I catch a new article every few weeks along the lines of “The Best Firefox Extensions for Doing ______.” Sometimes I see something cool that I end up downloading and using regularly, but most of the time I just stick with what I’ve got. I decided to share the list of extensions I have installed, and what I use them for.

Aardvark
This extension fits into the web developer category, and is really handy for quickly visualizing block elements in a website layout simply by hovering over the page.

BugMeNot
If you’ve never visited the site Bugmenot.com, you’re missing out. That site provides generic logins to those silly sites that make you create a login just to view things. This extension gives you an easy right-click option to pull a generic login from Bugmenot to the site you’re currently viewing.

Chatzilla
This one is simply an IRC client for Firefox. The main reason I installed it was for viewing Apple Keynotes chatted via IRC, so it isn’t an extension that I use regularly.

ColorZilla
This is another web developer extension. It gives you an eye-dropper tool that can be used to pull colors from any website, and copy them to your clipboard. I use this pretty regularly to quickly get hex colors from sites I like, or to remind me what color I used in a site I created.

Delicious Bookmarks
I’ve got a Del.icio.us account full of bookmarks, and this extension helps me to add/tag/sync those bookmarks with Firefox.

Firebug
Firebug is probably the most used extension in my collection. It fits into the web developer category, and allows you to rip up the code to just abou any website you can pull up in Firefox. I use it mainly for tweaking and viewing CSS issues in my sites, but it does a whole lot more.

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer
This extension keeps my bookmarks in sync between my work and home computers. It also provides a hosting service allowing me access to my bookmarks via their website on any computer.

Greasemonkey
This extension allows you to customize the way webpages look and function by using scripts to do different tasks based on the sites you visit. One of my favorite scripts removes hose annoying text link ads from sites that use them.

IE Tab
This one does pretty much what the name implies. It shows you what your site would look like in Internet Explorer. It’s handy for testing sites, but also if someone has a poorly developed site, it will allow you to quickly view it using IE without leaving Firefox.

Link Alert
I use the Link Alerty extension to warn me before I click on a link to an outside document. Where this extension is most handy is for PDF’s, so I don’t mindlessly click, and then have to wait for Acrobat to open. It’s also handy for e-mail links warning me when it is going to pull up my email client.

MeasureIt
Yes, another web developer extension (I’ve got a lot of them). This one lets you draw boxes around elements on a site to see how larget they are. It’s handy when looking at page/element widths.

S3 Firefox Organizer
This is my newest extension, and was downloaded when I started using Amazon’s S3 for backups. This extension gives me access (FTP-like) to my S3 storage account from inside Firefox.

Sage
A simple in-browser RSS reader - I like this better than the live-bookmarks reader built into Firefox.

Translator
This extension does quick and easy translations of websites with one click, Every now and then, I’ll run across a site I need to see that isn’t in English - this extension saves me in those circumstances.

User Agent Switcher
Along the same lines of IE Tab, this extension lets you spoof your user agent for those poorly developed websites that only work well in a certain browser.

Web Developer
The Web Developer extension is a very handy extension for web developers (duh), that provides different break-downs of page elements on the site you have it. It also allows live manipulation of those page elements.

WebMail Notifier
The WebMail Notifier extension notifies you when you get new webmail (catchy name eh?) so you don’t have to keep visiting the webmail sites one by one to check mail status. I use this for my hotmail, yahoo and gmail accounts.

Work-Only Extensions:
There are a few additional extensions that I use only on my work computer for various reasons.

Quartz PDF Plugin
Since Preview is my PDF-viewer of choice on my Mac, Quartz lets me open PDF’s using Preview right inside the browser vs. firing up an external instance for each doc.

Simple Mail
This extensions is similar to WebMail Notifier, but is used to check my pop mail accounts at work. I like to keep my work and home email separate, so my home mail doesn’t go to my mail app at work. This extension check my multiple accounts and lets me view/edit/send mail from right inside the browser.

Well, there’s the list of all the extensions I use. What does your list look like? Is there anything I should be using that I don’t have right now? What is your favorite best-extension-since-sliced-bread?

I read a small blurb in Wired Magazine about a company called Emotiv Systems that has created a really interesting product called the EPOC. It basically brings brain control to your computer or to video games. The EPOC is a headband helmet type thing that actually picks up your brain waves allowing you to interact with a video game or a computer simply by thinking about it. The videos make the interactions look very simplified in their demo games. There is also an emotion sensing piece to it as well - you smile, and your avatar smiles, you frown, so does your avatar. Given the simple demos, I’m willing to cut them some slack since it’s just a version 1 product, and it’s freakin’ brain wave control for crying out loud. They’re promising a release date before the holidays this year, and the price is only $299, which seems really cheap for brain control. This thing looks like it is has some promise, and when this thing is out, we’ll see how developers take advantage of it. I can’t wait till I don’t have to manipulate a keyboard and a mouse to run around an blow things up in my computer games. This is just one step closer to putting you inside the game.

You knew something like this would happen sooner or later. Someone has gone out and created a toaster that you hook to the internet. The toaster pulls down news stories and burns it to your bread so you can read as you eat, I guess. It can also toast images to your bread. It’s kind of a cool idea, but I don’t’ know how practical. This crazy new home appliance is actually a finalist in a design competition so you can’t go out and buy one of these yet… but I’m sure the day is coming.

Ever wonder what would happen if you tried the infamous Diet Coke and Mentos experiment in Zero G? Robert Woodhead decided to take that experiment to the skies… literally. He packed up an experiment kit (Mentos, Diet Coke, containment bag) and took off in a special ZeroG plane to get weightless.

the hypothesis that we wanted to test was that convection of the soda was an important part of the whole reaction; under normal gravity, bubbles formed around the mentos rise up through the soda, allowing more soda to come in contact with the candy, and thus more bubbles form. However, in microgravity, there’s no “up”, so any bubbles that form will just stay near the mento, and will in fact keep new cola from reaching it.

This is probalby the best unboxing video I’ve ever seen. It is for the Samsun Omnia i900 phone. It seems that it was actually created by Samsung, to go viral… and it sure has. I’d totally buy this phone if it came like this!

Microsoft Research at The Univeristy of Washington has put together a really amazing new demo of thier Photosynth Composing Application. It takes large collections of photos from many different users (i.e. flickr or smugmug), and builds a 3D environment out of those photos by stiching them together at various locations and depths around the subject. Then filters are placed on the images to adjust the colors to make the movement through them more fluid or remove all the day shots or night shots so the resulting movement doesn’t jerk back and fourth through dark and light photos. There is a great video on YouTube demonstrating the process and what’s possible with this software. This is really cool, and I can’t wait till it’s available on a wider basis.

At work I split my time between two physical offices. That can make keeping notes and paperwork between the two somewhat difficult. Enter Evernote, the super handy multi-platform information capture tool.

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.

Evernote allows you to throw just about any sort of information you’ve got on your computer up into the cloud to retrieve it whenever it is needed. There are desktop apps for just about every platform. There are web clippers for just about every browser. There are even cell phone apps that let you send information from the road. Whatever it is you capture, it all gets synced to your Evernote account. So, I can log into the website or pull up the Evernote app to get anything and everything I’ve added. Once the info is up there, you can tag it and organize it however you ‘d like. It also does text recognition on images you upload, so everything is searchable. Given my back and fourth situation, Evernote really helps me keep track of what’s goign on.

Last week the FCC ruled that Comcast acted against their open-Internet principles by improperly slowing peer-to-peer BitTorrent traffic. Up to that decision, and shortly after that decision became official, there have been several good articles written on the topic. Some are strongly for it, and some strongly against. Some simply ask if it was necessary and why. If you aren’t familiar with what exactly has happened, it all started with Comcast throttling a certain type of traffic on their networks. That means if you were using BitTorrent for anything on Comcast’s network, they shut down your transfer. It wasn’t based on amount of data transferred, it wasn’t based on peak usage times, it was based on the protocol, which according to the complaint goes against the FCC’s Internet Policy Statement.

Degrading these protocols undermines innovation and violates the FCC’s Internet Policy Statement, whose four principles guarantee consumers access to the content, applications, and services of their choice, as well as access to competition among network, applications, and content providers.

In this debate, I think I could easily fall on the side of the complaint, or ultimately the FCC’s ruling in favor of the complain (Comcast was in the wrong). As someone who personally and professionally uses the Internet a lot, this issue hits close to home. Strictly speaking about Internet protocols, there really shouldn’t be any reason for this. Traffic from one application or protocol shouldn’t be treated differently than traffic from another application or protocol. Bits are bits no matter where they come from. Just because I’m watching YouTube videos online and you’re checking your gmail, there really should be no difference in how our connections are treated. So at its core level, I am for Network Neutrality. The lines, wires, pipes, whatever you want to call them shouldn’t play favorites to what travels through them.

There are a few areas where the issue does become a little more gray for me. When Network Neutrality came around the last time (government bills, debates etc.), there were no official regulations put into place but an understanding that if networks did start to prioritize traffic, the FCC would retroactively punish them. The network operators said, “you don’t need to make it illegal, we’ll be good… we promise.” At that time, even being on the side of network neutrality, I kind of agreed that a law might not be necessary. Particularly given that the folks making the laws most likely didn’t understand the issue, and would probably botch anything that did get put together. Just look at past technology regulations and laws for examples of this. Even if they were able to cobble together a good law, I’m still not for frivolous legislation, but wonder if that is the only way out now. Comcast is not the only network doing this type of thing. Many ISP’s are doing similar things with the traffic flowing over their networks. Maybe it’s just in a different way than Comcast, or maybe they haven’t gotten caught yet. Given statements made by many ISP’s, they definitely want to be able to do it in some form or another. I don’t like to get political on here, but I don’t really see that this is really a political issue, or at least it shouldn’t be one. It really shouldn’t matter what political party you follow, it’s more about getting the most out of the Internet, and not being beholden to your service provider for a certain type of content. This image is an obvious exaggeration, but shows what I mean. This might not matter if there were true competition for internet services, but in many instances there are maybe one or two high speed options in an area (usually phone or cable). If they both happen to do what they please with your traffic, you’re out of luck.

The other part of this that is a little gray to me is the why. I have my suspicions as to why the network owners want to do this, but really want to know if it is true or not. The claim is that Comcast, or any network provider, needs to shape the traffic on their networks to avoid becoming oversaturated and not being able to handle the use (that they’ve oversold). They claim over and over again that a small percentage of users take up the bulk of the bandwidth on their networks so that other users can’t. I’m joking a little bit here, but was crazy Sen. Ted Stevens right when he claimed that the Internet was just a series of tubes and when the tubes fill up there isn’t room for more data to flow through them. The part that doesn’t make sense to me (and please correct me if I’m wrong) is that data is not a limited resource. We’re not talking about oil here, where there is only so much to go around. The argument that the network operators throw out in this debate is people using more should pay more. There are even some ISP’s experimenting with limiting users bandwidth (a throwback to the AOL dial-up days). My suspicion here is that the network operators are just plain greedy, wanting to squeeze more money out of customers. All of these network operators have peering agreements, so it isn’t costing them more (or really anything at that matter) to make these bits flow over their lines. The only part of this that makes any sense is that possibly the lines are oversold and at capacity now, and they haven’t invested back into the infrastructure. I don’t mean the big lines here connecting one city to another or one big network to another big network. I mean the last mile, the stuff that runs from those big lines into your house. The bits themselves flowing over those wire are basically unlimited. Isn’t the price I pay for my connection right now paying for that infrastructure? And what about all the tax perks given to the telecoms in the 90’s for the promise that they’d upgrade their networks? It’s true that I could be very confused on how all of this works, but to me is just seems like the communication/telecom big-wigs just want to up the bottom line and are using this network neutrality debate as an excuse.

These are just my rambling thoughts on the subject. I could be way off in several areas. Please let me know if I am, and why things are the way they are. I want to understand this. Is there a valid reason for it, or is it just the need for control and greed at work? I just think that for the Internet to thrive, it needs to be a neutral environment. Just look at the past 10 years and where we’ve come. Would we have come as far if the owners of the lines got to pick and chose what went over them and how? This is an exciting time. It could even be called an information revolution looking at how people publish and ingest information online. We risk bringing it all to a standstill if the network operators get to put up their own traffic cops and only let through the bits that they deem worththy, and lock up the ones they don’t.

Some good articles about the recent debate:

• Who Should Solve This Internet Crisis?
• OPEC 2.0
• Yo FCC! Are You Doing Anything About Metered Broadband?
• FCC Rules Against Comcast

I just ran across a cool little site that helps you determine how much a drive will cost from point A to point B, based on MPG, gas price in the area you’re traveling, distance etc. Given gas prices these days, this is a handy little tool. The results are a bit scary sometimes. Give it a try, and see how much it costs to go to the grocery store every week.

What is a little bit like Mortal Kombat but involves mentos and kissing instead of fighting? If you said Mentos Kissfight, you guessed correctly! Mentos seems to be really pushing the kissability after eating their candies lately. Given their Kiss Cam web game, and the latest TV commercial for Mentos gum. The Kissfight game involves running around and trying to kiss your opponent (is that the best term here?) faster than they can kiss you. Picking up falling Mentos gives you super kiss powers. Give it a try, and see if you can become a Kissfight champion!

Remember the last Nintendo Cartridge Nintendo? This one takes it a step further, adding a controller and a screen to the package. Now you don’t even need to have a TV to play your cartridge-sized Nintendo. This one doesn’t look like you can play more than one game though. Oh well, it’s still pretty cool.

I jut got another email from Netflix, and it looks like they decided not to remove profiles.

You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.
We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.
-Your friends at Netflix

Maybe the petitions, complaints and bad press they were getting prompted the change of heart. I also wonder if maybe the 1-2% they quote a the only subscribers using that feature was maybe a little low. Whatever it was, thank you for listening to your customers Netflix.

Turiba University Sets a new world record with 1911 simultaneous Diet Coke and Mentos fountains. This breaks the previous record set by 1360 Belgium students last April.

I just got an e-mail from Netfix, they will be removing profiles feature. I thought it was spam at first, since why would Netflix do this? I followed the link, and found out this it wasn’t a joke, they are in fact removing profiles effective September 1st. This feature lets you set up multiple movie queues under different names. So I have a profile and my wife has a profile and we both get one DVD out of our two-DVD plan.

We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008.
Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.
While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.
If you have any questions, please go to http://www.netflix.com/Help?p_faqid=3962 or call us anytime at 1 (888) 638-3549. We apologize for any inconvenience.

To me, removing a feature is not an “improvement,” and may prompt me to find another DVD rental service come September 1st. If you use profiles, please let Netflix know that this is a bad idea.

UPDATE: Apparently, there are a lot of (rightly) upset Netflix users out there.

• Netflix Community Blog: Profiles feature going away
• Hacking Netflix: Netflix Eliminating Account Profiles
• Digg: Netflix Eliminating Profiles
• Protest Netflix’s Cancellation of Profiles Petition
• SaveNetflixProfiles.com

Appalachian State University has recently published the results of their study on the physics behind the Mentos + Diet Coke = Crazy Fizz phenomenom. This is some serious science that I can get behind! If you ask me, more research dollars need to go towards the study of Mentos. According to the study, here is the reason the Diet Coke fizzes up when Mentos are added.

So why does the reaction occur? In an opened container of soda, carbon dioxide gas bubbles out over the course of minutes or hours until the concentration of carbon dioxide left in the soda is proportional to the carbon dioxide in the surrounding air. This de-fizzing reaction is slow because the surface tension of the liquid is very high, which keeps the gas bubbles trapped.

But when a Mentos is dropped in the beverage, it breaks the surface tension and as it falls the candy’s surfactant coating further reduces the surface tension of the liquid. The candy’s rough surface also provides growth sites for the gas, making it easier for carbonation to escape as a foam geyser.

The geyser also occurs when sand, salt or lifesavers were added to the Diet Coke, but the mass lost and volume traveled is much less spectacular.

If you wan to see the full ariticle in its full complex physics detaiils, you can access it from The American Journal of Physics Online.