This script now integrates properly with both GMail and Google Reader. Reinstall and enjoy 🙂

“What?” you say, “You don’t use Facebook, Stephen, you’re so cool and geeky!” Ah, but unfortunately not all of my friends are, and I have been drawn in to the service. Mind you, I don’t spend hours reading the profiles of people I don’t know 😉 I do use it, however.

There’s one thing I’ve always hated about Facebook — the notifications system. Many too many emails flooding my inbox about what is happening, either that or I have to check the site regularly. No RSS on the things you actually want notifications of. Worst of all messages, the one thing you REALLY need notification of, won’t even send you an email.

The ‘official’ solution is to install the Facebook toolbar. I tried it, it’s nice, but I don’t use the service enough to warrant that screen real-estate OR that memory usage.

My solution is a Greasemonkey script. It integrates notifications of messages, group invites, event invites, and friend requests into the side of your GMail view. Install the script, go to GMail, click the Facebook logo and log in. For best results, check the ‘remember me’ checkbox (funny, you can’t have it remember you for logging in to the site, but for a third-party script you can…). Go back to your GMail and click the link that appeared where the Facebook logo used to be. Voila. If you checked the box, next time you go to GMail it should just display the notifications without intervention from yourself.

Die email notifications!

Userscripts.org entry

School is soon coming to an end for me (time to find a job!), which means somewhat more time to help all of you out.  I have had support requests sitting around, some over a month, in my GMail box waiting for me to have time.  In the last week and a half I have dealt with most of them.  However I have discovered that this can cause an organisation nightmare, trying to remember what I have and have not done.  So I have transferred remaining support requests to a ticket system, kind of like Bugzilla, but it’s Trac-powered.

If  you wrote me and your request is not in the system, please add it.  Please do not add things (bugs/feature requests) that are already there.  I DO get notified by email when someone adds a ticket or comment.  Please DO use this for bug reporting / support requests whenever possible in the future 🙂  Please remember, however, that anything posted there is public and thus private things (ie, your template) should likely be sent by email and not attached 🙂

I have updated my Asynchronous Peek-a-boo Comments. I have added the ability to limit the number of comments displayed (requested by kca) and fixed the Jose problem.

I have re-enabled JScripts, at least for now… the URLs in the comments here for alternates also work. We’ll see what happens. I may delete the script for my old comment form hack since it is a big bandwidth user…

This is unfortunate because it affects a great many of my (and other’s!) Blogger hacks. Four of my Ning sites have been taken offline for bandwidth usage. Some of you have written me about this. Here is the message I got from Ning just today:

Hi Singpolyma,

We wanted to get in touch because several of your sites that are being
used to host scripts or to transfer blogger profiles have exceeded
projected traffic quotas for both inbound and outbound connections.

These sites are:

bloggercomments
jscripts
googlerelated
singpolymaplay

Please subscribe to the extra bandwidth premium service for these
applications to maintain their current level of service.

I’m surprised that so many are using googlerelated (Edit: the problem was storage space and that app is now online again), but the others are no shock. The service needed to up each is $9.95 US per month. I will thus be slowly moving some of these scripts (the much-used ones from singpolymaplay and the entire JScripts app) to here at singpolyma.net. Hopefully bandwidth will not be a problem here. The Blogger Recent Comments app is outdated, but if there are any who want it back I’m gonna need cash to re-enable it.

If any of your hacks or sites are broken, I apologise, I will try to resolve this ASAP. Donations (see sidebar) would definately speed this process, but I’m not gonna beg for money 😉 I’ll get it done in time.

Some of you have been advantaged by the Plugoo widget in my sidebar that lets you chat with me.  If I am offline it emails me.  There is one problem with this — many of you do not leave your email address.  If I cannot contact you, how can I answer the question?  To answer some of the recent unsigned queries:

My translate widget is by a friend, Trevor Creech.  See my credits.

Someone is having trouble with peek-a-boo widgets.  Most of those have recently been updated — try the new versions and if it still doesn’t work contact me and tell me which one you’re using and how to contact you