links for 2009-04-16

• 101 Great Free Sites and Downloads You've Probably Never Heard Of
  We scoured the Internet to come up with 101 innovative, entirely free downloads and services. Don't miss our Best Bets.
  (tags: web2.0 software Applications)
• 3D Mailbox – 3-Dimensional Email Software. Bring e-mail to life! Email just got cool and fun.
  3D Mailbox delivers a fantastic, smarter e-mail experience. Immerse yourself in 3-D as you read and write your mail. Thrill to the awesome energy of jumbo jets. Or relax to the sounds of the ocean, seabirds, and cool Brazilian tunes. Hang with your mail poolside, or feed your spam to the sharks! Deleting spam is so much fun, you may wish you had more!
  (tags: email 3d software visualization funny windows freeware mail)
• TwitterFriends – Your relevant network on Twitter
  With TwitterFriends you can find out the hidden network of Twitter contacts that are really relevant for you.
  (tags: web2.0 twitter tools statistics visualization stats socialnetworking twittertools)
• 11 Useful Twitter Tools That Don’t Require Your Password
  Twitter tools have emerged all over the web, as this great service offers many ways to get in touch with people that really matter to you. However, safety is another of those things that matter and not all Twitter tools are trustworthy.

  But don’t be alarmed, not all the tools out there are after your twitter identity! Let’s have a look at 11 twitter tools that don’t require your password and are still very useful and powerful:

  (tags: web2.0 social twitter-tools tips twittertools socialmedia tools twitter analysis)
• 9 Semantic Search Engines That Will Change the World of Search
  The ideal search engine would be able to match the search queries to the exact context and return results within that context. While Google, Yahoo and Live continue to hold sway in search, here are the engines that take a semantics (meaning) based approach, the end result being more relevant search results which are based on the semantics and meaning of the query, and not dependent upon preset keyword groupings or inbound link measurement algorithms, which make the more traditional search engines easier to game, thus including more spam oriented results.
  (tags: SEARCH semantic searchengine semanticweb web google internet Reference)
• Teaching College Math » Blog Archive » MathDaisy 1.0 for Accessible Math
  Last year, I posted about a product that could read math for blind, sight-impaired, or learning disabled students. With the release of MathDaisy 1.0, it’s just gotten a LOT easier to produce accessible materials.
  (tags: math differentiated_instruction assistance accommodations)
• Storychasers | empowering responsible digital citizenship
  Storychasers is a multi-state (and potentially multi-national) educational collaborative empowering students and teachers to responsibly record and share stories of local, regional and global interest as citizen journalists.
  (tags: writing literacy digitalstorytelling storytelling collaboration web2.0 journalism education)
• The Florida Center for Reading Research
  Resources for teachers, coaches, parents, administrators…
  (tags: reading literacy research resources education instruction vocabulary Fluency)
• Seth's Blog: The hierarchy of presentations
  A presentation is a precious opportunity. It's a powerful arrangement… one speaker, an attentive audience, all in their seats, all paying attention (at least at first). Don't waste it.
  (tags: presentation presentations marketing communication powerpoint howto advice tips speaking)
• 50 years on, Cobol is still going strong | Technology | The Guardian
  It is 50 years old this year, but Cobol is still a key player in behind-the-scenes business software
  (tags: programming history languages Business computing technology Computer software cobol)
• The Future of Firefox: No Tabs, Built-In Ubiquity – ReadWriteWeb
  Mozilla's designers are also currently thinking about a complete redesign of the way the browser looks and feels, in order to keep up with changing usage patterns. The most radical proposal we have seen so far would do away with the standard browser tabs, and replace them with an interface that looks more like iTunes than Firefox.
  (tags: firefox browser future browsers innovation software development concept)

Thinking Desktop

After reading the article yesterday about one of the concepts behind the future of Firefox, I did a couple of things.

First, to experience what it looks and feels like, I installed the Tree Style Tab add-on into my Firefox browser.  In my entry from yesterday, I also made reference to the importance of having access to Twitter so did some arranging to make sure that my Seesmic Desktop was always going to be available.  My new desktop experience now looks like this.

I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of customisation that is available with this add-on.  I like the hierarchy layout that it provides as you go from one link in a page to another.  It delivers a nice record of how and where you got to a particular page.  My only concern, at this point, is the amount of dead space left over.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m in search of the perfect layout to have all of the information sources collected together into a single spot.  You’ll note that in the screen grab above, I’ve got a little room left over!  However, it didn’t take long to be able to adjust to having the tabs on the left instead of the right.  In long scrolling pages like my Delicious network above, the extra real estate in the browser window is nice to have.  There may indeed be something to this.

Now, for truth in browsing – I’m fortunate to be able to install this on a screen with wide dimensions.  The above illustration is from a Macintosh set at 1440×900.  The experience is a little less thrilling when set at a conservative 1024×768.  However, the add-on does have the ability to hide and reveal the tabs which is very helpful.

I also took a look around at family and some colleagues who happened to be on the internet.  The first observation was that my fixation on a single point of info isn’t shared by all.  Much of what I saw was just a browser open and a focus on the content of the webpage.  When other information was needed, it was a matter of going to a different web resource or to a different application starting with the process of shutting down the browser to do so.  What you don’t see in the image above is that I also have an email client, word processor, and iTunes open as well.  Daughter Bubby did have a couple of apps open as she’s doing homework, browsing, and clobbering me in Word Twist on Facebook.  She refuses to go full screen with any of her apps, instead preferring to have bits and pieces visible for switching from one to the other.

So, the experiment will continue.  It was a far easier transition that what I thought it was going to be.  Even if this turns out not to be the future for Firefox, I’m thinking that the add-on may remain.  It makes tabbed browsing even more intuitive for me.

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