crazysweet.net - Power Browsing

Power browsing: All-in-one gestures link

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:38:38 -0500

For some reason, the latest version of one of my favorite Firefox plugins hasn't gone through the approval process yet, so the version that is compatible with Firefox 3.6 looks like it's not out yet, but really you can get to it through Mozilla's website (you may have to log-in, though). It's labeled experimental, but works fine w/3.6 from what I can tell.

At any rate, use the link above, or just go to the author's site directly to find a version of All-in-One Gestures compatible with Firefox 3.6.

Networking in Person - use a PocketMod picture book!

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:48:49 -0500

For all those folks whose job is better shown than described - here's a 4 step process for getting a pocket-size picture book -

1. Gather about 8 pictures of your work
2. Layout in Word (or google docs or acrobat.com) on exactly 8 pages and use Save As PDF
3. Download and run the Windows-only PDF to PocketMod converter from PocketMod.com
4. Print and fold (see the video from Pocketmod.com, embedded after the break)

Now, when you are mingling (say, at a Christmas party) and people ask you what you do, you can pull out a credit-card sized 8 page booklet and show them.

Notes -
I first tried to use PowerPoint to layout everything in landscape, but the PDF to Pocketmod converter changed all the aspect ratios - it expects Portrait - so I found Word to be almost as simple to layout. If you want Landscape oriented pictures, it's easiest to rotate them in your OS first then drag them into Word. If your version of Word doesn't have Save As PDF, you'll have to use gdocs or acrobat.com - they both can download as PDF.

Try to tell your same story that you would otherwise when you are asked what you do, but this time you'll have pictures. If you have to put words in the document, make sure to use a large enough font to be read at 1/8 the size.

Power Browsing - Free Movie Weekend at EpixHD

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:28:28 -0500

Epix HD is still giving away weekend invites at The Invite Page. I got one within 10 minutes of requesting it, to be activated over the long weekend.

I couldn't find any way to just get a text listing of their current movies, so I tried to generate one. These links will all say "Watch" even though you can't watch them all, but it just goes to their page.

Is there anything there worth watching? We watched Benjamin Buttons a couple weeks ago on their site, the Picture Quality was very high.

Full List of movies (as of 11/25/09) after the break...

Web Stuff - Desktop VR in flash

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:26:12 -0400

Just caught a couple videos on Dutch site gerbster.nl - here's one of some Desktop VR using Papervision and WiiFlash to perform head tracking for a flash application -

Virtual Reality Head Tracking in Flash from gerb on Vimeo.

See their entry about it. Also check out their demo video of head tracking with a webcam instead of wii remote - the videos illustrate it pretty nicely.

Both are a little ways away from being widely usable - they use an external program to do the tracking (WiiFlash or gerbster's webcam equivalent) and serve the position through a local web server, but as Flash versions get faster, there's a real possibility of it all being done in the browser.

Browsing - Embeddable Dilbert Widget

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:55:39 -0400

I noticed yesterday that the dilbert site has an embeddable widget, with different sizes for different types of web sites. Nice. check out http://widget.dilbert.com to embed your own (on facebook, myspace, lj, or whatever), or just bookmark the permalink to this post. They said the widget's archive will go back to at least 2005, and the dailies are in color. Sweet.

Power Browsing - SearchMash

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:20:11 -0400

I happened upon a link (via Mashable) that mentioned SearchMash - which is apparently a testing site for google search to try new features. They also have Flash SearchMash. Both pages have some interesting features, like a mini preview of pages so you can scan through your results a little faster.

Power Browsing - Netscape 9

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:09:21 -0400

I've been trying out the latest Netscape for a week or so, it seems pretty nice. I like that it shares a lot of code with Mozilla, so it can use the same extensions that Firefox uses (I really like my firefox all-in-one gestures plugin).

But also, this version of Netscape has a couple interesting features
- you can have a "Link Pad" in a sidebar, and drag links to it for later without necessarily bookmarking them.
- it claims to auto-correct mis-typed urls. For kicks, I tried "gooogle", which it fixed to "google".

Power Browsing - Meebo Firefox Extension

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:53:49 -0400

Meebo just announced a nifty little Firefox Extension that can be configured to auto-sign in to your meebo account whenever you start Firefox, and run your buddy list in the sidebar.

Meebo is a website that allows you to sign in to all the various Instant Messaging (live, aim, yahoo, google talk, icq) services using a web browser. Having a meebo account lets you store your accounts on their server, making it very simple to sign in to any service from anywhere. This plugin makes it a little more convenient to see them all at once (not sure though about voice or video options, sorry). A bonus is for me is that with meebo I can sign in to multiple live accounts at the same time.

Web - TV Networks spurn iTunes

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:41:36 -0400

NBC recently ended their deal with Apple to sell shows on iTunes. Looks like they'll be giving away their shows online, according to multiple sources. ABC's giving theirs away too, in an arrangement with an AOL service. Last year, I was able to find pretty much whatever show I wanted to find in a free online service. I guess this time around, they'll be offering downloads (and hopefully higher quality). I would guess that the downloads are DRM'd, but if they're in a standard non-DRM format, that'd be great for streaming to the game system - wouldn't even have to connect the computer to the TV.

ZDNet Article

Power Browsing - Browser compilation posts via Mashable.com

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:42:02 -0400

Mashable.com, the "web 2.0" blog, frequently puts out roundup-style posts, where they'll list around 30 related sites or tools. Today, they have a couple interesting ones:

300+ Useful Firefox Plugins - Lots of blogging, social networking, and security tools for Mozilla's little browser that could. I'm going to try the "Remove Cookie for Site" add on.

30+ Browsers - Not browser plugins, but 30+ browsers. I think I had heard of 4 or 5 of them, and regularly use 3 of them. (Firefox for most browsing, IE when Firefox doesn't render correctly, and Flock to create picture-embedded blog posts).