DOWNLOAD THE ALL NEW FOG TOOLBAR!!!!!!!!

[Guest]

Well I've put a LOT of effort into this project. I have yet to update the portfolio at Agenda Labs, but that's because I'm going to test drive this baby and see how you guys like it.

I mentioned just a moment ago that I was planning to solve the Gallery situation....well....it hasn't happened yet. I'm still working on it. xD

BUT this puppy will hopefully be the solution to that problem. I'm planning using the capabilies of this toolbar to (hopefully) host a Gallery that everyone can access...without even having to visit FOG!

This toolbar includes a link to the IRC chat room; the Oekaki gallery; the FOG FM widget (directly available from the toolbar itself!); a menu linking to user-specific pages (like your UCP); a pop-up blocker for those that don't have one; a link to the log in page here at FOG so you can instantly tap into your favorite, spooky writing community.

As I said, the toolbar is still in its Beta stage. I'll be making several upgrades shortly (even tonight). I will keep you inform not through this thread....but through the Desktop Alerts feature that comes with it! O! M! G! That's right, whenever you install this baby, you can receive Alerts regarding FOG, the toolbar, or anything else ultra important. For example; let's say that FOG goes down for some reason (more than likely due to Forumotion's pathetic reliability), I will send you an Alert that will pop-up above your system tray (next to the clock) that will inform you of this situation.

Once this toolbar has successfully completed all phazes of the testing; I will turn the controls over to none other than the FOG Administration (don't get too excited you two, its gonna be a while until I say this is cool xD ).

Take this baby for a test drive and let me know what you think here.
You can also use the Contact button when you install the toolbar. This button can be found next to "FOG" at the end by clicking on the drop-down arrow. In the future, I'll replace this with a logo image.

[Guest]

This could be a nice tool for anyone that is interested in having a toolbar. Personally, that isn't really my thing. I only use one toolbar, but I keep it hidden most of the time, and it's the web developer toolbar for Firefox. I'm not sure how you're planning on linking this to a gallery, but at this point we're not really too concerned with the gallery.

Agenda, we appreciate your enthusiasm for FOG. Your projects are fun little additions, but we want to be sure you understand that we prefer not to be responsible for them and their administration.

[Guest]

No prob. It was merely an offer if you wanted to take control; you don't have to take control of this if you prefer not to.

[Kathryn Lacey]

I just want to say that I absolutely love the FoG toolbar. It's made of awesome! May I make a suggestion? Users who download the FoG toolbar are probably all going to already be a part of FoG, so it's a bit unnecessary to have the link to FoG always go to the welcome page. It's also a bit annoying for people like me who use dial-up. You may want to just have it link directly to the homepage: http://www.footstepsofghosts.com/forum.htm

[Guest]

If you click "Log In" you will be redirected to the forum index if you are already logged in. If not, then you can take a guess where you will be transfered to.

But I do understand your suggestion for changing the redirect in the logo. I'll alter that in version 1.3. Thanks!

[Kathryn Lacey]

Oh! I'll keep that in mind. I was always afraid it would log me out if I clicked that while I was already logged in. Thanks for letting me know, and thanks for considering my suggestion. ^^_^^

[Dio the Awesome]

Dj sir, you are made of win and sex.

*Becomes a beta tester*

I'll let you know of anything useful I discover!

[Guest]

Dj sir, you are made of win and sex.

.... WTF??????

[Loki]

How am I just now coming across this?

Downloaded and installed.

[Kathryn Lacey]

I love it! It tells me when I have emails, and those emails are usually FoG notifications, so it works out!

[Gunneh]

I'm thinking that he's actually remaking the toolbar, guys. I could be wrong, though...

[Kathryn Lacey]

Either way, as long as it still has a feature that enables me to know when I get my emails, I'm peachy.

[Guest]

Holy shi-.... I mean.... yes, I'm currently reconstructing it....


lawl

UPDATE:

I've re-opened the toolbar project and I'm currently making some updates. You're toolbar may change a few times. So far I've updated the "FOG Studios" menu to "Music" since FS has been replaced by ALS. The playlist is still available, too.

[Guest]

Okay, I think I've updated the toolbar enough to make it more efficient. New features include a Twitter feed for "FOG News" (I call it the "TANF" or Twitter Action News Feed xD ).

I've relocated the Gametap and Oekaki links to the Tools menu. The IRC button has been updated to reveal the channel itself, instead of the whole page in a poorly configured iframe. You basically have the simplicity of a Firefox add-on, without the confusing set-up. The most recent addition to the toolbar is a cool gadget at the end that looks like a search box. The thing is, that ain't no search box. Its a spell checker, grammar checker, and translator! Paste whatever you want in that box and it will check it as fast Microsoft word and even offer you suggestions and improvements.

This will help alleviate Firefox and IE spell-check failures. I hate it when the spell-checker stops working on me. Now, the only catch with this tool is that it won't check more than 250 characters at the same time. They make you upgrade to remove that limit. So you may have to check one sentence or so at a time. (think of it as Twitter)

Remember, if you don't like the widgets you see, you can customize your toolbar to add and remove widgets (even the default ones). Just click on the tiny arrow next to the FOG logo at the start of the bar. Go to "Toolbar Options" and go to the "Predefined Components" tab. You can hide default components from there. To quickly add your own widgets and content, click on the + button at the very end of your toolbar. That will allow you to choose from an infinitely growing list of widgets (like iPhone apps and such).

Also, don't forget to spread the word about this toolbar. The more installations we have, the more money we generate for FOG. For each five dollar mark we reach, we donate $5 to FOG. Check http://agendalabs.forumotion.com for more information!

[Loki]

Sweet Action!

Kudos on that spell check and dictionary widget, I'm going to be using that a lot. Perhaps you could look into a thesaurus widget to go with the set?

[Kathryn Lacey]

That's really exciting! I'm sure those donations will help Fate with this, too.

How many downloads are equal to five dollars?

[Loki]

By downloading your community toolbar, you generate a reward of a little less than a dollar.

According to the announcement in AL Studios. So I'm guessing 6-7 downloads will bring the $5 reward.

I wonder... Does it only count for downloads after that announcement was made or does the instances it was downloaded beforehand count?

[Kathryn Lacey]

Well, the twitter toolbar announcement said we have twelve toolbar installations and $3.78 earned. If it's a little less than a dollar per download, I'm assuming that this started only a short while ago.

[Loki]

Huh... well in that case the "little" part in "a little less than a dollar" had a good amount of embellishment to it.

I'm calculating 31.5 cents per download in that case, meaning FoG gets $5 per ever 15.873 downloads.

[Guest]

Sorry about my wording, I didn't think about what I was typing and the translation it would come out to when read. XD

In the beginning, after I released the toolbar (the date of the first post in this thread), Conduit told me that I had generated x amount of money and that if I reached a certain point I could "cash out" and take that as profit. I really had no intention of generating a personal profit from a toolbar. For one, that eat away at my heart, knowing that I was basically scamming people and making easy money. That's dishonest and heartless.

When the toolbar's popularity fell (from the dwindling numbers it was at), I gave up on it. But when I remembered only a little while ago that Forumotion offered every forum an easy donation page (Fate has the link disabled on FOG, but I know the URL), I got the idea to begin a fundraising campaign out of the blue. I figured that if I could get enough users using this toolbar (a toolbar that is meant for the users of FOG) and generate a small income, I could use that income for FOG.

I have no interest in making money through Conduit right now. I have a job and I'm joining the Air Force in a few months. So I'm perfectly as it is. I think its best to relay whatever income is made off of the toolbar to Fate so she can continue to expand FOG.

Loki did the math right and Kathryn was correct that the $5 started generating from the income already earned from the first few downloads.

[Loki]

Loki did the math right

Of course I did the math right. It's what I do.

[HawktheThird]

This seems pretty cool, but does this work with Chrome?

Oh, and Loki, great sig.

[Kathryn Lacey]

I downloaded it again! Now that I have my fancy laptop with it's fancy DSL, I needed the toolbar again.

This is actually the third time I've had to install it, but it's the first time on this computer!

[Guest]

@Kathryn: That's alright, the more you download it the more money you generate for FOG!

@HawktheThird: I wish it did, but unfortunately, no. The toolbar is available instantly for IE and Firefox. Separate download instructions are available for Safari. Until Chrome allows for toolbars to be available for their browser header, Conduit it unable to create a proper installation file.

Total money generated so far: $4.35! Keep it up! Spread the word!

{EDIT}

After going back and checking Loki's math wizardry, I noticed a missing variable. It appears that variable "Y" is also a vital factor of this equation and that "y = user activity". Since the last installation we've lost 2 active users.

Further more, it appears that the day I created the toolbar, I had 30 days of a "promotion bonus" from Conduit, in which I would receive a greater PPI rate than normal. (PPI = Pay Per Install). After reading a chart of my balance history, it appears that our PPI rate as of the last few installations is $0.19. My PPI during the promotion ranged anywhere around $0.45 to $0.58; a very noticeable difference. The range of the PPI's is calculated by our missing y variable (activity). The more active our users are with the toolbar, the money that comes pouring in. Simply clicking a few buttons every day helps. Check your e-mail with it; listen to the music provided; JUMP IN THE IRC CHANNEL (another thing we are really urging your guys to participate in *cough* ).

As you can see, each click is tracked and sent to my super secret doomsday panel.

Hope that helps explain the flaw in our predicted outcome.

[Loki]

I guess that means that I'll have to start remembering to press the "FoG" button rather than type "foot" followed by the down arrow and enter into my browser. Obviously the former is much quicker, but we all know that old habits die hard.

[Kathryn Lacey]

I bet one of those inactive toolbar users was my first download of it. Actually, I may have had to download the toolbar four times in total, so I could be both of those.

At least this one will remain active. ^^_^^

[Weiss]

Do believe there's an issue with the translation feature. I typed in the Japanese term "konbanwa" to see what would happen. Theoretically, it should have come up with, "Good evening," since that's the correct meaning. Alternatively, it might have stated that no entry could be found for that term.

What did it do?

The application disappeared from the toolbar, along with the radio application. I had to refresh the toolbar from the drop down menu next to the "Footsteps of Ghosts" button to bring the applications back.

On that note, I love the radio application. 1.FM (Dance) has some nifty music for just chilling and enjoying a decent beat.

Edit: Okay, I find this pretty humorous. I went to check out the widgets and I saw the one that includes the translator and such in the list. The description says that it's a grammer checker! Yes, that's right. It checks your grammer. I don't know about you guys, but I definitely trust that widget to correct my grammer - whatever that is.

[Guest]

Haha! Great find Weiss! Many of those widgets are user-created (not "pro-created"), so there will be some kinks here and there. And I completely see what you mean about the disappearing act it performed for you. Conduit's biggest aggravation is that, sometimes, whenever I try to release an update, it acts like the changes I made never happened... the wonders of JavaScript.

Oh and online translators are never 100% accurate. Especially since Japanese and the Oriental languages have to be translated, first, into Latin before they can be translated into English. Oriental languages are what "experts" consider an "exact language". Meaning, that translating Japanese directly into English would be disastrous. If one word in Japanese is actually two words in English, then that one word in Japanese more than likely has multiple meanings. Like other Oriental languages, it is properly translated when you match it to the context of what is being said.

Its much like us (the English-speaking folk of the west) saying the three words "there", "their", and "they're". To the human ear they sound the same. We must first listen to the entirety of what's being said before we can determine which word is being used.

{EDIT}

Further improvements have been made. I've compacted the IRC widget into the "Tools" function, changed out the icons and compacted the UCP links into the new "Quick Links" menu. I also found that the Caligo Character Sheet link defaulted to my Caligo profile.... hehe.... so I corrected that to default to the user that is logged in on the computer. If you are logged off, then it will ask that you log in because it defaults to "rpg_sheet_edit.forum"; thus, requiring log in credentials.

Another improvement lies in the Music menu (again). I've relocated the playlist widget one level deeper into the menu and swapped the icon. Below the widget (the reason for the new menu level) is a link to the Playlist Requests page at Agenda Labs. If you want to request more tracks be added to the playlist, then you may do so using that page (we're currently constructing the request survey and optimizing it for JavaScript [so its a fancy pop-up over your browser and fades the background]).

The final improvement for this new version is the addition of a default Facebook log in button. Recognize the familiar blue icon? You can now post content to your "wall" using that widget and do much more with it! You almost never have to visit Facebook because it sends Friends Requests and Comment notifications directly to your desktop as long as the browser is still processing (in other words, you can have it minimized and not use it for days and it will still send you alerts). The alerts will be similar to the FOG Alerts that we send you every-so-often.

I'm currently debating on whether or not to remove the "grammer" checker and translator. To me, it looks as though it takes up too much space and its not exactly aligned right compared to the other content on the bar. What do you guys think? Shall it stay or go?

[Weiss]

Might as well kick it. It doesn't function optimally, so it will create more problems than it solves, in my opinion. I purposely tried using Japanese because Japanese is such a difficult language to translate. If a translator can't do something that simple, I don't see its usefulness. In addition, it can only spelling- and grammar-check small blocks of text at a time, so that function has limited usefulness. Besides, I can't say I trust a grammar and spelling checker made by someone who misspells "grammar" in the first place...

[Bird of Hermes]

Besides, I can't say I trust a grammar and spelling checker made by someone who misspells "grammar" in the first place...

That's just sad...