Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 
Have you ever wanted to add your own search engines to the search bar in Firefox? Well there are plugins that will do this for you, but I find that it’s more fun to create them yourself. If you go to the folder C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins, you will find an XML file for each search engine. If you open one of these in a text editor, you can probably customize a copy of one of the existing files to meet your needs.
The only tricky part is the icon. It needs to be converted to a base 64 text string. Base64 Online does a great job of doing this for you. All you have to do is upload your image (often found at www.[whatever website].com/favicon.ico), and Base64 Online will convert the *.ico file into Base64.
Here are two of mine: (you can right-click > ‘Save Link As’ into the above folder if you don’t want to do the work yourself)
UIUC People Search
Song Lyrics (via SongMeanings.com)
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Monday, June 16th, 2008 
Google Favicon, Revisited – The Goolers are still trying to find the perfect favicon. I think most of the options look good, and I don’t think they’ll ever be able to please everyone.
Google Monitoring ISP Throttling – Google will be creating a tool to help consumers detect if their ISP is throttling their internet traffic.
“We’re trying to develop tools, software tools…that allow people to detect what’s happening with their broadband connections, so they can let [ISPs] know that they’re not happy with what they’re getting — that they think certain services are being tampered with,” Google senior policy director Richard Whitt said this morning during a panel discussion at Santa Clara University, an hour south of San Francisco.
HotHardware: Google To Develop ISP Throttling Detector
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Monday, June 9th, 2008 The problem: A software solution to play music on an outdoor, pool-side audio system.
The solution: I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days. My parents want to put in a few outdoor speakers near our pool, and I was brainstorming about what would be the best solution.
One of the most simple solutions would be the all-in-one receiver. This receiver could have a CD player built in, as well as an AM/FM radio, and inputs for external sources (an iPod, for example).
This solution is easy to understand, and has high reliability. There is little chance that my parents will be confused by a single box that has big knobs for “Volume” and “CD – Radio – MP3.” This is probably the most logical solution for the less technically inclined.
A more complicated, but more interesting and potentially more useful solution would be a software solution. This software would run on a computer that is connected directly to the speakers (via amplifier). The computer would have the following specifications:
- Play a CD
- Play over-the-air radio
- Play online radio
- Play music from an iPod or MP3 player
- Play music from online sources (Pandora comes to mind)
- Accessible from the internet (but the internet is not required for full use of features)
Is there a software solution that will do this?
One of the major obstacles will be to actually get music on the computer. For example, if I just purchased Weezer’s Pork and Beans
on iTunes, I want to play this song outside on my sound system. How do I get this song that is locked down with digital rights management (DRM) to my “Jukebox” computer? I can’t! The proliferation of DRM-free music sites like the Amazon MP3 Store help this problem, but the consumer would still need to upload the music to the host computer somehow.
If we assume the music is already on the computer, this simplifies the process. The software would simply require playlist creation and switching to other forms of music like Pandora or online radio. A nice cross fader and audio-leveler would also be nice.
Although a custom piece of software could be written for this, a typical audio program like iTunes, Windows Media Player, or foobar2000 would do the trick. The system could be accessed remotely through Windows Remote Desktop or similar desktop sharing application. iTunes already supports playlist creation, CD playing, and online radio. Most AM/FM radio stations have online stations these days, so a terrestrial radio tuner would not be needed. The mere fact that it is a computer allows playing of other internet media like Pandora. An MP3 player could be plugged in via USB and played.
Sometimes it is easier and more reliable to use a current solution than to invent your own.
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