External Brain

Of late I have been tinkering with Mycroft, which is the search bar widget used by Firefox and the Mozilla / Netscape suites. I have discovered a couple of cool things that I’d like to share with you.

First up, you can delete unwanted search plugins. There’s no GUI for this, but it’s very easy.

And next, you can make your own plugins using a simple SGML markup derived from Apple Sherlock. The documentation for this is here. It looks a bit intimidating but it’s actually no more difficult than writing HTML (and there’s a great validator tool at Mindzilla). If you want to support people using a Moz or Netscape suite, or Firefox with the Search Sidebar extension, you’ll need to read up on the Mycroft sidebar documentation.

The great thing about rolling your own plugin is you can set the search defaults. For example, I like to shop for DJ records at the Juno Records website. Since I mainly buy drum n bass, I have written a plugin that restricts its search to the drum n bass section (as well as a genre agnostic search that I hope Mozilla will one day get around to uploading).

In the meantime you can download the Juno d n b plugin or the full Juno search plugin by clicking on some of the words you have just read.

To install them, find you browser search plugin directory (on Firefox for Win32, it’s Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/searchplugins) and unzip the supplied archive into it. Feel free to play around with the code while you’re at it; it’s all plain text, and the <input> name attributes correspond to the target search engine’s <input> elements.

Update: Here’s one for the Chemical Records d n b section.

Update: If you want users to be able to install your plugin by clicking a link, there’s a JavaScript addSearchEngine() method.

Update: Here’s one for Board Game Geek (my favourite site of late), provided by Andrew Avella of Avella Studios, NY.

Update: Some enterprising soul has written a delete GUI for Mycroft plugins.

Current Testra PR hype has it that nearly all ADSL-enabled exchanges will have ADSL2+ capabilities by mid-2006 under an AU$210 million program being undertaken by the telco

Intel has introduced a new wireless networking standard called 802.11s. This standard utilises a mesh topology, allowing for fully self-configuring networks where each node can relay messages on behalf of others, thus increasing the range and available bandwidth with the number of nodes active within the system, versus the point-to-point structure of existing WiFi networks. This will radically transform WiFi hotspots, allowing the geographical area and available bandwidth on the network to scale with the number of participants

Yet another wonderful collection of machinery, that I should never be allowed near, are the industrial shredders made by SSI. Admittedly the people who work for the company appear to be just as irresponsible as me, as their videos of shredders eating concrete, washing machines, tyres and fridges can attest — via Dan’s Horrendous Waste of Bandwidth

A restaurant in New Zealand has been fined NZ$3,000 for failing to keep its web site up to date. By having out-of-date menus and prices on its web site, it has breached the Fair Trading Act, according to the New Zealand Commerce Commission

Google’s desktop search tool officially has left the realm of beta testing and is in full release. The company announced version 1.0 on Monday, along with several additional features. Google Desktop Search now supports the Firefox and Netscape Web browsers in addition to Internet Explorer

Working on weekends = not cool.

Getting paid extra to work on weekends = not highly cool. See previous point.

What if… = very cool.

Hacking your CSS to accommodate Internet Explorer = not cool at fucking all!

Getting Unstuck = cool.

Brain dead-ness = not very cool. But it helps drown out hysterical, whingy, control freak co-workers.

Forgetting to buy decent green tea leaves for work = not cool.

www.zefrank.com = coollishly funny.

sleep = cool indeed.

Anonymous Internet access is now a thing of the past. A doctoral student at the University of California has conclusively fingerprinted computer hardware remotely, allowing it to be tracked wherever it is on the Internet

Don’t have the .Net framework on your PC to utilise Broadcastpc.tv’s spamming adware technology? No problem, they’ll download it for you without you knowing. The problem is that it’s a 23MB download and a 65MB install but, with the service packs and other extras, could end up eating 100MB of your disk space once installed

If certain state officials have their way, cities in Texas will no longer be able to offer free WiFi to their citizens. This could set a dangerous precedent if passed, as broadband providers could start lobbying officials in the other 49 states to ban free WiFi as well. Pennsylvania has already fallen victim to such a law but it excluded Philedelphia due to the city’s existing efforts. One of the members of the FCC is far from impressed at the move

Perth-based ISP iiNet plans to expand its ADSL network to reach 90% of Sydney customers over the next 9 months as it spends $9.6 million to increase its presence on the east coast

Companies eager to tighten up their information security perimeters should focus not on technology but on teaching their employees how to say no, ex-hacker done good Kevin Mitnick told a full house at Toshiba’s MobileXchange conference in Melbourne

The US military is funding development of an energy-pulse weapon, designed to deliver a jolt of excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometres away. Intended for use against rioters, it is meant to leave victims physically unharmed. The device fires a laser pulse that generates a burst of expanding plasma when it hits something solid, like a person, producing pain and temporary paralysis. Right now, researchers are attempting to optimise pulse parameters to evoke peak nociceptor activation or, to put it in plain English, cause the maximum pain possible. The potential for abuse of such a device have not gone unremarked