Adding photos to your screensaver and desktop.

I like having web access to my favorite pictures from vacations etc, and the same access to friends photo feeds.  But I never look at them.  So I wanted to find a way to integrate them into my computing a little more (life of a grad student = constance computer use) I’m sure there are several ways to do this and feel free to comment if you have a better suggestion.

I downloaded Wallpaper Juggler to rotate my desktop wallpaper. You can customize how often it will change the picture, and it appears to lack annoying flashy transitions, just changes the picture (I like that).  It will also pseudo-intelligently download new images from WallpaperStock; by intelligent I mean it will get the correct size for your monitor; by pseudo- I mean if you delete an already downloaded image, it will re-download it the next time you tell it to connect.  You can add your own directories to the rotation (obviously) but so far I think they have to be images on your local machine.  I don’t see a way to add photostreams from Flickr or PicassaWeb yet, but I’m sure that can’t be to difficult to do since I also started using Google Photos Screensaver to bring personalized photos to my screensaver.  GPS lets you add photos from your local hard drive, Picasa, Flickr, and any other RSS photofeeds you want. This lets you stay up on your friends photoalbums without having to log in to Facebook (which I also like).

Howto remove annoying Facebook ads.

I nearly gave up on Facebook due to all the sponsored links and advertisements cluttering the site.  Then I found the Stylish Firefox extension.  Excellent little addon, but in the interest of brevity I’m just going to tell you what to do.  If you’re not using Firefox (or Flock for Beto) you’re SOL:

1.)  Get Stylish Firefox Addon.

2.) Get the following Stylish scripts for Facebook from UserStyles.

- Remove All Facebook Sponsors

- Facebook Ad Remover Compilation

3.) Installing the scripts couldn’t be easier. Scroll down to “Install Options” and click the button to load the script into Stylish.

You’re done.  Enjoy Facebook without all the crap, well at least the adds.  Maybe someone will make a script that removes invitations to join Pirates v. Ninjas.

Enjoy!

Web 2.0 Update — Music

I’ve found some goodies that all music lovers will enjoy. First is Songbird. It’s an open-source music browser built on the Firefox architecture. It’s still in developer preview status (i.e. it’s not finished) but the functionality is there. It’s great for searching the web for new music, old music, rare music, any kind of music. Songbird is being built to replace your current music program (e.g. Window’s Media Player, Itunes, etc…) but it specializes in finding music using a variety of search engines and music blogs. When it finds a song for you, it allows you to either add it to your library and keep the song on the web, or you can download the file to your own machine. It provides mp3 player support, Audioscrobbler, and “add-ons” so the features will keep coming as more and more users write software for it. The full version is set for release sometime this year.

For those of you looking for more adventure, you can make your own media player with Foobar2000. LifeHacker wrote a post about this program that shows what some of the readers were able to come up with. You can read the original LH post for more information about Foobar2000 and some of the functions you can control. As far as I know ( I haven’t used it yet) Foobar2000 only plays media files, it won’t go finding media for you a la Songbird. However, I’m sure someone will come up with a way to get these two gems talking before long, for now, just find and download the music with Songbird and listen to it with Foobar2000.

There are lots of other music tools out there, I don’t have time to talk about all of them (or try them all for that matter). Some others I’ve used or heard of are:

Last.fm internet radio

MediaMaster online media library storage

finetune internet radio

and of course: Pandora

If you know of any other good music utilities on the web, please leave a comment and share.

Time for me to get back to work.

web searching … back to basics… finally

Google has started a new search engine called searchmash that they are using to test new concepts. Personally, one of the best features of searchmash is the absence of advertisements. That’s right, no ads. Employing a clean, simple interface, there’s also no sign of Google unless you view the privacy policy or terms of service statement. The engine appears to run using Google’s search algorithm, though I haven’t seen any verification of this — even Google seems to be keeping quiet about what the site can do except to say that it’s being used to test user interfaces etc… The features of the engine can be found here. My favorite ability of the site is a box on the right of the screen that lets you quickly change your search results from web to wikipedia, blogs, images, and videos that play on the search results page. So far I’ve been very impressed with the site.

To make searchmash your default search engine from the firefox address bar just open “about:config” and search for the “keyword.url” variable. Change this value to:

http://www.searchmash.com/search/

now when you type something into the address bar you will be taken to searchmash’s results for that phrase. You can do this with any search engine or search box on the web, because Firefox is awesome!

Online Music Library

I want to share an awesome website called, “The Music Genome Project” aka. Pandora. It’s an online collection of over 400,000 songs by more than 20,000 artists and it’s free. To get an account all you need is an e-mail address, I’ve yet to receive a single e-mail to that address and they are the only site I’ve given it to so apparently they feel the same about spam as I do.

Starting is Easy. Just enter an artist or song name that you like. Pandora will then compile a radio station for you based on specific qualities of that song/artist. As new songs come into the station you can give them a thumbs up or down, you can even move a song to another station if you like it but don’t think it belongs on the current station.

With their specific music license, Pandora doesn’t allow you to rewind or go back to a song, or play a specific song on request, however, if you make a station based on a song, it will play sooner or later, just not right away. Pandora doesn’t have any classical or world music but I’ve made several great stations based on varying genres and I think any music lover will find something they enjoy.

There is also a standalone player called OpenPandora. It performs the same function as the website, without requiring a dedicated browser tab or window. There is also a website dedicated to helping you expand your Pandora stations and musical interests called (what else?) Pandora Stations. And finally, you can share stations with your friends that have a Pandora account and listen to their stations, though you can’t rate songs on stations you don’t own. So if you set up an account and want to check out my stations, let me know.