Tech Tuesday
Staying on the Facebook theme for a bit, I want to give you two more tips for better Facebooking. As you know, implemented in your Firefox browser is a list of search engines that you the user can utilise instead of opening the page itself.
In addition to the default list, Mozilla also provides extra search engines that you can add to your browser. If you are technologically inclined you can also make your own, or if you’re like me you can rely on smarter folks at the Mycroft Project to come up with search engines instead.
On the Mycroft page just enter any address (for example Cnet.com) and chances are that someone has already come up with a search engine for that site. To make life easier, I’ve added my usual haunts such as NewEgg.com and IMDb.com. You could most likely find an engine for any site that has a search feature.
Facebook Search Engine
If you’re like me, you sit at your desk working and all of a sudden a name you haven’t heard, let alone spoken, in over 10 years will pop into your head and you will wonder, “Hmmm, I wonder if Such and Such is on Facebook.” Instead of pulling up the entire Facebook page, just choose the Facebook search engine, enter Such and Such’s name and voila! The Mycroft Project has a Facebook.com search engine that can be found here. Choose the first one on the list.
Facebook Autopoke 2.1
One last piece of Facebook ware is another script for Greasemonkey. The last time I spoke about Greasemonkey, I recommended Facebook Remove App Requests, and No Facebook Applications. Since then I see that Facebook has installed a button called “Ignore all Requests”. At last!. The other two are still valid, I guess. I also want to recommend a script called Facebook Autopoke 2.1 which does exactly what it says. If someone pokes you, it will poke them back and fulfill your poking obligation. Nice eh? Besides, poking is stupid and you probably don’t want to waste your time doing it. Of course, as with the others, if you want to use this, you need to get Greasemonkey first. Get it here.
Gimp
The last tip is some software a lot of you probably already know about. If you can’t afford Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator and/or feel guilty about stealing it, Gimp will ease your consciences.
Gimp, as described on its website, is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. If I knew more about photo retouching, image composition and image authoring, I would talk more about it, but I don’t, so I won’t. But I can tell you that all of my headers for this site (excluding the current) I’ve done using Gimp - not that that’s such a great recommendation considering the fact that I have no artistic skills. In any case, Gimp is free, very versatile (from what I understand) and version 2.4.4 is available here (Windows 2000 and above only). If you are installing Gimp, you need to install GTK+ 2 Runtime Environment FIRST in order for it to work. Get GTK+ 2 Runtime Environment here.
9 Responses to “Tech Tuesday”
By Chennette on Mar 4, 2008 | Reply
Mani, I think it is great that you do these tech tips for getting the most out of Firefox, but does anyone else but me find Mozilla (firefox and thunderbird) to be ridiculously clunky at times? If I load any setta extras on it, it crashes or freezes. It updates automatically and changes ALL my settings, and when I change the auto-update setting, the next time I choose to update, it STILL removes my settings/bookmarks, and switches back to auto-update. I have a running battle with it and have refused to update recently (and yes, don’t worry, I know how recover and reset, it’s just incredibly annoying). It uses up so much of my limited resources too. It still accesses the net way better than IE, but frankly, I don’t have the greatest system, and tend to be minimal about such applications. When I get my new computer I am going to try out all other browsers.
I do, however, have Gimp. And it provides far beyond my level of need, with hopes for self-improvement. It does take a while to start up for me, but it doesn’t affect other programs while it’s running like most other photo software.
By Alex on Mar 4, 2008 | Reply
Mani, Chennette,
I never have a problem with Firefox or Thunderbird - certainly I wouldn’t describe either as clunky. Though Thunderbird disappointed me a couple weeks ago when it failed to detect a phishing scam email that was very convincing - I’m pretty computer savvy (if I may indeed say so myself) but this was incredibly convincing - thankfully, when I clicked on the link Firefox opened and detected it as fraud - so Thunderbird’s security, while it’s good, is patchy; I hope they do a little something about that soon.
Mani, you know what I love about Firefox though? The built in spell check. I real doh wanna be a pain here, eh, but “Teusday” man? Is that like a play on words combining tech and Tuesday?
By Mani on Mar 4, 2008 | Reply
Chennette, geez, those problems your’e having don’t look familiar to me in the least. My browser crashes every once in a blue moon, but when it resumes everything is the same, I don’t have problems with it updating either. It never removes my bookmarks or anything like that. My only real problem with Firefox is that it uses up an insane ammount of memory - a fact pointed out to me only this past weekend. This morning I checked and it was using 273MB of ram, which by the way is my biggest memory hog. I did have about 25 tabs open and I do have almost 70 Add ons and thems, but Geez! I’m lucky to have enough ram to cover it. I think it may be your system that’s causing it to foul up. I still haven’t switched to Thunderbird, so I can’t talk there.
Alex, boy, I shock I cyah spell Tuesday. Please let the record show that I can spell it, this was just a typo. For some reason the spell checker doesn’t check the blog title field. Go figure. But thanks for pointing it out for me.
By bandwagonist on Mar 4, 2008 | Reply
mani that’s over doing it… use to be a firefoxer but i now go on Safari… ever since my permanent OS switch…
By Jumbie on Mar 5, 2008 | Reply
I switched over to the new Opera (free) last week. Has built in ad blocking, (Mani, doh start!) and free email support (Gmail included). And talk about speed… ! Plus it resizes the pages smoothly and maintains the clarity without any funny effects.
Chennette seems to be describing a system with some spyware on; may I suggest spywareblaster and spybot? And next time, go into the options for firefox and set it the way you want it. Never had a problem since…
By Chennette on Mar 5, 2008 | Reply
I guess my complaint is that newer Firefox doesn’t work well on some older systems - it does use a lot of RAM (even though I have hardly any extensions) and it annoyed me with its updating. I choose the settings I want all the time, but it’s the updates that remove my bookmarks and change the settings without asking me and that’s what annoyed me.
And so I started a slow seething resentment against it that may be overblown compared to its actual performance. I guess the more recent resentment is due to the stupid office Dell I have been forced to use since my own laptop monitor died. There may be spyware on this system, but not on my old and I still had issues.
But as for Thunderbird, I had frequent crashes, and it didn’t seem to manage IMAP mail very well, so I stopped using that altogether.
By crankyputz on Mar 6, 2008 | Reply
Lost you for a while, glad to see your alive n kickin
By wuzdescene on Mar 8, 2008 | Reply
Mani … this kinda off topic …. ah see yuh ‘about tuh become extinct’ boy …. today’s Guardian ….. ad on Page 42 G-Life ….
By Game Well and Truly Over on Mar 28, 2008 | Reply
About to become extinct?!?! Noooooooooooo
I’m glad someone else thinks poking is stupid