I’ve been scraped, which is both a surprise and a disappointment at the same time. Some automated system has decided it liked the look of my post on the 12th and decided it fit the criteria for inclusion on their entirely synthesised site. Nice of them to include a link back to the original article, so that makes it alright then…

Of all the things that I considered when I started this test installation, and I’ll reiterate that it’s only a test at this stage, being used by a automated tool to provide handy chunks of content for someone else’s link farm wasn’t one of them.  Frankly I didn’t think there would be anything that’d interest anyone else other than myself and a few friends I’ve pestered into helping me test the site.

So the lesson for the day is, underestimate the depth and breadth of the internet at your peril. Here endeth the lesson.

Yesterdays round up of add ons were the kind of tools that would be useful for anyone. Todays bunch are a bit more specialised. You might not find them immediately useful, but if you’ve got a specific itch that needs scratching, they can’t be beat…

FireBug - essential web design tool. I can’t belive how insanely great this is. If you need to dive into the code of a site to see how it works there’s nothing better. Want to make changes to any site on the web on the fly? You can with Firebug. (Unbeatable for blog theme tweaking…)

FireFTP - platform agnostic FTP tool. Because I use both Linux and Windows on a daily basis, I got fed up with switching FTP clients. With FireFTP you don’t have to, it’s all done from the browser. Remember, the browser is the new operating system…

FireUploader - for easy and quick access to my Picasa account. I’ve been uploading a huge amount of photos recently, and frankly the Picasa interface sucks. You can only upload five files at a time. With FireUploader I can upload directories full at a time. Also integrates with lots of other services for extended usefulness…

Google Notebook - The more I use it, the more uses I find for it. Not strictly a Firefox extension, more a Google product. Highlight a chunk of website and clip, it’s in the notebook. Great for research and, well, taking notes… Highly recommended if you haven’t tried it already.

Well that’s the extent of the add ons I can’t live without. Do drop me a note if you try one of them you don’t already use…

I’ve been using Firefox for longer than I’ve been using Linux. First I used Netscape as an alternative browser in Windows, swiftly migrating to Mozilla Firefox when it became available. Firefox as a tool in it’s own right seemed like an unnecessary change, but I soon came to love it. Firefox 2.0 was a breath of fresh air, and the more I use it the better I like it.

The best thing is its extendability. I run Firefox on about half a dozen different PC’s. Some mine, some work, some Linux, some windows. On all of them I install a suite of extensions that make life easier for me. I’ve been using most of them for so long now that I don’t even think of them as extras, and I’m always surprised when there not there on a new PC.

I’ve split this list into two chunks to stop it from getting too unwieldy… Here’s the first four, I’ll get to the other four tomorrow…

English Dictionary - For in line spell checking on any website. The WordPress installation on my UkLinux server is a bit flaky. When you hit the button for a spell check it just returns an error, but with this extension it doesn’t matter. The same in Google Docs, no need to wait and click a button. Simple spell checking everywhere. Indispensable.

Adblock Plus - for blocking ads. I hate ads. You hate ads. Chances are you already have this installed. If you don’t, every ad you download eats bandwidth and costs you precious time. Install this now. (Dangerous words from a man who has advertising on his site…)

FlashBlock - for blocking flash. The only thing that annoys me more than ads are Flash ads. No, I don’t want to download your multi-megabyte ad on the off chance that I’m interested. Life’s too short. With this extension you never have to suffer them again, and you can always turn it back on again if it’s absolutely needed for site navigation…

RIP - for removing anything Adblock or FlashBlock misses. RIP stands for Remove It Permanently and it does exactly what it says on the tin. If there is something on a site you never want to see again, use this. One of my favorite uses is to remove a load of rubbish from social networking sites.

Anyone can make use of these tools, Firefox makes them so easy to install. Tomorrows batch are a bit more specialised, a bit more oriented towards what I spend my time doing. (I’ll do the jokes…)

It looks like it is incredibly simple to set up an online store these days. As long as you’ve got something to sell, a website to act as a storefront and a PayPal account, you can get yourself set up in next to no time.

Companies out there will take all the difficult stuff off your hands. You can just add buttons to your site and have a fully functioning shopping cart and checkout system up and running in minutes…. Impressive.

E-junkie is the company I’ve been looking at. They just charge a flat fee per month depending on the number of items you are offering for sale. That’s the number of products you are offering, not the number of individual sales you make.

So, for example, their lowest rate is just $5 a month for 10 products. Drop some code on the website and viola, away you go. It works just as well for tangible items as it does for non-physical products (mp3’s, ebooks, etc). It really does lower the barriers to entry for an online store to virtually undetectable levels.

Been getting to grips with WordPress ‘pages’ today. (As opposed to posts) Those of you who are still paying attention might have noticed that more of the links are working up by the header image. Namely HOME, ABOUT and DONATE all do what it says on the tin…

About is a bit thin at the moment, I’ll be adding to that at a later date, but the Donate page has a working PayPal button and an Amazon WishList, which I think is quite cool. Not that I’m expecting a huge rush on there. It’s just the fact that it’s so easy to interlink everything.

Talking of interlinking, it’s possible to push the blog posts to your Facebook page fairly easily, so I might do that at a later date.

If you have any comments about the layout fo the pages or the site in general I’d really like to hear them.