I surf the web all the time on mobile devices wether that be my personal Motorola Q smartphone or the Commission’s iPod Touch. Some sites work well, some don’t. Ever wonder how well yours will do? Just head on over to the W3C mobileOK Checker, enter your site’s URL, and get a report. The report is code-centric so knowledge of XHTML and CSS will help you understand the results.
Here’s another online reader’s advisory tool: whichbook.net. Just choose four attributes and choose how much or little of those attributes you’re looking for. Once you’re done, click go and you’ll receive your recommendations. You can also change from attributes to character, plot and setting. I played with it some and all the recommendations I got seemed very accurate.
Got a DVD you want to watch on your iPod? How about that funny video from YouTube you downloaded from YouTube that you’d like on your phone to show all your friends? There are many tool out there to do this but the recently released Vio Mobile Video Converter from the folks at The Pirate Bay claims to be the easiest to use, fastest, and best quality results tool out there. I’ve played with it and it does seem to live up to the hype.
Here’s another Firefox add-on for you. Once you’ve installed Who Is This Person?, just highlight a name in any Web page, right click, and send their name off to LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Google, or one of several other sources. You never know what you’ll find out about someone.
Once you get the hang of it, downloading via BitTorrent isn’t that difficult. Trouble is, getting the hang of it is the difficult part. That is, until now. The folks at fireaddons have created firetorrent a Firefox add on that treats downloading via BitTorrent no harder than downloading any other file. Once installed, just click on a link to a .torrent file and the downloading begins.
For those familiar with BitTorrent, some of the same rules still apply. The more seeds, the faster the download. Fewer seeds, slower download. Also, this client doesn’t seed as far as I can tell so it’s download only. So, if you’re really wanting to truly participate in the world of torrents, you’re better off with something like Vuze which will not only download but also upload back to the community.
I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now and if you’re reading this on the blog proper I’m sure you’ve noticed the new layout. If you’re reading this in your RSS aggregator of choice, please take a moment to hear on over to http://www.nebraskalibraries.org/ITART/ and take a look. There’s still some tweaking to be done but the major portion of the move to the new design has been completed.
The portable version (i.e. runs off a flash drive and doesn’t touch the local computer’s hard drive) of OpenOffice.org 3 is now available for downloading. If you haven’t tried it yet, you officially have no excuse.
"OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose."
One thing I love about Linux/Ubuntu is its absolute extensibility. One easy way to extend the functionality of Nautilus (the standard file browser in Ubuntu) is to add scripts for added functionality. There are a few scripts (also called addons or extensions) in Synaptic – just go to System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager and search for Nautilus addon or extension. You can also find a wealth of scripts at G-Scripts and you can download a 125 of Nautilus scripts at one time. There’s also an article that explains how to use the scripts. You can also write your own scripts to help you automate your most common tasks.
Chrome has it now. Firefox 3.1 and IE 8 will but they’re not out yet. Want it in Firefox 3? Just install the Private Browsing add-on and you’re all set. So, just what is private browsing? Well, it has been nicknamed "porn mode". Basically, whenever you’re in private mode no record of any of your surfing survives the closing of the browser. (Once the new versions of IE and Firefox are released with this feature built in, I plan on recommending that on public computers, this mode is set as default. I’ll blog more about that when the time comes.)