Daily Digest
Snap Any Window to Half the Screen
Size in Windows 7 [Windows 7
Screencast]
We’re on a Windows 7 screencast bender! You’ve
already seen Windows 7’s Aero Shake and Peek features
today, but another useful drag-and-dropper is the abil-
ity to resize any window to half the size of your monitor
and dock it to the left or right side of the screen. In an
earlier screencast you saw that dragging a window to
the top of the screen maximizes it. Following that, if
you drag a window all the way to the left or the right
of the screen, Windows 7 will display a glass overlay
on the desktop. Let go of the mouse button and it
will snap the window onto that overlay, which is half
the screen’s sizemdash;a handy helper for widescreen
monitor owners. Hit the play button above to see this
in actionmdash;apologies for not including the half-size
docking action in the earlier clip.
How Can I Sync My Firefox
Installations? [Ask Lifehacker]
Dear Lifehacker, I have Firefox installed on three
separate computers, and I find it difficult to keep the
same Add Ons/Preferences synchronized between all
three machines. Is there an automated way to synchro-
nize my Firefox installation between all three machines?
In other words, if I add a new Add-on or Greasemon-
key script to one Firefox installation, can it be auto-
matically added to my installation on my two other
machines? Signed, Three Firefoxes, One User Dearest
TFOU, This has been the holy grail of Firefox needs
since Firefox extensibility turned us all into tweaking
junkies. You can already use tools like Foxmarks or
Mozilla Weave to sync bookmarks, passwords, and a
little bit more (with Weave), but unfortunately there
are no tools built specifically for syncing your exten-
sions in the same seamless manner. So what’s a Firefox
lover to do? As it turns out, there are several ways you
can go about syncing Firefox so that you’ve got the ex-
act same browsermdash;history, extension, bookmarks,
passwords, and allmdash;no matter where you’re work-
ing. Option 1: Go Portable Probably the easiest option
is to download Portable Firefox, toss it on your thumb
drive, and take it with you everywhere you go. It’s not
1
syncing, of course, but it is guaranteed to work with-
out any significant effort on your part aside from car-
rying around a thumb drive. Option 2: Sync Portable
You can take the portable idea one step further with
free syncing tools like Dropbox. Just download and
install Dropbox on every computer you want to sync
Firefox to, then download Portable Firefox and store
it in your Dropbox folder. Dropbox will automatically
sync to Portable Firefox to the Dropbox folders on your
other computers. Since the whole point of Portable
Firefox is that it can live anywhere, and it doesn’t re-
quire any specific folders outside of itself, every change
you make on one computer should automatically sync
to all of your other Portable Firefox installs on the rest
of your computers. As long as you aren’t using Firefox
on two computers at the same time, everything should
run flawlessly. With two Portable Firefoxes running si-
multaneously, you may run into the occasional conflict-
mdash;though even then it’s rarely a major problem.
Finally, since Dropbox syncs to the web as well as your
desktop, this setup as two more benefits. First, both
computers don’t need to be running at the same time
to perform the sync. Instead, whenever one computer
turns on, it’ll automatically sync up to the latest ver-
sion from the web. Second, if you’re ever at a computer
that isn’t yours, you can navigate to the Dropbox web
interface and download your customized Portable Fire-
fox to any computer. That way you can have your per-
fectly personalized browser no matter where you are,
then delete it when you’re done. Option 3: Sync Ap-
plication Data If the Portable Firefox route doesn’t ap-
peal to you, you can still sync Firefox installationsm-
dash;extensions and allmdash;by syncing your applica-
tion data with FolderShare or a similar syncing tool.
(Dropbox isn’t ideal for this one because it doesn’t let
you choose multiple folders anywhere on your desktop
to sync, while FolderShare does.) I’ve walked step by
step through this process in detail once before, so I
won’t go into it here. Like the Dropbox version above,
you may see the occasional conflict if you sync Fire-
fox this way. I hope that helps, TFOU. It’s still not
perfect, and we’re all waiting patiently for the day that
one Firefox extension takes care of all our browser sync-
ing needs, but in the meantime, one of these methods
should do. If anyone has other suggestions for how they
keep their Firefox installations in sync, let’s hear them
in the comments. Love, Lifehacker
Thoroughly Invade Someone’s Privacy
with 123people [People Search]
People search engine 123people.com aggregates search
results from several different sources online mdash; and
off. Simply enter a person’s name, a city or zip code,
and 123people will display search results from social
networks, telephone listings, web pages, Wikipedia and
the like. A quick search on my likely new representa-
tive in city government, David Chiu, turned up some
good candidates for his home address and phone num-
ber, and certainly found plenty of photos on Flickr and
web sites and articles related to his recent campaign (as
well as plenty of information about David Chiu, com-
petitive poker player and others). Potentially creepy?
Yes. Potentially useful? Also yes. As with our tips
on how to track down anyone online, Lifehacker cannot
be held responsible in the event you’re slapped with a
restraining order. 123people.com
Five Tweaks for Your New Ubuntu
Desktop [Linux]
With the recent release of the popular Linux distro
Ubuntu’s 8.10 version, code-named Intrepid Ibex, we’ve
recently detailed some productive-minded Ubuntu Kung
Fu, as well as a user-minded tour through 8.10. This
morning, though, we’re taking a more nuts-and-bolts
look at changes you can make to your newly-installed
system to make it faster, reliable, and more enjoyable
from the inside out. Read on for five tweaks that any
Ubuntu user (or Linux user in general) should consider
making to get started on the right foot. Disable or
throttle back Tracker indexing Installed and running
by default on Ubuntu desktops, Tracker is an actually
handy search tool that’s placed, Spotlight-style, in the
upper-right taskbar, giving you quick access to files and
folders. The only catch is that Tracker eats up a good
bit of processor power to keep itself current, and, de-
pending on how you use your system, might not be
necessary at all. The How-To Geek walks through the
process of scaling back or disabling Tracker entirely.
Looking for a low-power, high-functioning alternative?
Try learning the magic of find. Disable atime to speed
up your hard drive Some older Ubuntu distributions,
and other Linux systems, mount hard drives using an
atime option. The problem, as noted by Linus Tor-
valds himself, is that atime writes to the hard disk
every time a file is accessed to keep up its indexing
records. We’ve detailed how to turn off atime for faster
hard drive access, and newer Ubuntu users can go a bit
further in disabling the replacement relatime as wellm-
dash;but be sure to back up your original /etc/fstab
file, as some applications and services might get cranky
without it. Switch to mirror servers for updates Ev-
ery six months or so, a new version of Ubuntu drops.
And every six months, without fail, users looking to
download a new CD or upgrade their systems slam the
Ubuntu.com servers, leaving many with huge download
waits, and users just trying to grab the latest updates
in the lurch. Save yourself the cyclical grief, and save
Ubuntu’s developers some hosting costs, by switching
to mirror servers for updates. Universities and Linux
groups around the world are happy to dish out the lat-
est system updates, which are mirrored hastily from
Ubuntu’s servers, and you’ll probably get better speeds
finding a nearby host. Upgrade to OpenOffice.org 3
Ubuntu sticks to a rigid release schedules, so the latest
version, 8.10, had to wrap up its software picks before
the OpenOffice project could finalize its 3.0 version.
Luckily, it’s not too hard to put the latest open-source
office suite on your desktop, either as a replacement for
the 2.x default or next to it. The Tombuntu blog de-
tails the steps, which require only a minimal bit of com-
mand line work. Back up your home folder The ”home”
folder in Linux, found at /home/yourusername, is more
than just a stash for MP3s and cat pictures. In hidden
files (named with a . at the start) and specific fold-
ers, it’s where most applications keep your preferences,
data files, and other customizations. Having a backup
of your home folder is pretty crucial to reinstalling a
system that went bad, making painless upgrades, and
generally feeling better about your stability. You can
kick it old-school with rsync or hook up an external
hard drive, but the recently-opened Dropbox makes it
seriously easy and automatic to back up the home folder
with a native client application. BONUS: Install Win-
dows fonts and multimedia codecs Because of its open-
source ideals and licensing, Ubuntu can’t include non-
open codecs like MP3s, WMA/WMV, or DVD play-
back by default. Getting it all working, though, isn’t
too hard. Head over to the Medibuntu site, and fol-
low the instructions for ”Playing Encrypted DVDs” and
”Playing Non-Native Media Formats.” So those are a
few things this writer always does when installing a new
Ubuntu system, or helping friends install theirs. Let’s
hear our Linux-savvy readers’ hit listsmdash;what are
the first steps you always take when setting up your
new system? Share your items, and commands, in the
comments.