TechLifeWeb

I’ve been spending more of my on-line time on Google+.  I love it because people share great things and it is really easy to add new great people to follow.

One wish I have is to have it be even easier to share things that I find around the web. Google has made it easy for sites to add a +1 button but it isn’t exactly easy to share content. It isn’t to copy a URL and paste it into Google+ but come on, shouldn’t computers help us out here?

To that end, I have put together this bookmarklet to make sharing easier.

If you aren’t familiar with bookmarklets, they are links you add to your browser’s Bookmarks Toolbar. The idea is that you save the link below to your bookmark bar or favorites. Then when you are out on the web and want to share a page with your Google+ followers, you click the link in your bookmarks and it will grab the title and URL of your page, open a new window and let you compose a post to Google+.

Is it perfect? The good part is that it should work just fine whether you use Chrome, Firefox or even IE. Probably others too but I haven’t tested it. The caveat is that it uses the mobile version of Google+ which if you want to post publicly is easy but takes an extra step if you want to just post to some of your Circles.

How to get the bookmarklet

First be sure that your Bookmarks bar is turned on (see below if not)

Drag this link: Share to G+ up to your Bookmarks Toolbar.

UPDATE 29OCT11: New version! See the update at the end of this post.

A note about Bookmarklets in Chrome: Seems there is a bug in Google Chrome that doesn’t automatically set the title of a bookmarklet so you just get the default icon. The icon will work just fine but if you want a title next to it so you remember what the link does, simply right-click on the icon in your bookmark bar and click edit. Add a name like “Share to G+” (without the quotes) and then click OK. Update 29oct11: Since the original post, Google has fixed this issue.

How to turn on the bookmark bar in various browsers
To turn on the Bookmark Bar in Chrome:

• Click the wrench icon on the browser toolbar.
• Select Bookmarks.
• Select Always show bookmarks bar.
• (or ctrl+shift+B)

To turn on the Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox:

• On the menu bar, click View, select Toolbars, and then select Bookmarks Toolbar.

To turn on the Links bar in IE:

• On the menu bar, click View, select Toolbars, and then select Links.
• Note: in IE, it might be easier for you to right-click on the link above and then select ‘Add to Favorites’. Then in the dialog that pops up, choose the links folder.

Usage
When you are on a page and you click the bookmarklet you will see this screen. See the notes on it for more information:

UPDATE 29OCT11: New version does a +1 and Share using the interface well are all used to in Google+! Now your shares don’t look like they are coming from the mobile interface. Drag this one to your toolbar:
+Share on G+

There are some web sites out there that make things hard to read. I don’t mean for quick browsing. Most of us who have been using the web for any length of time have trained ourselves to get the gestalt of a page fairly quickly. I mean for time when you really want to read an news or other type of long article.

Over at arc90 they have a new lab experiment where they have created a bookmarklet that you install easily in your browser. Then, when surfing to a page that you want to read for a while, you click the bookmarklet and instantly the page changes to a much more readable format.

Here is a quick video they put together to visually explain what they are doing.

Readability : An Arc90 Lab Experiment from Arc90 on Vimeo.

You can get the bookmarklet here: Readability

Sites that I found interesting for December 11th 2008 through December 19th 2008:

• Access more memory, even on a 32-bit system – No matter how much memory you have in your PC, you may not be getting the most out of your installed RAM.
• Form Bookmarklets – Makes the browser ignore web site requests to not remember passwords.

  Some sites, including many banks and a few other sites such as Yahoo Mail and Microsoft Passport, tell browsers not to remember passwords for visitors using autocomplete="off". This bookmarklet makes the browser ignore autocomplete="off" temporarily, allowing you to save passwords even on sites that use autocomplete="off".

• Oppo Readies Universal Blu-ray Player – Value video products manufacturer Oppo Digital said it is preparing to enter the Blu-ray Disc player category in a big way, with a fully featured “universal” unit supporting, DVD video, DVD-Audio, and SACD, in addition to Blu-ray Discs with up to 1080p/24Hz output.

Bookmarklets are links you add to your browser’s Bookmarks Toolbar. In this case, it gives you a button to easily save pages to Yahoo’s Delicious service. Here is an illustration if you haven’t used one before:

This is very handy in Google Chrome since we don’t have add-ons or extensions. At least not yet.

Here is how to create the bookmarklet in your Google Chrome browser:

Make sure the “Bookmarks Bar” is visible. If it is not, go to the configuration menu by clicking the wrench icon in the upper right and then check ‘Always show bookmarks bar’. (Hint: Ctrl+B toggles the bookmarks bar on and off)

Drag this link: Bookmark on Delicious up to your Bookmarks Toolbar similar to how it is shown above.

You are done! Happy bookmarking.