Ars Technica reported last week that Google released the Google Browser Sync Extension for Firefox. I've had a chance to use this for the past couple of days now, and this is a must have for anyone who has multiple computers and uses Firefox regularly. It's now second on my list behind the Web Developer Extension.

You must have a Gmail account. Once you install the extension, Google will then sync a variety of browser data (you choose which one's to sync): cookies, passwords, bookmarks, history, tabs and windows.

It's been great having my browser on my desktop and laptop in sync with each other. Make sure you try it :-)

The Chronicle: Daily news: 12/10/2004 -- 01

The Chronicle is reporting that Penn State U. has advised its computer network users to steer clear of IE and embrace Firefox. This is a great move and one that I hope will ultimately lead to universities abandoning Microsoft altogether. There are not only alternatives to Windows and Microsoft Office--there are BETTER alternatives. Of course, the critical thing isn't just that a program like Firefox is faster, safer, or more innovative than Internet Explorer.

Blackbeard...It's hard for me to even say the name without fuming into a lengthy, vitriolic rant about unenlightened administrators and graft. However, for those of us at Blackboard-monopolized and mandated universities, we often don't have a choice about using it. "The university is paying $500,000 a year for this, you better use it" seems to be the story at most places. To make matters even worse, we have to use Internet Explorer to properly access Blackboard's gradebook. To wit:

There is a known problem with the gradebook trying to produce too many table entries in the table sent to the web browser. IE will render the table as it receives data, while Firefox/Mozilla will wait for the data before rendering the table. It is a known bug, and should be fixed in the release we are installing December 20th.

I don't think I could possibly count how many times this semester I've been frustrated by the browsers provided on campus workstations. I've gotten so accustomed to using Firefox on my home machine, that even the older versions of Netscape and Mozilla provided on our classroom computers just aren't up to the task.

However, no longer. Slashdot reports that there are now USB drive versions of Firefox and Thunderbird. The applications are installed and run off removable media such as jump drives, cdrw's with packet writing, external hard drives, and zip drives. Can't wait to try out Firefox off my jump drive during class on Monday :)