PCTechBlog

Firefox Add-ons

Here is a list of the Firefox extensions add-ons that I have installed:

• autoHideStatusbar - Automatically hides the status bar
• Better Flickr - Enhances flickr with compiled Greasemonkey scripts
• Better GCal - Enhances Google Calendar with compiled Greasemonkey scripts
• Better Gmail - Enhances Gmail with compiled Greasemonkey scripts
• Better GReader - Enhances Google Reader with compiled Greasemonkey scripts
• ColorfulTabs - Adds colors to tabs
• del.icio.us Bookmarks - Easy to add bookmarks to del.icio.us.
• ErrorZilla - Better error pages
• FaviconizeTab - Minimize tab width to only favicon
• Flashblock - Stops flash animations from starting on page load
• Google Browser Sync - Synchronizes settings between browsers
• Google Gears - Allows offline access to Google Reader and Remember the Milk!
• Greasemonkey - enables user scripts
• Growl Notifications - enabled growl notifications for Firefox
• It’s All Text! - Allows you to use an external text editor to modify text in text boxes
• PhishTank SiteChecker - Uses PhishTank to test the current url for phishing sites
• Torbutton - enable the tor proxy for Firefox
• Update Notifier - Notifies you when there are updates to extensions.

Continue Reading August 8th, 2007

madKast

I heard about madKast on the last GeekNewsCentral podcast.  This looks like a pretty cool way to add a widget to share your posts via email or on social networking sites.

You have to include a javascript in your header, and then the script parses the page to identify the individual posts.  Then it places an icon next to each title.

When you click on the icon, a widget appears where you can send the link in an email, or your can post it to various sites.

I found a problem in the way that it detects individual articles.  The posts that I have that were submitted directly from del.icio.us, are not marked with the madKast icon.  All of these posts have a title similar to “links for 2007-07-29″.  I send an email to madKast support about this problem.

I will not be installing this myself.  The problem that I have with this is that the javascript is hosted on an external server.  There is a chance that, if their server is unresponsive, that page loads could be adversely affected.

If they offered the ability to host the javascript yourself, I would probably install it.  In fact, I would probably write a LifeType plugin for it.

Continue Reading August 8th, 2007

How to Use Excel’s LEN Function to Find Problem Records

A reader posed an interesting conversion problem between an old database and a new online one. The new online system would not accept field values longer than a set number of characters. Rather than getting an error message saying which record was the problem, a generic import failure message appeared. As you may have guessed, the old system didn’t have length restriction on fields. The good news is the developer provided a record layout with field sizes. With this info, she could use Microsoft Excel’s LEN function to identify and correct the problem records before importing to the new database. (Includes online tutorial)

Continue Reading August 7th, 2007