Monthly Archive for July, 2004

Seagate to offer 5 year warranty on hard drives

Published
by
Tom and Pilar
on 27/7/2004
in Technology
. 0 Comments

For anyone who has had a hard disk crash and burn (and who in the tech world hasn’t) the latest announcement from Seagate that it will offer a 5 year warranty on all drives manufactured since June 1st 2004 is the best of news.

This should spur the competition to similar offerings and eventually lead to more reliable hard drives.

Seagate’s fortunes of late have suffered a little of late reporting a net loss of $33 million in it’s July 20th Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2004 report.

Let’s hope this latest announcement bouys their sales and that they are still around in five years to honour any warranty claims that may arise!

Microsoft to dabble in Open Source once more?

Published
by
Tom and Pilar
on 24/7/2004
in Technology
. 0 Comments

Interesting article in Microsoft Watch on how Microsoft appear to be getting ready to release more products to the Open Source community.

Maybe if they released Internet Explorer, the open source community might fix it for them!

Free OpenOffice Support available

Published
by
Tom and Pilar
on 24/7/2004
in Technology
. 0 Comments

I read an article in News.com recently which said that Flexiety software are giving 30 days free support when you download OpenOffice from their website.

Sounds like a nice way to get some support for this app - don’t know how the support office handles support calls from Europe (outside of US office hours) though.

RSS reader in Firefox

Published
by
Tom and Pilar
on 24/7/2004
in Technology
. 0 Comments

If you can’t wait for mozilla to release V 1.0 of their Firefox browser with its in-built RSS reader, you can always download Sage - Sage is an Extension for Firefox which creates a Sidebar (available under View -> Sidebar -> Sage) allowing you to browse your RSS sites from within the browser.

There is also an import function which is supposed to allow you to import your RSS Feeds from your RSS Reader apps although I couldn’t get this to work with either NetNewsWire or Shrook OPML files.

See screenshot below to see it in action:
Sage RSS Reader working in Firefox

Building RSS readers into the browser

Published
by
Tom and Pilar
on 24/7/2004
in Technology
. 1 Comment

I see where Firefox is going to include RSS feed integration into its next version (V1.0) - and in fact has already built it into its nightly branch builds.

Firefox has built the RSS feeds into the Bookmarks - calling them Live Bookmarks or Livemarks. Livemarks allow you to bookmark an RSS feed and these appear as bookmark folders, with individual items in the feed appearing as bookmarks. Check out Redemption’s weblog to see a couple of screenshots of this functionality in action.

Seems Thunderbird is building RSS reading capabilities into the next build (0.8) as well.

At this rate Apple’s Safari RSS, which is scheduled for release with their new Tiger OS in 2005, will be the last non-Microsoft browser with an RSS reader built-in!

Safari RSS

Published
by
Tom and Pilar
on 21/7/2004
in Technology
. 1 Comment

Apple are showcasing some of the features of the forthcoming version of their Safari web browser - Safari RSS. Safari RSS will read RSS feeds straight into the browser, obviating the need for a second Internet app, it will automaticall notify you if you land on a site with an RSS feed, and it will display it properly (it can read RSS0.9, 1, 2 and Atom).

I’m not sure yet when Apple are going to release this version of Safari - if they wait until the release of Tiger in 2005, then this functionality will already be in most browsers. If they do it now, they have a chance to regain market share - I know I use Firefox on the Mac as my browser of choice (it notifies you if the browser window you are going to close has more than one tab open! - a simple but critical feature).

Tom Raftery’s Social Media is Digg proof thanks to caching by WP Super Cache!