Friedbeef’s Tech

Mouse gestures have always been a “love it, or hate it” proposal.

For the uninitiated, mouse gestures refer to a process where quick flicks of a mouse perform basic functions in a program. (Think of it as shortcut-keys via mouse). While this may not sound appealing to many users, it something you really have to try to appreciate.

Mouse gesture programs come in all shapes and sizes, but this post will focus on the All-In-One Gestures extension in Firefox. (I’ve tried a bunch - loved this one the most).

This extension enables you to draw on your browser by holding down your right mouse button, and based on what you draw, your browser will perform a certain task.

Want to go back a page? Just draw a line to the left. Draw one the other way to go Forward.

Want to open a bunch of links? Draw a box around them. Simple.

This is not as daunting as it sounds as you can customise all the actions based on what you feel comfortable with.

For anyone interested, these are the settings which I use:

Open Link in New Tab = Down
Close Tab = Down Left
Undo Close Tab = Down Right
Back = Left
Forward = Right
Stop Loading page = Up
Reload Page = Up Down

My personal rule of thumb is keep it simple to draw, and only focus on your most common functions so it is truly intuitive to use.

This is a good example of what NOT to try:

Once again, this is something you to try to appreciate. For me, it has become second nature, and essential to how I browse with Firefox. Mouse Gestures. Do you love it or hate it? Would love to know what you think.

Related Links:

All-In-One Mouse Gestures Firefox Extension
Mouse Gestures on Answers.com
Built-In Mouse Gestures for Opera
StrokeIt Mouse Gestures for Windows

Technorati Tags: mouse, mouse+gestures, firefox, extensions

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Internet radio has been around for years and years.
It was there when RealPlayer was the ultimate media application around.
It was there when streaming via a dial-up connection was cool.
It was there when I listened live to Michael Jordan sinking his final shot for the Bulls on NBA.com.

Over time, broadband got better, audio quality audio shot up, and internet radio stations of every imaginable genre started popping out all over the place. Pretty soon, you could fully customise your listening experience by picking stations that appealed to your tastes.

So what makes Pandora different from Shoutcast, Itunes Radio, or Windows Media Player Radio? Let’s take a look….

A quick background on the Music Genome Project:

This project was started by a group of musicians who listen to songs in order to analyse, and categorise everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics. Having done so for the past 5 years, they’ve analysed over 10,000 different artists.

What this means is that when I tell Pandora I like Tori Amos, it doesn’t just conclude that “I like Altenative Rock”.

It concludes that “I like mild, rhythmic syncopation, mixed acoustic and electronic instrumentation, major key tonality, a breathy female lead vocalist, and electric pianos”.

If I tell Pandora I like Nirvana, it doesn’t just conclude that “I like Grunge”

It concludes that “I like mild, rhythmic syncopation, repetitive melodic phrasing, minor key tonality, melodic songwriting, and a dynamic male vocalist”

You get the idea.

Radio Made Just For You (And Your Friends)

Once you sign up (Free of course) and type in the name of your favourite artist, Pandora will analyse your choice, and create your own station which streams songs based on what you typed in.

Now at any point during the stream, you can start telling Pandora whether you liked the song it selected or not. As you may have guessed, it further refines it’s choices based on your ratings.

It gets better. You can combine artist qualities. For example, I can create a Tori Amos stream, and then combine it with the qualities of Sarah McLachlan to better suit my tastes.

It gets better. Unlike typical internet radio, you can pause the stream, and you skip a song you don’t like.

All streams are high quality 128k, but I have had no problems streaming smoothly even with a low-speed broadband connection.

Of course what modern web service would be complete without the ability to share your music tastes? Pandora allows you to email a link of your streams to your friends, where they can listen in to your stream without registering, and they can also have a look at the type of songs you like.

You have have a quick glance at my favourites here.
If anyone wants to have a listen: This is my Acoustic & Folk stream

…And One More Thing…

Best of all - You can create multiple streams. One stream for R&B, one for Rock, one for Jazz, etc. all fully customised to your exact tastes.

Seriously. It’s radio just for you.

Related Links:

Pandora
RadioIo
Shoutcast
Itunes
Windows Media Player

The writer is an avid listener of RadioIo Accoustic and RadioIo Classical on Itunes Radio during work, and thanks his present employer for not being cheap on bandwidth.

Technorati Tags: pandora, music, streaming, radioio, shoutcast, itunes, media

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One of the things I love about Firefox is that it can be whatever you want it to be.

Here’s a quick list of 5 Firefox Extensions worth trying.

Session Saver: Whenever I close my browser, this neat extension will automatically save whatever tabs I had open at the time. This gives me the freedom to pick up right from where I left off my last web session.

Flashblock: I truly abhor Flash advertisments. They’re distracting, they suck up bandwidth and make my pages slow to load. This extension will block ALL the Flash from loading on your browser.
Of course, not all Flash files are evil, and there are times where you might want to see some Flash. As such, you can disable the filter with just one click, and also allow trusted sites to get around the filter. If you like this, you can also try Adblock.

IE View: Once in a very long while you are going to hit a site that only runs properly on IE. Should this happen, just click the icon and Internet Explorer will open, and point to your current page for a near seamless experience. You can also set a website to “always open in IE”

PDF Download: PDF files, while useful can be a nuisance at times if it’s on the web, as it may take ages to render in the browser. Now, everytime I click on a PDF file, This extension will tell me how large the PDF file is, then ask If I want to save the file, view it normally, or view it as HTML (Stripping out images for faster loading).

Answers : Hold down Alt (or Option on a Mac) and click on any word to get a quick definition, an up-to-the-minute reference and more from Answers.com. You don’t even need to highlight the word. Simple, fast, and really useful.

Related Links:

What are Firefox Extensions?

Get more Firefox Extensions at:
Mozilla
Mozdev
Roachfiend

Bonus Link: A collection of Firefox Related Avatars for Instant Messaging here

Technorati Tags: firefox, extensions, mozilla, answers, ie, flash, pdf

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