Zion Radio » Web

User-configurable Keyboard Shortcuts

Rex Pechler — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:53:37 +0000

Concept: A System that allows web surfers to configure their own Keyboard Shortcuts for web applications.

Probably a firefox extension or chrome plugin, but also a web directory where visitors can install greasemonkey scripts that will add keyboard shortcut functionality to various apps. The full add-on will be promoted to be able to notify you of configuration change possibilities and specific website productivity tips, all based on the current URL in view. Users will be able to change/add/remove keyboard shortcuts for every URL.

Challenges:
- compatibility
- change monitoring
- conflict resolution

Lyrics for Last.fm

Rex Pechler — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:54:43 +0000

Ever since I installed MobileScrobbler on my iPhone, I’ve been using Last.fm a lot … like almost every day, and for hours at a time. Here’s my profile. Last.fm “scrobbles” (keeps track of what you listen to, and uploads that info) your music, and my iPhone automatically does this when I listen to anything in the iPod feature, and so does my Mac when I listen to anything in iTunes. Why do I want to do this? For posterity, as you might imagine, but Last.fm also provides music recommendations in the form of a personalized radio station. And the personalized radio station is what I really love. I mean, you press play, and you’ve got all sorts of new stuff to listen to, and the percentage of it that I like is much higher than listening to anything else. And it’s more interactive, because I can teach the system my preferences by pressing either the “Love” or “Ban” buttons.

Anyway, MobileScrobbler lets me read lyrics while I listen to songs… Which I LOVE doing. That Mac version however, does -not- do this. I was able however, to find a Greasemonkey script that adds lyrics to the song page on Last.fm, and therefore enables a workaround. (Greasemonkey is a FireFox plugin that I use daily… it let’s you add things to, and modify websites. People make scripts to make all sorts of websites do all sorts of cool things. Check out http://userscripts.org for examples).

My workaround is this: Listen in the Last.fm app. When I want to read lyrics for the current song, just click the link in the app to open up the song page at last.fm. The greasemonkey script shows the lyrics right there for me. Works.

Oh, and then I can also comment on the song right there too, another feature I’d like to see added to the Last.fm Mac client.

Tech Gets Crazy

Rex Pechler — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 05:30:39 +0000

I’ve started a new blog… http://techgetscrazy.blogspot.com

I’ve decided to make Rex.FM more of a personal blog, while I’ll post my crazy, tech-related posts over at TechGetsCrazy. I feel like it will be a better outlet for my ideas without pushing my personal brand too much. I mean, I really want Rex.FM to be about me, not my crazy ideas. So anyway, expect some coolness over there, if you’re interested, and subscribe via Google Reader or whatever if you like… feel free to expect some awesomeness. http://techgetscrazy.blogspot.com

Blogging from the iPhone

Rex Pechler — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 23:14:16 +0000

I’ve been looking for a way to blog from my iPhone, especially because I wasn’t having much luck with the WP-mail plugin that allows you to post by email.

Anyway, I’m writing right now on my iPhone using a plugin called WPhone, which you can find here: http://wphoneplugin.org

You can now expect a lot more posts from me here!

Facebook for iPhone… Still Incomplete

Rex Pechler — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:28:04 +0000

I just saw a post by Robert Scoble, where he mentions the iPhone interface for Facebook that Joe Hewitt created. Facebook for iPhone looks pretty slick, I’ll admit that. But it is also missing a ton of essential features.My top wishlist / feature requests:

Commenting on photos
Edit Profile info
Message people from their profile
Groups

These are all things that don’t work on the current iPhone interface, but seem like a serious missing feature. Now, I’m not sure who to point my finger at, but I’m disappointed that there’s been no apparent improvement to the iPhone interface since it was released about 6 months ago.

No More Daily Twitter Summaries

Rex Pechler — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 09:12:25 +0000

I’ve just had too much trouble getting Twitter-Tools to do exactly what I want. I’ve been thinking about New Year’s resolutions, and maybe blogging every day consistently is something I’d like to achieve. Happy 2008!

My experience with Facebook Beacon

Rex Pechler — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:58:38 +0000

I just read Mark Zuckerberg’s post where he’s basically apologizing for mistakes made in the launch of Beacon. I just want to share my personal experience with Beacon.

Yesterday, I was looking for a coffee shop to go study for my Business Strategy course. I did a quick search for “coffee” in “Santa Cruz, CA” at Yelp.com and was presented with a list of nearby cafés ranked by users. I went to the (relatively) new Bad Ass Coffee downtown, and had an amazing Double Cappuccino (with Half & Half). Looking back at Yelp, I saw mediocre ratings of the Bad Ass coffee, so I registered at Yelp and wrote my own review.

Later, I went to Facebook for something completely unrelated. Here’s what I saw:

Amazing! Impressive! I really like it! What happened? When did Facebook and Yelp talk? I don’t get it! But I like it!

Now, I’m sure Beacon has created all sorts of problems for people, but so far, for me, it’s been nothing short of awesome.

We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.

from: Zuckerberg: Thoughts on Beacon | The Facebook Blog

Google Reader unread count zero for once

Rex Pechler — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 02:19:21 +0000

I know this isn’t really something worth blogging about, but I’m pretty excited to have finally gotten my Google Reader unread items count down to zero. I don’t think this has ever happened since I first started using it… I originally signed up for just too many feeds. Anyway, here’s a picture of my achievement…

The Worst Thing About the Social Web

Rex Pechler — Wed, 09 May 2007 22:01:31 +0000

For me, the worst thing (at least in regard to productivity) about the Social Web, Web 2.0, is not just having way too many articles to read, but also that I am compelled to read all the comments too.

Especially on posts that I’m interested in… for example, I was just reading a piece on Rich HTML signatures in Gmail over at Amit Agarwal’s Digital Inspiration (He does PodTech.net India). The comments are right there at the bottom of the post and it’s very interesting to see all the different ways people respond to his article:

Intriguing isn’t it? …And I just want to keep reading all of them, but I can’t… we can’t. I mean, for awhile, when I was just getting familiar with Web 2.0, I spent a lot of time reading comments on Digg (et al.). But now I use Google Reader keep up with everything (even Facebook now), which spares me from the temptation by not showing comments (of course, if I really want to say something, I can go to the original post on the blog’s website).

Do you suffer from this temptation to read comments too? How do you handle it?