Norton Ghost GDisk

Pros:

• can be used from Windows command line
• can be used also for USB connected disks

Cons:

• Slow?

Usage example:

 
gdisk32
 
gdisk32 [disk number] /diskwipe /dod

Other disk wiping solutions: Disk Wiping Utilities: How to Get Rid of Your Data Permanently

FastStone Capture is one of many screen capture programs. It is for Windows and free for home users. It can capture windows, objects, full screen, rectangle regions, freehand-selected regions and scrolling windows/web pages. It has some integrated functions like resizing, cropping, text annotation, printing and more. You can save the captured images in many different image formats. Capture has also a screen magnifier and a screen color capture.

What makes FastStone Capture an excellent program is it’s good features, very clean, minimal and easy interface.

PageAddict is a Firefox extension, wrote by two neuroscientists, that monitors your Internet browsing and displays a summary of the time you’ve spend time on each web site for the day and shows graph of your web surfing habits history. You can be surprised about results.

PageAddict add-on is actually Greasemonkey script and it stores all the data locally. Here is what site says about privacy:

Details of the web sites that you have visited are stored in your browser and are not sent to any external websites. PageAddict is designed such that external websites cannot access this information and does not use cookies.

If you want to focus your web browsing you can add categories for sites and restrict how much time you spend in each category in a day.

More Firefox add-ons.

Use your web applications, like Gmail and Google Calendar, just like desktop applications.

Bubbles is simply but clever way to use web applications or sites just like desktop applications. You just add your favorite web sites in Bubbles settings and after that you can use them in their own windows and they sit in the system tray. Bubbles has some web applications pre-configured and they have some extra functionality. There are Google Calendar, Gmail, 30 Boxes, Yahoo Mail and Flickr. You can for example upload photos by dragging them into Flickr.

Some applications just work so naturally as desktop applications in Bubbles. My favorites is to use SlimTimer with Bubbles.

Automate you software installation by making software list and let the InstallPad do the work for you.

InstallPad is an easy and smart program. It is a little like apt for Windows. You just make a list of your favorite programs with InstallPad or straight in xml format and InstallPad will download and install silently the ones you choose. Yoy’ll get time for more important things.

InstallPad can resume cancelled downloads and can try to find the latest version of the programs. It is still in an early stage, but it is very promising and there are coming features.

Last updated: November 24, 2006

Useful extensions for Firefox for web browsing and web development.

There are thousands of add-ons for Firefox. In this list I have concentrated on those extensions that minimize and cleans Firefox user interface and makes web browsing easier and more effective. Last part is for extensions for web developers.

Web Browsing

• Aging Tabs: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Makes unused tabs fade with age and highlights the selected tab. If you usually have many tabs open at the same time, this extension might be visually helpful.
• All-in-One Sidebar: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Sidebar control lets you quickly switch between sidebars, view dialog windows such as downloads, extensions, and more in the sidebar, or view source code or websites in the sidebar. This extensions cleans nicely the user interface by gathering all opening windows into sidebar.
• BetterSearch: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  While waiting for Firefox 2 version look GooglePreview. Enhances Google, A9, MSN, Yahoo, Answers.com (web results), AllTheWeb, del.icio.us, Ask.com, Clusty.com, Vivismo.com, Dogpile and Simpy.com by adding preview thumbnails and Amazon product info as well as new special links to the search results.
  This extensions is great with search sites as well as with del.icio.us lists to help to memorise the tagged sources.
• Blogger Web Comments: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Waiting for Firefox 2 version. Post and read comments on any webpage. You can see on any web page list of blogs which have a links to the current page.
• BugMeNot: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Bypass compulsory web registration with the context menu via www.bugmenot.com.
• del.icio.us: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Keep, share and discover all your favorite thins. For del.icio.us users. There is a new extension by del.icio.us called del.icio.us Bookmarks. It integrates more tightly with Firefox’s bookmarking system, so it conflicts with other extensions like Google Browser Sync and Foxmarks. The new extension might be worth trying.
• FaviconizeTab: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage Added 2006-11-24
  The width of the specified tab becomes small up to the size of favicon. This is a must tab space saver add-on!
• FxIF: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  View EXIF data in image properties.
• Google Notebook: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Allows notetaking while browsing. Well, for Google Notebook users this is a must.
• GooglePreview: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Inserts web site thumbnail previews in Google and Yahoo search results. This extension feels faster than BetterSearch.
• Greasemonkey: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  A user script manager.
• IE View Lite: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Cut down version of IE View (Firefox add-ons page). Open Internet Explorer view in a tab. IE View and IE Tab extensions does the same thing, but both of these extensions use C++ code to do their thing, which means they use DLLs, which means they’re larger than the JavaScript-based IE View Lite and more susceptible to changes not only in Firefox but in Windows itself.
• IE View: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Opens pages in IE via Firefox menus. There is also IE View Lite (Firefox add-ons page), which is, according to the author, a cut down version of IE View. Both of them allow the current page or a selected link to be opened in Internet Explorer. Third option is IE Tab (Firefox add-ons page), which works like IE View but opens IE pages in Firefox tab. IE Tab extension uses C++ code to do its thing, which means it uses DLLs, which means it’s larger than the JavaScript-based IE View and more susceptible to changes not only in Firefox but in Windows itself.
• Menu Editor: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Customize application menus. This is a nice way to hide unnecessary menu items.
• Mouse Gestures: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Allows you to execute common commands using mouse gestures.
• New Tab Button on Tab Bar: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Adds a new tab button to the tab bar. When you have only couple tabs, it is easy to open new tab by double-clicking empty area on tab bar. But when there is no empty space, New Tab Button on Tab Bar extension is handy. Now that Tab Mix Plus is Firefox 2 compatible and if you use it, it includes this extension’s functionality.
• SearchStatus: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Display the Google PageRank and Alexa ranking with search-related tools.
• Stealther: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Surf the web without leaving a trace in a Firefox.
• Stop-or-Reload Button: Firefox add-ons page :: homepageTurns the stop and reload buttons into a single one. When you can stop, you have a Stop button, otherwise you have a Reload button. This is a small extension to minimise a little user interface.
• Stylish: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Customize the look of websites and of the user interface. This is a must extension if you want to tweak Firefox user interface. For example to show only those web site icons on tabs that have a favicon and fade the not selected tabs icons like in Flock web browser (I guess code needs some cleaning):

  @namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul);
  /* Fade just the icon */
  .tabbrowser-tabs tab:not([selected="true"]) .tab-icon {
    -moz-opacity: 0.25 !important;
    display: -moz-box !important;
  }
  .tabbrowser-tabs tab:not([selected="true"]) *|tab:not([image]) .tab-icon {
    display: none !important;
  }
  .tabbrowser-tabs tab:not([selected="true"]) .tab-text {
    margin-left: 2px !important;
  }
  .tabbrowser-tabs tab[selected="true"] .tab-icon {
    -moz-opacity: 1 !important;
    margin-top: 1px !important;
  }
  /* Alternatively, kill only default tabbrowser icons (no site icon) */
  .tabbrowser-tabs *|tab:not([image]) .tab-icon {
    display: none !important;
  }
  /* Show icons (no matter what) when hovering over the tab */
  .tabbrowser-tabs *|tab:hover .tab-icon {
    -moz-opacity: 1 !important;
  }

• Tab Mix Plus: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Tab browsing with an added boost. This is a must., but waiting for Firefox 2 version…
• Tab Sidebar: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Displays previews of your tabs in your sidebar. Occationally this might come handy.

Web Development

• ColorZilla: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Advanced eyedropper, color picker, page zoomer and other colorful goodies.
• FireBug: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Web Debugging Evloved.
• LiveHTTPHeaders: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Waiting for Firefox 2 version…
• Modify Headers: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Add, modify and filter http request headers.
• Selenium IDE: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Record, edit and play Selenium tests.
• UrlParams: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Displays the websites get/post parameters in the sidebar.
• Web Developer: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  Adds a menu toolbar with various web developer tools. This is de facto extension for web developers.
• X-Ray: Firefox add-ons page :: homepage
  See the tags on a page without viewing the sourcecode. Nice little extension to quickly check the tags.

For web development testing purposes it would be very handy to have multiple verisions of Internet Explorer (IE) on Windows. Luckily it is possible.

It is possible to run multible versions of Internet Explorer in standalone mode. First Joe Maddalone introduced this in Multiple Version of IE in Windows XP Pro. Manfred Staudinger perfected the standalone versions in Taming Your Multiple IE Standalones by adding IE version numbers to the title bar of the standalone browser window.

Now there are two options to install different versions. You can download readily packaged versions separately from Evolt’s archive. You just have to unzip the packages into your hard drive. Or you can use TredoSoft’s installer which contains IE3 IE4.01 IE5 IE5.5 and IE6.

Mozilla has released earlier than expected final version of Firefox 2.

Just a couple days after Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7, Firefox releases Firefox 2. As Ars Technica notes, it is available earlier than expected as a ftp download.

Firefox 2 offers some visual and usability improvements, like enhanced search capabilities and improved tabbed browsing, and some useful new features like built-in phishing protection, inline spell checking, browsing session resuming. The Session Restore feature restores windows, tabs, text typed in forms, and in-progress downloads from the last user session. It will be activated automatically when installing an application update or extension, and users will be asked if they want to resume their previous session after a system crash.

Firefox 3 is planned for May 2007.

While Flickr is lackin the fullscreen slideshow, luckily there are other programs to do that.

Flickr’s own slideshow is fine, but it definately lacks the fullscreen option. It is quite a diffrence between 500 pix and fullscreen slideshow. After noticing that Safari is having a plug in for that (Windows version coming soon) and browsing through the Flickr Tools, there seems to be some web page services and programs to replace this lack. One of them is Flickr AutoDownloadr.

Being a Windows desktop program Flickr AutoDownloadr does a pretty good job as a online service’s “add on”. It downloads the selected fotos to your computer and and displays them as a windowed or fullscreen slideshow. You can select one users or everyones potos by dates, tags, favourites, set and groups and order them as you like. The best thing is that you can make a shortcut to open almost any open page on Flickr as a slideshow. You can also use the program to download photos to your computer without showing slideshow.

Downloading and installing the program is straitforward and the user interface looks clear. Running the program first time it asks if you want to associate the ‘flickrss’ protocol with this program. You’d better to answer yes in order to be able to use the clever option to open the slideshow from the Flickr web page. All you have to do is to bookmark the following link in your web browser: javascript:void(location.href=’flickrss:’+location.href).

Now when you navigate to a page on Flickr and then select this bookmark, those photos will be displayed in a fullscreen slideshow. Slideshow opened this way uses the program settings from last time. Flickr AutoDownloadr can be also used from the command line.

Being an excellent program, there where also some problems during the test run. Sometimes some couldn’t be seen in a slideshow and program only showed the error message: Failed to set image to… Actually selecting sets did this every time. There could also be a button to just save the settings without starting a slideshow.

But anyway, while Flickr is lacking the fullscreen slideshow, this program is an excellent replace for that. And here is the tip: Chage the photo quality setting to high, go to Flickr Last 7 Days Interesting page and start the fullscreen slideshow from the bookmark, sit back and enjoy the show…

Microsoft has released the final version of Internet Explorer 7. It is available now as a manual download or on November via Windows Automatic Update.

Microsoft has officially released the final version of Internet Explorer 7.0 (IE7) for Windows XP SP2 with build 7.0.5730.11. IE7 is available for free download at Internet Explorer Home. Though IE7 will be pushed via Automatic Windows Updates on November, it can be disabled from auto-installing. Some localised language edition of IE 7 will be released within the next few weeks and others later.

Internet Explorer 7 features tabbed browsing, web search widget from the toolbar, advanced printing options such as shrink-to-fit printing, anti-phishing filter, ability to discover, read and subscribe to RSS feeds directly from IE7. More importantly, IE7 has improved security features such as ActiveX opt-in and improved support for web standards and CSS.

Mozilla is also expected to release final Firefox 2 anytime this month. So you would better hurry up to test IE before that…