Network Solutions Buys MonsterCommerce

I've been using MonsterCommerce to host the shopping cart for a few of my larger clients for several years now. There have been a few ups and downs, but this once very small company has grown and thrived throughout the years.

This year the "St. Louis Business Journal ranked MonsterCommerce as the fastest-growing business in the region -- expanding sales by 812 percent between 2002 and 2004." Considering they took in $12 million this year, those are some very impressive numbers indeed.

Earlier this year Network Solutions decided to go shopping for, well, for a shopping cart company. And after looking at several companies, they settled on MonsterCommerce.

Read more from MSNBC:
MonsterCommerce bought by giant Network Solutions

I wish all the best to MonsterCommerce as they look to double their staff and continue to expand and innovate in 2006 and beyond.

First Expos of 2006

Barbara Hardie's first 2 Alternative Connections Expos of 2006 are posted on her web site.

Sunday, January 29, 2006
Crowne Plaza Hotel
Cromwell, CT

Sunday, March 26, 2006
Best Western Royal Plaza Hotel
Marlborough, MA

For more information, including expo agendas, visit AngelConnections.com

Firefox 1.5 Is Awesome

Well it's out, and has been for a little while now... the final release of Firefox 1.5 from Mozilla.

I installed it towards the end of November and got to say that it's better then ever! If you're still using MSIE, you really need to switch. Even casual web surfers are missing out on so much. And if you're a power user such as myself, you'll never go back to MSIE once you make the switch. For security alone you'd want to switch, but there are just so many great features in the program.

If you need some help in the transition from the "dark side" of MSIE, you can check out "Firefox: How to..." The unofficial guide to Firefox. If you hurry you can buy it for just $17, but the price will be going up soon.

Besides the standard features, you can also add on extentions that increase the fuctionality of Firefox. Once you have tabbed browsing setup, you may want a quick way to navigate between tabs. I just got an extention called foXpose, which allows you to see a small screen shot of all of your tabs and jump quickly from one to another. I've seen this sort of thing for every window on a Mac, now at least you can use it for web surfing.

You can find and search all the available extentions on the Firefox Add-ons page.

Some other favorites are; BetterSearch (add screenshots to search engine results pages), Sage (RSS Feed Reader), Deskcut, Forecastfox, Tab Clicking Options, BlankLast (for tabs) and NoScript for that extra bit of security. And when you've got a good list of extentions installed, get InfoLister to keep a record of all the extentions, plugins and themes you have.