The NetCircle – Now hiring PHP Developer in Shanghai

FlipMyText

Don’t you agree MySpace? Sometimes you just don’t have to say anything, but meanwhile you can still look pretty, or at least glamorous.

One of our developers, Alvaro Videla, released a few weeks ago a Firebug/Symfony extension: FireSymfony. This allows developers to see their Symfony debug toolbar as an Firebug extension, which leaves the page layout unchanged and also brings more UI improvement. This being quite useful for us at the office.

Our support to this extension is part of our company culture; we encourage people to participate and innovate for the company or the community. We will provide resources to Alvaro like design for the plugin and the blog, hosting for the site and time during business hours where he can work on documentation, bug fixing and new features.

Good luck little plugin!

Due to a nasty Chinese Virus my computer at work died. As I just got a new Laptop (as shown in the post before) I’ll pimp my Firefox at work in the same way my laptop is pimped. The question here is not which browser to use, cause I’m in love with Firefox even though this might change someday, the time has not come yet.

Here’s what I’m using. If you have suggestions and ideas fell free to comment. I don’t think there’s such a thing as overpimping or too much comfort.

• All-in-one-sidebar: Is there for you when you need it, to control downloads, extensions, site information, chronic, bookmarks and so on. And disappears if you don’t need it.
• Better Gmail 2: I’ve totally forgotten what it changed because it’s not a big difference it just makes Gmail feel better.
• BlogRovR: I’m not sure about this one, but it doesn’t bug you so it doesn’t hurt installing it. 1. I don’t use it properly 2. I expected it to reduce the noise. It doesn’t but it structures it by suggesting the matching blog posts for the site you are on atm.
• Bookmark Duplicate Detector: I need it, actually I’d need more than that. I still haven’t found the perfect way to store and organize my bookmarks. Any suggestions?
• British English Dictionary: This helps a not native speaker like me a lot, but I could use some grammar advice too.
• Clipmarks: You can just select the parts of the site you need to blog, send, print. Unfortunately it ruined the blog design.
• German Dictionary: It doesn’t hurt to make sure your German blog posts have the right spelling
• Evernote Web Clipper: If you are using evernote its the right choice. A smart notebook you can share or just store the stuff you find till you need it for a post.
• Read it later: A button to bookmark pages in a “read it later” folder. Very useful.
• Shareaholic: Share stuff easier, faster.
• Time Tracker: I was curious (I was surfing 178h last month, this means the browser is open and active about 6 hours a day. Wah! Do I have a life? I need a Firefox application to find that out)
• Yoono: Intended to socialize your browser I basically use it to follow twitter, flickr and facebook updates in little boxes which appear in the corner of my browser. The sidebar could get a bit smaller for my taste and limited use.
• Foxsaver: Turns Firefox into a Screensaver showing for example you flickr photos, I don’t use it any more because it made Firefox crash a couple or times and I don’t really need this feature.

Bottom line: Addons have to be subtle, easy to use and they need to disappear if you use them. Toolbars make me crazy. If I want a toolbar I’ll search for one. If I want Stumble upon I want the features not a toolbar. If an Addon wants me to read the manual it will never ever be used.

pimped new laptop

I’m a big fan of customization. And I’m very sceptic about everybody having stickers on their Macbook. It’s kind of cool and individual but if you hang out with the wrong/right people it becomes a uniform. Anyway I thought about it and decided to buy a Sony Vaio. Yes it’s not a Apple product and I say it loud and proud even of 51,8% of my audience will stop reading here now. Anyway as a customization fan I had to put a sticker on my laptop BUT only one. At DesignSkins you can print easy removable stickers for every kind of electronic gadget you own. So here’s my pimped laptop and my pimped old iPod nano (Yes, there are Apple products I can’t resist). So now I have a customized uniform laptop.

The best part is that they are easy removable, because I didn’t have the time to design something myself and as soon as I’ve done that I’ll update my laptop look. Until then my iPod and laptop will look cute but not most individual.

Great idea to promote your product by the way. Not only the logo but a cool pic matching your product for your employees and as give aways. The times of the lighter with your Logo are not over but there’s definitely cooler stuff around too.