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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/10/gcal_gmail.jpg” height=”150″ width=”179″ /Gmail has added support for sidebar gadgets to its experimental Labs section, allowing users to add an agenda view of Google Calendar, a short list of recent Google Docs files, and any web-based gadgets using a href=”http://incubator.apache.org/shindig/#tab-home”Apache’s Shindig standard/a to the left-hand sidebar. As the developers themselves note, adding outside gadgets isn’t exactly user-friendly, but then again, adding too many gadgets could lead to some page-loading slowdown. You can enable the GCal, Docs, and external gadget support in the beaker-icon Labs menu of Gmail. While you’re in there, here’s a few ways to make Gmail gadgets more convenient./p pullistrongMove Labels and Chat to the right-hand side:/strong Enable the “Right-side labels” and “Right-side chat” features in the Labs section to move those sometimes lengthy boxes over and make room for your new gadgets./lilistrongManually re-order your left sidebar:/strong Turn on “Navbar drag and drop” in Labs, and you can drag any of your widgets up and down in your left-hand sidebar. Combined with the right-side options above, you can place your gadgets pretty much anywhere you’d like. You’ll likely want to turn off this feature when you’re done, though, both for JavaScript speed and to prevent accidental re-ordering./lilistrongTurn off secure (https) access, if needed:/strong The developers say that some external widgets might not work so hot if you’re accessing Gmail through a secure connection, the kind that puts httpstrongs/strong: in your address bar. That might be a deal-breaker for some, but Google’s own widgets seemed to work fine in our own test./lilistrongFind and share your Shindig gadgets:/strong Enable “Add any gadget by URL” in Labs, and your Settings section gets a new “Gadgets” header with a simple URL entry box. Google has only shared one that definitely worksmdash;a version of their YouTube scroller, available by pasting in codehttp://www.google.com/ig/modules/youtube_videos.xml/codemdash;but says you can add more by “pasting in the URL of (a gadget’s) XML spec file.” Any of our readers savvy with extensible markup language are welcome to post their own gadget findings in the comments./li/ul/p div class=”related”a href=”http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-calendar-and-docs-gadgets.html”New in Labs: Calendar and Docs gadgets/a [Official Gmail Blog]/div br style=”clear: both;”/
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If you’ve turned your $60 router into a user-friendly super-router with open-source firmware Tomato, you already know that Tomato can boost your Wi-Fi signal, track bandwidth usage, and set Quality of Service rules with ease. But if you’re a big fan of Adblock Plus—the most popular Firefox extension among Lifehacker readers—you can save yourself an extension installation and universally block ads across your entire home network by adding a custom script to your Tomato firmware. Here’s how it works:

There are several ad-blocking scripts available that could work, but the one I’m using comes from this forum post. Thanks Tad!

Installation

1. Open the Tomato Admin Scripts interface
You’ll need to login with the user name and password you set in our instructions for installing Tomato. Once you’re logged in, make sure to click on the WAN Up tab.

2. Copy the ad-block script to Tomato
I’d recommend going directly to the source, since the author of the script updates it regularly in the top post. As of this writing, the script looks like this:

You should paste the script into the blank text area in the WAN Up tab we navigated to above.

3. Save the script by clicking the Save button.

4. Reboot your router to enable the script.

That’s all there is to it. Next time you visit a web site, you should notice a conspicuous lack of ads. The same should be true from any computer, as long as its connected to your Tomato router.

There are some unfortunate bits and pieces about this method versus the Adblock extension that you might want to take into consideration before setting it up on your router. First, if you want to whitelist a site, you have to manually edit the script by changing the following section:

…replacing aa.com with the site you wanted to whitelist. Keep in mind that whitelisting does not work for whitelisting all ads on a specific site—instead, if you’re having trouble opening a site you want to look at because it’s on a blacklist, whitelisting that site will let you access that one specific site. As someone who makes a living writing for an ad-supported web site, I normally encourage people to allow ads on sites they care about. Unfortunately the script doesn’t allow you to whitelist all ads on specific sites. (It may be possible, though, so if you know how to go about doing so, I’d love to hear it in the comments!)

I am aware that many of you rely on ad-blocking scripts or extensions to speed up your slow internet, (in fact, we’ve recommended that you do as much to survive a slow internet connection), and others of you just hate dealing with the eyesore that flashy ads can cause.

So while I still heartily encourage supporting sites you frequent, this simple script makes setting up a universal ad-block on your home network a breeze. If you’ve used a similar method to block ads across your network, let’s hear about it in the comments.

Software engineer and Lifehacker reader William Bartholomew loves previously mentioned Firefox extension Ubiquity, but would prefer it were a bit more… well, ubiquitous.

One of the biggest limitations I see is that its keyboard shortcut is only available from within Firefox; I really want to be able to invoke it from whatever application I’m currently using.

To address this issue, Bartholomew created a small program that creates a global shortcut that invokes Ubiquity no matter what application you’re using. It’s all written in a few lines of AutoHotkey, so keep reading for a closer look at the code, a link to download the executable, and a reminder of exactly what Ubiquity brings to your Firefox installation.

First, if you need a quick refresher on what Ubiquity can do for you, check out the screencast below:

In addition to the features shown in the video above, Ubiquity has also seen integration with popular to-do list manager Remember the Milk. Now let’s take a look at how the AutoHotkey script works. (If you’re not interested in the code, just grab the download here and be on your way.)

Now let’s take a look at the code:

As you can see, this works very similarly to TabsLock, the application that switches to or opens Chrome or Firefox whenever you tap you Caps Lock key. The difference: Instead of opening a new tab once Firefox is active, this script invokes Ubiquity.

If you wanted to change your keyboard shortcuts—whether you’ve set a different shortcut to invoke Ubiquity from Firefox or you’d prefer a different gloabl shortcut—you can do that directly in the script.

Wow. Just wow. Call me a cultural elitist, but who considers it socially acceptable to hang a glowing pair of balls from your rear bumper? I don’t care if they’re connected to your brake lighting, they’re just wrong. I never thought it possible for LEDs to be horrifically misappropriated, but BrakeNutz just rewrote the script on that. Check out the video over on Jalopnik. [BrakeNutz via Jalopnik]