Pdf It! is more than PDF
The Pdf It! extension is designed for FireFox running on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux. The Pdf It! menu item appears in the Tools menu as well as context menu.
The Pdf It! extension features are as follows:
- Convert current page(Whole Page or Visible Part) to Image(PNG or JPEG)
- Add title to generated image (Firefox 3 only)
- Specify the color/position/font size for title
- Apply up to 16 filters while converting page to Image
ImageVenue
I don’t have much use for the PDF function of this addon (based on an online service) . The PDF function does not provide a full colour rendition of the Web page. It is the ability to create a JPEG of a web page that can be emailed or put up on a site like ImageVenue.
If you use ImageVenue, then you only need to send a link to the image, which must be either JPEG or JPG with a maximum size of 3 meg. For example, an image of our web page is easier to send as a link than as an image file. Of course this is not secure from outside viewing but it is handy for some things.
Most PI companies are small affairs, usually four or five people, but in my experience, they create a lot of data. Video, pictures, reports, supporting material for reports, scanned documents, and it must all reside on a computer somewhere.
Microsoft Windows Home Server software, which sells for about $100, is a a very simple (in form and function anyway) operating system that has built in backup and file sharing capabilities to make life easy without adding the complexity of managing a true server.
In May, Acer began selling its Aspire easyStore Home Server. The street price seems to be less than $500 CD which usually includes a second 1TB drive and Windows Home Server software.
UPDATE:
It seems that it had a tendency to lose data under some conditions, a problem that’s only been fixed recently: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=473
How often have you hear the terms Web 2.0, Web 3.0, or semantic web, and realized you don’t even know what Web 1.0 is? Well, here is the article that explains it all in very few words and some good slide presentations:
Recently, I did battle the Great MicroSatan.
Two of our workstations have been going for about 4 years without a fresh install of the OS. One machine started to act-up and it corrupted all the MSWord templates it touched. The documents it created were everlasting problems on other machines. The offending machine would hang-up, crash, and generally make everyone’s life miserable. The Great MicroSatan was wreaking havoc upon our little company.
It wasn’t hardware. It wasn’t the drives. Took out the drives and ran checkdisk on them using another machine, everything was OK. Diagnostics found no problems. It was the work of the Great MicroSatan!
Spybot-Search & Destroy found thousands of temporary files, but nothing untoward.
Norton found nothing.
Using CCleaner, I removed all the temporary files.
Using Little Registry Cleaner and then CCleaner I removed all the dross in the registry.
Nothing helps — oh, despair, woe is me — the Great MicroSatan is too powerful!
Then salvation appears in MSWord, Help>Detect and Repair. Great MicroSatan, get thee behind me, you are defeated!
Texter saves you countless keystrokes by replacing abbreviations with commonly used phrases that you define. It runs in the Windows system tray and works with applications you’re typing in. It can also set return-to markers for your cursor and insert clipboard contents into your replacement text, in addition to more advanced keyboard macros.
How did I ever live without this?
Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time allotted.
Efficient online searching dictates that you set time limits for each search. If you don’t, the time allotted will be infinite and the job will expand to fill all the time you have and more.
Defeat Parkinson and His Damn Law
The first step to preventing Parkinson’s Law from taking over your life is to fully understand what you are really looking for. As an Investigator, I will normally look for data on people or companies; each has a name, address, telephone number, and fax number. This is how I search for this data on the Internet and compile the results in the shortest possible time.
The Assembly Line
The purpose of the “Assembly Line” is to be certain that I search using all relevant search terms while keeping good records of the date and URL’s where I find things. The collected material will be well organised for easy report production. Hence the title, Assembly Line Searching. Continue reading ‘Assembly Line Searching’
The Web browser has become one of the Investigator’s or Researcher’s most basic tools. Add-ons make this tool more complete, easier, and faster to use.
ErrorZilla: The standard “server not found” page is useless if you’re looking for a Web site that’s gone AWOL. ErrorZilla adds a series of buttons to the bottom of the standard “Firefox can’t find the server” message, providing instant access to the Wayback machine, Google Cache, Whois lookup, Ping and Trace
A similar add-on, Resurrect Pages, allows you to see dead pages, broken links by searching through five big page cache/mirrors: CoralCDN, Google Cache, Yahoo! Cache, The Internet Archive, and the MSN Cache. Unlike ErrorZilla, this doesn’t offer Whois lookup, Ping and Trace.
All-in-One Sidebar
The Firefox sidebar is one of the browser’s more useful tools, but least used. It allows you to browse your history and view bookmarks and many add-ons use it as well.
This add-on tool lets you quickly switch among all your sidebar panels, which gives you information about your browser use. It will let you see your entire download history in the sidebar or show all of your add-ons with details about each, or give you information on the current page you’re visiting, and more.
If you don’t use the Firefox sidebar, try this add-on and you might. If you do use it regularly, then this one will be a keeper.
Download All-in-One Sidebar
BugMeNot
Registering to use a Web site is making a deal with the devil. Information such as your name, e-mail address, mailing address, phone number,etc.. This is followed by a tsunami of spam. Your name is sold for mailing lists and worse. But for many Web sites, if you don’t register, you can’t log in and use the site.
This add-on solves the problem. Go to a Web site, right-click in the user name or password field, and select BugMeNot. A valid user name and password will then be entered into the form. You can then use the site without having to register. This free add-on works in concert with the BugMeNot Web site, which has many user names and passwords for multiple sites.
Download BugMeNot
CustomizeGoogle
This is a must-have add-on. It customizes Google in just about any way you could imagine and it will block Google’s ads as well as Google analytic cookies that invade your privacy. And most importantly for the Investigator, it anonymizes your Google user ID.
It adds links in your Google search results to other search engines, such as Yahoo and Ask.com, among others. It filters out search results from known spammers, and it will also let you customize features such as Gmail and Google News. If you want to customize the way Google works, make sure to download this one.
My favorite feature is the ability to set my Google preferences so they don’t disappear when I clear out the cookies.
Download CustomizeGoogle
Mini Map Sidebar
Mapping services are among the most useful sites on the Internet. Mini Map Sidebar allows you to open it as a Firefox sidebar, then drag and drop address names or links to it, and a map of them will open right in the sidebar. You have your choice of map services, including Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, and others. You can zoom in or out, get directions and do anything you can do on the mapping site itself.
Download Mini Map Sidebar
Secure Login
Secure Login integrates with Firefox’s password manager, and will log you into any Web site without you having to remember or look up the password. On a site that requires a login, either click the icon or use a hot-key combination to login.
The program prevents hackers from stealing your passwords by halting malicious JavaScript code. It also protects against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks and other password dangers.
Download Secure Login
PDF Download manages the download of large PDF files. This remains necessary to handle PDF files in Firefox V.3.
Download Statusbar allows you to view and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar - without the download window getting in the way of your web browsing.
Morning Coffee allows you to bring up a whole menu of websites with a single click. MorningCoffee is particularly useful for routinely monitoring several sites simultaneously.
Ubiquity promises to become the most advanced tool for Firefox. It is in early beta now but getting better. It requires Firefox 3. Check out the video below.
Beware that this can be abused. It will allow you to alter the content of a web page then email it as part of a mash-up. In the current version, there are well-documented ways that a command author could smuggle malicious code into your machine.
With Windows XP, to clear the page file on shutdown go to Control Panel->Administrative Tools-> Local Security Policy->Local Policies->Security Options->Shutdown: Clear Virtual Memory Pagefile … enable it. It is wise to enable this setting on every computer you use.
We tell people to travel with a “clean” laptop. However, Windows creates a lot of temporary files. The most damaging can be the Page file. Everything that went into virtual memory is there in a file on the hard drive. Of course you should also use a good file erasure programme before shutting off the laptop.
Evidence Eliminator and similar software can kill out files and perform other tasks. But their use can raise red flags in a legal dispute.
But the wiper programs don’t ensure a clean getaway. They leave behind a kind of digital calling card.
“Not only do these programs leave a trace that they were used, they each have a distinctive fingerprint,” Kessler said. “Evidence Eliminator leaves one that’s different from Window Washer, and so on.”
I recommend the use of file erasure tools, especially when crossing international borders with computers. If you use such a programme regularly you have plausible deniability if you’re accused of erasing data to keep it from the police or the courts. If you always use it, then its “fingerprint” will always be there. If the install date matches the computer’s purchase date, then they can’t say you did this to eliminate the evidence the courts or police were seeking. Also, get a receipt for the wiper programme to show when it was purchased for the same reason.
File erasure programmes are part of prudent security practices and should not be viewed as something suspicious.