Updated Dec. 2008, Looks like moving from Blogger to Wordpress broke this post quite a bit

I’ve been looking for a bookmarklet that would turn plain-text URLs into clickable links for a while, because it got tedious opening big blocks of plain-text links in Google Reader or in torrent trackers. I had it on my to-do list to write one, but I happened upon one that had already been written at squarefree.com’s bookmarklets site. ..I just wouldn’t have guessed the name.

To make this worthwhile, here are my 3 favorite bookmarklets:

1. Linkify – Turns plain text URLs into clickable links. Try it out here if you want: http://www.dmack.ca
2. Hide visited links – makes visited links invisible (in real time, even). Try them on the above url once you make it a link.
3. Remove redirects – a good way to get around a lot of interstitial ads. Removes redirect scripts from urls in this format: http://www.example.com/out.php?url=http://www.example.org/

Post your favorite bookmarklets in the comments section!

Paul Neave has put together a very impressive flash app that lets you input coordinates and a time, and view the night sky as it would appear on a cloudless night. It helped me identify a few of the stars and constellations visible from my house. You might recognize the name Paul Neave as the guy who made the Flash Earth application, which is also very cool. I couldn’t find a lot of information on his website, but it looks like he used a star map/database from somewhere and wrote it into that awesome dome-y interface.

A non-teaser trailer for Takeshi Kitano’s new film has surfaced on the Office Kitano website. I can’t tell anything about the movie beyond the fact it’s going to be another weird comedy.