I often work across several different computers. I have a desktop, a macbook, and a laptop that all get used for a variety of tasks pretty much everyday. This can be a huge pain to keep things synchronized – especially web browsing (which is the vast majority of what I do). I’ve used several plugins in the past to help synchronize my setup, including Xmarks (formerly FoxMarks), but FINALLY I’ve found a solution that will sync all of my bookmarks, extensions, session history, settings, greasemonkey scripts, etc in one solution. In short, I’m using Dropbox (a great service on its own) to synchronize my Firefox profile across all the computers using a symlinked directory. Detailed instructions to follow.
/Users/[username]/Dropbox on a Mac and C:\Users\[username]\Documents\My DropBox on Windows), create a new directory to store your Firefox profile in (I used firefox-profile).ln -s target link_name – which you may need to run as root (On Windows, the command uses the syntax MKLINK /D link_name target – this should be run from the command prompt and you may need to run this as admin in order to complete this. You can run this as an admin by going to start, typing cmd, right click the command prompt option and choose “run as administrator”) where link_name is the original Firefox profile folder (found in step 4) and target should be the shared directory in Dropbox used to store the profile (I used firefox-profile in my Dropbox folder – be sure to use the full paths for simplicity). And that’s it! When you reopen Firefox it should open using the shared Dropbox directory and sync all your plugins, bookmarks, session history, etc across all of the machines. There are a few things I should mention as well though. First, you’ll probably want to turn off Dropbox notifications, as these files change often while browsing and will be resynchronized with each update. Notifications for this can get annoying quickly. You also might notice some weirdness if you browse on multiple computers at the same time…both keep trying to save their session history (and everything else) to each other and will continuously overwrite each other. Shouldn’t do any permanent damage, but worth thinking about.
Let me know if you have any other suggestions of if you get this working for yourself in the comments below.
Been playing with Power Twitter recently and I love it! For those of you not already familiar with it, it’s a FireFox addon that builds on the Twitter.com UI to add a bunch of missing features (that Twitter should’ve already added).
Some of the features include:
I included a few screenshots of some of these features above.
Overall this has proven to be a really great plugin from my usage so far. I find a lot of it is stuff that I didn’t realize how much I would use until I have it. I think it’s great that the Twitter community is active enough to modify the Twitter interface using FireFox addons, but it does raise a few questions about why the Twitter team isn’t integrating this stuff themselves.
In any case, if you use Twitter from the interface at Twitter.com much (and you browse in FireFox) I’d definitely recommend giving this addon a try.
I just recently discovered PlayOn! which is a media server that allows you to stream content to your PS3 or Xbox from online sources like Hulu, YouTube, CBS, Netflix and others. Setup is super simple. Just download a small app to one of your computers on the same network as the console, install it, put in your credentials (for the sites that require it), and then browse to the new media server on your PS3. I literally was up and running in about 5 minutes.
So far I really love the service. I’m an active Netflix user and love the “Instant Watch” section. I used to run this through a computer hooked up to my TV, which worked, but was extremely clunky to use. There are separate boxes you can buy to have this same functionality, but why pay for new hardware when the PS3 is already hooked up, network ready, and fully capable. I also really like having Hulu and other mainstream media sites built right in. It’s just one more step in moving to the on-demand, internet ready media systems that are starting to take off.
The only downside to the software is that it’s not free. I’m currently using the free trial, and I’m told that the software will be ~$30 when it’s out of beta and no longer a free trial. A bit of a road block for some, I’m sure, but more than worth it for me to be able to do this completely seamlessly without adding another box to my living room setup.
I’m also planning to give Boxee a try soon. As far as I know there’s no way to stream this to the PS3, but I’d be willing to use a PC for this if it worked well enough. I’d also like to find a nice way to watch video podcasts on my PS3…anyone out there doing this?
Overall a really great piece of software that is super simple to use. Definitely recommend it.