New Tab Jumpstart

New Tab Jumpstart ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8914 ) isn't the name of some geeky new action movie, although that would be kind of cool. It's the latest in the ongoing development of a decent new tab behavior for Firefox. We've covered several attempts at getting this just right, and New Tab Jumpstart is one of the best so far. It seems largely inspired by the speed dial made popular by Opera and now Google Chrome, but that's not a bad thing.

Chrome users will find the layout of Jumpstart very familiar. The majority of the page is taken up by a grid of frequently-visited sites that you can pin permanently or delete. On the right, there's a search box, a list of recent bookmarks, and a list of recently-closed pages. It's a sensible starting point for a new browser session, although it lacks the eye candy of, for example, Safari's start page.

-from Download Squad

SearchMerge

With all the hype around Twitter as the future of search, it makes sense that someone would put together a search engine that combines Google results with results from social sites around the web. Enter SearchMerge ( http://searchmerge.com/ ). It's basically just a text entry field and a selection of sites to search, including Twitter, Friendfeed and YouTube, but it has the potential to be very useful. Or, it would, if there were any apparent rhyme or reason to the order of the results.

A search for Download Squad turned up a Last.fm page, our website, a year-old Vimeo video, and a post about netbooks from February, in that order. The results were all relevant, but they could be sorted in a more logical way. SearchMerge is also fairly slow when you're using it to search every available site. The real-time search option is neat, but suffers from the same long wait for results. It's a great idea, but it has a long way to go in the implementation.

Unemployment Rate Data made easier by Google

If you go to Google.com and type in [unemployment rate] or [population] followed by a U.S. state or county, you will see the most recent estimates!

Unemployment rate, Los Angeles County, CA
11.3% of the labor force - Not seasonally adjusted



Yay! You still may need to provide an adequate source though, and not just the Google search page.

u.nu :: the shortest urls. period.

Yet another URL shortening service: U.nu

From their website:
u.nu :: the shortest urls. period.: "Why u.nu is the 1-4-u

* u.nu is the shortest domain name available.
* u.nu doesn’t use look-alike characters, such as l, 1, I, 0, and O.
* u.nu isn’t picky about upper- and lower-case, so you can easily read your URLs to someone over the phone, or send them via SMS.
* u.nu is a palindrome (if you ignore the dot)."

Status-bar Scientific Calculator :: Firefox Add-ons

Status-bar Scientific Calculator :: Firefox Add-ons

This is genius! This extension uses the Firefox Status Bar (yes, the small row on the bottom of your Firefox Browser), as a calculator. Great for those simple math queries. With a quick glance, it seems to also have some advanced functions -- trig functions, logarithms, frequently used constants (pi, e, etc). It's a lot easier than pulling out the calculator that came w/ your Windows Operating System!

Enjoy!

Ooops. Error in Earnings Exporter 2_00g

Hello,

Its embarrassing to say I made a boo boo when I did the formulas to the "Category Analysis." The Percent of Total Questions was incorrect, and it calculated something that had almost nothing to do with it. Thank you Kathy Bond for letting me know of this error.

You can download the new version here or view the Earnings Exporter page here. I'll also have a few screenshots up for you on the Earnings Exporter page.

Thanks again!

Earnings Exporter v2_00g released! Category Analysis

Hello,

I just finished a rough version of the Earnings Exporter with added analysis on your categories. You can download it here. Now you can see which categories are earning you the most money per hour!

Expeditors, this doesn't help you guys too much. However, you guys may find the daily analysis charting nifty.

Keep in mind that this is VERY rough. It may not be as visually appealing as you may expect, but it does its job.

New features:

• Category Analysis
• Daily Analysis Charting

Known Bugs:

• Some graphs may not be working on the first click. Try viewing some other charts first, and coming back. Sometimes this helps.
• I still don't know where the 1004 error is coming from. If that's the problem you're having, and it has worked before, sometimes trying again the next day will help. (Otherwise, I'm sorry)

Greet or Delete - Ubiquity

Greet or Delete Extension Review: Ubiquity

This interesting add-on has goals to make browsing the web more userfriendly. If you wanted to send an email to lets say your friend Ben a "welcome back" message, you could do that without having to navigate to Gmail! After pressing a hotkey, you would just type something like "Email Ben Welcome Back!" and it would automaticaly do that for you.

Although interesting, this Add-on doesn't have the capabilities (yet) to be useful for ChaCha. "Search Top Cell Phones" would bring you to a Google search page for "Top Cell Phones," but there're already quicker ways to search Google (including the use of bookmarklets).

Firefox has plans in putting the features of the Ubiquity project into a future version of Firefox as Taskfox, so hopefully it'll gain some useful features (or an easier way to "develop" features) sometime in the future.

Final Verdict: DELETE (for now)
Score: 3/10

Next Review: Whenever I run into an interesting extension to test. I think this would be best as 1) I have spent VERY few hours a week ChaCha'ing and 2) even less hours testing the extensions.

Good luck.

College Basketball 2009 - March Madness

ChaCha HQ posted a tipsheet to help us with the March Basketball Queries.... And although their help-page layout looks appealing, I was never a fan of using ChaCha links to help me on my searches (I don't think I've visited the Quicklinks page more than 10 times).

Anyway, Google just posted a page that might provide help to the same queries. Its an alternative to the ChaCha way, and may or may not be quicker for you.

Give the page a look--maybe you'll like it.

Browser Ball

Sorry, I usually don't post anything unrelated, but this is just pretty cool: Browser Ball

Greasemonkey - Myspace custom style remover

This Greasemonkey script removes the custom styles of Myspace pages so we can actually navigate through them.

Make sure you have the Greasemonkey Extension installed.

Greet or Delete - ImgLikeOpera

Greet or Delete Extension Review: ImgLikeOpera

I originally installed this add-on because I thought it could speed up page loading times as it forces Firefox to not load the images. Although the extension does this, and does it well, today's websites rely too heavily on image-based navigation--too much to make allow this script to fully be useful. Far too often I found myself disabling the script on webpages, simply because I could not find my way around.

Although I recommend this script to any dial-up modem users out there, this script is NOT useful for anybody with DSL+. Since all ChaCha guides are required to have at least DSL, this wouldn't be useful to anyone.

Final Verdict: DELETE
Score: 2/10

Next Review: Ubiquity

Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar :: Firefox Add-ons

I found a nifty little add-on that may be useful for those that have tons of bookmark items in their Bookmarks Toolbar. This add-on allows the toolbar to extend into multiple rows.

Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar :: Firefox Add-ons

Bookmarklets to ease your search

These bookmarklets will allow for faster searching, w/o much typing. I've been looking for a way to search "highlighted words" and was VERY happy when I found this. After setting it up, all you do is highlight some text on a webpage (ex: your ChaCha query), click a bookmarklet, and BAM your search pops on another tab.

Installation:

1) Make sure you have your bookmarks toolbar visible. You can do this by right clicking on your firefox top menu, and make sure "Bookmraks Toolbar" is checked. If it wasnt before, you should see a new toolbar up top. This allows for easier access to your bookmarks:

2) Drag and Drop! I've compiled some scripts already here for everybody -- All you need to do is drag and drop onto your bookmarks toolbar.

3) Use! Highlight, Click, and Go! If nothing is highlighted, most of the following scripts will prompt you for an input.

Web Search:
Search Google [G]
Search Yahoo [Y]
Search MSN [M]
Search Google, Yahoo, and MSN [SearchAll]

The above Yahoo Searches will help support me by generating some revenue through HPF. If you do not want to do that, use the following: Search Yahoo [Y] and Search Google, Yahoo, and MSN [SearchALL]

Language and Lookup
Definitions/Dictionaries:
Definr [D]
Dictionary.com [Dict]
Oxford English Dictionary [Oxf]
Merriam-Webster Dictionary [MWD]
Yahoo Dictionary [YD]
Wordsmyth English Dictionary [WD]
MultiDictionary Search [MultiD] - Includes Definr, Oxford, Merriam-Webster, Yahoo, and Wordsmyth
Urban Dictionary [UD]

Definitions/Thesauri:
Merriam-Webster Thesaurus [MWT]
Yahoo Thesaurus [YT]
MultiThesaurus Search (MultiT] - Includes Merriam-Webster, Yahoo, and Wordsmyth

Definitions/Acronyms:
Acronym Finder [Acro]

Non-Famous People:
123People [123]
MySpace People [MSP]
MySpace All [MSA]
Spock People Search [Spock]

Weather and Time:
Quicklinks weather [Wzip] (accepts zip codes only)

Entertainment and Arts
Horoscopes (Highlight the name of the horoscope--must be correctly spelled):
Astrology.com [AHoro]
Yahoo Horoscopes [YHoro] - somehow, this only works if the horoscope is NON capitalized. Otherwise it will bring you to the horoscope from 1969.
Cafe Astrology [CafeHoro] - same as Yahoo. Their website does not recognize horoscopes that are spelled with capital letters.

Movies:
IMDB Search (imdb)

Music:
Amazon MP3 Search (mp3)
SongMeanings Artist (lyrA)
SongMeanings Lyrics (lyrL)
SongMeanings Song Title (lyrT)

Health and Fitness
Diet and Nutrition:
The Daily Plate (cal)

Medicine and Treatment:
Drugs.com (med)


URL Shorteners (Just click when you're on the page you want the URL shortened)
TinyURL
Tr.im
is.gd

If you have any requests, post a comment here, or send me an email.

Thanks for reading.

Notes: I have yet to figure out an extension that allows you to HOTKEY bookmarks. I'm looking into keyconfig, but I haven't figured it out yet. I'll post when I do.

Shorten URLs with Bookmarklets

I just found this to be very useful--And it just takes only a bit of space in your Bookmarks Toolbar!

Sometimes, when the IS asks us to send a picture or guitar tablature we cannot send via text message, we can send the URL. And URL's sometimes cna be VERY long. Many of us use shortening services such as TinyURL.

Now, instead of going to the shortener's webpage, you just click a button on your toolbar and it generates a link for you.

Drag the following onto your Bookmark toolbar and try it out (3 different URL shortening services)
TinyURL
Tr.im
is.gd

Enjoy!

Greet or Delete - Changes

Hello,

This is just a notice informing all you loyal visitors about the change of the weekly Greet or Delete into a bi-weekly column.

I just got a new job so I want to have a few more days each week to test out the new extensions before writing a review.

I'll have the review on ImgLikeOpera in by next Friday, March 13... (Wait, that's ANOTHER Friday the 13th?)

Change phone numbers into xxx-xxx-xxxx format!

This is regarding a thread posted on the Ge/Sp Addons forum that I found VERY helpful. This script uses the Greasemonkey extension and changes any phone number in the format (xxx) xxx-xxxx or (xxx)xxx-xxxx into the ChaCha preferred format of xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Special thanks to diesel for making this possible.

Notes:

-This does not seem to work on phone numbers on Google Maps
-It does not work on phone numbers listed in xxx.xxx.xxxx format
-This also changes dates from dd mm yyyy to mm dd yyyy.
-The script is provided on an external website and I hold no responsibility if it changes. I currently use one with the following source code (this is the same as diesel's version as of March 02, 2009:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Date Correct
// @namespace      home
// @description    Dates to US format
// @include        *
// ==/UserScript==

// Regular expression components
var sMonths = "(January|February|March|April|June|July|August|September|October|November|December|(?:Jan|Feb|Mar|Apr|May|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sept|Sep|Oct|Nov|Dec)\\.?)(?=\\s|\\b|\\d)";
var sDays = "(3[01]|[0-2][0-9]|[1-9])(?:st|nd|rd|th)?(?=\\b|[^\\d])";
var sSpace = "[\\s\\u00A0]*";

// Regular expressions
var reUSdate = new RegExp("([\\b:]?" + sDays + sSpace + ")?" + sMonths + sSpace + sDays + "(," + sSpace + "(?=[12]\\d{3}))?(?!:|\\d:|\\d\\d\\d?\\b)", "gi");
var reDayMonth = new RegExp("\\b" + sDays + sSpace + sMonths, "gi");
var reISO = /([12]\d{3})([\-\/._])(1[012]|0[1-9])\2(3[01]|[0-2][0-9]|[1-9])/g;
var reUSnumeric = /(3[01]|2[0-9]|1[3-9])([\-\/._])(1[012]|0?[1-9])\2([12]\d{3})/g;
var phnumber = /(\()([0-9]{3})(\)\s*)([0-9]{3}\-[0-9]{4})/g;
//var reTwelveHour = /\b([012]?[0-9])(?:[:\.]([0-5][0-9]))?\s?([apAP])[mM]\b/g;

// Proper case string prototype
String.prototype.toProperCase = function()
{
 return this.toLowerCase().replace(/^(.)|\s(.)/g, function($1) {return $1.toUpperCase();});
};

// Takes a number and returns the ordinalized form
var saOrdinals = ["th", "st", "nd", "rd"];
function ordinalize(iNumber, sMonth)
{
 var sOrdinal = "";
 iNumber = parseInt(iNumber, 10);
 if (sMonth.substr(sMonth.length - 1) != ".")
 {
  if ((sMonth.length > 3) || (sMonth.toLowerCase() == "may"))
  {
   var iOrdinal = 0;
   var iHundredUnit = iNumber % 100;
   if ((iHundredUnit <> 13))
   {
    iOrdinal = iNumber % 10;
    if (iOrdinal > 3)
    {
     iOrdinal = 0;
    }
   }
   sOrdinal = saOrdinals[iOrdinal];
  }
 }
 return iNumber + sOrdinal;
}

// UK date to US (May 4th to May 4th)
function cbUSdate(sMatch, sPrefixOuter, sDayPrefix, sMonth, sDaySuffix, sComma)
{
 var sDate;
 if (sPrefixOuter && (sPrefixOuter.substr(0, 1) != ":"))
 {
  sDate = sMatch;
 }
 else
 {
  sPrefixOuter = sPrefixOuter || "";
  var sDay = ordinalize(sDaySuffix, sMonth);
  sMonth = sMonth.toProperCase().replace(".", "");
  var sSufix = ((sComma == ", " || sComma == ",") ? " " : "");

  sDate = sPrefixOuter + sMonth + " " + sDay + sComma;
 }
 return sDate;
}

// Ordinalize and capitalize (Jan 3 to Jan 3)
function cbDayMonth(sMatch, sDay, sMonth)
{
 return (sMonth == "may" ? sMatch : sMonth.toProperCase() + " " + ordinalize(sDay, sMonth));
}

// ISO date to US (06-28-2008 to 06-28-2008)
function cbISO(sMatch, sYear, sSeparator, sMonth, sDay)
{
 return (sDay.length == 1 ? "0" : "") + sMonth + sSeparator + sDay + sSeparator + sYear;
}

// UK separated date to US (04/13/2008 to 4/13/2008)
function cbUSnumeric(sMatch, sDay, sSeparator, sMonth, sYear)
{
 return (sMonth.length == 1 ? "0" : "") + sMonth + sSeparator + sDay + sSeparator + sYear;
}

// phone number format
function newnumber(sMatch, lp, ac, rp, num)
{
 return (ac + "-" + num);
}

// Localise UK dates to US format
function localiseDates(sText)
{
 if (sText.match(/\d/))
 {
  sText = sText.replace(reUSdate, cbUSdate);
  sText = sText.replace(reDayMonth, cbDayMonth);
  sText = sText.replace(reISO, cbISO);
  sText = sText.replace(reUSnumeric, cbUSnumeric);
  sText = sText.replace(phnumber, newnumber);
  //sText = sText.replace(reTwelveHour, cbTwelveHour);
 }
 return sText;
}

// Apply date localisation to all text nodes
var xpathResult = document.evaluate("//text()", document.documentElement, null, XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE, null);
for (var iNode = 0; iNode < onode =" xpathResult.snapshotItem(iNode);" nodevalue =" localiseDates(oNode.nodeValue);" inode =" 0;" iset =" 0;" onode =" xpathResult.snapshotItem(iNode);" nodevalue =" anglicise(oNode.nodeValue);" iset ="="">

Homepages Friends - Make money searching the web

Review: Homepages Friends

A few people have asked me about this after seeing the banner on the right --> , so I've decided to make a post. I originally thought it would be a good idea to wait until I've gotten paid, but I guess I can update you guys again later.

To be eligible for payments, you basically have to search with their search engine. Now, you may be wondering... eww, what if this search engine sucks... but let me write that Homepaages Friends uses the Yahoo Search Engine. I'll compare it with Google a bit later. Anyway, this service offers to share revenue from any "linkage revenue" they generate. This amounts to approximately £0.01 per search, or about ( $0.0126 USD ) and requires a minimum balance of £20 ( $25.20 USD ) to cash out (paypal).

Comparing to Google, the Yahoo Search Engine is a bit slower. I'd say fractions of a second, but I have to admit it is still noticible. As far as the search results, I have to say for some topics I would rather go with Yahoo - movie showtimes and business lookups are just to name a few.

Its up to you if you want to give it a try and make a few extra bucks a month ;). I'm currently at £9.23

Greet or Delete Week 2: Fire Gestures

Greet or Delete Extension Review: Fire Gestures

Welcome back! I can't believe another week has gone by already, and its almost March! It just felt like a couple of weeks ago when we were celebrating New Years.

Anyway, back to business. I had the chance to test out the extension Fire Gestures last week, and its usefulness was VERY UNEXPECTED. My first thoughts before I installed was that it was one of those "visually appealing" add-ons that in no way could help speed up ChaCha. But seeing that a few other guides have it installed, I decided to try it out.

Fire Gestures is an extension that allows you to do common browsing actions just by making a quick gesture of your mouse (and holding down the right mouse button). For example, with a quick stroke of the mouse, I could easily go back/forward, go to the next/previous tab, reload, etc.

I have to first admit that it takes a bit getting used to. Its very hard to switch from pushing the backspace button on the top left to just right click and drag your mouse to the left. I still haven't haven't gotten used to everything, but I'm progressing.

A good thing is that this is fully customizable. The most useful feature so far I would have to say is being able to bind a mouse gesture to closing all other tabs. After finishing a query, I can now make an upside down U and viola, all the other tabs would be gone. I also have my Universe tab locked (thanks to Tab Mix Plus), so its not affected by any accidental closing.

Final Verdict: GREET
Score: 7/10

Next week: ImgLikeOpera

Pay Experiment - rnhung version

Hello. Its late, so I won't be typing much.

But I made a few advances on my Earnings Exporter spreadsheet and was able to chart some data (see below). These are made up of over 1800 queries, and from early January. These are the average earnings per qhour (qhour is query hour. It only counts the time answering and neglects the time waiting for questions. This value is higher than earnings per real hour), and earnings per question that I received over the last 6 weeks or so.

Earnings per qhour

Average earnings per question

I removed dates that had 10 or less queries.

Things to note:
Category Pay commenced at about Feb 18, and my earnings per question as well as earnings per hour plunged dramatically.
Before category pay, some of my earnings dipped below $0.10 and $0.20 due to aborted questions, etc.

And yes, I do expect this functionality to be available in the next Earnings Exporter. I just have to tweak it so everything automates. Plus, I might add some analysis to our categories, so we know exactly which categories we are banking on.

Enjoy.

Open up Firefox search box results in new tab

Just a quick walkthrough of how to set up the Firefox search (top right) to open up in a new tab.

1) Type about:config in the URL bar
2) Click the "I'll be careful" button
3) Find browser.search.openintab
4) Right click and set it to true

Enjoy!

Firefox Awesome Keywords

Awesome Keyword feature

I'm sure you've been into this situation before:

The IS asks you, "define: heaven"

You KNOW where to look for this. Your process is most likely to load up definr.com or another dictionary. Then you would probably type or paste the word "heaven" into their search box.

That's a lot of work.

With Awesome keywords, you can instead type "[keyword] heaven" into the URL box of your Firefox window.

... and that's it. You're already at the definition page.

This feature is useful if you KNOW where you're going to look. Recipes, definitions, synonyms, etc.

Try this:
Bookmark this page: http://definr.com/%s
Add a keyword to it: I set mine to def

After you're done, go to your url bar. Type in your keyword and your search term:
"def heaven"

Click send. :) Voila!


The "%s" in the url field is replaced by the string of your search. In the above example, the url was http://definr/%s

If you typed "def happy", it would instead bring you to page http://definr/happy.

Add these bookmarks (you will need to add your own keywords). Just drag and drop to your Bookmarks Toolbar / Folder
Definr
Urban Dictionary
Google Maps
imdb
Daily Plate (nutrition facts)

You may also ask, what if the website asks for more than one input? White pages asks for the "first name," "last name," "city," and "state." How can you accomplish something like that?
Instructions on how to set up multi-parameter search

And you may wonder if you can search multiple searches at the same time
Instructions on how to search more than one page


That should be all!
Enjoy!

Greet or Delete Week 1: Define Word

Greet or Delete Extension Review: Define Word

This extension can potentially be a great add-on for a ChaCha guide. Highlight a word, right click, and select which website you want to look up the word. It'll do the rest for you. Simple? Yeah, I agree.

However, I feel that Define Words too LIMITED. Out of the whole drop down, which ones do we use? Maybe 3 or 4? If this were made specifically for ChaCha guides that includes MORE RELEVANT links, then MAYBE.

Out of the couple days I had this add-on installed, I found it VERY HARD to get myself to use it. Its just NOT MY STYLE to highlight and search with a drop down menu.

This extension also CROWDS UP my right click menu (which led me to find the Menu Editor addon that can remove items)

I personally prefer using Firefox Awesome Keywords. Its definitely more customizable, and will suit anybody who types faster than 20 wpm.

Final Verdict: DELETE
Score: 4 / 10

Next Week: Fire Gestures

Earnings Exporter v1_02d Released

Yup.

Fixed so that it works correctly for the Category Pay changes made earlier today.

Earnings Exporter v1_02d

Enjoy!

Greet or Delete - Firefox Extensions put to the Test

This column will be a weekly review of a random (or suggested) Firefox extension and how it can help or hurt ChaCha SMS guides. I will post my thoughts by the end of each week (by Friday) pros, cons, and my final decision of whether you should GREET the extension into your extension library, or DELETE.

~
Past reviews:

Fire Gestures - Score 7/10
Define Word - Score: 4/10
Ubiquity - Score: 3/10
ImgLikeOpera - Score: 2/10

~

Let me post here a list of my current extensions, and my thoughts about them, as I will not be reviewing these.

Codewolf's Statsclicker v1.6 - This addon adds a non-intrusive earnings summary in the bottom of your Firefox screen. It can be set to automatically refresh your earnings and question count every so often.

Review: This is one of those must-have, but luxurious, addons. Yes, we can live without it, but why? It keeps me motivated to work as I get to see my earnings for the current month shoot up.

Clippings - This extension allows us to assign hotkeys to the text we commonly type. Instead of spending 5 seconds to type "It appears that you tried to send a keyword to ChaCha. Please check it and try again. Avoid extra spaces, words & signatures," or "Thanks for using ChaCha. Ask again soon!" it only takes me 1 second.

Review: Since ChaCha added PAQ ability for expeditors (they now can provide the IS with answers from previous questions), I have to admit that many of my Clippings have started collecting dust. Nevertheless, I still use a few very often: ones for signatures, history problems, etc. This is a MUST for any SMS Guide.

Copy Plain Text - This nifty little addon simplifies copy and pasting, a lot! Often times I find myself pasting from a website that is very poorly formatted-extra spaces, lines, etc-and this addon just gets rid of all those for me so I don't have to do it myself. For example,

" This sentence has a space before it,  two


spaces after each comma,  and
one space after it "

would be pasted as

"This sentence has a space before it, two
spaces after each comma, and
one space after it"

True, it may only save a couple of seconds... but seconds add up!

Analysis: Very easy to install and configure. Very easy to use. "What? Did I just save 2 seconds per question without even noticing?" "Yes, you just did."

Tab Mix Plus - I use this addon mainly to keep my Guide Console Dashboard opened. No accidental closing, opening up new links, etc. I've written up instructions and a short analysis on this extension before, and you can read about it here.

Other non-ChaCha specific extensions installed:
Adblock Plus - Block ads
Fire.fm - Music toolbar from last.fm
Foxmarks Bookmark Syncronizer - Syncronize bookmarks with your other computers
Greasemonkey - Allows you to customize webpages with javascript
NoScript - Allow javascript to run on only websites you trust
StumbleUpon - Discover new websites
Tweak Network - Firefox performance booster

All that said, next week's featured addon will be:
Define Word

I just installed it and will have a review by next Friday.
Enjoy!

Subscribe! (I've added a subscribe to email link on the right side of this page)