Robots Will Be Our Superiors

A friend recently asked about syncing bookmarks across different browsers.  Right now it seems like the best tool for that is Xmarks, which performs the admirable task of making sure bookmarks are all lined up between IE, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.

I had used Xmarks in the past (it used to be a Firefox exclusive, Foxmarks), but lately I hadn’t been as synced up as I could be.  I will openly confess to using Firefox almost exclusively for my web browsing needs – so the ability to sync across several browsers seemed unnecessary.

The big option for Firefox users right now is also made by Mozilla – Weave.  Taking advantage of the assumption that the intended user is browsing with Firefox exclusively, Weave does bookmark synchronization and a whole lot more.

Obviously, bookmark syncing is present.  Expanding on that, Weave will also sync the Firefox toolbar settings as well.  Example: I have my toolbars tweaked so my bookmarks are just icons on the top menu bar, next to the Help menu.  I think it looks nicer than using the standard bookmark toolbar and frees up some screen real estate on my laptop.  When I make changes to this toolbar (or any toolbar, for that matter), those changes are saved to my Weave profile.  If I add a shortcut on my laptop, the next time I load Firefox on my desktop computer said shortcut will automagically appear.

Continuing in features exclusive to Firefox, Weave will also sync the settings of your Personas, or user themes, assuming the necessary add-in is installed on the computers being use.  The Awesome Bar will also be updated, so typing in the same words or phrases will get the same results on all computers.

And if you could possibly want more, Weave also allows you to use the history and even the closed tabs from other Firefox installations.  Firefox recently added the ability to recover closed tabs, meaning the user doesn’t have to worry about accidentally closing a tab and then having to root through the history folder to find it.  Once Weave is installed, a new item is added to the History menu: “Tabs From Other Computers”.  It’s a small addition that turns out to be more useful than most would assume at first.

I have three different computers I that I use Firefox with, two at home and one at work.  Weave has proved to be a pretty handy tool for keeping my user experience consistent across all of them.  Mozilla is always hard at work, making sure that Firefox is a world-class browser and also working on other special projects like collaborative coding, browser enrichment, and giving everyone the ability to write extensions.  Check out the Mozilla Labs site to see all the neat things they’re working on.

Only 17 days until Windows 7.  One week later is the next Ubuntu release:

Firefox Personas is another variation on the Firefox “theme”, that allows for easy modification of the visual aspect of the Firefox GUI.

The Persona plug-in and system is pretty slick, much nicer than the old method of managing themes.  Making a Persona over making a Theme is much, much easier.  Their interface for creating a theme comes with detailed instructions on how to make the picture files and inline color pickers for choosing font colors.  Slick!  Being able to mouse-over and preview the personas?  Brilliant!

My only complaint would be that one has to wade through 50 lame/hard on the eyes personas to find one good one.  Ah well, such is life.

I personally go for the abstract/gradient/just different enough to make the browser look slick without looking annoying type.

I’ve seen several movies lately that I’ve enjoyed, including, but not limited to: Sunshine Cleaners, Helvetica, and District 9.

I also learned that in the upcoming version of Gimp 2.7, you can finally rotate brushes.  I’m… I’m just so happy.  I’m also pretty excited about the fact that text editing is no longer done in a separate window, but inside the actual project.

I’ve been using Pipes for a little bit now, and I have to say that I’m still impressed with what it can do.  For a while my results were less than ideal, but a little tweaking got things to the way they should be.  My biggest gaffe was to forget to set the block “all” fields to block “any”, which meant that I was still getting a large amount of unwanted posts that didn’t meet all of my filter’s criteria.

My only beef with Pipes so far is the updating process.  The news doesn’t trickle in like a normal RSS feed .  Instead, I get buckets of posts dumped on me periodically throughout the day.  Checking Reader has become pretty habitual for me, so it’s something that I’ve noticed happening.  I won’t get any Gawker-related posts for a few hours and then pow – 26 new posts.  Not a huge deal, but not ideal.  Oh well.

In my never-ending quest for RSS domination I came across yet another solution to keeping up to date on news in the form of RSSOwl.  RSSOwl is a standalone application that has a lot of things going for it.

The Good Stuff

1) You can easily import all of your feed information from another RSS reader.  In Google Reader one can export an OPML file which contains information about all of your currently subscribed feeds.  Load this file in RSSOwl, and you’ve got all of your blogs, including their folders.  No fuss, no muss.  Actually, there is one muss (?), but it has to do with Google.  When I thought I was exporting an .opml file I was actually creating a .xml file.  Since RSSOwl is looking for .opml files exclusively, it took me a while my exported feeds.  Once I changed the file extension all was well.  Google can import such files as well, so this convenience goes both ways.

2) You can FILTER any or all of your feeds in a way that I was using Pipes anyway.  Let’s say I wanted to subscribe to Food Bloggin, but I only wanted to see what my friend Chris was eating.  I could set up a filter to only include posts authored by Chris.  Pretty slick, and it negates the need for Pipes altogether.  (I will freely admit that using something as complex as Pipes as a simple RSS filter does not do its capabilities justice.)

3) Portability.  Having an application be “portable” is the new rock and roll these days, and the term gets thrown around almost as much as “cloud computing”.  The gist of it is that everything needed to run RSSOwl is self-contained in one directory, meaning you don’t really need to install the program.  Nothing is written to the registry, nothing is send to Windows.  This means that one can (as I do) run it off a USB drive on any computer.  Feeds anywhere!

4) RSSOwl is open source.  In case you couldn’t tell, I like that.

5) Tabbed browsing.  Tabs make everything better!

The Not So Good Stuff

1) For some reason when I open RSSOwl on a new computer, I need to reload my feeds.  Not quite sure why that is.  It kind of shoots the portability factor down a bit, eh?

2) There’s no way to mark something “as read” between readers.  If I read something in RSSOwl, it doesn not mark it read in Google Reader.  This is not a huge deal, and nobody’s fault in particular.  Being spoiled by IMAP, however, I can read something in Thunderbird and it will be read in Gmail, and vice versa.  Obviously there is no such standard written for blog postings, and I doubt there ever will be.

3) The logo is kind of devious.  Mozilla has a pretty slick logo in Firefox and Thunderbird, and the RSSOwl logo is a not-so-subtle attempt and trying to blend right into the Mozilla suite.  Whether that’s a tip of the hat or an attempt to catch the un-savvy into thinking they’re all part of the same project is unbeknownst to me.

The image below is the default, and the result of my opening RSSOwl on my laptop for the first time.

It bums me out that Thunderbird doesn’t get as much attention as Firefox.  Thunderbird is often neglected by not only users but also developers/tweakers, as is evidenced by the lack of extensions and themes for the program.  There are more themes for Firefox than you can shake a stick at, and the same goes for extensions.  Thunderbird?  Not so much.

I’ve read a few different blurbs about the fact that TB doesn’t get as much love as FF.  It makes sense given how integral the web browser has become in most people’s lives.  With more and more people using webmail (and by webmail I mean Gmail), the email client just isn’t as important as it used to be.

I blame Gmail.  Once upon a time I could make the claim that I like to “own my emails” by having copies on my computer when I needed them.  Google added offline access and that took care of that.  Even though Google got past that one, I still stand by Thunderbird because I can manage three different emails that I use on a regular basis from one spot.  Convenient.

There’s some good stuff that happens at http://www.spreadthunderbird.com.  (That’s where I got the TB banner that is on my OS page.)  I hope the TB community growth rate takes off with the impending release of Thunderbird 3.  I’ve been using the beta for a while and it’s a solid program.

Even if you use Gmail, check out Thunderbird.  Gmail works great with TB; here’s how to set it up.

The purchase of Sun Microsystems by Oracle has some pretty deep implications in the world of Open Source.  The first and most obvious is that Sun managed MySQL (which is actually owned by a subsidiary), the open source database software that provided an alternative to… Oracle’s database software.

This acquisition also means that Oracle now owns Java and OpenOffice.org.  OOo is emerging to be the most visible alternative to MS Office.

Aside from the conflict of Oracle now owning the free, open source alternative to their own commercial products, the fate of the other products is up in the air as one doesn’t know how Oracle will view and treat their new properties.  I haven’t read a lot of doom-and-gloom yet, but like most people I am slightly skeptical.

We’ll see what happens, I guess.  In the big picture, the Open Source software that has been managed by Sun will live on regardless, because, well… it’s open source.  Someone somewhere will pick up the torch and modify the source into the new standard.  Hooray for the GPL!

I made this today:

Not terrible for a first try.  Most of it is cobbled together from the graphics on the gimp.org home page.  Check out those sexy rounded edges.

You can read an entire list of the updates and new features that are coming with OpenOffice.org with version 3.1, but I’m the most excited about one minor tweak in particular.  Finally, finally, finally, you can rename a sheet within Calc by double-clicking it.  That annoyed the hell out of me ever since I started using the program.  It’s  long-standing Excel convention convention that took them forever to integrate into Calc, and I’m not entirely sure why.

It’s the little things that make life worth living.

Also of note is the impending release of Firefox 3.5.  What was originally slated to be a mere upgrade to 3.1 saw SO many significant changes that they bumped up the version number to 3.5.  I’m excited.

All this talk of software made me realize that I don’t have a link to GIMP on my little OSS page.  I haven’t been able to find any GIMP banner ads online.  Perhaps I should make my own… in GIMP.

GIMP (and yes, I do insist on capitalizing it every time) recently took second in Lifehacker’s Hive Five for image editing.  I don’t think anyone was expecting anything but Photoshop to win, but it was nice to see GIMP in second.