1Password

goo.gle URL shortener

Delicious Tools

Google Voice (by Google)

Web Dveloper

RSS Subscription Extension (by Google) via @snay2

MeasureIt

Please, PLEASE! let me know of other “can’t live without extensions for Chrome.

Google Chrome

• I think Google Chrome rocks.
• So what?
• Who cares about my opinion?
• Proof that I’m right.
• … thanks for telling me about Google Chrome… WAY better than IE…
• :-)

I think GOOGLE CHROME ROCKS!

I have been a loong time fan of Mozilla’s Firefox web browser, and for many reasons. Firefox has extensions, is clean, standards compliant, has firebug, and a fun logo. I recently started trying out Google’s Chrome because most of my geek friends were raving about it. … and WOW! Talk about fast and clean and well done! I am very impressed with Chrome. Some would ask, “why not just use Safari since they are both about the same?” While they do use the some open source rendering engine, they offer completely different user experiences. Chrome has done browser extensions right, and by right I mean that it’s easy for both the developer and consumer. No need for restarting the browser after instal, building extensions is the simplest out of IE (shudder)/ Firefox/ Safari, and no toolbars allowed! I have also really enjoyed the way the interface is designed. Chrome has stayed clean, simple, and effective for all of my browsing and development needs.

SOOOO WHAT!?!

WHO CARES ABOUT MY OPINION?!

I admit that I am not the average user. I am a geek that lives in a text editor and in the browser so my opinion is greatly skewed and it is even hard for me to trust that my experience will be similar to those who aren’t freaks of the geek.

HERE’S THE PROOF!

At sunday dinner, my niece was complaining about their “internet” crashing and freezing while working on the computer. “Who’s your internet provider?”, I asked. “NO. No. no. The internet stops working and crashes” she replied while drawing a computer screen sized box with her pointer fingers. Saving the fact that the browser was being confused for the internet for a later blog post, I told her that IE was just a way to display the contents of the web and that she should download Google Chrome and use that instead.

I didn’t explain where to download it, how to use it, or why it would be better. I really didn’t expect her to find it, install it, and actually use it but I was wrong. Just one day later, today, I got a facebook notice from her with a cute little note that not only blew my socks off, but also confirmed my thoughts on why Chrome has been growing in market share.

“Hey thanks for telling me about Google chrome…WAY better than internet explorer :]
Google! :]”

That little message made my day and may be a big step in my niece becoming a geek.

I’m very excited about releasing the next version of my Kynetx application that utilizes a recently released Kynetx action, percolation. This action digs deep into the bowels of the dark search engine pits and pulls out relevant search results.

If you’ve already been using the first version app, you already have the update. The code updated as soon as I pressed the version update button! : ) Now install the app if you don’t already have it and start having fun searching.

.. And come join us at our next Impact Conference! Developers, entrepreneurs, and everyone else is invited to come and learn because THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING! Visit http://www.kynetx.com/ for more details.

Google Chrome

Mozilla Firefox

Information Card

Microsoft Internet Explorer

Steps:

1. Get default gateway of VM machine
2. Use that address the same way you would “localhost” on your Mac

Example:

Get IP address of VM

Local Mac development environment

Dev environment from VM

One of my co-workers recently tweeted, “I really want to know how I missed this web comic. Hilarious!! http://bit.ly/7das6F“. That got me thinking about how much people do miss from their favorite comic sites or any site on the web for that matter. Of course you can subscribe to RSS and get all their updates but those who valiantly use and keep up with their feeds know how quickly it can become overwhelming. But what about all of the people who like sites or products but don’t know how to set up an RSS reader or who just don’t want to? How do you get your content to those people all the time without them having to type in your URL?

With Kynetx!!

With Kynetx you can customize the users experience on your website AND ANY OTHER WEBSITE YOU DESIRE!!

Are you getting excited yet? Are you listening or paying attention?! Are you thinking about the possibilities??!!!

In this example, if a user really loves the comic “Geek and Poke” why not make the content available to them anywhere they go on the web in unobtrusive manner? In fact, if you do it well, the users will be giddy with the results and love your product even more! It’s a little known secret that people actually like advertising. THEY DO! People love to buy stuff! What people actually hate is irrelevant and irritating ads that are in their faces. I took 3 sites and customized the users experience based on the context that they really enjoy the comic “Geek and Poke”.

• Google.com
• CNET.com
• CNN.com

Here are the after and before photos of what the user will see as they visit these sites.

Geek and Poke on Google.com

Geek and Poke on CNET.com

Geek and Poke on CNN.com using Kynetx technology

All the user has to do is download an Information Card into their Card Selector on their computer!

Check out this presentation by Kynetx to learn a bit more. (Make sure you watch it full screen. It looks much better!)

If you would like to try it out for yourself, drag this bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar: Geek & Poke or click to download the information card below to your card selector.

Geek and Poke Information Card

Just visit any of the three sites with the card installed or click on the bookmarklet while on that page and you to can see the magic happen. ; )

TLS = Transport Layer Security
SSL = Secure Socket Layer
https = Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure

Private and sensitive information gets sent over the internet all day so what is preventing someone from stealing that information? In order for information to be securely transferred over the internet 2 basics are needed.
1. Confirm server identity
2. Encrypt communication with server

You don’t want to send information to someone who is impersonating the person you actually want to send it to, do you? SSL and TLS provide a way to verify the identity of the recipient. In it’s simplest form, there are many companies that will give people digitally signed certificates vouching for that person saying in essence, “we have checked to make sure this person is who they say they are and we think you can trust them.” When you browse the web, your browser has a list of companies that it will trust to tell you who you can trust. So, when you connect to a server your browser can check their certificate and if it is signed by one of the companies that you trust then your browser will trust it.

Private conversations are good when you are sharing sensitive or private data. You don’t go walking around on the street shouting out your birthday, credit card number, and social security number so why would you do it on the internet? TLS and SSL provide a way for you to have a private conversation with a server so that others can’t “listen in” on your conversation by encrypting the data. Most data on the web is transferred using http but when it is secured using TLS or SSL it is called https.

It’s important to know when you are or aren’t using https when browsing the web to protect your information. Most browsers have visual indicators to show that https is being used. Make it a habit to make sure that your information will be secure before sending or retrieving that data.

Resources to learn more of the nitty gritty of SSL, TLS, and https
TLS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security
http://www.ietf.org/dyn/wg/charter/tls-charter.html

SSL:
http://www.verisign.com/ssl/ssl-information-center/how-ssl-security-works/index.html
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7130470471741831613&ei=JETxSrXaC5v-qAPLzKWxDQ&q=ssl&hl=en&view=2&client=firefox-a#

https:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Secure
http://www.ourshop.org/resources/ssl.html

Images via CC BY 2.0
Lock and Chain: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bala_/
Silheuette: http://www.flickr.com/photos/narciss/
Yelling: http://www.flickr.com/photos/demibrooke/

THE PROBLEM

Information is flying all around us like debris from a tornado going through a trailer park. Information overload is a real problem now for the average person and it can wreak havoc on a persons productivity and goals. Never before in the history man has there been soo much information available. Experts, books, seminars, awareness: the availability of these are low if not non-existent. We are like little children who have been handed a gun with incredible power but no one is talking about how to safely handle it, and people are getting hurt!

WHAT TO DO

Fortunately for you, if you “shoot yourself in the foot” its your fault! Probably not what you were expecting, but it’s true. You have control over most of the information you subscribe to.

• RSS Feeds
• Television
• Radio
• Email
• Social Networks
• Magazines
• Newspaper

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH MY BROWSER?

You can control what your Firefox looks like. I have seen too many people who try to browse the web with so many buttons, bars, and add-ons that much of the space for actually viewing web pages is reduced by about a third or more. Take back your browser real estate and surf the web with freedom again!

WHAT CAN I DO?

Here is an example of two extremes.

If the bloated one looks similar to yours or a friends browser then you are in the right place.

To Do:

• Use the Toolbar collapse button to hide the clutter until you need it

• Remove all add-ons you aren’t using all of the time (Spring Cleaning!)
• Hide toolbars (functionality can often be accessed through the application menu)
• Remove buttons that aren’t needed (most have keyboard shortcuts which are faster)

This is really fun because you get to drag and drop buttons where ever you like.

• Hide status bar if you don’t use it (Bottom gray bar)

• Disable “Always show the tab bar”

The real trick is to balance the functionality of add-ons and buttons with space. After many months of trying different configurations, this has been the most effective layout for me.

I use the keyboard shortcuts for the Firebug add-on and the other basic browser buttons like forward, back, refresh, so I have removed all those buttons and add-on bars. I show the status bar on the bottom so I can see if the HTML pages I am coding are validating as strict without running a validator. I also hide the bookmarks bar because I don’t use them very frequently. Everyone uses the web differently which makes Firefox great for many people because it can be customized for their needs. Play around with your layout, reduce distractions, and find what works best for you.

Storm Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/liebedich/ / CC BY 2.0

There are a few reasons why your installed add-ons might get marked as incompatible. Sometimes the developer has not changed the install requirements to accept your version. Mozilla suggests to developers that they don’t mark it compatible until they KNOW it is compatible. So, many developers don’t mark their add-ons compatible with beta and alpha releases of Firefox. Another reason an add-on might not be marked as compatible is because it really ISN’T compatible. Running an incompatible add-on can corrupt data in your browser profile and other places on your computer so don’t force add-ons to work unless you are willing to deal with the risks.

Precautions:

• Don’t force add-ons unless you are willing to deal with possible browser crashing and data/profile corruption!
• Backup your profile!
• Be an add-on minimalist! The more add-ons you have, the more that can go wrong… very wrong.
• Backup your system regularly. If you don’t do this already your crazy and you should start yesterday!

How:

To force Firefox to accept all installed add-ons we simply need to tell it in it’s configuration file to ignore incompatibility. It will still check for updates and inform you that add-ons are incompatible, but it will let them run.

Steps:

1. Open Firefox
2. Type about:config into browser bar and press enter
3. Click “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button and chuckle at Mozilla’s developer’s humor
4. Right click on any list item in browser window and select “New” -> “Boolean”
5. Paste extensions.checkCompatibility into alert box input window
6. Select “False”
7. Open add-ons window: Select “Tools” -> “Add-ons”
8. Click “Restart” on yellow notification bar
9. Throw your hands up in the air
10. Shout for joy
11. Spin around in your twirly chair and get back to work
12. ; )

Visual Steps:

1. Click on the first image
2. Click on the arrows that show up when you mouse over the image to walk through the steps visually
3. Enjoy the show

Shocked Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carbonnyc/ / CC BY 2.0

FF 3.7a - aka Minefield

Firefox 3.7 Alpha is available for download for developers to try out but it is still very alpha. I love the humor that the Mozilla developers have as seen through the icon used for Firefox 3.7a. The developers have lovingly named the alpha “Minefield”. Love it! ; ) Still want to try it out? Download Firefox 3.7 Alpha

This Warning applies to you if you are using an old browser!!

Check out the bring down IE 6 campaign over at http://www.bringdownie6.com/