Though on a somewhat abandoned state for the time being, we keep a co-brand with TradePub who offer a variety of free magazines, white papers and publications to qualified professionals. Their range of publications are not limited to IT or Computers however that’s what you are most likely to hear us promoting for obvious reasons.

Besides eWeek and Website Magazine which are some of their quality standard offerings, I recently got an email from TP letting me know of three new whitepapers on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which is a recurrent topic on today’s Internet if you are looking to maximize your exposure on the web. Check them out if you’ve got a chance:

Do’s and Don’ts of Search Engine Optimization

Website Redesign and Search Engine optimization – Keys For Success

Determining the Best Keyword Strategies for Your SEO and SEM Campaigns

You have likely heard it a million times already, Firefox 3 is a very nice improvement over version 2, especially in the performance department. And while many still prefer to stick to their own improved versions of Opera and Safari (sorry IE, you are a disgrace right now), Firefox is by far the most used alternative browser. I believe that comes in part thanks to its flexibility for customization and the myriad of useful add-ons you can get for it.

I can’t stress enough the add-on part. From webmaster tools, to simple functionality tweaks and social networking integration. My following tips, however, lay on the side of about:config tweaks (that is, you have to manually apply these yourself in the settings registry by running the about:config command on the address bar). So here we go:

Search from the address bar
Firefox brought wide support for the secondary search field that will directly Google anything you type, however I found asking myself, why two text fields? Why not re-use the address bar, so it will go to full URLs directly or will Google any other keywords I type in there (by default Firefox uses Google’s I’m feeling lucky option = going to the first search result directly, which I don’t think is ideal most of the time).

You can change this behavior by entering the about:config command in the address bar, then filter the preference list by typing keyword. The option called keyword.URL should appear. Change its value from the default to:
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=

That should do the trick. Now Google directly from the main address bar.

Make zoom settings tab independent
Firefox 3 upgrades zoom functionality present in previous versions by replacing font-only zoom to full page zoom which scales images and all other page properties. This may work to your advantage most of the time, but if you have many tabs opened for the same site, Firefox will think you want to zoom-in in all those tabs under the same domain. Personally I find this annoying.

So, enter the config zone and look up for the entry called browser.zoom.siteSpecific, then set it to False. This will prevent the browser from automatically zooming in all tabs from the same website.

Bonus tip
Did you know that you don’t have to type “www” or “.com” every time you enter an address? For example, just type “techspot” in the address bar, then use Ctrl + Enter to make it a full .com URL.

Instead of steel, aluminum or even carbon fiber, the GINA Light Visionary Model has a body of seamless fabric stretched over a movable metal frame that allows the driver to change its shape at will. The car — which actually runs and drives — is a styling design headed straight for the BMW Museum in Munich and so it will never see production, but building a practical car wasn’t the point.

Source: Wired
Original Source: BMW

Nintendo Wii + Hot chick = viral video. It was only a matter of time…

Every once in a while we get to see these kind of rare occurrences, and when I say we, I mean the millions out there that can browse the web. Thank god there is Youtube.

BTW, I happen to like Ballmer. I believe he’s much smarter and upfront businessman than he’s given credit for.

If you have moved on to use Firefox 3 Beta 5 (as I recommended) then you know how much speed was left untapped with previous versions of the browser. There are still a quite a few popular extensions that are not compatible however, Tab Mix Plus, being perhaps one of the most general purpose and useful out there.

But worry no more. If you don’t mind the beta-over-beta code you will be running, there is an experimental version of the add-on available for Firefox 3 Beta 5 that seems to be working just fine. This still has not been posted to the official Mozilla add-ons site, so it’s a little gem I had to share. Enjoy.

Having had my friendly and not so friendly encounters with my MacBook Pro and the bundled OS X operating system, at the end of the day I believe that for a powerful laptop I couldn’t have done much better other than buying another ThinkPad. The last one I got was a T42 and still runs like a charm even after a very embarrassing “wrong-screw-in-the-wrong-hole” moment :).

In the world of expensive ultra-portables though, the MacBook Air and the new ThinkPad X300 are two jewels to be had… check this out before buying though…

With the kind of financial backing that Google has, it’s not at all surprising that they have registered at least a few dozen typo domains and the like, but ones like thesecretofburritos.com or googlesex.com are a bit more unusual.

Here at TechSpot we have had a few problems with other people registering regional domains, but what can you do about it. What we do have done is trademarking our brand to at least cover some basis (it’s a nice name you have to agree ;)).

While browsing around this morning I stumbled upon this bit of news: “Apple released a new graphics upgrade kit today.” For those Mac Pro users out there (that is, the tower desktop system, not the laptop) can now upgrade to a GeForce 8800GT for about x1.5 the actual price of the card, ain’t those wonderful news?

From Macrumors.com:

When Apple released the Early 2008 Mac Pro, they offered the NVIDIA 8800GT as an upgrade option, however due to firmware issues, the 8800GT was not compatible with previous generation Mac Pros — until today.

And here’s a reaction by a Mac Pro owner, taken from Apple’s website:

YES! We all know how good this card is and 1st Gen Mac Pro owners can now use it…
Hooray!

Perhaps you may want to grab an overpriced memory upgrade kit from the manufacturer as well?

If like me, you spend a sizable amount of your computer time on a web browser, you can forget about RAM or processor upgrades, it’s software where the hole was all this time.

First let me tell you that I’m an avid fan of trying new web browsers, or at least new versions of today’s traditional browsers like Firefox, Opera, IE and Safari, that includes betas and release candidates. But because I had grown so comfortable with my Firefox extensions and overall set up, I was ultimately drawn away from using experimental builds on a daily basis. It’s not until lately that I have seen a large number of Firefox add-ons ported to the Beta version (currently Beta 4) and so I thought it was time for another spin.

Seriously, the browser is speedy. I had previously experienced the improvements in Beta 1, I got a few random crashes then, but no more. I can tell you that on my desktop machine that is currently running Windows Vista on an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, I’m feeling a difference in speed that is way more palpable than when I upgraded from a dual core Athlon CPU, I had less RAM and was running on an older platform. I also have most of my extensions installed, so the comparison is more or less apples to apples. With a load of tabs divided in two windows, and many other programs running at the same time, the mere change in browser suddenly is making for a much smoother working experience.
In fact, I’m currently writing this on Firefox 3 Beta 4 Portable which let’s me run a standalone copy of the browser without sacrificing my older Firefox 2 install, so in case I want to roll back, it’s a non-issue.

I have also tried Internet Explorer 8 in Vista and it does offer similar speed improvements. Likewise, Safari 3.1 on OS X also welcomed me with better performance, but neither of those can replace Firefox for me. Opera lovers must also forgive me but I have not downloaded the latest Opera version yet, although just this past weekend I saw fellow editor Erik Orejuela running a gazillion tabs on it, probably more than Firefox 2 can handle without crashing (he switched after the 2.0.11 fiasco).

My recommendation, give Firefox 3 beta a try now and see how it works for you. Many of the most popular extensions are now usable on the beta (BTW, there is a newly revamped add-ons site). Somehow it seems all browser developers felt the need for speed on this iteration, so you can choose your browser flavor if FF is not your thing.