An actual release time has now been announced, 10am PDT (California time). So that means that here in New Zealand will be 5am the 18th of June (tomorrow). When you wake up, you’ll find Firefox 3 all ready to download for your enjoyment 
Extensions have already been busy updating, All-in-one sidebar, Greasemonkey, Firebug, etc etc. Firefox 3 will let you know which extensions are broken when it first starts so there shouldn’t be any troubles.
Expect to see Firefox 3 released tomorrow. Help it get into the record books for most downloads over 24 hours by hitting the image below,
In Firefox 3, the location bar learns some new tricks. This has given in the unofficial name of Awesome Bar because it gives a lot more control. Here are some tips to using it,
Bookmarking has been made a lot easier thanks to the Star icon to the right of the location bar. Click once, and you’ve bookmarked it. You might not know that you can click again to change the bookmark properties, with a new feature known as “tags.” Fill out the Tag field with keywords about the bookmark. When you want to go back to this page, just type one or few tags in the location bar to see it.
I follow a forum thread which gets increasingly bigger, and I don’t want to subscribe to the forum. Creating a bookmark is useless as it would quickly go out of date as the thread is quite popular. But, as forum software tends to put the first post ID in the URL, I can use that to get to the page quickly. I could easily type in the web site name, but you can also type in parts of the URL and it will still match.
So, if I want a GP Forums thread, each URL contains the word “thread” in them, so I can type “gp forums thread” and it will give me all threads that I have been to on GP Forums, despite “GP Forums” appearing in the title, and “thread” appearing in the URL. I can add the word “gta” and then I get all threads that have “GTA” in the title.
If I want all New Zealand sites I’ve been to about Vodafone, I could go “.co.nz vodafone” and get a list that way.
If you find yourself doing a rather common search, you can turn it into a dynamic bookmark that you can access from your bookmarks toolbar or menu. Just go to Bookmarks » Organise Bookmarks, and in Search Bookmarks type in your terms (i.e. “.co.nz vodafone”). Change your Search Area to History and you should get your results that look similar to the location bar ones (without the bookmarks though). Click the Save button and give it a name. It will automatically go into the Bookmarks Menu, you can drag and drop it to where ever you please.
What are your tricks? Comment!
Eagle eyed GPForum users were quick to point out a PlayStation 3 scam, due to the very poor presentation. If anything, this post should go into a “How not to scam people” book or something.
User meeekael posted a link to this TradeMe auction. Clearly set out to catch someone out who did not know much about the PlayStation 3, it was advertised as an 80gb PAL PlayStation 3, of which none exists (unless you change the hard drive yourself) and out of the list of games, one is a Wii exclusive and three aren’t even out yet.
After plenty of quizzes from TradeMe members, he quickly pulled it down, just to come back with a 60gb PS3 for sale. This time he wasn’t going to bother with any games, clearly he can’t do research and is out for a quick buck, so thought not to include a list of anything. Just a 60gb PS3. He even provided a picture, with his face blurred and a crudely cropped photo of a recent paper.
THIS IS FOR ALL THOSE WHO DID NOT BELIEVE ME WITH MY 80GIG. I HAVE TAKEN THE GAMES AWAY. TAKEN THE 80GIG CONSOLE AWAY AND GIVING YOU A 60GIG. YOU CAN THANK ALL THOSE WHO DOUTED ME. OH YEH THATS ME IN THE PICTURE THIS HAS BEEN SENT TO TRADEME HEAD OFFICE SO DONT BUG ME
After some hairy questions from GP members, someone commented,
Personally I think stuff him! If he wants a “legit” one from someone in NZ that he can go and see, then let him, or report him to TM for ruining yr auctions?
After getting the question answered, the same person asks,
Are they sealed in their boxes, sorry for many q’s but was scammed $665 outta some guy and no PS3 to show for it. Trying to not get caught again ya know….
Oh dear.
What is interesting is he says that “the console is brand new in the box” and “i have six units in possesion.” But, the picture?
Why does he have them out of the boxes, and why are there eight in the picture when he only has six?
Member farenheit,
Why is there a badly composited newspaper in that photo? If these are brand new, what are they doing out of their boxes?…Scam much? BAM!
The BAM!?
Hmmm, that looks familiar.
The person in that picture is actually Dr Frank Mueller, one of the people behind the PlayStation 3 cluster at North Carolina State University. Original find.
So, thanks to GPForum members meeekael and farenheit, TradeMe is a safer place. And watch out for seller naturallyforyou, apparently who’s selling things that are “good for you.”
Firefox 3 has reached a new milestone today with the release of Release Candidate 1. For those not into the naming conventions, alpha is best to avoid, beta is mostly stable but not done, and a release candidate is something that is completely finished but need to find any outstanding major bugs.
It is quite a nice step-up from beta 5. It is a bit speedier, and with lots of polish, as we like. I’m running the Vista build, so things may be different on other peoples machines, but they’ve added nice little Vista elements around the place. For example, the search box is italicised and grey just like the rest of the search boxes. They also appear to be using the Segoe UI font through out. Lots of blue is present. (Remember that Firefox 3 uses operating system dependent themes now, so things will look completely different on XP, Mac OS X, and Linux. The Mac OS X version looks fantastic.)
The Library, the new one-stop location for your bookmarks and history, looks a lot nicer too. Icons are present for each of the different stores (Bookmarks Toolbar, Bookmarks Menu and Unfiled Bookmarks). There are more stores for History and Tags. They have cut down on the search though, unfortunately. In the beta builds, the search operated much like the Vista search in Windows Explorer (you could add boolean searches, last access dates, etc). Now you can only restrict a search to a location and save it. Slightly disappointing, but the catch with the beta versions was that the functionality didn’t actually work perfectly, so shame they couldn’t finish it. Hopefully someone will release it as an add-on at some point in the future.
The Downloads window finally gets the Clean Up button, but they’ve named it “Clear List.” Hurrah! (Clean Up gives me the impression they’re going to wipe all my downloads).
Some extensions are having problems. Look here for information on turning off compatibility checks (but be warned and find your shortcut to Safe Mode!).
If you are using Vista, I highly recommend getting the Glasser extension. It makes the program look even more polished. Add the CSS to your userChrome.css file to make it even better.
This might be an interesting idea. Already on the PlayStation 3 you can record your singing performances and upload them to the My SingStar community (and there are some rather funny videos on there too). Now this video uploading is taking a new step, with the YouTube API being added to the PS3 SDK (Software Development Kit).
Now you can upload your in-game moves and upload directly to YouTube. That would be rather awesome in GTA IV (a recent time filler for me).
The first game to feature this will be Japanese game Mainichi Issho. Who knows what exactly you can upload in that game (looks rather crazy to me).
There is a website dedicated entirely to video game videos, GameVee.com, but I think they miss out due to the lack of upload API.
I’ve been a bit slack of late. While my Twitter feed has been going, I haven’t had the urge to write anything on my blog.
I even missed April 21, the day when I started writing in it. I’ve been blogging for pretty much six years now, but I’ve had issues in the past with lost hosts, backups etc. So this is my longest lasting blog. And hopefully, it’ll last even longer.
Wouldn’t you find it a bit odd that a game gets MA15+ in Australia, yet that same game gets R18 here?
Well, it’s happening (and not for the first time). Australia gets editions of Grand Theft Auto that are cut so then they could get past OFLC ratings. While Australia has an R18, it is strictly limited to films only. Any game that gets R18 is banned. The maximum game rating is MA15+.
A cut version of GTA IV is making it’s way there, and to the shock of Kiwi fans, we’re getting it too, despite us having an R18 rating and never having a cut version of the franchise before. However, the interesting thing here is that the same game is getting our maximum rating, R18, for violence and offensive language.
First thought is that Australia is being quite conservative in banning games that are R18. But isn’t it a bit liberal if a 15 year old can get the same violence, language and sex? Kotaku got a copy of the Australian OFLC report to find that not a lot has been cut, except since that article some reviews have sprouted up where it appears that sex is only displayed as a bouncing car in our version.
This is the country where porn is banned for sale or hire in all but two states. Isn’t it a bit odd that adults can’t see a bit of sex, yet killing people by either blowing them up or stabbing them (or with just a bit of fistycuffs), being able to pick up hookers and solicit sex (A/NZ version only showing a bouncing car), watching people snort cocain and the like, you have to be 15 years to enter? It seems that the intention of banning R18 games had the directly opposite effect to what it was trying to achieve.
Very recently (last month), there has been a push to introduce an R18 rating for video games. Details here. It has been met with some opposition, with a “think of the children” argument. Why don’t the ministers think that this is a Restricted classification? That’s what the R stands for, it is Restricted to persons 18 years and over. Children are not supposed to get it, and if they are, maybe they should be looking at enforcing the law as well.
I’ve started to see it here, I was in KMart when a parent was refused sale because she was buying the R18 game for her seemingly 10 year old child. Just give big warnings that they’ll be fined, and give them some leaflets and they might start refusing access. This seems to be a problem that higher-ups don’t get, you have a ratings system that isn’t being enforced. So don’t ban it, start enforcing what you’ve already got!
If Australia did have an R18 rating, then 15 year olds won’t be having legal access to this game just like they aren’t in every other country. The thought that not having R18 prevents them from seeing content that is in GTA is a farce, they are pretty much seeing brutal stuff as is evident of the R18 rating for the exact same game here in New Zealand. Archaic views that games are for children is affecting what your children do see, and maybe that “think of the children” argument should be used to actually restrict these games to adults, and not punish them.
Freeview terrestrial service will be differentiated with the name Freeview|HD. This is a good idea and reduce the confusion between what the satellite service provides and the terrestrial service provides.
Meanwhile there is going to be three new channels for Freeview, bringing the total television channels to 13. The first is TVNZ 7, the new factual channel from TVNZ. It will have news on the hour, every hour from 9am to 11pm each day, and on weekdays have a “breakfast zone” of rolling news bulletins from 6am to 9am. The 8pm news will be one hour long and will reportedly provide more depth than One News at 6pm. Available from 30th March. TVNZ 7
Te Reo, or what was previously known as Maori Television Rua, will be a channel only in Maori language (hence the name, for international readers, Te Reo means “the language”). It will only run for three hours a day to start with, but will eventually be extended. Available from 28th March. Maori Television (No UTF-8 support in WordPress??)
TVCentral is only going to be available in Waikato/Bay of Plenty area as it’s the first regional channel to jump onto the Freeview bandwagon (that’s slow moving). It will also only be available on Freeview|HD for now too, so available sometime in April, though if you have a UHF aerial in Waikato/BoP you can pick it up already. TVCentral
An Xbox 360 user had the inevitable happen to him causing him to send it in for repair. Sounds like something heard every day, but this was different. This guy, named Nathanial, had taken it with him to many events and getting it signed by members from Bungie, Xbox 360 team and Rooster Teeth Productions, among other things. He made sure it was all going to be fine, and was assured that all his precious signatures, quotes and drawings would stay.
Alas, when he got his console back, it had been scrubbed clean!
After taking his story to the net (even have it on the front page of Digg), he’s had Bungie come in and right the wrongs that their once-parent company had made. They sent him a whole swag of gear, signed by many members of the Bungie team. One of them was the sound track, signed by Marty O’Donnel with the words “DO NOT ERASE!” written just beneath.
It’s great to see a company (that had nothing to do with the mishap) chimed in to help one of it’s fans. Not much can be said for the mega-giant Microsoft – they still haven’t said anything about the matter.
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