Monthly Archives: December 2006

Browser Add-ons, Mozilla Firefox, NSFW Extension, Software

NSFW Detector

Problem: You work in an office. You may occasionally browse non-work websites. These websites may occasionally link to pages that may be Not Safe For Work (NSFW).

Proposal: If websites indicated somehow that links (and the link text) were NSFW, your browser could screen them out or tone them down to avoid embarrassing you or costing you your job. *

Solution: The NSFW Firefox extension. It checks each page for links that are indicated to be NSFW, either with rel=”nsfw” or class=”nsfw”, and applies a set of CSS rules to the links. These customizable rules could remove the links entirely, make them semi-transparent, or even make them stand out more, if that’s what you’re going for.

* Or you could, you know, just not view non-work websites at the office. :-)

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Life, Pedro, Pets

The Truth About Cats and Dogs

I got my wife a kitten for Christmas:

Our dog Pedro thinks that the kitten is his pet and hasn’t stopped hovering over it for the past 6 days:

In fact, he only eats when the kitten does:

The kitten quickly figured out that Pedro is afraid of this baby-gate (it tipped over on him once when he tried to climb over it), so he crawls underneath it when he needs a break from the constant dog-mothering.

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Home Improvement, Life, Recommendations

America’s Next Top Remodel

My wife and I recently remodeled our back entryway, partly because it needed it and partly as preparation for remodeling our kitchen. We replaced 25 year-old linoleum with laminate flooring, stripped off the textured wallpaper, painted the walls and doors (after repairing some pretty big holes and cracks hidden by the wallpaper), and put up some wainscoting. I also added a built-in bench with storage under the seats, which I think is pretty sharp.

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And since I know that I would be curious, here are the details of the products we used:

  • The flooring is Tarkett’s “Heritage Maple” laminate flooring.
  • The wainscoting (also called beadboard or just plain paneling) and chair rail are both from The Home Depot.
  • The paint is Glidden’s Drum Beat Red with their grey “Gripper” primer underneath.
  • The red rug came from Wal-Mart, but I can’t find it in their online store.
  • The curtains are from Brylane Home.
  • The bench was just made out of surplus lumber from one of my father-in-law’s many wood storage sheds, but the hinges are from Ace Hardware.

This post isn’t sponsored by any of the companies above, but I’d recommend any of the products I just listed. We managed to make good choices with just about everything that went into this project, with the possible exception of choosing to have me do the work.

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Life

I’ve been tagged… Five things you don’t know about me.

So C.K. tagged me into the “List five things people don’t know about you and then get five more people to do the same” pyramid scheme meme. (For those of you keeping track, the line back to the top of the pyramid is me » C.K. Sample » Jason Calacanis » Amanda Congdon » Michael Ambs » Rick Rey » Steve Woolf » Steve Garfield » Jeff Pulver.) So here they are – five things you (probably) don’t know about me, Chris Finke:

1. I used to write movie, music, and restaurant reviews for the Janesville Gazette’s JNL section; I probably did 40 to 50 of them over a four year period. I also won their Christmas creative-writing contest three years in a row.

2. I’ve played a tuba. While wearing a Santa suit. And beard. In front of 1,600 high school students. While getting booed. Loudly.

3. When I played third-base in Little League, I completed an unassisted triple play. Needless to say, I lucked into it: I caught a soft line drive while standing on third with the bases loaded, and the runner at second just screwed up and kept running.

4. I can gleek. This both disgusts my wife and makes her jealous that she can’t do it too.

5. I have surprisingly persistent career goals: in second grade, one of our homework assignments was to write down what we wanted to be when we grow up; I put “computer programmer or music teacher.” I went on to start college as a music education major before switching to computer science. (It was not until after I was well into my CS degree that I found the paper and was amazed by my second-grade self.)

That’s it for me, but as for my five people: tag-you’re-it, Alex, Muhammad, Derek, Fabienne ;-), and just for the heck of it, Ken Jennings.

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Netscape Blog

FAS Updated

This post originally appeared on the Netscape Blog.

We’ve updated the Friends’ Activity Sidebar Firefox extension to include the option to be notified of your friends’ votes (in addition to their stories and comments). To use this new feature, install version 1.1 of the extension from Mozilla Addons, and after restarting your browser, open the FAS options dialog via Tools > Add-ons > Netscape Friends’ Activity Sidebar > Options. Check the “Notify me of new votes by my friends.” box and click OK.

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The next time the extension checks for new activity, your friends’ votes will be displayed along with their stories and/or comments.
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Digg, Netscape, Netscape.com

Where are Digg’s new features?

On November 9, Wired Blogs ran an article “quoting” Digg founder Kevin Rose as saying that 20 new features would be added to Digg over the next month. (I say “quoting” because the phrase was not actually in quotes, but it can be deduced that Kevin said or implied it at some point during the interview.) That was 32 days ago, so let’s do an overview of the improvements we’ve seen to Digg since then:

Uh… hmm… er…

That’s right – despite boasting of nearly two dozen new features to come, not a single one has been introduced. This brings a few questions to mind: where are they? What are they? Maybe the most important question of all is “Are they?” (as in “Do they actually exist?”).

If Digg actually had 20 new features due to be released by December 10 and none of them made it, they need to take a serious look at their development cycle. Heck, even Netscape released more features for Digg in that timeframe than Digg did.

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Netscape Blog

The Netscape Digg Tracker

This post originally appeared on the Netscape Blog.

In the spirit of holiday generosity, we give you this:

The Netscape Digg Tracker

Based on our own Friends’ Activity Sidebar and by using the public Digg API, this extension allows you to monitor your friends’ activities on Digg!

Netscape’s Digg Tracker extension helps you keep tabs on what stories your Digg friends are submitting, commenting on, and digging. A new toolbar button (shown below) features the Digg mascot. When there is new activity by your friends (i.e., a new comment or a new story submission), the button will be activated and the digger will be shown with his shovel. Clicking on the activated button will open a list of your friends’ activity in the sidebar, allowing you to easily browse the stories in which they’re being active.

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Figure 1: The two main states of the toolbar button.

Each time you view your friends’ activity, you will only be shown activity that is new since the last time you opened the sidebar. In addition, the top 5 stories from Netscape.com will be shown below your friends’ activity. At any time, you can click the toolbar button to view these links, even if there is no new activity to display. The extension defaults to showing you the submissions of the friends of Kevin Rose, Digg’s founder and chief architect. You can have it alert you to your own friends’ activities by entering your username in the options dialog.

Note: The sidebar limits activity to five stories/comments for each friend. To view more of a friend’s recent activity, click on their avatar or username to be sent to that friend’s profile.

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Figure 2: Netscape’s Digg Tracker Sidebar

Netscape’s Digg Tracker is compatible with Firefox 1.5 through 2.0.0.* as well as the latest release of Flock and can be downloaded from Mozilla Addons.

Happy Holidays from Team Netscape to Team Digg!

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Netscape Blog

Browser Extensions

This post originally appeared on the Netscape Blog.

Today we released two Firefox extensions that hook into Netscape.com: the Sitemail Notifier extension and the Friends’ Activity Sidebar. We hope that these extensions will allow you to get even more value out of Netscape. Both extensions are compatible with Firefox 1.5 through 2.0.0.* as well as the latest release of Flock.

Sitemail Notifier

The Sitemail Notifier extension adds a button (shown below) to your toolbar that indicates when you have new sitemail messages at Netscape.com. Clicking the button will bring you to your messages page.

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Figure 1: The two main states of the sitemail button.

Friends’ Activity Sidebar

The Friends’ Activity Sidebar (FAS) extension helps you keep tabs on what stories your Netscape friends are submitting and commenting on. A new toolbar button (shown below) features Chad, the older, more mature brother of AOL’s little yellow chat mascot. When there is new activity by your friends (i.e., a new comment or a new story submission), the button will be activated and Chad will send a friendly wave your way. Clicking on the activated button will open a list of your friends’ activity in the sidebar, allowing you to easily browse their stories and comments. Each time you view your friends’ activity, you will only be shown activity that is new since the last time you opened the sidebar.

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Figure 2: The two main states of the FAS button.

Note: The sidebar limits activity to five stories/comments for each friend. To view more of a friend’s recent activity, click on their avatar or username to be sent to that friend’s profile.

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Figure 3: The Friends’ Activity Sidebar

Suggestions for future extensions or improvements on these extensions are most definitely welcome.

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Netscape, Recommendations, Video

TV Squad Daily: The Smart Choice

If you’re like me and don’t have time to watch a lot of TV, but you still want to be able to speak eruditely on such topics as K-Fed’s latest faux pas or Conan’s latest bon mot, check out the TV Squad Daily Vodcast.

Two minutes of TV Squad Daily will leave you refreshed, informed, and ready to be the envy of all the water-cooler conversationalists. Go get ’em, tiger!

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