Lucky Disasters » Google

Three More WebRunner Webapps

Kris — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:25:31 +0000

Looks like I’m getting a lot of traffic looking for a Bloglines webapp. So, why not:
Bloglines.webapp

While I’m at it, here are a couple of other webapps I’ve cobbled together, I’ll appologize in advance for the low quality of the icons on all of these…
Google Page Creator Webapp
Google Webmaster Tools Webapp

At this point I should probably include a warning, so – keep in mind while running these webapps with WebRunner, that WebRunner itself is still a in pre-release/beta stages. Which means that the webapps found on this site, while working to view sites and what not, are not intended to be a replacement for your standard browser. The websites you’ll be viewing were not designed to be used with WebRunner, and therefore not all features on these sites may be compatible with it. I claim no responsibility for any malfunctions related to WebRunner. I’m providing files that allow you to access some websites, nothing more. Feel free to use the webapp files found on this site, but keep in mind you’re using them at your own risk – and without warranty!

Standalone Webapps – WebRunner

Kris — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 02:48:38 +0000

UPDATE – 071010 – after further testing I found a couple of errors in my original webapp file. So, I’ve updated the icon and a couple other things and reposted. Enjoy!

Over at Lifehacker they’ve posted about the standalone Mozilla based WebRunner. WebRunner is, well I’ve pretty much been over that already. The point is, you can launch a webapp from a standalone program, allowing you to do things without getting distracted by all that… extra web. I really like this concept, I now have links for Gmail, Google Reader, and all those other nifty web 2.0 apps I like.

I wanted to give this a try myself, so I’ve made a standalone Wikipedia launcher. Get it here. It’s a launcher for the Wikipedia’s English main page.

Make your own! It’s dead simple! All you do is install the WebRunner software, create an ini file for your app, create icons and zip these files together. Rename the zip file to your.webapp and your good to go!

There’s a couple of worrying things about the webapp files – from a security standpoint. The biggest of these is that you can include a js file with javascript that runs at an application level. In other words it has access to everything that the application has access to, like – oh I don’t know – the file system?! (in my best Church Lady voice – oh crap am I revealing my age!). Another is the fact that you’re using a zip format to distribute the rest of your files. Which of course can have it’s own security problems when used with other programs. You also don’t really have the ability to get at a lot of the standard Mozilla settings that WebRunner shares. So you can’t make adjustments to settings for cookies, passwords and the like.

At any rate, it’s still a relatively young application, so I’m sure they’ll get the security issues addressed, but for now, make sure you inspect those files before you run them!

Links:
WebRunner
Lifehacker post
My Wikipedia launcher

Disclaimer

Keep in mind while running these webapps with WebRunner, that WebRunner itself is still a in pre-release/beta stages. Which means that the webapps found on this site, while working to view sites and what not, are not intended to be a replacement for your standard browser. The websites you’ll be viewing were not designed to be used with WebRunner, and therefore not all features on these sites may be compatible with it. I claim no responsibility for any malfunctions related to WebRunner. I’m providing files that allow you to access some websites, nothing more. Feel free to use the webapp files found on this site, but keep in mind you’re using them at your own risk – and without warranty!

Google in Other Countries as an Anonymizer

Kris — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 04:40:06 +0000

I sit behind a proxy filter at work which is a pain the butt when it comes to trying to get to pages that have information that I need on them. Some times pages are misclassified, sometimes there are services I’d like to use but can’t get to. For instance, Google’s translation services, which work better than many of the translation services out there. This includes AltaVista’s Babel Fish services which is what I’m locked into using by the proxy.

Google’s translation service (as well as some of the other online translation services that I’d like to use) is classified as an anonymizer. This is due to the fact that you can use it to bypass the proxy and load pages that you can’t get to otherwise. Which is weird because Babel Fish will do exactly the same thing, only less reliably. I’m guessing this unreliability is why we’re allowed to use it (maybe I’m just being paranoid).

I’ve found a way around the proxy we use (of course this will only work until someone figures this out and adds a new filter and stops this behavior). Use Google in another country/language and access that translation service as an anonymizer:
German: http://translate.google.com/translate_t?hl=de
Japanese: http://translate.google.com/translate_t?hl=ja
Etc., you get the point.

From there just select the proper language to translate to/from. I haven’t tried the above links form work yet. I usually navigate to the translation services from the Google home page for that country (ie http://www.google.de > Mehr > Übersetzen or http://www.google.jp > more » > 翻訳). So, we’ll see if this works when I try to access the translation services directly…

UPDATE – 070725

This does work from behind proxies. At least as of this date…

Browse Your Website From Your Website with Google’s Cache and Page Search

Kris — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 01:34:02 +0000

[cpg_imagefixthumb:71]Now that Google has my page cached and I’ve finally figured out how to get Google AdSense Search configured to return search results to my website, I’ve started playing! ^_^

Here’s something fun. If I run cache:www.luckydisasters.com from my Google Site Search bar I get the cached version of my website on my website. From there I can go to my current website from the Google search frame and browse from there.[cpg_imagefixthumb:70]

What does this mean? I have no clue, but it is amusing for a few minutes. If I come up with anything useful for this, I’ll post it! In the mean time, give it a try if you have Google Site Search!

UPDATE!! 070219

I originally did this from work. I tried this at home and it didn’t work. Looks like I’ve got to compare the Tab Mix Plus Firefox Extension settings on either system to figure out how I got this to work on one browser and not the other…

Firefox Tip – Google+Search Bar = Built-in Calculator

Kris — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:37:30 +0000

[cpg_imagefix:63]
OK, so maybe I’m a bit slow (many of you have probably already figured this one out), but I still think this is cool.

A few weeks ago I was typing search text (actually a part number followed by a manufacturer) into the search bar in Firefox and I noticed that as I typed the auto-suggest was subtracting the numbers on either side of the hyphen in the part number before I had input the manufacturer. After I’d finished with my search, I decided to look into this further. Sure enough, if you typed in formulas, added conversions or input special operators, the Firefox search bar and Google were returning the results – without actually submitting it!

Now call me crazy, but I think this is pretty sweet! I don’t have to waste all that time hitting enter or clicking the search button and waiting for the page to load (OK, so I’m lazy :). All I’ve got to do is punch in the formulas I want and I automagically get results back!

Of course, this got me to wondering what else is going on behind the scenes in my favorite browser. Then I thought better of it. That’s the kind of thing that could keep you up at night…

Link to Nancy Blachman’s Google Calculator (Cheat Sheet)