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Test a geek:
The answer to the previous question was Netscape. Netscape had over 90% of the browser market-share before Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer. Until version 4 of IE, there was a fierce battle between the two companies.
During the 1970s computer engineers at various research institutions began to utilize telecommunications technologies to link their computers together. This effort, the forefather of the modern Internet, was known as what?
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Tech news:
eBay purchases Skype. eBay plans to pay $1.3 billion in cash and $1.3 billion in stock along with an extra $1.5 billion, for a total payout of more than $4 billion, if Skype meets certain financial targets by 2008. The move, expected to be complete by the end of the fourth quarter, marks the biggest acquisition in eBay’s 10-year history.
California power outages affect Microsoft conference. Parts of the city, including the location of Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference, plunged into darkness Monday afternoon as a result of a major power outage in the region. The outage struck at about 12:30 p.m. and continued past 2 p.m. Microsoft group product manager Greg Sullivan was giving a briefing about Windows Vista when his Powerpoint presentation and most of the lights at the Los Angeles Convention Center went dark. “We haven’t figured out a software solution to this one–yet,” Sullivan joked. “Damn Linux-based power supplies,” one attendee remarked before it became known that the outage extended beyond the convention
Windows Vista to kill your expensive monitor. Windows Vista will make protected digital content become fuzzy and unreadable unless it is viewed on a high bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) compatible monitor. Who knows what Microsoft will think of next.
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How To: Expand web browsing with gestures.
For most people using the internet, the concept of mouse gestures is foreign. That is of course unless you’re using Opera, the number three browser in the world. While many people, including myself, applaud Opera for its innovation many people have chosen to go with Mozilla’s Firefox.
Utilizing the amazing database of extenstions, you can now bring gesture functionality to Firefox. What is a mouse gesture? A gesture is a series of mouse clicks and movements that execute a command. Want to reload a page, just hold your left-click and move up and down. Releasing the button executes the command associated with that particular gesture. At first, gestures seem like something that isn’t needed or just fluff that can be done away with. Once you try them out though, it’s just like tabbed-browsing: it’s a feature you can’t be without.
Mouse gestures are customizeable and can be configured to do a whole bunch of things. Best of all because Firefox is open source, you can expand the gestures that are currently available. So why not give it a shot? Get the All-In-One Gestures Firefox extension from https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&category=Popular&numpg=10&id=12
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Ask A Geek:
This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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Hack:
This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast.
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The geek’s view: Findory
What happens when you take the amazing technology behind Amazon.com’s personalization features and mix it with a newspaper? Findory; that’s what.
Findory is the product of two former Amazon.com coders who worked on the site’s search and recommendation systems. Findory is an interesting concept where news articles are all put into one place like on Google News, but when you begin reading articles the Amazon-esque experience kicks in. Each story you click on is anaylized and added to your profile. The site dynamically changes its content to match what you clicked on and displays relevant stories.
I found Findory to be a really interesting website because it is straight-forward, no nonsense approach. User registration isn’t required and advertising is limited to a few Google AdWords. The site is clean and anyone can pick it up instantly. The great thing about Findory is that it instantally changes its content when you click on a story. Simply hitting your back button displayes updated articles that now match your latest preferences. I saw tech articles as most of the content on the site within three-or-so clicks of my mouse. Findory doesn’t show any pictures, which adds to it’s raw-yet-powerful look. It is reminicent of Google.
Registering for the site is painless and brings the advantage of your personalization profile going onto any computer you use. Checking the website from work? Log in and all your preferences are loaded and the site matches what you like to see. Findory also lists blogs if you like to read those as well. Overall, this website is a lot of fun to use and is easily a great news source to go to. In the long run, Findory is about personalizing information. Go ahead and check it out at http://www.findory.com
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