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Firefox 3 for Developers…

May 30, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I spent a little time this afternoon reading about Firefox 3 for Developers so I could kind of get an idea of what lies ahead in the next browser release.  I found out some pretty interesting features that will be available for end users, see the list below.  If you are a developer, check out this link for more information that is of interest to developers. 

User experience

  • Easier password management. An information bar at the top of the browser window now appears to allow you to save passwords after a successful login.
  • Simplified add-on installation. You can now install extensions from third-party download sites in fewer clicks, thanks to the removal of the add-on download site whitelist.
  • New Download Manager. The download manager makes it easier to locate your downloaded files.
  • Resumable downloads. You can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
  • Full page zoom. From the View menu and using keyboard shortcuts, you can now zoom in and out on the content of entire pages — this scales not just the text but the layout and images as well.
  • Tab scrolling and quickmenu. Tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu features.
  • Save what you were doing. Firefox 3 prompts you to see if you’d like to save your current tabs when you exit Firefox.
  • Optimized Open in Tabs behavior. Opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs instead of replacing the existing ones.
  • Easier to resize location and search bars. You can now easily resize the location and search bars using a simple resize handle between them.
  • Text selection improvements. You can now select multiple ranges of text using the Control (Command on Macintosh) key. Double-clicking and dragging now selects in “word-by-word” mode. Triple-clicking selects an entire paragraph.
  • Find toolbar. The Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.
  • Plugin management. Users can now disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.
  • Integration with Windows Vista. Firefox’s menus now display using Vista’s native theme.
  • Integration with Mac OS X. Firefox now uses the Mac OS X spell checker and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates.
  • Star button. The new star button in the location bar lets you quickly add a new bookmark with a single click. A second click lets you file and tag your new bookmark.
  • Tags. You can now associate keywords with your bookmarks to easily sort them by topic.
  • Location bar and auto-complete. Type the title or tag of a page in the location bar to quickly find the site you were looking for in your history and bookmarks. Favicons, bookmark, and tag indicators help you see where the results are coming from.
  • Smart Bookmarks folder. Firefox’s new Smart Bookmarks folder offers quick access to your recently bookmarked and tagged places, as well as pages you visit frequently.
  • Bookmarks and History Organizer. The new unified bookmarks and history organizer lets you easily search your history and bookmarks with multiple views and smart folders for saving your frequent searches.
  • Web-based protocol handlers. Web applications, such as your favorite web mail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is provided for other protocols as well. (Note that web applications do have to register themselves with Firefox before this will work.)
  • Easy to use Download Actions. A new Applications preferences pane provides an improved user interface for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.
  • Improved look and feel. Graphics and font handling have been improved to make web sites look better on your screen, including sharper text rendering and better support for fonts with ligatures and complex scripts. In addition, Mac and Linux (Gnome) users will find that Firefox feels more like a native application for their platform than ever, with a new, native, look and feel.
  • Color management support. By setting the gfx.color_management.enabled preference in [about:config], you can ask Firefox to use the color profiles embedded in images to adjust the colors to match your computer’s display.
  • Offline support. Web applications can take advantage of new features to support being used even when you don’t have an Internet connection.


Security and privacy

  • One-click site information. Want to know more about the site you’re visiting? Click the site’s icon in the location bar to see who owns it. Identify information is prominently displayed and easier than ever to understand.
  • Malware protection. Firefox 3 warns you if you arrive at a web site that is known to install viruses, spyware, trojans, or other dangerous software (known as malware). You can see what the warning looks like by clicking here.
  • Web forgery protection enhanced. Now when you visit a page that’s suspected of being a forgery, you’re shown a special page instead of the contents of the page with a warning. Click here to see what it looks like.
  • Easier to understand SSL errors. The errors presented when an invalid SSL certificate is encountered have been clarified to make it easier to understand what the problem is.
  • Out-of-date add-on protection. Firefox 3 now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and disables older, insecure versions.
  • Secure add-on updates. Add-on update security has been improved by disallowing add-ons that use an insecure update mechanism.
  • Anti-virus integration. Firefox 3 now informs anti-virus software when executable files are downloaded.
  • Windows Vista parental controls support. Firefox 3 supports the Vista system-wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.


Performance

  • Reliability. Firefox 3 now stores bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences in a transactionally secure database format. This means your data is protected against loss even if your system crashes.
  • Speed. Firefox 3 has gotten a performance boost by completely replacing the part of the software that handles drawing to your screen, as well as to how page layout work is handled.
  • Memory use reduced. Firefox 3 is more memory efficient than ever, with over 300 memory “leak” bugs fixed and new features to help automatically locate and dispose of leaked memory blocks.
Filed Under: Miscellaneous, Web Development Tagged With: ,

Dude Flips Out at Cubicle World…

May 30, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I have no idea where this was at but some dude obviously just can’t take it anymore and goes nuts tearing up “cubicle world” and finally had to be subdued. His rant goes on for a few minutes though before they stop him. I have to admit, if I would have been in the same room I would have probably been too hysterical to help out… this is just good stuff.


Office Worker Goes Absolutely Insane – Watch more free videos

Thanks to Jennifer Laycock on Twitter for posting the cell phone camera view of this, http://tinyurl.com/64mwu6

Filed Under: Funny

Dunkin’ Donuts / Rachael Ray Ad

May 29, 2008 By Leave a Comment

When this story broke yesterday I couldn’t help but laugh.  It’s sad that we live in a society that this could even be an issue.  She’s trying to help sell $4 mocha latte’s folks, not support jihad…  Geesh.  It makes for some good humor though. 

Just a thought though, couldn’t someone just use Photoshop and fix this whole thing, and take Rachel and Dunkin’ Donuts out of the Axis of Evil?? 

BOSTON (AP) — Dunkin’ Donuts has pulled an online advertisement featuring Rachael Ray after complaints that a fringed black-and-white scarf that the celebrity chef wore in the ad offers symbolic support for Muslim extremism and terrorism.

The coffee and baked goods chain said the ad that began appearing online May 7 was pulled over the past weekend because “the possibility of misperception detracted from its original intention to promote our iced coffee.”

In the spot, Ray holds an iced coffee while standing in front of trees with pink blossoms.

Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin complained that the scarf wrapped around her looked like a kaffiyeh, the traditional Arab headdress. ”The kaffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad,” Malkin wrote in her syndicated column.

“Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant (and not-so-ignorant) fashion designers, celebrities, and left-wing icons,” she said.

A statement issued Wednesday by Canton, Mass.-based Dunkin’ Brands Inc., however, said the scarf had a paisley design, and was selected by a stylist for the advertising shoot.

“Absolutely no symbolism was intended,” the company said.

Dunkin’ spokeswoman Michelle King said the ad appeared on the chain’s Web site, as well as other commercial sites.

Amahl Bishara, an anthropology lecturer at the University of Chicago who specializes in media matters relating to the Middle East, said complaints about the scarf’s use in the ad demonstrate misunderstandings of Arab culture and the multiple meanings that symbols can take on depending on someone’s perspective.

“I think that a right-wing blogger making an association between a kaffiyeh and terrorism is just an example of how so much of the complexity of Arab culture has been reduced to a very narrow vision of the Arab world on the part of some people in the U.S.,” Bishara said in a phone interview. “Kaffiyehs are worn every day on the street by Palestinians and other people in the Middle East – by people going to work, going to school, taking care of their families, and just trying to keep warm.”

While some extremists and terrorists may wear kaffiyehs, “To reduce their meaning to support for terrorism has a tacit racist tone to it,” Bishara said.

Malkin, in a posting following up on last week’s column, said of Dunkin’s decision to pull the ad, “It’s refreshing to see an American company show sensitivity to the concerns of Americans opposed to Islamic jihad and its apologists.”

Ray, host of the Food Network television program “30 Minute Meals” as well as a syndicated daytime talk show, began appearing in ads for Dunkin’ Donuts in March 2007. When Dunkin’ announced the partnership, it said Ray would be featured in TV, print, radio and online spots in a campaign running through 2010. To top of page

Source: ‘Paisley’ or ‘jihad?’ Dunkin’ Donuts yanks Rachael Ray ad – May. 29, 2008

Filed Under: Funny Tagged With:

Google, Starbucks, and You…

May 28, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Elliot Noss of Tucows delivered an interesting Keynote Presentation at ISPCON in Chicago.  I have seen this posted on a few of my friends blogs so I decided to take a listen, it’s a great perspective…

 

Filed Under: Email Solutions, Web Hosting Tagged With: ,

Mozilla Messaging – TB3?

May 25, 2008 By Leave a Comment

If Mozilla can get together a product that is as effective as outlook and has the ability to sync with Plaxo, LinkedIn, and my Palm Treo Smartphone, I will completely migrate my 20 years worth of Business Data, 2500+ contacts, etc. to Thunderbird 3 when it is complete and out of Beta!  Microsoft, this will essentially severe our ties forever!

Mozilla Messaging Starts Up Operations

New open source organization kicks off development of Thunderbird 3

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. – February 19, 2008 – Mozilla Messaging, the new mail focused subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, today announced that it has begun operations.

The initial focus for Mozilla Messaging is the development of Thunderbird 3, which will deliver significant improvements, notably integrated calendaring, better search and enhancements to the overall user experience. Thunderbird is a free, open source email application that is used by millions of people around the world and is built using the same open source development model as the award-winning Mozilla Firefox Web browser.

Mozilla Messaging has staffed a small product development team who will work as part of a community of contributors from around the world.

“We’re excited to renew the focus of our open source community on the future of Thunderbird,” said David Ascher, CEO, Mozilla Messaging. “Every one of us is committed to building a great email product that people will love to use and that serves as the foundation for choice in a critical area of Internet software.”

Mozilla Messaging is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. The board of directors consists of David Ascher, CEO, Mozilla Messaging; Christopher Beard, VP and General Manager, Mozilla Labs; and Marten Mickos, CEO of open source database vendor MySQL AB.

“Thunderbird email is a vital part of the Mozilla project which brings freedom to hundreds of millions of internet users worldwide,” said Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB. “By joining the board of Mozilla Messaging, I hope to help the world communicate better.”

For more information, please see the FAQ and the following blog post from David Ascher:

Mozilla Messaging Starts Up Operations

Filed Under: Email Solutions, Miscellaneous Tagged With: ,

Headed to HostingCon 2008 in July!

May 22, 2008 By Leave a Comment

My business partners and I had tossed around the idea of not attending HostingCon this year in Chicago.  It’s not that we haven’t had a lot of fun and picked up on a lot of really good information at this conference in the past 2 years that we have attended in Las Vegas and Chicago, it’s just that we don’t really see ourselves entirely as a “hosting company”, we are about 80% development in all likelihood if you looked over our sales figures. 

In the past we have always felt a little bit out of place at this conference because most of the folks we met up with were large wholesale hosting firms with sophisticated automation systems in place and didn’t provide any value added services to speak of, much less design and development.  Also, a vast majority of the other attendees we encountered didn’t really have a clue who their existing clients were, for the most part they were focused on volume sales.  Pleth is an entirely different company.  We might have several hundred clients but we know all of our clients on a first name basis and are in contact with them pretty frequently, not to mention we know their applications inside out because we built them! Being a managed hosting firm we have always had the opportunity to meet up and touch base with our existing providers such as The Planet, Parallels (formerly Plesk SWSoft), and a few others.

We wanted to investigate some other conferences to possibly attend (see delicious links) this year instead of HostingCon but after researching what all was out there that might be well suited for what we do I didn’t see anything that really seemed to fit the bill, so I finally convinced them that HostingCon was a good idea for this year!  I think we are planning on nailing down our travel plans the first of next week. 

If anyone else in the industry that checks out my blog periodically is going to be in Chicago this year please don’t hesitate to drop me a note and let me know you are going to be there, would love the opportunity to say hello and catch up on things.  Here’s a little bit of information about this years upcoming conference.

Great Location for HostingCon 2008: Historic Navy Pier in Chicago

Whether you’re an executive or a system administrator you’ll learn from the best and brightest in the industry and network with your peers. You’ll also meet the vendors in our exhibit hall who will help you take a step on the path to growing your hosted services business. There will also be special vendor demos in the exhibit hall to help you learn about the products offered by the sponsors and exhibitors.

Our conference program is packed with information and insight from professionals who know the hosted services industry. HostingCon 2008′s broad selection of conference sessions and keynote addresses will help you learn how to take your business to the next level.

It’s not all about hard work, it’s also about quality play! Join other professionals and vendor representatives in the fun and exciting events surrounding HostingCon 2008. There’s sure to be something for everyone to enjoy. And don’t miss the great exhibitor giveaways!

Register now!

For More Information: HostingCon 2008 => Hosted Services Industry Conference and Exhibition

Filed Under: Web Hosting Tagged With:

R1Soft- Continuous Data Protection (CDP)

May 22, 2008 By 1 Comment

My business partners and I recently made the decision to add another server to our existing network to serve as an off-rack, dedicated backup server. 

This wasn’t an easy decision for me because I had already grown pretty attached to our disksync synchronization service that we were leasing from The Planet but at the end of the day I was pretty impressed with R1Soft’s product, especially after listening to an interview on The Web Hosting Show that aired a little while back.

Our server admin, Matt, spent a little more time researching the product than I did and he was also pretty impressed with the product.  For Matt to be impressed was enough for me!  Just a little bit about the new solution that we are running for those of you that are interested in the technical aspects of R1Soft’s product:

R1Soft offers the only Continuous Data Protection solution for Linux Server backups. R1Soft is a solution that enables disk-based data protection, Linux disaster recovery, and Bare-Metal Restore for servers and workstations running Linux and Windows systems. The software is the first high performance backup and restore product for MySQL and the only software to offer True Granular Restore™ for MySQL.

To learn more: R1Soft- Continuous Data Protection (CDP), Linux Disaster Recovery, and Server Backups for Linux and Windows

Filed Under: Web Hosting Tagged With:

Comcast to Acquire Plaxo

May 22, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I wasn’t too surprised to learn the other day that Comcast had purchased, or was fixing to purchase, Plaxo.  I have been a loyal Plaxo user for about 10 years or so an absolutely love the service. Not only is it the single best way to stay updated with all of your business and personal contacts but it has also evolved into a very unique social networking aggregator as well. 

The Plaxo Pulse application, and I have to admit I haven’t spent as much time as I would like playing with this tool, allows you to not only keep track of your contacts contact information but it also synchronizes their blog entries and any other RSS Feeds that they might have out there like Flickr, Picasa, Blogger, etc.  This has been pretty cool for me because it has alerted me to friends and business colleagues that I had no idea even blogged!

I am not for sure what the purchase price for the company was, and I am pretty sure they aren’t disclosing it at this stage in the game since the sale isn’t final yet, but it’s likely it will be pretty high compared to other service providers out there that have been grabbed up as of late.

Here’s an excerpt from their blog entry about the acquisition:

Big doings at Plaxo today! We are really excited to announce some of the biggest news in the history of Plaxo: We have just signed an agreement** to be acquired by Comcast, the nation’s leading provider of entertainment, information and communications products and services (and our largest customer and partner).

Joining forces with Comcast is a real win for our customers, our investors, and our employees. Comcast has an exciting vision to bring the social media experience to mainstream consumers. Together, we will be able to help users connect with all the people they care about, across all of the devices they use, with all the media they love to consume, create, and share. This is also great news for the Internet industry at large, where Plaxo has been – and will continue to be – a strong advocate for opening up the Social Web.

Plaxo will remain an independent operation in Silicon Valley, reporting into Comcast Interactive Media, which is a division of Comcast that develops and operates Internet businesses focused on entertainment, information and communication. All of our 50 employees will continue to innovate on and grow both our networked address book service and our next-generation social network, Pulse. And through additional integration projects with Comcast, we’ll be able to take these services to a lot more users and places than we could on our own. We are developing an exciting roadmap with Comcast that includes socially enabling the media experience in places such as Comcast’s high traffic portal (Comcast.net),CIM’s popular interactive entertainment properties (such as Fancast and Fandango), and the television

Plaxo and Comcast have been working together for the past year on a number of initiatives. Plaxo is providing the universal address book for Comcast’s SmartZone communications center (slated to launch later this year), and we are also now hosting all of the address book accounts for Comcast webmail users. Our partnership has already more than doubled the reach of the Plaxo network, bringing the total number of accounts to nearly 50 million.

Together, we intend to deliver on a vision of making “social media” a natural part of the lives of regular people, not just early-adopters. For example, you should be able to securely post family photos online in Pulse, and have them viewable by any of your family members, whether they are online, at work, on their mobile device, or in their living room watching TV. And you should be able to discover new shows to watch, based on what your friends and coworkers have recommended.

So, what about current Plaxo members? The services you know and enjoy from Plaxo will not only continue, but will continue to evolve and improve. In addition, both of our services benefit from “network effect,” which is to say that the more people who use them, the more useful they become.

Continued Protection of Your Privacy and Support for Interoperability
Plaxo has always been a strong advocate of giving users ownership and control of their data. We protect our users’ data with one of the strongest privacy policies, which will continue. We will continue to work toward greater interoperability and data portability, with the user at the center and in control. Comcast has a similarly strong privacy policy, and we are both committed to ensuring that the protections users have come to expect will continue.

In Conclusion
Finally, we’d like to extend an enormous thanks to the people who have helped Plaxo reach this point—our millions of loyal customers, our patient investors and advisors, and the extraordinarily talented group of employees who have worked so hard to bring us to this point.

So, whether you’ve been a part of the Plaxo network for a long time, joined recently for Pulse, or have just followed us from the sidelines, we appreciate your interest in the Plaxo story. We are excited to open a new chapter today.

Ben Golub, CEO
Cameron Ring, Founder and Chief Architect
Todd Masonis, Founder and Vice President of Products

** We are not releasing financial details of the transaction. The acquisition is subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, and is expected to close in the near future.

Source: Plaxo’s Personal Card: Comcast to Acquire Plaxo; Pulse to Become Central to Creating Unified “Social Media” Experience Across the Web, the TV (and more)

Filed Under: Miscellaneous, Social Media / Web 2.0 Tagged With:

Now Feeding to Twitter!

May 22, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I think I am a little late to the punch on picking up this cool little trick because I have seen some of my friends already using it but I finally took a few minutes to get my mind around Twitterfeed this afternoon.  Basically Twitterfeed just feeds your Blog’s RSS Feed (or content) through to your normal Twitterfeed so that your followers on Twitter are instantly notified when you have posted a new blog entry. 

Now, given the fact that Twitter‘s probably the most unreliable social networking tools out there I have to admit I do like it a little bit. It has taken me a little while to get my mind around it but now that I have used it a little while I can see where it has it’s own unique place in the social landscape. 

Setting up the twitterfeed was pretty simple, you just need to login using an openid account, then enter in your twitter account settings and then enter your blog’s RSS feed URL.  The whole process took about 5 minutes to complete.

Source: www.twitterfeed.com

Filed Under: Social Media / Web 2.0, Web Development Tagged With: , , ,

Email As a Service…

May 22, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I ran across a blog entry on smallbiztechnology.com that referenced two companies that we (Pleth Networks, LLC) have worked with in the past and still have a current working relationship with, Maltrust and BlueTie. 

Both of these companies offer an awesome alternative to hosting your own email in-house or on your web-hosting server.  If you have ever considered outsourcing your email solutions to a third party provder, please contact us and let us discuss a couple of popular options with you. Here’s an excerpt from their post:

If you are still using your own email server, in your office, to service your email needs, you are doing a dis-service to yourself and your company, unless you have VERY specific reasons for doing so.

Outsourcing your email to one of the many email service providers on the marketd is the way to go. You don’t have to worry about managing hard disk space, upgrading software or security – you can focus on your business.

One of the long time leaders in this space, webmail.us was purchased by the ultimate customer focused web host Rackspace in October. It’s recently changed its name from webmail.us to Mailtrust.

In addition to the new company brand, Mailtrust announced the addition of Microsoft Exchange Hosting to its product portfolio. With the addition of Microsoft Exchange to Mailtrust’s flagship Noteworthy email hosting service, customers now have a choice of platforms depending on their size, functionality and budgetary needs.

You can get recommendations from other email service providers from your local technology consultant and also check out BlueTie which has a very robust and feature rich email service.

This is something that my business partners and I realized a few years ago that prompted us to offer our Pleth Premium Email product as an Email Outsourcing Solution.  Since that time premium email solutions have grown into one of our most requested products.

Source: Email As a Service: Much Bettter Than Hosting Email On YOUR Server

Filed Under: Email Solutions Tagged With:
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