Firefox Tools

I saw this post on Slashdot a few days ago that talked about a Firefox extension that would visually indicate what type of link you were looking at/about to click called target alert. Being a long time user of the Web Developer Toolbar by Chris Pederick I decided to give it a whirl. The images take a little longer to show up than the page does, but it’s pretty neat nontheless, and makes for a lazier surfing (if that’s possible).

So I got to wondering if maybe there had been an extension created which served as an rss aggregator (I’ve been looking for a nice free one for a bit) and Voila!, I found one. The project is called Sage and is a very simple rss reader for both RSS and Atom formats (why can’t we all just get along?). Not having ever used a reader before I had little or no expectations going into the deal, so I was not disappointed. Sage does allow you to import/export your listing so you can maintain the same list in two places, which is nice, but it is a fully manual process that I think should be worked on to make it more automated, perhaps via remote storage and an SFTP transaction upon opening. They could even use the JavaScript GET to see if such a synchronization was even needed. I am complaining I guess, but not too loud.

I’ve been anxiously waiting for an opportunity to get a GMail account and I finally got one last Friday, from two different people. Apparently they sent out a bunch of invitations to current members on Friday, since Nick had 6 and Michael had several as well. It now looks like they are offering invitations to anyone who sends an email to a GMail account holder which I think is a policy shift, but not having an account before I don’t really know. It could be kind of a social networking thing to see how far the accounts will get before they open them up to the public, or at least that was Mike’s idea. Whatever it is, the application is pretty slick

Just as an aside, there is a contest that picks a winner by drawing randomly from entrants and double checking to make sure they are registered to vote. You can sign up by clicking here. It seems like an interesting idea, I guess. Anyway, it doesn’t take any time and you were already going to vote anyway, right?