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Firefox plugins

by | Jun 17, 2006 | evilzenscientist, Technology, Uncategorized

Bon Echo

I’m using Bon Echo – currently the alpha 3 release of the next generation Firefox browser.

I’m really impressed that even as an alpha it’s seemingly rock solid – and with some really nice enhancements.

One thing I did miss was some of my plugins – mainly around web development.

Most plugins are written to support the current branch of Firefox – i.e. 1.5.x – I found a plugin to help with these on Bon Echo.

The MR Tech Local Install plugin works with Bon Echo – also it allows the ‘max version’ tag for plugins to be directly overridden. That lets me install all manner of newer plugins on my cutting edge Firefox.

Cool Blogs v 1.5 – an update

by | Jun 16, 2006 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

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We’ve had fun this past couple of days working on some of the enhancements to Cool Blogs.

Written at: Draper, UT

The first – and most visible enhancement – will be adding ratings to posts. We found a really good Ajax based plugin that does this nicely.

Here is an example from our test environment. (The post is aggregated from the Evil ZEN Scientist blog – look below for details on this.)
SNAG-0241.png

The other enhancement is that we are going to start bringing blog posts from Cool Bloggers own blogs. There are several Novell Distinguished Engineers who are blogging around the security and identity space – and we will start aggregrating content from there.

If you look at this example – it’s directly from Ted Haeger’s own weblog.

SNAG-0240.png

Also we’ll be adding improvements to the RSS feeds, threaded comments – and a few other surprises along the way.

I suppose this links back to Ted’s post about new bloggers. I’ll be bringing a few more ZENworks bloggers into the mix this weekend. First will probably be Martin Irwin – he of ZENworks Server Management CPK fame.

Written at: Draper, UT

Vista update

by | Jun 15, 2006 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

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Vista

Another in a series on Vista.

I blogged in April about the hardware baseline for Vista – I pointed out that the minimum specs were pretty steep:

  • general knowledge worker – Pentium 4 class machine, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, 1Gbit ethernet, accelerated graphics capability
  • ‘power worker’ – Pentium 4 class machine; dual core and 64 bit ideal, 2GB RAM, 100GB HDD, 1Gbit ethernet, accelerated graphics capability

This garnered a comment from Wolfie2k6:

I have it running very nicely, thank you – with all bells and whistles – on a box that cost me less than $500. That’s including a set of high end Altec Lansing speakers.

Wake up folks – hardware is CHEAP.

I still contend that the minimum hardware is way more than $500 – and that was validated this week with the release of the hardware specs for Windows Vista Premium – one of the SKUs likely to be deployed by corporate customers:

The following are requirements for Windows Vista Premium logo-compliant PC and will be mandated by June 1st, 2007:

  • Must have H.264 hardware decoding
  • Must have HDCP
  • Must support multi-monitor support
  • Must have HD audio
  • Must have HD audio jack presence detection
  • Must have Serial ATA 2.5
  • Must have minimum of 50MB NV cache on hybrid HD’s with at least 8MB/sec write 16MB/sec read (for mobile only)
  • Must support booting from USB flash drives
  • Must have Windows Vista Green Button on all remotes
  • Must have Green Driver Quality Rating (DQR)

DailyTech has the full skinny.

Written at: Ottawa, Canada

Behind the scenes at Novell Open Audio

by | Jun 14, 2006 | blogging, coolblogs, evilzenscientist, Novell Open Audio, podcast, Uncategorized, ZENworks

I blogged on Novell Cool Blogs about doing an interview at Novell Open Audio.

The email invitation looked a little like this:

From: openaudio openaudio
To: openaudio openaudio;  Martin Buckley;  Michael Douglas Pearson;  Ted Haeger
Date: 14/Jun/06
Time: 14:00 - 15:00
Subject: ZENworks 7 SP1
Place: Podcast Studio, 8th floor behind the mens room

Prep and Interview

The Novell Open Audio Crew
www.novell.com/openaudio

(more…)