I read on Dennis Howlett’s site that Microsoft strong-armed the magazine PcPro. PcPro wanted to distribute a beta of Office 2007 on its cover disc and according to Tim Danton of PcPro:
as part of the conditions for allowing us to include Office 2007 on the cover disc, Microsoft Corp - in many ways a company distinct from the far cuddlier and more approachable Microsoft UK - wouldn’t allow us to put any open-source software onto the same disc
Then further in Dennis’ post I also read that Microsoft are going to start charging $1.50 per download of Office 2007 beta. I’m sorry, what? Microsoft you should be paying people for beta testing your software (and finding all the bugs in it for you) NOT charging them for the privilege of so doing.
“Hi, we’ve just developed this new prototype car. We’d like you to take it for a test drive for us to see are there any problems with it. Oh, and that’ll be $1.50 please.”
Yeah, right - welcome back evil empire. The mask slipped there just a bit, didn’t it?
Via Dave Cormier comes the absolutely scandalous story of how a small West African school was forced to reverse its decision to drop Windows in favour of free and open source software.
…due to numerous recommendations forthcoming from the US Embassy, the State Department, and technology professionals involved in providing services to international schools worldwide, it has been decided that the switch to open source software on such a large scale is premature, and has therefore been reversed.
It is no wonder they are not popular.
I recently upgraded my Firefox install to 1.06 - while I was at it, I upgraded the extensions and added some new ones (GreaseMonkey, SessionSaver, Google Toolbar for Firefox, and Googlebar).
After installing all of these and re-starting Firefox a number of times, I realised that the File -> New Window command was no longer working. Neither was the right-click Open Link in New Window command.
I wasn’t sure if this was a bug in Firefox or if one of the new extensions was causing a problem so I googled and couldn’t find anything that might indicate a problem with Firefox 1.06.
I then started disabling the new extensions one by one (and re-starting Firefox in between). Still no joy.
Then I remembered that I had updated the SearchStatus extension to 1.6. Disabling this extension resolved the problem and I am now able to open new windows once more (phew!).
Curiously there is no mention of this bug on the developer’s site - I reported it on the comment form on their site so hopefully we will see an update soon.
Kudos to Michele for pointing out the Organic SEO Wiki - the “organic” refers to the manual type of page optimisation, as opposed to automatic submittal and page alteration.
Everything on the site
can be implemented by one person, rather than having to hire a firm and pay big bucks for them to do the same stuff
Perfect for DIY SEO enthusiasts - and the fact that it is a wiki means that you can contribute to the site as well.
I found a great virtual desktop manager for OS X - it is called Desktop Manager (strangely enough!) and is freely downloadable here.
Desktop Manager allows you to have any number of named virtual ’screens’ (up to available memory) to arrange your programs on, Sticky window support (allowing you to have one window on all desktops), status-bar menu, desktop pager, Control switching via configurable ‘hotkeys’ and cool switch transitions.
The software is in early beta so it may well crash or windows may disappear. I had one issue where all my windows disappeared, as did the controls for Desktop Manager - but opening a new Finder window, navigating to the Applications folder and re-launching Desktop Manager brought everything back.
I like it and am hoping a more stable version will be ready when Tiger launches.
I had a WordPress template called Rubric on my WordPress 1.2 site. I hacked it a bit to work for me (adding css to show Amazon links within posts etc.).
On upgrading to WP 1.5, I followed the very straightforward upgrading old WordPress templates instructions and suddenly I had Rubric in WP 1.5.
I have since changed my theme on this site to ShadedGrey but I have a screen shot of the theme so people can view it.
A couple of people have asked me for the code for Rubric and I have obliged when asked.
Consequently, I have zipped up a copy of the theme - you can download it here. Be warned, I am not a coder so any modifications I have made are quick and dirty.
If anyone has any suggestions for improvements, please feel free to contact me with them.
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