Mozilla

Stop Wasting Time when you Search

I frequently find myself doing two things:

1. Using the google site: keyword to search Drupal.org
2. Using the Drupal search to search Drupal.org

I'm also a believer that the fewer keystrokes the better, especially in light of RSI experienced by "professionals" doing computer work. So, why not eliminate a couple hundred keystrokes a day with a Firefox quick search?

Get the Bookmarks

Here are three links to bookmark:

1. Google Site: Search for Drupal.org
2. Drupal.org node search
3. Drupal.org user search

You can also download a bookmarks import file to import into Firefox (Bookmarks > manage Bookmarks > File > Import).

Tweak the Bookmarks

Once you've added them to your bookmarks, open the bookmark manager, right click on the Google Site: Search, go to the properties, and set the "Keyword:" to be a simple to remember letter or word - I use "d" as my key for this search. For the node search I use the keywords dn and for the user search I use du.

Use the Bookmarks

Then, going to the URL bar and typing "d handbook" will take you to a Google search for the term handbook on the site:drupal.org. Brilliant.

This is pretty basic stuff and I probably wasted more letters by typing this all up, but it's too neat not to share.

IE users - you're out of luck. So go get Firefox.

In a post today, Chris Blizzard discusses the way "IT" workers are viewed and asks why open source contributors exist in the places where they exist (and don't where they don't).

I've thought about this a bit and my own personal take on this based upon some maps I've seen like the map of contributors/mentors in the Google Summer of Code project (which is a really neat project if you hadn't heard of it). Basically, if you look at the countries with large numbers of participants you'll notice that the countries are more likely to have participants based upon 1) the wealth of the country 2) the "tech focus" of the country 3) relative level of "safety net" policies in the country. There are a few outliers and that's understandable in any sampling.

Maybe you've been following this, maybe you haven't. Basically, music CDs from Sony have contained a piece of "DRM" software which, when run on a windows computer, installs itself in a hidden manner.

Many people have written about this. As a result of public outcry, Sony has agreed not to do this any more and has provided software which removes the orginal offending DRM software.

Just recently some folks are starting to point out that there is a flaw in the uninstaller that sony provided. The flaw causes people who use it to have their computers open to malicious ActiveX software. According to the Princeton folks who researched this: "It allows any web page you visit to download, install, and run any code it likes on your computer." There's only one small problem with that statement which is, of course, that it won't affect you if you are using Mozilla and/or Firefox. And none of this affects you if you were using Linux or MacOSX from the beginning.

[EDIT: Apparently Sony wanted to nail Macs with the DRM software as well - I'm not sure if it would impact IE for Mac, but most Mac users use Safari or Firefox or Camino as their browser anyway, the ActiveX problem isn't a problem for them.]