You made history today: nothing like this has ever happened before.  Tech companies and users teamed up.  Tens of millions of people who make the internet what it is joined together to defend their freedoms.  The free network defended itself.  Whatever you call it, the bottom line is clear: from today forward, it will be much harder to mess up the internet.

The really crazy part?  We might even win.

Approaching Monday’s crucial Senate vote there are now 35 Senators publicly opposing PIPA.  Last week there were 5.   And it just takes just 41 solid “no” votes to permanently stall PIPA (and SOPA) in the Senate.  What seemed like miles away a few weeks ago is now within reach.

But don’t trust predictions.  The forces behind SOPA & PIPA (mostly movie companies) can make small changes to these bills until they know they have the votes to pass.  Members of Congress know SOPA & PIPA are unpopular, but they don’t understand why–so they’re easily duped by superficial changes.  The Senate returns next week, and the next few days are critical.  Here are two things to think about:

1. Plan on calling your Senator every day next week.  Pick up the phone each morning and call your Senators’ offices, until they vote “no” on cloture.  If your site participated today, consider running a “Call the Senate” link all next week.

2. Tomorrow, drop in at your Senators’ district offices.  We don’t have a cool map widget to show you the offices nearest you (we’re too exhausted! any takers?).  So do it the old fashioned way: use Google, or the phonebook to find the address, and just walk in, say you oppose PIPA, and urge the Senator to vote “no” on cloture.  These drop-in visits make our spectacular online protests more tangible and credible.

That’s it for now. Be proud and stay on it!

–Holmes, Tiffiniy, and the whole Fight for the Future team.

___

P.S. Huge credit goes to participants in the 11/16 American Censorship Day protest: Mozilla, 4chan, BoingBoing, Tumblr, TGWTG, and thousands of others.  That’s what got this ball rolling!  Reddit, both the community and the team behind it, you’re amazing.  And of course, thanks to the Wikimedians whose patient and inexorable pursuit of the right answer brought them to take world-changing action. Thanks to David S, David K, Cory D, and E Stark for bold action at critical times.

P.P.S. If you haven’t already, show this video to as many people as you can. It works! http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa/

Back to my original point, the images.  They don’t work because the WordPress exporter/importer didn’t work like I expected it to when I backed up my blog before removing it from GoDaddy.  So, there you have it!  I will try to get the images working again, but I just wanted to clarify and decry SOPA and GoDaddy as much as I would like to decry Net Neutrality.  These are the good guys!  I guess no more Danica Patrick commercials for me.

One of the big reasons why Firefox has become so popular is because they have revolutionized the way we interact with our browsers with the integration of tabbed browsing.  Mozilla first started using tabbed browsing in 2001 and Thunderbird users have wanted this basic feature for years.  Tabs are finally a standard feature in Thunderbird.  Open one window and have your inbox and as many emails as you want opened at the same time, all in the same window, brilliant!  This has been the best new feature added to this latest release of Thunderbird.  However, there is one feature with the tabbed browsing that I would still like added.  When I want to compose a new message, I would like the window that opens up to become a tab.

Another cool feature added to Thunderbird is how they overhauled the ability to search your inboxes.  If you’re like me, you have more than one email address to manage; I have four that I use.  I can search a specific inbox or all of them.  There is also a cool statistics feature at the top of all your search results that is a bar graph of the emails you’ve received matching a search term through time.  You can click a certain week to get more detailed information about your search results and even down to the day.  This can be useful when monitoring your messaging patterns.  The new search also gives you the ability to narrow your search results by selecting a specific person, a mailing list, emails with attachments along with several other options to help you find that email from last year more efficiently.  The one thing I would like to change about the new  search is the way the information is displayed.  The search results all run together.  I wish each result was in its own little bubble with a background to make it stand out from the other results.  Despite this minor lack of detail, I am very pleased with the new search feature; it looks like Mozilla took a page from Google’s book.

Thunderbird was also nice enough to include some neat little bonus features.  For instance when you’re writing an email you may say something like; “Please read the attachment closely.”  Once you’re done typing the word ‘attachment,’ Thunderbird will politely remind you to include that attachment so you don’t look like an idiot if you forget to attach it.  I really like this feature because I have forgotten to include an attachment before.  That’s not the only keyword it works with, but definitely the most useful.

Thunderbird also created a nice handy integrated inbox as I’ve grown to call it.  Thunderbird now gives you a master inbox with the ability to micromanage all of your separate email accounts.  This makes my inbox more organized and it is easier to see all the information from all of my email accounts simultaneously.

One feature I would still like to see added (although I’m sure possible through plug-ins) is to have the address book become integrated with social networking sites like Facebook and Linkedin.  This would just make getting in touch with your contacts a little bit easier.

All in all, I give Thunderbird 3.0 a big thumb up.  It included some more basic features like the tabs and powerful search along with some wow features like the word recognition and search statistics.  Mozilla executed this upgrade well too; I haven’t noticed any bugs or crashes.  Thunderbird is known for the quality and security of Mozilla products along with the intuitive, clutter free interface that’s synonymous to all Mozilla products.  If you are a Thunderbird 2.0 user, I highly recommend the upgrade and if you’re still using Microsoft’s archaic and confusing Outlook, please switch to Thunderbird and give it a week; I’ll guarantee you will not want to switch back.

However, just because the internet is cheap, doesn’t mean you still can’t save even more money.  I’m also not saying that I can get you that fancy new $2,000 TV for $1,000 either.  But, in times like these where wallets are thinner than ever, it takes some creativity to find the best of the good deals.  All of the tips I’ll talk about today are ones that I personally use and I decided to publish an article like this because I get asked by people all the time how cheap I can get something.

The place I always go to first when trying to find anything is Google Product Search.  They scourer the internet and find all the websites that sell that item and compares the pricing.  Sometimes the prices are a little outdated but overall it can be a great first place to look.  Type in the product name and click search.  For example; Amazon lists the Logitech Harmony One Universal Remote at $199.99 plus shipping.  After heading over to Google Product Search, I typed in ‘Logitech Harmony One,’ clicked ‘Search Products,’ then clicked ‘Compare Prices,’ lastly I clicked on ‘Total Price,’ so I could see the price after shipping costs.  I am able to get the Logitech Harmony One shipped to my house for $179.77 thanks to Google.  That’s over $20 in savings for a minute of my time!

My next tip involves Amazon.  Usually Amazon already has the best price and it’s a great website with great service and fast shipping.  If you use Amazon as much as I do, sign up for Amazon Prime.  I have been a member of Amazon Prime for years now and I love it!  It costs $79.00 a year, but you get free 2-day shipping on most items and you can upgrade to $3.99 1-day shipping.  Another plus is that you can share you Amazon Prime with up to 4 other household members.  Get them to chip in to split the costs.  By the numbers, if you buy from Amazon once a month or more you could be saving money and time by getting Amazon Prime.

The third tip I have for you involves a neat little site many people never heard of known as RetailMeNot.com.  This website allows users to enter in promotional codes that websites use to give people free shipping or discounts.  When I go there I search the website that I am interested in buying something from and I look through the various promotional codes and I try some of them out.  This can be very hit or miss as a lot of the codes have expired or are not relevant to your order and some websites do not allow users to submit promotional codes.  Every now and then, you find a jewel on this website that knocks 10% off your order or gives you free shipping.

The newest tip I have involves eBay.  They have a brand new program called eBay Bucks that is currently invite only and I got lucky and got an invite!  Soon it will be made available to everyone.  It’s free and it gets you 2% back on all of your purchases on eBay.  Every 3 months, eBay will issue you an eBay Bucks certificate for use on eBay towards future purchases.  There are some clauses however.  You must pay using PayPal and it doesn’t apply to purchases in eBay Motors, classifieds or real estate.

The last big tip I have for you applies mainly to college students.  Myself being one I know how expensive textbooks are.  My tip to you is to buy international versions.  These are the same thing as what you can buy at your bookstore, but are made for people in developing countries.  Often times they say “Not for sale in US,” and the price will be in rupees instead of dollars and they are almost always in black and white and soft cover.  You are allowed to own these, it’s not illegal and some bookstores even buy them back from you too.  I buy the international version of every book I can and use Google Product Search to find them.  On average I save about $70 a book or $210 a semester which means $420 a year or $1,680 over my 4 years in college.

There are many more ways to try and find the best deal on the internet but these are the highlights and secrets of my success to saving hundreds of dollars or more every year on the web.  The last piece of advice I have is to be creative and look around the internet, some websites sell products from several merchants and consider buying used and refurbished items.  Also, keep an eye on websites like Woot.com and 1SaleADay.com.