Andrew Beacock's Blog

If you use Firefox then you probably use the Google search box in the top left corner. If you want to add Technorati to the list of search engines in the drop-down box then download RatherBiased.com's beta Firefox Technorati search plugin . Technorati Tags: firefox , technorati

Each of my blog posts has a list of relevant Technorati tags that makes it easy for Technorati to categorise my posts, hopefully generating more readers of my blog. I read about Technorati's tagging system a while back, but didn't really want to handcode the HTML at the bottom of each post. I set about searching the web to see if anyone else has the same issue and can across the Oddiophile blog. There is a post from January which provides a bookmarklet that does all the work for you. You drag the bookmarklet link to your bookmark toolbar (that's the installation process!), then whenever you want to create some tags, you click the bookmarklet, type in the tags with a space between each one, click 'OK', then copy the resulting text and paste it into your blog post. That's it, nicely formatted Technorati tags, without any of the work or possible typing errors! Technorati Tags: technorati , bookmarklet , oddiophile

After receiving some help from my mate Robert Baillie , I've finally managed to finish my 'hack' to Foxylicious (v0.4) to enable the experimental interface when you right-click and choose 'Add to del.icio.us'. This gives a slightly larger window than the default one but includes the recommended, popular, and your tag lists making it easier to categorise your bookmarks. So why use this over the experimental bookmarklet provided by del.icio.us ? For a start I find it much easier to right-click than to navigate to a bookmarklet up at the top of the screen. Another reason is that if you are using Windows (XP at least) then with certain tabbed browsing settings the popup window goes behind the current window (it doesn't do this under Debian). I also wanted to give hacking an extension a go, and this seemed an easy way to try it out. I can't be bothered trying to create a full extension, and don't want to take credit for the excellent Foxylicious, so to u...

Dietrich Ayala (the author of Foxylicious - my favourite way to deal with del.icio.us links) has created an interesting service that collects & displays the HTTP headers from any browser that visits the mobiledump page. It's primary use is so you can view the HTTP headers that were sent by your mobile device. I've just just pointed my Nokia 6310i at http://http://dietrich.ganx4.com/mobiledump/ and I've been added to the bottom of the list, my specific details are captured on the Nokia6310i1.0_4.80_ProfileMIDP1.0_ConfigurationCLDC1.0.txt page. This is a simple service but what I really like is the fact that you can view all the other browsers (both web & mobile) that have hit that page so you can see the headers for handsets that you may not have access to. There are other lists available on the web of mobile user-agent strings but they don't include a full dump of all the headers. This information isn't normally available from the manufacturer eit...

I've been a bit quiet lately, partly due to a 2 week holiday to Florida, and partly because I've been a bit blog-lazy. I'm still using del.icio.us , but haven't found any other tools to make my experience better. I did start hacking up Foxylicious to support the experimental interface and I'm almost there, just need to know the correct JavaScript function to grab the selected contents of the webpage - any helpers? So apart from finishing the Foxylicious hack and posting it here and back to the original author I suppose that's my del.icio.us hunt over. I'm still using Bloglines as my RSS aggregator but I always struggled with the font size dictating not only the post entry's text size but also the size of my feed list. Greasemonkey to the rescue! Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that can control the rendering of the client-side DHTML so you can change pretty much any part of the page. You install Greasemonkey then add 'user scripts' of...

Firefox was updated on Wednesday after some JavaScript security holes were found. A new version ( 1.0.4 ) has been released so if you use Firefox I recommend that you upgrade to it ASAP. I don't let Firefox upgrade itself as this leaves some old version information in the 'add/remove programs' list in Windows that you can't get rid of - I always completely uninstall the old version then put the new one on. Don't worry, it doesn't delete your settings, bookmarks or extensions as these are stored in a different location from the application. More information is available at the Mozilla News page. Technorati Tags: firefox

I was just listening to Thursday's edition of the For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report podcast in the car on my way to work and I get a mention! I emailed Neville last week asking about some short podcast on PR matters and due to that they mentioned my email. The show was on Thursday April 14, and my name and blog are listed at the end of the "Intro" list of links in the show notes. I'm trying out a number of podcasts on different topics at the moment, and Shel & Neville's banter on PR & blogging issues makes the hour-long trip to work all the more bearable! Technorati Tags: podcast , For Immediate Release

A few hours after I started to export my bookmarks from Firefox to del.icio.us I realised that I needed some way to pull back those bookmarks into Firefox so that I would still be able to access them quickly without having to go to the del.icio.us website first. I use Firefox as my browser and it has loads of extensions available that pretty much do anything. I was sure that there would be one to solve my need and the best one I could find was Dietrich Ayala 's Foxylicious . This extension basically syncs a local bookmarks folder with the bookmarks that you have stored in del.icio.us providing local access to them. It also creates a sub-folder for each tag that you have created, and fills that folder with all links that are marked with that tag. It will sync with del.icio.us once a day but you can always do an immediate sync but clicking the 'tools' menu, then 'Foxylicious', and clicking on the 'Update Bookmarks' button. It also offers a right-click '...

Del.icio.us has a number of bookmarklets that help you submit urls to your account. One that was added a while ago is an experimental post interface that provides some additional features to help you tag a particular link. It provides the usual url, description, extended, & tags along with a list of recommended tags selected from your own personal list (which is also shown) as well as popular tags from all del.icio.us users. I really like this new interface but I much prefer the popup action of the "popup post to del.icio.us" bookmarklet, so I've merged the two into a "popup experimental post to del.icio.us". Drag the following link to your bookmark toolbar (or right-click and add it to your favourites, then edit the bookmark and replace the text USERNAME with your del.icio.us username otherwise it won't be able to post to your account. popup experimental post to del.icio.us If you select some text on the page that you wish to post then it will be put i...

Received this post from the del.icio.us mailing list, Joshua (the guy behind del.icio.us) has made the transition from it being a hobby to his full time job. This can only mean good things for del.icio.us, and a number of new features are being worked on already, check out the new popularity indicators, tag bundles, and a new way to view your tags lists (you can also get your page to look like this, just insert 'new/' before your username). Technorati Tags: del.icio.us

What exactly is del.icio.us ? It's a "social bookmarks manager". 'Social' because anyone can see your bookmarks and you can see everyone else's. 'Bookmarks manager' because it provides a way to easily bookmark a website, add a comment if need be, and then categorize it by add a 'tag' or two. Your bookmarks are then available via an easy to use website. What is a tag? Tags are single-word keywords that help you group similar bookmarks together. A bookmark can have more than one tag associated to it (or none at all if required) so you can create some quite complex groups with such a simple flat hierarchy. For example, I have the BlogThis extension for Firefox that allows blogging to Blogger.com tagged with 'firefox' and 'extension'. What else does it do? When you have all your bookmarks publicly available online then you have some interesting options available: * access your bookmarks from any machine with a browser. * no n...

How do you decide what your first blog post is going to be about? I feel it's all about entrance, and that's a tough thing to decide when in theory the whole web world is watching. I've thought for a while about what type of topics I would like to blog about, and most of these are covered in my blog headline description. I'm one of those people who likes to get really deep in a new technology or idea, explore every part of it, then decide if it's something to keep or throw away. My current "topic" is the social bookmarking site del.icio.us and what benefits tagging can give us. Tagging is starting to be pretty pervasive with sites like Technorati and Flickr using them as well. People are able to search the web for a particular tag and retrieve a whole host of different content from a number of sources such as websites, blogs, podcasts, photo archives, etc. I think I'm going to structure my blog in a "this week I've been mainly exploring ......