OT: Technology and Geek Stuff Thread

[DanO]

"FF3 is significantly faster than 2, although you can speed up 2 with addons like fasterfox. The 'awesomebar' is a real killer for me, though - enough to make me downgrade back to 2 if not some other browser."
------------------------Yahoo is now promoting FF3. I get a message everytime I log on saying I should change.

GO LIONS "08" !!!!!!!!

[Sharkbait]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZUN-...eature=related

DOM Inspector, ....heh

[unknown lions fan]

Darl, I've heard a number of people fussing about the "awesomebar" and I don't really see all that much of a difference. I'm assuming you're referring to the way it shows web sites on the type ahead feature? The only real difference I can see is that it's two lines instead of one, with the title and the URL. This doesn't seem like a major change to me. Am I missing something?

[unknown lions fan]

here's a write-up on how to disable it if it bothers you:

[Darl McrBride]

Thanks but that doesn't work. I already have a plugin that does about 80% but it still pisses me off. The double line entry is annoying. Searching bookmarks, history, page titles, and cache in addition to url's you've typed in is annoying. Searching entire strings instead of just auto-completing what you're typing is annoying.

Example, I want to revisit rothbard.org so I start typing r...o... Now, instead of rothbard.org popping into the location bar I get a bunch of Milena Rosner links in addition to that. I can see why people might like that but it should be an option and the developers shouldn't have completely yanked the existing code - changing the behavior of a basic UI element.

[FVD]

I was just reading about Google's Chrome Browser that they are releasing tomorrow and I'm thinking about downloading it and giving it a try.

[FVD]

Here's a screenshot I found of it:

[Larsky]

Another topic.....

I'm a Mac head, starting with my Apple II computer way back in 1979. I'm also a Netflix user; love it. But here's where Apple and Netflix don't play well together: on movies available for "instant watching." That is, Netflix streams certain titles for watching immediately, on your PC. But they only use Windoze DRM, not Apple's. So, no "instant watching" for Mac users.

I was feeling a bit ripped off, but not so much. For one thing, I have a hard time watching movies on my computer for the simple fact that I'm used to interacting with the computer. It's hard for me to sit back and be passive at the computer screen for any length of time.

But then I was made aware of the Roku box. It connects to your network (I recently went wireless), and allows you to view Netflix "instant watch" titles on your TV. You can browse your queue on your TV and select the title you want to watch. And while it's not HD at the moment, the box has the capability of firmware upgrades which are expected to enable HD functionality in the future.

So I bought one. $99 shipped from the manufacturer. Set-up took less than ten minutes, went perfectly. And I'll be goddamned if it isn't the coolest thing I've added to my TV in a long time. The downside is that only about 12,000 titles are available for instant viewing (Netflix has over 100,000 titles at the moment).

The best part? There's no added monthly fee. I'm still paying the same thing for Netflix I always did. Only now, I have a cool on-demand service that I can use without having to cough up more dough for Comcast.

If you're a Netflix user, I recommend checking out the Roku box (it's on the Netflix website). If you're a Netflix user AND a Mac user, I strongly, strongly recommend getting this thing. It's really good.

[FVD]

Well, I just downloaded the new Google Chrome browser, and may I say that it is lightning quick. Every page I've checked out in so far shows up even quicker than it did on Firefox and IE. The only thing that I don't like is that they don't have a Java plug-in for it yet. You can't run Java applets on it, but I'm sure that's something that'll be quickly fixed by the people at Sun.

[Darl McrBride]

Checked that out myself and had tears in my eyes to discover the "OmniBar" - a contraption a magnitude worse than the "AwesomeBar". It is quick, though - it spawns an entirely new process for each tab so if you have the horses it should be speedy. For Java, I read somewhere on the google site it supports the latest java release (beta).

[FVD]

Yes it does, I went and downloaded it this morning and Java is running just fine on it.

There's a task manager feature in the browser, so that if one of your tabs freezes up, you can kill the one tab without having the whole browser crash on you. Huge improvement IMO.

[King Cole]

After my most recent reformat I couldn't get FF2 back. FF3 I was having problems with "error must close" constantly. I decided to try Chrome. Haven't used much yet but at least it doesn't close all the time

[DeanUK]

Don't know if this has been posted before, but heres an online sports "magazine" that might be of interest. Covers mainly the 4 sports, college and Nascar.

You need to subscribe to see it all, but it's free.

http://today.sportingnews.com

Tried google chrome also, I quite like it, may consider using the Mac one when it comes instead of Opera that I use at the moment at work.

[bimmer84]

Great kink Dean. Thanks!

[unknown lions fan]

Cool little piece of Flash work here. Arachnophobiacs may wish to avoid the link...