Those of you who are already using Firefox will know exactly what to do. Just download it and install. I have heard there are significant improvements in both speed and security.

For those of you using other browsers such as Internet Explorer, I invite you to give Firefox a try. It is a way better browsing experience. Especially after you add your favorite add-ons.

Firefox changed the internet forever when it became popular at the beginning of the decade. It had become stagnant after the dot com boom. Microsoft had already won the browser war and did not bother to upgrade it’s browser until it upgraded to IE7 within the past few years.

Browsing has become safer and web development is a lot more fun thanks to Firefox.

One great thing about SportsUltra.com is that you can try it out without signing up for an account. You just add all of the teams, players, and sports writers that you want to follow. The site will then pull then show you a list of sources across the web that are saying stuff about what you want to know about. If you register for the site, you can receive updates via email. Filters are provided at the top to filter by team, player, video, etc. A widget can be added to your web site based on a filter as well that will list news on your blog/web page.

This will be great to follow BYU and the Utah Jazz.

There are a few features that I was expecting to see but couldn’t find anywhere.

Where is the blog? I know you’ll can send site news and info but I want to read about how you guys work. Get a blog.

I want to subscribe to my news via an RSS feed. This was key for me. And do you guys just search news sites or do you search blogs as well?

They could also add some other features such as adding images to your customized news page. It is not necessary to be a social network, but the site could use some networking features.

For the most part, when customizing my content, everything was there. A few reporters weren’t listed that I was hoping for. There were a few things that I found odd when adding college alumni.

After reading around a little, I noticed that there are some other sites that offer similar services. I need to take a look at those to do some comparing. SportsUltra fell a little short for me. I’d like to see some improvements in the next few months. I’ll definitely keep my eye on them.

Here are some other reviews:

• SportsUltra Offers Intuitive and Dynamic Custom News
• SportsUltra.com – The Sports News You Want
• New Sport Site Launches Today

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

I’m sick of creating a profile on just about every web site I visit. And then as I am looking for a job, companies want a copy of my resume (to only store, since they never look at it). This has become especially troublesome lately.

What happens if I update my resume? Each site that has my resume will not know about this change. And I realize this isn’t a problem that needs to be addressed immediately (my immediate needs include finding a job). Currently, I will update my resume on a site if I need to and I want a job bad enough from that employer. But if these employers want the best people, is their current solution the best way to go about it?

The same goes for every site wanting me to create a profile. I have created my share of sites where a profile is useful to each user and hopefully the site provided benefits to each of the users that went to the trouble to provide their personal information.

Let me give an example. When I first started my job search, I created a LinkedIn profile. I have been able to edit my profile, add contacts and have my contacts provide recommendations for me to be included on my profile.

Then last week I found Jobster. They have similar features once you create a profile. You are able to network with other users and have them added to your personal network. Although Jobster made it easy for me to import contacts, I noticed most of the contacts in my network on LinkedIn do not have a profile on Jobster.

I have already emailed some people to ask them to create a LinkedIn profile. Some have done so. Some I sure never will. But do you really think I want to do the same thing by emailing these same people to create a profile on Jobster and add me to the network? Not really.

I recognize that both LinkedIn and Jobster have very similar features, while some features are different. They both are trying to get me to use their network primarily.

What I am looking for is one place to be able to accomplish any task on the web. Ideally, it would be great if LinkedIn and/or Jobster provided an API to allow me and others to create a profile on my own web site and allow all the features that are provided on their own sites.

So when somebody is searching for a Java developer in Seattle, they are provided with my profile information that I updated on my own web site. Once they visit my site, they will also be provided with samples of my work, what I think about, perhaps a beautiful picture of myself. The point is I get to provide them with the information I want them to know and keep it updated on one site.

I know that many sites are starting to implement OpenID into their sites. For those who don’t know, OpenID provides a decentralized single sign-on system. This would make it so I don’t have to register on every site I visit. But not a lot sites support OpenID yet.

Back to the resume problem. It might be cool to have some kind of resume API or tagging system to provide to employers. They can then add it to their tools when trying to find somebody to fulfill a current job opening. I would just have to update my resume on my web site and I would still be found by those employers that need somebody with my skills.

Is there an opportunity here? Possibly.

I have heard a lot about people using their own web sites as a resume. I will be blogging more about that in the future.

Let me know what you think. Why does every site want my resume/profile? Why can’t I keep that information on my own web site?

I am just trying to upload some pictures to try them out. You can either upload each picture one-by-one (I refuse to do it that way) or use their slick drag-and-drop tool (it’s a java applet). There must be a limit to how many you can do cause after about 15 uploads, it does nothing.

I haven’t given up on photodot just yet. They seem like a great site with some cool features. They have free accounts but it is difficult to find the difference for a paid account.

So I guess my blog is paying off. If only I blogged more I could rise to the top.

If you all want to help me rise to the top, just make sure you link to me and my intriguing blog posts. From what I understand, there are two things to do to optimize search results. So if I want to rise to the top, I need to update my blog more often and I need other blogs and web sites to link to me.

Also you shouldn’t use aliases.

As long as I am asking for links, I thought I should update my own links. So far I have added only friends’ links. If you feel left out let me know so I can add you.

Josh, I too want to be “secure� but for some reason I don’t really give a rat’s arse if one of my ports are open.

To me, this was an interesting comment. I realize that this particular post could have been boring to some, but I felt it was important to document what I did. When doing research to find out how to do this task, it took time that I felt was unnecessary. Making this info public perhaps reduces the time to find this information for the next person looking for it.

The most important part of the post was telling people that I had my network scanned to see if I had any vulnerablities with how I had my networking configured. Everybody should run this test to make sure that their network is not vulnerable to attacks.

Maybe I should explain why it is important to not have any ports open, or more important to be stealth to the rest of the Internet.

A computer has many ports. It is through these ports that it receives incoming communication. For example, when surfing the Internet, you are most likely receiving the information through port 80. As explained on GRC:

Open ports are the result of something in your system or network deliberately preparing to accept unsolicited incoming connections from unknown and anonymous machines on the Internet. Due to the inherent difficulty of writing completely secure programming code, a high percentage of open ports are “exploitable” by malicious Internet hackers. This means that sooner or later some clever “exploit” could be crafted to take advantage of your open ports to gain an advantage without your knowledge or permission.

These open ports come from a number of sources. The main source and most frightening is an “out-of-the-box” Windows computer.

There are many aspects involved in computer security. This is just one of them. And it is easy to figure if you are vulnerable. Is security important to you?

After doing some research, I decided to make the DSL router act as a transparent bridge. This would allow me to use the DSL router solely as a DSL modem and plug it directly into the router.

So now I have my Netgear router doing everything that a router should be doing-WiFi, security, etc. I feel much better about it now. I also added WEP encryption. I was using no encryption before.

I chose WEP over the more secure WPA simply because I need WEP to use the WiFi connection with my Nintendo DS. Someday I would like to use both.

I also went over to grc.com to run the Shields Up! test. It’s a test to verify that you are safe. by checking to make sure all ports are closed, etc. I passed the test with flying colors. Everybody should make sure their network is secure by running the utility.

This has been on my list for a long time. It’s good to be secure.

First of all, if you keep your browser on your album for a while, there is a small sound bite that says “Hello?” in a very annoying way. Web pages should not speak to me unless requested to speak (video, sound bit, etc.).

I don’t like the interface. I don’t like the free version so why would I pay for a pro account. There are a lot of missing features that I would like to have.
To be fair, they do have some cool ideas for features. I don’t like how they were implemented though. It also can host videos as well.

I won’t waste a lot of time writing more about photobucket. They missed the boat. They have done something right, however, to be the top photo sharing site on the Internet.

I tried to go to the site at work, but since it tries to bypass the proxy server, it won’t allow me to even attempt it.