Google Safe Browsing Extension for Firefox

Via Google Labs: Google Safe Browsing is an extension to Firefox that alerts you if a web page that you visit appears to be asking for your personal or financial information under false pretences. This type of attack, known as phishing or spoofing, is becoming more sophisticated, widespread and dangerous. That’s why it’s important to browse safely with Google Safe Browsing. By combining advanced algorithms with reports about misleading pages from a number of sources, Safe Browsing is often able to automatically warn you when you encounter a page that’s trying to trick you into disclosing personal information.

Yes! I love Google Firefox extensions. When my sister comes to visit for the holidays, she’s bringing her ancient, overloaded laptop with her. I’ll be wiping it and reinstalling the OS for her. And, of course, I will teach her the joys of Firefox. Looks like I’ll add this extension to the list of items that need to go on there.

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Protopage wants to be your new homepage (or if you are a Firefox user, one of your homepages!). Protopage lets you put personalized news, sticky notes, and bookmarks all on one page. This is very Web 2.0. The pesonalized news stories are RSS feeds, of course, and the sticky notes can be anything you want: a to-do list, reminders, whatever. The nice thing about Protopage is how it shows off the power of page AJAX. It was fun to plan around with (see my page), but I don’t need it. I don’t need sticky notes on my homepage, sorry; and I’m perfectly happy with my RSS feeds at my Personalized Google homepage. Also, if you’re going to offer any bookmarking tools and not integrate them with del.icio.us or the like, then I’m not interested. Web content is ever-changing, and I don’t have time to update a list of static links everytime I find a new, interesting site. Still for the AJAX alone, Protopage is worth a look.

Read another review here.

Google is buying 5% of AOL for one billion dollars. Although Google has been the search engine on AOL for some time, Microsoft recently made a move to change that. MSN offered AOL millions per year to dump Google and go with MSN search instead. That didn’t happen, though. Instead, this Google purchase is a 5 year deal that has Google giving AOL millions of dollars of free advertising on Google to promote AOL’s network of websites. AOL also gets the exclusive right to sell online banner ads for Google. AOL will keep about 20 percent of the proceeds from those ad sales, while Google will get about 80 percent. (source: WashingtonPost.com)

But what’s the real deal? According to the New York Times, "Google, which prides itself on the purity of its search results, agreed to give favored placement to content from AOL throughout its site, something it has never done before."  (To login to the New York Times, registration is required. May I suggest BugMeNot.com?)

Favored placement to AOL content? How is that going to work exactly? I’m not sure this is okay with me, unless we are talking about completely transparent favored placement, like the Sponsored Links sections — off to the side or highlighted in another color. That is pretty much the only way that this is acceptable. Some may say that this is evidence of Google "jumping the shark", but I think that’s going a bit too far. What it is, is Google fighting against an ever-more-aggressive Microsoft, who were trying to kick Google out of the AOL game. Maybe Google just had to do what Google had to do.

Holy crap! I’ve been quoted on a CNet site! CNet’s "Blogma" website keeps track of hot blog topics. The topics are chosen by editors and readers. These topics are followed by the reactions of various people in the Blogosphere. Very cool. Blogma is my new favorite website now!

About time! Yahoo! already beat Google on this one, having introduced their audio search a month or so ago. Still, better late than never. The new Google Music Search lets you find albums and songs on the artist you’re searching for. You don’t have to go to a special site to use the Music Search. If you are doing a regular Google search for a favorite artist or band, the music results will appear at the top of the search results. As you click on the links to albums or songs, you will see links to music stores where you can buy the music. It’s easy; it’s simple; it’s clean. But is it better than Yahoo!’s Audio Search? I would say no, it’s not any better or worse — it’s just different. Yahoo! doesn’t pull audio search results into its main search page. You have to use the Audio Search page itself. However, Yahoo! does allow you to filter your results for "music," "podcasts," and "other audio," which is definitely more than what Google does (right now). Which search do you prefer?

If you don’t know about Frappr, it is a great tool that uses Google Maps to create groups with a visual display of where everyone is located. For example, you can add yourself to my Frappr map, or you can just look and see who has already joined. Frappr has added some new features, like People.Frappr and Local.Frappr, but what looks really interesting is the most recent addition: Frappr Forums. If you have ever wanted to add forum functionality to your blog, this certainly is an easy (and free!) way of doing so. Do you Frappr?

No, seriously, what is LibJingle? According to the homepage, it’s "set of components provided by Google to interoperate with Google Talk’s peer-to-peer and voice calling capabilities. The package includes source code for Google’s implementation of Jingle and Jingle-Audio, two proposed extensions to the XMPP standard that are currently available in experimental draft form." And that means nothing to me. So, someone explain in PLAIN english what this is. Because when I hear P2P and Google Talk in the same sentence, I’m interested.

Was dying to post this earlier, but….(see below entry). Anyway, Gmail is now available on your mobile phone! A dream come true - at least for a Google girl like me! You just go to m.gmail.com on your phone to access your inbox. Even cooler is the fact that it can handle attachments like pictures and .pdf files. I downloaded an attached picture today, but haven’t had a chance to test .pdfs yet.

I have TMobile and all I need for Mobile Gmail is the TMobile Web plan, which is $5.99/month, as opposed to the data plan, which is $20/month. Oh, and…have you seen my new phone?

Goodness! Typepad was down ALL DAY LONG! I hope they pro-rate my bill for all that time I couldn’t blog. It sounds as if they had a major disaster on their hands. It kind of makes me nervous when they say they "have no reason to believe" that any of my data is lost. If that’s the case, then where are all my posts’ images?

UPDATE: What really happened at Typepad! Via Niall Kennedy’s Blog.

With the holidays just around the corner, I’ve already starting stressing over getting those thank you cards out. Since many family members ship presents from out-of-state, I’ve received a few things early. I always send thank you cards, but I never have stamps, because really, who actually writes letters anymore now that there are computers? Finally, I have found my salvation: www.cardstore.com! You can pick out a card, customize it completely, and they will print it, stuff it in an envelope, stamp it and mail it for you. Fabulous!