get this month will cost me about $10. I know it’s not much, but it’s a bit of money for a website that isn’t making me anything.

So, I decided to post a little “Support Me” section on the sidebar. These are all links to free downloads which I would HIGHLY recommend you try out. Picasa is a great picture organizing software, Firefox is the only browser you should be using and Google Pack is a bunch of the most useful free software you can find in one tidy package.

At the very least if you haven’t downloaded these pieces of software at least do so from my site so I can gather a little referral commission to pay for the extra bandwidth this month.

I’d appreciate it.

Blog, podcast

Weekly Podcast Update 06.04.06

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Now with some regularity:

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Tech Friday: Using Google Maps as Yellow Pages (Firefox only)

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Probably one of my most used Firefox bookmarks is a google maps search. I use it constantly. Where’s the nearest bowling alley? Is there an REI near by? How do you get to ____?

Anytime, I have one of those questions I ctrl+T to a new tab on firefox and then I type “yp ____” and immediately a google maps search with my location as the starting point shows up.

Here’s how to do it (Sorry this is a bit more complicated then I’d like). The Code Below is what you want to edit to create your bookmark. First just add a new bookmark to Firefox (you can bookmark this page). Then go to that bookmark and right click and choose properties. Now you can name it what ever you want. Then your going to paste in the code below (after you’ve edited all the sections: STREETNUMBER, STREETNAME, etc.) into the “Location” box. Finally your going to pick your keyword (mine is yp), and then click okay.

That’s it. Now anytime you want to look something up you just go up to the address bar (easiest is to hit ctrl+t to open a new tab) and type “yp pizza” or “yp bike shop” and your search is done.

Blog

Tech Friday: Prefetching Firefox and other speed tweaks

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It took quite a bit of time to win my friend Zach over to the joys of Firefox, but he eventually saw the light. But, just like me, Zach doesn’t like a slow computer. When he wants to check something online quickly, he’s still been using IE cause it loads faster on his computer. You might have noticed the same thing, which is why today’s Tech is all about speeding up your computer.

Prefetching Firefox
The reason IE runs quickly is Microsoft set it up so that it’s ‘ready to run’ or prefetched. You can easily do this manually for any other program:

  1. Right-click on the program icon
  2. Select properties
  3. In the ‘Target’ box, add ” /prefetch:1″ at the end of the line.
  4. Click ‘Ok’

Speed things up by doing this to any program you use regularly.

Simple programs for Simple Tasks
Besides your internet browser the second most used program is probably a word processor. Many have Microsoft Word, though if you don’t I’d highly recommend OpenOffice as a complete alternative. BUT, I’d also recommend you stop using MS Word quite so much.

If what your writing doesn’t need any formatting why not just pop open notepad? If you want it to look a little prettier you could use Wordpad (both located in your accessories folder). These programs run SO much faster then word or OpenOffice and they work for probably 40% of your needs.

For the other 60% I think I should mention AbiWord. It looks a lot more like Word and has most of the most common features. Give it a whirl and save plenty of time in the process.

Blog, Web Links

Tech Friday: Firefox Extensions

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If you haven’t noticed the little orange badge in the bottom right corner of my blog (and from the stats, most of you have) I’m a fan of Firefox over IE. There are multiple reasons, but I’m through trying to persuade you to switch, I’d rather tell you about some of the great things I use at firefox.
I recently had to start my computer back up from scratch, which has meant restarting my firefox installation. Before I had added so many extensions that they were conflicting with one another and freezing up firefox at least once a day. I couldn’t bear to part with them though so I left it in conflict and just got used to restarting.
But, now I’m starting from scratch and I’ve decided to move quite slowly and only install my absolute favorite extensions, one at a time. So for those who have just entered the firefox extension world here are my current Must-Haves:

  1. TabMixPlus– This is my first install because of a couple of the great features:
    -undo (restores tabs you closed right back to their original position with their history intacted)
    -Session Manager (restores all your tabs from the last time you closed Firefox, let’s me pick up right where I left off)
  2. Google Toolbar– They greatest feature currently is that you can pick and choose which buttons to add to where on your toolbars:
    -Autofill (saves hours of time filling out forms)
    -Spellcheck (keeps me from looking like an idiot)
  3. Greasemonkey– I wish I could explain how cool this is, but the list is endless. If you ever thought a site would be cooler if… there is probably a script for it.
    And these two are more specific to your situation and interest:

  1. FireFTP: for those who do webdesign easy upload
  2. Screengrab: if you like to take full length screen shots of webpages
Blog

The Joys of keylogger

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I’d just written a brilliant and funny short post during a quick 10 minute break I have here, when my computer decided to hiccup and forget I ever typed anything. Seeing as I’m at work and I’ve neglected to download a keylogger, I experienced the horrible feeling that so many folks across the globe feel every so often, I lost my work.
Why haven’t I experienced that feeling in so long? Why, you might ask, did I go through college without ever lamenting over a lost paper, and staying up till 3AM to catch up? Oh, the joys of keylogger.
Now, just a disclaimer, keyloggers do qualify as spyware, and if your not careful you’ll delete them everytime you clean up your computer with your Spyware Checkers. But, keylogger’s also record every key you press (as it’s doing right now). And when that webpage decides to reject you, you can just hop over and copy and paste that sucker back in. I’ve used Family Keylogger for quite a while, but I’m currently trying out Emsa Save my Work. I’d recommend either for Everyone.

Blog

Performancing for Firefox

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This is my first post from my cool new tool Performancing. 
Basically I’m writing in the bottom half of my firefox browser, like this:

What is so great about this is it makes it easy to blog about something from another website and easily view what you are writing and cut and paste as necessary.  It works for a number of different blogs so you might want to try it out. What’s great is that you can easily post the same post to three or four different blogs if you wanted to.

[performancing] via Lifehacker

Blog

It’s just better

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So after some friends candidly pointed out to me that they weren’t able to subscribe to my blog I decided I should probably see what my site looks like on an internet explorer browser. My site looked horrible! Now I know that means it’s my job to get it all fixed up right and looking pretty for everyone who comes across it, but it also made me realize something:

Firefox is just better.

No offense to you Microsoft fans, but it’s time to branch out. Do your life a favor and download firefox.