Firefox is a favorite browser of mine, principally because of the extensions. Extensions are applets that augment your browsing experience, modifying Firefox so that your management of the information you?re viewing is easier and less involving. Many of the extensions afford users the ability to sort information in a more efficient manner (as many of you might have read, one such extension groups multiple pages of photographs into a single scrollable page), while others enable the extraction of information culled from the page you?re viewing.
One such extension we?ll touch upon is Web2PDF, a neat tool that allows you to convert any webpage you?re viewing into a PDF format. This is especially convenient if you?re looking to distribute the information gleaned from that particular website to multiple people. With Web2PDF, all one need do is convert the page to PDF format and distribute it accordingly.
Once the extension has been installed, you?ll have to ability to begin converting those page. Looking at the top of your browser, you?ll notice the addition of a button associated with the task. After you?ve decided to convert the page into a PDF, you?re tasked with just pressing that one button. Upon its submission, you will observe the conversion process.
Upon completion of that process, the tool will prompt you to download your newly created PDF. Simply right click and designate a location to which you?d like the PDF saved.
When viewing the directory in which the file has been saved, you?ll notice that its filename corresponds to the webpage from which it originated.
If you?re one of those people who?s ambivalent about installing too many extensions on your browser, Web2PDF can also be accessed directly. You can visit their website, where you?ll notice a field in which you can enter the URL of the webpage you?re looking to convert.
For those of you who?re looking for a better means of saving the information you read while browsing the web, this is a simple way to do so.
For you Mac users who use Safari, the web browser released for the Mac OS X operating system, Apple has come out with the latest version. Released just today, Safari 4.0.4 introduces a number of improvements to its performance and stability.
Apple recommends that all users of Safari install this latest update. The fixes include:
Improved performance of Javascript
Improved performance of Full History Search, for those of you with a sizable number of history items
Improved stability for 3rd party plug-ins, the search field and Yahoo! Mail
Still in its infancy, the internet is a growing community, home to everything from recipes for the most outlandish dishes to books that are no longer in print. As use of the internet has exploded, so has the content it exists as a medium for, with no boundaries on what?s available to those entering its domain.
This includes content that some might deem objectionable.
Guarding your family against this has been difficult, the near unregulated structure of the internet serving as a platform for what many would find highly offensive. While there are safeguards that monitor internet use, they?re not always effective, a result of the internet?s unceasing growth.
Given the internet is almost inextricably tied to the development of our children, at home and school, it?s unreasonable to assume that they will not make use of its function. As any responsible parent knows, protecting our children against harmful material is paramount in the process of nurturing them into well-adjusted young adults. However, preventing children from using the internet does them a disservice that has been shown to stunt development in this information age.
With Google?s search engine being the most popular of its kind, it?s? likely that your children will put it to use at some point.? Whether it?s a search for the latest videogame tips or rumors about their favorite teen starlet, there?s plenty of safe content that?s available for them to search for. Unfortunately, the chance of them happening upon search results of a questionable nature can be high.
Google has always allowed its users to filter the results of their searches, removing content that is deemed inappropriate. Helpful as that feature?s been, the ability to lock those settings has never been available until now.
Today, Google launched an improvement that allows one to lock the SafeSearch setting to the strictest level of filtering. To prevent a minor from tampering with this feature, it will be password protected, leaving only the guardian empowered with the ability to change the setting.
As seen below, results generated by any future use of the Google search engine will be observably different, the page on which they?re normally displayed accompanied by colored balls that sit on top. This serves as a reminder to parents and teachers standing from afar that their children?s content is being filtered.
For a demonstration of how to use this feature, Google has provided a video:
This is but one of several measures you can take to protect your children during their time on the internet. While Computer Geeks encourages responsible use of the internet, we understand that many children aren?t informed about the dangers that lurk about its corridors. Use of this option in combination with other measures and discussion with your children about online safety should ease that concern.
Whether you?re looking for your seasonal flu shot or you?re concerned about the availability of a vaccine that combats the H1N1 swine flu, Google has rolled out with a handy locator that points you towards the nearest location to service that need.
Once that?s loaded, it might prompt you to enter your location. To do so, select the ?Change location? link.
Once the search is completed, you will see a red icon in the form of a needle. This will show you where to obtain the regular seasonal flu shot. A blue icon of the same type notes where you can get the H1N1 vaccine. A needle that?s mixed with both red and blue indicates a location where both services are available.
Clicking on any of the icons will present you with more information about that particular location.
On the left-hand side, you?ll see all of the locations on the map. While most of these are pharmacies, Google has said that more sites will be added with time.
One important bit of information that?s omitted from these details is whether or not the flu shot or vaccine is in stock. While the icon indicates that the location is supplying those services, looking to the left of the map tells you that the stock is depleted.
In addition to the locator, Google also has a site that follows flu activity, highlighting those areas in which its prevalence is high.
Google continues to remind us why their presence on the internet is so invaluable. They harness the simplicity of their model to innovate how our community utilizes an internet that is still in its infancy when considering the possibilities.
While we at Computer Geeks hope you never come down with the flu, we also know that staying informed can often be the best possible defense.
Oftentimes, through no fault of either party, our customer service representatives encounter unintended obstacles when attempting to detail exactly why a customer?s computer has ceased to properly function. One of the more frequent problems encountered by our clients is the infamous ?Blue Screen of Death,? or BSOD. The ?Blue Screen of Death? is an ominously nondescript blue screen alerting the user that, for any number of reasons, the computer must shut down to prevent further damage. This screen is accompanied by text, of which much is unintelligible to all but the most tech savvy.
As calls come into our office, our phone reps attempt to detail the specific problem as best they can, but their understanding of what lies at the heart of the issue goes only so far as the end user is able to articulate it. No blame can be attributed to the client, for even some of the most accomplished technicians find themselves at an immediate loss for what?s ailing a system stricken by BSOD, their answers coming after the issue has been researched.
BlueScreenView is an informative utility that operates as a interpreter of sorts, taking what many find to be incomprehensible and processing? that information in a manner that makes it a bit easier to digest. The necessity of a utility like BlueScreenView becomes obvious when observing how little time you have before the ?Blue Screen of Death? proceeds with a system reboot.
With BlueScreenView, the user can access BSOD dump file, filtering that information through a report that?s just a bit easier to understand. When launching the application, it will scan for the minidump files generated by the system crash, which are usually located in C:windowsminidump. Taking that data, it displays it in a window, with the dump file listed above and those drivers associated with the crash sorted below.
You can read even more information about the driver?s role in the crash by double-clicking on each one. Or, you can simply decide to parse the selections down to just those drivers that were directly implicated in the system crash.
It bears mentioning that this is merely the precursor to any troubleshooting that is to take place on the stricken computer. BlueScreenView translates the garbled messages from the BSOD and creates a clearer account of just what precipitated the system crash. While this utility will not solve the conflict, it will grant the user a better understanding of where the focus should be.
For those users who are interested in calling Computer Geeks, this might prove handy, particularly when relating the details of what you?ve experienced to the phone representative that takes your call.
This afternoon, Apple released a second update for Snow Leopard, the latest installment of their Mac Operating System. The most notable inclusion in Mac OS X 10.6.2 is a patch that addresses the guest account bug, fixing it along with several other issues.
This particular bug takes effect when someone logs in and out of a guest account on a machine running Snow Leopard. Once that individual logs back into their regular account, they?ll notice that it?s been cleared of all the data.
Since its discovery, Apple has been working on a fix, finally releasing one today.
In addition to this critical patch, a number of other concerns have been redressed, the following list describing just what?s been corrected:
The deletion of data that would occur when using a guest account
A problem that would see users randomly logged out of their account
A problem preventing the addition of images to contacts in Address Book
Performance issues with Front Row when watching movies
Generating mobile accounts for Active Director users
Stability of VPN connects
Improved peformance for iWork, iLife, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, MobileMe, and iDisk
Performance issues with VoiceOver performance
Video playback and performance issues for iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2009) and iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) computers that are known to arise when using AirPort.
These are just the fixes that have been applied to the Operating System, with many more issues addressed elsewhere. For the complete list, visit Apple.
