Favorite Chrome extensions

For Chrome/Chromium users, here are my favorite extensions.  What are yours?

Privacy/security related

• AdBlock -- probably the most important one here.  I can't stand browsing without it.
• Disconnect -- blocks tracking web page elements from major providers (Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.)
• Explode -- expands most URLs created by URL rewriters (e.g. TinyURL)
• KB SSL Enforcer -- This one actually causes a bit of trouble, so you may not actually want to use it. It tries to ensure that you're talking to websites over encrypted channels by detecting whether there's an SSL version of each site.  Even though it has systems to override its decisions, it still ends up screwing up a fair amount of the time (especially with online banking) since many sites don't actually mirror their SSL sites correctly.
• Keep My Opt-Outs -- opts out of personalized Google ads

Web site integration

• BugMeNot Lite -- makes a little widget pop up in the Omnibox when BugMeNot is available
• Delicious Bookmarks -- bookmarks pages quickly in Delicious.  There are many Delicious extension, but I like this one since it shows you tag suggestions.
• Google Docs Viewer (by Google) -- fast access to all your documents, easy to open them in new windows
• Google Voice (by Google) -- shows number of items in your Google Voice inbox, makes all phone numbers click-to-call
• Minimalist for Google Calendar and Minimalist for Gmail -- these two let you disable many individual elements on Google Calendar and Gmail.  On my laptop where there's limited screen real estate, this helps quite a bit.

Browser functionality

• Google Quick Scroll -- when you search for something and follow a link on the search results, this presents the option of jumping to the location of the snippet on the page
• History of these2 -- lets you search history more easily by time and site
• RSS Subscription Extension (by Google) -- adds RSS widgets to the Omnibox

Reduce, reuse, research...then recyle

Just a quick plug for an awesome recycling search engine: Earth911

You say what you want to recycle and a zipcode and it tells you places that will recycle it. Very well-done website. At least where I am, there are many local places that will recycle all sorts of non-trival objects (rechargeable batteries, Plastic #5, CFLs, etc.).

Quick hacks: webnumbr for fast scraping (of a single number)

Like the previous quick hack, I had little to do with this -- just demonstrating a tool. In this case, the goal was to graph the national average for certificate of deposit interest rates over time (you can find this information at Bankrate.com). At SHDH37, Drew told me about webnumbr which does exactly this (and was possibly developed at a previous SHDH) -- you pick a webpage and then select a single element from that page. webnumbr will scrape the webpage at an interval of your choosing and graph the data. I'm not wild about their graphing (prefer something interactive like this or Google Charts) but it looks like you can get the raw data in various formats (CSV, etc.) which would let you use other graphing methods, overlay charts, etc.

If you're interested, here are graphs for the average 1-year and 2-year CD rates.

Quick hacks: Yahoo Pipes for RSS feed filtering

In my Copious Free Time(tm), I've been working on some very quick projects. I'm writing them up since, while many of them are quite simple, they highlight some interesting tools.

I used to read the "Marmaduke Explained" blog at this website. It has since moved here but the RSS feed includes other entries as well. Using Yahoo Pipes, I was quickly able to create a new RSS feed which only includes entries that include Marmaduke in the title. See the pipe I made here (output available as RSS, JSON, email, etc.). Yahoo Pipes is, like the name implies, a series of tubes -- nodes in the graph feed perform operations and feed into other nodes. So, my point is that Yahoo Pipes is a cool piece of software and probably underutilized -- the basic filtering that I do is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg for what it can do (for example, there are "translate" and "location extractor" nodes). If they added basic scraping abilities, I'd likely use it even more (but see upcoming posts for different ways to do scraping...).

Facebook's War on Privacy

Naegle: I guarantee I can find some new revenue streams. Step one: Let's sell some ad space. Reverend, how would you feel about wearing this robe? [holds up a robe with "Fatso's Hash House" embroidered on it]

Lovejoy: Mmm...conflicted?

Burns: Too bad! You've already signed the deal.

Naegle: Actually, he hasn't.

Burns: Oh. Well, we highly value your input. [menacing] Until you sign the deal...

-- Simpsons, She of Little Faith

I am deeply concerned with Facebook's new privacy policy. As I understand it, the most damaging change is that a good portion of every Facebook profiles will now be public -- name, photo, location, groups, friends, etc. I can't fathom how this ever seemed like it would be a good idea. The possibilities for exploitation are astronomical. Anyway, I'll stop ranting now and point you to other people who have written much more eloquent pieces on this and suggest some actions you can take.

More information

• Detailed description of what the new privacy policy means
  ACLU's dotRights.org campaign
• EFF's analysis of the changes
  I hope that they will have an action page soon, but I don't see anything yet.
• The case for online privacy
  Bruce Schneier's response to Google's CEO (who unfortunately has a similar attitude towards privacy)

What you can do

• Share these links on Facebook, Twitter, and email! That's the easiest way to spread this information to people who need it.
• Sign ACLU's petition to Facebook.
• Visit the dotRight's Take Action page.
• A properly organized (inter)national protest might bring this the media coverage it deserves... (need help from EFF and ACLU for this)

(P.S. Yes, there are some positive aspects of the changes. However, these come at too great a cost and they're completely independent of the negative portions.)

Update (12.11.2009): Some more links as this unfolds:

• Why Privacy Matters (Guillaume Marceau)
• Facebook tosses graph privacy into the bin (Joseph Bonneau)
• An ironic, unanticipated outcome

Why I dislike text messages

This article succinctly explains the main reason I dislike text messages: (emphasis not in original)

"...Wireless data service is AT&T's only bright spot, up a whopping 26% per customer. How so? As any parent of teenagers knows, text messages are 20 cents each, or $5,000 per megabyte. After the first month and a $320 bill, we all pony up $10 a month for unlimited texting plans. ..."

I have been waiting for someone to shake things up and get cell phones using instant messaging and/or email rather than text messaging which, in my mind, consists entirely of disadvantages (expensive coupled with payment on receipt, limited message length, impossible to know if messages are even received, ...). With luck, this will help as well.

Weird Craiglist scam

Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game

-- Sympathy for the Devil (Rolling Stones)

Dear Internet,

I am attempting to sell a desk on craigslist and received an unusual response, quoted here in its entirety:

Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:53:48 -0500
Subject: Re: L-shaped desk, almost new - $150 (East Side)
From: trendy carley <trendycarley0@gmail.com>

Hello ,
I appreciate your response to my inquiry. I'm interested in buying it
from you. I would've come and inspect it myself but I am on a business
trip overseas and wont be back for a while.
Please do withdraw ,with immediate effect the advert from Web as I dont
mind adding $50 for you to do that so I can be rest assured that it is
held for me. I should believe it is in good condition as stated. I will
be making the payment via a Certified Check which my secretary will
mail across to you. I'll be picking it from you with the aid of my
mover. My Mover will be coming to pick it from you once the Certified
Check has been cashed.
If condition of sales works for you I then ask that you get back to me
with the following details so that payment can be posted ASAP:
Required Information

1.Name to be issued to...
2.Contact Address(City,State,Zip code,Country):
3.Contact telephone number:(home,cell or work)
4.Clear pictures showing details

Do get back to me as soon as possible with this details for payment  to
be made out to you immediately you get it on time. Also I will want you
to remove the advert as soon as possible and I dont mind paying $50 for
you to have that done ASAP as I said earlier, so no one else is lined up
for it. Thanks Hoping to hear from you soon.

Best Regards

Just what is the nature of this guy's game (not to mention his (her?) rather unlikely name)? Completely bizarre that one would pay someone to remove an ad and weirder still that one would expect them to do it before receipt of payment. Additionally, the desk is only being sold for $150 so $50 is a considerable markup (plus he'll certainly be paying a bundle for the mover). Then there's the spot where he seemingly leaves out my name from the template ("Hello, ") and the redundancy of asking for a ZIP code and country (at least, I've always heard other countries refer to them as postal codes).

I'm really curious where he's going with this. Some ideas: (please post ideas in the comments)

1. He's just gathering names, addresses, and/or telephone numbers.
2. No check will ever come but maybe a mover might.
3. Check will come and bounce. Mover will come and bounce with the desk.
4. There's some second part of this scheme that is too tough to predict at this point.

One other tidbit is that the original email from him (which came from trendycarley02@gmail.com instead and asked me rather simply "Is it in good condition..?i am interested.") was immediately tossed into the spam folder by Gmail.

I've been thinking about comedic responses. So far, the best one I've come up with is posting his response on the Internet.

Steal this idea: Musical intersections

Listening to you,
I get the music.
Gazing at you,
I get the heat.
Following you,
I climb the mountains.
I get excitement at your feet.
-- The Who, "We're Not Gonna Take It"

There are a couple times when two or more people want to listen to some form of streaming music (road/train trip, shared office space, etc.). Streaming radio sites like Pandora should have the option of combining multiple peoples' musical taste and come up with music that both people would like. Being able to generate a road trip playlist for portable music players would be nice too, though there are the obvious copyright issues.

I imagine coming up with good shared playlists is trickier than just taking the intersection of the songs/musical features. Ultimately, it would depend on the model of listeners tastes. Of course, in many cases, these intersections can be small (my freshman year college roommate and I both liked Stevie Wonder but had little else in common musically).

Wait, what?

Marge: I don't understand why we have to build a ray gun to aim at a planet I never even heard of.

Homer: Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
-- "Treehouse of Horror VII" [snpp]

McCain and Obama are looking more and more similar each day! Their automatic image picker seems to have some problems telling the two candidates apart... (seen on huffingtonpost.com, emphasis not in original)

Google Transit now in Rhode Island

A semi-Earth Day related post for Earth Day:

Google Transit now covers RIPTA buses in Rhode Island. I will use it for all my route planning needs. (In fact, I don't have a choice as the official RIPTA trip planner now simply embeds Google Maps.) Unfortunately, while the service is quite useful now, imagine what it would be like if it included systems that actually connect? Currently, the Bay Area appears to be the only area in the US which covers multiple systems (and it already has its own multi-system route planner). I think Google has an initiative to help transit agencies publish their information (which allows us to use alternative route planners).

The trip planner passed my sanity check: I asked for directions to the airport and it was smart enough to know that one should never take the 20 (it always leaves earlier and arrives later than the 14 -- not sure what its purpose really is).

Also, some tiny annoyances involving the walking direction. Walking directions currently lack detail (known bug) and you need to do more searches to get distances or routes for these (though strangely, timing information is given instead). There are also no controls on the preferred amount of walking distance.

Strange satirical dream

I had a dream where a friend was having trouble breathing and needed medical attention so I tried to call 911. I've been told that when you call 911 from a cell phone, the cell phone goes into a sort of lockdown mode, though I'm not sure if this is true. In any event, after misdialing several times, my phone went into a strange mode and launched a tiny web browser rather than connecting my call. The 911 "website" was a disaster -- all I wanted was an ambulance, but the website had all of the most frustrating aspects of websites:

1. It required registration ("New user? Click here!")
2. It had CAPTCHAs which were very difficult to type on the telephone keypad. Apparently, the site was the target of fake 911 calls by spammers.
   
3. The web page was extremely long and hard to navigate on the phone.
   
4. I think it had advertisements.

Obviously, this is not the future of emergency telephone services, but I find it sort of amusing in some ways. I woke up before things could get worse.

Copying links from Google search results

You may have noticed that when you copy links from Google search results, you don't get what you expected -- when you hover over them, your browser says one thing, but when you right-click on them, it says another. For example, searching for snappletronics, Google gives you the code for a link like this: (emphasis not in original, obviously)

<a href="http://snappletronics.blogspot.com/"
class="l"
onmousedown="return rwt(this,'','','res','1','AFQjCNGxo5T82OPvPMIGpTmHTE3JzTBwzg','&sig2=vMD0Ey969KDVrwhFXwVgBw')">

What does this mean? It means that when you right-click on the link, some Javascript function gets to run and change the link, so the link turns from Snappletronics to Snappletronics (watch the tooltip or your browser's status bar). The second link tells Google that I clicked the link and maybe other identifying information. I believe this surreptitious link-changing is a pretty strong violation of "Don't be evil."

Fortunately, there's help if you use Firefox. If you have Greasemonkey, this script will remove their hooks and prevent them from changing the link on you.

Update (11.12.2010): The above script is now outdated. Depending on when you read this, this script might be a decent replacement.