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5 replies on “On a nerdier note”
On a nerd note:
Recommend if you use firefox to download/get ABP – Adblock Plus which should remove most if not all your ad’s.
Most sites have mobile version you can access from your web browser, so always try mobile.xxx.com, many times they will not have ad’s or very little graphics.
I would also play with changing your browser type setting, look at refspoof, you might be able to make the world think your browser is a mobile phone and give you a slim line page.
Last, make sure people get the unlock code for Locked phones already on plans before they cancel!
Picked up all the Firefox addons. Refspoof acting like Opera Mini seems like a nice middle ground between Fennec and full-on Firefox. mobile.xxx.com was an interesting example… I’m surprised the blog didn’t flag it as inappropriate! I also updated the phone page to be more specific on a few fronts, so hopefully posterity will benefit.
Paul, greetings!
I’m in love with your blog for 2 reasons:
– your fab Kenyan Internet Phone Cheat Sheet – yay!
– how you were able to lock down one of your post. I’m not a blogger yet, so I will contact you in the future on how to do that (or, you could link me to instructions now).
Welcome to geeky blogosphere of mobile computing (and tethering)! In the coming months, I plan to find +/- contribute +/- create some type of central resource for mobile information that we can all access and share. For now, let me provide some links that might be useful to you and others.
Like you’ve written before, how the Kenya telecomms charge for bandwidth is mysterious and downright shady. I wished they charged based on time online, rather than data metering, that way all these tools would actually save the money.
As noted above, never leave home without AdBlock Plus when using Firefox.
There’s a FF add-in called ImgLikeOpera which does similar image blocking/filtering like Opera–Opera probably does it better.
I like ImgLikeOpera because its button/lever-thingy can sit in either the toolbar or statusbar.
For those who don’t know, User Agent (UA) switching can be a very useful tool for browsing mobile-specific webpages on a computer. Some (many?) mobile webpages are designed with specific mobile browsers. Some won’t even display a page unless the UA is a recognized setting; others will push you to the full Internet version of the page–annoying.
Looking at refspoof, I really like the functions the developer produced; I’ll have to study it more. There’s a veteran FF add-in, User Agent Switcher, which does the same thing but probably without extra functions. There’s also PrefBar which has extra features including a UA switcher.
I have a sh*tload of links to mobile browsing sites, too many to list here. I would love to post them on one portal or site for all to share, but unfortnately there’s just too many to recommend. Anyone have suggestions, let us know. In future contribs, I’ll share the links in posts.
Looking forward to your future posts. You’re gonna love Kenya!
Some of the suggested Firefox plugins are pretty great— I’m back from Opera for the time being. I’ve updated the phone page accordingly. Password protecting blog posts is easy with WordPress: there is an optional password field per post.
Firefox tip (particularly for those non-geeks):
The advice you gave for about:config in Kenyan Internet Phone Cheat Sheet, these would need to be re-entered each time FF is started. To keep the changes permanently, add them to the user.js file in the > FF Profile folder <
Here’s an example of a user.js entry:
user_pref(“accessibility.blockautorefresh”, true);
The “;” is mandatory, at the end of each entry.
Your ‘GreaseMonkey Mowser Images script’ is very sweet, Thank You. There are many other mobile site optimizers, I encourage “the community” to experiment with some of them using your script. To start the race, try skweezer.net (the “Skweezer International” link is where you can configure settings), and PHONifier.