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 Fun Tech Stuff for November
by Mike250 on November 11th, 2008 in Miscellaneous, Random, Programming

I’m going to try and post some fun tech gadgets I’ve played with or am playing with recently and give a little write-up of each.

Lately I’ve been a bit more obsessed than normal with trying to get all the stuff I like to look at on one page. This could be via iGoogle, MyYahoo! or whatever. I’ve also been doing some web work for my cricket club and am back in that mode of making sure the site looks the same cross-browser. I’ve been looking at various browsers again and will talk a little about my latest look-in.

MySpace Comments RSS Feed

I hate logging into MySpace and being forced to see who’s completed the latest retarded survey. But I do get gems in my comments from time to time that are worth hanging on to. I found this great script online that allows you to enter your MySpace address and generate an RSS feed:

http://makedatamakesense.com/myspace/comment/

Enter your address, click Create Feed of Comments and copy the URL of the page that is generated. The page will look ugly; if you look closely you’ll notice that it appears to be an un-formatted plain text generation of your recent comments. Fear not, it is in RSS compliant XML and can be added to your RSS reader! I added it to MyYahoo!, tweaked it to show the 5 recent comments and set Headline only. Gold.

Facebook Friend Updates Feed

I actually had to look around a bit to find this one. Initial searches on the net led me to instructions to broadcast my own updates, but I don’t care to have a feed of myself! To locate the RSS feed of your friends status updates, do the following:

  1. Login to Facebook
  2. Click Friends from the top menu
  3. Click Friends’ Status Feed in the left menu under Subscribe
  4. Copy the URL and to your RSS reader

Similar to the MySpace feed described above, the page will appear to be an un-formatted plain text generation of your friends recent status updates.

Butcher Cricket Feed

While on the feeding frenzy I decided to write my first ever feed, taking the recent news articles posted to our cricket site. Each week various members of the club write Match Reports of the previous weekend’s action in our five Grades of cricket; I’ve written PHP and MYSQL to generate my own compliant XML RSS feed.

http://www.butchercricket.com/feed

Google Chrome

So Google has developed their own Browser! There’s not much left in the Marketplace for them to cover is there? I’m trying it out, really really really (I said really) enjoying the minimalistic approach and browser rendering, and was pleasantly surprised how seamlessly Firefox Bookmarks and Stored Passwords came across! Stored Passwords is one reason I hate switching browsers.

I do have a couple items on my wish list:

  • Tab Controls are minimal - I want to be able to set all addresses entered in the address bar to open in a new tab but can’t.
  • I also want to cycle through my tabs with hot keys, such as F2 back and F3 forward. Can’t do it. Let’s just say tabbed browsing is still limited.
  • Where’s my Ad and Script blocking options? I want to be able to easily configure safe and untrusted sites.
  • Javascript Rich Text Editors on webforms don’t work, probably because they’re hard coded for IE 6.0+ and FF 2.0+. Still, I want it to work.

I’ll probably find more things to be disappointed in, but right now I continue to use it as my main browsing browser but not my developing browser.

And that’s it for now. Will try and follow up with more stuff I play with next month.

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5 Responses to “Fun Tech Stuff for November”

  1. AvatarCapn John
    Nov 18th, 2008
    1:53 pm
    1

    “I want to be able to set all addresses entered in the address bar to open in a new tab but can’t.”

    Do you mean to say Firefox can do that?

    Currently if someone pastes a non-HTML link in a forum, I have to copy it, hit Ctrl-T for a new Tab, then paste the link into the new Tab’s address bar and away I go. I do that because I’m not finished with the first page/Tab so I want two open.

    It would be nice to be able to copy a URL, paste it into that current Tab’s address bar, hit Enter, and have a brand new Tab open at that address, without manually opening a new Tab myself. Ok, sure, it’s two less key presses, but that’s exactly the point! It’s a time saver! It’s streamlining a process by removing a superfluous step.

    Enlighten me on how I can do this :)
  2. AvatarMike250
    Nov 18th, 2008
    3:03 pm
    2
    Author Comment

    Yep! Get the add-on: Tab Mix Plus. Once installed, goto the Tab Mix Plus options, Events subsection, Tab Opening tab and check off Open tabs from:

    Bookmarks
    Address bar
    Groups of bookmarks
    Search bar

    I totally agree on the time saving of it! Try it out!
  3. AvatarCapn John
    Nov 20th, 2008
    1:00 pm
    3

    Mate, one of the pics you’ve got on rotation in your banner makes me really homesick.

    It’s the one of the road sign showing you’re 44 K’s out of Cann River.

    Even though it’s nowhere near Traralgon, it IS only 214 K’s to Bairnsdale, and from there it’s just another 120 K’s to Traralgon. Of course with Mum living in Munro now, if I was at Bairnsdale I’d be just a stone’s throw from her new home.

    Don’t take it off rotation, even if it does make me a soppy bastard ;)
  4. AvatarMike250
    Nov 23rd, 2008
    6:22 pm
    4
    Author Comment

    Ah yes, I remember taking that photo well. It was during our Aussie Holiday in February 2006, we drove from Sydney to Melbourne via a short stay in the Snowy Mountains. Everything about this road and that sign just felt very Australian for some reason.

    And don’t worry, it won’t come off rotation. Any time you want to see it again, or a few other snaps from VIC, just go here.
  5. AvatarCapn John
    Dec 2nd, 2008
    2:13 pm
    5

    Driving up PCH between L.A. and S.F. is very much like driving Australia’s Great Ocean Road, but, it’s still not the same. It’s like looking up at the stars at night; they’re just starts but I’m never going to see the Southern Cross no matter how many stars are out or how long I look.

    I can drive through the hills/mountains above Pasadena, and there’s gum trees up there, and it resembles the Aussie ‘bush’ but…it’s not. There’s just something different about it.

    Aussies may love singing “I still call Australia home” but unless you live somewhere else for a really long time, you’re really not going to get it.

    I live in the U.S. now. It took a while to happen (9/11, ‘01 was an eye opener) but I’ve come to realize I love this country. I’ll probably die and be buried here…but I still call Australia home.

    Apparently many Victorians who move to Melbourne call it home, but the town they grew up in? That’s home-home. The U.S. is my home, but Australia is home-home.

    /sad home-homesick panda
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