Firefox 1.5 Released!!!

Finally, after months and months of beta and RC testing mozilla has released
Mozilla Firefox 1.5. While there are too many new features to go over now, a
quick look at their firefox page will tell you what you need to know if
you're considering switching to firefox.

The mozilla homepage has moved to http://www.mozilla.com.

Firefox 1.5 RC3

It's quickly coming to that time of the year when a new version of firefox is released (actually this is only the second big version ever). Currently we're up to version 1.5 RC3, which is more release candidates than I think I've ever seen any software have. I'm accounting this one on the new update system in Firefox. I absolutely love the system, although understandably it's still very bug laiden. I hope for their sake that by the final release it is fully repaired because otherwise that could be a real problem for new users who don't have the patience to wait for all the problems to be fixed.

In the meantine RC3 is working alright. I've had a couple of crashes although I'm blaming that on some themes and extensions. Still, Firefox 1.5 is looking promising. It can be downloaded at mozilla.org

U3 USB Disks

Ever wondered what it would be like to walk up to any computer, stick in your USB disk and in about a minute have it magically become just like yours at home. Well the new U3 standard is a step towards doing that.

This great new product will hopefully allow some enterprises the ability to have a group of desktops, as a pose to laptop computers, and still allow people to treat each computer as their own. The concept involves running a special menu application upon plugging in the USB disk, and then selecting from what programs you want to run. Some will link the mail clients (such as Outlook) to your USB so that you can send and receive email without having to setup an account again.

Other popular uses would include graphic editing, web browsing and financial management. In the future it is hoped that a Linux version will be made available. At the current point in time the only way to use U3 is to buy a special USB disk which supports the U3 standards, so it isn't for everyone!

Check out their website at www.u3.com.

ProjectBypass.com Update

ProjectBypass.com, a website offering a service to bypass your workplace or
educational institutions' internet filtering scheme, has finally started
serving secure web pages (https). The secure ability is available by going to
http://projectbypass.com and entering the website you want to go to.

This great tool is a invaluable at places with overly strict filtering
systems, so use and enjoy.

Successful upgrade to Ubuntu 5.10

A few weeks ago I did an amazing thing. I fully updated to the next version of
Ubuntu from over the network. I still can't believe it's possible and it is
another great reason why you should use this OS.

The steps I took are roughly as follows:
-Adjust my apt sources list so that the codename hoary was adjusted to breezy.
-Run synaptic, select smart upgrade and click apply.
-One day, and 500 mb of download limit, later my system was quite happily
running Ubuntu "Breezy Badger" 5.10.

I thoroughly recommend this OS to anyone new to the linux world with a decent
internet connection.