Archive for February, 2010
Twitter, the Super Bowl and You – #SB44
Feb 3rd
The NFL announces the #SB44 tag for Twitter and Flickr (and wherever else you use tags).
Not surprisingly the NFL has a Super Bowl XLIV related site up with all the standard bells and whistles (countdown timer, visitor guide, etc) including a new Super Bowl Twitter Page and announced #SB44 as the official hash tag for all that is Super Bowl 44 related.
The NFL marketing department has designated #SB44 as the tag to use for Twitter, Flickr and wherever else you plan on posting Super Bowl related stuff in an effort to harness the power of social media by organizing the content ever so slightly. The site itself is a Flash-tastic compilation of tweets and photos you can pan across, but the content must be heavily moderated because there is nothing very interesting being posted (no cursing, no ranting, etc).
This is a great example of how major corporations can use Twitter to organize their followers and help feed their own hype machine for whatever they have going on. For users at the game, outside the stadium and across the country searching #SB44 should find you the latest and greatest news (from Twitter, at the least).
via [CNET]
4 Favorite Firefox Plug-ins I Can’t Live Without
Feb 2nd
First off, if you use Internet Explorer regularly… What is wrong with you?
Now that that is out of the way lets talk about Mozilla Firefox. The beauty of open source applications are the plethora (I can’t say that word without thinking of the 3 Amigos) of plug-ins, add-ons and extensions to let you add or tweak features. Firefox is no exception and offers thousands of add-ons to allow you to manage your web browsing experience.
The key to technology is making it work for you. Choose applications and technologies that put the power of customization in the user’s hands then take full advantage of making the technology better for yourself.
To that end, here are 4 add-ons that almost everyone would benefit from using regularly.
Sage
I subscribe to a ton of RSS feeds that I need to get through regularly to stay on top of news around the world and sage is my favorite RSS reader.
It is basic and simple, displays in the Firefox sidebar and allows for drag and drop adding of feeds.
Xmarks
Xmarks synchronizes your bookmarks and passwords across to a server so that they can be accessed through the web and in different physical locations. I spend a lot of time reading articles and bookmarking resources, but I do it at work, at home on my desktop and on the road with my laptop. Now when I find a work related link while at home I don’t have to e-mail it to myself, it’ll just show up in the bookmarks folder in every location and everything happens in the background so you don’t have to worry about it.
Firebug
I am not a coder, but I do often have to mess with CSS elements of a website to tweak this or that. Every skill level from code peons like me all the way up to hardcore developers use Firebug to steal look at and tweak code. From figuring out how a page is laid out to where a particular DIV ends, there is no tool better for getting a quick look at the behind the scenes action of whatever page you’re look at. If you’re curious, download it and mess around. You wont break anything.
Greasemonkey
Greasemonkey is a plug-in that allows users to run javascript to modify or manipulate web pages. For example, there are scripts for creating a Facebook Dislike button, re-organizing gMail’s layout and (my personal favorite) automating Mafia Wars playing. There are thousands of scripts and often many for the same purpose so you should read the comments and consider ratings and # of downloads before you choose (also don’t be afraid to try one then replace it with another). Is there some way that you wish you could tweak a site you use every day? Check userscripts.org and you might find the script to do.
Google Docs Lets You Share Any File For Free
Feb 1st
Back in October ‘09 the Google Docs team announced shared folders which was a much needed addition to the gDocs featureset. Now the team has announced the ability to upload any file type you please, essentially making Google Docs into an online file sharing repository.
Users can upload up to 1GB of data and make the files available for viewing and download to anyone they want. Additional storage is $.25 / GB / Year.
There are many ways out there to share files with friends and coworkers (including creating a Google Site or manually uploading to your FTP site), but being integrated directly with Google Docs makes the process much cleaner, simpler and safer. Users can leverage their existing accounts to take advantage of the sharing and security features that come with Google Docs.
This isn’t a mind blowing feature, but the next time you need to distribute a file that is to big to e-mail you should think of Google Docs. It’ll save you a ton of time.
via [Google Docs Blog]
