While browsing the day’s popular delicious links, I came across a Firefox extension that I had never seen before. Tab Sidebar uses Firefox’s sidebar to give a visual representation of the contents of each of your open tabs. There are options to reload and close the tab, as well as display the URL of each tab. It’s a pretty nifty extension, but it was obviously made for the Windows version of Firefox. I made a few images and replaced the existing ones in the extension.

To install these new images, first quit Firefox and then go to

~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/[profile name]/extensions/

In this folder should be a list of all your extensions. Most extensions are named very cryptic-like, but fortunately for us, Tab Sidebar has named itself properly. Open the folder

TabSidbar@blueprint.co.uk/chrome/skin/

BACK UP ALL THE IMAGE FILES IN THIS FOLDER!

I made a new folder called Original Images, and put all the gifs and tiffs in there.

Next, unzip the new images into this folder. Restart Firefox, et voilà! Tab Sidebar has been Aquafied! I also chose to assign Cmd-Shift-T to the Tab Sidebar menu item (do this under the Keyboard And Mouse preference pane in System Preferences), but I don’t think Firefox likes that too much. I’ll keep playing around with that to see if I can get it to work.

Tab Sidebar requires Firefox 1.5b1 or higher. I take no responsibility for messing up your installation of Firefox or Tab Sidebar.

It seems to me that there has been some negative response to Apple’s care of its customers recently. With all the new products from Apple, perhaps they are neglecting the very people that make the demand for these products? Codswallop.

About two weeks ago, my iPod slipped out of hand, from about a foot high onto tile. It was wearing its wasabi iSkin at the time, and it merely reset itself afterwards. I thought nothing of it, until about two days later. The buttons stopped responding, and the critical battery icon would flash intermittently. Two Thursdays ago, I requested a service order from Apple. The next day, DHL delivered an empty box, wanting to take my iPod right then and there. Unfortunately, I was not home, and I had to take it to DHL on Monday.

Last Thursday, a brand new iPod was waiting for me when I got home. I could not believe my eyes. Apple had taken my iPod, ordered a new unit, and sent it back to me, all within a less-than-a-week turnaround. Unbelievable!

Thank you, Apple.

Surivors reveal Superdrome horror, found via Boing Boing.

This is America, the land of hope, oppurtunity, tolerance, and accountability. In recent times, this statement becomes more and more idealistic and further away from the truth.

The disaster in New Orleans is horrendous enough. Why does it take a tragedy like this to bring out the worst in people? Who is to blame here?

The kneejerk reaction might be to point the finger at the poor, because they don’t know any better, or because they are only trying to survive. Bullshit. The scenario down there was controllable after the weather died down, and the organizers and leaders made mistakes. Logistical errors were made, miscommunications are abound, and thousands upon thousands of people watched their lives worsen every day, even now, six days after the hurricane made landfall in New Orleans.

Rape, looting, pillaging, and violence are not tolerable. Neither is violent retaliation against these egregious acts. Army units are being brought in from Iraq, where they have little to no accountability for their actions against what the media has so popularly named the insurgency. This does not insinuate that they will treat the citizens of New Orleans as if they were a threat to the well-being of America, but one must wonder about the validity of the choices being made by American armed forces. Not only did help arrive much too late, but the organization of aid to Louisiana has been lacking to say the least.

Numerous stories pour in throughout the day regarding the limit of supplies and manpower. The choice to make available all resources to all areas is not a hard one to make. The fact that a man was killed trying to flag down help says it all. What about the dozens of pirate bus drivers that risk incarceration to go where official rescue operations dare not.

People’s lives should not be governed by red tape. Getting the help in there is only half the battle. Using manpower and resources responsibly and effectively are key to helping resolve this situation.

Hey! That’s cool. I especially like the line that says: “Though this is the first, it won’t be the last native Mac application that Google delivers. So please, Mac users, stay tuned!”

Thanks, Google!

The app is a tiny menu bar item that will replace GmailStatus as my Gmail notifier. I like the fact that the option to show the number of unread messages is not a little haywire like it was in GmailStatus.

The only thing that is missing is Growl Support, but maybe some enterprising Machead will come up with a script for that. I might make an update to this post after I’ve used it for a few days, but for now, this seems excellent!

Update: It seems that I rely on Growl way more than I thought I did. It must be the transparency with which Growl integrates into the system, but I love knowing when I get new mail via that lovely bubble notification. Also, earlier when I said that the unread count isn’t all funky like Gmail Status, it wasn’t exactly true. The notifier puts the number in parentheses next to the icon, which in turn changes the width of the menu bar icons according to how many unread messages I have. Not cool; I’d much rather have an overlay. I’ll keep trying Google’s app and see what, if any, updates come out.

Update 2: Gmail Notifier supports plugins! A plugin called Gmail+Growl adds Growl support, and I love it! I took the images from Gmail Status (because they are so much cooler) and used them in Gmail Notifier. Now I have an official Gmail notifier with Growl support that looks good doing it.

I saw a rather cryptic post from Robert Scoble concerning Pandora the other day. I had no idea what it was, whether it was MS related or not, but I decided to check it out. Scoble normally has some interesting things to link to, whether his critics like to admit it or not.

For the past few years, the Music Genome Project has been listening and sorting thousands upon thousands of tracks of music. They have eschewed the normal conventions of genre and classification and instead given each song a number of musical attribrutes, including tonality, harmonies, rhythm, and melody. Pandora is the MGP’s gateway to the end user.

Visit Pandora.com and you will be greeted by a simplistic web page with an embedded Flash application. Simply enter the name of a group or song that you enjoy, and sit back. Pandora searches the MGP database to find similar music to what you have defined.

You can create up to 100 stations, and the first ten hours of listening are totally free. You don’t even need an email address to listen!

Try creating a station from one song, and then add what you think are similar songs to the same station. Pandora will adapt and start churning out some awesome new music that you have never heard before but will be hopping on iTunes to grab immediately.

I love this concept, and I would like to see a more robust client (instead of a clunky Flash app. Ajax anyone?) and way more publicity. Where is all the buzz about these guys?

I’ll keep giving Pandora a listen, and perhaps I’ll cough up the $36/year fee. It seems a fair price for an almost endless supply of customized new music. Plus, the fact that my Mars Volta station played two of my favorite Mars Volta songs, an At The Drive In song from the new compilation, and the bonus track that was not even included on Frances The Mute makes it a keeper in my book already.

Yesterday, Slashdot had two posts concerning the release of an instant message client from Google. This morning, Google has officially announced the release of Google Talk.

I connected to the Google Talk service last night via Adium and one of the sites that Slashdot linked to.

The fact that Adium so seamlessly integrates accounts is definitely a plus. Messaging Google Talk contacts was totally transparent.

Google Talk has some excellent integration with Gmail, too. Try sending an gmail to another Gmail address: That person is automatically added to your contact list. If you manually add a contact to Google Talk, their alias info is automagically grabbed and implemented, while their email address is added to Gmail.

This is probably all part of Google’s world domination plans (is that not getting a little cliché?), but it’s so darn cool that I don’t care one snitch! No message limit, unbelievable sychronicity, and the fact that it’s Google all make me wonder: Can they take on AIM and, more importantly, MSN?

I have moved my blog to a new site. I’m not sure how long Blogger keeps URLs that are no longer published to, but http://uptonianthoughts.blogspot.com/ will remain up as long as possible. Please change your bookmarks and feed readers accordingly.

Google announced yesterday the immediate availability of RSS feeds for their news page. You can subscribe to any section of news that is available at http://news.google.com. I am still wondering why they did not make sure the feeds show up in Firefox via the Live Bookmark icon, but I use Sage anyway.

This is awesome. Apple, please make a Bluetooth version.

This may be old news, but Amazon seems to indicate which albums it sells are copy protected. I haven’t looked to see if any other albums are flagged like this, but it seems that “Copy Protected CD” is one of the formats that is listed on Amazon’s Buying Guide. When was this implemented, and do they catch all copy protected media? Has anyone bought an seemingly normal album from Amazon only to find that it was copy protected?

Even though this indication is nice, a copy protected work is not technically a CD, but I think Amazon labeled it as such to reduce confusion.