Shimon Rura's Blog » computers/useful software http://rura.org/blog just another software developer in Boston striving to be a renaissance man Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:15:15 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 Wink – flash software tutorials http://rura.org/blog/2005/05/06/wink-flash-software-tutorials/ http://rura.org/blog/2005/05/06/wink-flash-software-tutorials/#comments Sat, 07 May 2005 01:05:23 +0000 shimon http://rura.org/blog/2005/05/06/wink-flash-software-tutorials/ link

Wink looks like a very handy application for demonstrating usage of software. Unfortunately for would-be screencasters, it doesn't record audio, though it does have handy text bubbles. [via Lifehacker]

]]> http://rura.org/blog/2005/05/06/wink-flash-software-tutorials/feed/ 0 Firefox Extensions to Check Out http://rura.org/blog/2005/04/13/firefox-extensions-to-check-out/ http://rura.org/blog/2005/04/13/firefox-extensions-to-check-out/#comments Wed, 13 Apr 2005 22:09:24 +0000 shimon http://rura.org/blog/2005/04/13/firefox-extensions-to-check-out/ The Mozilla Update site has lots and lots of extensions for Mozilla browsers. Here are my picks:
  • Autocopy – automatically copy any selected text to clipboard
  • Tabbrowser Preferences – tweak tab settings (includes putting an X on each tab label, not just on the right)
  • AdBlock
  • ForecastFox – weather forecasts in your toolbar
  • DictionarySearch – get definitions via context menu
  • Web Developer Toolbar – highly recommended if you develop websites
  • ConQuery – query web services from the context menu; good for fiddling around with server-side scripts
  • GooglePreview – adds thumbnails of result webpages to Google and Yahoo search results
  • Javascript Debugger – aka Venkman
  • Nuke Anything – probably superceded by AdBlock, but more straightforward. And perhaps you like advertisements…
  • EditCSS – modify stylesheets, live
  • AutoForm – automatically fills data into forms, such as your name and email address.

Potentially interesting:

  • ieview – preview a page or link in MSIE
  • SmoothWheel – smooth scrolling when using mouse wheel
  • QuickNote – make annotations on web pages

I've tried a bunch of these and they work as advertised. It's great that Mozilla's extension system makes it possible for so many people to improve the product.

]]> http://rura.org/blog/2005/04/13/firefox-extensions-to-check-out/feed/ 0 Gmane http://rura.org/blog/2005/04/04/gmane/ http://rura.org/blog/2005/04/04/gmane/#comments Mon, 04 Apr 2005 20:48:11 +0000 shimon http://rura.org/blog/2005/04/04/gmane/ link

Gmane is a mailing-list-to-news gateway. News here means good old USENET news, accessed via NNTP. Mail-to-news gateways have been built before, but gmane is interesting because it is bidirectional—you can post via usenet and have it funneled into the mailing list. You can also read and post via a the web using a threaded interface (example) or a blog-style interface (example) complete with RSS.

Gmane is focused on communications about free software, but it's also the most comprehensive cross-media threading system I've seen. The world will be a better place when conversations can start in email, move into mailing lists, web forums, and blogs, and provide access to the whole thread from any entry point.

]]> http://rura.org/blog/2005/04/04/gmane/feed/ 0 Drooling on Ruby http://rura.org/blog/2005/03/17/drooling-on-ruby/ http://rura.org/blog/2005/03/17/drooling-on-ruby/#comments Thu, 17 Mar 2005 23:30:04 +0000 shimon http://rura.org/blog/2005/03/17/drooling-on-ruby/ I keep on hearing good stuff about the Ruby on Rails web application framework. It's like the Republican party—one of the highest values of its supporters is to tout its greatness. But the Rubyblicans have evidence: cool projects like Basecamp and sibling Tadalist, wiki+hierarchy tool Hieraki, and the aforementioned Web Collaborator. Not to mention very nice documentation, such as this tutorial on making, guess what, a to-do list.

Perhaps it's too late to turn my own (upcoming) to-do list application into an experiment with Ruby on Rails, but my beloved Perl on PageKit still let me get a prototype of voo2do kicking in about a day. Definitely, the vast majority of my time on v2 has been spent tweaking CSS and Javascript to make the interface work.

But I'll save the rest of the hype until you can actually visit and try voo2do…

]]> http://rura.org/blog/2005/03/17/drooling-on-ruby/feed/ 0 Web Collaborator http://rura.org/blog/2005/03/17/web-collaborator/ http://rura.org/blog/2005/03/17/web-collaborator/#comments Thu, 17 Mar 2005 22:57:57 +0000 shimon http://rura.org/blog/2005/03/17/web-collaborator/ link

Free wikis for workgroups.

]]> http://rura.org/blog/2005/03/17/web-collaborator/feed/ -1 Interesting stuff roundup http://rura.org/blog/2005/02/01/interesting-stuff-roundup/ http://rura.org/blog/2005/02/01/interesting-stuff-roundup/#comments Wed, 02 Feb 2005 00:45:12 +0000 shimon http://rura.org/blog/2005/02/01/interesting-stuff-roundup/ Steven Johnson on software that works well with his mind: in NY Times Book Review and his own weblog.

David Weinberger points to a brilliant del.icio.us site integration hack by Matt Biddulph made with a Firefox extension called Greasemonkey. I wonder if it would make sense for sites to leave dedicated spaces for client-side DHTML extensions… <div id="__extendme__"/> anyone?

]]> http://rura.org/blog/2005/02/01/interesting-stuff-roundup/feed/ 0 Learning the JavaScript debugger Venkman http://rura.org/blog/2005/01/09/learning-the-javascript-debugger-venkman/ http://rura.org/blog/2005/01/09/learning-the-javascript-debugger-venkman/#comments Sun, 09 Jan 2005 09:40:32 +0000 shimon http://rura.org/blog/2005/01/09/learning-the-javascript-debugger-venkman/ link

Handy tool for web app hackers.

]]> http://rura.org/blog/2005/01/09/learning-the-javascript-debugger-venkman/feed/ 0 FreeMind http://rura.org/blog/2005/01/05/freemind/ http://rura.org/blog/2005/01/05/freemind/#comments Thu, 06 Jan 2005 00:55:53 +0000 shimon http://rura.org/blog/2005/01/05/freemind/ link

Found on del.icio.us lifehacks: FreeMind is an open source mind mapping tool. You draw cool outlines of thoughts and links. I've been wanting to try one of these for a while, but haven't gotten around to it; perhaps a good free one will motivate me.

]]> http://rura.org/blog/2005/01/05/freemind/feed/ 0 GMail Drive shell extension http://rura.org/blog/2005/01/04/gmail-drive-shell-extension/ http://rura.org/blog/2005/01/04/gmail-drive-shell-extension/#comments Wed, 05 Jan 2005 01:50:38 +0000 shimon http://rura.org/blog/2005/01/04/gmail-drive-shell-extension/ link

Access your gigabyte of GMail storage as if it were a drive in Windows.

]]> http://rura.org/blog/2005/01/04/gmail-drive-shell-extension/feed/ 0 43 Things http://rura.org/blog/2005/01/03/43-things/ http://rura.org/blog/2005/01/03/43-things/#comments Tue, 04 Jan 2005 01:45:08 +0000 shimon http://rura.org/blog/2005/01/03/43-things/ link

A new site from The Robot Co-op where you can keep and share a list of life goals.

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