Any blinking text on a webpage can be extremely irritating. Here’s how you can disable the annoyance in Firefox.
First, open up Firefox and type about:config in the address bar then press Enter.
If you encounter the void warranty message, just click “I’ll be careful, I promise!” then uncheck the box next to “Show this warning next time” if you choose not to see it again.
In the Filter box, type in or you can just copy and paste the text below. Notice the default value is set to ‘true’.
browser.blink_allowed
Just double click on it in order to toggle the value to ‘false’.
Test It!
To test the changes made, just refresh this page and the following text should not blink anymore. This works on Firefox 3.5.3 however the tweak is also applicable in older versions of Firefox as well.
Thanks to a third-party application from Jajah, Twitter users can now make voice calls directly to each other by just clicking on links on the microblogging service.
The Jajah@call service will allow Twitter users create a VOI (voice-over-Internet) voice chat session by typing @call@username where the username is the recipient’s Twitter identification. Though the calls can only last two minutes during the beta test, they are positive that it may change over time after further developments.
Jajah, a Mountain View, California-based firm, already operates an Internet calling service with over ten million users. Currently, this service makes it very easy to make voice calls, provided that both parties are Twitter friends and both also have Jajah accounts. The service is free and works on any Twitter-enabled device.
With this new Internet service from Jajah, you can still keep your phone number private and still talk to just about anybody on Twitter. Competition is consequently just got interesting. Last Tuesday, game voice chat service Vivox also announced that it could allow Facebook users talk to each other similarly with Jajah also by sharing a link. Vivox offers voice chat for roughly15 million users. Jajah is currently raising a funding round this spring.
Google wants its online news site to feel more like the good old print product.
And the company is prepared to pay for it.
Google took the wraps off of Fast Flip on Monday, a slick online tool that lets readers flip through articles from newspapers and magazines as quickly and effortlessly as if they were turning the pages of a magazine.
The company said it will share advertising revenue with the 30 publishers whose content is currently available on Fast Flip, including the New York Times, the Washington Post and Newsweek.
Obsessive Google-watchers may recall that rumors of this product emerged back in June.
But the company officially released Fast Flip on Monday, making it available on Google Labs, the company’s outlet for products that are still in the testing phase.
Google is essentially hosting images of the first page of various articles from its partner publishers. A Web surfer can browse by topic or news source and scroll through fast-loading snapshots of all the relevant articles. There’s a “recommended” section that aggregates the most popular articles thanks to a new recommendation tool that Google has added (watch out Digg!).
Google is running banner ads alongside the article thumbnails, the proceeds of which will be split with publishers (though Google won’t disclose the terms of the revenue split). If a Web surfer wants to read the full article, they’re redirected to the publisher’s actual Web site.
“The publishing industry faces many challenges today, and there is no magic bullet,” said Google Distinguished Researcher Krishna Bharat in a blog post announcing Fast Flip. “However, we believe that encouraging readers to read more news is a necessary part of the solution. We think Fast Flip could be one way to help, and we’re looking to find other ways to help as well in the near future.”
It’s a fine balancing act by Google, which can continue to stand behind its argument that it helps news sites by sending traffic their way while also sharing a bit of the wealth.
But Bharat acknowledged in an interview with Reuters that various aspects of Fast Flip, including the business model, are subject to change.
Whether the current iteration will be enough to assuage some of Google’s most vocal news industry critics remains to be seen.
Missing among the list of FastFlip partners is Dow Jones, whose chief executive called Google a “digital vampire” this summer.
Source: Reuters.com
If you need to create batch files to automate cleanup on your computer, you’ll definitely need to include at least one of these commands in your batch script. You can automate any of the functions on the Internet Explorer 7 Delete Browsing History dialog.
This is the dialog that you probably used to see:
And below are the commands that correspond to the different buttons. The most important, on a cleanup perspective, is the first, which will delete the temporary internet files that are cluttering up in your computer.
To run these commands, you can just type them from the command line, the Start Menu search box in Vista, or a batch file.
Temporary Internet Files
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 8
Cookies
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 2
History
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 1
Form Data
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 16
Passwords
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 32
Delete All
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 255
Delete All – “Also delete files and settings stored by add-ons”
RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 4351
These commands also work in Internet Explorer 7 on XP or on Windows Vista.
Online video site YouTube is in talks with several major movie studios about renting movies to users by streaming the movies over the Internet according to a person familiar with the talks on Wednesday.
It would mark the first time the world's most popular video site would charge its users to watch videos.
YouTube, which is owned by Internet search giant Google Inc, has held discussions with Lions Gate Entertainment Corp, Sony Pictures, a unit of Sony Corp, and Time Warner Inc's Warner Brothers about online movie rentals, the person said.
In many cases, the movies would be available for rental for a fee in a system similar to Web rental programs from Apple Inc's iTunes, Netflix and Amazon.com with newer movies. YouTube would likely charge a similar fee around $3.99 a rental.
YouTube, which is the world's No.1 video website, currently offers video for free, on an advertising-supported basis.
It currently has a range of archive movies, TV shows and promotional clips from the three named studios and other partners on its site.
"We hope to expand on both our great relationship with the movie studios and the selection and types of videos we offer our community," said YouTube spokesman Chris Dale.
YouTube is in the midst of talks and negotiations with a wide range of media content partners as it ramps up efforts to build a substantial library of current and archive professional movies and videos that it can monetize.
The site, best known as a place to seek out fun videos uploaded by users that feature themes such as skateboarding dogs and dancing babies, recently started to emphasize a growing amount of professional videos.
Advertisers are believed to favor professionally made videos over those of users. Hulu, a video site owned by News Corp, Walt Disney Co and NBC Universal, has had relative success attracting both users and advertisers with a range of full-length TV shows and older movies.
Last month, YouTube announced a partnership with Time Warner Inc properties including CNN and TNT. It agreed a similar deal in March with Walt Disney.
YouTube owner Google has come under growing criticism from Wall Street analysts and investors concerned the expense of serving millions of videos to users around the world everyday is costing the company more money than it earns from advertising.
Source: Reuters.com
For lovers of Twitter, little is as exciting as adding a new dimension to their tweets.
BlackBerry users will be tickled by TwitVid, a simple way to post short videos on Twitter using their phones (TwitVid, and similar apps have been available on the iTunes App Store for months).
After downloading the App, using it is simple. From within the app, click “Record a New Video,” record, enter your tweet and send. It will be posted on your Twitter page with a link to the video. TwitVid will tell you how many characters are left to type, allowing for the link, so you don’t run over your allotment.
Although your message is limited in length, Adil Lalani, co-founder of TwitVid, said the site puts no limit on the length of a video (your carrier or phone may restrict the size of files, though).
Anyone with a video phone can use TwitVid, even without an app. First log in at the TwitVid Web site, which will assign you an e-mail address. Using that assigned address, send a video as an MMS or an e-mail with the video as an attachment with your tweet in the subject line. It will post like a standard tweet.
Now instead of just telling people you are having coffee — again — you can show them how you look drinking it.
Source: NY Times
Facebook has decided to make worldwide changes to its privacy policy resulting from negotiations with Canada's privacy commissioner.
Last month, the social network was found to violate Canadian law by holding on to users' personal data indefinitely.Facebook has now agreed to make changes to the method it handles this information as well as be more transparent about what data it collects and why.
It will also ensure clearly that users can deactivate or delete their account.
"These changes mean that the privacy of 200 million Facebook users in Canada and around the world will be far better protected," said Jennifer Stoddart, Canadian’s privacy commissioner. "We're very pleased Facebook has been responsive to our recommendations."
She further noted that the decision might also have implications for other social networking websites.
Facebook Vice President of Global Communications and Public Policy, Elliot Schrage, believe the new policies set "a new standard for the industry".
'Unrestricted access'
Facebook also said it will make changes that will give users further control over the data they provide to third-party developers of applications, ie: games and quizzes, aside from updating the privacy policy.
There are approximately 950,000 developers in 180 countries that provide applications for the site. The changes will require applications to state which information they wish to access and acquire consent from the user before it is used or shared.
"Application developers have had virtually unrestricted access to Facebook users' personal information," added Ms Stoddart. "The changes Facebook plans to introduce will allow users to control the types of personal information that applications can access."
The site will further encourage users to review their privacy settings and make it clear to users that they can delete or deactivate an account as well as the difference between the two.
Michael Richter of Facebook stressed out that if a user chose to deactivate their account, the site would still store their information "even if it is for 10 years".
"We're committing to that user," he noted. "We want them to know that if they change their mind they can always come back."
The social network confirmed that work on the changes will start immediately but it would take around 12 months to implement.
The regulator began its investigation as a result of complaints by the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) at the University of Ottawa. Canada is the first to complete a full investigation of Facebook's privacy practices. The country has roughly 12 million Facebook users, about one in three of the population.
Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, is devising a major revamp to how people contribute to some pages. The site will be requiring revisions to pages about living people and some organizations to be approved by an editor.
This is a rather radical shift for the site, which apparently allows anyone to make changes and alterations to almost any entry. The two-month trial, which proved to be controversial to some contributors, will begin in the next couple of weeks as per a Wikipedia spokesperson.
"I'm sure it will spark some controversy," said Mike Peel of Wikimedia UK, a chapter of the organization that operates Wikipedia.
The trial had been approved in an online poll, with 80% of 259 users in favor of the trial. Peel said further, "the decision to run this trial was made by the users of the English Wikipedia, rather than being imposed."
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales first outlined the said proposal last January this year. It was met by a storm of protests from Wikipedia users who argued the system had been poorly thought out and rather would create extra work.
'Lock down'
The two-month trial will assess a system of "flagged revisions" on the English-language Wikipedia site. This means that any changes made by a new or unknown user would have to be approved by one of the site's editors before the changes were to be published. At the same time as the changes are being considered over, readers will be re-directed to earlier versions of the article.
Wikimedia believed the system was "essentially a buffer, to reduce the visibility and impact of vandalism on these articles".
There have been numerous high-profile edits to pages that have provided false or misleading information about a person. For instance, last January of this year; US Senator Robert Byrd’s page falsely reported that he had died.
If a page has numerous controversial edits or is repetitively vandalized, editors can lock a page, so that everyone cannot edit it. For instance, editors had to lock down two pages about the initial reports of the death of Michael Jackson to stop further speculation about what had caused his death.
"For these articles, flagged protection will actually make them more open," noted Mr. Peel.
The decision was purposely created to focus on the pages of living people because they were the "most high-profile pages with the highest probability of causing harm".
He added that, "[The trial] may also be extended to organisations which are currently operating.”
The system has already been in operation on the German version of Wikipedia for over a year.
The changes to the English language site - which now has more than 3 million pages - will be rolled out in the coming weeks. The changes will be discussed in Buenos Aires this week during the annual Wikimania conference.
