You know I love Firefox, right? I know that I’ve said it enough times.

Today I want to throw a brief tip out there and give you something to download to help you use Firefox to find things on the internet quicker.

Smart Search Bookmarks are something that (as far as I can tell) are unique to Firefox at this point, Opera doesn’t have them (easily accessable), nope on Google Chrome and we all know that Internet Explorer would never have something that would make web browsing this easy. Did I just hear someone ask about Netscape, seriously? It’s dead; it has to be smellier than Lazarus was by the time Jesus got to him.

So, now that we’re past my lame attempt at humor…

These bookmarks allow you to search just about any search on the internet by typing it into your location bar (the place you type “www.CruTech.org” when you want to come here) with a short prefix to make it search the right page. For example, we’re going to set it up so that if you want to search Google all you have to do is type a “g” before your search term and hit enter, like this:

To do this, go to Google.com first. Right-click (Control-Click for Macs) in the search box and choose “Add a Keyword for this Search…”

When you do that a pop-up box will, well, pop up.

In the Name box, type “Google Search” (or whatever will help you remember what it is when you look at all of your bookmarks), put “g” in the Keyword box and I’d suggest putting it in a new folder named “Searches”; you can get to the folders by clicking the small button with just the triangle in it.

Click “Add” and you’re good to go.

Go up to your search bar and type “g CruTech” and hit enter.

Ta-da!

Remeber, you can use this for just about any search box out there. I use this a ton to search on Wikipedia and other sites, including the directory for all of the sites that are associated with Campus Crusade for Christ.

I’ve included a file that you can download and import into your bookmarks. It has all of these searches included:

Prefix – Search Site
acronym – Acronym Finder
amazon – Amazon.com
ebay – eBay
flickr – Flickr (images/pictures)
froogle – Froogle Quick Search
g – Google Quick Search
image – Google Image Search
lh – LifeHacker (Technology Blog)
quot – Stock Symbol Quicksearch
technorati – Technorati (Blog Index)
thes – Thesaurus
slang – Urban Dictionary (slang search)
w – Wikipedia
local – Yahoo Local Search
fb – Facebook
ccci – CCCI Search
bible – Bible Gateway (search reference or word to find)
weather – Weather Channel (search using zip code or city name, ex. “weather 22207″)
cc – Creative Commons (great for images, text, etc with light copyrighting)
imdb – Internet Movie Database
bs – YouVersion (bible study resources, search scripture references)
half – Half.com (cheap books, etc.)
wookie – Wookiepedia (Star Wars encyclopedia)
d – Dictionary
map – Google Maps
blue – Blue Letter Bible
yt – YouTube
ebible – eBible.com

You can download the file here, right click and choose “Save link as”. Remember where you save it so you can import it to Firefox:

Bookmarks.html

Enjoy!

This past week I got an email from a staff friend that contained a forward warning about a “new” computer virus. While it is a real virus and really can do significant damage to your system and stored information, there was a bit of panic-inducing misinformation:

>>This is the worst virus announced by CNN. It has been
>> classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever.
> This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is
>> no repair yet for this kind of virus…

While this virus is not “the worst” or “most destructive” virus, all viruses can be a pain in the neck and it is important to have an antivirus in place to guart your computer and your information against these destructive little programs that (sometimes) really are able to erase whole hard drives.

For antivirus options you can go a number of different ways, from proprietary (and costly) programs like McAfee and Norton to free (and effective) ones such as Avast! or AVG.

I have installed Avast! on all of my machines and on a number of ones for family and friends and have had and heard nothing but good things from it.

To install the free Avast!4 Home Edition all you have to do is download it and register it for free every 18 months. You it will be updated as often as new virus defenitions come out and you won’t have to worry about viruses any longer.

Also, it seems that Avast! has an inexpensive Mac version (less than $40) for 3 years of virus protection and coverage.

I am not sure whether or not I would suggest getting rid of a proprietary antivirus software, but I have never had any virus get to any machine that I’ve put Avast! on (keep in mind, I probably browse websites and download programs more often than most users).

Beyond reccomending an specific antivirus, I must stress this, make sure you have some sort of antivirus software! You never know when you’re going visit a reputable site that has been hacked, like CNN.com was just this spring.

If you’d like to check out other free antivirus software options (AVG, Nod32, Avira and Kapersky antivirus programs) I’d suggest the list on this post at LifeHacker.com.

While I am not a Mac user, I know that many of CruTech’s readers are and I think about you all often while I keep my eye out for things that may help your lives as well.

I came across a list at Lifehacker (one of my favorite tech-blogs) of that seems to have a number of useful things that Macs are inherently are able to do. Here’s the list:

1. Say anything.
2. Show off Stacks and Expose in slow motion.
3. Activate screen corners.
4. Display custom hard drive icons.
5. Look up words in the dictionary with a keystroke.
6. Launch applications from Spotlight.
7. Tab between all controls.
8. Zoom WAY in on a page.
9. Show the date on the menubar.
10. Double as an external drive.

To see what all of these mean, head over to the post at Lifehacker (it would be rude/illegal for me to copy the entire content of their post).

To be honest some of these things don’t make any sense to me (what is Stacks and Expose?), some are just for “pretty” (the custom hard drive icons), but others seem way useful – looking things up, launching applications, tabbing between controls and doubling up a drive.

Here is my challenge to my Mac-lovers out there – tell me what you love about your Mac. Three things that I will not accept as good reasons are: they’re prettier (I agree), they run better (not always true), they don’t get viruses (neither does my Windows/Linux machine).

We’re all familiar with PDFs, those documents that you get that you can always read but you can never edit. They have been pretty standard for a number of years now (they’ve existed since 1993), but they’re on the brink of becoming the standard for documents on the internet (there are actual standards for content on the Web).

They are convenient because you don’t have to worry about whether or not your friend has Word, Publisher or whatever other program you’ve created your document in – they can still read it. It’s also great for sending out prayer letters by email so that you’re sure that all of your supporters can read it – I mean the program to read them is even free!

For a long time I was confused about how many people seemed to be able to create PDFs yet I was completely not able to make them… then I found out how.

Now, from what I understand, the ability to save a document to a PDF is native to OS X so those of you who are Mac users have this pretty easy. We’re going to walk through how to install a PDF Converter as a printer on your system. The program that I use is CutePDF.

CutePDF allows you to create a PDF document in any program that you can print from. When I need to print off a Bible study to send to a student – “print” it as a PDF and email it. When I have a receipt online that I want to save – “print” it as PDF and save it on my hard drive. When I want to save a webpage complete with all of the content as a single file – “print” it as a PDF and I can open it quickly whenever I want.

First, go ahead and download it from here (Windows required), you’ll also need to download a converter called Ghostscript that is also linked on the page (you can get it here). On the CutePDF page they’ll look like this image to the left.

Now all you have to do is run the CuteWriter.exe and converter.exe files that you’ve just downloaded and you’ll have CutePDF installed in your options whenever you want to print something. When you “print” with it, it will give you an opportunity to save it as a PDF where ever you want.

Now you can create PDFs!

Let’s be honest, we all have biases. For those of us who have had a part in ministry that includes active evangelism, it’s a part of every day life; people look at and interact with the world differently.

There is a similar truth in technology. People have differing uses and preferences when it comes to how they want their technology to look, work and approach the tasks they have to do. As I have looked at the list of people who have subscribed to these posts I notice that there are some people who will not always find my posts interesting because they’re using programs, platforms or operating systems that I don’t use and therefore know very little about.

CruTech is an outgrowth of a mentality of getting the most out of your technology without having artificial limits placed on you; this leads me personally to advocate for a number of technologies and systems that may or may not catch you in stride. While I don’t have the time (or much interest) in getting to know these systems, I do want CruTech to serve you as well as possible; if you are (or know someone on staff who is) better versed in things that I don’t know about or use I would love to have you (or them) become a the second author of content here. Feel free to contact me by leaving a comment below.

As a semi-pro wrestler I once heard about once said, “Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.”

Stuff I am a fan of:
• Open Source software
• the Windows operating systems
• Google products and services
• being able to tell my computer what to do rather than having artificial limits placed upon me
• web-based technologies

Tech stuff I know little about or don’t particularly like:
• Macs
• Internet Explorer or Opera
• Microsoft itself
• proprietary software
• overpriced technology that is available for free or cheap

Yes, I said I don’t really like Macs, I do understand that they can be very useful for those of you who are doing visual design, audio or video editing. They are not really any more useful or easy to use than Windows machines and are far more susceptible to viruses and other attacks than they were in previous generations. On the other hand, I would love to have someone writing for CruTech that knows Macs well and can help those of you who read to use them more powerfully as well.

I just wanted to make sure you all knew where I was coming from. I will focus a lot on web-based technologies which are open to use on Windows, Macs or Linux machines so don’t click that unsubscribe link just yet!

I need to begin by noting something that I wasn’t aware of when I wrote last week’s Beginning with Firefox post; the Preferences window (called Options in the Windows’ version of FF) is not in the Tools menu, but the Edit menu in non-Windows’ versions. That is where we’ll spend a lot of our time this week.

Before we do that let’s look at the (I believe) universal Tools menu.

Web Search – This simply puts your cursor in the (customizable) search box at the top right of the screen. While we’re looking at it click on the small arrow to the left of the search box now, you’ll see the standard search engines that come pre-installed with Firefox – you can ad more which is something that we’ll cover in the future.

Downloads – Here is the window that pops up when you download a file. It’s a way to keep track of them and even monitor where you’re downloading them to on your machine.

Add-ons – This is one of the beautiful features of Firefox (and really just about any open source program). Add-ons are mini-programs that you can install into your Firefox that can make it capable of performing tasks that in can’t “out of the box”. The Firefox installation that I’m using right now has 25 add-ons running that do everything from notify me when I have a new message in my inbox to blocking ads to spell-checking things that I put in text-boxes online… and more.

If you bring up the box it will have a few options that will allow you to change the Theme (just the look of your FF browser window), and add on items that will allow you to play Flash videos (think YouTube), or other media (think CNN or games). If you click the “Get Extensions” or “Get Themes” it will take you to the page on Firefox where these are available.

Java Console, Error Console, Page Info – Probably not something you want or need to dive into if you’re not designing a website.

Clear Private Data – This will enable you to clear your cookies, browser history, and other data that your browser keeps about your habits. It does it relatively thoroughly, be careful that you don’t delete passwords that you want to keep saved!

Now on to the options…

Read the rest of this entry »

I do already have a number of ideas for what I hope to post here when I’m back from Florida and North Carolina, a couple of them are actually already being covered by Rob over at 170spoons.

• My own tech-biases (or “why I need someone who can write about Macs”)
• Firefox, why it’s better than what you’re using.
• Google, and why they’re the opposite of evil
• Gmail
• Greader
• Gcal
• Google Apps
• How to learn to use any program
• Why your mouse is not always best (or “Shortcuts are your friends”)
• Basic computer upgrading
• Social networking tips
• iTunes, MP3s and Podcasts
• Open Source programs (or “Techno-Democracy”

In the mean time, I will be soaking up some rays at Cape Canaveral and then D-ing some MPs in North Carolina.