If you’re a heavy Google user such as myself, then you probably noticed the new mandatory “Everything” bar now located on the left side of your Google search page. Some may not care but me being a daily Netbook user, I need all the screen space I can get. A friend emailed an article from TweakGuides on how to get rid of this new annoyance. I thought I would pass along the information in case anyone else finds this new Everything bar as useless as I do. With a desktop machine or native widescreen it’s not as much an issue because the search results usually don’t take up the entire span of the screen anyway… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

(Image courtesy of Agile Web Solutions)

With more people creating a variety of online accounts and putting more information online and with the increase in the number of hacks trying to get into accounts, having a password manager is worth looking into. One of my favorite password managers, 1Password, has been available on the Mac platform for years and works seamlessly with a variety of browsers. 1Password is also available on the iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad. Well, imagine my surprise to see that Agile Web Solutions has released a beta of 1Password for Windows!

While it does not yet have feature parity with the Mac version, it’s an excellent first version. There are plugins… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Where it all started

So you say you’re getting download errors on HD movies in iTunes?  You’ve contacted Apple support, and they haven’t been able to help?  Your HD movie sits there in your download queue, just sitting and sitting, and when you try to download it, it times out after slooooowly downloading just a few megabytes?  Learn from me, grasshopper, and you will save yourself some time!… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

It looks like Google decided to take on a small chunk of Microsoft, specifically their Internet Explorer v6 web browser, and won.

As of March 1st, Google will no longer support the IE6 browser for Google Docs or Google Sites.

IE users will have to upgrade to at least version 7 if they want to use those products, as “many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers,” said in the Official Google Enterprise Blog.

What is supported?  IE7, Firefox 3 (and newer), Chrome 4 (and newer) and Safari 3 (and newer).  Why did they decide to do this… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

I was on a Norwegian Cruise Lines “Cruise to Nowhere” this weekend, and on each floor they had large LCD monitors letting you know what was going on around the ship, such as which restaurants had a wait, and what bars were on which deck.

Apparently they might want to switch over to Firefox, as Internet Explorer had a little trouble keeping up — and it pooped out a little before midnight on Deck 13!… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

This is one of those bits of news that bears repeating, particularly if you use online banking.  CNET is reporting about a new type of Trojan horse, known as URLZone, that is designed not to steal your login information for online banking sites, but rather to actually steal your money while you’re on the bank’s website.  URLZone is sophisticated enough that it calculates how much money to steal based on how much is in your account, then displays a false balance to the user so as not to arouse suspicion.

The Trojan is being distributed through emails, infected sites that carry the malware, or an Adobe PDF.   It exploits a hole in Firefox, Internet Explorer… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Following the Google Labs and Gmail Labs, the people behind the Google Toolbar Team has chosen to free their imagination and build and deliver fast improvements to the Google Toolbar.

Here are the first two creatures of the Google Toolbar Labs.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Microsoft last night introduced a new service called Live Mesh. After reading a half dozen summaries of the service (none of which had very concrete information), I concluded that Live Mesh is an advanced synchronization tool that does pretty much what Windows Live Foldershare has been accomplishing on my PC for the last two years. Using Foldershare I create one folder on my office computer called “Sync” – then on each of my remote computers Foldershare automatically synchronizes the contents of the folder (and all subfolders). It’s very cool – BUT – I also use Google Apps (documents and spreadsheets) – which don’t require any of this because all data is saved on the web and accessible from any Internet connected computer. This is where Microsoft is getting desperate to close the gap and protect their legacy desktop software. Will Live Mesh be worth the wait? It’s hard to say but you can get in line to test it – and I’ll show you where to sign up.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...