If you didn’t read my last post about PicLens, you should. I want to highlight a few of the really cool features this addon has. I have had a bit more time now to play with it, and I’m very impressed. Even more so than when I started using it. Last night, while I was lounging around surfing the web I decided to check out the discover mode available from this Addon. The one thing I couldn’t do was to take a screenshot of it to show you. I didn’t spend too much time trying to get one, but it seems that the hotkeys for taking screenshots in OS X aren’t available while using PicLens. But that’s not a big deal, I’ll try to explain what I saw. Continue Reading “Follow-up, PicLens awesomeness.” »

If you are a bit of a techie and like free stuff, you might want to check out Sun’s latest marketing scheme! Basically if you try their latest OS, Solaris 10. And if you register it then they say they’ll send you $50.00 in Restaurant certificates.

Last time I tried a similar $50.00 in certificates for your info or time, it was a success. The chamber of commerce (I think) had a promotion a few months ago that if you registered with them they’d send you fifty dollars for free. I was dubious but after about a week I got my coupons in the mail and lo and behold they were authentic and usable. I ended up not using them because my girlfriend also got a bunch and we used those. The rest had expired by the time we wanted to use them but the pack came with two $20.00 coupons for dinner and one for $10.00 for lunch I believe. They were all valid at a number of good places.

Anyway… I wonder if this is something similar.

update - Doh, forgot to give you the link! (https://communications.sun.com/sunSat/c/slb2_Reg_50_4360.html)

Good morning!

I’m glad that you’re back for the weekly Firefox add on review. If you missed some of the previous ones, check out the Firefox link on the right.

Today I’ll show you about Autocopy. It is a very simple extension and if you’re not familiar with this concept, the first and only question you may ask is “Why?”. Why do you want this? Why should you use this? Well I think it is a great time saver. I use it almost every time I surf the web.

The concept is simple and it has been used by Linux and some windows programs like Putty for a long time. It is based on the notion that when you highlight a section of text, usually you intend to copy it. Instead of highlighting the text, then pressing “ctrl+c” and then “ctrl+v” to copy then paste, well… it autocopies the text you just highlighted in one motion.

Then to paste, you can use the middle-wheel from your mouse or simply press “ctrl+v” or use the edit menu and select paste. You can autocopy from the browser and it works in text boxes as well as regular pages. Whatever you copy goes into your clipboard so it is available to paste into any application, like Word or Excel. When you highlight the text, it will blink to indicate that it has been copied. As simple and trivial as this may seem, once you get the hang of it I’m pretty sure it will prove to be a huge help in your daily web surfing.

Autocopy works right out of the box and it indicates its status by placing a small clipboard with a check mark on it on the bottom right corner of your browser. You can temporarily disable the extension in one click by left-clicking on this icon. If you right-click on the icon instead, you have access to configuration options.

There’s a lot of configuration options available if you want to get into it and customize it to your liking. I find that it works great with the defaults. The only thing I usually change is the “De select after copy” option. That is just a preference I have.

If you want to give it a try, you can download it from here.

Have a great weekend!

We spend so much time in our browsers nowadays, that slowly more and more functionality is being added to them. Foxytunes is a great extension to control your music from your browser. I’ve been using it since it came out years ago. Its grown to support all major music players, including: iTunes, Winamp, foobar, rhapsody online, real player, xbox media center, last.fm, musicmatch, sonique, quintessential, coolplayer… just to name a few. In the unlikely case that your music player is not supported, it also has an option to use a generic player.

At a quick glance, this add-on is great because it…

• Supports major browsers, not just Firefox
• Supports most major music players (itunes, winamp, coolplayer etc)
• Works on Windows, Linux and Mac
• Saves you time
• Prevents clutter

Head on over to FoxyTunes homepage to get started!Installing it is as easy as any other Firefox Extension, the only thing to note is that you’ll need to add FoxyTunes’ website to the Allowed Sites list for Firefox. This is really easy to do. Simply, click on Get FoxyTunes link. Firefox will show an alert telling you that it prevented this software from installing. Click on “Edit Options” you will be taken to the Allowed Sites - Add-ons Installation list.

Simply, verify that the address to be added is www.foxytunes.com and then click on Allow. It should look like this:

After this, click on the Get FoxyTunes link again and the standard Firefox software installation process will commence. Install, restart firefox and FoxyTunes will be ready to go.

Once you restart Firefox, you will be taken to the FoxyTunes welcome page. This is nice because it shows you new features and how to use the plugin. This page will only be displayed once after each installation or update so if you loose it, this is the link (http://www.foxytunes.com/welcome/) but FoxyTunes is really easy to use so you should not need to revisit theis page. Notice the huge orange arrow pointing at the location of the FoxyTunes controls, and get started.

Once installed, you’ll see that this is a really mature add-on. It has all the nice features you’ve come to expect from well written software. Mouse over each of the buttons to see what they do. Your main button for now will be the music symbol icon. This is FoxyTunes main menu and you can access all settings and options through it. Click on the button, then click on Player and select your preferred player from the list. If you are currently playing music, the status bar will refresh automatically and immediately to show you the current song playing. If your player isn’t running, simply click the play button and this will launch it and begin playing whatever was playing the last time you used it. I think this works for all players but I know for a fact that it works for Winamp because that is what I use.

Besides the obvious and main purpose of this add-on, that is to control your music player (play, next song, previous song, volume etc) this add-on has a lot of cool extra features. Using the search button, you can access web searches for the song/artist/album currently playing. The one i use the most is the lyrics search. It takes you to search results for that song so you can see the lyrics quickly. No more futzing around lyrics365.com, or other sites. You can also use built-in features to look up an artist’s Wikipedia page. The iTunes store is also just a click away, allowing you to shop for new related songs easily.

This add-on is definitely a must have for me; if you listen to music on your computer you should give this a try. It will save you time and keep you from minimizing your browser just so you can find your player and skip to the next song, or repeat, or pause or change the volume.

This is one of my new favorite extensions. I believe (by looking at the interface) that it is a revitalized version of an old add-on. I used it before and I love it but it broke with one of the Firefox upgrades. I forgot the name of the original. In any case, this addon is awesome, it synchronizes (as the title says) your bookmarks. If you use more than one computer to surf the web, then you want Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer in your list of extensions or add-ons for Firefox.

It is super easy to use. One major difference from the previous add-on, is that this requires you to sign up to their server. This gives you a place to synchronize your bookmarks up to. It automatically and periodically checks your local bookmarks and synchronizes them against the ones in the server. But don’t worry, it is free to use.
Within moments, all your bookmarks are the same, no matter which computer you are on at any given time. This add-on gets a two-thumbs up from me. I can’t live without it since I started using it.

Google Notebook is most definitely a cool new product coming out of the prodigy that Google Labs is.

This is awesome and something I’ve been looking for since I have been using the web. There have been numerous web research tools produced out there, most of them offered as a premium service. Some of them bloated with useless features or lacking logical services. This does exactly what I need. It is easy to use, you simply highilight what you want to “note down” and use the provided firefox extension to “Note this” to your Google Notebook. You can then share your notebook (if you wish) or make changes or whatever. Simple and elegant. It integrates into Firefox really nicely so it also gets kudos for that.
Here’s my sample notebook. I’m currently learning Ruby so I’m using Google Notebook to keep track of the book I’m reading and other stuff I find online. Enjoy, you can find more info at the Google labs page!

So I’ve been wrong for a while now about something. I always bought into the common assumption that Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is insecure. It actually is relatively secure. It is secure enough to keep your connections to windows computers safe from prying eyes and other threats. Waddaya know? Apparently for me, the answer is “nothing” eh.

Anyway. While I was doing some research into the matter I found several comments by Microsoft fan-boys that RDP was good enough to use. Forums in the tech community were filled with these comments. So I had to find out more about this and I did. I found several articles that support these comments.

One of the features of RDP is the use of RC4 encryption. Of course, you should always make sure that both computers using this have the latest and greatest RDP client. Yeah there’s a slight chance that someone may setup a “man-in-the-middle” attack and try to decrypt your information. But Seriously? you think someone actually wants to go through the hassle of setting up this attack? Its expensive, time consuming, and usually reserved for multimillion dollar corporations or millionaires. Kurt, one of the bloogers I found talking about RDP put it best:

To give you an idea of the sophistication we’re talking about, this hacking technique is usually reserved for attacking eCommerce sites like eBay & financial institutions like Bank of America to intercept credit cards & passwords. If someone is in fact truly attempting to use this technique against you and your computer, it’s not random: You or your organization is probably important enough (or rich enough) that skimping paying $50/year for LogMeIn Pro, $200/year for GoToMyPC, or whatever support service you might otherwise be using isn’t exactly your first priority. Remember: This is your Mom we’re talking about… not freakin’ Bill Gates.

So go forth and RDP into your home computer till you get sick of it. It’s ok.