While Belvedere is good for getting the clutter off the desktop and into other organized places, there is no quick hotkey way to bring it back. This is where Fences shines gives the ability to group the clutter and decide right down to file by file what you want to do. I was hopeful that Fences would allow me the ability to group off the desktop items in one fell swoop like Belvedere, but after installation and checking it out that doesn’t appear to be an option. Maybe that will be added in future update?

When you run Fences for the first time a handy option is included that will auto sort your icon clutter. Here’s the before and after shot of my desktop.

Before Fences:

After Fences (auto organize on first time program run):

Note: in the screenshot above to the right is the program Rocketdock and not a part of Fences. Rocketdock is a handy Mac-style program launcher.

The auto sorting fences created are as follows:

• Quicklinks – contained folder shortcuts and one game shortcut misidentified by Fences (should have gone into the ‘Programs’ fence)
• Recent Things – most recently accessed files on the desktop
• Programs – click to launch these programs. Redundant for those using Rocketdock, unless you have programs you want to try out (like Fences) and then once you decide you will use them regularly enough to add to Rocketdock.
• Web Links – Mine was empty since I almost never save web links to the desktop. I deleted this group.
• Folders – I would have thought the folder shortcuts placed in Quick Links would have gone here, but not the case. I deleted this empty fence too.
• Files & Documents – this fence was the only one with a scrollbar and sort of a catchall for everything else. So now instead of having my entire desktop fill up with junk from left to right, this would catch everything? Nope. When you add a new file it goes to the desktop and must be sorted. Bummer.

If I’m not going to take time to delete or move the file on the desktop to a folder off the desktop, it’s doubtful I’d move into a fenced off area. It’s really a bummer that Stardock didn’t add a feature which captured anything saved to the desktop and auto sorted. Without that feature, it’s sort of a non-starter for me. It’s not a bad start.

The best solution is not having to run program(s) like these at all. Just be neat and not clutter your desktop, but that doesn’t seem to work for me who likes saving things to the desktop for quick access versus navigating to a file. For example, when I want to save a picture that I’ll use in a blog post I’m working on like this one, I’ll save it to the desktop and then drag it into Windows Live Writer. The step that I neglect all too often is the cleanup of this image file. That’s where Belvedere has come in handy. Good news for fellow Belvedere users, you can still run alongside Fences.

I’m going to try using both Fences and Belvedere for awhile and see how it goes. My early opinion? This adds another step to the process of organizing the clutter and if I’m going to organize, why rearrange dust? Instead, it should be cleaned away like Belvedere does, right? That said, the double-click for quick clean desktop could come in handy and I liked how I could make organized fences around my desktop image of the notes on the guitar fretboard. Only problem there: as new stuff is added, I have to reorganize, which I probably won’t do. I’m mixed on this one, but curious what others think. Grade: C+

Huh? Hey, put that full phone number display back! The first thing I went into the add-in options to try and figure out how to change it so the full telephone number displays but didn’t see how it was done. So I went to the Skype extension for Firefox help page and it still shows the full phone numbers being displayed.

I found some more current versions of the plugin via Google search like v2.3.0.31 and v2.3.0.22. Tried v2.3.0.31 downloaded from softpedia and that was a bust (link intentionally removed).

According to the Skype forums, they withdrew support for the separate Skype plugin back in September 2007(?). Yikes, how did I miss this? Now it’s part of the installation process for versions 3.x of Skype? You have to select in the options that you want the Firefox plugin. So I reinstalled Skype from scratch attempting to try that option. Only see the Internet Explorer add-in option.

So I checked the internet explorer option and was curious if my phone numbers would be full length in IE.

Nope. Outside of hacking the Firefox plugin code, which seems like the only option remaining to fix this to me, is there any option or way to turn on full numbers display? Anyone? Bueller? Before I start digging through the plugin code, I want to be sure I’m not missing some option somewhere to fix this.

If you are perusing the archive posts and seeing these newly added footnotes, you might note that I’m also coding the dead links by domain name. This is so that I can query the database in the future and see what domains are the worst offenders of expiring/changing their links.

What I like most about Chrome is that they stripped it back and will add what’s needed. Reminded me of how Firefox started out. If they don’t weight it down with too many BS features, Chrome could be a contender someday. In their Chrome intro video they emphasize wanting to move the browser space forward. Since talk is cheap, let’s look at interesting Chrome features:

- tabs that are independent processes. This is huge. Every browser should have this feature. Why have one website crash every other tab you have? Major kudos to Chrome for this feature alone, which they borrowed from the Internet Explorer 8 team but as a user, I don’t care. Hurry up everybody else and get this in your browsers now.

- locate the memory hogs. You can track memory usage by each tab by typing:

about:memory

Is your favorite website a memory hog? Now you’ll be one about:memory check away from finding out.

- no need for two different input boxes (URL and search query): Omnibox for multiple functions.

We’ve seen some creative uses of the location bar but Chrome is on the right track by recognizing that having more than one input form is just eating precious pixel space. Chrome helps utilyze pixel space.

- a useful local homepage. When you first load Chrome it will show your most visited pages. Maybe not the most innovative page on the planet, but different from trying to sell us something or advertise to us.

You can check your browsing history at any time by typing CTRL+H

- Incognito mode. Don’t want to have websites you visit show up in the history? Just open an incognito window. No sites you visit here will show up in the history a la Firefox’s Awesome bar or IE8 InPrivate Browsing.

Others talking about Google Chrome (updated)

• Google employee, Matt Cutts, informative as always helps to allay privacy concerns by sharing when Chrome phones home while Ina Fried reminds us to read the Chrome fine print.
• Walt Mossberg spent the last week with Chrome: "My verdict: Chrome is a smart, innovative browser that, in many common scenarios, will make using the Web faster, easier and less frustrating. But this first version — which is just a beta, or test, release — is rough around the edges and lacks some common browser features Google plans to add later."

Before heading out to PAX I whipped up a Sweetcron bookmarklet controller but it wasn’t far enough along to show anybody else. With version 0.4 of my Sweetcron Bookmarklet code, I’m ready to share with other Sweetcron users. Consider this post the official place for updates for future versions, so might want to bookmark this page.

Update 9/9/08 8:20am PST: version 0.5 released. This fixes issues with sweetcron default configuration disallowed characters in the web page tittles being bookmarked. For people upgrading to the new version, you’ll find instructions in the README.txt.

Installation and usage is straightforward, just do the following:

STEP 1. Download (unofficial) Sweetcron bookmarklet (v0.5) and unzip
STEP 2. FTP bookmarklet.php to: /system/application/controllers/admin

STEP 3. Then login to your sweetcron admin area and visit:

yourdomain.com/admin/bookmarklet

You’ll see a page with the bookmarklet code that looks something like this:

STEP 4. Right click over the "SCBM v0.4" link and drag to your browser bookmarks toolbar.

STEP 5. Now visit a web page, select some text and click the SCBM bookmarklet. A window will popup and allow you to edit the selected content or add new notes, images (image extraction is not automatic) or other HTML. If you are at a page with the meta tags set, these will be automatically extracted and added to the "Tags" section of the Sweetcron Bookmarklet form. Otherwise, you can enter in tags separated by commas. When satisfied with what you want to publish, then click the "Publish Post to Sweetcron Now" button.

Whatever you added should show up on your Sweetcron page immediately like this:

If you manage to break something or have suggestions/feedback for making this bookmarklet controller better, feel free to let me know in the comments below.

Browser compatibility
The following browsers have been tested and work with Sweetcron Bookmarklet (unofficial) v0.4:

Firefox 3.x
Flock 1.x
Google Chrome (released today 9/2/08)
Opera 9.5x
Safari 3.1.x

Update 8:19am & 8:57am PST: In the comments Luboš kindly offers a good post on some alternate Site Meter tracking code workarounds that don’t require nuking the Site Meter tracking entirely. This includes an IE7 fix that will allow you to view websites that haven’t fixed the tracking code yet.

When IE7 users visit a site using Site Meter the following error prompt is shown:

When "ok" is clicked this is what happens to the page:

Upon verifying the issue, I immediately disabled the site meter code on our group blog VTOR (Update: I have since added back the tracking portion, without the IE7 offending JavaScript). According to site meter (graph below, gray color) some 43% of visitors to that site can’t get there?! Screw that, goodbye.

We’re also running Google Analytics at VTOR so we can get stats details from that until this issue is resolved, but there goes the transparency convenience that Site Meter provided. I’m not sure our group will want to put Site Meter back after this debacle. This is a serious flaw. Fortunately MakeYouGoHmm hasn’t used the Site Meter code since I learned of disturbing allegations on May 27, 2007, so IE7 browser users can view this site just fine.

This problem painfully illustrates why using third party code carries huge risks.

Sidenote and source credit: I first learned about this issue from Duncan Riley’s FriendFeed message this morning which pointed to a post by him saying the lack of this important story showing up on TechMeme has a bias .  Duncan is miffed because his publication The Inquisitr broke the story and despite several blogs linking to it including Mashable that appears on TechMeme all the time, the story isn’t showing up on TechMeme. I just visited TechMeme to verify that it still wasn’t on the current page or via search. Nothing yet. Gabe Rivera, creator of TM, has commented here in the past, maybe if/when he sees this he will offer some explanation why TM has failed to highlight this important story.

Update 9:59am PST: This story is on TechMeme now.

Now please excuse me why I go write an apology post at VTOR for the 43% of users who couldn’t get to the site because of third party code. I hope they will come back and give the site another try. Grrr, not a good way to start a Saturday morning. Fix this ASAP, Site Meter, this blows!

Update 8/4/08 7:01 am PST: Site Meter has fixed the issue and posted to their blog.

People can sign up for free at http://workspace.officelive.com and will be granted immediate access to the service. Microsoft is also unveiling a number of new Office Live Workspace features, such as an activity panel, notifications, direct links and multifile upload.

The three pane window UI with the middle being the document section is familiar:

I like the simplified layout better than Office Word with the new ribbon but there is one big problem in Firefox that Microsoft needs to fix: you can’t type anything in the note section in Firefox.

This requires loading Internet Explorer to be able to type the body of notes. I’m not going to change my browser of choice to use this instead of Google Docs. Yeah, it’s beta and I’m sure they’ll fix this in good time but it would be nice to see Microsoft release (even in beta) a web app which has major functionality like this working in Firefox, Opera, Safari and Internet Explorer, not only the obvious latter. Silverlight?

Bonus points for allowing to create documents in Office applications offline and save them to the Office Live Workspace with this Office Live Add-in. You can learn more about how to use the Office Live Add-in with the tip that Vista users should install the Office Live Workspace Update for Windows Vista for best performance. Reboot required for that last one.

Curious what others think? (will update)
Michael Arrington isn’t impressed: "It’s a half way approach that still requires the installation of Office and other software on local machines."
Leo Blanco loves the competition: "What I love about all these price wars and cutthroat competition is it pushes companies to enhance consumer experience through low prices or better customer service."
David Chartier at ARS Technica: "Office Live Workspace is a well-rounded tool that removes a lot of the complicated and expensive overhead of collaboration."

Shot across the bow of Google or fart in the wind?
If you don’t own or use Office — and keep in mind that a lot of people, particularly business, do — there isn’t much to see here yet. However, for those who work in and around Office it’s nice to see Microsoft make this available. We have one Office suite for our online business while in our offline business we’re using OpenOffice. Will this make me go out and buy another Office license? Not yet. You?

Those who use third party Twitter clients might not have noticed, but I’ve seen several friends mention missing this feature and wondering when or if it would be added back. When the names aren’t hyperlinked, it makes it an extra step or two to get to the person’s Twitter page. Here’s what a message page looks like without the names hyperlinked:

Today, I took some time out and created a tiny little Firefox extension called Twitter Link (TL) which will add those links back. After installing TL here’s the same page with the missing hyperlink back:

This would have been ideally suited for a Greasemonkey script, but I decided to make it standalone for those who don’t use Greasemonkey. Twitter Link v0.1 adds the text “TL” to the status bar so you know it’s enabled. I’ll probably remove that in the next version though. TL will ignore email links and it only works on twitter.com at this time. I thought about leaving it open to work on any site with @name since it ignores linking email@address.com, but could easily enable that in TL v0.2 or later if others wanted it.

What happens when twitter.com adds back the hyperlinks? Just disable or uninstall the plugin from the TOOLS->Add-ons menu. Feel free to leave any comments/feedback about the plugin below.

Whether or not you like serendipitous surfing, SU helps you explore (possibly) unchartered web waters. That’s a good thing.

Google tried to copy, comes up short
For those using the Google Toolbar, in April of this year they released a similar stumbling-type feature as an add-on button by clicking the dice icon which hasn’t caught on yet. Perhaps because there is more to SU than stumbling sites. You can form and/or participate in groups. I started the Blogs ‘R Us group at SU years ago and it now has over 1,400 members. Conversely with the Google toolbar all you can do is bookmark the page.

One strength of the Google Toolbar over SU is the ability to create your own button add-ons, so it would be possible to add more SU social-type features. Would be nice to see StumbleUpon add some sort of API/plugin structure to their toolbar.

History
Back on January 18, 2004 I joined the site StumbleUpon, then a Canadian startup, today owned by eBay. Unlike Skype which has less synergy with eBay, you’d expect StumbleUpon would have more auction-related functionality. Stumble auctions button at least? Not yet. Also missing is the ability to add Stumble-thru to your own site. Matt created a random posts Wordpress plugin but that’s not related to the page you’re on (there’s a good idea for an improved SU-type Wordpress plugin).

After taking nearly four years to thumbs up 2,500 pages, I’m reflecting on how I’m still using Stumbleupon today. Customer (yes, I sent them a few bones for sponsorship, have you?) longevity is one of the greatest compliments for any product/service. I know a lot of webmasters like SU because they get extra traffic from people stumbling their pages, but the wave of webmasters and bloggers selfishly filling SU with too many subpar blog posts has damaged the quality of the service somewhat over the last year. No offense to bloggers who use SU non-selfishly, but I liked using SU better when it wasn’t used by as many bloggers, when it wasn’t part of eBay.

With that said, the good still outweighs the bad with this service. Thank you again, Stumbleupon.

Update 3:45pm PST: After an hour or so of dice button pushing in the Google toolbar I reached this screen:

That’s right, there’s a limit to the number of dice searches in the Google Toolbar. I’ve reached a wall with keywords in StumbleUpon before, but that’s never happened with the “all” category.

G.ho.st looks like a desktop and has similar functionality except one major downside: everything happens in a browser window. While the maximized browser is about as stripped down as one can get, I still feel like I’m working in a box. It just doesn’t feel right to me. What about you?

Other Annoyances include:

- the g.ho.st browser is really a proxy to other websites and thus some sites don’t display properly, including this blog and any other that blocks hotlinking through proxies.
- the URL in the browser window not changing when I clicked on pages which negated the use of copy/paste of the location bar, something I use frequently

Remember FTP in Windows Explorer
One neat thing I discovered while using g.ho.st — or rather rediscovered because I keep forgetting that the functionality is there — is the ease by which you can use FTP in Windows Explorer. Hold down the Microsoft key and press the E key to launch Windows Explorer. Then type:

ftp://YOUR_G.Ho.st_username@g.ho.st

After entering in your G.ho.st password you will be able to drag and drop files from your real desktop to your virtual one. Try this with your web hosting FTP account. It’s a handy way to use a basic FTP editor when you’re on a Windows box without any other kind of FTP, but beware that passwords are passed in plain text. Use web folders instead if you’d like a secure connection.

In summary, G.ho.st reminded me what features I like and use on the desktop and how a virtual desktop doesn’t give me enough reasons to use regularly at this time. Maybe in the future when the quirks are worked out and we can move outside the confines of a browser. I’m curious what readers think of G.ho.st and virtual desktops in general?