Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Will Be Out Tuesday!

The official release of Mozilla Firefox 3.0 is next Tuesday… and I will be upgrading ALL my PCs immediately! Yes, it is THAT good! It will not, however, have the “private browsing” feature enabled. See the link below for that story:

Firefox 3 won’t have ‘private browsing’

At least one security feature won’t make it into the final release of Firefox 3 on June 17, Mozilla confirmed again Thursday. The feature, Private Browsing, would have disabled all caching, cookie downloads, history records, and form data used during the current session. In essence, you could surf the Web and leave no fingerprints.

“It basically said to the browser: I would like what I’m about to do to not be logged anywhere,” said Johnathan Nightingale, Mozilla’s ‘human shield,’ aka its security user interface designer. He described the private browsing process as this: you hit a button and everything past that point isn’t logged. Then, at some point in the future, you hit the button again and it’s as though what you just did never happened. One possible use might be when someone other than the computer owner uses the browser. ‘We looked at ways to do this, but the problem is that it touches a lot of code,’ Nightingale said. ‘Because there are such rich interactions with Web sites and mashups and things like that, we didn’t want to put in something that was half baked.'”

Solution to the Regegade Laptop Sound Card!

Zone-Tek USB Sound CardI have found the solution to my podcasting/sound card issue with my new laptop! Dewd! Check it out! A Zone-Tek External USB sound card that Intrex Computers is carrying here locally for $12.99! Plug it in, then set up a package I found called “Podcast Station” to recognize the USB sound card as the microphone source, and viola’! We are back in business! Check out Podcast Station at the link at the end of this posting… (the red “Podcast Station” box.)

I will be registering it very soon since it saved my podcast (at least doing it with my new laptop, see the posting a few days back.) Here’s the low down on it from the Podcast Station web site:

Podcast Station

“Podcast Station is a Win 2k, XP and Vista program that will record, edit, mix and publish your podcasts. It’s like having a control console on your computer. Podcast Station provides an easy and fun way to create a Podcast from start to finish. Use your own mixers, amplifiers or compression/limiters or Podcast Stations built in options.

  • One easy-to-navigate screen. Resize the window to add more carts and decks.
  • Up to 30 on-screen deck buttons with crossfade sliders, countdown timers and the ability to pause and resume play of the file. Allows assignment of most common files types like MP3, WMA, WAV, AIIF ect. of any length.
  • Up to 70 on-screen cart buttons can be assigned MP3, WMA, WAV, AIIF etc. of any length and can include sound effects, jingles, sweepers, liners, bumpers, interviews and any other kind of sound. Carts automatically re-cue when stopped, ready for play again instantly.
  • “Pro” mode adds auto-crossfade and auto-segue functions to each deck button, as well as user-settable start and stop positions at each end of the deck progress bar.
  • Loop mode allows any deck or cart to be looped indefinitely.
  • Save deck and cart button configurations including assigned audio. If you produce several different podcasts that each require their own set of music, bumpers, etc., each configuration can be saved for fast recall later.
  • Automatic gain control (AGC) – boosts the timid and limits the loud on either or both channels. Can be applied to the microphone input alone or to the carts, decks and mic together.
  • Adjust individual volume on decks and carts with 3dB, 6dB and 12dB pads.
  • VU meter (technically a peak program meter) displays playback and record levels over a 72dB range.
  • Markers for marking locations and making notes while recording or playing back. Podcast Station shows a floating window with time line position and marker titles you have made. Text can be copied and pasted into RSS, ID3 and iTunes tags as desired. Ideal for long interviews when you want to mark important parts so you can come back and edit and assign to buttons to play back later.
  • Zoom into the waveform with a 100X zoom feature for precise editing.
  • Auto-fade to mute function on cart, deck and microphone sliders is activated with right click in the slider channel. Right-click again to restore level.
  • Real time waveform scroll in edit window during recording. See your voice’s waveform move across the screen as you talk and record.
  • User choice of folder location for files.
  • Unlimited undo and redo for life of files.
  • Keyboard map of all editing and transport commands under Help menu with roll-over definition labels.
  • Effects:
  • -Adjust volume
    -Bleep
    -Fade in/out
    -Insert silence
    -Mute
    -Noise reduction
    -Normalize
    -Reverse
    -VoiceSlip
    -Change Pitch
    -Change Tempo
    -Change Rate

  • Additional effects available through the Advanced Effects menu:
  • -Chorus
    -Compression
    -Distortion (two kinds)
    -Echo
    -Flanging
    -Parametric Equalization

    -Reverberation (two kinds)

  • Four sliders for controlling volume levels:
  • -Carts: master volume control for all cart buttons; can be linked to deck slider.
    -Decks: master volume control for all deck buttons; can be linked to cart slider.
    -Microphone: volume control for record input.
    -Monitor: master output volume control.

  • RSS publisher/editor with support for iTunes tags.
  • FTP file upload manager built into the publication wizard.
  • Import and export WAV, AIFF, WMA, MP3 and other popular file formats. Add ID3 tags to MP3 files.
  • Export mono-right, mono-left, or two-track mono.
  • Record in stereo, playback in mono or stereo.”

Podcast Station

Where I Will Be This Weekend! Hulk Smash!

HulkMe go see Incredible Hulk. Hulk smash! Dr. Bill like. Gamemaster come too. Gamemaster’s mom also come see movie. It be fun!

OK, OK… I am laying it on pretty thick… but I think this will be a fun movie… we are looking forward to it! Hey! I didn’t steer you wrong on Ironman, now did I? Go see “The Incredible Hulk!”

IMdb Summary of the Hulk Movie

“Depicting the events after the Gamma Bomb. ‘The Incredible Hulk’ tells the story of Dr Bruce Banner, who seeks a cure to his unique condition, which causes him to turn into a giant green monster under emotional stress. Whilst on the run from military which seeks his capture, Banner comes close to a cure. But all is lost when a new creature emerges; The Abomination.”

Geek Software of the Week: SpeedFan!

SpeedFanA neat little utility to let you know how your system is behaving physically… is it getting too hot, is it “healthy?” Free (of course!) and very cool! (No pun intended!)

SpeedFan Web Site

“SpeedFan is a program that monitors voltages, fan speeds and temperatures in computers with hardware monitor chips. SpeedFan can even access S.M.A.R.T. info for those hard disks that support this feature and show hard disk temperatures too, if supported. SpeedFan supports SCSI disks too. SpeedFan can even change the FSB on some hardware (but this should be considered a bonus feature). At the lowest level, SpeedFan is a hardware monitor software that can access digital temperature sensors, but its main feature is that it can change fan speeds (depending on the capabilities of your sensor chip and your hardware) according to the temperatures inside your pc, thus reducing noise. Several sensors, like Winbond’s and the AS99127F support fan speed changing, as well as others from Maxim, Myson, Analog Devices, National Semiconductor and ITE, but the hardware manufacturer must have connected the relevant pins to some additional, yet trivial, circuitry. This means that if you have, say, a Winbond W83782D on a BP6 then you’re ok, but not every motherboard with such a hardware monitor chip will be able to change fan speeds. From one of the very first hardware monitor chips that could be found in standard PCs, the National Semiconductor LM75 (and all of its clones, like the Philips NE1617 and the Philips NE1618 or the Maxim MAX1617) or the Analog Devices ADM1021, such chips have been greatly improved, both in their precision and in their capabilities. Current chips can monitor fan speeds, voltages and change fan speeds by using PWMs (Pulse Width Modulation). Some chips can even be programmed to vary fan speeds without any additional software intervention. If your BIOS was programmed to setup such chips this way you can still try to use SpeedFan’s Advanced Configuration to revert to manual (software controlled) mode.”

SpeedFan Tray DisplayI also like how it shows the temperature in the tray when it is minimized. Very neat! Check out SpeedFan! It may be what you have been looking for to monitor your system!

Yahoo/Microsoft Deal Off the Table!

So we won’t have a “Micro-Hoo” after all… I can’t say that makes me sad!

Microsoft has closed the door, says Yahoo

“A statement issued by Yahoo this afternoon (yesterday) says that all talks with Microsoft over any possible combination of their businesses has effectively concluded, and that it wants to maintain its own search business. One final meeting between both companies’ executives apparently took place on Sunday. ‘At that meeting, Microsoft representatives stated unequivocally that Microsoft is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo, even at the price range it had previously suggested,’ the statement reads. With that result, Yahoo board members determined that any business deal with Microsoft that would constitute less than a merger, would leave Yahoo without an independent search business that the company says is ‘critical to its strategic future and would not be in the best interests of Yahoo stockholders.’ This flies in the face of rumors circulating as late as an hour ago, stating Yahoo may have been ready to cede its search business or search capability to Google.”

Yahoo and Google are now talking about Yahoo using Google ads on their site to raise revenue. Wow! They must be a’hurtin’… because it would seem that they could do that themselves. But, we will see how that works out!

Don’t Count Biofuels Out Just Yet!

Folks have railed against me for liking the idea of using Ethanol as a fuel. And, I admit that using corn as a source for Ethanol is problematic! However, when President George W. Bush was laughed at for saying that research was pointing to switchgrass as an Ethanol source, folks may have been a bit premature!

It turns out that plain ol’ boring switchgrass is a very good source for biofuel! A recent study says that we can get well over 500% more power out of using switchgrass than goes into cultivating it! That’s no small return!

Biofuels from Switchgrass Offer 540 Percent Return on Energy Inputs

“(NaturalNews) Biofuel produced from a fast-growing variety of grass can produce 540 percent more energy than is used during its manufacture, according to a study conducted by researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers grew switchgrass on 10 different farms, ranging between three and nine hectares in size, for five years. They calculated the energy used to produce the fertilizers, herbicides, diesel and seeds used in the switchgrass production. Because no large-scale biorefineries currently exist, the researchers used estimates to calculate how much biofuel could be produced from the switchgrass farms’ output. In contrast to an earlier study, which found a net energy gain of 343 percent, the researchers found a 540 percent energy gain from switchgrass. The researchers did not include in their calculations how much energy used to ship the switchgrass to a refinery. In order to keep these costs low and the energy output high, they recommended that biorefineries be constructed near the fields on which switchgrass is grown.”

So, leave the corn for food and livestock feed, and use switchgrass! (What else are you gonna do with it?)