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A couple cool browser plugins

OK, so I found a few plugins that make browsing the internet a joy, and they also help your index finger not have to click so much.

I want to start with something that has been around for a long long time but I have just recently started using it. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website. What does that mean? Think of it as a myspace/facebook/last.fm of bookmarks. What you do is you bookmark things in your browser, just like you normally would, but the bookmark is actually stored with del.icio.us instead of locally on your computer. Once you bookmark something you can see who else has also bookmarked the same thing, and then see what else they are bookmarking. You can also create networks of people and keep up to date on the things they are bookmarking. It makes finding new things a little bit easier. It is also great because you have access to all of your bookmarks where ever you are.

The next thing I found is by a company called Cooliris and it is a plugin called Previews. The first noticeable thing it does is it adds a extra button you can click when you hover over links in your browser. The picture below shows it better than I can say it.

If you click/hover over that question mark blue book thingy it will bring up a window showing where the link goes. But it does it all without leaving your current window.

You can still browse just as you normally would inside the smaller windows and you can also join the window to your current Firefox session by clicking the tab button. You can also skip to the next link on the page or email the link to someone. Not that emailing links to people is new, but doing it without leaving your current browser window is pretty new to me. You do have to sign up with a Cooliris account for email, which is a obvious downside, but that is only if you want to use the email feature.

As if my right click menu wasn’t crowded enough, it also gave me a couple new features to highlight text and do a google, google image, wikipedia, or dictionary search all without leaving my page.

If you are doing a Google image search outside of Previews and want to view all the results as a slide show Previews can do that too. Simply do the search and hover over one of the image results then click on the play button.

But slide shows is where my next plugin comes in. This next one is called PicLens and it is also made by Cooliris. This is the coolest browser plugin I have ever seen. It makes me want to buy a touch screen display just to have this running at my desk at all times. Cooliris has a pretty cool video of the plugin in action and I will try to capture what it does in a couple screenshots.

The first thing that happens is you get this new icon.

Then whenever you click the icon to launch Piclens you get a full screen 3D wall. Each icon represents a story, picture, video, or search result. You can then click on each picture and it will play the video, show a summary of the story, or display the picture.

The categories are on the top left side and the search is top right.

You use the bottom blue bar to scroll through the wall.

When you click on a video it starts playing automatically.

You can also double click to make it go full screen or play a slide show.

I really can’t describe how smooth and great looking this plugin is. I also can’t explain how much memory the thing eats! Seriously, don’t try to fold proteins or play Unreal Tournament 3 in the background while this is running.

One other reason I thought Piclens was so cool is they have a Wordpress plugin; yes I installed it. The plugin adds a link to the bottom of each post and you can click on it to view all the pictures in that post without needing to install Piclens. That is pretty cool but it isn’t super useful seeing as there aren’t a whole lot of pictures to look at on my blog. What it is good for is viewing something like a gallery. Thanks to some cleaver people they found a way to do it with Gallery2.

I installed the needed items on my gallery and you can have a look at it here. What you do is just go to the gallery and click the play button that shows up on any image when you mouse over it. Piclens will then load up and show the current image using the 3D wall.

All you need to do to make Piclens work with your Gallery2 installation is upload this xml.php file the file here to the root of your Gallery2 installation and then edit the theme.tpl file for whatever theme you are using. Make sure you rename the xml.php_.txt file to just xml.php. I am using carbon as my theme so I found the file in gallery2/themes/carbon/templates/ folder on my server. To edit the file you need to find the line that has

{if $theme.pageType == ‘album’}
{g->theme include=”album.tpl”}

and add

<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”MediaRSS:{$theme.item.title}”
href=”/gallery2/xml.php?g2_itemId={$theme.item.id}” />

on a new line right after the first text.

That was it. It works fine for me on two computers with Firefox 3.0 and Internet Explorer 7 but please let me know if you find that it doesn’t work in other browsers or other operating systems (I am too lazy to turn on my mac).

Please also let me know in the comments if you have found any other browser plugins that I may not know about.

Windows tools

So I thought I would clean out a few more pinned articles in my bloglines before I went to bed. By a few, I mean 9. Lets just get started with this.

The first one is real simple. This is how you can easily disable Aero before running a program. In many cases you would want to do this before running a 3D intensive game. All you have to do is find the shortcut, right click and go to properties, click the compatability tab and check the box that says “Disable desktop composition”. That is it. Aero will disable itself next time you launch the shortcut and enable itself when the program is done.

The next tip it two-fold. First there is a quick tip on how to backup your DVD’s with 1 click. Sure that 1 click is going to take you a few hours to complete, but all you have to do is click once. The second part is a bit more involved but shows you how to backup your DVD’s and play them easily on a PS3. Sure you could always put the DVD in the PS3 and play it but who wants to get up? This uses a great tool, which I have yet to use, called PS3 Video 9.

Next up is another two parter and this is all about extracting things you never knew you could extract out of Windows. If you want to use a icon that a certain program uses. You can use IconsExtract or if you want to extract all the drivers you are using, to save as a backup, you can use DriverMax.

One of the last useful updates I have is a visual tweaker for Vista. It is called Vista Visual Master and has a lot of very useful tools. It gave me the ability to use custom themes again after I installed SP1 and that is worth a download itself.

Here are a few that most people probably won’t find very useful but I am going to give them a try for various reasons.

To remove passwords from Excel documents you can either buy a tool called Excel Password Remover or you can run one of many macros that will remove the password for free. I want to link to the full article so you can see all the comments with the macro options.

The last two I have are random but I know I will need them one day. First is a way to disable cached domain logins in Windows. This also may work to increase the number of logins available when off the domain but I need to test with that. To do it all you have to do is open the registry and find:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon

Once you find that just change the cashedlogonscount to whatever value you want. Note that 0 disables this ability.

This last one will come in real handy when making my classroom images. A tool called CleanHandler will clean up those autoplay options that pop up in Windows when a cd/usb stick are plugged in.

I feel pretty good after that update so I will leave you with that.

Catching up

I have had quite a few articles and tools that I have been wanting to post here but I haven’t made the time to do it. So I guess I am just going to make one big post for all of them. Most of these tools came from the wonderful How-to Geek but there are a few other good ones in the mix.

First up is replacing your task manager with process explorer in Windows Vista. In XP it is usually as simple as going to options and clicking on replace task manager. In Vista there is a bit more of a trick to it if you still have UAC ruling your life. UAC is the first thing I turn off in Vista so there wasn’t any problem for me. Head over to the How-to Geek for further instructions and screenshots.

The next tip is all about drivers. First you could always see what drivers you have installed at the command line, but that isn’t very fun. I guess you could see what drivers are installed and export the list to a text document, excel spreadsheet, or something else. Or you could just transfer the drivers directly from one machine to another. This is great news if you are moving from one computer to another, or if you are just having problems with your computer and want to do some troubleshooting.

Downloadsquad makes the list of useful tools with the Revo Uninstaller. I have never heard of it before but already really like it. Not only can it uninstall your programs and search for left over files and registry entry’s, but it also has built in shortcuts like the on screen keyboard, msconfig, system properties, etc. And because the new version is free AND portable I can keep it on my usb key and take it with me when troubleshooting machines.

Downloadsquad also showed me a Universal Extractor that could be very useful for extracting files that 7-zip can’t already open. I haven’t tried it yet but I defiantly want to keep it in my bag of tricks.

You would think this post would be done now because there is already so much stuff. But I have been procrastinating for a while now on these tools.

Inventgeek had one of the best do-it-yourself articles I have sen for a while. How to make your own thermal paste from diamond dust. I really want to give this one a try on my PS3 but it is going to have to wait just a little bit. I am still a bit nervous about putting it back together. The opening up doesn’t scare me at all. It is only the reassembly.

The last two articles go back to the How-to Geek. If you support machines like I do you probably use the Group Policy Editor quite a bit in Windows XP. This tip shows you how to add it to the control panel. There is also one for adding User Accounts Utility (userpasswords2) in the control panel.

Last but not least. How to Remote Control Leopard with TightVNC brought to you by Lifehacker.

Well I am officially caught up with the articles I wanted to add here. Now I think I will try some of them out and maybe play some more video games.

Pidgin plugins

Pidgin comes with some phenomenal plugins by default (see psychic mode). But there were still a couple other things I wanted to have available to me. The main thing I wanted was the buddy list to be visible but without having the “Pidgin” taskbar entry. I did a quick search and came across Pidgin Extended Preferences. It allows you to turn off the taskbar entry for pidgin so you have more room for programs you actually need. I did a couple other searches at sourceforge and found a neat current track plugin and music info plugin that seem pretty useful/useless but cool.

Let me know in the comments if you know of some other great third party plugins that you use in pidgin.

*BTW* Turns out the current track plugin doesn’t work under Vista Ultimate x86. I am going to look into this a bit more.

It doesn’t look like the plugin is working under Windows XP also. That is OK though. The author of that plugin had a link to MisicInfo plugin which does a similar thing but doesn’t support as many players.  I got it working with Winamp 5.5 under Vista without a problem.  Enjoy!

Weekend Update

I should have some good pictures of pumpkins sometime this week so I will post those as soon as I get them. I also just wanted to share a few tools I found over the past week (or two).

The first I found over at Lifehacker and it is called NetDrive. It allows you to mount remote file systems (ftp, sftp, etc.) to your windows machine. You can download the utility here because I guess it isn’t developed anymore and somewhat hard to find.

Secondly there is a program called mRemote. I really want to give this one a try. It allows you to manage multiple remote desktop connections all from one program. The real cool thing is it doesn’t have to be the same type of remote desktop. You can use it for RDP, ssh, vnc, etc. It is open source so you can grab the latest version from SourceForge.

Finally there

is a how to on Wired about Usenet file sharing.

Download/How-to overload

I found a great new site this past week. Howtogeek.com is a site that was developed to show you how to do a whole lot of things you never really thought you would want to do. At least that is what it is for me. Things like getting a Expose Clone for Vista to customizing your Vista logon screen. Or a few things I found that can even improve productivity like adding “Copy to” or “Move to” dialogs to the right click menu or Disabling delete confirmation. All I have to say is they defiantly made the cut to make it on my RSS feeds.

Download Squad also came through and showed me how to remove unwanted programs and improve battery life with vista. I haven’t used either of these yet but they are still pretty nifty. I have been wanting to try out adding folders and applications to My Computer but with howtogeek rolling out so many tools I haven’t really messed with it much. One thing I have tried and really like is the ability to upload youtube videos directly from my cell phone. You have to register your number first but after that all you do is send the video to YTUBE and it will be ready for you once you get to a computer. If you have a nifty phone that can view youtube from your phone you can just as easily view the video after a few minutes wait.

Finally Lifehacker had a neat (and not very useful but cool) tutorial on how to hide a file in a jpeg image.  I have seen this before but it is always nice to link to at least one.

Hopefully I will have more stuff for you guys in another week or so but work has been really busy and I haven’t been home much.

Vista Downloads, and other stuff

Download squad has been kick’n it into high gear with some great downloads. First lets start with Vista tools.

There is something about programs that don’t need to install in order to run that I just love. Vispa is one of those programs. It is similar to TweakUI for Windows XP but it doesn’t quite have all the cool customizations. It still has enough customizing to hold me over until something better comes out. Stardock TweakVista has a few more options but it is a paid program. Or at least it will be when it comes out of beta, so grab it now. CyberNotes also has a pretty neat walk through on making your Alt-Tab icons bigger. I have not tried this one myself yet but I plan on doing it once Vista is fully reinstalled for me.

The last few tools are kinda random but still great. Angry IP Scanner is the first one and it does just what you think it does. It can scan for IP addresses easily with a pretty decent GUI. Add Remove programs in Windows XP is only good if the program is listed. If it isn’t there you are left in the dark. Fortunately there is a dll file that lets you get a lot of the hidden programs back on that list. Finally here are some great icons for free.

That is all I got for now so enjoy.

It has been a while

I guess it hasn’t been THAT long since my last update but I have a few new things to through your way (actually my way because no one reads this).

First of all I don’t know if I gave a link to Ze Frank his show is simply awesome and his website is pretty cool too. To bad I found out about his show after he was done with his internship.

I had an idea this morning. Why doesn’t any company make a car stereo that can strip the vocals out of live songs (cd’s, radio, etc.) so you can sing your own tracks in the car. Really is that so hard? My Sega Saturn and Xbox can both do it.

How about a download! Pitaschio is seriously one of the best plugins for Windows XP I have seen (or at least tied with Tweak UI). Thank you downloadsquad for giving me yet another tool that I use almost every day.

I don’t have anything else right now but I have a couple of posts notes coming about my upgrade to knoppmyth R5F1 and my Kubunutu 7.04 install.

Wasting time

I was wasting time waiting for my Kubuntu 7.04 Beta iso to download and I stumbled across 7 things to ask myself weekly to help “change my life”. I am all about bettering life and learning but most of the times I just forget to think or ask questions. Hopefully this will be fairly easy to implement into some sort of routine.

1. What will I try to improve on next week?

2. What was I most proud of this week?

3. What was my biggest accomplishment this week?

4. What have I done to get closer to my life goals this week?

5. What was hard for me this week, and why?

6. What was my biggest waste of time this week?

7. What did I do this week that made me ashamed?

Oh and while you are asking yourself hard questions and thinking about the meaning of life (or at least your past week) check out the keepon dancing video.
Thats all for now. Happy Birthday Bubbles!

Print to PDF’s

Thanks to Download squad I can once again print to searchable PDF’s without the need for Adobe professional installed (I hate that software). The software they talked about is called doPDF and it is basically just for printing to PDF. The readers left some comments to some other PDF creators that are probably worth a look. Some mentioned were cutePDF, PDFCreator, and BullZip PDF Creator.

I went ahead and attached doPDF v5 to this post for some reason if the site gets taken down I couldn’t figure that out.