FoxyTunes - Firefox

Do you listen to Music while surfing the Web?
Now you can control your favorite media player without ever leaving the browser and more...

Supports WinAmp, iTunes, Yahoo Music Engine, Pandora, foobar2000, Windows Media Player, Xbox Media Center, Musicmatch, Quintessential, J. River, jetAudio, XMPlay, MediaMonkey, Media Player Classic, Sonique, wxMusik, Real Player, XMMS, Noatun, Juk, Amarok, Music Player Daemon, Rhythmbox and many other players.

Just click on the orange note and select your player

Read More and Download

Sticking with Opera 9

It's been a month and a half since I started using Opera 9, with a promise to report back later. I'm still using it, although some of the things I liked initially have faded while others have emerged. #

Firstly, the ability to browse cached documents offline turned out to be a dud. The behaviour I was observing (where I could view pages from my cache while disconnected) was due to the following setting, in Preferences -> Advanced -> History: #

As someone whose work involves making websites the idea of seeing stale documents for five hours is pretty horrifying, so I changed that to "check documents never" as soon as I saw it (I'm pretty confident that doesn't affect conditional-GET, which should work regardless). As soon as I did that I lost the ability to browse offline. Browser vendors take note: you can still be the first modern browser to implement a proper offline mode! #

The disadvantage of changing those setting is that they can break JavaScript image preloaders, leading to an unsettling flicker when you mouse over some links. That's why I've left my image setting above to check every five minutes. #

Despite losing offline browsing, other features have popped up that have kept me happy: #

Opera is the only Mac browser I've used that includes a working full-screen mode; great for presentations. #

Hitting space moves you down the height of the viewport, as with other browsers. Hitting space at the bottom of the page takes you to the next page in the 'sequence', if there is one. My first guess was that this used <link rel="next">, but it also works on Yahoo!, Technorati and Google search results pages which don't have those links. I suppose it's looking for any link on the page with 'Next' as the link text. Whatever it's doing, it works surprisingly well. #

Site compatibility really is excellent; I run in to sites that don't work in Opera about as often as I do sites that don't work in Firefox. Part of that might be due to Opera's ingenious browser.js file, which includes Greasemonkey-style site-specific fixes and automatically updates itself once a week. Clever, but a bit scary at the same time. #

The built-in IRC client is good as well - if it wasn't for Colloquy it would be my first choice for IRCing on the Mac. #

Finally, Opera's low memory footprint continues to keep me from switching back to Safari or Firefox. My Mac (a two and a half year old PowerBook) is noticeably less sluggish now that those two applications have been relegated to JavaScript hacking (gotta love FireBug) and the occasional misbehaving site. #

I haven't even touched Opera Mail yet, and the gadget support is something I played with once and never used again (but then I don't use Dashboard that much either). #

Overall I'm extremely happy with Opera 9 and I'd recommend giving it a go - especially if you've tried and disliked an older version. #

Browsers Bugs in 2006 Symantec Says - Mozila - Opera

Hackers are hitting pay dirt in their search for browser bugs.

According to Symantec's twice-yearly Internet Security Threat Report, hackers found 47 bugs in Mozilla's open-source browsers and 38 bugs in Microsoft Internet Explorer during the first six months of this year. That's up significantly from the 17 Mozilla and 25 IE bugs found in the previous six months.

Even Apple's Safari browser saw its bugs double, jumping from six in the last half of 2005 to 12 in the first half of 2006. Opera was the only browser tracked by Symantec that saw the number of vulnerabilities decline, but not by much. Opera bugs dropped from nine to seven during the period.

And while Internet Explorer remained the most popular choice of attackers, no one is invulnerable. According to the report, 31 percent of attacks during the period targeted more than one browser, and 20 percent took aim at Mozilla's Firefox.

All Browsers Targets

"There is no safe browser," said Vincent Weafer, senior director with Symantec Security Response. "If you've got a browser, make sure you're configuring it correctly," he added. "That's a far better strategy than running some browser just because you haven't heard of it."

Part of the rise is due to the growing market for vulnerabilities, Weafer said. Legitimate companies such as 3Com's Tipping Point and Verisign' s iDefense pay for this information, and there is also a growing black market for exploits. "People are encouraged and getting money for finding vulnerabilities, so now you have more people looking," said Weafer.

Browser bugs are also relatively easy to find and exploit, said Marc Maiffret, chief technology officer with eEye Digital Security. "Everyone has realized that targeting the applications on the desktop is a better way to break into businesses and consumers and steal things than server flaws," he said via instant message.

Businesses and consumers may both be targets, but home users are the victims in about 86 percent of all attacks, according to Symantec.

Fastest Patches

And the U.S. is the biggest source of online attacks, thanks to its large number of compromised machines with broadband connections, Weafer said. About 37 percent of all online attacks originate in the U.S., he said.

While there may have been more bugs in Mozilla than in IE, Symantec gave the open-source project high marks for its bug-fixing. On average, it patched bugs within one day of their public disclosure--the fastest turn-around of all measured browsers. Opera came in second, averaging two days. Safari was next, with a five-day window, followed by Microsoft, which averaged nine days per patch.

Microsoft may lag as a browser patcher, but when it comes to operating systems, the company leads the pack, according to Symantec. The slowest? Sun Microsystems.

Css - Html Wizard

Welcome to the totally revamped HTML and CSS border style wizard! Use this wizard to experiment with table border styles and generate style source code. This wizard uses dynamic HTML to change the style of the table in-situ, without loading another page. It is cross-browser compatible with Firefox, Netscape, Internet Explorer, and other modern browsers.

The style sheet code generated by this wizard shows the easy way to apply a style to a table. In the HTML, you should only set the "class" attribute on the "table" tag. You should not set the "class" attribute for every single cell, because that bloats the HTML code and wastes bandwidth. Instead, you can use inheritance that says that every "td" or "th" that is a child of "table.sample" should have a certain style. In a short amount of code, you have powerful control over the look of the table.

The above example doesn't show it, but you can also efficiently alternate the row colors in an HTML table by using inheritance. In your code, alternate the class tag of each "tr" tag between the two classes defining your row colors, such "r0" and "r1". Then, define the styles for "table.sample tr.r0 td" and "table.sample tr.r1 td". Note that you can not set the background color of a "tr.r0" directly, because that is only a table structuring element. You must set the background color of the "td" cell that is a child of the "tr.r0" and "tr.r1" rows.

The -moz-border-radius style tag will be rendered in browsers based on the Gecko Runtime Engine. These include Mozilla, Netscape, and the best one, Firefox. For those who are using old-fashioned Internet Explorer, you will not see the effect, which is to produce rounded corners. There are large number of Netscape extensions like this one that allow you to create slick effects, and they are fully backward-compatible with older browsers like IE.

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Job : Graduate Assistant to Professor S W Hawking

Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
Vacancy Reference No: LE00670 Salary: £20,842-£23,457

Limit of tenure applies*

The Relativity Group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of the University of Cambridge is looking for a recent graduate to fill an assistant position from December 2006.

The Head of the Group is Professor Stephen Hawking who is disabled and communicates using a computer system and speech synthesiser. If you were accepted for the post you would be responsible for maintaining and improving this computer system as well as other pieces of support equipment. You would help him to prepare and deliver seminars and public lectures and assist with scientific papers. You would also accompany Professor Hawking on his many travels and assist other members of the group.


Flexibility, stamina and a confident and caring personality, together with a valid driving licence, are essential for this demanding job.

Further particulars and the application form (PD18) are available from Judith Croasdell, e-mail: J.Croasdell@damtp.cam.ac.uk.

Applications should include a covering letter, full CV and completed PD18 form and the names of two referees who can be contacted immediately. This should be sent to Ms Judith Croasdell, DAMTP, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge CB3 0WA.

* The funds for this post are available for twelve months in the first instance.

Closing date: 22 September 2006. Interview date: 18 October 2006.

Firefox Extensions September - 2006

Adblock 0.5.3.043
Adblock Filterset.G Updater 0.3.0.4
Batch Download 1.0.5
CustomizeGoogle 0.51
CuteMenus - Crystal SVG 1.2
del.icio.us 1.1
DownloadHelper 1.91
Fasterfox 1.0.3
Fire Encrypter 1.7
FlashGot 0.5.96.060910
FoxyProxy 2.2
Gmail Manager 0.5.1
Gmail Skins 0.9.6
Google Browser Sync 1.2.20060802.0
ListZilla 0.8
Menu Editor 1.2.2
Nightly Tester Tools 1.0.4
Restart Firefox 0.3.1
Resurrect Pages 1.0.3
ScrapBook 1.2.0.3
StumbleUpon 2.83
Talkback 1.5.0.6
Thumbs 0.6.3
Web Developer 1.0.2

Firefox Extensions and Library Tools

ConQuery Catalog & Federated Search (CCFS)

ConQuery, created by Vasa Maximov, allows Mozilla Firefox users to highlight/select any text they see on a web page, right-click, and then automatically query that text in any one of a number of search engines.

Why should I care? You're reading a case, or an article on a web site, and you come across a reference to a book, a person, or a journal article. Is this book at Ford Library? Is the article available online? With CCFS installed, just select the relevant text, right-click and choose 'Query to...' from the pop-up menu. Your search results appear without extra typing or opening a new browser window.

The basic installation of ConQuery comes with several default search engine plugins (Amazon, Google, Creative Commons, etc.) Your Ford Library Systems Librarian has created 4 additional search plugins for ConQuery that will allow you to:
search the Duke University (and Fuqua) Library Catalog by title keywords
search the Duke University (and Fuqua) Library Catalog by words at the start of a title
search a word or phrase in Duke's MetaLib Federated Search tool
search the UNC-Chapel Hill Library Catalog by words at the start of a title

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FireFox Tools

ieview
Just right-click on a page or link and select it to open in Internet Explorer. I use this one a lot, especially when working in sections where I know there will be a great possibility that I’ll need to hack it to work in IE.

View Formatted Source & View Rendered Source 
View Formatted Source will even import referenced files, like stylesheets, and display them in a box along with the source. It will also show you which css styles are affecting an element; very cool. I’ll add a third one just to be confusing: ViewSourceWith is a great little tool for sending page markup to an external editor, such as Dreamweaver or TextMate.

ColorZilla – Grab colors from the page with an eyedropper tool built into your browser, along with a color-picker and zoom tool. Another cool feature of this one is its ability to outline elements on the page as you glide over them.

MeasureIt – Especially helpful when You have a space to fill with an image and would like to quickly get the dimensions of that space. Just resize the box by dragging the tool across the space and you’ve got size.

HTML Validator & Checky – Checky is really helpful in quickly accessing various online validation tools, like if you need to check your css for typos. The HTML Validator is great because it sits in the bottom right corner of the browser and tells you if the page source is Tidy, and will tell you exactly what’s wrong with it when you click the icon.

LinkChecker – Need to check the links on a page in one fell swoop?

RiteOfTongue  For  bad spellers out there.  When you’re entering text into a form (like an html rotator in BV) you can right click a word or phrase for spelling suggestions.

Seo for Firefox (Beta)

Want to know why Google or Yahoo! ranks pages? If so this is the Firefox extension for you. SEO for Firefox pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a more holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market right from the search results.

Want to learn more? Read on.

This tool was designed to add more data to Google and Yahoo! to make it easier to evaluate the value and competitive nature of a market. SEO for Firefox pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a more holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market right from the search results. In addition to pulling in useful marketing data this tool also provides links to the data sources so you can dig deeper into the data.

Installation:
You have to be using Firefox to get this to work. If you have not yet used Firefox go download Firefox, and then come back to this page using Firefox as your web browser.

Click Here to install the SEO for Firefox extension.
If the Software Installation window is visible click Install Now.

If not, then:
See if there is a yellow bar near the top of your browser.
Click the Edit Options button on the yellow bar.
Click Allow. Then click OK.
Click Here
Click the Install Now button.
As a final step, restart Firefox.

Search Yahoo! or Google to verify this extension is working for you.

Off the start PageRank is the only thing that is automatically pulled into the SERPs. After you install SEO for Firefox and restart your browser you may want to configure the extension settings to pull in other useful data.

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Firefox - Tools - Merrian - Webster (Windows,Macintosh,Linux)

Get Merriam-Webster plug-ins and extensions for the Firefox browser, ranging from Search Box to Sidebar.

Look up words in the Dictionary or Thesaurus from the Sidebar in Netscape, Mozilla, and Firefox!

Download and Read More

FireFox - Spy on Chrome with DOM Inspector

Put a microscope to the XUL that makes up the browser chrome with the DOM Inspector.

If you want to hack the existing Firefox chrome, that means building on someone else's work. There's usually no time to study all that code at length, so shortcuts are required. The DOM Inspector is a fast jumping-off point that lets you detect the relationships between different chrome files. It's a good starting point for most of the hacks in this chapter. This hack explains how to get started.

Inspecting XUL

The DOM Inspector is most commonly used to examine HTML pages . However, it can also be used to inspect the XUL chrome content of any Firefox, Mozilla, or extension window. A small catch is that the DOM Inspector recognizes only windows opened after the inspector was started, plus the initially opened browser window. If some other window is of interest to you, this simple but ungraceful solution is required:

1. Start Firefox.

2. Open the DOM Inspector using the Tools menu.

3. Go back to the initial browser window.

4. Open a new browser window, or whatever window is required for inspection. Ideally, it should have a meaningful title displayed in its titlebar.

5. Using Alt-Tab or otherwise, change focus back to the DOM Inspector. You can do this even if the window to be inspected is a modal window.

6. In the DOM Inspector, choose File Inspect a Window and pick the window desired.

If the normal browser window is inspected using this technique, the top of the tag hierarchy covers the whole window, not just the web page displayed. Therefore, the topmost tag is a <window> tag rather than an <html> tag. shows the result for a standard browser window.

Topmost XUL tags in a Firefox browser window

This display is very revealing. It shows all the keyboard shortcuts specific to the window (inside <keyset>), all the window's commands that can be executed (inside <commandset>), and, given enough drilling down, all the other content of the window as well.

If you do drill down through the right set of tags, you can also discover the HTML document currently displayed inside that window. This brings the point home that the whole window is nothing more than an arrangement of tagssome XUL, some HTMLas shown in

HTML content embedded inside XUL content

Connecting the Dots

The pictures show the tag hierarchy, but they also show id and class values for those tags. The names of these IDs and classes are well-known and stable values that rarely change. Many of the popular Firefox extensions rely totally on these pieces of information. You can learn about the structure of a given window by comparing these live values with the same values as stated in files provided by the chrome.

For example, when overlays are used the ID of a tag in the master document usually matches the ID of the <overlay> tag in the overlay document. This allows you to track down where a given overlay is applied in the master document.

Alternatively, either ID or class might be used to link a given tag to a specific CSS style or to a specific piece of JavaScript logic. Stylesheets and scripts supplied in the chrome regularly use styles to hide, display, and decorate tags in order to provide user feedback.

Studying the DOM Inspector output and comparing it with the textual content of the chrome files helps you to understand how particular pieces of XUL-based user interface are operated on. As the user changes the user interface, you can use the tag breakdown and the informational panel on the right to see if the scripting logic in the window added any tag attributes or styles or not. You can use the DOM Inspector's editing capabilities to experimentally remove pieces of the examined window and see the results immediately.

This kind of matching brings you one step closer to making an ugly chrome hack. By removing, restyling, or modifying some tags, you can have a large effect on how the window is brought together from many separate files for the user's consumption.

Web Measurement Basics

Analog is purportedly the most popular web server logfile analyzer in the world. If you're just getting your feet wet in web measurement, you might want to give it a quick try.

Analog, written by Dr. Stephen Turner (one of the original web measurement hackers), is an easy-to-install and highly flexible web server log analyzeone that hundreds of thousands of people have likely tried at one time or another just to get a taste of web measurement. Since it's completely free, you might want to take the time to download and install the application and generate a few reports just for fun.

Analog is highly scalable, ultra-fast, easily configured to report in over 30 languages, and it works on any operating system. Analog is purportedly the most popular measurement application in the world.

Download analog, executable or source code.

ClickOnce - Firefox

La implementación ClickOnce permite publicar aplicaciones basadas en Windows en un servidor Web o en recurso compartido de archivos de red para simplificar la instalación. Visual Studio ofrece compatibilidad total para la publicación y actualización de aplicaciones implementadas con ClickOnce. La implementación ClickOnce está disponible para los proyectos creados con Visual Basic, Visual C# y Visual J#, pero no para Visual C++

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AtackAPI - Ataques desde Javascript

Anteriormente se menciono un detector de puertos escrito en javascript, se ha publicado AtackAPI, que permite hacer ataques de una manera simple usando javascript.

AttackAPI provides simple and intuitive web programmable interface for composing attack vectors with JavaScript and other client (and server) related technologies. The current release supports several browser based attacking techniques and simple but powerful JavaScript console.

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Ajax Rating Script

You might have seen this kind of rating systems on some of the websites on the net, it’s easy and very usable - no drop down menus, no submit buttons, you just click on the star and you are done. All the calculations are then done at the background and the results are shown back to you with the latest ratings. That’s the power of Ajax!

This script has been developed by MasugaDesign, thanks to Ryan Masuga for making our life easier.

If you want to develop your own star rating system there is a tutorial at KomodoMedia.

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Why Ajax ?

Ajax has changed the web. There’s no doubt about that. It’s made the internet a happier place to be (well, when it’s used well) and has helped fuel the Web 2.0 movement to make it what it is today.

But what I’m left wondering is - why?

No, I’m not saying that Ajax is overrated or that it’s not really useful (I wouldn’t be writing for this site if I were). What I’m going for is more of why Ajax is as popular as it is and what it is about the way we use the web that makes it such a perfect fit.

When it first came on the scene, it was a neat toy. Don’t deny it, you tried it out to make something like a auto-completion search box or pulling in content from a server-side text file. You were happy that there was something as cool as this that had the possibility to update content on command. Unfortunately, this is where some stopped. They saw it as this “toy” and dropped it like any other web-based feature, thinking it probably wouldn’t catch on. Good thing they were wrong.

Other developers, ones fascinated by the potential Ajax had, took things even further. They saw what was really at the core of what made Ajax special. They saw that, with Ajax, they could break free. Browsers had limited them to the “request a page and let it load” philosophy for so long they’d thought it was all there was. Jesse James Garrett showed them different - he cracked the door open and showed a sliver of light to these hard-working souls and told them that there was another way.

Javascript was the path to enlightenment, and through it, the ability to make their pages more than what they were. This is what the “Ajax difference” really is - a way to break free of the oppression of the normal page load, a simple path to more advanced functionality, and the one thing that anyone that uses a computer wants at all times - a fast, responsive application that “just works”.

Ajax has changed the face of the web forever. Save for some of the browser enhancements and a few other technologies, I dare to say that it’s had the most significant impact on the way we use the internet in it’s short life (well, the life as Ajax as coined by J.J.G. back in February 18th of 2005).

It allows us to realize our web-based dreams, one XMLHttpRequest at a time.

Firefox - Google Browser Sync

Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions. For more info, please visit our FAQ.

Install Now

browswersync.xpi

FireFox - TrackMeNot

TrackMeNot is a lightweight browser extension that protects web-searchers against surveillance and data-profiling. It does so not by means of concealment or encryption (i.e. covering one's tracks), but instead, paradoxically, by the opposite strategy: noise and obfuscation. With TrackMeNot, actual web searches, lost in a cloud of false leads, are essentially hidden in plain view. User-installed TrackMeNot works with the Firefox Browser and popular search engines, e.g. AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN, and requires no 3rd-party servers or services.


Install TrackMeNot [0.3.0a] (30k)

Firefox - Windows Media Player

 Windows Media Player
Version: 7.1 and later

SeaMonkey, Mozilla Firefox and Opera will automatically detect and use the Windows Media Player plugin if it is installed.


If you are using Windows Media Player 7.1 or later, Mozilla will detect and use the Windows Media Player plugin if it is installed.


To use the Windows Media Player ActiveX control with Mozilla Firefox, see the Embedded Windows Media in Firefox thread at the MozillaZine Forums, written by Vectorspace

Download: Windows Media Player 9 Series

Download: Windows Media Player 10 for Windows XP

Firefox - Mozila Viamatic foXpose

The Viamatic foXpose plugin is a tiny little extension that lets you view all your tabs inside a browser window. This extension will only work on Firefox 1.5 or higher . You can get more information about this extension on mozilla.org or you can visit the forum to leave a comment or suggestion.

The latest version that is available on mozilla is 0.3, you can also download 0.3 from the forum .

[ Install foXpose extension (0.3)] [Viamatic foXpose forum ] [ Screenshots ]

Performancing for Firefox

Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox

 

• Works with all major blog software
• Easy WYSIWYG Editing
• Trackback, Technorati and Del.icio.us support

Once installed, just hit F8 or click the little pencil icon at the bottom right of your browser window to bring up the blog editor and easily post to your Wordpress, MovableType or Blogger blogs.

Click the install link below and you will be sent to Mozilla.org to install Performancing for Firefox

Install Performancing for Firefox version 1.3 Now!

Getting into Google and Yahoo News

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 50 million Americans get news online on any given day. In comparison, only 27 million Americans watch network TV news on a typical evening. The Internet is quickly becoming the preferred news source over television, magazines, and trade publications.

News web sites like Yahoo News, Google News and MSNBC Searchbot receive millions of visitors every day. If fact, Yahoo News ranks ahead of MSNBC.com and even CNN.com, while Google News ranks ahead of USAToday.com and the NYTimes.com.

You can tap into these massive traffic sources through the use of press releases. Additional benefits of distributing your press release include possible media exposure, pickup of your release in online publications, increased link popularity to your web site, additional search engine rankings on your target keywords, and increased traffic to your web site.

However, there's much more to press release marketing than simply whipping up an article and sending it out to the world. You must take time to optimize your press release properly.

Press releases should be optimized in much the same way that search engine optimization specialists optimize ordinary web pages to achieve higher rankings. In doing so, you will receive much higher visibility.

For example, one press release from MarketingExperiments.com resulted in 2,200 visitors and 5 interview requests by journalists. This is the power of a highly optimized press release.

Listed below is an outline of how to create an optimized press release for your own website and how to distribute it for maximum exposure.

The first and most important element is to search for keywords and phrases that are likely to deliver qualified leads to your website. A good press release combines targeted keywords with creative writing that makes for a compelling read.

To find these lucrative keyword phrases, begin brainstorming what people would search for when looking for your products. If your products or services are targeted to a particular geographic area, you might want to include these locations in your keyword phrases as well. It is best to target up to 3 keyword phrases.

Once you have done this, you can head on over to http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ to do some additional keyword research. Simply type in your list of potential keyword phrases and this tool will give you a list of related keywords and how many times they are searched for per day. This information can aid you in choosing which keyword phrases will bring your press release the highest amount of exposure.

Now that you have chosen the best possible keywords, it's time to integrate these targeted keyword phrases into your press release. You should include your keywords in the headline, the title, sub-headings and the first two paragraphs. Search engines place much of their emphasis on the title and the beginning paragraphs.

Your title should reflect your strongest keywords, not the name of the company. Include local modifiers if possible. Although it's often nice to see your company's name in print, it's unlikely to bring you the exposure you deserve. Instead, use targeted search phrases that are likely to be used by your potential customers.

You should also optimize your press release by integrating targeted links within the content. Many press release distribution services and news wires now offer the option of purchasing a hyperlink. You simply convert a keyword phrase within the release into an active hyperlink. This will increase search engine visibility for that keyword phrase and also drive additional traffic back to your website.

Where to Send Your Press Release

There are a wide variety of places that will allow you to syndicate your press release. However, there are only a select few that you really need to focus on. Here are some distributors that will help you get the exposure you deserve.

http://www.prweb.com
http://www.businesswire.com
http://www.internet.com
http://www.prnewswire.com

In addition to press releases, you can also get your content into Google and Yahoo news directly. If you publish frequent news and articles, your site may very well qualify as a news source.

You can submit your site for inclusion to Google News at http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/request.py . However, keep in mind that Google is looking for sites with an editorial review process and multiple contributors. If you are accepted, Google Newsbot will hit your site very frequently and you will receive an extra stream of quality traffic to your web site.

You can also suggest your news site be added to the Yahoo News index. Simply go to http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/news/cgi_submitsource and fill out the form.

Besides syndicating your press releases online, you should also seek exposure offline. You do this by building a media list of local newspapers, trade journals, magazines, web sites, radio and television shows.

If you want media coverage, you must identify target publications and their editorial calendars. Send journalists and editors personal emails with pitches on your story.

You can begin building your own media list at http://www.mediapost.com, http://www.afr.com, and http://www.abyznewslinks.com.

I have one last tip on getting into Google News. To quickly get your articles into the Google News search engine simply perform a search on Google News for relevant keywords, take note of the sites that are getting picked up and find out if any of them allow you to submit articles or press releases. If so, you have found a direct pathway to getting your content into Google News.

One of these places can be found at http://www.americanchronicle.com. Simply visit the site and scroll down to the very bottom of the page and click on the link that says "submit work". From there you can sign up to be a contributor.

If accepted as a contributor, you will then be able to submit articles along with your picture. Many of their articles are syndicated on Google News and are available to the millions of searchers who go to Google News each and every day.

Now that you know how to optimize your press releases and articles for maximum exposure, I urge you to begin an aggressive press campaign to increase exposure to your brand, gain quality inbound links, and increase your website traffic.

del.icio.us extension for Firefox

The del.icio.us extension for Firefox allows you to easily bookmark webpages in del.icio.us, from within the Firefox browser. It integrates with the Firefox toolbar and provides extra options such as right-click menu and highlight text to add notes.

Firefox: vulnerabilidad DOS mediante FTP

Se ha publicado una nueva vulnerabilidad que afecta a Firefox 1.5.0.6 y anteriores, mediante la cual un atacante puede provocar el cuelgue de Firefox al establecer una conexión FTP.

Es explotable de forma remota, el exploit ha sido publicado en múltiples sitios y carece de parche.

Google Mapping KML - Applications

Google used the Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas this week as a launching pad for mobile maps functions based on key markup language (KML) files, downloadable from fellow Trekker developers.

KML files hosted on a website can be downloaded to mobile phones to create interactive maps - AJAX conversation boxes pop up with say, crop circle maps or restaurants near certain hotels.

The list of possible maps is limited only by imagination or need as developers think them up and create them. Once a web-based URL is provided for the map, interested users can enter it into their phones.

Google is showing off the new capabilities with mapped out sci-fi locales. The team has also produced a video to show what can be done with it. They also have an interactive demo.

Grab For The Blog Traffic

SEOmoz's Rand Fishkin has twenty-one suggestions on ways to improve blog traffic, ranging from the choice of blogging software to building the brand.

"I got 99 problems, but the blog traffic ain't one of them."
-- a little remix of Jay-Z's '99 Problems'

Fishkin does not have many problems with blog traffic either. The respected SEO expert speaks at the Search Engine Strategies conferences and we're sure he is well-known within our readership.

His latest blog post discussed the ways bloggers can grab a better shot at drawing more traffic. Fishkin's strategies apply as much to the business-oriented blogger as they do the individuals.

"Rather than charging $400 an hour to give advice on the subject, I thought it would be valuable to share many of the most common pieces of advice here," Fishkin said of his blog entry.

He advises people to always host a blog on a domain they control. "A blog on your domain can attract links, attention, publicity, trust and search rankings - by keeping the blog on a separate domain, you shoot yourself in the foot," Fishkin said.

The best option here would be to make the blog a sub-section of the primary domain.

Tagging content makes it available to the growing realm of social media. Relevant tags on blog posts will be found by those who search for that tagged content on Technorati. Fishkin said tagging can help bring in a big traffic bump from social news sites like Digg and Reddit, and the StumbleUpon sharing community.

There are a couple of things Fishkin advised bloggers not to do right away, like enabling comments or dropping advertising on a new blog. Both can be enabled later.

"Once you're upwards of 100 RSS subscribers and/or 750 unique visitors per day, you can open up the comments and see light activity," he said.

As for ads, Fishkin thinks they "have a direct, negative impact on the number of readers who subscribe, add to favorites and link" to a site.

The rest of Fishkin's hints should be very helpful to anyone who wants to be a better blogger.

While a massive volume of traffic can't be guaranteed, following his suggestions will make for a more rewarding blog for its visitors and its writer.

Google Web Toolkit

Google released on 15th May 2006 their own AJAX toolkit, which they used in order to build gmail, gcalendar, gMaps.

demos : All available widgets All application examples

The innovation is in the java-to-javascript compiler : you can code and debug everything in the UI using only java langage then generate the js/html and deploy it.

All recent browsers are supported in the web (ajax) mode. The javascript library to download with web mode is 100 ko. The available UI widgets can be extended with new ones, and support CSS; additional custom js functions can be inserted nicely if you need. Available widgets with drag'n drop are still lacking.

A RPC protocol (JSON) is included, as well as browser history management (support of the browser's back button).

Licence for GWT code, including JRE basic packages emulation in javascript, is Apache 2. The development tools (compiler and support for hosted browser mode) remains free but closed source.

A hosted browser mode is also available to deploy the pure java classes within an applet container (or within an Eclipse JVM).

The SDK is running on windows and Linux, JDK1.4.2.

Google Web ToolKit

Google - Orkut

Though not mentioned on the Google homepage, orkut is a service hosted, created and maintained by Google engineers. Orkut is a social networking service, where users can list their personal and professional information, create relationships amongst friends and join communities of mutual interest. New Orkut accounts are by invite only from an existing member. Affinity Engines, a company based in Palo Alto, has filed a lawsuit alleging that their co-founder Orkut Büyükkökten illegally re-used Affinity Engines software code when he moved to Google

Orkut

Google Co-op

Google says that "Google Co-op is a way for users to help us improve search. It lets people and organizations label web pages and create specialized links related to their unique expertise. Whether it's information about a hobby, a profession, or an unusual interest, everyone can contribute to making Google search more relevant and useful for the entire community." Google launched the service on 10 May 2006. Co-op allows users to subscribe to links and labels provided by a Google Co-op contributor, and this information is then incorporated into that user's web search results when they search for a related topic

Google Co-op