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Upgrading to Firefox 3? Backup First with FEBE
Sep 2nd
If you’re a Firefox browser user, backing up your browser’s settings is a good idea generally. If you plan to upgrade to the current version, Firefox 3.0.1, it’s critical that you have a backup on hand, just in case one or more of your favorite add-ons don’t work properly.
Why Upgrade Firefox?
If everything’s working well, why should you upgrade? Mozilla, Firefox’s maker, will continue to support Firefox 2.x until December, 2008. So why upgrade now? There are a number of new features, including better speed and security, that could make an upgrade attractive.
Also, some add-ons, such as Perspectives, are designed for Firefox 3.0 or above. If you’re interested in using add-ons like this, you’ll need to upgrade. More >
Check Slickdeals If You’re Looking for a New Computer
Aug 28th
Slickdeals bills itself as “the most frequently updated and complete deal site on the web,” and it is worth a look. It is a “one-stop” site that lists the latest “buy one, get one free” offers for fast-food restaurants, rebates, and how to get a “free” razor in exchange for your personal information.
More importantly for you, Slickdeals also shows current deals for computers and computer accessories from Dell Small Business, Newegg, and an assortment of “big box” stores.
More >
TinyURL Shortcuts – Look Before You Click!
Aug 25th
TinyURL is a handy service for creating shortcut links from long web addresses (Uniform Resource Locators, or URLs). For example, you’d like to email a very lengthy URL, such as MapQuest directions to your home. If you paste the link in an email, it may look OK to you, but for the person receiving the email, the hyperlink could be broken into multiple lines. This could be inconvenient or confusing to the person you’re emailing.
Instead, you could use TinyURL to create a “shortcut” to the original link. Because this URL is short, the person you’re emailing should be able to click on the TinyURL link with no problem.
How To Be Kind When Sending Shortcuts… More >
Tame Flash Animations with Flashblock Firefox Add-on
Aug 20th
Despite the “cool factor” that Macromedia Flash animations bring to a web page, you might want to limit Flash on your PC. You may have a computer with only a small amount of RAM that you don’t want Flash animations to gobble up.
Perhaps you’ve read about (or seen!) “malvertisements,” maliciously-designed Flash animations that display seemingly-helpful screens that say, “Your system is infected” or prompt you with a phony “System scan” option. Those fooled into clicking these convincing screens could end up infecting their computers with malware.
Flashblock, a free add-on for Firefox, prevents all Flash content from loading, except from the sites you specify. More >
NebuAd CEO Asked “Have You Stopped Beating the Consumer?”
Aug 14th
Bob Dykes, CEO of NebuAd, was recently questioned at a House subcommittee meeting by Rep. Edward Markey (D – MA), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. NebuAd is one of the advertising companies which use deep packet inspection (DPI) to examine the (unencrypted) web traffic of the customers of the internet service providers (ISPs) who partner with them.
Kansas-based ISP Embarq is one of NebuAd’s partners. At issue was a data-gathering test conducted earlier this year by NebuAd against 26,000 of Embarq’s customers.
Embarq did notify its customers about the test, noting that customer’s web surfing data would be retained, and that they could opt-out of the test if they wanted.
Rep. Markey encouraged Mr. Dykes to offer an opt-in model, instead of the current opt-in option. More >
Protect Your Eyes: Use OpenDNS’s Free Web-filtering Service to Block Adult Sites and More
Aug 11th
We recently mentioned that you can point your router or browser to OpenDNS‘s DNS servers to protect your computers from the DNS Poisoned Cache vulnerability brought to light by Dan Kaminsky. While many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have patched their DNS servers, others have not yet done so.
There is another reason to consider OpenDNS, as you can use it as a free web-filtering service. How-To Geek posted a well-written tutorial describing this in detail.
What is Web Filtering? More >
Clean Up Your (Browser’s) Act – Profanity Filter for Firefox
Jul 25th
Just as your ears might be assaulted by someone’s foul mouth as you walk down the street, you might unwittingly come across some family un-friendly language on a web page. You may not browse to any overtly nasty sites, but on sites that allow unmoderated comments, some people might leave some profanity-laced prose.
The Profanity Filter for Firefox, a Greasemonkey script, can help by actually replacing foul words on web pages with “***”. It actually runs after the page loads, so the original page (including any profanity) is displayed on the screen momentarily before the script replaces any words.