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Not too long ago, Amazon released Elasticfox, a Firefox extension to help manage EC2 instances. We really liked the idea of a GUI for managing EC2, but the idea of having it integrate with our browser and slow down our browsing made little sense. Luckily, Mozilla’s XULRunner project makes it easy to turn projects like these into standalone applications, and the code for Elasticfox proved relatively easy to add to.

application.ini

XULRunner needs a bit more metadata than Firefox. The first file needed is called application.ini. It lives in the root folder of the extension code (where install.rdf goes for Firefox extensions) and contains information such as vendor name, version, and supported Gecko versions. Here is an example for use with Elasticfox:


[App]
Vendor=Amazon
Name=Elasticfox
Version=1.0
BuildID=20080109
Copyright=Copyright (c) 2007 Amazon
ID=elasticfox@amazon.com


[Gecko]
MinVersion=1.8
MaxVersion=1.9.0.*


prefs.js

XULRunner also needs some default preferences set, so that it knows what window to open and what Gecko features to enable. The file for this is called prefs.js and lives in defaults/preferences. Here is some example code for use with Elasticfox:

pref("toolkit.defaultChromeURI", "chrome://ec2ui/content/ec2ui_main_window.xul");
pref("signon.rememberSignons", true);
pref("signon.expireMasterPassword", false);
pref("signon.SignonFileName", "signons.txt");


package.sh

Finally, these new files have to be added to the XPI. In Elasticfox, this means replacing the second-to-last line of package.sh with the following:

cp -rvf defaults/ build/
pushd build && zip -9 ../build/ec2ui.xpi * -x *.sh -x project -x ec2ui.rdf -x *~ && zip -r9 ../build/ec2ui.xpi chrome/*.jar && zip -r9 ../build/ec2ui.xpi defaults/* && zip -r9 ../build/ec2ui.xpi defaults/preferences/* && popd


Setting up XULRunner

Mozilla has good instructions on installing XULRunner on various platforms (Linux, Mac OS, Windows). Once it is installed you have to run:

xulrunner --install-app ec2ui.xpi

This will create an executable in a platform-specific location that you can just run. (For more information about paths used, see the Documentation)

Note that these modifications do not affect the ability of the XPI to be used as a Firefox extension.

Elasticfox Installer.exe

Back in early 2007, overwhelmed by our feed readers we envisioned a service that would address RSS information overload. In the spring, we brainstormed, we researched, and we started working on the code. By the summer, we were lucky to recruit an amazing beta team, and had a spectacular launch. This past fall we scaled our systems to keep up with demand, engaged with numerous partners, and worked on building a top-notch team - what a year!

And 2008 is only going to get better. We’re happy to announce today that AideRSS has closed a financing round with Tech Capital Partners and a group of Canadian angel investors. This funding will provide us with resources to continue to grow and develop leadership in the fast-accelerating RSS market and deliver the leading tools and services needed to help increase your personal productivity. We’re extremely excited to have been able to assemble such an amazing team of investors and mentors!

Both Marshall Kirpatrick from ReadWriteWeb and Jeff Nolan from Newsgator along with many others have identified RSS as one of the hottest trends for 2008 and a growing source of information overload. Attention, relevancy, and prioritization are, without a doubt, all areas that will see a lot of innovation this year, and our team is going to be right at the forefront of these initiatives. Talk about an exciting challenge!

Keep an eye on our blog for more great announcements coming up - partnerships, collaboration, new features. It’s going to be a fun and a busy year ahead!

Before we could even announce the pool and the grand prize for the persistence to get into, and out of the remote AideRSS headquarters in the winter season, Jeff decided to take the matters into his own hands. A quick survey of the roads to our premises shows a number of Mini skids, and power slides up the hills! See for yourself…

All good fun and nothing a warm cup of coffee can’t fix. This is going to be one fun winter!

I’m writing this as the Defrag conference is winding down. It’s been one of the more interesting conferences I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending for a couple of reasons. First the subject matter is loosely clustered around the notion of the Implicit Web which gives lots of wiggle room for presentations. It also makes for broad topic scope and depth. I.E. much food for thought.

Secondly the attendees are the participants in this space from the software vendors driving the Implicit Web to the analysts and venture capitalists that support us. As a result almost every presentation has turned into deep, rich conversations.

The RSS space is well represented here by Lijit, Newsgator and of course ourselves. It’s been great to bump into AideRSS users and hear how we’ve made their feeds both more manageable and relevant.

All good to hear, especially as the new guy on the team.

Wow, what a turnout and an amazing milestone for the DemoCamp initiative last night! Kevin and myself shared the stage with a number of local startups and open source projects while presenting to an overflowing room at the Toronto Board of Trade. Kudos to the organizers for pulling together another amazing venue.

Kevin presented a brief overview of AideRSS and I gave a first sneak peek of our new and up-and-coming recommendations engine. We’re hoping to go live with this feature in the course of the next few upcoming weeks, and it should be an exciting milestone! We will provide dynamic and personalized feed recommendations based on your RSS feed subscriptions, and also enable you to identify and explore new and similar blogs with respect to any particular feed.

As well, we’ve had an amazing number of people approach us with great feedback and feature suggestions - thank you for all the support! I’m looking forward to the next DemoCamp already.