Hasta La Gadget!

As the Linux Foundation tells it, the Linux-related job market is today 80 percent larger than it was five years ago. Whereas other industries have had to shed workers in the current recession, the Foundation is hopeful penny-pinching measures might actually encourage businesses to transition to Linux-based software and thereby further stimulate employment opportunities within the sector. We’re not told exactly what “Linux-related” means in this context, but the newly set up Linux.com Job Board indicates that the vast majority of new openings are for system admins. That’s right, the corporate world is crying out for more geeks — won’t you answer the call?

[Thanks to Overlord59 for the Tux images]

Linux Foundation sets up Job Board, cites 80 percent growth in Linux-related jobs originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 07:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on January 10, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Firefox is known for the large amount of themes that they have available, with most of them being pretty subtle. After all, no one wants to sit and stare at a browser that would make your eyes water up…or would they?

Before I get into listing the slightly more “interesting” themes that I have found, I want to first say that I use the default Firefox theme. That might make me a little bland but I think the way Firefox looks out-of-the-box is simply marvelous, just like Flock, Opera, and even Internet Explorer. I think all of those browsers come with a great default theme/skin and I have never swayed away from them. So if you use one of the themes that I list here (and it is a great possibility since they total nearly 3.5 million downloads) don’t take any offense to it because they are solely my own opinions.

–Walnut (about 1,500,000 downloads)–

The Walnut theme doesn’t seem too bad at first and I actually think that I would be able to tolerate it had I no other choice. Of course, with over 1.5 million downloads I would have to say that there are a lot of people who have made this their theme of choice. Like most themes, when it is just the toolbars that are skinned it doesn’t seem quite so bad…but when you take a peak at the options you’ll notice that it is surely a lot of wood!

–RedShift (about 900,000 downloads)–

There is no way that I could use RedShift on a daily basis! The solid black background and bright red text would make my eyes bug out of my head. It’s like trying to read a website that is written on a solid black background, although you typically don’t do a lot of reading when it comes to items that have been skinned. Typically you’ll just be pressing buttons and typing things in the text boxes, but those too have black backgrounds.

If the RedShift theme pictured below doesn’t excite you, then maybe one of the author’s other color choices will: BlueShift, EarthShift, GoldShift, GreenShift, OrangeShift, or PinkShift.

–PimpZilla (about 730,000 downloads)–

Out of the five themes that I have listed here, this would be the only one that I would ever consider using. It doesn’t strain your eyes at all and actually has some well thought out replacement icons. So if it isn’t that bad then why am I listing it here? Because it is just too funny with the icons and leopard print background to your tabs bar! I’m surprised that this one doesn’t have more downloads than it currently does.

–GlowyBlue (about 270,000 downloads)–

I would rank this one right up there with the RedShift in terms of usability. The background/text combination is sure to strain your eyes after just a short period of time. The blue version is the most popular but it can also be found in wine, gold, green, and red.

–Pink Paula (about 90,000 downloads)–

In order to find this one to be tolerable you better like pink because you’ll be seeing a lot of it. Some people may think that it takes it a little too far, and I might have to agree with them. However, the pink is not terribly overbearing because of its washed-out appearance, but it might help to increase the number of female Firefox users if they knew that this existed. There is also another Firefox theme designed for Breast Cancer that doesn’t go over-the-edge with a pink background, but it does look slightly more like magenta.

–Overview–

So, there’s a different perspective on the themes that are currently available for Firefox. Some of them might be kinda cool for giggles around the office, but they could surely put some strain on your eyes if you are a heavy user of the Web browser. For me the default theme works great and is subtle enough that it doesn’t distract me from the sites that I am trying to read. Even the Noia theme seems to be a little too much “eye candy” for me, but I have been tempted to try out Blue Ice…it’s subtle yet attractive.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

Firefox 2.0 Themes – presented by Learn FirefoxFirefox 3 Themes: Vista on XP, or XP on VistaYour Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryCyberNotes: Your Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryThemes For Your iPod – Make It Look Like Firefox

This article was written on January 28, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tracking Down Great Software For You!

Paint.NET is an photo and image editor that is about as feature intensive as you can get while still keeping it a fast (and light) application. When you start Photoshop you have to wait 10 to 30 seconds before you can start using it, but Paint.net is ready to go almost instantly…which is why this is one of my favorite image editors. Most of the time I am looking to do something quick, and Paint.NET can do 95% of the tasks that I need to do, which primarily consists of cropping or rearranging an image.

The new Paint.NET 3.0 just made things a lot better with my two favorite additions being the “tabbed” interface and a new gradient tool:

• Simple and intuitive tab-based multi-document user interface.
  
• Now available in 8 languages: English, Chinese (Simplified), French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish.
• Interactive Gradient Tool that makes it very easy to draw and then fine-tune placement and coloring of a gradient.
  
• User-definable color palette (as opposed to just the color wheel).
  
• New effects: Clouds, Median, Unfocus, Outline, and an improved Sharpen.
• More intuitive and more powerful toolbar.
• Generally improved and cleaner user interface.
• History files are now compressed to save disk space, reduce disk activity, and improve performance.
• “Merge Down” layer command.

The only thing that I would like to see now is a right-click menu for a lot of the various options. For example, when managing layers I would like to be able to right-click on one of them and select “Delete” to remove that layer. I find myself right-clicking expecting a menu to popup in Paint.NET since I have become so accustomed to Photoshop’s right-click menus. Maybe they’ll work on that for the next release.

Overall though, I would hate not having this application installed on my PC now. I haven’t looked into being able to put this program on a USB drive and take it with me, but it would be really nice to have it wherever I go so I might try that out to see what happens.

Congrats to the Paint.NET team for making such a great application…I think this should be included with Windows.

Download Paint.NET 3.0
News Source: CyberNet Forum [thanks javasharp]

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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We wanted to hate Pocket Heat, because it seems like such a terrible, foolish idea for an iPhone application. But we couldn’t, because a) the design and execution, right down to the lovely application icon, is absolutely dead-on and b) it doesn’t actually work any more

Pocket Heat turned the iPhone into a heater. You slid your finger and dial in the amount of heat you needed, and the app would industriously push the CPU and other processes in order to warm things up. If it worked on a regular computer, its fans would spin up and pump out hot air like a hair dryer.

The past-tense review is because the latest version of Pocket Heat doesn’t actually heat anything: it merely lights up the screen with a mellow, warm glow. According to the iTunes Store page, it “has no heating capabilities/battery drain” and instead features “warming graphics and sound effects”.

We imagine that consumer hatred caused this reversal, as draining the battery and overheating a computer is a rather stupid thing to do. But shouldn’t we be able to choose to be stupid? I guess that now the most stupid thing to do is to buy a $2 app that just shows pictures of a heater on screen. Hot? Sadly, not.

Pocket Heat [iTunes via Mashable]

Nokia has announced that it has started pushing the N900’s very first post-launch update, but apparently it’s not anything crazy like Maemo 6 (yeah, we know it’s not even close to ready, but you know you want it) or system-wide portrait orientation support — instead, it’s just a minor bump designed to prepare the set for the upcoming launch of the Maemo-flavored Ovi Store. That’s great news for anyone looking for a more unified way to get paid apps on the phone, a significant step towards making Maemo a more consumer-friendly platform than it is at the present. Look for the update to be available globally within the next day or so, both over-the-air and via Nokia Software Update on your desktop.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: We’re being told that the Ovi Store’s now accessible from the device at store.ovi.mobi — anyone care to share stories of success or failure? Thanks, Matija!

Nokia N900 gets first software update, but don’t expect much originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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