David Cancel’s Web Beacon Finder

(Via David’s blog)
David Cancel’s written a Greasemonkey script which alerts you to the various web beacons / tracking bugs used on the websites you visit.

Go here to get it.

Not sure I can surf with this enabled all the time, given the number of sites using these various services - but it is certainly interesting to try it out for a while and see how common they are.

Is that a weave, or your natural hair?

Mozilla just (on 12/23, while I was off celebrating Lille julaften) launched another project on Mozilla Labs. This one’s called Weave, and it represents Mozilla’s entry into the data portability discussion.

(I’m sure they meant weave as in the “weaving the web” reference - but I can’t but help think about hair weaves, and the artificial extension of the browser beyond its natural domain - a little irony in the name itself? Not that there’s anything wrong with wearing a weave, mind you.)

News Coverage:

• Mozilla Weave: More Servers for your browser (ajaxian)
• Hands on with Mozilla Weave: Personalize your own cloud (ars technica, with screenshots)
• Mozilla launches Desktop Integration Tool for Firefox (Mashable)
• Mozilla Weaves Web Platform for User Data (ReadWriteWeb)
• Mozilla Weave Helps Us Move to the Cloud (Web Worker Daily)
• Mozilla floats Weave as Web platform (Between the Lines at ZDNet)
• Mozilla Weaves Services (GigaOM)

And the original announcement itself: Introducing Weave (Mozilla Labs).

In that announcement, Mozilla Labs argues that:

Web browsers like Firefox can and should do more to broker rich experiences while increasing user control over their data and personal information.

The initial release, which requires a Firefox 3b2pre or later build, lets the user synchronize browser history and bookmarks with data storage in the cloud.
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Use your Long Tail Facebook Apps

Thanks to Dion Almaer using more than six apps on facebook is again possible.

Well, possible is an overstatement - but I tended to forget the ones which fell below the virtual fold imposed by Facebook showing only six by default.

Dion’s aptly named Greasemonkey script to expand Facebook left bar effectively clicks the “more” button under your applications in the leftmost column on Facebook, showing you all of your installed applications.

What gets pushed further down the page, of course, is advertising - in this case the “Facebook flyer” which I for one can do without.

Of course, you have to be running Firefox and have Greasemonkey installed, but you should have both of those things anyway.

Thanks Dion for a nifty quick hack.