This is an update on my prior post about using the Prism plug-in for the Firefox browser. I now have nearly a dozen “web applications” that I’ve made from websites. The fist one I created was for Google Reader. Now I have added one for my local weather, National Radar map, Grand Central, Premiere Conferencing, my work email’s Web interface, our corporate directory, and the web interface to my Network Storage. During a recent Woot-off, I even created one of these web applications for Woot so it was easy to keep up-to-date on the deals.

I find it very handy to have “windows” rather than browser links to these applications. The windows remember their size and placement. Prism runs these applications as separate from the browser and even remembers login information separate from the browser. While I do not get “off-line” access, that’s not a concern since most of these web applications are for specific servers or very time sensitive (weather now not a few hours ago) so if I don’t have a network connection, the service would not be much use anyway.

all in all, it is one of the better productivity enhancements I’ve adopted over the past several months. It goes especially well with StandaloneStacks which I use to extend my taskbar!

As noted in a previous post (go search for it using the search window in the upper right if you must), I now use Synergy for my multiple PC/Laptop home office environment. (FYI – I now simultaneously enjoying and struggling with a T61p wide screen as my primary terminal).

The one thing that irks me is the lack of  of the middle mouse button  (aka scrolls wheel) feature that is intrinsic on Thinkpads.

The best (and for now reasonably acceptable) solution is the use a Firefox and Thunderbird plug-in called Grab-n-Drag. It only covers the scroll feature of browsing and email, but since one of my machines is predominantly just that, it covers things pretty well. I hope to figure our a configuration for scrol wheel support across the “now 4 thinkpads” sooner or later but in the mean time, one machine is much happier !

This is a follow-on to my post “Home office goes multi-monitor with a twist“. I’m pretty happy with Synergy. One change I suggest (for sanity). I suggest either increasing the wait time that Synergy takes before switching to the next machine or enabling “bounce”.

I found, after a little use, that there were times when I’d move the mouse to the edge of my screen – either going to the top of the screen to get to a menu on a maximized window, or just pushing the mouse out of the way. In it’s default settings, Synergy would move the next computer. I first tried setting a delay of 500ms then 1000ms before the switch. Both did OK. Then I tried the “must hit the edge twice” (or what I called bounce). This worked well too and had the added advantage of letting me have multiple virtual desktops (the Compiz cube on Ubuntu, Spaces on OS X, etc.)

I don’t have a system that can display to multiple monitors – all my compute power is tied up in laptops of various sizes, shapes, and ages. each can have one external monitor but then I still end up either buy a bunch of monitors – one each – and a KVM or some other solution for switching the keyboard and mouse. I know of a better solution (at least for me) but was lacking time to get around to completing hte setup. Well, “sleepless at 4AM” solved all that.

First order of business was to build three laptop stands/risers. These things stand a laptop up vertically. I am without my workshop or else this would have been a no-brainer. I scrounged some metal rod (remnants of the political candidate signs that littered the yard back last fall) and dug out my shop Dremel and started cutting and bending. This yielded three new stands. Next, I had to clean my desk and re-route all the network and power cables. Lastly, I installed Synergy on all four laptops (my personal X60, my work T60 and old T40, and my M200 tablet PC). Synergy works across the different operating systems and is happy with Windows, Linux (Ubuntu), and Mac (which unfortunately I don’t posses to test). The T40 is “above” the X60 with the T60 to the “left” and the M200 to the “right”. When I move my mouse to the far right of my screen, it appears on the M200. Move it back and across the screen to the far left, and it appears on the T60. Similarly, moving the cursor to the top of the X60 show the cursor on the T40. (The top most monitor is the media player). Wherever the cursor appears, the X60′s keyboard and mouse are functional.

With Synergy, I have a four monitor & 4 CPU system !

I really like the Firefox feature that lets me select some text and then (right-click) search in Google for the text. I find myself mistakenly trying it in all my applications – email, instant message chats, documentation, etc. I finally had to find some way of getting this functionality everywhere.

I am currently trying out Transfz. While not exactly the same as what Firefox does, it’s close enough until I find something better. I bind a hotkey (in my case I used ALT+2). Then, I just select text anywhere and hit the hotkey. My browser of choice is launched with a Google search on the highlighted text.

I have found a bug or two. For example, while writing this blog post, I double clicked a work – there by highlighting it. Transfz did not recognize this method of selecting text and when I hit my hotkey, I got results from my previous search. I can live with that … for now.

I should point out, Transfz does a whole lot more. It’s extensions and plug-ins add a lot of interesting features. I just wanted Google search.
If you know of a better solution – sorry, I’m a Windows user at the moment – post a comment.