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Firefox Minefield – Tab Candy Rocks
26 Jul 2010
When a friend sent me a link to TechCrunch’s Firefox Just Perfected Tabbed Browsing. It’s Like Apple’s Expose Plus Spaces For The Web, my first thought was oh no – the wonderful tabs in Firefox are about to get screwed up ruining my favorite browser. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The developers at Mozilla are working on version 4 of Firefox, codenamed Minefield. One of the developers is working on a feature that may or not be included in the final version called Tab Candy. For those of you that have iOS 4 on an iPhone, you are already familiar with the ease of dragging applications into a folder-like container. This works pretty much the same way.
There is already a plug-in to Firefox called Showcase, that allows you to see all of your open tabs visually that is pretty cool. Tab Candy goes a step further by allowing you to drag a visual thumbnail into another to create a group that you can label and save. The developer’s video provides a nice demonstration of how this works.
After seeing the video, I couldn’t wait to give it a try and so followed the TechCrunch link to the Developer Builds which are updated nightly. Installing the new version went smoothly and one nice thing was that it did not replace my current version of Firefox. I can always switch back.
After using Tab Candy for a few days, all I can say is that it really rocks. It sure helps keep dozens of open tabs organized by related tasks making the browser much more productive.
Now of course this is a Beta version and a pre-release build, so you have to expect a few quirks and bugs. One of them is that the browser will attempt to update everyday to the nightly release. If you don’t disable the updating feature, your will get the vanilla version of Minefield without Tab Candy and end up reinstalling and then going to customize on the task bar to find the tab candy icon to add it back in. If you want to play with this, you will want to manually update the build rather than rely on automatic updates. See, https://support.mozilla.com/ro/forum/1/736763?s=tabs&as=s for more information on this item.
Thumbs-up to the developer and team for this great innovation to Firefox!! Awesome. Let’s cross our fingers and hope that it makes its way into the final build of Firefox 4.0.
Darkspore
25 Jul 2010
Last Wednesday EA Games announced the pending release of Darkspore in February 2011. The development team also appeared at the San Diego Comic-Con on July 24th to promote the new game, which is a departure from the previous renditions of Spore with an RPC flavor. The supporting website features a teaser video and promotional information about the game.
Unfortunately, the promotional site is sluggish and not very fast in loading in the latest version of Firefox, which is a bit frustrating. (It is also a flash website making it unfriendly to iPhone and iPad users) The website seems to play better in Internet Explorer.
From the game’s website we can glean that the game’s premise is that a race called Crogenitors have been transforming living matter to dominate life on all planets within the galaxy. The player begins as a fugitive with the mission of constructing genetic heroes to battle against Darkspore.
One of the first reviews of the new game, Kotaku’s First Look at Darkspore, EA’s New Sci-fi, Spore-based RPG, provides a better look at the game in my opinion, complete with some good screen-shots that will give an idea of what the new game is about. The teaser video is also available at Kotaku’s The Darker, More Dramatic Side of Spore.
The development team has initiated a thread in the Spore Forum (Sporum) to get feedback from the community on the new game at http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/60209.page. In addition they have provided a Darkspore FAQ for the Spore Forum at http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/60210.page.
EA has also set up a separate Darkspore forum at http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/categories/show/208.page. While they may be great game designers, they have demonstrated a failure to understand good web design with this site – using gray text on a black background makes the forum posting difficult to read. Sure, it is a “Dark” game but that doesn’t mean that the supporting forum needs to be dark to the point where it is difficult to read.
Prior to announcing the new game, EA/Maxis held a number of creature creation contests using templated creatures within Spore. Many Spore players suspected that this might be related to the rumored new game, but there was no confirmation. After the announcement on Wednesday, a thread was started at http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/60411.page explaining that indeed these template creature contests were for the purpose of developing “UGC NPCs” for the Darkspore game.
Reactions to the new game within the Spore community seem to be mixed. While there is some enthusiasm for the new direction in the “Spore Universe”, there are also players who complain that the original game is in need of fixing or patching to correct problems.
As a diehard Spore player, I am interested in seeing how the game works when released. It looks to have a lot of potential. And as it turns out Amazon is already accepting pre-orders for the game.
RFID – Digital Identity, Privacy, and Freedom
24 Jul 2010
As with almost any technological development, the potential always exists to do much good, much harm, or both with RFID technology. It is a pretty attractive idea to be able to go in a store, pick up items, and leave without standing in line for a cashier with all of your purchases being handled by RFID technology in the background. We have already embraced the wonders of loyalty card programs which offer us discounts while at the same time cataloging what we purchase.
As we move in this direction, more and more information about us can be accumulated. If it is misused, the wonders of the technology start to take on a darker cast. The video below highlights the dangers of misusing the technology. While we don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water, we do need to be thinking about how to protect our privacy and in turn our freedom.
While some of the content of the video may be thought to be an exaggeration, we ought to ask whether it is possible and whether we should accept anything that inhibits our freedoms. We need to be careful of laudable goals being accomplished with technology where the same tools can easily be used to control what citizens can do in their lives.
Advertising Targeting Extraterrestrials?
14 Jul 2010
Out in Rachel, Nevada, there is a huge image of the Kentucky Fried Chicken Colonel Sanders Logo staring up into the heavens. This image formed from some 65,000 tiles on the ground can be viewed from space. And given its close proximity to Nevada’s “Extraterrestrial Highway” one has to ask whether the intent may have been to induce space-faring aliens to swoop in for some finger-licking good Earth food.
According to Wikipedia, KFC built the logo in 2006 to mark the debut of a “massive global re-image campaign that will contemporize 14,000 plus KFCs around the world.” The logo was built in 6 days from 65,000 one-foot-square tiles. When you zoom in you’ll see an 18-wheeler parked to the left of the Colonel, and the shadows (next to his ear) of two people looking at the logo.
Missing Disk Space – Find Out Why
12 Jul 2010
While working on my computer I chanced to notice that a 750 GB drive was showing that 500 GB of space was in use. Wow! I didn’t know I had that much, so I wanted to know how the disk had gone from 300 GB of used space to 585 GB in a matter of weeks. What happened to that extra disk space??
The first step was to add up the size of the files in every folder on the drive. Hmm. That added up to just over 350 GB, so what happened to the other 135 GB?
What I needed was a tool that would accurately tell me what was on the drive because what Windows Explorer was showing me in file size didn’t match the disk usage number and wasn’t even close. Turns out there are two really great tools out there that do a wonderful job of mapping a hard drive.
WinDirStat – From SourceForge.net, this is a free tool that provides graphical maps of your drive. (Sample image map of a hard drive)
SpaceMonger – Free for 30 days and about $25 for a license is a wonderful tool that provides accurate graphical maps of hard drive contents. I picked this one and ran it to see what I had. Voila, it found that there were multiple System Restore Point files that were hidden system files. These files were using the missing disk space. Mystery solved. (Sample image map of a hard drive)
