AdaptiveBlue Releases BlueOrganizer for Firefox

Theres a new Firefox extension in town, and I'm trying it out. It's BlueOrganizer by Adaptive Blue. This is a contextual search engine that offers some useful little features that made me want to download it immediately. The tool bar button contains a drop down list of your saved favorite things and places. It adds some little blue buttons to pages you're looking at that, when you hover your mouse over them, show drop down menus with further information on the item. This is alot like Cool Iris, which I highly recommend as a tool that lets you preview link destinations without leaving the page you're on. This thing notes the places you go and offers links to semantic matches of what you're looking for or looking at. So, when you're looking at books, for instance, the button on the page next to the book will show you the popularity of the book on the web and where else its available. You can add the book and/or the site to your favorites on the toolbar, and the program will give you the option to do things like, make an instant widget of the item and where its available to add to your blog. The same can be done for the dontation page of a cause, a blog that you like (such as this one!...or even RIPCoco...Brilliant at Breakfast?)

This is a next generation search engine, and though I've only just installed it and will have to play around with it, and see how much information is being sent to the mother ship, I like the idea very much. I'm not one who sweats big business knowing what sort of bread I'm buying, but I can see the potential for misuse of the information that concerns me. As someone who is fascinated by the statistics of popular culture, I am more interested than worried.

If you're someone who regularly cross checks everything with Amazon, Buy.com, a ton of tech blogs, and numerous newspapers and magazines, this may be for you. Further report to follow after Ive messed around with it. I'd love to hear from anyone out there using it who has a report, bad or good.

Another highly recommended Add-on for Firefox is Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer which synchronizes all of your bookmarks across your network. I love the thing!

eya gang!

a tip for Mac users from the Bloggie:

Submitted by maggiesboy on Mon, 12/24/2007 - 5:04pm.

Cool iMac trick for capturing stuff on your screen

Press Shift+Command+4 (Command is the key with the Apple icon on it)

Your cursor will turn into crosshairs.

Drag it over anything you want to copy and let go of the mouse.

You'll find the image on your Desktop as a .png file.

Double click to open it in Preview.

Now you can "Save As" to any format you like (.jpg, .tiff, etc)

There's a lot more....

Ive been in tech meltdown around here....this is besides the raging rapid in my basement yesterday, the suddenly leaking disposal, the new path (by the blood of hands made by my father so they are sorta...um...his?) washing away, mice in every drawer and every humane trap staring dolefully at me with cute popping eyes, and everything from the space heater to the washing machine to the refrigerator deciding to bite the dust.
No, this is about tech...my tech...which is a little involved, granted, because I like it and I want everything new and wireless that I see.
My problem remains that the idea of having to deal with tech support from Dell, Linksys, Verizon, Cablevision, or Microsoft, leaves me in tears. I just don't have the time and Ive become like some sort of Pavlovian experiment in my disdain for accents, Indian or otherwise. I would probably like a suave Aussie or Brit to talk me through it all, but thats not what you get when you call in...you get someone who puts you on endless hold so that they can research the problem and read the manual while you listen to commercials or muzak. I have gone from trying to understand how the other cultures work and trying to apply it to my own needs in support, to a dripping hate in which all I can do is tell the person on the other end that I know its not their fault, but I cant understand why it takes me 5 calls till I get someone who knows my answer....how I resist the standard "reload your OS" advice over and over till I get someone who knows something.
So, my tech time slips by as I procrastinate for the first time in my life and curse Michael Dell and his speech at CES promising a new level of support for the XPS line; a level based out of Austin with top tier techs who would know a thing or two. For the first week thats what I got, but then right away my calls were routed to South America and Canada, of all places. South America was pretty good, but I knew more than the guy I got. He did call back a million times to follow up, but he had no new information. Canada was a little too laid back and snarky for me. I love Canadians but the whole thing of putting themselves in your shoes doesnt translate up there.















So here I am, about to expire on this or that service plan which I would gladly pay more for if it was usable, and wondering what problem I should fix for the entire afternoon....
The email hijack of my laptop? The failure again of my NEW Belkin router, just losing components (probably my fault in removing stuff from Hijack This!) or the inevitable load of Vista and the new Office.
Then there is the failure of the Monarch system, which failed twice in the 2 years that I had it, with a year to go on its warranty...but then Monarch went out of business. Should it be easy to get a new motherboard from ASUS? Should I have to call and email 10-20 times only to receive one line answers that don't answer the question at all?...After being told to fax or mail my original receipt to prove my warranty worthiness, I was told that I had to go back to square one....and to boot, my fax went down!! To their credit HP's tech did a couple of quick tests and then sent me another All-in-One right away.
Then, upon having to send back the main component of the broken one, I called FedEx and they proceeded to not come and pick up for days....They lost the order 3 times in a row and couldnt understand why it wasn't going through. This meant that I had to lug this huge box inside and outside for 3 days, finally leaving it covered with a garbage bag in the snow on the 4th night. The driver who finally showed up unceremoniously threw the bag on the floor as he hauled the thing away. Hell, it wasn't his fault....
Its that these corporations are too damned BIG...and no matter what Michael Dell or anyone says, unless they stop taking such huge salaries and start putting some money back into training of tech support, American tech support, and yes, replacing poorly assembled products without putting us through a wringer, I might as well learn to build my own boxes.
With hardware Im great, but I'm very weak on software...so, PJ may have to guide me....maybe even an old gal can learn a thing or two.
I will write more about this new Dell box in the coming days and some strange glitches that Ive found in Microsoft vs. Dell vs. Verizon...or anyone else who dares try to mix their software with that of the emperor!