Firefox - GO EXTENSIONS!

Most of you are probably already sold on firefox as an Internet Explorer replacement, but if not you should REALLY check it out! Tabbed browsing by itself has transformed my life! Well, that may be a bit of an overstatement, but it sure has simplified browsing...

Here are the extensions I currently use:

Forecastfox
RUSure (still testing this - not sure if I'm going to keep it)
FlashGot (in conjunction with FDM as mentioned earlier)
AI Roboform Toolbar for Firefox (All right, I broke down and spent some $$$ - Roboform is worth every penny!)
Ebay Negs! (But why can't they update it to work with 1.5?!?)
Scrapbook (Don't dismiss this one because it looks girlie -- it's like bookmarks on steroids!)
Download Manager Tweak
Tab Mix Plus
Adblock Plus
Adblock Filterset.G Updater

(Oh, I've added a bunch of searches to the built-in search bar at the top. CNet Reviews, Epinions, All Recipes for my wife, etc.)

There are tons of 'em out there, but these are the ones I've settled on. If you've got an extension you just can't do without post it in a comment and I'll check it out...

The text editor we will use in heaven: VIM

Here's yet another piece of free software: vim. (VI improved -- what does VI stand for? VIew. But can't you edit with this? Enough of your questions!)

Here is an editor freely available with INCREDIBLE power. Is it easy to use? NO! Is it easy to learn? NO! But if your job involves a lot of text editing and you want to be just as efficient as is humanly possible you owe it to yourself to try it out.

Check out http://www.vim.org

Why do people PAY for anti-virus?!?

Avast anti-virus consistently comes in very successfully in reviews and comparisons against the big-name anti-virus companies. The difference? Avast antivirus is FREE FOR HOME USE! Just download it and then every 14 months you download a new key -- how difficult is that?!?

Simple, effective, auto-updates, and free. Why go anywhere else? www.avast.com

Parental filters for internet

I have a 6-year-old who is just starting to get on the internet and enjoy some of the educational games and etc. It would be *way* too easy for him to click on some ad or other link and be taken into content that is completely inappropriate. So I'm on the prowl for some decent filtering software. I really like free software (see other posts) but I'm willing to pay a one-time fee if it's reasonable. What I don't want to do is end up paying that fee each and every year.

I tried "We Block" and it slowed my browsing to a CRAWL. (That was after I turned off the keyword searching -- as long as this software was installed I experienced slow-downs by 5-10 times! (Just between my wireless router and my computer I was unable to update my bandwidth meter every 5 seconds -- it took longer than 5 seconds for it to download! When I got rid of the software it was instantaneous -- just a blip and the screen was updated. I tried it several times on and off to make sure I wasn't getting confused with some other change -- definitely We Block was the problem.)

Then I downloaded CyberSitter. It works effectively and no big slow-down, but some of the designed-in "features" are crazy! If you get to a page deemed inappropriate (and there seem to be a lot of false positives) they don't give you a message -- they either put up a simple "not found" type of message or else THEY REDIRECT YOU TO SOME UNRELATED SITE! What's that all about?!? I can see the first as being an OPTION parents might want to choose in certain circumstances, but I can't imagine when there would EVER be a time where being redirected to an unrelated site makes sense. And certainly there should be an option to simply give an error message which makes it clear WHY you can't go to that site. Now whenever I get an error message related to my browsing (timeout, not found, etc.) I always have to disable the filtering and try the site again simply because I don't know if there's really a problem or if it is just the filtering software. YUK! And the other problem is that there is no concept of multiple profiles or users -- I operate at the same level as my 6-year-old. That in and of itself makes this software virtually unusable in my book. (I'm not interested in viewing ually explicit content and would like to have that filtered, but I don't want to be reading in a technical forum where someone cusses and suddenly I find myself in some unrelated site.)

SCORE SHEET SO FAR:
We Block: 1 out of 5 (unusable)
CyberSitter: 3 out of 5 (good for very restrictive environments, but crazy response to filtered sites and no way of applying a different profile for different users)

Any suggestions on another one I can try that won't require me to pay an annual fee?

Open Source in Albania

Software Piracy is a huge problem here in Albania. Since computer instruction is one of the things we do at the Center for Christian Leadership it's an issue we *have* to deal with.

Our solution we're coming down to is open source. Graduating students who qualify are equipped with a computer loaded with linux, open office, and several other pieces of software. It gives them the capability to do what they need to do and takes away the "I have no other alternative besides pirating" argument. Open Source is a very real alternative and it works!

Are you training in MSOffice or MSWindows? Why not include a few days of training in Linux and Open Office? Most of the time that's all it takes to transfer the concepts (assuming you are teaching it conceptually and not just by rote). Try it!

Suggestions for FDM

I've been using FDM for a few weeks now and I have a few suggestions for Free Download Manager...

(1) There are 3 levels of network load - high, medium, and low. It would be nice if these could be the default but have other user-defined possibilities as well. I know I can alter these 3 as I wish, but I end up altering them all the time depending on the load on the shared connection I have.

(2) Right now scheduling is per download. Wouldn't it be nice if scheduling could also be for settings of network load? So I'm working late and start a download on maximum speed but I know my wife is going start surfing at 7:30am -- I schedule it to go to low at that point so she won't be annoyed by how slow things are going. Or I'm going to bed early and have a big download going. As long as my neighbor is up I don't want to annoy him (we are legitimately sharing the connection - ISP knows about it) so I go at very slow speed, but at midnight I'd like to it up to maximum speed.

More suggestions later...

Finally - a free download manager

I've been searching for some time for a decent free download manager. I played around with leechget 2004 and was pretty pleased with it. Then I ly upgraded to 2005 and he had crippled it -- only a single download at a time! Well, I've finally found what I was looking for.

The incredibly imaginatively named "Free Download Manager" (or FDM for short).

Check it out at http://www.freedownloadmanager.org

Enjoy!