Freelancer's Office » Technology http://www.freelancersoffice.com freelancersoffice.com Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:38:14 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Newt Gingrich Has Promised America the Moon, But Can He Deliver? http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2012/01/26/newt-gingrich-has-promised-america-the-moon-but-can-he-deliver/ http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2012/01/26/newt-gingrich-has-promised-america-the-moon-but-can-he-deliver/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:38:14 +0000 FreelancersOffice.com http://www.freelancersoffice.com/?p=631 Scientist-astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt stands by the American flag during a moonwalk on the Apollo 17 mission.

In his speech to Republican voters in Cocoa, Florida on Wednesday, Newt Gingrich addressed the issue of what he intends for the future of America’s space program if he is elected president of the United States.

In [...]]]> Scientist-astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt stands by the American flag during a moonwalk on the Apollo 17 mission.

Scientist-astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt stands by the American flag during a moonwalk on the Apollo 17 mission.

In his speech to Republican voters in Cocoa, Florida on Wednesday, Newt Gingrich addressed the issue of what he intends for the future of America’s space program if he is elected president of the United States.

In his commentary, Gingrich promised, “By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American.”

In addition to his desire for a permanent American base on the Moon, Gingrich wants to make the Moon the 51st State in the Union.

In talking about Governor Romney’s opinion of Gingrich’s plans for the Moon, Gingrich told an audience in Cocoa, Fl, “The weirdest thing I have ever done, and I am going to tell you all, because sooner or later his researchers will find it. At one point, early in my career, I introduced the Northwest Ordinance for Space. And I said when we got, I think the number was 13,000, when we have 13,000 Americans living on the Moon, they can petition to become a State.” He went on shortly after that with a promise, “And I will, as president, encourage the introduction of the Northwest Ordinance for Space to put a marker down, that we want Americans to think boldly about the future and we want Americans to go out and study hard and work hard and together we’re going to unleash the American people to rebuild the country we love. ”

There are a few obstacles to Gingrich’s dream to transform the Moon into the 51st State of the Union. Once the issue of financing such an undertaking has been overcome, and the logistics of colonization has been sorted out so that colonists can begin to sign up to be taken to their new lunar homes, there is still the small matter of ownership of the Moon. Can Gingrich promise the American people the Moon?

Nevada entrepreneur Dennis Hope might have something to say about Gingrich’s proposal. Hope is the head of the Lunar Embassy Corporation, and his corporation has sold land to over 3.5 million Lunar land owners.

In 2004 Hope started his own Lunar government to assure the property rights of his customers were protected. Hope claimed in a July 2009 National Geographic article that his government had a ratified constitution, a congress, a unit of currency and even a patent office.

“We’re now a fully realized sovereign nation,” Hope said.

While Hope has expressed his confidence that his claim on the moon is a secure one, the Lunar Embassy Corporation is not the biggest obstacle to Gingrich’s plans.

Beyond the Lunar Embassy is the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA). The UNOOSA website has a PDF version of the United Nations Treaties And Principles on Outer Space which was adopted by the United Nations on December 19, 1966 and entered into force on October 10, 1967.

The formal Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies is a part of the treaty and deals with specific concepts included in the 1967 treaty.  Adopted on December 5, 1979, it entered into force on July 11, 1984.

Of significance to the issue is Article II of section A of the treaty:

A. Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities
of States in the Exploration and Use
of Outer Space, including the Moon
and Other Celestial Bodies

Article II
Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to
national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or
by any other means.

Article XVII
This Treaty, of which the Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish texts
are equally authentic, shall be deposited in the archives of the Depositary Governments.
Duly certified copies of this Treaty shall be transmitted by the Depositary
Governments to the Governments of the signatory and acceding States.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF the undersigned, duly authorized, have signed this
Treaty.
DONE in triplicate, at the cities of London, Moscow and Washington, D.C., the
twenty-seventh day of January, one thousand nine hundred and sixty-seven.

 

Another, more clearly worded part is to be found in Article 11 of section E:

E. Agreement Governing the Activities of States
on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies

Recognizing that the Moon, as a natural satellite of the Earth, has an important
role to play in the exploration of outer space,

Desiring to prevent the Moon from becoming an area of international conflict,

Article 11

  1. The Moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of mankind, which finds its expression in the provisions of this Agreement, in particular in paragraph 5 of this article.
  2. The Moon is not subject to national appropriation by any claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.
  3. Neither the surface nor the subsurface of the Moon, nor any part thereof or natural resources in place, shall become property of any State, international intergovernmental or non-governmental organization, national organization or non-governmental entity or of any natural person. The placement of personnel, space vehicles, equipment, facilities, stations and installations on or below the surface of the Moon, including structures connected with its surface or subsurface, shall not create a right of ownership over the surface or the subsurface of the Moon or any areas thereof. The foregoing provisions are without prejudice to the international regime referred to in paragraph 5 of this article.

 

The United States entered into an agreement over 40 years ago that the Moon, and all celestial bodies, should belong to all mankind and to all nations. It was recognized in that treaty that no single nation should ever have the capability to lay claim to an area of such significant scientific importance to all mankind.

Given the commitments made by the signing of the UNOOSA treaty, and its specific negation of ownership of the Moon and other celestial bodies, it is difficult to see how Gingrich could promise that the Moon could be made the 51st State of the Union.

Surveyor 1's shadow on the Moon on June 2, 1966.

Surveyor 1's shadow on the Moon on June 2, 1966.

]]> http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2012/01/26/newt-gingrich-has-promised-america-the-moon-but-can-he-deliver/feed/ 0 The Internet on Strike 2012 http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2012/01/24/the-internet-on-strike-2012/ http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2012/01/24/the-internet-on-strike-2012/#comments Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:17:55 +0000 FreelancersOffice.com http://www.freelancersoffice.com/?p=614 Read part one of this article series

On December 21, 2012 the Mayan long count calendar will end. Many see this as an indication that the world will either end or be significantly changed on that date. We can not be certain what will happen, if anything, as this year comes to a [...]]]> Read part one of this article series

On December 21, 2012 the Mayan long count calendar will end. Many see this as an indication that the world will either end or be significantly changed on that date. We can not be certain what will happen, if anything, as this year comes to a close, but we do know that the year started with an online glimpse of what the future might look like. On January 18th select websites all across the Internet went dark in an online strike to protest censorship on the Internet.

Among the sites that went on strike the most significant may have been Wikipedia. For 24 hours the online encyclopedia went dark to its English users with the graphic shown here.

Imagine a world without free knowledge.

The move was a protest against what some saw in SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. To find out more about the bill and why so many prominent websites protested it, see the first part of this article series Justice Department Megaupload and Anonymous… what happened and why.

Those who were using the Internet on the 18th  may have encountered a number of sites that went on strike. And, in full disclosure, several websites associated with Freelancer’s Office also went dark; including this website, Phantascene.com, Alaskan Home & Garden, and Mars Station One.

Some of the websites that joined the strike, either by full blackout or a display of visible support, include:

Area907.info
Boing Boing
Craigslist.org
The Escapist
Google
ICanHasCheezburger
imgur
Internet Archive
Mars Station One
Minecraft.net
MoveOn.org
Mozilla.org
Namecheap.com
Nedroid.com
The Oatmeal
O’Reilly Media
Post Secret
Reddit
Tech Crunch
TwitPic
Webmusher.com
Wikipedia
Wordpress.com
XDA Developers
xkcd.com

The above list of 25 websites are only a sampling of the websites that joined in the protest, and even more sites helped to spread the news that the sites would protest and why the persons in control of the websites felt it necessary.

Some sites, such as Nedroid, presented the very serious issue in their own unique manner, often incorporating humor to encourage the visitors to read the notice:

Some of the sites that went full black as Wikipedia, include: Craigslist, MoveOn.org, and the Internet Archive. (click images for larger views)

 

Perhaps the most visually striking of the websites to be seen, or not seen, on January 18th was WordPress.com, a very popular blogging platform which is used by Freelancer’s Office. What greeted visitors to WordPress.com was a very visually striking view of what online censorship could look like in comparison to other forms of more well known censorship.

]]> http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2012/01/24/the-internet-on-strike-2012/feed/ 0 Justice Department, Megaupload and Anonymous… what happened and why? http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2012/01/22/justice-department-megaupload-and-anonymous-what-happened-and-why/ http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2012/01/22/justice-department-megaupload-and-anonymous-what-happened-and-why/#comments Sun, 22 Jan 2012 10:12:33 +0000 FreelancersOffice.com http://www.freelancersoffice.com/?p=607 So, by now most people know that on Thursday the leaders of Megaupload were arrested by New Zealand authorities acting on request of the United States Justice Department, and that persons swayed the decentralized group that identifies itself as Anonymous to launch multiple retributions against a variety of targets that included the Justice Department website, [...]]]> So, by now most people know that on Thursday the leaders of Megaupload were arrested by New Zealand authorities acting on request of the United States Justice Department, and that persons swayed the decentralized group that identifies itself as Anonymous to launch multiple retributions against a variety of targets that included the Justice Department website, the FBI website, Universal Music, RIAA and MPAA websites.

But what actually happened and why?

Throughout Wednesday, January 18th, there was a coordinated effort on the Internet to display, in an exceptionally visual manner, what the Internet could look like if bills such as SOPA and PIPA were to be passed in Congress. At the heart of the Internet strike was freedom of the Internet. One of the most notable effects of the strike was the complete blackout staged by Wikipedia. Other sites, such as Google, simply placed a blackout bar across their name and allowed users to continue to make use of the site’s services.

So why the huge protest? SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) are trying to do good things, the problem is that they are trying to do good by doing a lot of possible harm.

SOPA is more formally known as “H.R.3261 — Stop Online Piracy Act”. You can find it on THOMAS, or check H.R. 3261 – Stop Online Privacy Act which is where I located it as of the time I am writing this, or the THOMAS entry for SOPA at the thomas.loc.gov website.

The first thing you see under the heading of the bill is the mission statement of the bill:

“To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by
combating  the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes.”

The first thing I have to think is – what other purposes?

The Stop Online Piracy Act, hereafter referred to as SOPA, was introduced in the House of Representatives on October 26, 2011 by Mr. Smith of Texas for himself, Mr. Conyers, Mr. Goodlatte, Mr. Berman, Mr. Griffin of Arkansas, Mr. Gallegly, Mr. Deutch, Mr. Chabot, Mr. Ross of Florida, Mrs. Blackburn, Mrs. Bono Mack, Mr. Terry and Mr. Schiff.

What concerns manyof those who oppose the bill is the manner in which SOPA seeks to stop online piracy. It is a long bill, so I will pinpoint areas I have seen that others have discussed, however, I encourage you to please read the bill for yourself.

I will be referring to the H.R. 3261 – Stop Online Privacy Act link in the following points:

Page 10.1 —-

Sec. 102 Action by Attorney General to protect U.S. customers
and prevent U.S. support of foreign infringing sites.

Sounds okay, right? I mean, we want our government to protect us, right? And they do have a few pages there that discuss how they find the owner of sites and order them to stop doing what they do not like. Then we get down to page 13, lines 21-25, and page 14, lines 1-10:

(i) IN GENERAL. — A service provider shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order, including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain name’s Internet Protocol address. Such actions shall be taken as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order.

Move on down to page 15, lines 11-20, and we have…

B) INTERNET SEARCH ENGINES.—A provider of an Internet search engine shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may order, designed to prevent the foreign infringing site that is subject to the order, or a portion of such site specified in the order, from being served as a direct hypertext link.

Now it is possible that your favorite picture site will be compliant and remove all images that infringe on any copyrights, but if they don’t then the entire site is likely to be blocked by search engines so you can’t find them via a search engine anymore. And, even if you do have them bookmarked or the URL memorized so do not see why them no longer showing up on a search engine is a bad thing, page 15 line 21 kicks off another reason why you should be worried about SOPA.

That is where they specify that if you pay to use the legal parts of a website that has illegal content on it, that your payment network can still block you from making subscription payments to that service.  Ending your ability to subscribe to it from within the United States.

What is of concern to manyis that by providing any sort of service where persons can communicate (think about your favorite forum or social networking site), or post content for others to download (think about your favorite file or document or image sharing site), the site owner can be held liable if their site is used for illegal purposes. Not the entire site, if just a portion of it is used for illegal purposes.

It is good to have someone make sure that your site is are not being abused or used for pirating, but as SOPA stands now, I would have to completely close my sites to comments (including my forums) so I could read EVERY comment before it was posted or I would face a $2,000,000 fine and prison time. For multiple cases a $5,000,000 fine. (And note that the same bill has $5,000,000 as the fine levied for someone that intentionally causes harm or death to someone or who shares military or government secrets – WHY is murder and treason comparable in fine to sharing two songs online????? Shouldn’t murder and treason be a bit more serious than an artist losing the sale of a .99 cent song???)

If I just leave my sites (as I have been known to do – a LOT), and someone posts links to where a movie can be downloaded (which BOTs do, a LOT), then under the SOPA bill I am held liable and fined multiple millions of dollars, plus whatever the entertainment industry decides to fine me for their lost income.

I’m in the US, and as far as I know all of my sites are too, but if a site is not in the US, and the site owner is not in the US to be dealt with personally by the laws of the US, then the Attorney General can order search engines to block your ability to see the site. (Section 102(c)(2)(B) as indicated in excerpt above – (Page 15, Lines 11-20)) That means the Attorney General decides to black out sections of the online world to US citizens. For their own good of course.

The scary part is, we, the people of the United States, would be giving our government the right to decided what sites need blocked from us. How easily could that power be abused?

And that is just part of what makes SOPA scary. I can’t go into full details in this post, so for a very good look at just what SOPA would mean, check out Why SOPA Is Dangerous byChris Held over at Mashable. He breaks it down into easily understandable language, but you still owe it to yourself to read the full bill and see just what it has to say for itself.

This post is VERY long, so I am going to break this discussion into a series of posts. Tomorrow I will tackle the next part of it: the Internet Strike and what happened with websites all across the Internet going dark for a day. I think if you read SOPA between now and then, you will understand why the sites felt it was necessary before I can get that post made, but come back anyway, I have some pictures of some of my favorites that I will share in tomorrow’s post. Then tomorrow or Monday I will get to why the Justice Department took down Megaupload and what you should know about Anonymous’ strike back, and why everything might have just been poorly timed events that snowballed to create the chaos it did.

]]> http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2012/01/22/justice-department-megaupload-and-anonymous-what-happened-and-why/feed/ 1 Daz Studio 4, 3D creation program – Get it for Free! http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/09/01/daz-studio-4-3d-creation-program-get-it-for-free/ http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/09/01/daz-studio-4-3d-creation-program-get-it-for-free/#comments Thu, 01 Sep 2011 08:51:19 +0000 FreelancersOffice.com http://www.freelancersoffice.com/?p=531 Well, so much for sleeping anytime soon. I just finished downloading Daz 3D from the Daz website. I’m not sure just how long their limited time has been or will be going on, but when I just downloaded the program it was marked down from the normal $49.95 to free, they say until October 31, [...]]]> Well, so much for sleeping anytime soon. I just finished downloading Daz 3D from the Daz website. I’m not sure just how long their limited time has been or will be going on, but when I just downloaded the program it was marked down from the normal $49.95 to free, they say until October 31, 2011.

If you check the Daz Studio 4 page for the basic Daz Studio 4 program it has a 100% markdown through October 31st. I just went through the full checkout process and sure enough, downloaded for free and it is now up and running on my computer.

So, why, you might ask, do I need Daz if I have Blender? Well, I got it because I was looking for how to use Poser files in Blender and someone had said that Daz can open Poser files and export them as files that Blender can read. So Daz is my bridge between the multitude of things that I can find to get for Poser but that are not available for Blender. ;-)

I’m still not certain what else Daz will be used for, but it looks promising for my plans to create character representations and mini movies for my websites.

]]> http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/09/01/daz-studio-4-3d-creation-program-get-it-for-free/feed/ 0 Out of the work day and into the Blender http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/08/26/out-of-the-work-day-and-into-the-blender/ http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/08/26/out-of-the-work-day-and-into-the-blender/#comments Sat, 27 Aug 2011 02:06:45 +0000 FreelancersOffice.com http://www.freelancersoffice.com/?p=520 Blender 3D that is. For those who do not know, Blender 3D is a program made for creating 3D models. You are likely most familiar with the concept if you play SIMS, since The Sims is made up of little figures that are manipulated as 3D figures. Blender 3D is the kind of program that [...]]]> Blender 3D that is. For those who do not know, Blender 3D is a program made for creating 3D models. You are likely most familiar with the concept if you play SIMS, since The Sims is made up of little figures that are manipulated as 3D figures. Blender 3D is the kind of program that makes the stuff in games like The Sims. It is also an exceptionally powerful film making program for the creation of 3D films.

See…

I worked with Blender long ago, over 5 years ago at least, and am back into relearning it and expanding on what I had learned back when I first tried it out. I want to take some of the short stories I have but never got around to getting published, polish them up a bit, and try my hand at turning them into short 3D films.

It is going to take me a while to get to that level of skill, but I am fairly excited to see what I can do and it meshes perfectly into my original love of wanting to get into making movies. At the very least, I can make up all of the characters from my Heir to Magic world and start getting them loaded up onto that website. That is my first goal.

For now, Blender 3D is a very good fun toy for me to dangle at the end of the work day with a promise that once my work is all done I can play in Blender.

]]> http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/08/26/out-of-the-work-day-and-into-the-blender/feed/ 0 You searched for it, you must like everything about it. Right? http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/07/07/you-searched-for-it-you-must-like-everything-about-it-right/ http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/07/07/you-searched-for-it-you-must-like-everything-about-it-right/#comments Thu, 07 Jul 2011 22:51:01 +0000 FreelancersOffice.com http://www.freelancersoffice.com/?p=448 I had something pointed out to me by a friend a little while ago. A new “You like this!” element that I had not noticed Google using. When I search for something on Google, I get a result like this…

When my friend makes the same search, her search result page comes back [...]]]> I had something pointed out to me by a friend a little while ago. A new “You like this!” element that I had not noticed Google using. When I search for something on Google, I get a result like this…


When my friend makes the same search, her search result page comes back looking like this….

Note the specific differences between two entries for the same website…..

 

I do not know why my friend’s search results in an automatic +1 to EVERY entry on the search page, or why I have never noticed that before in my searches. I also do not know what the green checks are for. So far, there seems to be something about MacAfee that others have said was a culprit for them.

I’ll be investigating this and seeing what I can dig up on what it is and why it’s happening. Google has a page on the +1 button, and on the +1 Button privacy. I have not yet found why it seems to do the default “Like all results” in a search.

 

]]> http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/07/07/you-searched-for-it-you-must-like-everything-about-it-right/feed/ 1 How much is your time worth? http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/06/20/how-much-is-your-time-worth/ http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/06/20/how-much-is-your-time-worth/#comments Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:01:39 +0000 FreelancersOffice.com http://www.freelancersoffice.com/?p=427 I was looking for more work online and realized that Alaska’s $7.75 per hour minimum wage is by no means a low hourly wage. Anyone that thinks it is, just needs to try to earn some money as a writer.

Or as anything relating to writing and online researching. I was looking at a request [...]]]> I was looking for more work online and realized that Alaska’s $7.75 per hour minimum wage is by no means a low hourly wage. Anyone that thinks it is, just needs to try to earn some money as a writer.

Or as anything relating to writing and online researching. I was looking at a request for a virtual assistant, and in one of the ads I found the person wants to pay $30 for 25 hours of work. That means they want someone that will do all kinds of tasks for them such as writing and research and a variety of other listed daily activities, for at least 5 hours per day, and they want to pay them $1.20 an hour. That’s $6 for a full day’s worth of work. That might seem like a lot in some countries, but for me it does not even pay one month’s fees on my websites. I think my mom made more than that in the 1960′s working as a waitress in diners.

The online world, in particular the world wide aspect of the online world, has completely devalued the skills of anyone working online for a living. Average pay per word seems to have dropped down to $0.002 per word for writing. That means that to earn $1 online a writer needs to write 500 words. Average typing speed is, I think, around 62 wpm… going by that, if all they do is write, no research no pauses, solid typing at the computer, a writer can kick out around 3,720 words in an hour. And that does not account for any research or proofreading after the piece has been written. So, let’s be very crack-the-whip toward the writers and say that they can write 2,000 words in an hour, which includes a little research about what they are supposed to be writing and writing it, and proofreading, and since they are writing it for someone else that also needs to include the time it takes for them to send the writing back to the person who now owns it.

Yes, owns it. For that $0.002 per word the writer is giving away all rights to the piece and the person purchasing it owns all rights to it forever.

So, 2,000 words plus research plus sending them off to the person who bought them means the writer is working very hard to earn $4 an hour. An average of about half minimum wage in Alaska. Earning roughly $20 per day, five days a week makes it $100. So, writing their fingers off five days a week a writer can earn around $400 in a month, bringing the income for online writing up to somewhere between $500 and $1,000 if they work really really hard and can get enough work that they are not taking breaks or weekends off.

There is no room for the writer to take on a second job, because all of their time is spent writing to manage to earn what is basically rent for their home for the month. There is little if any time left for them to relax and enjoy time with friends and family, not if they want to hit the mark of possibly earning enough to pay the mortgage.

I’m not sure what a writer is to do when a world-wide market for skills means that even the best writers are competing for work that can be done by someone willing for work for $1 a month. And it is really bad that even $5 a week of guaranteed income is looking really good to me, no matter how hard I have to work for it.

So, what is the least you would take per word writing online? Has the online market caused a major undervaluation of a writer’s time?

]]> http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/06/20/how-much-is-your-time-worth/feed/ 0 Firefox App Tabs http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/06/08/firefox-app-tabs/ http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/06/08/firefox-app-tabs/#comments Wed, 08 Jun 2011 21:07:59 +0000 FreelancersOffice.com http://www.freelancersoffice.com/?p=402 I found a new best friend last night. I was working on the bazillion web pages I keep open, no, bazillion is not an exaggeration – I currently have 12 Firefox windows running a total of 29 tabs open on my computer. And that is just on the main computer, my research computer beside me [...]]]> I found a new best friend last night. I was working on the bazillion web pages I keep open, no, bazillion is not an exaggeration – I currently have 12 Firefox windows running a total of 29 tabs open on my computer. And that is just on the main computer, my research computer beside me has a few more web pages and tabs open on it as well. (and people wonder why I want an 8 screen system.)

Anyway, I was working on the multiple pages and tabs and went to undo having closed a tab I had accidentally closed before I was finished with it, and I noticed “Pin as App Tab” in the drop down menu. That sounded interesting, so being the curious person I am, I clocked on it to try it out.

Today I decided I needed to know what it is I am playing with, so I went looking and found information on it.

App Tabs are tiny tabs that you can set to stay on your Firefox 4 window. They condense down to just the size of the website’s icon (making it vital for webmasters to learn the value of those little address bar pictures!), and move to the far left side of the other tabs. You can still easily see what each one is by hovering over it. It can not be closed on accident, because there is no close button on the tab – only the site icon. To close an App Tab you either right click on it and select “close tab” from the menu, or you unpin it and close as normal.

Additional features of the App Tabs that I have not played with yet are very promising for how handy they really are -

Say you have a GMail account and set up an App Tab to keep your GMail open in a tab. When you get new e-mail to your GMail account, the App Tab will change color to blue to alert you that the web page has changed.

App Tabs are permanent until you tell them not to be. I have spent many hours setting and resetting my startup pages based on what I need to be working on in any given week. With the App Tabs, once they are set, they stay in place. Opening again each time you start up Firefox until you tell them to stop being App Tabs. For me, this means I can open several research pages, set them as App Tabs, then shut the computer down if I need to and get back to work the next day with the same resources I had been using the night before.

And the App Tab is a permanent little fellow, links clicked on in an App Tab will open in a new tab rather than in the same tab – even if the website’s links does not normally open in new tabs. That means you never need to worry about losing the base resource when doing extensive research online. I can not count how many times I have followed a link away from a site with great information and then could not find my way back to it because I had got to skipping back and forth on sites. Now a great resource can be set as an App Tab and there is no dear of losing it until I am finished with it.

So, how do you use the App Tab? Well, first, of course, you need Firefox 4.

At the top of the screen is the tabs for all the tabs you have open in your window… hover your mouse over one of those tabs and press the right side mouse button (right click on it) it brings up a menu:

Reload Tab
—————
Pin as App Tab
Move to New Window
—————
Reload All Tabs
Bookmark All Tabs
Close Other Tabs
—————
Undo Close Tab
Close Tab

Click the left mouse button on “Pin as App Tab” and it moves the tab to the left and shrinks the tab to the size of the site icon.
To return the tab to being a normal tab, right click on it as above and in a menu that looks very similar select “unpin tab”. That’s all there is to it.

]]> http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/06/08/firefox-app-tabs/feed/ 0 Could computers replace pencils? http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/04/27/could-computers-replace-pencils/ http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/04/27/could-computers-replace-pencils/#comments Wed, 27 Apr 2011 22:56:37 +0000 FreelancersOffice.com http://blog.freelancersoffice.com/?p=382 I have been around computers since I was at least six years old. My father (who was self taught via a computer repair manual read over bourbon and coke) worked as a computer programmer and I can remember him standing beside a huge wall of computers with me and explaining what punch cards were and [...]]]> I have been around computers since I was at least six years old. My father (who was self taught via a computer repair manual read over bourbon and coke) worked as a computer programmer and I can remember him standing beside a huge wall of computers with me and explaining what punch cards were and how they told the computer what to do as I slowly fed them into the card reader.

There was another place that he took me once with a series of walls in it that were filled with reel to reel tapes that seemed almost as big as I was.

In the 1980′s we bought the Vic-20 and my father taught me how to create programs in BASIC. I remember my older brother programming the computer so that it was talking. I was one of the first to buy the Commodore 64, which I first saw in a store on a military base in Washington. I stood back and watched as two GIs fiddled with the display model for several moments then wandered off. It had a blinking little line on the screen with a bunch of things they had obviously tried to type into the poor computer without knowing how to talk to it. After they moved away, obviously thinking it not worth their attention, I stepped up and typed in the first thing I had been taught by my dad. The BASIC code to have the computer say “Hello World! My name is Commodore 64, what is your name?” Which would be followed by a personal “Hello, ____, how are you today?” after the person entered their name. I was, admittedly, rather proud of the impressed looks the soldiers got when they investigated what the kid had been doing with the computer.

Later on in the 80′s, around 1986, I went to Job Corps to take secretarial training because secretarial school was the only thing they had that dealt at all with computers. Even then, they did not consider the computer to be as important to the secretary as learning to use a typewriter. I would spend my days in a chair typing forms out on an electric typewriter, a wall between me and the computer room where during breaks we could go over and work on speed building programs on the Apple IIe’s they had. There were I think about eight of them in the room, and the only use that the center seemed to have for them were the programs on them that let the secretarial students practice typing.

There were a few other basic programs, but it was all about learning other things with no focus on the computers. One day after I completed my work in secretarial class for the day I asked the teacher if I could spend my time in the computer lab while the others finished up? With permission to leave and go see the computers whenever I finished early I started to spend more time in the computer lab and was soon allowed even more freedom to be over there rather than in what I felt was the wrong room.

Yes, typewriters were kewl and all, but I knew that if anyone wanted to do anything they needed to be where the computers were.

I think my teachers sorted that out too when I hacked into the program of a basic little game that would guess what you were thinking of and rewrote it to be even better.

By the time I graduated, 11 months after entering Job Corps, my secretarial instructor had no idea what to put on my diploma. She had me sit at her desk with her and go through a huge three ring binder to look up what someone that programmed computers would be called. The closest we were able to find was “Terminal Systems Operator.” There just was no classification in the secretarial world for someone with any level of computer skill.

I knew then that I really was not cut out to be a secretary if they did not even have a classification for what I was.

In the early 90′s (1993-1994) I went back to school, college this time, to learn to be a Small Business Administrator. I majored for a few semesters in Small Business Administration with a minor in writing, both of which placed me in the computer lab a good percent of the time. It was in the fall semester of 1993 that I was in a class on computers and created a website where I built a “What’s happening in my life” diary. Something that today would be considered a blog. As the other students clustered around their computers and giggled at the conversations they had with the giggling mob on the other side of the room, and the guy beside me played a online adventure game that was similar to choose your own adventure books of a few years before, worked on creating programs and assisting the lab techs by answering what were to me fairly easy questions about how to get the computers to do what the users wanted them to. It was not long before I was known as the one to be asked if anyone had any issues in the computer lab. It lead to the guy that ran the lab asking me to work as a lab assistant the next semester, but I was unfortunately not able to due to a planned move that later on fell through.

Today, as I write this, I sit in front of three computer screens. To my left is a screen that holds my work, the things I need to write if I want to pay the bills in the months to come. Directly in front of me is another screen, where I am writing this and where I do most of my writing. Then to my right is a third screen, which is hooked up to a second computer. The second computer is either off or in hibernation mode a lot, it is dedicated to e-mail and being a secondary research screen for when I am looking up information for articles and ad copy.

It feels natural to be sitting in front of three screens, someday I want to add more screens to the collection. Spread things out a little more and make my work more streamlined. Computers are going to be here for the rest of my life and beyond. They were office monsters that took up entire walls when I was a child, and now the most powerful computer I have fits easily into my purse. What will they be like when I am 80?

And yet, for all of their ability to draw me to them, for all of the desire to sit at a computer and feel comfortable, I still reach for a sharpened number 2 pencil to write out my notes and work on pages for novels. I bought a LiveScribe as soon as I could afford one, because I prefer to write longhand at times and yet… it is still not used nearly as much as my cup of sharpened number two pencils.

The computer is here to stay, and it will only get better, but I don’t the pencil manufacturers ever need to worry it will make them obsolete. Some of us, even the most computer loving of us, will always turn to the number 2 pencil for the feel of actual connection with our writing that only it can provide.

]]> http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2011/04/27/could-computers-replace-pencils/feed/ 0 Who knew video conversion could be so hard? http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2010/03/19/who-knew-video-conversion-could-be-so-hard/ http://www.freelancersoffice.com/2010/03/19/who-knew-video-conversion-could-be-so-hard/#comments Sat, 20 Mar 2010 00:20:35 +0000 FreelancersOffice.com http://blog.freelancersoffice.com/?p=289 I’ve been trying to convert a .mov file from my dad’s HD camcorder to a format that I can edit using Windows Movie Maker. This is a very complicated process that has seen me working for two solid days now downloading and installing a converter program, testing it, uninstalling and searching for another one. Each [...]]]> I’ve been trying to convert a .mov file from my dad’s HD camcorder to a format that I can edit using Windows Movie Maker. This is a very complicated process that has seen me working for two solid days now downloading and installing a converter program, testing it, uninstalling and searching for another one. Each time I went through that it was several HOURS of my computer being tied up to the point I could not do any other work with it.

So, what did I discover to be unsuitable for one reason or another? A small sampling of the failed converters:

  • CraziVideo
  • Media Coder
  • Screen Edit 1080
  • Handbrake

And the one that finally succeeded? Any Video Converter. YAY! It worked beautifully for me! I just finished conversion of the first video in a series I am making for a painting I am working on. I’ll get it uploaded onto YouTube later.

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