Firefox 3 Stumbleupon toolbar offers exporting function

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

While idly browsing online today (as one often does on a Sunday afternoon), I had a look at the options on the new Stumbleupon toolbar for Firefox 3 to see if anything new was there. I was intrigued to discover this:

It turns out that you can export ALL of your Stumbleupon “likes” from your Stumbleupon profile to your Firefox 3 Bookmarks.

The irritating part to this though is that if you have a lot of stumbled likes, it will take a long time for this process to be completed and your browser is basically frozen while it is going on. You can’t use Firefox for other surfing while this is happening and if you eventually want to shut Firefox down, you’ll have to terminate the whole thing. So if you have thousands of stumbles to transfer over, you might want to leave this running overnight while you’re sleeping.

When it’s finished, you’ll have a nice backup of all your stumbled sites in your Firefox bookmarks. You can then repeat the process every week or month depending on the volume of your stumbling activity.

I am pretty certain it doesn’t transfer over your tags as well, but nevertheless, having a simple record of the sites is better than nothing. But in future upgrades, having the tags transferred over would be a nice touch for better organisation purposes. I have over 12,000 stumbled sites and having them all tagged would make my life a lot easier when it comes to tracking down a particular site.

So taking this idea a step further, if you use the Del.icio.us extension which synchronises your Firefox bookmarks with your Del.icio.us account, then you could export your Stumbleupon “likes” to Firefox, then they will be synchronised to your Del.icio.us account. The only downside to that of course is that they won’t be tagged and organised, so it’s up to you if you want to go down that route. Personally I am still debating whether I want to throw 12,000 untagged URL’s into my Del.icio.us account.



Phone in your Twitter messages with Twitterfone

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Twitterfone

I have always been a bit of a sucker for new toys and gadgets, especially ones on the internet and Twitterfone is now officially “my new toy”.  The invite code has been sitting in the wreckage that is called my email inbox for the past couple of weeks now and it was only today that I finally got around to activating it and seeing what Twitterfone was all about. As soon as I did so, I got that gleam in my eye and my girlfriend said to her friend who was around, “uh, oh, I know that look… I’ll never get Mark off the computer now!”

So what is Twitterfone all about?

Continue reading ›

Broken hearted man to auction his life on eBay

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

A man, whose partner of 12 years walked out on him, plans to start a new life – but not in the traditional sense.  He plans to start a completely new life by auctioning his entire old life on eBay and walking away with nothing except his passport and his wallet.

The auction is due to start tomorrow and will run for one week.   The man in question, Ian Usher, has set up a website to publicize the upcoming auction and he insists that it is completely genuine and not a gimmick.   The website has YouTube videos showing his house in Perth, Western Australia, and it has details of everything the successful bidder will receive.

In his website intro, Ian says :

I have had enough of my life! I don’t want it any more! You can have it if you like!

However, I am still not sure whether this is inspired madness, complete foolishness, or just some sort of mid-life crisis.

He adds that, included in the auction, will be his house and all its contents, a car, a motorbike, a jetski, kitesurfing gear, his job (he works in a rug store), his clothes, and even his friends (how can he sell his friends?)

He hopes to make up to $500,000 to fund his new life.

I can’t make up my mind whether Ian is very brave or totally nuts.    What do you think?   Could you turn your back on your life with only your wallet and passport in your pocket and sell everything else you own to someone?   It might actually be very liberating to do it.



Official : Kim Jong-il does NOT use Firefox

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Mozilla has a nifty looking downloads map which breaks down all the Firefox 3 downloads country by country.  Download Squad previously commented that Turkmenistan was letting the side down with seven downloads but they must have seen the article and got all embarrassed because they suddenly picked up speed and they are now up to a staggering 30 downloads! You go Turkmenistan!

I started moving the mouse around to see who else was not giving much love to Firefox and my mouse passed over North Korean airspace.    It was then that I discovered that with zero downloads, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il does not like to use the Fox.  He’s obviously more of an Internet Explorer man when it comes to doing his online international drug deals and eBay sales.

Of course you have to take a lot of things into account with this Mozilla download map.   The western world is obviously richer with more computers and better internet access than say Africa for example.    Other countries may have people who are very poor and cannot afford computers or internet, points which the Download Squad article also underlines.

But we’re coming up for nearly 15 MILLION downloads worldwide in the space of less than 4 days.    The Firefox 3 juggernaut shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon.

Social Networking for Gadget Lovers

By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Need a second opinion before you make your next electronics purchase? A new social network called PEBuzz (Personal Electronics Buzz) hopes to help.

The site, launched about a month ago, features user-generated reviews and opinions on everything from high-end TVs to random gadgets. The site lets you set up a personal profile page and connect with users who have interests in similar kinds of products. Like most sites of this type, users rank public posts to give them more or less weight based on their usefulness.

So far, PEBuzz has in the ballpark about 1,000 members and says it is quickly growing with more gadget enthusiasts by the day.

Court rules your boss can’t read your email & texts

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

In a landmark ruling, a US federal appeals court has declared that employers are not allowed to read employees work emails and text messages without getting a warrant first.

But the ruling only applies to situations where the company outsources its email and texts to an outside company and not if it is done in-house on internal servers.

The ruling comes after a police officer, Jeff Quon, sued his department for reading his work text messages, some of which were personal and sexually explicit to his wife.   The company that stored the messages, Arch Wireless, was found to have violated the Stored Communications Act and the court said that Quon’s messages were protected under the Fourth Amendment.

Personally speaking, how stupid is Quon to use a police department pager with taxpayers money to send sexually explicit messages to his wife?   Then when he is caught, instead of apologizing and offering to reimburse the department, he proceeds to sue his department (who then has to use more taxpayers money to defend themselves) for more financial compensation!

To be honest, I am not all that sure that this ruling is actually good.   Shouldn’t employers have the power to check to see if idiots like Quon are abusing their employer’s trust?   I am all for privacy, but if employees are using work accounts for personal gain, the employer should have the ability to verify what’s going on.

Your opinions, as usual, are always welcomed!

Via Los Angeles Times

The Tech Effect: Are Computers Making Us Stupid?

By JR Raphael
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Technology lets us do things that once seemed like science fiction. From thoughtless navigation to limitless recollection, machines have made nearly every facet of our lives easier. But in doing so, have they also taken away skills that were once second-nature? An expanding argument suggests the internet and general abundance of technology may, in fact, be making us stupid.

The Atlantic‘s Nicholas Carr points out how his mind doesn’t work the way it used to. Reading long articles or books, he says, seems like an impossible feat now; he loses focus after a few pages. The idea of getting information so quickly and easily has seemingly shifted the way his mind works.

Carr notes how Nietzsche observed changes in his writing style with the advent of the typewriter decades ago. “Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts,” he is quoted as writing.

So could our brains again be evolving, so to speak, as a result of our dependence on modern technology? There’s certainly evidence to suggest some kind of change. A scientific study conducted a couple years ago found the ability to remember personal information — anything from a birthday to a phone number — is significantly lower in younger people who have grown up with cell phones and computers than in members of previous generations.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s seen the effect firsthand: I used to know the phone number of every friend, relative, and business I called with any level of frequency. Nowadays? Not so much. Outside of a few basics, I’ve inadvertently moved from storing the information in my brain to archiving it in my Outlook Contacts list.

Memory may not be the only function affected, either. An ABC News report out this week suggests the sudden ubiquity of GPS technology may be causing us to lose our senses of direction, as well as our drives to explore unknown terrain.

The question that remains, then, is if there is a true physiological shift as a result of all of this. Is technology actually making us stupid? Are we losing brain functionality with every previously mind-driven task we farm out to a machine?

Science doesn’t have a definite answer yet, but maybe you do. The floor is open to discussion — unless, that is, your short attention span and limited memory capacity have already caused you to drift away.