Monthly Archives: March 2011

Earth Hour 2011

It’s that time again. So if anyone is wondering where I am(online) from 8PM EST till about 9, or maybe even later, I might be reading a book by candlelight or maybe even some geocaching depending on the weather.

From http://earthhour.org:

Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million individuals and more than 2,000 businesses turned their lights off for one hour to take a stand against climate change. Only a year later and Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries/territories participating. Global landmarks such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, CN Tower in Toronto, Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and Rome’s Colosseum, all stood in darkness, as symbols of hope for a cause that grows more urgent by the hour.

n March 2009, hundreds of millions of people took part in the third Earth Hour. Over 4000 cities in 88 countries/territories officially switched off to pledge their support for the planet, making Earth Hour 2009 the world’s largest global climate change initiative.

On Saturday 27 March, Earth Hour 2010 became the biggest Earth Hour ever. A record 128 countries and territories joined the global display of climate action. Iconic buildings and landmarks from Asia Pacific to Europe and Africa to the Americas switched off. People across the world from all walks of life turned off their lights and came together in celebration and contemplation of the one thing we all have in common – our planet.

Earth Hour 2011 will take place on Saturday 26 March at 8.30PM (local time). This Earth Hour we want you to go beyond the hour, so after the lights go back on think about what else you can do to make a difference. Together our actions add up.

Firefox 4.0 is out!

 

The much awaited release of Firefox 4.0 is finally out. From my brief tests it does seem a hell of a lot faster than it’s 3.x predecessor both in opening up and loading up all my previously opened tabs. This is even with a dozen or so addons installed. Firefox is back to being the exciting speed demon it once was. Along with the performance increase Mozilla has also redesigned the layout of their new browser.

Very similar to the way Google Chrome looks, the new Firefox displays it’s tabs at the very top of the window. Now, at first with Google Chrome I didn’t really like this, but over time I have gotten used to it and even prefer it now. Firefox 4.0 also lets you hide the menu bar at the top, giving you more room on your screen. They have also move the back and forward buttons onto the address bar and allow you to close the “addon bar” at the very bottom of the screen for even more vertical room saving.

Another new and improved feature is Firefox sync. This allows you to sync your Bookmarks, Passwords, Preferences, History and even your open tabs across all your Firefox browsers on multiple computers. This is also handy for backing up all that information for when you need to reinstall your computer’s operating system. Just a quick login to Firefox sync and you have your browser just where you left off the last time you used it.

At the time  of this writing, Firefox has been downloaded over 3 million times in the 13 hours it’s been released. There was another new browser released recently that boasted less than that in a full 24 hours. We’re on track to about double those numbers.

Now, for most users, getting Firefox is as easy as going to http://getfirefox.com and clicking the big green download button. Or by clicking on Help -> Check for Updates at the very top right of your Firefox window. Unfortunately, for Linux-based operating systems, Mozilla only provides a tarball package of their new release. This works perfectly fine once extracted somewhere on your computer and running the “firefox” binary. But it isn’t a very clean or trackable install. Fortunately, there is a Mozilla Team at Ubuntu for all of it’s users who have taken the time to package up Firefox 4.0 into a PPA you can add to your Software Center which will allow you to upgrade to the latest version just like any other normal update. I have found easy instructions from a recent post on the Ubuntu Planet here. Thank you Adnan Quaium.

 

  1. Go to Appli­ca­tions > Ubuntu Soft­ware Cen­ter from the top panel.
  2. Head to Edit > Soft­ware Sources and click the ‘Other Soft­ware’ tab.
  3. Press ‘Add’ but­ton and then paste the fol­low­ing line into the rel­e­vant field to add thePPA.
    ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
  4. After adding the PPA you will be prompted to update your sources.
  5. Once the update is done you can head to Sys­tem > Admin­is­tra­tion > Update Man­ager to per­form an upgrade.
  6. Thus FF4 will be installed in the system.

Happy Browsing!