apple releases safari 3.1 --- 3 years too late

apple just released safari 3.1 for windows, but seriously, who cares.
there're much stronger competitors like firefox, flock and opera.
and once you go firefox, you won't look back.
apple safari would have its chance of the market share if it opened to windows users 3 years ago while IE6 was dying and firefox just started out to gain some ground. but now the market has already been shared, where is the target market for safari? it's too late, give it up.

this is a map of browser market share in November, 2007


however, there's one market still not too late which is instant messenger. open ichat for windows and make it open source. with those ugly interface the rest applications have, ichat has the most chance to win out. that will take most market from openAOL and from windows live messenger.

it's now or never, apple.


According to the latest figures from Neilsen/Netratings, AOL still has a commanding lead in the IM market.

• AOL: 53 million
• MSN: 27 million
• Yahoo: 22 million
• Google: 866,000

QuickSilver clone for windows --- MightyBox

I found this open source project MightyBox.
It's a clone of QuickSilver.
It's still in alpha version but I tried it and thought it's pretty good.

sticky notes & screen shots

Talking about some good old desktop applications. I have been using these two applications for a long time. They are small applications that doesn't take much space, straight forward and simple, do what they are supposed to do. Unlike some applications trying to become a huge 'do-it-all' monster where I find them just trying too hard.

1. For taking screen shot, Screen grab pro is the best. simple, clean, small.
you can select any part of the screen you want to cover, then save it as jpg or bmp file.

I was thinking of a Mac's grab parallel program in windows, then I finally found this. Other related programs tried to make things so complicated. If you just want to take a screenshot of a website or desktop sometime, trust me, this one does the job nice and easy. No fuss at all.

2. sticky notes
I was so jealous about Mac's sticky note. It looks great and must be very convenient to have them. So I went out to surf the net, found several stickies program, tried them.

The Turbonote+ got my nod. I've been using it for years now. It's a great program. You can change note color, set alarm, sent it out as email, etc. But one down side is they are not free.

I have recently come across stickies. It's as good as the other one I just mentioned. Not only you have several options of skin, but it's also free.

So to save your time googling and testing out all the programs out there, use these stuff if you need them. No need to shop around. You don't have to pay anything anyway. :)

Tags:

• sticky notes
• screen shots
• grab
• sticky

keep a copy of whatever image of a website you like, yeap.

Some webpages disabled the right click so you can't save an image you like on your hard drive.
The reason why I want to save those images is simply because I liked them and want to have them on my desktop to look at from time to time. ;)
So here is an easy way to disable this blocking.

on Firefox browser:
Tools -> Options -> Web Features -> uncheck Enable JavaScrip

This information is initially found from here.

Or, you can install firefox extension --- allow right click.

one more option, use this greasemonky script.


Tags:

• right click
• image
• hack
• save

Firefox help: Accidentally removed all passwords

There are certain times when it's smarter just to leave your computer alone.
Like when you are sleepy, half conscious or drunk. Because something you do in that state might cause you great pain later.
I knew I should not have been on my computer when I got up on Sunday morning feeling still sleepy and were not able to concentrate.
I accidentally removed all the passwords in the password manager.

Yes, I have been using PasswordMaker for a while, so I was not in a total panic. But I was lazy. I didn't change all my old passwords. They were in the password manager, I thought, it should be fine. When I was attempting to delete only one wrong password entry, I clicked on the 'removed all' button. There was not a 'do you really want to do this?' dialogue box to confirm my intention, so right away everything was erased.

I said I wasn't panicked. But it still shocked me.
Now instead of going to brunch, read Sunday New York Times and enjoy a nice day, I sat in front of the computer searching for hours only to recover the passwords.

During my research, I found Firefox 1.5.0.1 now has built-in automatic bookmarks backup. It was backup-ed in the profiles folder with dates on the file name. However, the information about lost password was not easy to find.

I can't find any way to recover deleted passwords. Once it was removed, it was gone. The main files for storing passwords are in profiles folder too. They are "key3.db" and "singons.txt". You need both files. Thanks god I had full hard drive backup-ed three days ago. So I simply go into my backup, found these files, copied and pasted them back to the hard drive. Everything was back on track in two hours. That was not too bad.

But what if I don't have a backup? Then the pain will just follow me for several days and finally it will come up and sting me every time I can't log on a website.

To keep a backup of passwords is important if you don't want this happen to you. One way is just keep a copy of them in another folder. Or, keep a full backup of the hard drive, or the Firefox profiles folder. Backup is like brushing your teeth. Do it, don't think!

There is an extension to help you output all passwords in a text document so you can print it out as a record. It's called Password Save. It's not the best way but it's an old school way. Or you can just start using PasswordMaker and never have to worry about it thereafter.

Choose a way, either way. Save your heart ache for something else.

Tags:

• password
• Firefox
• help
• extension
• backup
• recover

Rss reader

Rss reader is a very convenient software if you have a bunch of blogs that you want to keep track of. It will let you know when the blogs are updated.

I am not so keen to reading on rss readers. It takes away the individual website design. Unless the site is terribly designed, I think it's more fun to go to the website.

Nevertheless, it's a good way to keep track of websites and blogs. You'll get notified if they are updated. So you don't have to surf the net in vain.

I spent several hours looking and testing several rss readers. In a quest to find a simple, effective, and well-designed rss reader. My standard here is to find a easy to use, easy for the eye and not a stand alone program. I prefer to have it integrated with the browser or an email client, so I don't have to have one more program running on my computer all the time.

Sage turns out to be the best one for me.

You need to be using firefox browser. Install Sage extension. It will then open on the sidebar of the browser with only a click. So far, there're 30 different styles you can download to customize the display. When visiting a webpage, it can search for rss or atom feed automatically. You can easily add feeds to the list.

What if when you are not able to access your computer? There are web based rss readers too.

Google reader is the one I most preferred. It's very simple. I like the magnifing on a single post interface design. And the import/export of the rss feeds are very easy. I exported the OPML file from Sage, then imported it to Google reader. So now no matter I am on my computer or at public pcs, I have the same settings.

The other web based rss reader I tried is Bloglines. It seems to have a lot of users. I applied for an account and set it up. After trying it 20 minutes, I found it complicate and too ambitious. The way it set up to pull hundreds of news feeds just add to my information anxiety. Besides the interface was also confusing. I gave it up.

One other find I thought is very interesting and worth a mention. Which is a messenger like rss reader called Nutshell. It sits on your desktop like a messenger and informs you new updates and headlines with a ticker bar on top of the screen. It's highly customizable, versatile and beautifully designed for the look.

Tags:

• rss reader
• Sage
• google reader
• bloglines
• Nutshell

the delicious Bli.nkli.st

I posted 2 entries on my other blog about social bookmarking. Mainly talked about my experience which transformed from resistance to enthusiasm about del.icio.us. The first post was "share bookmarks". The second was "social bookmarking... it's del.icio.us". On the second day I posted it, mindvalley's Mike kindly enough to send me an ivitation to try out Blinklist. I was quite happy with del.icio.us then. Didn't see any need for using another bookmarking service. So I put off the invitation for awhile.

But in a short time, I started to accumulate a big amount of bookmarks, that's when the problem began. With del.icio.us, it's hard to find my bookmarks. The tag cloud is not as big as I wished for easy browsing, the website design has not improved for a long time. It seemed like they were quite happy with how they are now, no more improvment needed. But that's not quite the truth. For one thing, it's hard to find bookmarks that were burried deep inside the pages.

So I decided to give Bli.nkli.st a try. (I hope guys at mindvalley won't get offended by my 'delicious-ize' blinklist. I think they had the idea and name it quite well. Why not borrow it too?)
First, the import process was blissful. Smooth as highway 99. In under 10 minutes, I have all my bookmarks up on blinklist. But after this, there's a little reading required to be able to get a more comprehansive idea of it. I think this part should have an intuitive interactive tutorial, or plain drawing to explain each part's function. I would say it's a little bit too much reading for the present presentation.

It took me around 30 minutes reading to be able to use it confidently(including rumpling around in the help page and lots of back and forth clicks to find out the differences.) And had to google 'shoutbox' to know what is that. :) But even so, I'd say the reading is quite worthwhile, if you have enough patience to do it. It paid off very well. Cause I found out bli.nkli.st is a very versatile application which can be set up according to whatever need you have and let you find your bookmark quickly. Most people have 'to read', 'to buy', 'to try'... tags on the favourite tab for easy organizing and quick access. However, the quickstart button has to open another page, which doesn't seem quick enough for me.

Bli.nkli.st has a much cooler interface design. That's one more point added for making my using experience quite pleasant.

My only humble request now, is to have a 2 button toolbar, like delicious', one for go to the website, one for tagging. That will make me very happy.

(This is my current solution instead of the toolbar.)

Tags:

• social bookmarking
• web2.0
• bli.nkli.st
• share