My Technology Addictions

I have been busy all week taking part in the 31 day blog challenge and thought I would have a look at some of the links on Problogger from the last time Darren ran the same sort of project. One article I read was about Social Bookmarking – Getting your Blog Noticed . I started looking around at things like Digg, Furl, Linkfilter. That is where I found some unusual and at the same time fascinating websites.

Linkfilter

1. Did you know that there is a place that will take your photos that you would otherwise delete? Deleted Images is such a place. I couldn’t find any information as to using these images for your own sites but if anyone knows more I would be interested to know. Some of the blurred ones like this one or this one would make great backgrounds for quotes to use on blogs or PowerPoint presentations 
2. Then there is the story about Facebook – the CIA conspiracy that talks about a conspiracy theory that links Facebook to the CIA and the US Department of Defence.
3. Walking to the shops damages planet more than going by car the TimesOnline has a report that walking to the shops is worse for the environment because food production is so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance.
4. The feel good yellow duck a giant yellow Rubber Duck that is supposed to have healing powers.
   
   Digg
5. If God was a programmer is very well done and will be appreciated by fellow programmers.
6. Can I have your badge number and the source code to your breathalyzer? A Minnesota man who was accused of drunk driving has sued to see the source code of the breathalyzer machine that busted him, and the state Supreme Court is allowing the request to go forward. This will be interesting to watch!
7. Television Studios Embrace BitTorrent TV executives are starting to realise that leaking shows to BitTorrent can help promote them.Furl
8. SOCIAL BOOKMARKING: 50+ Social Bookmarking Sites a list of more than 50 of the top social bookmarking sites available.
9. FLICKR TOOLBOX: 100+ Tools For Flickr Addicts 100’s of tools to use with Flickr
10. 7 Clever Google Tricks Worth Knowing Google tricks and search manipulation.

That is enough for one night, I could spend hours trawling through all these social bookmarking sites and reading stories, maybe I will make it a monthly thing to collect and post.

Update: Well I had such a good holiday – 3 weeks that it took me 5 weeks to upload this post but here it is

Well I have been on holidays of three days now and have basically been surfing the web, downloading stuff, listening to podcasts.

ScreenGrab

This is one of my favorite Firefox extensions that I use very frequently and I used it to capture the image above. One of the best features in Screen Grab is the ability to take screen shot of a specific region of a web page. This is great if you want to a quick screen shot for your blog. I use it even to copy part of images directly from the browser without having to open Photoshop to cut or resize.

Showcase

Showcase lets you view open tabs as image thumbnails and also has a find bar that will filter your thumbnails. A great tool if you have lots of tabs open at once – which I always do.

Web Developer

Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.

del.icio.us Bookmarks

This extension integrates your browser with del.icio.us

del.icio.us lets you search and browse your bookmarks and you can access your bookmarks from any computer. This gives you more freedom and great access to your bookmarks without being tied to one specific computer. You can also share your bookmarks with other and search for similar bookmarks in the del.icio.us network.

Here is my del.icio.us account

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon lets you “channelsurf” the best-reviewed sites on the web. It helps you find and share great sites.

MeeTimer

MeeTimer is a very useful tool to monitor where you spend your time online, and to help you be proactive in becoming more productive.

MeeTimer gives you everything from a simple page timer to advanced stats on your usage habits; with a focus on highlighting where your time could be used better (more productive = more free time = better day!).
As it runs all the time, every effort has been made to make it fast & light; and it benefits greatly from Firefox’s inbuilt database for speed.

Colorful Tabs & ChromaTabs

Colorful Tabs colors each of your tabs in pastel colors, colours are assigned randomly and as long as that tab stays open the colour will stay the same. So the same tab will keep the same colour even if the URL for that tab changes.

ChromaTabs is similar to Colorful Tabs. The difference is that with ChromaTabs a tab’s color is determined on the hostname in the URL. If you keep the tab open and go to a different URL then the tab colour will change.

Twitter

My favourite at the moment . It is difficult to describe in words how this works. I tried to explain it today but found it better to login and show how it works. Nat Torkington sums it up well when he describes it as “Think of it as a cross between blogging and instant messaging: you type a short message (140 or fewer chars) and your subscribers (friends) instantly see it. You can view a single “river of news” page that functions as a group blog by all your friends.”

You can follow me on twitter/developit

Twittervision Twittervision 3D and Flickrvision Flickrvision 3D

These two I discovered and found that they can be very addictive. Watching Tweets and images pop up, BUT be warned you may see chat or images that are not very appropriate for “G” viewing.

You can even get screen savers that show Twitervision and Flickrvision But will you get any work done when you download these?

Mac Screensaver

XP Screensaver

Nat Torkington has a post with more details about Twittervision and Brady Forrest has a post about Flickrvision that goes into more detail

And there is always Twitterholics