Archive for the ‘utils’ Category

Safari Extension Gallery Has Big Impact On Better Facebook!

Posted by Matt at 29 July 2010

Category: Programming, browser extensions, facebook, javascript, utils, web

Background

On July 28 2010, Apple officially released a new version of Safari, and along with it the Extension Gallery. A few weeks before the release, I received an email from Apple requesting that developers submit their extensions for consideration to be included in the gallery when it was released. I was happy that Better Facebook, my browser/script extension that I have been working on for almost a year, worked great in Safari and that I had previously figured out how to package an official Safari Extension. So I filled out the form and submitted Better Facebook to the gallery.

On the morning of July 28, I got an Google Alert email with a new match for the term "Better Facebook" (I am a self-stalker!). It pointed me to the Safari Extension Gallery, and I knew that I could expect a bump in traffic for the day.

Thankfully, Better Facebook is prominently featured in the gallery, near the top of the listings, and the first extension to be listed in the "Social Networking" category:

bfb_gallery

Impact On Site Traffic

Previously, my site got around 1,000 hits a day – sometimes more, which I was always pretty happy with. But you can see the history compared to July 28!

bfb_stats_long

Looking closer at just the one day of traffic, I found that I got over 16,000 hits to the site itself!

bfb_stats_day

Looking at the referers, I found that over 10,000 of those hits came directly from the Safari Extension Gallery:

bfb_stats_referers

I was happy to see that Better Facebook was mentioned in other stories about the Extension Gallery also, including ZDNet and Lifehacker.

I haven’t totaled up the number of actual downloads yet, but I did exceed my bandwidth limitations yesterday. I might need to increase my hosting capabilities if this continues.

Impact On Facebook Page

Better Facebook also has an official Page on Facebook, and the impact on the number of people who "Like" it was dramatic!

The history of "Likes" of the page looks like this:

bfb_stats_fan_history

A slow, steady growth pattern to what I considered to be a pretty impressive number – 8,500 fans before July 28th. But on the day itself, I saw an impressive growth of almost 2,000 new fans! That put the page over 10,000 fans, which is a number that many companies and pages would envy. As I write this, the page stands at 10,691 fans and it just keeps going up. It will be interesting to see the historical graph once it is updated in Facebook Insights.

Conclusion

I have put many hours of work into Better Facebook, and I’ve been happy to see it grow and its popularity slowly increase. I find it incredibly useful for myself, and most users seem enthusiastic about what it does also. The problem has always been how to get it to "explode" and really take off and find a wider userbase. Being listed in the Extension Gallery has finally been the spark that made this happen, and I’m very happy about it! It’s a fun, interesting experience and I get to learn a lot from it. It helps me create better software and learn new ways to share information and interact with users in the social space. I’m grateful for the exposure, and humbled by the positive reactions of thousands of users.

Now… can I somehow profit a little from this? Heh. We’ll see…

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Handy YouTube Viewer

Posted by Matt at 20 January 2009

Category: utils, web

YouTubeLogo

Use this technique to easily "pop up" a YouTube video and keep it on top of other windows so you can watch it while you continue to browse . . . uh . . . work.

The first tool is a bookmarklet. In Firefox, for example, you can right-click on the Bookmarks toolbar and select "New Bookmark". Other browsers are similar.

image

For the location, use this bit of javascript. Make sure it’s all on one line!

javascript:e=document.forms.embedForm.embed_code.value;
w=window.open(’about:blank’,'_blank’,'height=360,width=450,menubar=no,
toolbar=no,location=no,status=no,resizable=yes,scrollbars=no’);
d=w.document;d.open();d.write(e);d.close();
 
Or, drag this like to your toolbar to do the same thing:
 
 
Now when you are viewing a video on YouTube, you can click the bookmark and it will pop up a window with just the video.
 
But how do you get the window to stay on top, so you can do other things while watching it?
 
Install PowerMenu. This program puts a few useful items in the context menu when you right-click on the title bar of a window or the item in the start bar. Just choose "Always On Top" and it will stay visible.

And there you go, a handy YouTube viewer that lets you continue working while you watch the latest viral video of the week!

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PHP Excel Reader

Posted by Matt at 24 December 2008

Category: Programming, utils

I recently created a project on Google Code for PHP Excel Reader. This is a PHP library for reading MS Office Excel files that has existed on Sourceforge for quite a while but was no longer being maintained or enhanced. I needed to use it for a work project, so I put in some time to fix it and enhance it to make it more usable. I decided to put it up on Google Code in the hopes that others would find it useful.

[ PHP Excel Reader Project Home ]

Example

Microsoft Excel

<?php
require_once 'excel_reader2.php';
$xls = new Spreadsheet_Excel_Reader("example.xls");


echo '<table border="1">';


  for ($row=1;$row<=$xls->rowcount();$row++) {


  echo '<tr>';


  for ($col=1;$col<=$xls->colcount();$col++) {


    echo '<td>' . $xls->val($row,$col) . ' </td>';


  }


  echo '</tr>';


}


echo '</table>';


?>






HTML Output




Usage




$data = new Spreadsheet_Excel_Reader("test.xls"); 

Retrieve formatted value of cell (first or only sheet): 

  $data->val($row,$col) 

Or using column names: 

  $data->val(10,'AZ') 

From a sheet other than the first: 

  $data->val($row,$col,$sheet_index) 

Retrieve cell info: 

  $data->type($row,$col);
  $data->raw($row,$col);
  $data->format($row,$col);
  $data->formatIndex($row,$col); 

Get sheet size: 

  $data->rowcount();
  $data->colcount(); 

$data->sheets[0]['cells'][$i][$j] - data from $i-row $j-column 

$data->sheets[0]['numRows'] - count rows
$data->sheets[0]['numCols'] - count columns 

$data->sheets[0]['cellsInfo'][$i][$j] - extended info about cell
$data->sheets[0]['cellsInfo'][$i][$j]['type'] = "date" | "number" | "unknown"
$data->sheets[0]['cellsInfo'][$i][$j]['raw'] = value if cell without format
$data->sheets[0]['cellsInfo'][$i][$j]['format'] = Excel-style Format string of cell
$data->sheets[0]['cellsInfo'][$i][$j]['formatIndex'] = The internal Excel index of format 

$data->sheets[0]['cellsInfo'][$i][$j]['colspan']
$data->sheets[0]['cellsInfo'][$i][$j]['rowspan']



			


			

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Easily trim mp3 files using mpTrim

			


			

				
Posted by Matt at 18 November 2008

				
Category: utils

				
Tags: , , , 
			


			

				


Ever come across a song that has an especially long intro that annoys you? Or a “hidden track” at the end with a minute of silence between? Or a second half of the song that you don’t like as much as the first?


if it’s an mp3, you might think you need to convetr to wav, open a wav editor, trim the song, then re-convert to mp3 to get just the part of the track that you actually want to listen to. Not worth the effort!


But there is a better way: mpTrim


This Windows utility lets you trim an mp3 file directly, without an impact on its sound quality because it works directly on the mp3 contents rather than converting to wav first. You can fade in and out at the timings you pick to trim out the junk that you always skip over anyway. It’s free and very handy when you need it!

			


			

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Folder Guide – A great Windows utility for right-clicking

			


			

				
Posted by Matt at 18 November 2008

				
Category: utils

				
Tags: , , , 
			


			

				
I like to work as efficiently as possible, so I end up installing and trying lots of little utilities and programs that might make life easier. Most of them get uninstalled a short time later, but a few stick. Folder Guide is one of them.


The idea is simple: Anywhere you are browsing your Windows file system, you can right-clicking and jump to one of your preset directories. If any application opens up a Save or Open dialog, you can right-click in it to quickly go to your common place to put files. Rather than scrolling around in the tree view in Explorer, you can quickly jump to the directories you use most often.


I have already found it very useful after only 2 days of use. I recommend giving it a try.


Folder Guide web site






			


			

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