Zen And More » Software

Twitterfox marries Twitter and Firefox

Bengt — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 19:38:34 +0000

I have been a rather reluctant user of Twitter because I could not find a tool that was easy enough to use. Twitter itself is so so, I wanted something easier. Along came TwitterFox which is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ status messages on Twitter.

You get a small icon on the status bar that notifies you when your friends update their status and you can use Twitterfox small text input field to update your own status.

Antivirus and firewall

Bengt — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:44:44 +0000

I have been using AVG combinded Antivirus and Firewall for some time. When it was time to renew I decided to opt for free alternatives. First I tried AVG Free 8.0 but it messed up (as I see it) and installed addons in Firefox I could not remove without uninstalling AVG Free.

My choices of free software are avast! antivirus and Comodo Firewall. They work well together and are easy to set up.

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How to get folders in Gmail

Bengt — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:45:30 +0000

I have posted about using coloured labels in Gmail which makes labels more visible and useful. But I was still not too fond of labels as they are applied in Gmail.

Then I came across Folders4Gmail which is a terrific script for Firefox with Greasemonkey installed. Suddenly your labels show up in a folder-like hierarchy. You controll the hiearchy with how you name your labels.

Using coloured labels in Gmail

Link Medley

Bengt — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:17:37 +0000

Chris Garrett writes about Top Software Tools: Readers Recommendations where he lists software for Windows, Mac, Linux and cross-platform.

DailyWritingTips has PC Vitals for Every Freelance Writer, actually it is great advice for anyone using a computer.

DailyBits has a post about The Worst PC Disasters and Their Solution.

Firefox 3 is out

Bengt — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 05:53:49 +0000

Firefox 3 is finally released, the Mozilla site – Getfirefox.com – is overladed at the moment. Mozilla Zine writes about Mozilla Firefox 3 Released.

CNET has a review at Firefox 3. In summary they say:

The good: Firefox 3 touts faster rendering, vastly reduced use of system resources, clever new data-mining tools for your bookmarks and browser history, and more security features than any other browser.

In the process of getting better Firefox 3 dropped support of some operating systems: Windows 95, 98, and Me; Mac OS X, versions 10.2 and earlier.

Firefox remains CNET Editors’ Choice for best Internet browser.

If the Mozilla Firefox site is overladed then you can download from Mozilla Firefox 3 – CNET, that is where I got my copy.

Lifehacker writes about Top 10 Firefox 3 Features and has a Power User’s Guide to Firefox 3. They also have Posts Tagged “ Firefox 3 ” as a way to find other posts.

Mozilla aimed for a Guiness World Record in number of downlads within 24 hours. At Spread Firefox Download Day 2008 it says:

Thanks to the support of the always amazing Mozilla community, we got more than 8 million Firefox 3 downloads in 24 hours. That’s more Firefox downloads than we’ve ever had in a single day — an impressive feat indeed!

Note: This text is published at btwendel.com. If you see it elsewhere they are using my content.

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Free Programs to keep Windows Protected

Bengt — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 09:13:56 +0000

DailyBits has a post titled 10 Best, Free Programs to keep Windows Protected.

Windows isn’t secure as you might have known. You’ve probably faced threats and trojans on your computer. There are loads of programs that are targeted at keeping your Windows computer safe from intrusions, here’s a pick of the best of them.

This post covers the essentials which are anti virus, anti spyware, firewalls and cleaners. From the list I have picked CCleaner, a junk remover + registry cleaner + uninstaller, and I like it.

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Drupal content management system

Bengt — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:56:32 +0000

During the weekend I worked with an idea of mine and wanted to create a new website. I have tried Joomla before but wanted something smaller and decided to try Drupal. It turned out to be a small, flexible yet powerful system. I had a site in production status up and running in around two hours.

I use the Aberdeen theme which looks great for my site. Among the modules I installed are SiteMenu which gave me categories as a side menu, just what I needed.

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Using coloured labels in Gmail

Bengt — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 09:53:03 +0000

When I first read The next evolution of labels I was not much impressed since I could see no immediate benefit with coloured labels. But I decided to give it a try and it improved readability and overview a lot.

I created some filters that put coloured labels on certain incoming mails. This makes it easy to see what’s in my inbox. In my case I set a dark green label on my RSS-feeds, label = !Feeds. This makes it very easy to spot the RSS-feeds, I only read them when I have enough time which usually is in the evenings. I also have filters and coloured labels for yoga-related emails and for some groups at Yahoo. Now I can easily pick the mails I want to read, depending on how much time I have at hand.

Note: The exclamation mark first in the label name places it on top in the labels list.

A new Songbird is out

Bengt — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:37:30 +0000

Songbird has released version 0.3 and I have downloaded and installed it. This time I changed feathers (layout) since the original is all black. I decided to use iBird which looks great. It is an iTunes lookalike which is OK, I like the colours. I use Song Notifier which shows an alert slider when the song changes. And I have Pause/Play/Stop Buttons which changes the single Play button in Songbird to separate Play/Pause/Stop buttons.

PermaTabs for Firefox

Bengt — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 07:50:24 +0000

PermaTabs is a great add-on for Firefox. PermaTabs adds the ability to turn tabs into permanent tabs, they will stick around between sessions. It is very useful for keeping URLs you use often (I use it for my Gmail) always available and they stay from session to session. And it is useful for picking up articles where you left off during a previous session (which of course also can be done using bookmarks).

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