Dear people of the world:  Stop everything…right now.  This is a momentous occasion.  Are you sitting down?  Well, stand up.  Then sit down again.  Okay, here it goes: Twitter, the mogul of all things 140 characters, has made an announcement this week.  And here it is.

They have redesigned their site!  Well, it’s not final as of yet, but if you are a lucky twitterer you may randomly get to see it play out on your profile.  This preview option appears as a bar across the top of the webpage (secretly mentioning that a new version of Twitter is here) and if clicked, a whole new world of short, social networking appears.

So here’s a quick breakdown.  The left side of the new webpage design contains the tweets from your peers and colleagues, and one might say that there is nothing new about that.  But is this the case?  As you scroll down the page, previous tweets keep on showing up in real time.  Clicking for older tweets is no longer necessary; the tweets come to you.

The right side of the new design initially shows nothing, but as one hovers over tweets on the left, pictures, hashtags, video, and other useful information will appear on the right side of the page.  Is that cool or what?  Currently sites like YouTube, Flickr, TwitPic, and a few others are coordinating with Twitter to allow their media formats to be shown in the right viewing pane, and more will probably follow once the new site design fully rolls out in the coming weeks.  Along with all these sleek new features, things like messages, retweets, and mentions will be moved to a location above the timeline and a large search bar will be incorporated to the top of the page.

All the new site features are listed here.  If you do get to try out this new swag on your Twitter account, be sure to use the hashtag #NewTwitter to let the developers know what you think is working well and what is not.  After all, Twitter is a community first and foremost.  And for those who don’t get to try it out… well, I’ve heard counting ceiling tiles helps pass the time.

P.S. Here is a video presentation about the new Twitter.  Does the ending feel paradoxical to you?

The post Twitter Gives the Fail Whale a Break and Updates its Site first appeared on Techerator.

It’s only been a few weeks since I wrote my last article about an update that patched 32 critical security holes in Adobe software, but here I am again.  Since you’re all my internet buddies, I’d like to let you know that Adobe just released a new patch for their software but it might only notify you if you manually check for updates.

Sure, it seems odd to me that they would say things like “This update addresses customer issues and security vulnerabilities” but make you find the update for yourself.  You know, because you’re always opening Adobe Reader, clicking Help, then selecting Check for Updates for fun.

This specific update addresses a few vague issues, but I’d still recommend doing it right away.  For more information, check out Adobe’s Release Notes or read the specific update information below.

Enhancements for security (including a zero-day fix), performance enhancements, bug fixes, improved browser support, and Updater improvements.

Internet high-five goes to Steve Gibson for this tip.

The post Important Adobe Update Available, But There’s a Catch – You Might Need to Update Manually first appeared on Techerator.

To help decrease the size of update download, you can install the Presto plug-in for yum.  With the Presto plug-in, yum now has the ability to download only the changes in the packages, called deltarpms, and not the complete package.  Using yum-presto can reduce the total download size anywhere from 60 to 80 %.

Installation

Installing the Presto plug-in for yum is done with the line below.

sudo yum install yum-presto

After the plug-in installs, update your system with

sudo yum update

I have had a very good experience with yum-presto.  Recently I performed a new installation of Fedora on a system and without the Presto plug-in, I would have had to download around 400+ MB of updates.  With Presto, I was able to download all updates in only 112 MB.

Have you heard of the Presto plug-in for yum?  What other yum plug-ins have you used?  Let us know in the comments below.

The post Decrease Fedora Update Time With yum-presto first appeared on Techerator.

Updating Firefox with Ubuntuzilla

Step 1: Download the correct version of the .deb installer from Ubuntuzilla’s download page.  Once downloaded, install it by double clicking the .deb file and follow the instructions.

Step 2: Close Firefox completely.  This may present some problems since you’re likely reading this guide from within Firefox, so write down the next steps or print this page.

Step 3: Start Ubuntuzilla by opening Terminal (typically under Applications –> Accessories –> Terminal or press ALT+F2 and type gnome-terminal.  Type the following command to start the program:

ubuntuzilla.py -a install -p firefox

Step 4: Ubuntuzilla will ask you to confirm the correct version of Firefox, choose a language (US English users will want to use option 14), confirm your language choice, and enter your password before installing.  Once you have completed those steps, Ubuntuzilla will backup your current settings and begin downloading and installing the newest version of Firefox.

Step 5: If everything went well, you should see The new Firefox version X.X.X (fill in the blanks) has been installed successfully. Before finishing, Ubuntuzilla will give you the option let it automatically check for updates to Firefox and notify when they are available.

The newest version of Firefox will now be installed – it can be launched from your Applications menu or by typing firefox in Terminal.

Manually Updating Firefox Later

If a new version of Firefox is released and you want to update without performing a full reinstallation, you can use Firefox’s built-in update feature to streamline the process.

Step 1: Close Firefox completely.

Step 2: Enter one of the following commands in Terminal to launch Firefox as a root user:

In Gnome:  gksudo firefox &
In KDE:  kdesu firefox &

Make sure to type gksudo and not just sudo! Sudo will mess up your profile permissions, according to Ubuntuzilla’s wiki page.

Step 3: In Firefox, click Help –> Check for Updates.  If an update is available, it will be downloaded.  Click Restart Firefox Now when prompted.  Firefox will restart as root again, so close and re-open it and you are finished.

The post How to Automatically Install the Newest Version of Firefox in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope first appeared on Techerator.