Club Linux Coffs Harbour

At OpenPC Labs
37 Orlando St,
Coffs Harbour NSW 2450

Hugh gave us a presentation on Firefox tips and tricks, and some of the new features of GNOME 2.14.  To the best of my recollection, here are some of the topics covered, with accompanying linkage (Please add anything I've missed in the comments):

• Introduction to Firefox. Aimed at Windows™ users, so ignore the installation section.
• Introduction to Firefox, v1.5 edition.  Updated version of the above, which doesn't seem to cover new features particularly, just updates the screenshots.
• Firefox 1.5 Release Notes
• Firefox 1.5.0.1 Release Notes
• Unofficial Changelogs for Firefox Releases.  Incredibly detailed list of changes.

• RSS at Wikipedia
• XML.com: What is RSS? (a bit technical)

• Mozilla Firefox: RSS and Live Bookmarks

• Sage feed reader extension for Mozilla Firefox

GNOME 2.14

• GNOME 2.14 Press Release
• GNOME 2.14 Release Notes

• Rhythmbox
• The version of Rhythmbox shipped with GNOME 2.14 now supports Audioscrobbler...
• ...which automatically adds the tracks you play to an online database which can be used by sites like last.fm to produce recommendations of other music you might like.
• I've set up a Coffs Coast Australia group on last.fm. If you have a last.fm account, please add yourself to that group.
• ...and I can add you to the last.fm Recent Tracks RSS aggregation on our site.
• FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) produces audio files approx 50% the size of the uncompressed data, with no loss of quality.  It's produced by xiph.org, the same people responsible for Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora, Speex, and other great free multimedia goodies.
• Ogg Vorbis is the "lossy" audio file format of choice for free software users and discerning people generally.  Generally held to produce better quality at similar, or even smaller, file sizes than MP3 or WMA files.  And unlike MP3 or WMA, Ogg Vorbis is not proprietary or patent-encumbered, so it's free software-friendly.
• Musepack is a relatively new codec, not supported by a lot of software or hardware yet, which claims superior quality at higher bitrates.  I'd always assumed it was proprietary, but their website claims it's open and patent-free.  Cool.