Firefox 3 is released! I have used it for a few weeks already, and am very happy with it. (Update: a day-and-a-half later, it has been downloaded over ten million times!)

Among these recommended extensions, I find a few especially useful: Ablock Plus, All-in-One Sidebar, Customize Google. DownloadHelper, Foreastfox, IE Tab, PDF Download, PicLens, Menu Editor, QuickNote.

Another benefit of Firefox is that this site actually looks good on it! (I noticed recently that the single page view is a little off with Internet Explorer - all lower case letters, the comment field is not in the right position, etc. I’ll look into it at some point.)

I see that Eckhart Tolle is doing an online class for Oprah’s book club. A genuine mystic who goes mainstream and reaches thousands and thousands of people. It is actually quite astounding. It is free, and anyone can sign up.

Here is an opportunity to hear Adyashanti live (there is also audio/video from his talks on his website and YouTube).

Dear Friends of Adyashanti,

We are happy to announce the premiere of Radio Adyashanti on the internet. This will be a live broadcast beginning with a talk by Adyashanti followed by call-in questions from people around the world. Please join our beta test of this exciting new offering.

Radio Adyashanti
6-8pm Pacific Time
Thursday, April 26, 2007

If you live in the US, call 1-800-997-7182.

If you live outside the US, please call 408-938-0476.

If you would like to email a question for Adyashanti, please send it to radio@adyashanti.org. Please limit your question to 2 or 3 sentences.

Radio Adyashanti is just one part of a whole media site called Café Dharma—dedicated to offering immediate access to Adyashanti’s teachings.

During the beta test of this radio program, you’ll have access to the radio show and also to the audio download area of Café Dharma. You will notice that we also have video and podcast areas—these will be activated in the future.

The Blogisattva awards for 2006 have been announced. The winner of the blog of the year award is Integral Options Café, which is well deserved for its quality, consistency and comprehensiveness (it is one of the few blogs I regularly read.) The rest of the list is also worth taking a look at.

The premier award, Blog of the Year, Svaha!, goes to Bill Harryman’s Integral Options Café [link] the fulsome and intellectually hefty — yet fun, smooth, easy and delightful — carnival of information and insight. Bill has a broad and sophisticated palate of what is worthwhile and interesting and has an ability to sweep his readers in to his world of treasures and responsible living. We learn to stay fit; eat right; take care of body and mind, but we are not being lectured to by a finger-wagging nag. Bill gives us things to do, fun to find and insights that come from his challenging, interesting life and then adds thoughtful essays that are finely crafted, masterfully done, about Buddhism informed by Integral theory.

The new issue of Holons has a selection of integral blogs, and the annual Blogisattva award nominees (including this blog…!) for Buddhist blogs has been announced. Lots of good blogs on both lists, and worthwhile checking out.

I recently came across LibraryThing, an online service that allows you to enter books from your library, tag them, find similar lists from others, put a list up on your blog, and so on.

I found that it was very easy and surprisingly quick to enter books, and it is quite interesting to look at similar and overlapping book lists out there. It can also be helpful if I sometime in the future would want to replace lost books.

There are of course lots of similar and other interesting internet services out there, including three that allows for money-free exchange of books: BookMooch, What’s On My Bookshelf and SwapSimple.

I have been watching some nonduality (advaita, zen, buddhism) video snippets on YouTube. There are quite a few of them there already, and I am sure more to come. Here is one of several of Adyashanti, amazingly fresh and clear as he usually is.

sI switched to blogger beta a couple of days ago, which propelled me to explore some of the technical aspects of blogging, including lots of troubleshooting!

As a reminder for myself (and maybe others), here are some good places for free, and sometimes Open Source, information and utilities…

Blogger support

Blogger Talk to US - to contact blogger support

Blogger Help Group - google group for blogger questions/answers

The Real Blogger Status - up-to-date, practical blogger hints and tips

Utilities

FeedBurner - easy and flexible feed management

Google Analytics - keep track of visitors

Technorati - one way to keep track of who links to your blog

HTTrack Website Copier - backup your whole blog, or any other website

Hint: Under “options”, go to “limits”. Set maximum mirroring depth to 2 to capture front page and any internal links from front page. If there is an archive on the front page linking to all pages in the blog, then these will be captured. Set maximum external depth to 0 to not capture any external sites.

Mozilla

And while we are on the topic…

Firefox - excellent open source browser

Thunderbird - excellent open source email application

MozBackup - backup Firefox and Thunderbird settings and files

Firefox extensions I find useful:

• Adblock - blocks ads, easy and effective
• Adblock Filterset Updater - automatic updates of the adblock filterset
• All-In-One Sidebar - anything that would be a separate window comes up in a sidebar
• Blogger Web Comments - see what bloggers say about any webpage
• Customize Google - customize and add functionality to Google searches
• Menu Editor - edit any Firefox menu
• One-Click Answers - alt+click and get a definition of a word or other information
• Performancing - convenient, easy to use blog editor
• Scrapbook - save whatever webpage you are looking at
• Session Saver - starts up Firefox where you left it
• Super DragAndGo - click and drag links to open, words to define, images to save
• QuickNote - easy way to make notes while using Firefox
• Wizz RSS News Reader - easy to use