Sep 30
How-To Guides David
browser, client, default, e-mail, email, firefox, web-mail, webmail
Firefox
Using web-mail is great, you can get to your email from any Internet connected computer and you don’t have to worry about saving all your email when you get a new computer. There’s one thing about it that isn’t so great; that’s when you click on an email link in your browser and it starts loading up the built-in email application that you probably don’t use. Wouldn’t it be good to just click an email link and be taken straight to the composition page of the web-mail service you use?
Well, with Firefox there is a way to set this up. It does require you to have some information about your particular mail service, I’ve tried to cover the most popular ones here. Roughly speaking, the following process is going to do: 1) Unlock Firefox to accept a different mail service, 2) Make Firefox load some code so it knows about your desired mail service, 3) Select that mail service as the default mail client, 4) Re-lock step number 1.
Continue reading …
Sep 28
Book Reviews David
ai, altered, artificial, drugs, gibson, intelligence, matrix, reality, virtual, william
Neuromancer by William Gibson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
While not a total stranger to the cyberpunk genre thanks to film, Neuromancer was the first cyberpunk book I have read.
Having only just read it in 2009, the abstract notion of jacking in to the matrix (i.e. internet) does not seem as far fetched to me as it must have done when the book was originally written.
Through many parts of the book I felt as if I was loosing track of what was going on. Although, I think this is partly intentional, as Gibson expertly crafts his words so that you feel as if you are in a dream like state. It is no coincidence seeing as how the main character, Case, often takes drugs, and is the cowboy who jacks his mind into the matrix throughout the book. The descriptions of Case’s experiences while jacked in to the matrix are well described, which is helped by the use of primitive shapes and colours. The most trippy parts of the book are when Case’s time on the matrix are interrupted by a powerful artificial intelligence called Wintermute. These are very much like dream scenes, and they are not always explicitly announced in the text. Therefore, as the reader, you will find yourself trying to discern reality from virtual reality.
Most of the way through the book, besides the futuristic setting, the book looks like it will be about a criminal plot, which is in contrast to the book’s esoteric undertones of virtual and altered realities. However, you’ll find later in the book that something equally abstract is orchestrating all of the real world events. Which in itself I think blurs the conceptual lines between the real world and the on-line world.
Twenty five years after it was written, this is still a relevant and engaging book.
View all my reviews >>
Sep 25
How-To Guides David
firefox, tabs
If you accientally close a tab in Firefox, don’t worry. Just press Ctrl-Shift-T (command instead of ctrl for Mac users) and your last-closed tab will re-open up for you.
Sep 23
How-To Guides David
backup, browser, export, febe, firefox, passwords, profile, save, speed
My recommended settings for FEBE (click to enlarge)
More people are starting to comment on how Firefox is becoming a slow browser, with all the Add-Ons and the time it take to start up. I have found this too. I think that over time your profile acquires lots of settings and little bits of code here and there, left over from add-ons you may or may not be still using. The best way to deal with this, as with many computer problems is to wipe out and start again. This doesn’t mean I suggest you loose all your saved passwords and bookmarks though.
When I did this with my Firefox profile (which was many years old), I did it the manual way. It didn’t take me long, but you would need to know what you’re doing. I have since found a Firefox Add-On called FEBE (install from here) which will automate the process for you. Although IMHO, you still need to give it some thought when you are changing its settings. You can back up so many things from your profile with this, that you could end up defeating the object of clearing house! Remember, our aim here, is it wipe out as much of your old profile as possible without loosing the things you really need, like your bookmarks, passwords and Add-Ons.
You can set a schedule for FEBE, set whatever suits you. I am trying out having it do a back up everytime I shutdown Firefox, this does slow things down though. You can set daily, weekly or monthly backups. Or even just schedule a reminder to tell you to do it manually.
My recommended settings for saving the most important things with FEBE are in the above screen shot.
Now, in the event that you need to rebuild your Firefox profile due to some sort of fault and malfunction, that is still in your FEBE backup, then you need to manually rebuild your profile. *Deep breath*, this is going to take a little while, but follow my instructions and you’ll get there.
Sep 21
Mobile News David
allaboutsymbian, Review, s60, symbian, tweets60, Twitter
I said last week that I’d be writing for other sites, so here I am. This one came about quite quickly, I’ve got another one coming up soon that took a bit longer to organise.
So, here’s my review of the S60 Twitter app, “Tweets60″, at AllAboutSymbian.com – Link.
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