Usefull Firefox Extensions (A Firefox Extension Overview)
Since Firefox 1.5 came out, there's been a lot of discussion about the plug-ins people are using to make the browser more customized. For those new to this concept, one of the elements that makes Firefox so compeling is not just that is small in size and uses little resources, but the ability for users to create and add elements to the browser so that it has everything you want. With thousands of plug-ins built and more being built every day, most of what you might want if you designed Firefox from the top down for yourself. Some are toolbars, like IE traditionally has, some are extra search engines for the instant search box. Here is the list of plug-ins I currently use either at home or in the office for different reasons (if you don't have firefox, use the button the bottom right of this page to download):
del.icio.us extension - adds buttons and right-click menus to instantly view your del.icio.us page, as well as to instantly tag the page you are viewing, including all features of the del.icio.us pages without having to go to the add page every time you want to save something new. makes web-based bookmarking seamless.
Session Saver - An invaluable tool that saves your browser state. If Firefox or your computer crashes, this reloads Firefox next time you open it with all of the tabs you had open to all of the sites you had been viewing, in as many different browser windows as you were using at the time of the crash.
Performancing Blog Tool - blog from directly within firefox via a split screen view; compatible with many of the standard blog tools, and utilizes drag/drop from websites. You can import pictures, choose categories (when applicable), and delete posts all without leaving the page you are on.
Pearl Crescent Page Saver - ads the ability to take a complete screen grab of a site you are visiting, including the information out of view, and saves to a png file.
BugMeNot - ads right-click menu option to fill out site log-ins with submitted passwords from bugmenot registration site, allowing quick access to sites you may not want to waste time registering for (news sites, etc).
Send-to-Phone - text message web content you highlight on a page or type into a box directly in your browser, brought to you by google. User receives a prompting text before the actual message, so pay attention to carrier fees.
Gmail Notifier - get instant alerts when you receive a new email to your gmail account.
IE Tab - allows you to open page made for Internet Explorer only directly in an IE optimized tab in firefox. This is significant for many media pages on MTV, AOL, and anything Microsoft, among other things. Also many sites that have heavy form submission only work correctly in IE.
Viamatic Foxpose - pushing a key combination causes all open panels to be displayed at once in a grid that easily lets you choose which you want to view. This is based on what Mac already allows users to do to view what programs are open at once, but doesnt run as smoothly.
download statusbar - shows files being downloaded from the web in the bottom statusbar of your browser rather than causing an extra window download manager to open just for the file download.
Feed your reader - allows you to use the one touch feed notification in Firefox to add feeds to any common feed reader, rather than just the top link bar. For example, you can now add feeds to BlogLines by clicking the orange RSS icon that firefox uses to announce an available feed.
All-in-one Sidebar - sidebar management tool that lets you switch easily between various sidebars, including extension manager, bookmarks, history, download manager, in-page media, and even load website in a sidebar panel.
Tab sidebar - as an alternate to foxpose, this displays all current tabs as preview thumbnails in a sidebar of the browser.
Reveal - another alternate to foxpose, that offers a more interactive interface and a zoom feature that lets you magnify sections of a website. Also adds preview panes to the history buttons when you mouse over.
Google Toolbar - adds instant google searches, blogging, spell check, and other features, and is capable of being mixed into the browser so that it doesn't look like an independent toolbar.
Yahoo Toolbar - instant access to all of the yahoo daily management features, like calendar, myweb, etc, and built to work with Firefox commands like opening in new tabs.
Icerocket, Technorati Search - add blog search engines, torrent search engines, and various other quick search options to the instant search box in your upper right. Reach these immediately by hitting (CTR+K).
A (somewhat) Brief Look at Search
This is a (somewhat) brief overview of search and the look into the types of resources available to find everything you want on the internet. This article covers the main search engines, specialized types of search, blog (buzz) search, and combined (metacrawler) search.
Cnet released a few weeks ago a thorough ranking on search engines, reviewing what types of search features are available on each popular engine, and how well they perform in various categories. In honor of this I wanted to put forth some links and notes on some different places to search when what you are looking for isn't so simply available. Research utilizing one engine simply isn't as thorough as it once was, so let this be a starting point for greater things. This is by no means a complete list, but it gives you the opportunity to explore some different methods of search and is a well-rounded starting point.
The Big Three:
1.
Google2.
Yahoo!3.
MSNThese account for the majority of searches, and share many of the basic features (features also found in smaller engines)- plain search, image search, and news search among the most starndard.
The Specialties:
4.
Ask JeevesAsk Jeeves gained steam as an engine designed to respond to inquisitive statements. It will give you ansers to to queries posed in question form, such as "what is the origin of baseball?", and has tried hard to continue the tradition by building a very assisted search engine. When possible, the engine will return results with additional words to try, suggested words to remove, and related search terms. It will also give you a specific site that (attempts) to answer your question, if you formed one, and provide one touch access to related information that you might be seeking on a daily basis. For example, if you look up "baseball", there will be one touch access to "scores" and "schedules", as well as a drop-down menu for every mlb team's Ask Jeeves homepage.
5.
a9 Searcha9 is a search program built under the Amazon umbrella, and because of that maintains a slew of features designed to bring online shopping to the next level. You have the ability to load on one page several columns that basically run seperate searches for your search term in a different applications. Among the most unique are Amazon Books, IMDB Movies, and a9 Yellow Pages. Amazon books lets you search into any books the company sells for actual pages, and can actually be used to read a whole book entirely on the web. The Yellow Pages feature, though, is really impressive. The majority of the streets in major cities have been photographed, and when you find your location you see a frontal picture of the store. Once there, you can actually scroll through images of the entire street, viewing store by store what is in the area near the initial location you were looking at.
6.
AOL SearchAOL Search is more of an assisted search program. As you type in search items, it makes suggestions as to what you want. After you make you search it gives you suggested spots based on popular or official sites, such as Sports Illustrated. Also on top is a "snapshot" of your term. If you look up a singer, for example, it gives you links to their photos, videos, and music. Additionally, there are also categories in a bar on the left where your search term shows up, so that you can specify what you'd like. AOL's search pretty much continues the trend of their main service, which is to make the web smaller and more accessible for the user.
7.
Ice RocketIce Rocket is not a relatively well known search engine, but it has one feature it's trying to sell through as its money resource - the blog search. It's specifically seperated out the ability to search through blogs for current news in the blogosphere. Ontop of its basic Blog search, it also has a tool that graphs the quanitity of postings about subjects you specify over a period of time. Both of these tools allow you to track the buzz on a specific subject. Finally, for those bored who want to find a subject to look up, it has a live scrolling page of all the searches happening in real time on Ice Rocket.
More Blog Search Tools
Searching blogs, as addressed in the section about "Ice Rocket", is significant not only for the information that can be found in them, but because it gives you the opportunity to gain real-time knowledge of what the world is talking about. With everyone becoming a journalist, research is not simply about the facts, but about the perception. Blog search tools can bring that knowledge to yours hands. Here are three tools designed specifically to search blogs:
8.
Technoranti9.
Blogpulse10.
BlogLinesCombined Search Engine Tools
Aside from using specific search engines, there are several pages that have been built with the purpose of agregating engines. Some aggregate the results to give you the highest ranked sites by average (called Metacrawlers), and some give you results side by side to compare engine rankings. Here are a few tools that can be used for these purposes:
11.
DogpileDogpile combines the search results of Google, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves. Your search produces results as an aggregate of the three; However, after the initial search, you have the option to ad columns on the results page with specific results for any and all of those engines. This way you can compare result rank and see a variety of results at once.
12.
DoubleTrustDoubleTrust compares results between Google and Yahoo and gives you a long chart of results. First it displays the results that come up in both engines, then it gives you seperate breakdowns of the "orphan" results that show up in google or yahoo. It also gives you the opportunity to specify which engine you trust more, and gives more priority to those results.
13.
TwingineThis was formerly called "Yagoohoo!gle. The page basically allows you to do a search, and then splits your screen in two to display Google and Yahoo side by side with your search results. In addition, when you click on links it only takes you to the page on the half of the screen you are using at that moment. This isn't much in the way of offering something very unique, but its an easy way to explore different searches together.
14.
Xtra-GoogleThis page is one of the most complete search engine pages I've ever come across. While its initial purpose is to lay out all of the types of search and utilities that Google has to offer, it also pulls together a myriad of tools to do almost any search across countless engines. In pretty much every case it gives you a slew of options and combines the results of many to funnel popular results of any type of search directly to you. This is the ultimate "metacrawler", and there are a variety of methods of search to explore.
Again, this is not meant to be an all-encompasing look at the world of search engines. There are many, many more engines, metacrawlers, and tools that give you different ways to search. In particular, I have not included any engines that give you a snapshot of the page results directly with your search. This is a good starting point, though, and gives a strong overview of what the world of search has to offer.
-kbs
New Sony mp3 Player (Psyc NW Series)
Sony caught its Walkman Series up to date with its recent release, the Sony Psyc, which I purchased a few weeks ago in an unusually impulsive move on my part (Sony NW-E105 Network Walkman to be exact). Basically the Sony mp3 players are flash-based, which makes them light and small, and also not large in capacity. There are a handful of options when looking for an mp3 player of this type, but at this point in time you pretty much are deciding between the Sony players and the more popular iPod shuffle, which is in the same price range ($99).
[You can pay more for different features by other companies but the closer you get to the $200 range it is somewhat pointless to look at flash mp3 players, and hard drive hard drive based players are an entirely different story which I don’t want to get into with this article]
There are definitely pluses and minuses with both the Sony and the iPod, as well as many similarities. Both players are Small and light enough to fit in a shirt pocket without you feeling it, or wearing one on a lanyard around your neck (which I believe the iPod comes with). And both hold 512 MB of music in the 99$ model, which translates into varying amounts of music based on compression rates.
Sony Psyc mp3 Player
Outside of the basic specs, there are many reasons l chose the Sony over the iPod. First of all, the Sony has an LCD Screen so you can view which songs are playing and your settings. You also have more playing options. You can play Straight through, or you can play random. Additionally, you can make play-lists or folders that you can play in exclusively. With the iPod, on the other hand, there is no screen to show you what you are playing, and there is only a single switch that restricts you to playing all of your music either straight through a randomly.
Sony Psyc mp3 Player vs. Silver Dollar
While in the above cases the Sony is by far better, other elements are personal preference. The Sony runs on a single AAA battery and plays for up to 70 hours without replacement. This far exceeds the length of any mp3 player on the market, but requires replacements rather than a recharge. On one hand, this can be more costly but on the other hand you never have to worry about finding away to recharge on a trip (you likely won't have to and there are always more AAA batteries to be found). The iPod chargeable battery, in comparison, is known to lose charge capacity after a year, so if you plan on holding onto it for a while you should consider that.
iPod Shuffle vs. Trident Gum
One instance where the iPod is far better is its ability to double as a flash drive. Take the cap off the iPod Shuffle and you will be able to plug directly into any USB port, to either load or unload songs, or transfer any other files. You won’t use the player as a flash drive exclusively, because there isn’t much room if you want much music, but the option is nice and the ability to load or unload songs on the fly is very cool. The Sony instead requires its proprietary software to load or unload music (unless you want to completely reformat the drive), and requires a cord to connect. You can store files on the mp3 player, but the music files are converted a bit so you can’t just swap in mp3’s through a random USB port. With this and the fact that you need a chord to connect to a computer, the Sony is simply not easily capable of doubling as a flash drive.
All considered, it may come down to appearance. In my opinion, the iPod Shuffle is bland, boring, an unexciting to carry around. The Sony Psyc is just more fun to have, because it looks like something rather than a piece of plastic you found on the ground. I like the colors, the style, and the shape, which fits easily in the palm of the hand. And if you do decide to wear it on your neck while running or something, it won't look out of sort.
-kbs
Blogger (a Google Aquisition)
While the general impression of blogging is that it is meant for an online journal, the reason it has caught on is because the technology allows for one or many people to add to and develop content of a dynamic site at the same time. What makes a site interesting is the freshness of content, and a blogging tool allows you to continually publish without worrying about other aspects of site building.
Google's "Blogger" tool has some limits in its functionality, but it’s incredibly easy to submit posting and application extensions have broken through some of its limits. You also have extensive control over style and can eliminate even the last small reference to Google. You can eliminate the search bar and Blogger icon, which is surprising for a free application. You can also control the overall style the site through CSS and enter limited CSS in the individual postings. You can also choose to let Google host your site or publish it to your own server. If you choose this, you can use CSS to replicate other pages of a site you built and fit it in seamlessly.
Blogger Dashboard 
For posting itself you have the opportunity to limit who can post with permission settings and invitations to join the site. You can also limit whether or not people can comment on other postings and how those will appear- either staggered or on a unique page per post. If you choose to allow commenting, then the option will show up a specified invitation icon below each post.
As far as publishing, there are several options, all of which offer you to select any of the Blogger blogs you are a member of. Yon can use the "blog this" button in the Google search bar if you have left this feature on. After clicking, a pop up window will open with the various options. You can also return to your Blogger interface (called the dashboard) and post from there. In addition to these traditional methods, you can activate an email address for anyone to email to that will directly translate the text to a post. You can also activate a phone number that will allow people to call in messages that will get posted as a music file.
Blogger Settings
Beyond these options there are applications you can download to extend the functionality of the blog and allow you to easily post photos to the site. Google has ownership of two photo programs that interact with each other- 'Picasa' and 'Hello'. Picasa is a powerful photo-sorting program that, among other things, can export a series of pictures with html code, which you can post on a server (not provided) and have as a stand-alone picture page. However, you can also export individual pictures to Hello, which is their picture-messaging tool. With Hello, you can email photos with your Gmail account (if you have one), instant message photos will any one else who has the application, or post to any of your blogs with a message and a photo. The program limits you to one photo per post, but with some simple copying of code you can pull pictures together within the Blogger interface (after uploading each to individual posts, like I have done on this blog).
Blogger Searchbar
The final addition I’ll mention the extensibility of Blogger is a surprising one. ‘Flickr’, a popular photo community that was just purchased by Yahoo!, actually allows you, or anyone given permission through your blog, to select any photo in the Flickr community and post it directly to your blog. You have complete control over layout of the post and size of the photo, and the photo links back to the Flickr album of origin. While Flickr was initially independent, it’s still unlike Yahoo and Google to have this compatibility. Still, Flickr is a strong website that will only grow in functionality with its acquisition by Yahoo, and the posting capability is much appreciated.
That’s all on this, any questions or comments feel free to contact me.
- kbs
Yahoo! Information Suite
I've become mildly addicted to what I'll call here the
Yahoo! Information Suite. Yahoo!, from what I can tell, has brought together more customizable information in an easy to use and easy to sync fashion than any other computer super-power out there. While I was, and am, a huge google fan for reasons i'll reach into in my next article, today I'm going to try and give insite into the incredibly broad amount of things you can now do if you hand your life over to Yahoo!
Though it would take forever to uncover all of the applications available within Yahoo!, i'll list a few here to start:
The calendar program
The calendar program is actually several applications built into one. It handles your calendar, your email, your contacts, your events list, and your notepad/to do lists. Because it contains all of these applications, you can diversify your calendar to not only include everything in your life you have to do or remember, but you can also include everyone else you want to pass on this information to as well. You can share your calendar with contacts, you can set the application to send invites to anyone you specify from your address book when you book an appointment, you can have events emailed to you, you can even have reminders text messaged to you as well. You can also set the calendar to include any birthdays you've built into your events list, you can have the weather for various locations added to each day, and you can have the schedules of various sports teams you define placed into your calendar as well.
If you download Yahoo! Messenger you can even put all of this on your desktop. You will see today's scheduled events, your to do list, and direct access to all of your contacts/information. You can have reminders instant messaged to you, can view your personalized scoreboard, weather, and unread email.
The toolbar
The Yahoo! toolbar really becomes an extension of your calendar, with browsing features built in. It allows you to choose which of a myriad of features you want including one-click access to your email, calendar, and personal Yahoo! pages. It also alerts you when you have new email. Beyond the calendar integration, it also greatly enhances your browser features. There is a built in pop-up blocker and virus scanner, both of which turn on or off at your command. You can also import your bookmarks from any browser onto your yahoo toolbar, which is convenient for when you load it on several computers. The latest feature added to the toolbar is that it instantly alerts you if any pages you are on have RSS/Atom feeds, and allows you to add them from the toolbar directly to a Yahoo! customizable homepage, which I will discuss next.
Yahoo! Homepage
Somewhat unique to the Yahoo! homepage platform is that can actually build as many pages as you want, all brought up through a menu on your homepage. For my purposes, I have the primary page include my day to day features, then I have secondary page that handles the things I want to check every once in a while, and finally a third page that I add RSS feeds to. We can go over each individually.
The start page: If you're choosing my route, this page can include updates of all of the different information you pull together on Yahoo! I include a module that shows my recent emails, the next 3 days of my calendar, my personal briefcase (of which you can store 30 mb of files), the weather for the various places i'll be during the day, my fantasy sports teams, today's news, and today's comics.
My second page: Here I bring together the various things I might want entertainment oriented every once in a while. Yahoo! displays the line-ups for the channels I choose, the movies playing at the theaters I choose, new and upcoming movie release information, my stock portfolio, and my photo albums. The photo albums in particular are worth noting, since Yahoo! gives you unlimited storage and allows to set several different sharing permissions.
RSS Feeds: The third page I use as a place to put all of the RSS feeds I collect from sites I go to. This basically allows you to check for new content on as many sites as you choose, all at once. Any feeds added will show you the top 5 articles added in the last 3 days on any of the sites you choose.
ConclusionThis is just a quick snapshot of the several opportunities through Yahoo! you have to completely customize, contain, and share the information and resources in your life you want continued access to. Yahoo! has also added sync capabilities so that you can transfer and update your calendar, email, contacts, to do: list, and various other things directly with your hand-held pcs. There are hundreds of more features available, but this gives you information on where to start, and if you have any questions or suggestions, let me know.
- KBS
