Firefox automatically checks for updates to addons, but not for plugins such as Java, Silverlight, and Flash. If you’d like to know if these are up to date on your system just run Firefox and head on over to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/plugincheck/. If anything’s old, you’ll be provided with a link to download and install the update.
Last week Google held a meeting in which they introduced a very early version of their Chrome OS. Here’s a video that explains just what it is supposed to be.
Ever wish you could search Google for something and find out what others in your social network though about that topic? You now can by trying Google Social Search.
First head on over to Google Labs and click “Join this experiment” next to Google Social Search. Once joined, head back on over to Google.com and perform a search. On the results page click on “Show options” then click “Social” on the new menu on the left.
Here’s the results of my search for “ebooks” limiting to social results:
Here’s what Google says Social Search indexes:
From this you might have figured out that the more social “stuff” you do using Google-based tools, the better your results will be.
Microsoft is now offering a public beta of Microsoft 2010. As far as I can tell, anyone can download it from Microsoft. You’ll have to register but they seem to be accepting anyone willing to play with it. I’ve been using the Technical Preview on one of my laptops for a few months now and installed the beta last week. First, I’m impressed. Second, it’s stable. Third, it’s completely compatible with Office 2007. (As far as I can tell.) Here’s some screenshots:
Windows Live SkyDrive is yet another one of those online storage solutions. (And not even the only one from Microsoft.) I haven’t used it as much as I might like mainly because it was yet another cloud storage system that you had to access through a Web browser. In other words, it wasn’t transparent to use.
If you download and install SkyDrive Explorer your SkyDrive is now presented as just another drive on your computer, even though it’s online storage. Once installed, just open “computer” and you’ll see SkyDrive Explorer listed there.
Just open that up as you would any other drive and you’ll have access to all of your SkyDrive-based files and folder. (You will be asked to log in first of course.) Additionally, if you’ve made a file public, you can right-click on that file and get the public URL for that file automatically copied to your clipboard for easy pasting into an e-mail or blog post.
I’ve still got Drop.io, and Dropbox accounts but this one does make Live SkyDrive seem just a little bit easier to use than those others.
I’ve not used this yet because I totally love uploading to flickr via Windows Live Photo Gallery. However, flickr schedulr has one distinctly interesting feature: the ability to schedule when uploads happen. Think about it, set it up to upload your photos overnight when your shared neighborhood bandwidth is much more available.
Flickr Schedulr is a Windows desktop application that automatically uploads pictures to Flickr based on a schedule (e.g. to post a new picture every day at a certain time). It allows you to create a queue of pictures to be uploaded, along with their titles, descriptions, tags, and the photoset into which they should end up.
Features
- Easily maintain a queue of pictures to be uploaded to Flickr.
- Edit the title, description, tags and visibility settings for each picture, and optionally the photosets and groups to which the picture must be added.
- Get a visual overview of the queue through the inline picture previews.
- Drag and drop pictures onto the queue from Windows Explorer.
- When present in the file, automatically retrieves the title, description and tags from the picture when it is added to the queue.
- Warns you if there are pictures in your queue that are larger than the maximum file size you are allowed to upload.
- Can be run from the command line with the “/upload” switch to upload the next picture in the queue.
- Keeps a history of all pictures that have been uploaded.
- Shows you all your important account information, e.g. your remaining upload quota.
- Import and export the configuration (containing queued and uploaded pictures).
- All settings are automatically saved when you close the application.
A meme (pronounced /’mi?m/, rhyming with “cream”) is a postulated unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. (Wikipedia)
The term Internet meme is a phrase used to describe a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet, much like an esoteric inside joke. The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although this concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information. (Wikipedia)
Do you know the stories behind such Internet memes as The Star Wars Kid, Three Wolf Moon, and David After the Dentist? If not, do you feel out of the loop? Want to get back in the know? Check out the Know Your Meme series of videos on YouTube. (Surprisingly to me it’s been running for three years and I’ve just heard of it.)
Here’s the most recent episode for your sampling pleasure:
Officially, Google Docs files are compatible with Microsoft Word. Yeah, there are some limitations but if you want online access to a document or want to collaborate on a document with others, Google Docs is a great tool.
Because of this compatibility you’ve always been able to edit a Google Doc in Office. The problem was, you had to log in to Google Docs, download the file, open it in Word (or Excel), edit it, save it, and upload it back to Google Docs. That’s hardly an efficient use of your time.
But what if you could access your Google Docs transparently via Office? Now you can when you download and install OffiSync! Once installed in either Office 2007 or 2010 (I’ve not tested it in Office 2003 yet) you’ll get an additional ribbon which allows you to directly access your Google Docs files.
Ok, technically it does the downloading and uploading for you, so you’re technically not live editing as you can with others when logged into Google Docs directly, but if you just need to edit a doc, and you’re more comfortable in Office, this is the tool for you.
Now you can read Kindle books on your computer.
I follow hundreds of feeds so I’m always looking for ways to get through them all. Here’s how Robert Scoble does it. I don’t do everything he does but my style is very similar.