If you have ever designed your own website, or modified you blog’s banner, sidebar, etc., then you may have spent a good amount of trial-and-error time trying to guess how long your image should be. No longer. Pixus, an application that runs on Adobe’s new AIR technology, does that work for you. If you’re a blogger, and have spent time modifying you theme, then this app is worth a try.
Google Docs is great, but it can often be a pain to add files to your account. This post links to a Firefox plugin that makes adding files a little easier, at least for documents hosted on the internet. Right click on any supported file on the web (such as a PDF) and send it straight to your Google account. I hope someone develops a similar tool for Windows/Linux file managers. If you know of one, leave a comment!
If you use Openoffice.org or run a Linux operating system, saving any document as a PDF is easy. There is also a plugin for recent versions of Microsoft Office that can do this. But what about exporting web pages, or documents created by other software? For this you will need a “Print to PDF” driver. A “Print to PDF” Driver works exactly like any other printer, only instead of actually printing your document it generates a PDF in a folder of your choosing. This is very easy to set up: here are the details.
Linux provides the same functionality. Most distributions include a driver that does this: just go to your printer settings dialog, “Add” a printer, and look for an entry like “Print to PDF.” I’m sure MAC users have something similar, so perhaps one of our MAC readers could post a comment regarding how to set that up.
Jul 312008
A friend and I recently ran into a little problem: we wanted to share files with each other, but the files in question were larger than could be sent via email. Sure you can mail a CD, or meet up for coffee with a USB drive, but those options require both time and trouble.
Enter Drop.io. It’s a simple, private, password-protected file-sharing service that allows individuals or groups to exchange data quickly and safely over the internet. You “drop” your data in a folder with either a randomized name, or a name of your choosing, then send the link to whoever you want to access the data. You can set password protection, automatic deletion dates, and a variety of different permissions (view, view/add, or view/add/delete). Furthermore, drop.io provides a variety of different interfaces by which you can interact with its services: Web, email, phone, fax, and even a desktop widget. Even Twitter-integration is provided for those seasoned in the Web 2.0 world.
You can create as many drops as you like, though individual drops are limited to 100mb at the moment. All drops are anonymous (that’s right, you don’t even have to create an account!). Upgrades are available at $10 per gigabyter per year.
Jul 312008
For those who found my previous post about Microsoft and business models interesting, here is an article of interest. Microsoft is developing a new non-Windows operating system designed to meet the demands of Cloud Computing. Don’t expect the death of Windows anytime soon, though; it takes a long time to transition to new technology (Microsoft’s NT system was around for a decade before Microsoft merged it with Windows XP).
Jul 272008
Several factors have contributed to a recent surge among big-name companies in supporting open-source software. Chief among these is the increasing importance of interoperability in a Web 2.0 world. This is true across the board, from big-business capitalism, to the little-guy blogger, to governments around the globe–the world needs its data in transparent patent-free formats.
Microsoft is slowly responding. From Windows Live
to OOXML, to a partnership with Novell, and now a recent announcement that they will financially fund Apache, its biggest open-source competitor in the server market (this blog runs on an Apache server). Read more here.
This is all welcome news, but it is going to require a corresponding change in business model, one which open-source friendly companies like Novell, Red Hat, Sun, and IBM have been pioneering and perfecting for years. It is the move from a product-based model, where one tries to differentiate their product from its competition in order to sell the most items, to a service-based model, where you are selling your ability to help others.
In any case, the future will be interesting. In my opinion, Microsoft is on the right track. The sooner it moves to a service-based business model the better, for us and them.
Jul 092008
According to Google Analytics, at least 5 people downloaded Firefox 3 due to my post. Apparently, however, my contribution to Firefox’s World Record was fairly meager. The fabled Colbert Bump had far more impact. The Mozilla Foundation (the company behind Firefox 3) has provided precise measurements of the effects of the Bump, but are apparently not the first to do so.
Included here is a video of the Bump in action, or you can go directly to Colbert’s site.
Jul 082008
For those who use the excellent bibliographical software Zotero, a major milestone is in the works. The 1.5 release will support, among other features, keeping a full copy of your bibliographic database, which can be accessed by and synced with any of your computers, regardless of Operating System.
The latest release is still in development, and should be used with caution, but a preview candidate has nevertheless been submitted to the public for testing. If your are interested in trying out the new features, check out their announcement. Also, this release requires Firefox 3. Those who prefer the stable version should stick with Zotero 1.0.
Not familiar with Zotero? Check out my previous post, which introduces the software and shows you how to add JBL’s bibliographic style to the mix.
Jun 172008
The much anticipated release of the excellent web browser Firefox 3.0 is available for download. Curious what all the fuss is about? Wondering if you should switch from Internet Explorer (you should, by the way)? Check out the discussion here and here for the best Firefox analysis. Wondering what’s new? Check out this list or a more in depth visual tour.
Convinced? Help Mozilla (the organization behind Firefox) set a record for most downloads in a day by downloading now! Once you have your very own copy, you can start adding extensions and customizing to your heart’s content.
In honor of this milestone in Web development, I thought I would provide some of my favorite extensions. Check them out!
Zotero of course. I have already posted a brief introduction. If you do any amount of research, Zotero is a must for organizing bibliographical material. It also generates citations in a variety of formats, including Chicago and SBL. If you are having trouble getting start, make sure you check out their online screencast, and I plan on developing my own tutorial for SBL/OpenOffice support in the near future.
Ever wish you could access your most-used internet bookmarks anywhere? Or maybe you want to share them with friends and family? Or post automatically generated links to your favorite posts on a blog (as I have in the sidebar to the right)? Well then del.icio.us is for you. The interface takes a little getting used to, and the website has the kind of interface only a techie could love, but its worth the effort. More to the point, it has a brilliant Firefox Extension.
If you’re a longtime use of Firefox, you probably already have a collection of favorite extensions. Some of them might not yet be updated for Firefox 3. Don’t worry, you can still use them: just download Nightly Tester Tools to override Firefox’s default functionality.
Gmail is wonderful, but it is even more wonderful when you install Better Gmail 2, which adds some customizable functionality to gmail’s site.
If you’re a blogger, you definitely want to check out Scribefire. Like Zotero, it runs inside Firefox, allowing you to browse and blog at the same time; no more switching tabs and juggling windows!
Well that’s enough to get you started. I would love to hear what everyone else finds helpful. Post your ideas in the comments!
May 242008
Technology like this has been available to hackers in the Linux community for a long time, but it looks like the excellent people at Fedora are taking things mainstream. Imagine: your entire computer in your pocket. Looks like I have a new weekend project!
