I finally dug into GA? and figured out how to take it to the next level!

GA? now checks the entire HTML page to see if it contains Google Analytics code.  Prior to 1.0, it only checked for analytics code within the body of a page.

GA? is a Firefox extension that automatically detects if Google Analytics is installed on a web page and displays the result in your status bar.  For more details see the GA? - Is Google Analytics Installed page.

GA? is also ready for Firefox 3.

Tuesday June 17th is the release date for Firefox 3! We (Firefox fans) are hoping to set a Guinness world record for the most times a piece of software is downloaded in the first 24 hours! If you could download Firefox 3 on Tuesday, that’d be a great help!

So what’s new in Firefox 3? Lots of stuff. Here are a few high points.

• A browser interface that look and acts more like your opperating system. Including native Mac checkboxes, buttons and scrollbars!
• Smart bookmarks, aka Places. The browser will automatically remember your ‘most visited’ and ‘recently visited’ sites via a quick bookmark in your bookmarks bar.

Ever want to search Plurk.com for topics or friends?  Well there isn’t a formal search yet, however you can search with Plurk Lurker, a customized Google search just for Plurk.com.

Plurk Lurker makes it quick and simple to find information on Plurk.  It is limited to what Google can see, but it’s better than nothing.  You can find posts or users as long as their information is public.

Granted, it’s pretty basic but it’s better than none; which is what I’ve found otherwise.  I’m sure as soon as an API opens up, someone will create a better Plurk search.

I recently discovered Plurk.  A micro-blogging site much like Twitter, only with more features, a cool layout and that headless thing!

I’m a fan of the interactive and innovative timeline of posts.  However some people feel the timeline is a bit busy and go for the simplified mobile version.  So I decided to take a bit of code and put the mobile version in Firefox’s sidebar for easy access.

The Plurk Mobile Sidebar comes complete with Firefox 2 & 3 support, a headless thing button for your toolbar and a keyboard shortcut.  The actual features of the Plurk sidebar application are under Plurks control.

With the Firefox 3 release upon us, a lot of people will be wondering about the status of my themes.

So what is the status?

Currently, I have started work on iPox.  It’s looking pretty nice and it has advanced a bit from the current Firefox 2 version.  However, it’s a complete re-write.  I started from scratch and have a lot of editing to do.

A few weeks ago I took control over my email.  Not only did I clean out my inboxes, but I also converted everything over to Gmail.  Why would I do this?

1. Always online and availabe to me.
2. Doesn’t take up space on my webserver.
3. The labeling system is fantastic.  I didn’t really know this until I really started using it.
4. Integrated nicely with Mail.app or other email applications like Thunderbird and Outlook.
5. I can send and receive email from multiple accounts via one Gmail account.
6. iPhone ready.
7. Email is up even if website is down.

While browsing through the Mozilla Addons site yesterday I came across the official WALL•E Firefox theme!

Unfortunately the theme is Windows only. However, with a bit of investigating, I was able to extract the jar file and install it on my Mac.

The theme is pretty good. WALL•E is a bit hard to see behind the address bar and I wish the bar was semi-transparent so that he was more visible. It’s also a bit hefty at over 3MB. Other than that, it looks pretty slick and works well. Nothing to extraordinary, but fun none the less. As it makes its way to 1.0, the theme has a lot of potential to grow into something spectacular.

Did you know that iPhone backgrounds make great backgrounds for chat windows in Adium?  See for yourself.

It’s really simple to do too.  Here’s how.

1 - Grab a cool iPhone background.  Here is the blue iPhone background I’m using.

2 - Open Adium and go to the preferences and click on the messages area.

3 - See that area for a custom background?  Check the box and drag and drop your iPhone background in there.

Wa la.  You’re done!

There are a few things to keep in mind.  

I keep hearing people say that they got their inbox down to zero or their email is so organized and I never knew how they did it.  Then, last weekend, I sat down and started organizing a few messages.  Before I knew it, I was cleaning out my inbox and got it down to only a few messages.

So how’d I do it?  Here are my keys to success.

1. Create folders for topics that best match your email style.  Like Friends, Family, Shopping, Wife.  Think of who you get the most email from or what topics you get a lot of email on.  Then create folders to file all those emails into.

Have you checked out Dromaeo.com?  It’s a Mozilla owned site that runs a set of JavaScripts and test out how fast your browser is.  I tried it on my iMac, 1.83 Intel Core Duo with 1.5 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, and found Firefox 3 beta 5 to be the fastest browser.  Oddly enough, Firefox 2 was the slowest, even behind SeaMonkey!

Granted, this is no professional test.  Firefox 2 has the  most extensions on my computer and that could cause slowness.  There are always a lot of factors to take into consideration, but this is what my tests show.