Sorry it took a while to pick this one up on my radar. The folks over at Bloggers Blog had this nice little comment about my comments about Blogebrity’s list.

Blogebrity focuses on the big blogger stars for your benefit. Some bloggers are so unappreciative.

Is it unappreciative to want something different? Is it unappreciative to go against the grain every once in a while? I’ve gone back to say that the Blogebrity blog is good at what it does and more. They focus on the “big names” and every so often toss a bone to an interesting topic outside of the elite circle.

Now taking Blogebrity out of the conversation right now. What I want to see from somebody out there is a focus back onto the ideas rather than the personalities behind the ideas. By only including personalities, I fear we might be leaving a lot of people out there in the dark who have something interesting to say.

I’m not saying Blogebrity has to be the one who does it, they do what they do and they do it well. Just take me as the guy speaking up for all the other nameless bloggers out there.

When running through spellcheck, always pay attention!

Who should be in control of giving Web sites access to things such as JavaScript, Java, and other plugins out there? Most folks would say that they would like the power. Unfortunately, most of the time that decision is not up to you. It is up to the person behind the Web page you are visiting. Well not anymore, as long as you are a Firefox user.

Here is what the author has to say about the NoScript Firefox extension:

Extra protection for your Firefox: NoScript allows JavaScript, Java (and other plugins) only for trusted domains of your choice (e.g. your home-banking web site). This white list based pre-emptive blocking approach prevents exploitation of security vulnerabilities (known and even unknown!) with no loss of functionality.

I’ve got to say I wish this was built into Firefox by default, but the fact that there is an extension for it is nice as well. It is one of the few extensions out there that gives more than just a few new tricks to the Firefox browser interface.

So do you want to be put back in control? Then go download the NoScript Firefox extension.

One of the reasons I remember the first Web hosting start up blog is because it was going right about the same time I started this show. Jonathan Wold, the guy behind the magic then was also one of the first guests that I had right here on the Web Hosting Show. I was really sad to see that the project kind of got dropped, and Jonathan’s quest to start up his own Web hosting company was lost.

Listen to the Rest on WebHostingShow.com!

Some time ago I showed you a Firefox extension that would let you access your Skype information from inside of Firefox. At that time I told you I wanted to see more. Well the folks at Skype must have been listening because they now have a Skype Toolbar for Firefox. How does it look?

Well I have to say as far as toolbars go, it seems like everything is there and in working order. Some of the features include: call and chat to your existing contacts, change your online status, see how much Skype Credit you have left, and automatically send a contact a link to the web page you’re viewing.

With this type of functionality built in, it makes it much easier to use the Skype product in my opinion. There is now one less step you need to take to call folks. Anything that makes it easier for folks to use a program or service is alright in my book.

So give the Skype Toolbar a test drive and let me know what you think.

First I get the attention of Blogebrity this week, and now I get E-mail from the cat people. After reading my post on Lockergnome from Monday about a cat theme for Firefox, I got this from Mike:

Don’t like cats? Why call them, “horrible animals”? That is insulting to anyone who likes cats, and one poor way to conduct oneself in a piece for Lockergnome. I’ve dropped the Web Developer feed. Poor judgement tends to be consistent, so I can’t trust your articles anymore.

Backup soon followed though, as I got this message from Scott:

I wholeheartedly agree with you,and love dogs,but have found myself faced with fanatical cat-lovers when I ventured an opinion similar to yours.Of course,that was “live”,and I suppose that anyone who loves cats may well spend their spare time staring at it while it stares back at them,refusing every overture to come and play with the owner.Until its ready.Dogs are “hes’” and “shes’”,cats are “its’”.I hope I’m right about cat owners and they have no time for the net.Good luck and watch your back.Cats are also backstabbers,don’t forget.lol Scott

Man do I ever love writing for Lockergnome. You tend to meet some of the nicest, oddest and most unique people out there on the Web today.

Nobody really follows PageRank like they used to it seems. It is still fun to watch the little number go up and down though. Thanks to a tool from FuturePagerank.net, you can check to see if a change is in the cards for your Google PageRank future. The entire PageRank system needs to be changed though, it is flawed. It is way too easy to get a high number in Google PageRank thanks to splogs jumping into the mix with comment spam and trackback spam. If you want more search engine tools, go check out SEO Chat. They have a very nice selection of things to play with.

Don’t you hate how confusing an RSS link looks after you click on it? You have XML coming at you from every direction, and to somebody new to the experience, it can be the difference of finding the usability of RSS and not finding it at all. That is where Feedview comes in handy for your Firefox browsing experience.

What Feedview does, is it makes that XML mess a little prettier and a lot less scary to folks who do not know what they are looking at. Here is the author’s own words about what else it can do:

Feedview is a Firefox extension that shows newsfeeds/blogs in a more stylish way. Without the extension Firefox just shows the default xml stylesheet. It also adds the ability to add a livemark (even if the is not set) and the ability to switch article lengths.

Sounds pretty neat hu? This is even handy for me, because I don’t always like to look at the ugly XML code that comes with a RSS feed. So make sure XML experience a littler better and give Feedview a shot in Firefox.

Lets do a little role playing here. Let me be a random company out there in the world, and lets say I release a new product out there into the market. Chances are that not that many people will know about it, because face it – I’m not that well known. Now let us replace me with Google.

It seems like no mater what type of crap rolls out of the Google fun machine, there are some mindless Kool-aid drinkers who will fall in love with it. Do they like it because it is a good product? Do they like it because it changes their lives? No, they like it because Google made it. With the release of Google Base and the re-release of Google Web Accelerator it seems like nearly the entire Internet has their lips firmly locked onto Google’s backside.

Let us all stop comparing Google to Heaven and Microsoft to Hell. Instead of jumping on a brand’s band waggon lets really look at the products and decide if they bring more to the table than anybody else does. If they do, they should get praise, if not then let them know about it.

One reason I do not use multiple browsers unless I have to is the fact that my bookmarks are all in one place. I don’t want to have to sync these bookmarks by hand with every browser that might be on my machine. I use Firefox and I am happy with Firefox. The folks over at Chipmark.com have a new service though that will allow you to back up your bookmarks Online so you can sync them inside Firefox and Internet Explorer via the Web.

Here is what Chipmark.com explains it’s experience as:

Take your bookmarks anywhere! Welcome to chipmark.com, a free online bookmark manager that allows you to access your bookmarks from any Internet-connected computer.

Chipmark allows you to bookmark pages with our easy-to-use browser extensions. Our Firefox extension and Internet Explorer toolbar will fit right into your browser just like your old bookmarks or favorites would. You can also just use chipmark.com, and login to have access to all of your bookmarks from any computer in the world.

Now how is that for a trick? I do wish that Chipmark.com would support other browsers as well, but I am sure that will come in the future. The fact of the mater is I now have a quick and easy way of switching between browsing experiences. Sure, I’ll still stay on Firefox most of the time but what will you do?