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Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Whenever you hover over a link, Firefox extension Status Address Bar displays the URL a link is pointing to in your Firefox address bar, eliminating the need for your status bar and freeing up precious screen real estate.

For many, the only reason Firefox’s status bar is even useful is so they can see what URL a link is pointing to before they click it. If that’s the case for you, those extra 14 or so wasted pixels at the bottom of your browser window are probably better suited for adding a little more height to your browser’s viewing area. The Status Address Bar gives you the best of both worlds:

With this extension installed, you can hide your Firefox status bar (View -> Status Bar) and still see where links are pointing—only rather than displaying the URLs in the status bar, Firefox will display URLs when you hover over a link in the Firefox address bar.

In the screenshot, for example, I’m at the Lifehacker homepage (http://lifehacker.com), but my mouse is hovering over the first post. As you can see, that post’s URL is visible in my address bar. It’s not groundbreaking, but if you’re looking for more ways to maximize Firefox’s viewing area without sacrificing functionality, it’s a nice addition. Status Address Bar is an experimental Firefox extension, works anywhere Firefox does.

Originally posted 2009-10-13 18:25:28. Republished by Old Post Promoter

If you receive a direct message on Twitter that says, “lol, is this you,” don’t click it. The link will put up a fake Twitter login page, potentially tricking you into giving the phisher your Twitter login and password.

The phishing messages look like this:

“Lol. this you?? http://divinelink.net/?rid=http://twitter.verify.bzpharma.net/login”

Warnings of the attack began circulating on Twitter in the U.S. on Saturday afternoon. “The attack appears to be utilizing the SmartName domain parking service, which allows redirects to third-party sites,” said Jesse Stay, founder of the SocialToo Twitter enhancement service. “The DMs appear in the form of a legit URL, followed by something to the effect of ?rid=http://twitter.verify.bzpharma.net/login in the URL. Those URLs redirect to the latter URL, which is a phished site that looks like the Twitter login page.”

Stay was happy to point out that SocialToo’s automatic spam filtering for Twitter direct messages blocks the attack automatically for his customers. As of 6 pm MountaIn time in Stay’s native Salt Lake City, he said SocialToo had blocked more than 600 of the messages. “To enable the Phishing protection on SocialToo,” he wrote, “users have to either enable the DM E-mails in their preferences (these replace Twitter’s DM E-mails and will be a premium feature in the future), or create at least one DM Filter in their preferences.”

“These numbers are still going up as we speak,” Stay added, “so Twitter has still not put an end to the problem.”

Tags: Twitter

A new URL shortening service LinksPreadeR (spelled like that because the URL is l.pr) has just launched in beta with an interesting twist on the shortening craze. It allows you to tack comments onto the end of the short URL, to send messages via the hyperlink. That’s kind of cool, but it also obviously makes the short URL a lot longer. The idea is that with the messages in the URL, you won’t need to have a…

Read the original post:
New URL Shortener Is Kind Of Cool, Kind Of Defeats The Point

Originally posted 2009-07-09 17:28:43. Republished by Old Post Promoter

Lorem ipsum is a block of dummy text in Latin often used in design and publishing to fill space in a mockup. The brilliant Dummy Image Generator is like “lorem ipsum” for images.

Like “lorem ipsum”, the Dynamic Dummy Image Generator offers a glimpse at what content might look like in a layout, but instead of placeholder text, it creates a placeholder image. Using the service is dead simple:

Sometimes you just need a placeholder image right at your finger tips. Just enter the width + x + height at the end of this URL and off you go!

Example: http://dummyimage.com/640x480

You can even use a dummy image as a source in your HTML, like <img src="http://dummyimage.com/340x123" alt="A Dummy Image">, which would look like this:

The Dynamic Dummy Image Generator is free to use, and is a bit on the geeky side, but if you’re a designer or just spend the occasional free minute tinkering on the web, it’s a really simple, well-executed idea.

Do you hate Apple news? Are you so bothered by stories about the Cupertino-based company that you feel the need to comment on each and every story about how bothered by stories about the Cupertino-based company you are? Do you lay awake at night, cold sweat beading down your forehead, dreading the morning when you’ll potentially see your favorite tech site writing about a new Apple product? Do you believe that Apple is 100 percent evil in every way? Well we’re here to help.

Due to the overwhelming demand of 16 commenters, we present to you the Apple-free Engadget! Yes — read all the hot news happening in the tech world without the upsetting presence of Apple-related stories. Your dream is a reality… so now you’ll have to find something else to complain about!

Read – Engadget, sans Apple news
Subscribe – Engadget, minus the Apple

P.S. – You can change “apple” in the URL to whatever else you hate, too!

Do you hate Apple news? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Apple Financial, Liveblog

Apple announces its fiscal year 2010 first quarter results today at 5 PM ET / 2 PM PT, and TUAW will be liveblogging the event.
Apple’s first quarter was the quarter ending December 31, 2009, including the always-important holiday buying season.

You can join in on the call several ways. First, you can listen in on the streaming audio from the event by opening www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq110/ in your favorite browser at the appointed time. Second, come back to TUAW at about 4:50 PM ET / 1:50 PM PT and sign into our liveblog tool CoverItLive to add your questions or comments.

If you can’t make it to the liveblog, the entire transcript will be available for your reading pleasure after the event. A recording of the conference call will be available at the Apple URL listed in the previous paragraph.

TUAWApple FY10 First Quarter results conference call liveblog originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RSS technology makes it possible for anyone to keep up with fresh content without having to visit the site in question. Now the same holds for webpages without RSS thanks to a new Google Reader feature.

Today Google has rolled out a subtle change to Google Reader that lets you create custom feeds to track pages that don’t already have them. So you can subscribe to updates for any webpage simply by typing the URL into the “Add a subscription” text box.

Should you put the new feature to work, you’ll start to receive short snippets for any updates made to the pages, and Google asserts that it’s committed to improving the quality of these tiny blurbs over time. On the flip side, webpage owners can choose to opt out by adjusting a few lines of code.

So when might this come in handy? While most companies have their own blogs, receiving automatic notifications any time there’s an update to the homepage or product pages of a business of interest could prove to be vital. For example, with Apple releasing a “new product” and potentially news about the iPhone on Wednesday, you bet that I’m going to create some custom feeds.

[img credit: filiph]

Tags: Google, google reader, rss

Chrome: If you’re someone who copies and pastes a good number of URLs and text every day, Create Link extension for Google Chrome is a must-install extension. It’s a semi-equivalent to Firefox’s mighty CoLT add-on.

The missing element that makes Create Link a “semi-” equivalent to the link-prepping, time-saving powers of CoLT, and even its direct Firefox inspiration, is that Create Link only works from its Chrome toolbar button. That means it grabs the title and URL the page you’re currently on, rather than letting you grab the link text and URL from links you right-click on the page. That’s more of a Chrome extensions deficiency than Create Link’s own fault, but it must be pointed out.

Create Link is, however, open-ended in how you format your links, allowing you to prepare text for blogging, forums and bulletin boards, and anywhere else you need to write in HTML style or paste in URLs or page titles. It’s a free download, works wherever Google Chrome extensions do.

Trying to diagnose computer issues remotely is really hard unless you can see what’s actually going on. The next time your someone needs your help with their computer, point them to ShowMeWhatsWrong and have them take a quick screencast.

This genius little webapp is very simple to use. Head to the site, enter your name and email address, and the app will generate a unique URL you can pass on to the person you’re trying to help. When they click the URL, all they need to do is click “Start Recording” and the app will automatically take a screencast of their computer for as long as five minutes—though you can stop the action at any point along the way.

The app also picks up the user’s voice through the built-in or connected mic, so the person your trying to help can talk as they walk you through the problems they’re having. Click stop and the app automatically packages and uploads the video to its server, then sends you an email letting you know it’s there. You’ve got seven days to view it before it expires.

We’ve always liked previously mentioned CrossLoop for remote support, but what sets this app apart from other tools is the sheer simplicity of it. It’s a foolproof way for even the most novice computer user to capture and send a video of what’s going wrong on their system, and they don’t have to install anything. Check out the video and see for yourself how easy it is to take and share a screencast with ShowMeWhatsWrong.

Want a cleaner, less Farmville-filled Facebook experience? Try loading your friends’ and fan pages’ status updates, links, notes, and other material into an RSS reader. Facebook doesn’t make it easy, but it can be done with some clever URL copying.

LiveJournal user Jamie Zawinski details the steps needed to pull the vast majority of Facebook material you’d (theoretically) want to see into an RSS reader like Google Reader or NetNewsWire. In most cases, it involves heading to the right page for your friends’ Posts, Notes, and Notifications, looking in the right-hand sidebar box, and grabbing the feed URL for “My Friends’ [Whatever].” In the case of status updates, which is what you really would want to grab from Facebook, it requires a little URL tweaking of one of the above feeds, explained at Jamie’s post.

The real benefit to using Facebook in a feed reader? You avoid exposure to Mafia Wars, Farmville, and all that other application cruft, and get just the raw details on what your contacts are up to. You also, unfortunately, miss out on updates about your friends’ photo album updates, for reasons unknown to anyone but Facebook’s coders, but it might well be worth it for those who find visiting the social networking site’s actual page a cluttered experience.