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Did I Tell You About the Time We Canoed at Firefox 2?

How cool is this?

Continuing the tradition, Firefox 2 will use a pre-release code name taken from a public park. Bon Echo Provincial Park (http://www.ontarioparks.com/english/bone.html) is located in Ontario, Canada. The name literally translates to “good echo”, and reflects how it is our goal echoes that of Firefox 1, once again focusing on improving the browsing experience for our users, making it simple, effective, fast and useful.

Bringing together the absolute best of both worlds!

Anti-Bell

Moving has some real advantages - one of the foremost in my mind right now is the simplicity with which one can make a transition, namely, screwing Bell and going with Vonage for VOIP. I think this is what we’ll be getting:

Talk about fun. We need a phone line, we need cordless phones, and I don’t have a wireless router yet - what a great way to meet my needs!

Nobody Prints Cameraphone Pictures

Gizmodo : Nobody Prints Cameraphone PicturesNote: This is probably because cameraphones are such low resolution that printing looks like crap. Also, does anyone print anything anymore?

We bought Susie’s mom a low-end digital camera this year. Upon opening, her first words were, “Oh, I’ll have to get one of those little photo printers so I can send you guys some pictures.” I, naturally, was appalled — we don’t even own a printer, nor have I given much thought to purchasing one, when I can send people to Flickr or copy Mapquest directions to a laptop or PDA. But apparently some people think the next big market for cameraphone users is making prints from the images. Instead, why don’t we just start teaching people how to use online photo sharing services, then using the services’ built-in print ordering affiliations to make prints when necessary? If the Wall Street Journal is reporting that people aren’t printing cameraphone pictures, maybe that’s not a shortcoming of the printers — maybe printers just aren’t necessary.

It’s a crazy world, though. Someone yesterday tried to fax me something. I just about coughed out my tracheal data shunt.

I for one would be highly in favour of eliminating printers. I read in a book* that it’s recommended to send a hardcopy of your resume after emailing it. I must ask - why?? First of all, they should be able to read it online, secondly, a business can print their own copies if they want to.

And printing pictures is a huge step back from the convenience, the quality, and simplicity of digital options.

* Books are still the exception. There’s something aesthetically pleasing about curling up in a comfy chair flipping through crisp, new book, smelling the ink and feeling the stiff and slightly rough pages. I wonder if I just need to get used to reading ebooks and soon I’ll be retracting this exception too.

Firefox Users Bad for Advertisers

Firefox Users Bad For Advertisers

Internet Explorer users were more than four times as likely to click on ads than Firefox users were. During the period 0.5 percent of IE users clicked on ads compared to 0.11 percent of Firefox users. Speculation on reasons for the difference in click rates range from Firefox’s integrated pop-up blocking to seeing the average Firefox user as more tech-savvy the average Internet Explorer user.

I believe that the latter is true (reminds me of the statistic that Kerry voters were more educated than Bush voters), but the former is probably a better explanation.

Spam Games

It’s kinda funny - when Jenn and I got back from our walk, I had probably 3000 spam comments to eliminate, and Jenn had another 700. They were being submitted at a rate of at least 1 a second (how the heck do they do that?), all with different IP addresses (how do they do that?), but for my convenience, all with the words poker or texas in them. Strangely, none of them ever made it to the site, just to my inbox - so what does that accomplish? So, in an effort to play their game, you will no longer be able to add comments to old (>10 days old) posts. All comments were going to go through a moderation process, but that just sucks for our treasured readers. If that doesn’t work then I’ll try something else.

When Is Email Not Ideal?

There’s some discussion at work regarding the limitations of electronic communication. It’s somewhat related to the arguments that some make that email is a highly inefficient form of communication, and has significant costs to organizations, but that’s an issue for another time.

Some say that email, for example, omits the body language and “paraverbal” tools of face-to-face (F2F) communication. This is then explained as the cause of misunderstanding - that much of what needs to be said needs to be seen, and without seeing, the message is vulnerable to misinterpretation. I believe that misinterpretation has more to do with biases of the user than is inherent in the mode of communication. For example, a couple who live apart and maintain written correspondence (in the past with letters, now with email) can attain a high degree of understanding in spite of the limitations.

Someone who resents technology, or resents those who demonstrate capacity to make technology work for them, will be prone to bias from any email communication. For example, I disdain poetry since I have little appreciation for it and lack the desire to learn how to use it effectively. If I was involved in a poetic conversation, I’d quickly become resentful of it and avoid such conversations. In general, those who are unwilling/unable to communicate effectively by email prefer F2F. The corollary being that those who are unwilling/unable to communicate effectively F2F prefer email. Both methods are modulated by inherent biases.

Here are some additional perspectives on email (Note: all benefits have an inverted and corresponding risk in comparison to F2F):

Is there a balance? If so, where are the functional lines drawn? How does a conversation meet the diverse needs/abilities of individuals? At what point should personal preference (”I don’t like email and I don’t want to have to use it”) no longer be an excuse?

Supporting Language Initiatives

I’m all in favour of this kind of cultural preservation. Using technology to assist in this is quite cool:
Inuit language finds home on net

Inuktitut speakers will soon be able to have their say online as the Canadian aboriginal language goes on the web.

Browser settings on normal computers have not supported the language to date, but attavik.net has changed that.

It provides a content management system that allows native speakers to write, manage documents and offer online payments in the Inuit language.

It could prove a vital tool to keep the language alive in one of the most remote communities on earth.

“The worldwide web can seem like a foreign place to these people but now they can be players in that world. The internet will eventually be one of the basic tools that the Inuit people use,” predicted Mr Zielke.

The government of Nunavut is committed to making Inuktitut its working language.

Firefox Erodes IE Market Share

OneStat’s survey, based on Web users’ activity in 100 countries, revealed that IE 6.0’s market share fell to 88.9 percent in the third week of November, down 5 percentage points from its share in May 2004.

Mozilla-based browsers, including Firefox, rose to 7.4 percent, up 5 percentage points from May.

P4 2.4+

Where’s the best place to get a P4 2.4+ GHz CPU/chip? First priority: price (’pears to be the best deal is ~ $240 locally). Second priority: location and/or convenience to Kingston (would you trust that sorta thing by mail?). Third priority: quality and/or customer service. I dunno if I’m allowed to buy something like this with my birthday and Christmas coming up, but if the price is right… I might be able to convince the big cheese. Once I do that I’ve got a nice Celeron 2.4 Ghz chip to sell. Then I just upgrade to Mandrake 10.1 and then I’ll have screenshots to show off.

Extension Fascination

Firefox (and Thunderbird) extensions are incredible. I just installed the weather extension, in addition to oh, 20 others. The weather is the best, but the others are great too. I am amazed that some people still use IE (and Outlook Express).

Skins

There are some pretty options now - on the far right you can choose your skin.:mrgreen: Green and Red Bugs are my favourite (probably for Spig too).:twisted: And smilies are available on all posts and comments.:grin:

Rate Your Teacher

Here are my new fun sites that I found out about today. Rate My Professor and Rate My Teacher. On both sites you look up your school, university or college and read all the comments people had about profs/teachers. Very interesting… and let’s you know you weren’t alone in your frustration. Some comments were a little harsh but generally entertaining.

Internet Marriage??

A friend at work came in a little frazzled… her son announced at 5 am that he was engaged… to someone in Russia!!! They have never met… and have been ‘together’ for three months!! He ‘chatted’ with his future mother-in-law just last night…. He didn’t want his father to know about the engagement but the hollering seemed to wake him up…

Too much time…

I think I’ve spent too much time surfing today… I found this and thought it was neat. Make sure your browser is smaller than your full screen and watch it move!