This bookmarklet is a slightly modified version of Lifehacker's GMailThis bookmarklet. I tweaked the code by renaming some of the variables and re-writing the final output. The code is not my own it has only been tweaked slightly to work with Google Bookmarks rather than Google Mail.

After I mentioned Google Bookmarks yesterday I sat down and started bookmarking a handful of sites to be part of today's "To Do" list. While using the bookmarklet, made available by Google, I started to get annoyed by the need to constantly tab around to enter data. I was already familiar with Lifehackers GMailThis bookmarklet but because I'm not interested in bookmarking to my GMail account it didn't really appeal to me - except for part of it's "supercharged" feature. Ultimately I decided to tweak the GMailThis bookmark to fit my own needs.
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Every once in awhile I re-learn something I already knew and am forced to slap myself in the forehead. Earlier today I wrote a short article on creating a print.css file for your website or blog. This is kind of a quick partner post for those folks who are forced to deal with sites that don't offer up a good alternate stylesheet for printing purposes.

As I said - this is something I knew but forgot.

Did you know you can highlight text on a webpage and then only print that text without copying and pasting it? Simply highlight a block of code and then click file->print. About partway down the screen you'll be shown a dialog which gives you the choice of printing the whole document, a range of pages or simply the selection. The "selection" option will only be available if you've already highlighted text.

This is ideal for when you don't want to print a header, a sidebar, comments or even partial blocks of text. It works in both Firefox and IE - I don't know about any other browsers though.

One thing I love about Firefox is the fact that so many things seem to just happen. I see something, in this case it was a URL that was only written out in text (no hyper link,) and I thought: "Wouldn't it be great if I could just highlight it and go?"

Turns out you can - sort of. If you're browsing around a site and find a text link only available in text format ( bill2me.com ) highlight it and then drag it to the address bar. Just hit enter and away you go. If you're using the bookmarks toolbar you also have the option of dragging the highlighted text there to get an instant bookmark for later inspection.

As an added bonus you can copy a URL out of a text document, swap to Firefox and bookmark the link just by right-clicking on your bookmarks toolbar and selecting paste.

I'm still on the fence with DayTipper - mainly because there are only two types of tips that seem to get submitted; the incredibly worthless and the incredibly usefull.  Unfortunately the first makes up about 90% of the submissions and, more often then not, I read through and go ... "Well duh!"

Today I noticed a decent exception that was worth sharing.   Ann from Austin TX suggests using 1Gallon plastic bags to make blocks of ice.

I can't tell you how many times I've had to run to the local Honey Farms for bags of ice on party days.  While they're certainly essential for mixed drinks this tip can shave a few bags off your trip.

Rather than buying ice for your cooler simply fill up a few ziplock bags and throw them in the freezer.  When frozen they're ready for use - leave a little space in the bag and they may even stay self contained making your cooler that much easier to clean up.  Great tip, definitely something I'll keep in mind next time we're entertaining.

As I mentioned previously Yahoo! Pipes has a great deal of potential. The more you use the service the more you begin to see what can be done with it. Probably the most obvious use that jumps to mind (in fact its mentioned in the official description for the service) is mixing several feeds into one. While I wouldn't necessarily do this to many of my "must read" feeds, it certainly does make managing some of my less important ones easier.

The first mashup I created was designed to take a series of comic strips and mix them down into one feed. Besides simply showing the comics I wanted I also wanted to remove any of the "news" posts that tend to get mixed in. In this post I wanted to talk a bit about how I created the mashup and filter that accomplished this.

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