FoxiPod – Bank Shot to iTunes
May 17, 2005
It’s only for Firefox and Mac OS X users (hey — a demographic I fit in for a change!), but FoxiPod is a rather slick Greasemonkey script that automatically identifies links on websites to downloadable media that is playable in iTunes (mp3s, for example).
When it finds such links, Foxipod puts up a special icon next to it — click on the icon, and not only is the media downloaded, it’s automatically added to your iTunes library.
Slick!
Firefox – More Better Popup Blocking
April 5, 2005
I was bitching awhile back about the new wave of “unblocked” pop-ups that have sprang up lately. It looks like help is on the way, at least if you’re a FireFox user. According to one of the developer blogs, new pop-up blocking is being tested as we speak—and you can download a test plugin to try it now.
“Give that these pop-ups and pop-unders have really started to spread on the web, we’re testing a quick patch that enables the Firefox pref to block them. I blogged about this earlier this month and included manual steps to disable these nasty pop-ups and pop-unders. In addition to this fix, the good news is that for sites where you need these pop-ups, you can just whitelist them like you do other “wanted” pop-ups. This looks (at this stage) like a reasonable trade off.”
(via Slashdot)
Weblog Services
February 11, 2005
There are a lot of good reasons to include a weblog into your business site. Many of these advantages go out the window if you use a weblog service instead of making it an integral part of your site. Nevertheless, many people use them. If you’re considering doing so, here are the leading candidates.
Microsoft Search – Now Live and Direct
February 1, 2005
Microsoft officially launches their new search engine — how are your results? Thus far, I’m seeing about 30% more traffic from Microsoft Search than from Google.
PageRank Simplified – What you need to know
January 20, 2005
If you get anywhere near search engine optimization discussions, you’ll hear the term PageRank. There is both a lot of math and a lot of supposition regarding PageRank, but really only a few concepts that you need to know.
Read more
Firefox 1.0 CPU Usage
November 28, 2004
Just a quick tip—if you’re having problems with FireFox using an excessive amount of CPU time, be sure to check your extensions…
On my G4/1.5GHz PowerBook, I’d noticed FireFox 1.0 was starting to take 35% – 45% of the CPU, even when it was running in the background. I went in and removed a few non-critical extensions (GCache, FoxyTunes) and disabled a couple of others (Search Status (shows pagerank)) and Tweak Network Settings), and CPU usage fell back to a reasonable 2% – 8%. I don’t have the time right now to narrow down which particular extension or combination of extensions might be causing the problem, but if you’re seeing problems, you might want to go in and carefully start disabling a few extensions…
Download Mangers Rock…
November 11, 2004
I vaguely remember download managers, back in the bad old dial-up days. At that point they were usually tools to resume downloads if your connection died before it all trickled in (a not too uncommon occurance). I’ve ignored them since then.
The other day I happened to run into Speed Download 2, a download manager for OS X. For some reason, I looked at it long enough to figure out that it actually rocks for broadband users. By opening up simultaneous connections, it downloads large files much faster than normal—right to the edge of the connection speed, if the pipeline in between can be driven that fast. For a test, I downloaded an hour-long MP3 from the BBC site, and it managed to come in at about 4 megabits per second—which isn’t bad on a cable connection rated at 3 megabits.
Speed Download 2 plugs into FireFox and Safari and intercepts downloads of filetypes (well, MIME types, actually) that you choose. By default, it includes all of the common compressed formats. It took about 2 seconds to add MP3 to the list. When you click to download one of these file types, Speed Download is launched and takes over the download instead. It also provides a nice little download management front end, prioritization and queuing, restarts, history, etc. It even will automatically share a download folder via Rendezvou for you.
Very nice, and well worth the $20 registration fee. Check it out.
Firefox Security Upgrades
August 4, 2004
The Mozilla Firefox team has released version 0.93, for all platforms. This upgrade fixes a handful of possible security exploits that have recently been discovered.
Get yours here.
I’m glad to see that they’re staying on top of it.
Rip Internet Explorer out by the roots
July 29, 2004
Is making Firefox your default Windows browser not enough for you? Would you feel better with a scorched earth solution, wiping out the last vestiges of Internet Exploder Explorer from your system?
Well, it’s not for the faint of heart, but the folks over to Crackbaby have posted detailed instructions for editing the registry to COMPLETELY remove IE.
Apparently Microsoft was so amazed that they had a technician call to find out exactly how it was done… You’d think they’d know, wouldn’t you? Apparently they also mentioned that they would NOT be putting out a tech note on how to do this, for “obvious reasons”….
Yeah, there’s a shocker… lol…
Related: Running Windows Securely
Running Windows Securely
July 19, 2004
Over the past few weeks, I’ve written quite a bit on various Windows issues—Spyware, Viruses, and going to a more secure browser. Even though those articles have scrolled off the front page, a lot of people are still looking for them, so this article will be a “living document” with links to all articles I write on the topic, and there will be a link to this on the right sidebar if you should need to refer back to it in the future.
Windows Security Articles
No. More. Excuses. – The very basics of securing a Windows computer, and why it’s important (to all of us) that you do so.
Spyware and You. – The details of how and why you should scan for spyware on your computer.
Welcome to Day Zero – Explains what a Zero Day Exploit is, how your computer can be infected by one even if you’re “doing everything right”, and additional things you can do to protect yourself.
Making the Switch from IE to Firefox – The previous article explains why you’ll be a lot safer if you don’t run Internet Explorer (IE); this article gives you simple step by step instructions on how to replace IE with Firefox—a safer browser with lots of great new features.
Related Articles
More IE Vulnerabilities Found – If you think the recent Microsoft patches made IE safe, think again.
What’s on YOUR Firefox? – Some of the great extensions that can add new features to your FireFox.
A Real Solution to Spam? – A review of Mailblocks Challenge/Response system that really DOES stop spam.
It can’t be that bad… – How many clicks does it take to get to the center of an unprotected copy of Windows?
you had my hope up 
