EdgeCrafting - giving you an Edge !

Missing your favorite extension in firefox 3 ?! - In a post last year I wrote about the nightly tester tool which can be used for overriding extension compability check.

Nightly tester tool overwrite compatibility check extension by extension, if you want to skip compatibility for all extension in Firefox3 it's possible to switch of the compatibility check entirely:

1. Type “about:config” in the Firefox address bar
   Note: “about:config” shows configuration variable for Firefox
   
2. By-pass the warning screen
   Note: no complaining if altered settings gives you trouble !
   
3. In the area with list of settings variable, right click anywhere and choose New + Boolean in the pop-up
   Note: We want to define a new variable
   
4. Name the New Boolean “extensions.checkCompatibility” and press enter
5. Choose “false” as the value
   Note: Tells Firefox to ignore extension compatibility check
   
6. Restart Firefox

Warning: Only use the above overwrite to enable compatibility to Firefox 3 plugins.

Don't do this with Firefox 2.x plugins unless you know how to clean up any mess you might encounter. Many of of the older Firefox 2 plugins will mess up your Firefox 3 !

BonusInfo:
Mozilla knowledgebase links

Extensions.checkCompatibility
Extensions.checkUpdateSecurity

---

Liked this post ?! - check out other post about extensions

Try Etherpad for a fast, free , easy and really live collaboration and chatsession




Etherpad offers basic collaboration with no bells and whistles - BUT Etherpad do really excel at what matters when you want to have a quick collaboration session - it's fast, easy and simple !

• 10 sec to get an URL for a new Etherpad
• give out the url to your fellow collaborators
• click the url and you are ready to start writing and chat in the same etherpad
• each participant entries gets a separate color
• unlimited undo
• text updated twice every second = you do really have a live collaboration session
• elaborate or ask/answer questions via chat
  
• revisons of the etherpad can be saved at any time
  
• free !
  
• no login or account , thus no time wasted on filling out forms (a planned pro/paid version will include this)
  

I only miss three things

• simple text formatting as headlines and bulletpoints, but this should be in the pipeline.
• For corporate usage a password protection would be needed(in pipeline for a pro version)
  
• ability to delete an etherpad

Try Etherpad - it works !

Etherpad Review verdict: 4 out 5

Image via WikipediaJust installed latest version of PDFCreator which creates PDF prints from any Windows program.

Use it like a normal printer in Word, StarCalc or any other Windows application. I normally use it for receipts and other stuff I might need as reference material later.

PDFCreator is hosted at sourceforge.net a good place to find free open source tools, another good option is code.google.com

Kevin Kelly has a good follow up on his post about 1000 true fans which mused about whether the long tail economy were good for anyone else than aggregators - the original post made a case for the economy of 1000 true fans.

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living

Well, it turns out that 1000 true fans were a nice thesis, but 1000 fans don't really make a base for a living alone.

Kevin's recent blogpost the reality of depending on true fans with actual data and info from a musician Robert Rich is interesting reading ........ not surprisingly 1000 customers a year is not enough if you only earn 10$ per transaction

As Seth Godin stated in his blog post about 1000 fans
"you need to alter what you do and how you do it so that 1,000 true fans is sufficient to make you very happy"

My take - figure out how to expand from the 1000 fans, either by scaling the number of fans to 10.000+ or use the 1000 fans to reach out and get input to additional sources of income

In Robert Rich case - ask his fans for suggestion for places to expand his secondary income streams from licensing fees and references to sell his skill in studio mastering and engineering.

Wow ! - Animoto is a winner, one of the best video webservices I've tried so far;

Animoto produces videos that are totally custom made to the music and photos you choose, your photo's and chosen music are analysed and the result is a unique video.

Three easy steps to produce a video

1. Choose photo from webaccounts like Flickr or upload from PC
   
2. Choose music from (limited) Animoto or upload your own
   
3. Initiate video production, you get an mail 7-15 min later when your video is ready
   

The final video looks very good - see my sample below;



30-second video are free, one full video $3 and a years full access with unlimited video $30.
For a low-budget promotion video Animoto could be the answer, I will for sure use this service in one my current projects.

Review highlights


• very user friendly, simple and intuitive interface


• 3 easy steps to produce a video


• Limited music available, the help section points to a couple places with free music I think they should list alternative places more prominently


• In the help section you have to click every FAQ to see the answer, would suggest a show all option giving the option to scan the answers instead of reading it click by click. Tip, do read the help section - some good tips there
  


• Direct publishing option to Youtube, blogger, facebook ...


• Pricing seems fair


• Resulting video match the music, transitional effects and photos very well

Some users might want higher degree of control with effects and timing.
Currently only option to influence result is the ability to choose which photo to spotlight and musicstyle - but it work amazingly well

Animoto Review verdict: 4 out 5

Animoto is currently running a facebook campaign where you get a free full length Animoto video when signing up via their facebook app - not on facebook ?!, try this link instead

Update 2: You can find an up2date workaround described here

Change title tags for your blogger posts swap title hack


Update; Major issue ! Seems this and similar "title-above-head-tag-hack" breaks the visual layout editor in blogger when you subsequently want to add new pagelements via the visual editor ...... sigh

Note; following the advice from MYSS I'm pitching in the sidebar and focus my pages, thus will switch to blogging about different themes on different blogs.

Originial post below:

Wow, after some hefty research and a couple of late nights, I can release my first blogger hack!

An updated march 2008 version of the popular "Swap Blog Title and Post Title on Blogger".

From a SEO point it's more optimal to have the post title appear as the page title instead of a generic blogtitle first.

There's one minor issue I haven't been able to solve yet, the title tag ends above the head tag, which is not according to W3C standards for Title tag - but it should be rendered correctly by all browsers and even more important picked up by searchbots too .... so until something better shows up this hack should do the trick.

The hack's basic feature and design is similar to the old hack but I've eliminated some unneeded code, I suspect the original hack were done by someone without solid coding background (and understanding).

I've annotated the code to enhance clarity, but no guaranties for minor inaccuracy as I'm not completely confident with Blogger's framework yet.

anyway, here goes

1) Take a backup of existing template first ! - click Download full template and save it

2) Click expand Widget

3) Find this code in the top of blogger template,


4) Substitute with the code in table below - download link at the bottom of this post

5) Save Template

Note; Apparently Blogger integrates the new widget introduced in the hack with other widgets present, so when you re-open your template it will look differently and your widget hack code has been re-formatted and integrated with other widgets present in your template - it could be a problem later ..... so use this hack at your risk and keep your original back-up a safe place.

It's possible to re-find the added widget code after reformat by blogger, but it's not easy.

Note; Beats me why blogger keeps floating the table below down ... still looking into that

<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>	Include head content, loads page variable (I'm not totally clear about this one - no available documentation found)
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>	if this is an item page we want to do something
<b:section id='titleTag' class='header' maxwidgets='1' showaddelement='no'> <b:widget id='SwapTitle' locked='false' title='Swap Title' type='Blog'>	Widget needed for the code to work so we declare one, and as widget needs to be in a section we declare a section too
<b:includable id='posttitle' var='record'> <title> <data:record.title/> </title> </b:includable>	Declaration of subfuntion posttitle which takes the parameter record (parameter will be an object which contains information related to a specific post). For each record passed we generate a title tag (knowing we only will be called once, but since the post record is a part of an array we need to do this loop thing)
<b:includable id='main' var='top'> <b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'> <b:include data='post' name='posttitle'/> </b:loop> </b:includable>	Main routine in widget. Loops through all post (which is exactly one as we are only doing this on a item page), calls the subfuntion posttitle
</b:widget> </b:section>	widget and section closure
<b:else/> <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title> </b:if>	Use blogtitle if on main blogpage
<head>	Header tag is placed here, below our title hack!. Reason for placement below; otherwise we will get this error when trying to save our template; Your template is invalid because the tag 'b:section' appears inside of the tag 'head'

Click here to download the code to Swap Blog Title and Post Title on Blogger

If you like this hack, give me a blogger-hug .... read - a link to this post !

Thanks to following resources

• Jackbook.com where I found the original hack (or one of the many publication of it)
  
• Hoctro's Place for some solid walkthrough of widget's on Blogger
  
• Blogger Help on widgets
  

I noted this comment on the official Google blog "The Visualization API provides a platform that can be used to create, share and reuse visualizations written by the developer community. It provides a common way (an API) to access structured data sources, the first being Google spreadsheets" -

It might be hinting at a forthcoming API for GoogleBase ?!

When GoogleBase were launched I thought it would be a good option for database-on-www, but apparently Google don't want to compete in that area, GoogleBase seems to be aimed as an option to provide structured content for Google Search - leaving amazon S3 service as one of the best options currently for a database-on-www.