Internet – Page 6

September 15, 2010

Hey, Power Users: Believe It or Not, You May Love Internet Explorer 9

ie9 beta

Over at Technologizer, Harry McCracken took a look at the first beta of Internet Explorer today, and his opinions may surprise you. He believes that IE9 has finally caught up with the competition in most respects, and in some ways it has surpassed it. Among the highlights:

In testing, the IE9 beta blows through animation-rich HTML5 that some other browsers can barely run at all;
Like in Chrome, the address bar also doubles as a search field;
The Address Bar shares space with tabs, and shrinks to free up space as tabs are opened;
IE9 has tight integration with Windows 7 (for example, tabs can be pinned to the Taskbar).

Head on over to Technologizer for a thorough rundown, including a look at how Microsoft seems to be cautious about extensions. If you’re brave, you can also go get the beta.

Is there any chance you’d ever switch to Internet Explorer 9 when it is out of beta?

Internet Explorer 9: Microsoft’s Browser Gets Back in the Game [Technologizer]

September 1, 2010

How the Internet Might Replace the Classroom

classroom

There are many, many, great resources on the web, especially in the area of education. There are thousands of sites dedicated just to teaching languages, for example. In fact, Bill Gates said earlier this month that he expected that within five years the web would provide a better education than our institutions of higher learning. Here in Texas, the Board of Education seems to have fully embraced this trend, and now offers a home schooling program for elementary school-aged kids that is completely online. They even provide the computer.

My Life Scoop recently listed a few of the best sites for education, and there are more created every day. In fact, Xconomy pubished an article yesterday about a new startup, Udemy, whose name comes from “academy for you.” Udemy received $1 million in seed funding to “democratize learning on the web.”

Notwithstanding these great online learning opportunities, I’m still not sure that I want a lawyer representing me who got a law degree from iTunes U. So what do you think: will the internet ever truly replace the classroom, or will it always be a supplement to improve the classroom experience?

Bill Gates: In Five Years the Best Education Will Come From the Web [via TechCrunch]

Feed Your Mind For Free Online [via My Life Scoop]

Udemy Collects $1 Million to Exapnd Casual Learning Platform [via Xconomy]

August 9, 2010

Get Your Own SSL Certificate – For Free!

locks

On some sites, you may notice the lock icon at the bottom of your web browser. That icon means that you've established an encrypted Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection. This connection keeps your information safe and secure while it is being transmitted. To display that icon, a website needs to have a Certificate, which can be expensive. If you run your own website, MakeUseOf tells us how to get a free SSL certificate from StartSSL.

As MakeUseOf notes,

StartSSL offers free certificates with no holds barred and with absolutely no hidden charges. You can choose either a 128 bit or 256 bit key for encryption.

It should be noted that these are Class 1 certificates, which means that they only validate basic domain information (particularly, that the subscriber owns the domain name). As a result, while they are great if you want to use them to log into a personal site from an unsecured location, you probably want a higher class certificate if you are running an online store.

The MakeUseOf article give detailed instructions for setting up the certificate, including a strong recommendation that you back up your key locally. Let us know in the comments if you've tried out an SSL certificate from StartSSL, and how it's worked out for you. If you have another solution, let us know that, too.

StartSSL [via MakeUseOf]

Photo by mikebaird.

August 3, 2010

4 Ways to Get Update Alerts From Sites That Don’t Have RSS Feeds

website alerts

RSS is a great tool for keep tracking of updates to a web site. Twitter can be used in a similar fashion for those sites that announce updates via Twitter. It's a sad fact, though, that not all websites have RSS feeds or Twitter updates. Don't give up hope, though. Here are four other methods for being alerted when a site is updated.

August 2, 2010

How to Find Out When a Page Was Last Updated

page update date and time

Have you ever been curious to find out when a web page was updated? There’s a little trick that you can use to determine the date and time that a specific page was updated. Simply type the following into your address bar, and then hit “Enter” on your keyboard:

javascript:alert(document.lastModified)

This only works on some pages, and your browser must be javascript-enabled for it to work. If you want to automate this with a bookmark, WorldStart.Com has some instructions, which basically involves placing the above code in the address line of a bookmark.

In my experience, this isn’t foolproof. A site needs to have date information contained in its code, either because the developer placed it there manually, or because the system upon which the site runs did it automatically. When it works, though, it is a handy trick.

When Was It Updated? [WordStart.Com]

Category: Internet (page 6 of 10)

Hey, Power Users: Believe It or Not, You May Love Internet Explorer 9

How the Internet Might Replace the Classroom

Get Your Own SSL Certificate – For Free!

4 Ways to Get Update Alerts From Sites That Don’t Have RSS Feeds

How to Find Out When a Page Was Last Updated

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