I used to think I knew all of the cool reasons to use Firebird, but I just discovered one more: Firebird has an extremely intelligent address bar.
For instance, type “microsoft.com” into your Internet Explorer address bar and the URL will quickly be corrected into “http://www.microsoft.com”. As you would expect, Mozilla Firebird behaves in the same manner. But type simply “microsoft” into your IE address bar and you’ll get an MSN Search page for the term microsoft. Type “microsoft” into Firebird’s address bar and it is appropriately changed to “http://www.microsoft.com”.
Continue reading “Firebird’s Smart Address Bar” →
I’ve never been a big fan of McDonald’s, but something I read today might be big enough to change my mind. I was bored at work so I picked up a business magazine that’s lying on a file cabinet behind me. There was an article in there about McDonald’s offering wireless Internet in all of their stores in Taiwan. The article (seeing as how it is in a business magazine) dealt mostly with the logistics of setting up the network, and didn’t say much about the U.S.
Inquisitive minds want to know, so I quickly Googled “McDonald’s Wireless Internet” and lo and behold, there are several U.S. locations that already offer wi-fi connections for laptop users with wireless capabilities. They are in major metropolitan areas (of course) such as Chicago and New York, but it is also available in Seattle (one more reason to move there). You can find more information at mcdwireless.com.
I guess I may be a little slow in realizing all this though, since according to some articles I read (like this one), Starbucks has had wi-fi in most of their U.S. stores for some time now.
SitePoint has put out a new article that features wikis — what they are, why they work, who should use them, etc. It’s written by the same guy who mentioned wikis in an article a few weeks ago. Most of the arguments and explanations he presents can be found on most wikis already, but it is nice to see them presented clearly and succinctly in one place.
One thing that interested me is that he spends a lot of time talking about a stand-alone personal wiki called Notebook (what an original name, eh?). I’ve downloaded it to my computer and I’m this close to using it for my personal journaling in place of Movable Type. Up till now I’ve kept a password protected personal blog in an unadvertised location. I’ll let you know what I decide.
Microsoft apparently forgot to renew its domain registration for hotmail.co.uk. You can read the full story over at The Register, a british IT news site.
Some guy noticed that the domain was available and snatched it up out of the goodness of his heart before anyone else could. He’s already agreed to give it back to Microsoft. If I’m not mistaken, it would be illegal for him to sell it back. You would hope Microsoft will at least reimburse the guy for the cost of registering the domain.
The domain registrar said they followed procedure in making sure Microsoft was aware of the domain’s upcoming expiration. I guess someone really dropped the ball on that one.
