JDHarper.com

Ubiquity

2009-07-09T21:50:04+00:00

Ubiquity adds easy to use commands to Firefox. It's dead simple to use: activate it with a keyboard shortcut (I use Ctrl-Space), then type in a command. The commands autocomplete, so you don't even have to remember or type in the whole command. Some good ones:

weather <location> gives you the local weather
tinyurl <URL> sends the URL to tinyurl and enters in the shortened URL at the current cursor location. (Great for Twitter!)
twitter <message> broadcasts a message on twitter
tag <list of comma-separated tags> saves the current tab as a bookmark and assigns it the list of tags
email <text> to <email address> starts a new email in Gmail with a link to the current web page
escape HTML entities replaces all instances of greater than signs with > and all less than signs with < in the selected text--very useful for HTML-enabled forms where you want to discuss HTML tags
translate <text> <from language> <to language> replaces the selected text in a website with a translation of that text into a new language.
add to google calendar <event> adds an event to google calendar, e.g. "add to google calendar dinner with parents Friday at 5pm"
list opens a list of all the commands Ubiquity accepts

Very spiffy.

My iPhone App is Done!

2009-07-03T18:53:20+00:00

So, I've been gone for a while. I've been spending most of my time learning how to program in Objective-C and writing a new iPhone app. And now, it's finally ready and available for download!

The FoodPad Calorie Tracker is designed to make it as easy as possible to keep track of what you eat. It remembers previously entered foods in an autocomplete list for later meals, and it helps you discover how many calories are in your favorite homemade foods with the Recipe Calculator.

You can download FoodPad from the iTunes App Store now or find out more about it.

Habari Doesn't Work With Textmate; Ticket System Fails

2009-05-21T19:44:50+00:00

I've downloaded Textmate, which I've heard all kinds of good things about. So far, it's exceeded my expectations for how awesome it is. The only disappointment so far is that the Blogging bundle doesn't play nice with Habari yet. It works fine with a test Wordpress blog that I have, so the problem is with the MetaWeblog plugin for Habari. Clicking Fetch Post returns the error "Can't convert Array into Integer."

I attempted to submit a bug report on the Habari website, but gave up after several attempts were rejected as spam for some reason. So, maybe some Habari person will read this instead.

In B Flat

2009-05-12T15:58:33+00:00

This is a pretty neat project: In B Flat. Be sure to include the bottom left video, which has a neat bit of poetry in it that meshes well with the music from the other videos. (via MeFi)

Clean Up Facebook with a Greasemonkey Script

2009-05-10T13:33:29+00:00

Facebook has been deteriorating lately; the signal-to-noise ratio is going down. The news feed is cluttered with quizzes like "Which Disney princess are you?" and with people becoming "fans" of things like music and water.

Fortunately, there are people out there who have fixed these problems for us, with an incredibly useful little Firefox add-on called Greasemonkey. If you don't have it already, just click that link and click "Add to Firefox."

Next, we're going to install a script to make Facebook look like this:

After you've added Greasemonkey to Firefox, click on this link to install a script that will strip out Facebook ads, make it have only two columns instead of three, block app invites, and remove "fan" pages and apps from the Highlights and news feeds.

You'll be left with just the signal without all the noise.