mTextBox - eBooks for your mobile phone

Imagine if you could bring all your reading with you without carrying all the weight. That is the problem the good folks at Mapada Inc. are trying to solve with their mTextBox product. All you need is an internet-enabled mobile phone. Once you download and install the Java-based mTextBox on your phone, reading is a piece of cake. You can choose to read text already uploaded by others (usually, public domain books) or you can fill out your own text to read. Every piece of text (be it a book or a grocery list uploaded by you) is assigned an mCode. You must enter the mCode for the text you want to read in the mTextBox application on your phone.

I am very impressed with the implementation of the mobile application. I was curious as to how the entire text of The War of the Worlds would be transferred to my phone. I was anticipating a long download time of a single chapter if not the entire book when I first entered the mCode to read The War of the Worlds. To my surprise, the book loaded nearly instantly. As I scrolled down madly to see how such a large body of text loaded so quickly I realized what was going on. The application was loading small chunks of text as I scrolled. This is brilliant because each web request to fetch the next chunk of text is unnoticeable. I wish mobile browsers could do the same too.

The second great feature of this application is that when you stop reading or switch to reading something else a virtual bookmark is automatically created so that the next time you go to read it will pick up from exactly where you left off.

I would not recommend abandoning the trusty paper back because there are no batteries that could discharge nor do you have to worry about coverage (like on a plane). But for casual reading or taking some notes or your grocery list on the go with you mTextBox can't be beat.

mtextbox Hosted on Zooomr

Mobile Download | PC Download | FAQ

Tags: mtextbox, books, mobile

Replace your Firefox bookmarks with del.icio.us Bookmarks extension

If you use Firefox and have longed to integrate your del.icio.us bookmarks with the browser, then you must get the del.icio.us Bookmarks extension. This is the official extension from Yahoo! for Firefox. I have used this extension before, but decided to drop it in favor of del.icio.us Complete because of performance. Before del.icio.us Complete I was using Foxylicious to sync my bookmarks with Firefox. Although these extensions satisfied the basic requirement of providing access to your social bookmarks, they were slow and buggy and never felt completely integrated with the Firefox browser. del.icio.us Bookmarks solves this problem beautifully with a killer feature set to boot.



Not only do you get complete integration of your bookmarks from your Bookmarks menu (all pages are automatically bookmarked at del.icio.us), you also get the ability to search through your bookmarks using tags or keywords in the title of the pages. The search feature opens in the sidebar with a two-pane view. The top pane listing any tags that matched your search and the bottom pane matching any pages. This is not even the killer feature of this extension.



The greatest feature of the extension is favorite tags. You can create a list of favorite tags and then access these from the bookmarks toolbar with a single click. By default firefox:bookmarks and firefox:toolbar are in your favorites list. You can choose to display bookmarks tagged with one of your favorite tags in the bookmarks toolbar. The ability to control your favorite tags and to display all bookmarks with one of your favorite tags allows your bookmarks toolbar to have multiple personalities (without being a disorder). For example, I have my dailies like Gmail, Bloglines, and Digg, tagged with firefox:toolbar. I have my blogging related bookmarks such as Blogger, Feedburner, Google Analytics, and Performancing metrics tagged with firefox:blogging. Now, I can readily switch between my dailies and blogging sites with a single click.





The one minor gripe I have is the order in which tags are organized in the bookmarks toolbar. They are sorted chronologically from right to left meaning that your oldest bookmarks are on the right and the most recent ones are on the left. I would prefer the ability to drag and drop the bookmarks on the toolbar to create my own arrangement. That aside, this is a fantastic extension to your Firefox browsing experience and I recommend you waste no time in downloading it.

Happy bookmarking!

Tags: del.icio.us, firefox, del.icio.us bookmarks

FREE Zonet ZRC2011 USB 2.0 Starter Kit

Newegg is offering the Zonet ZRC2011 USB 2.0 Starter Kit for FREE after mail-in rebate.



[via Techbargains]

Tags: zonet, shopping, free

Firefox tip: Find as you type in links

Another tip for the keyboard power-user inside you, if you are using Firefox that is (if not, why aren't you?). I love the find as you type feature in Firefox. No muss, no fuss search at your fingertips. But did you also know that you can limit the find as you type searches to links within the page? If you didn't, then prepare to be enlightened.

Simply hit the ' (apostrophe) key before you begin typing the name of the link you are searching for and be dazzled. Try it now - hit the ' key and then type Tecnirvana on this page.

Bonus: Press the Enter key to open the link.

Bonus 2: Press F3 to find the next link (works on regular text too).

Tecnirvana
Tecnirvana
Tecnirvana
Tecnirvana
Tecnirvana
Tecnirvana

Tags: firefox

Firefox tip: Open URLs in a new tab without creating a new tab

Firefox 2 is out and my trustworthy Tab Mix Plus extension is no longer compatible. One of the features from Tab Mix Plus that I miss on a daily basis is its ability to open the URLs I type into the address bar in a tab by default. Ever since I have upgraded to Firefox 2, I have had to remember to create a new tab using the shortcut (Ctrl + T) or by clicking on the new tab toolbar icon when I want to browse to a new page. Every time I forgot to do this, the new page would open by overwriting my current tab. This got really annoying really quick.

I also upgraded to Internet Explorer 7 around the same time. Internet Explorer gives you some really good tips about working with tabs when you open a new (blank) tab. One of these tips educated me to using Alt+Enter from the address to open the page in a new tab. I was looking for something like this in Firefox, so, just out of curiosity, I decided to give it a try. Voila! A new tab opened without the muss and fuss of creating a new tab beforehand.

Bonus: Alt+Enter will also open results from the search bar in a new tab.

Tab Mix Plus - where art thou?



Tags: firefox

FREE Airnet Wireless Products

Newegg has Airnet AWR014G8 108 Mbps wireless router with 4-port switch, 802.11g wireless USB adapter, and 802.11g wireless PCMCIA card for FREE after mail in rebates.



[via Techbargains]

Tags: airnet, shopping, free

Publishing to Blogger beta using Google Docs & Spreadsheets

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a fine tool for composing documents online. The advantages of using Google Docs & Spreadsheets is conversation for another day, but I will tell you this - how you can compose and publish your blog posts from Google Docs & Spreadsheets to Blogger beta. So the obvious question is why would you want to compose your posts in GD&S rather than using the built-in editor provided by Blogger beta?

• Auto save - You will not lose your post if you inadvertently close the tab/browser. GD&S constantly auto saves your document at regular intervals.
  
• Spell checking - The Blogger beta post editor provides no means to spell check your posts.
• More control - GD&S provides advanced options when inserting rich elements like images, links, and tables into your posts.
  
• Interface - The editing interface of GD&S is more akin to a full featured document editor.

Although GD&S does not support publishing to Blogger beta directly, I have successfully been able to configure GD&S to publish to Blogger beta. GD&S help center provides documentation on how to publish your documents on any blog, but these will generally not work for Blogger beta. To publish to Blogger beta using GD&S:

1. Click on "Settings" in the upper right corner of your GD&S home page.
2. In the "Documents" tab, select "edit info" in the "Blog settings" section.
3. In the "Blog Site Settings" dialog,
   1. Choose My own server / custom
   2. API: Blogger API
   3. URL: http://beta.blogger.com/api
   4. Enter your user name and password
   5. (Optional) Enter your Blog ID/Title
      1. If you host multiple blogs on Blogger beta, I strongly recommend entering the Blog ID/Title to ensure that your posts are published to the desired blog.
   6. Select any desired options

You are done!

Full Disclosure: Tecnirvana runs on Blogger beta. This post was published using Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

Update: I have discovered that publishing from GD&S does not provide a title to your post. This means that you will not get a permalink to your post. I have edited this post in Blogger beta editor to give it a title.

Tags: google, google docs, blogger beta