Prowler: A Firefox extension to quickly send selected text to Prowl

Monday 07/13/2009  –  Category: Uncategorized

I stumbled upon Prowl this week and I have to say it's a pretty brilliant idea and an excellent use of the new push notification system in iPhone 3.0. Since they have an open API to send whatever you want to a user (defined by their API key), I decided to create an extension based on IPS to send whatever text you select to your iPhone. This could be phone numbers, directions, recipes...whatever you want to quickly send. It functions like a copy and paste across devices, similar to what Evernote's Web Clipper does but with the added bonus of having whatever you sent pushed as a push notification.

UPDATE: Download Prowler 1.0.3
UPDATE: Download Prowler 1.0.2
Download Prowler 1.0

Usage:
This assumes that you have the Prowl account and have the plugin and iPhone app installed. If you don't, get up to speed here.

1) Generate an API key under 'settings'.
2) Install the Prowler extension and restart Firefox when prompted
3) Copy and paste the API key you just generated into the Prowler Options preferences (under Tools > Prowler Options) and close the dialog
4) To send text to Prowl, select any text (up to 10000 characters), right click and click "Send Selected Text to Prowl"

That's all! Let me know how it works for you guys.

16 Responses to “Prowler: A Firefox extension to quickly send selected text to Prowl”

  1. How to send text from any application to Prowl | JZ * LABS - the web experiment playground of jason ting Says:
    July 21st, 2009 at 8:13 pm

    [...] post is a follow-up to Prowler, my Firefox extension that lets you send selected text to [...]

  2. Roy Bragg Says:
    July 24th, 2009 at 9:13 am

    This works like a charm. Great work.

  3. J Hatchett Says:
    July 24th, 2009 at 10:31 pm

    Thank you it works perfect inside the Vista64 and Win732 environments being sent to iPhone3gs through Growl for Windows.

    PS If you need a CDN (Content Delivery Network … just in case) check out my employer, we do have a Solar powered office, though as you probably know we can’t say the same for the Data Centers … Yet

    Thanks
    Jason

  4. craym0nk Says:
    July 26th, 2009 at 7:36 pm

    Brilliant work! Is there any chance this could be extended to allow some kind of text input and editing rather than just sending highlighted text?

    Something along the lines of a status bar icon that popped up a blank input box with further icons that would automagically paste the current URL or highlighted text into the input area and then allow the user to edit the content before sending. Checkout the interface for TwitterFox if my description doesn’t make sense.

  5. DeeJayBee Says:
    October 8th, 2009 at 7:51 am

    Bloody good work! I use this all the time to send info on pages I’m interested in to the missus; she enjoys getting bombarded, really!

  6. Prowler 1.0.1 | JZ * LABS - the web experiment playground of jason ting Says:
    December 26th, 2009 at 8:28 pm

    [...] View the original Prowler post [...]

  7. How to Jailbreak an iPhone (as of OS 3.1.2) (also works for iPod Touch) | i am words Says:
    January 30th, 2010 at 3:03 pm

    [...] updates on most everything on your iPhone. Fun stuff. (If you use Firefox, you’ll also enjoy Prowler, which lets you send text directly to your phone from your [...]

  8. Jono Says:
    March 24th, 2010 at 10:24 am

    I was really enjoying using Prowler to snag phone numbers, URLs and addresses from the web, but it looks like it doesn’t play nice with FireFox 3.6.2.

    Any chance of an update?

  9. NetNut404 Says:
    March 25th, 2010 at 4:18 pm

    Doh! does not work with firefox 3.6

  10. Jason Says:
    March 28th, 2010 at 4:36 pm

    hey guys – updated for firefox 3.6, grab the update here: http://jzlabs.com/stuff/prowler_1.0.2.xpi

  11. Buy Me An iPhone.com: News & Video Reviews of iPhone Accessories & Apps » Blog Archive » App Review: Prowl Says:
    May 10th, 2010 at 12:19 am

    [...] Folks are putting together nifty little add-ons to programs to increase the usability of the app. Prowler allows you to send highlighted text from Firefox to your iPhone. This handy feature alone has made [...]

  12. Andy Says:
    August 16th, 2010 at 12:45 pm

    Thanks for this great extension!

    Suggestion: Send the current URL or self edited text would be awesome! :)

  13. Amado Ziolkowski Says:
    October 5th, 2010 at 6:57 pm

    Good job!

  14. kharloss Says:
    May 12th, 2011 at 2:08 am

    great job.can you integrate “Send url using Prowl” when mouseover a weblink ?
    sometime i want to share fast a weblink.
    thanks.

  15. kalle Says:
    July 5th, 2011 at 1:02 am

    I second Andy, to send the current page url would be great!!

  16. John Says:
    March 5th, 2012 at 1:59 am

    Great addition for Prowl. Keep up the good work. :)

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