Some webmasters have started to ban Firefox users from viewing their sites to avoid ad blocking extensions—which makes no sense, but stay with us here. If you happen to stumble onto one of these sites you will get forwarded to a message that reads:
The Mozilla Foundation and its Commercial arm, the Mozilla Corporation, has allowed and endorsed Ad Block Plus, a plug-in that blocks advertisement on web sites and also prevents site owners from blocking people using it.
What exactly starts up automatically with your Mac? You can see a list of Login Items in the Accounts area of System Preferences, but some may have opaque names like LCCDaemon or SEC Helper. Macworld offers a few ways to see the full path to those auto-starting programs, either using Terminal-fu or simply hovering the mouse over an entry to get a full path tooltip. Once you’ve got the full path of the process, it’s easy to see what application the process is associated with after all.
See paths to Login Items [Mac OS X Hints]Do-it-yourselfer Kipkay did a little investigating and found that beneath the shell of a run-of-the-mill 12-volt battery was eight watch batteries. Considering watch batteries cost between $4 and $6 a pop, finding eight of them in a $2 battery makes for quite a savings. I guess this isn’t surprising since 9-volt batteries are filled with six AAA batteries.
12 Volt Battery Hack! You’ll be Surprised… [Instructables]A major annoyance that comes with running Linux on a MacBook is Apple’s over-sized trackpad. No matter how hard I try to avoid touching the pad while typing, somehow it gets tapped and throws everything off kilter. Unfortunately, disabling the trackpad in Linux isn’t as easy as it should be. The Ubuntu Forums has a nice thread that shows how this can be done without losing the ability to “tap select” using your pad. The process requires adding a couple of lines to xorg.conf and adding a short script to the startup session manager. Looks like Windows and Mac take the simplicity prize on this one. Although the thread is housed in the Ubuntu Forums, the process is ubiquitous for most distros.
Disable Synaptics Touchpad While Typing [Ubuntu Forums]Weblog MacApper details how to set up Quicksilver as a quick and universal dictionary lookup tool. The step-by-step covers everything from installing the Dictionary plug-in to assigning a universal trigger that can define the currently highlighted word. The trigger isn’t necessary, of course, since you can also get definitions by typing the word into Quicksilver and selecting the Dictionary action. In fact, when you install the Dictionary plug-in, you also get a Thesaurus plug-in to boot. I’ve been using Quicksilver as my primary dictionary ever since I got my Mac, and it’s definitely the quickest way I know to perform a fast lookup. Tutorial: Make Quicksilver your Dictionary [MacApper]
Ever been manually entering a URL into Firefox and then switched windows only to come back to Firefox and have the entire URL contents highlighted? If you don’t notice and resume typing, the entire contents of the URL bar are accidentally deleted. If you regularly type out or edit URLs this gets really annoying—fast! The Pain in the Tech weblog explains how you can edit Firefox’s settings in about:config to change this behavior. All you need to do is find browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll in about:config and change the value from true to false. Kiss those accidental deletions goodbye. On the extension side, Uppity makes a great companion for users that manually edit loads of URLs.
Firefox address bar tweaks [Pain in the Tech]Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Website time tracking extension MeeTimer has updated with a few new and worthwhile features to help you get serious about your browser productivity. MeeTimer still tracks and groups your browsing habits by categories (with several improvements), but now it also lets you set up deterrence measures (along the lines of Invisibility Cloak and LeechBlock) to track sites categorised as procrastinators and alerts you once you’ve reached the limit for procrastination. The main thrust of the deterrence feature is to keep you honest when you’re actually supposed to be working, so you can turn off the timer when you’re doing leisure browsing. Just remember, Lifehacker is filed under Productivity.
How to Reduce Online Procrastination [MeeTimer]A GUI front-end for xorg.conf is in the works and set to be bundled in Ubuntu Gutsy. Say farewell to manually editing this file from the terminal! Thanks, Arsgeek! More »
Windows only: System utility Easy Duplicate Finder scans drives and folders for identical files and lets you delete or move them off your PC. Unlike WinMerge, Easy Duplicate Finder can scan more than one folder or your entire hard drive at once for duplicates. Simply add the folders or drives to the scan list and go. Scanning a large drive like your C: drive may take some time, but subfolder scans are very fast. After the cut, check out a screenshot of Easy Duplicate Finder’s full interface. More »
