ThansCorner

Workfriendly.net provides a clever way to browse the web on the sly in an office environment. This isn’t something I really ever do, but I found the idea rather clever.

Enter an url in the main page and it gives you a new window, skinned to look like a word document. The window then serves as a text-based browser which allows streamlined viewing of whatever site you give it. There’s even a “boss key” that hides your web browsing and ironically brings up a document on overcoming procrastination and time management.

This site is definitely worth checking out if only for the sake of its humor and simplicity.

Firefox has been our browser for quite some time now, touted all along as safer and more efficient. Everyone knows, though, that firefox has memory leaks and, when using many of the web applications out there (gmail, meebo, facebook, etc.), firefox can slow down to a crawl.

Mozilla’s WebRunner is a streamlined version of the mozilla browser, designed to handle one web app within a window, without all the menus, bookmarks, and complications of a full browser. Profiles of the form <app_name>.webapp can be downloaded for different apps and placed on the desktop. The idea is that users open these apps much like one would a program on the computer itself.

There are a number of bundles out there for various web 2.0 applications. If one hasn’t been made yet, it’s pretty simple to do it yourself.

• Open a new text document in notepad.
• Modify the following code to fit the settings you want.  ‘id’ must be some unique id allowing WebRunner to keep track of multiple profiles.

• [Parameters]
  id=www.thanscorner.info
  uri=http://www.meebo.com
  status=yes
  location=no
  sidebar=no
  navigation=no

• Save the file as ‘webapp.ini’
• Right-click on the file, select ‘Send To’ -> ‘Compressed (zipped) folder’.  This will create a file called ‘webapp.zip’
• Rename ‘webapp.zip’ to ‘<app_name>.webapp’
• This file is now a shortcut to a streamlined version of that app.

Here is a bundle I made for the instant messaging app Meebo.

• Meebo.webapp

WebRunner is a project still under development.  With future additions such as support for work offline, spellcheck, extensions, and more customizable options on the way, this may be a nice solution for those apps otherwise sucking up memory all the time.

Each of us has at some point done a google search of our name, curious about what sort of information is out there to be found about each of us. Taking this process one step further is a new site in beta called Pipl. Enter the first and last name, and home city of a person. This service then does a search of what it calls the “deep web”, including social networks such as myspace.com, blog networks such as blogcatalog.com and more otherwise unindexed media. Depending on the uniqueness of your name, it can turn up a lot of interesting stuff you didn’t know was out there.

Peopledata.com supplements the information on Pipl, with current and previous addresses and phone numbers. All this info on the internets…

This is one sweet video. This group used long exposures to paint each frame with multicolored lights and then ran them together to make a minute-long Spring commercial.Take a look at the sky over time and recognize how long these guys were out there…Hit up this Link for more about the artists.]

This article includes simple instructions for making homemade ice cream without all of the churning and such of a regular ice cream maker. I just want to say that, though it’s targeted towards kids, I fully planning on making good use of this recipe as soon as I can find some rock salt.

Link to Homemade Ice Cream article