Mozilla Firefox is getting ready for a 1.0 launch in November and you can help out by giving a small donation, or a large one, to the community to cover advertising costs. By doing so, you’ll get your name in the full page Firefox ad in the New York Times. How cool is that?! You can be a part of history for only $30 and you get your name in a world wide newspaper. Oh and if your a student, it’s cheaper yet. Only $10. I may jump on this deal because it sounds like fun. It may be tax deductible too. Either way I’m just happy to help spread the Firefox browser.

I thought that today I’d lump a bunch of things together. — My new blog theme is coming along great! Check for it soon, hopefully before November. — Shapeshifter 2.0 is coming out next Tuesday. Shapeshifter is the best application for switching themes on a Mac! Speaking of themes, Hallo has reached version 1.1. I added a few more green/orange areas and a nice looking PumpkinApple menu. — Apple has released upgraded iBooks with cheaper starting prices. Now the laptops start at just $999 and all come with wireless cards. — Some sort of iPod event is happening October 26th. There are rumors of a 60gig color screen iPod or a special edition black U2 iPod. I’m hoping for the color screen one but we’ll see. — Adium .7 came out just days ago. I was a part of the beta group and it’s nice to see it become a reality. Adium is an amazing multiple service IM chat application that is very customizable! — That’s the news for now.

Customization is a big part of computers any more. From themes to skins people are constantly finding a way to change things. But did you know that you can change other things too? I’m running Firefox on a Mac and I was installing some pretty widgets into Firefox when I started poking around. While inside my application (right clicked on the app and chose ’show package contents’) I changed the very old image and broken image graphics to something a little more up to date. The old ones were from the days of Netscape 4.x. I also looked in the style sheets and realized that when Firefox draws input boxes it refers to a stylesheet inside Firefox. So I turned all borders to be 1 pixel solid instead of that indented look that they normally have. To me, the output was amazing. I also changed the G in the Google search bar to a much smoother G with no border. A few minor changes that I felt make my Firefox look a little nicer! Be careful though, by switching some of the information you could make things worse. For a while I had checkboxes with no borders. Kind of hard to see on a white background as they were white themselves. But, all in all, I screwed nothing up and made some sweet tweaks to Firefox that I’m very happy with.

CherryOS is an emulator program that supposedly allows a PC user to run OS X. However, it may be to good to be true. The Maui, Hawaii based company’s website for CherryOS crashed due to massive traffic and hackers. The company claims that it’s $50 software can run MacOSX at 80%, which, if were true, would be a huge improvement for Mac emulators. There is no demo out and the product is not shipping, but they are taking pre-orders. Many people don’t believe that the software works, or as well as stated. We’ll just have to wait and see. The company is currently trying to get it’s website back online and may even make a demo. They claim they wrote all the code and that it is as good as they say. We’ll have to wait and see.

We got our tickets to Rascal Flatts at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul Minnesota. The concert is November 20th and our seats are pretty good. The interesting fact is that I think, not positive, that the only reason the concert is when it is, is because the Xcel Energy center is trying to fill the stadium since the Minnesota Wild Hockey team isn’t playing. They need to make some money instead of having an empty stadium. Or so that’s what I heard rumored on the news. Either way, we are going to have fun!!

Apple unveiled their new mini retail stores yesterday. The mini stores look much like their current stores, however they are skinner and contain fewer products. They may be smaller, but they make the same impact visually. Their stainless steel walls, seamless white floors and ceilings along with the glowing Apple on the front make them an eye catcher at any mall. The smaller stores will make it easier for Apple to put stores in new places. For more information check out the AppleInsider.

I’ve been trying to do research to see what works better in search engines, sub-domains or directory folders and I just get more confused. When most people discuss the differences they either explain it in great detail that it goes over my head, or they give no real answers. What I want to know, is that if a sub-domain has only 5 pages or so in the site, would it be more beneficial as a directory? http://zoo.site.com or http://www.site.com/zoo/ The reason I ask is because, lately, I’ve heard that the more pages in your site can help you get found in search engines. I’ve also heard that sub-domains don’t count towards you site size. So would putting all my mini sites into directory folders on my main site be better? Or are they just fine in sub-domains? Does a search engine care? Will one be found easier than the other?

Netscape turns 10 on October 13th and ZDNet has learned that they are planing on making a big comeback this year!!

Netscape has been very quiet in the past years as Internet Explorer has taken most of it’s fans. However, things are starting to turn. Firefox is getting a lot of exposure lately and it’s good exposure. There are a lot of reports of security issues with IE and a push to drop it. With a name like Netscape, it could be just the thing we need.

What’s a rush cut? You’ve never heard of a rush cut? Good. That helps as I make up my new saying. We’ve all hear of short cut, that path that is shorter than the original. Or maybe even long cut, that path that’s longer than the original way. Well now there is rush cut. Rush cut is a combination of short and long cut. During rush hour the main path is up the freeway. One stop sign, two stop lights, then I’m on the freeway and cruising fast like. Well, add in traffic and some rain or snow and the freeway is basically a dead stop. So I take the long cut. Through local streets, many stop signs, many stop lights and avoiding the freeway. However, during rush hour, the long cut is shorter due to the amount of time it takes me. This is a rush cut. A path that is typically longer except in rush hour, when this path now takes less time due to slow traffic on the short cut. Thus, the creation of rush cut!

South East Minnesota residents now don’t have to drive to the Mall of America or other Krispy Kreme locations in the Twin Cities. Krispy Kreme is now open in Rochester! Watch the cars line up and the people line up to get the sweet sweet doughnuts. It’s located just off 52 next to TGI Fridays and Olive Garden. Don’t forget, the drive through is open 24 hours a day so you can get you doughnuts day or night. Humm what will be popular this Thanksgiving and Christmas? Mmmm doughnuts.