One Hand Clapping

Here is a short breakdown of the functionality on my tool bar, from left to right. For some reason WordPress compresses the size of the image, so open the page again, right click on the image and select ‘view image’ to see it in real size, if you do not use the toolbar already:

The tool bar contains the following elements, from left to right:

1. Google search box.
2. Top stories and search for news articles using Google News.
3. Web history – lists your searches and other history items. A nice memory jogger, on the one hand, on the other a bit scary.
4. Add more toolbar buttons – links to other Google services, such as Orkut, and to other sites (Digg, Facebook, etc.)
5. Access to Gmail accounts – list of recent thread titles, and open inbox in a web page.
6. Twitter link for posting the open web page on twitter.
7. Share the current page with friends through email or social networking services.
8. Sidewiki – “contribute and read helpful information on any web page” – see below for more.
9. Bookmark the current page
10. Google bookmarks.
11. PageRank information – cached snapshot, similar pages and backward links.
12. Spell checker in many languages, for use when filling web forms.
13. Google toolbar setting manager.
14. Gmail login, toolbar synchronization and web history.

Every feature is useful and valuable, but to me the most fascinating function is sidewiki – which I use as a side blog, side letter to the editor, side notepad, etc.

When I find a web page worth commenting on, I use sidewiki to add comments and content to it, without having to wait for approval by the site owner or newspaper editor. This is a heck of a lot better than adding an entry on my blog, which requires introducing the topic, writing, fact checking, spell checking, reviewing and editing, and which, quite frankly, nobody reads anyway. With sidewiki, I can just add my comments, clarifications or pearls of wisdom, without the need to write a stand-alone article. And I probably have a better chance of being read by other sidewiki users who read the same page.

Brilliant. Thank you Google!

I am probably a few years late to the Google Toolbar party, but having just read about it in a book about SEO, I figured why not give it a try. The book, Search Engine Optimization for Dummies, will supposedly make use of the tool in different ways – I will burn that bridge when I get to it – but in the meantime, I am enjoying one particular feature of the toolbar – SideWiki.

Sidewiki allows me to add comments to web pages I read, and share them with others through Twitter, Facebook, or Blogger. This is a VERY NICE FEATURE, for those of us who read a page, have something to say, but do not wish to waste it on their own site, which nobody reads anyway, or spend the time to create, edit and publish a slog (error/pun intended) entry of their own. Genius!

So if you have not done so already, download the toolbar. Add your two cents to interesting pages, and have instant access to the comments of others. Without having to create or manage a blog or a wiki yourself.

I shot a short video at a butterfly farm, in San Joaquin de Flores, Heredia, Costa Rica. You can watch it on You Tube, here!

The video needed some trimming, which I did with Avidemux. Not a problem. Saved it, played it, worked great. Except for the sound – the camera has a rather poor microphone, and it picked up conversations that were going on, in addition the fluttering and chirping of the birds outside.

Luckily, I was advised to use mencoder, by friends in South Florida: mencoder -ovc copy -nosound InputFileName -o OutputFileName

With a single line of text, a silent copy was made. A few minutes later, the whole world could share the video with me, courtesy of YouTube.