By Jin Nan Goto
One of the Great advantages Mozilla Firefox has are all the plug-ins and extensions. Firefox extensions and plug-ins can greatly enhance its abilities. TableTools is a nice gem that solves a big problem with HTML tables. It is difficult to extract the table from the webpage without breaking the table. If you cut and paste a table into Mircosoft Excel, the table will all be stuffed within a single cell. Moving tables from the web to a spreadsheet application is a very time consuming process.
TableTools is a Firefox Extension that gives you greater abilities to manipulate data stored in tables on the Web. Currently in version 0.26, You can sort and run filters on the data from within the browser. While the filters and sorting abilities by themselves can be useful, What Is really great about TableTools is that it lets you quickly and easily copy tables from the web into your favorite spreadsheet application. Simply copy the contents of the table as tab-delimited text (right click anywhere on the table and select “copy as Tab-delimited” from the menu item “Other table operations”) and then you can paste the copied data into a spreadsheet for use offline. You can get TableTools at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2637
By Jin Nan Goto
One real annoyance of modern technology may not be around much longer. The days when the types of power cables between different handsets varied widely are numbered. The GSMA announced a agreement between 17 cell phone companies and several major handset makers (LG, Motorola, Samsung, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson) which will work to make Micro-USB the standard connector type for Cell phones. This is a very welcome change (although one that will probably cost the Cell phone companies a good chuck of lost revenue), and micro USB is a very good choice as it can be used to transfer power and data. Since the cables can be reused with other phones and devices, consumers will spend less money on chargers and less of these cables will be sent off to landfills.
Mini and Micro USB chargers are already widely used in for handsets. Motorola, RIM (makers of Blackberry), and HTC (uses a mini USB connector for the G1). China already mandated that all cell phones in China be able to charge through USB. In fact, whenever I buy a cell phone I go out of my way to makes sure that it can be charged by USB. However many of these phones use an older USB specification “Mini USB” and not “Micro USB” which is the new proposed standard. Meaning, I’ll need to buy at least one more car charger.
External Links
CNET
WSJ Online
