Archive for February, 2010
February 27th, 2010
Last week I participated in a government sponsored delegation to Russia called the “U.S.-Russia Innovation Dialogue” This delegation was organized by the U.S. government, in cooperation with the Russian government, as part of the Presidents’ Bilateral Commission (“Presidents” means President Medvedev of the Russian Federation and President Obama of the US). The goal was to improve the ways of working together in areas with shared interests, while not ignoring areas of disagreement. One area of shared interests that has been identified in innovation, and thus the delegation.
The delegation was co-led by Howard Solomon from the National Security Council and by Jared Cohen from the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff. The delegation included John Donohoe, CEO of eBay, Padmasree Warrior, CTO of Cisco, Esther Dyson of EDventure, Jason Liebman of Howcast, Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, Shervin Pishevar, founder of Social Gaming Network, Ashton Kutcher, CEO of Katalyst, Ellis Rubinstein, President of the New York Academy of Sciences, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Chief Technology Officer and me. We met with all sorts of people — federal and regional officials, civil society actors, educators, students, and entrepreneurs. Our focus was the role technology can play in social development.
One explicit goal of the delegation was to do more than talk, to figure out concrete steps that can be taken. We ended up with a set of items where we see possibilities for immediate collaboration. It’s a pretty meaty list, laid out in 6 themes. There are versions available in English and Russian as well as a summary in The Moscow Times.
February 26th, 2010
Love them or hate them, Personas are here to stay, and I have to say the abstract category of Personas on Firefox’s web site are probably some of my favorites of them all.
Now I know I went on a ‘bit of a rant the other day about how some Personas just are not worth the time of day, however some really do fit in well with the Firefox browser too. Here are 10 of the most popular abstract Personas I found usable and beautiful.
There you have 10 of the most popular abstract Personas out there today. Which is your favorite? Do you have an alternative abstract Persona that should have made the list?
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
February 25th, 2010
As part of Mozilla’s ongoing security and stability update process, Thunderbird 3.0.2 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free download from http://getthunderbird.com/.
We strongly recommend that all Thunderbird users upgrade to this release. If you already have Thunderbird 3.0, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. You can also manually fetch this update by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.
For a list of changes and more information, please review the Thunderbird release notes.
February 25th, 2010
Looking for a way to keep your eye on your stocks?
Sure, there are a number of different web sites that will do this, but adding this functionality to Firefox would be even cooler. StockFox is the best lightweight stock ticker you can integrate into the Firefox browser.
You can setup your favorite stocks to either rotate in the status bar of the Firefox browser, or scroll across, like you see on the big cable news networks.
Does StockFox look like the tracking tool you need? You can pick it up on the Firefox Add-ons web site.
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
February 24th, 2010
This week, Mozilla launches the Open To Choice campaign. Aimed at raising awareness among web users in Europe on the importance of making an informed choice when selecting the software and services used to access the Internet. The campaign launches at a time when almost 200 million Europeans in 32 countries will be asked to make an active choice about which Web browser will act on their behalf to broker their online experiences.
Open To Choice begins with an open letter written by Mozilla CEO John Lilly, and Mozilla Chair Mitchell Baker, addressing the European Commission and Microsoft’s landmark Browser Choice screen settlement as “… an important milestone towards helping more people take control of their online lives”. Explaining the critical importance of the browser today, the open letter calls for greater understanding, and education on why choice not only matters, but also that of an informed choice.
Watch John Lilly, Mozilla CEO talk about the open letter, and why browser choice is so important.
Over the coming weeks Opentochoice.org will go on to provide further information about browser basics, and become a hub for conversations on the importance of Web choice.
Please read the open letter and join the conversation at http://www.opentochoice.org.
February 23rd, 2010
On the back of our announcement from Friday, we finished the first round of voting in the Mozilla Labs “The Home Tab” Design Challenge, identified the Top 10 concepts and moved them into a second round of voting.
In the second round we will once again ask the wider community to cast their vote – this time on three randomly selected concepts out of the top 10. Voting will be open until midnight March 1st. [more...]
February 22nd, 2010
Now, Firefox’s new Personas feature has seem taken off really well. Each time I visit the Personas web site, there are more and more backgrounds to use for Firefox. So with such a good start, what will be the downfall of the Personas?
It all comes down to quantity over quality. Some of these backgrounds just are not any good. The same could be said for many Firefox themes too, but with Personas – there are a few simple things that could go a long way before you submit it for the public, that would be so easy to check into.
For example, look at this:
I am not going to use a Persona where I can’t read anything inside of the browser.
Other annoyances would be having text in the background, having the background be too busy, and general “why the heck did you think that would make a good background” questions of designing competence.
So you tell me, what makes for a better Firefox Persona or have you been turned off my many of the ugly background out there? Post your feedback and thoughts in the comments.
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
February 20th, 2010
Just three days ago we announced the voting for the Design Challenge “People’s Choice Awards”. Within 72 hours, more than 1,400 people registered to choose, each voting on their five randomly selected concepts of the nearly 50 submissions. [more...]
February 20th, 2010
Do you find yourself typing the same snipits of information over and over again? Maybe it is a form you need people to answer, or perhaps it is just your e-mail signature. With Clippings, an extension for Firefox, you can quickly archive all your most used blocks of text to be used anytime.
Once you have this add-on installed, you can save frequently entered text for later really easily. All it takes is two mouse clicks and your text is there. Just right-click in the textarea, select clippings and then select the name for the text you wish to paste in.
Some of the features also include:
- Create clippings from selected text in a form field or Web page body (Firefox), or from selected text in an email or newsgroup message (Thunderbird)
- Create clippings by dragging and dropping text into the Clippings icon on the status bar
- Paste clippings into form fields (Firefox) or new email or newsgroup messages (Thunderbird) from the Clippings context menu. Individual clippings can be pasted as rich text if they contain HTML tags.
- Assign shortcut keys to clippings for quicker pasting
- Define placeholders inside a clipping that you will be prompted to fill in when you paste the clipping. Built-in placeholders for the date, time, clipping name, user agent, etc. are also available.
- Organize your collection of clippings into folders using Clippings Manager
- Import and export clippings to or from datasource files to share with other users
This is a great extension for Firefox if you find yourself typing the same things in over and over again. It can really help save a lot of time. You can pick Clippings up at the Firefox Add-ons web site.
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my personal blog and my hosting podcast too!
February 19th, 2010
There is exactly one week left to vote for Firefox in the 2010 About.com Reader’s Choice Awards. The nominations are in and Firefox is a finalist in the “Best Major Desktop Browser”, “Best Mac Browser” and “Best Mobile Browser” categories. Follow the links below to vote for Firefox as your favorite browser in each category. You can vote through February 25 as many times as you’d like, so please vote and tell your friends!
The Web Browser section of the 2010 About.com Reader’s Choice Awards honors the year’s best browsers. This is the first year that About Web Browsers is a part of the awards.
You can also vote for your favorite Firefox Add-ons in the following categories:
What are the About.com Reader’s Choice Awards?
For the first time, About.com’s Computing Channel is running a coordinated award program that will honor the best products, services and innovations in dozens of categories. The awards cover everything from phones and phone apps to high-powered desktop publishing programs and PCs. The program grew out of a popular IM Reader’s Choice Awards program, which took place in 2009 and 2008.