Firefox extension alert!

I just downloaded, installed a new addon. It is going on my list of required extensions pretty much permanently. PicLens is the name, and it gives a really cool effect to websites like Flickr, Youtube, and other media rich sites.

I wanted to wait a bit longer to try it out some more, and to take some nice screenshots to show you but oh well. You gotta try it if you are a regular Flickr user. I think its founded on the notion that we are looking for visual stimuli much more than just text.

It displays all the video and picture content from a website on a really attractive “wall” where you can zoom in and out and view the stuff. video after the jump. Continue Reading “Eye candy for the Web” »

I’ve been meaning to tell you about Flock, Flock is a relatively new browser on the huge list of available browsers out there; it is based on the same code that powers Firefox. Although I think Flock is a great browser, I prefer Firefox for my day to day web activity. In Flock I use the upload tool the most out of all the Flock features, in fact it is the only thing I’ll tell you about today.

Flickr has an uploader tool, but I don’t like it and it seems to fail whenever I try to use it. There are also other tools available, like juploadr (which I like), but out of all the tools I’ve tried, I like the uploader included with Flock the best. It is simple enough, but has a good set of features.

Continue Reading “Flock your photos to Flickr” »

Good morning!

I’m glad that you’re back for the weekly Firefox add on review. If you missed some of the previous ones, check out the Firefox link on the right.

Today I’ll show you about Autocopy. It is a very simple extension and if you’re not familiar with this concept, the first and only question you may ask is “Why?”. Why do you want this? Why should you use this? Well I think it is a great time saver. I use it almost every time I surf the web.

The concept is simple and it has been used by Linux and some windows programs like Putty for a long time. It is based on the notion that when you highlight a section of text, usually you intend to copy it. Instead of highlighting the text, then pressing “ctrl+c” and then “ctrl+v” to copy then paste, well… it autocopies the text you just highlighted in one motion.

Then to paste, you can use the middle-wheel from your mouse or simply press “ctrl+v” or use the edit menu and select paste. You can autocopy from the browser and it works in text boxes as well as regular pages. Whatever you copy goes into your clipboard so it is available to paste into any application, like Word or Excel. When you highlight the text, it will blink to indicate that it has been copied. As simple and trivial as this may seem, once you get the hang of it I’m pretty sure it will prove to be a huge help in your daily web surfing.

Autocopy works right out of the box and it indicates its status by placing a small clipboard with a check mark on it on the bottom right corner of your browser. You can temporarily disable the extension in one click by left-clicking on this icon. If you right-click on the icon instead, you have access to configuration options.

There’s a lot of configuration options available if you want to get into it and customize it to your liking. I find that it works great with the defaults. The only thing I usually change is the “De select after copy” option. That is just a preference I have.

If you want to give it a try, you can download it from here.

Have a great weekend!

We spend so much time in our browsers nowadays, that slowly more and more functionality is being added to them. Foxytunes is a great extension to control your music from your browser. I’ve been using it since it came out years ago. Its grown to support all major music players, including: iTunes, Winamp, foobar, rhapsody online, real player, xbox media center, last.fm, musicmatch, sonique, quintessential, coolplayer… just to name a few. In the unlikely case that your music player is not supported, it also has an option to use a generic player.

At a quick glance, this add-on is great because it…

• Supports major browsers, not just Firefox
• Supports most major music players (itunes, winamp, coolplayer etc)
• Works on Windows, Linux and Mac
• Saves you time
• Prevents clutter

Head on over to FoxyTunes homepage to get started!Installing it is as easy as any other Firefox Extension, the only thing to note is that you’ll need to add FoxyTunes’ website to the Allowed Sites list for Firefox. This is really easy to do. Simply, click on Get FoxyTunes link. Firefox will show an alert telling you that it prevented this software from installing. Click on “Edit Options” you will be taken to the Allowed Sites - Add-ons Installation list.

Simply, verify that the address to be added is www.foxytunes.com and then click on Allow. It should look like this:

After this, click on the Get FoxyTunes link again and the standard Firefox software installation process will commence. Install, restart firefox and FoxyTunes will be ready to go.

Once you restart Firefox, you will be taken to the FoxyTunes welcome page. This is nice because it shows you new features and how to use the plugin. This page will only be displayed once after each installation or update so if you loose it, this is the link (http://www.foxytunes.com/welcome/) but FoxyTunes is really easy to use so you should not need to revisit theis page. Notice the huge orange arrow pointing at the location of the FoxyTunes controls, and get started.

Once installed, you’ll see that this is a really mature add-on. It has all the nice features you’ve come to expect from well written software. Mouse over each of the buttons to see what they do. Your main button for now will be the music symbol icon. This is FoxyTunes main menu and you can access all settings and options through it. Click on the button, then click on Player and select your preferred player from the list. If you are currently playing music, the status bar will refresh automatically and immediately to show you the current song playing. If your player isn’t running, simply click the play button and this will launch it and begin playing whatever was playing the last time you used it. I think this works for all players but I know for a fact that it works for Winamp because that is what I use.

Besides the obvious and main purpose of this add-on, that is to control your music player (play, next song, previous song, volume etc) this add-on has a lot of cool extra features. Using the search button, you can access web searches for the song/artist/album currently playing. The one i use the most is the lyrics search. It takes you to search results for that song so you can see the lyrics quickly. No more futzing around lyrics365.com, or other sites. You can also use built-in features to look up an artist’s Wikipedia page. The iTunes store is also just a click away, allowing you to shop for new related songs easily.

This add-on is definitely a must have for me; if you listen to music on your computer you should give this a try. It will save you time and keep you from minimizing your browser just so you can find your player and skip to the next song, or repeat, or pause or change the volume.

StumbleUpon is awesome. More than just an add-on, it is actually a service. It is what some people call channel surfing for the internet. I would have to agree with that. With StumbleUpon (SU), you define a bunch of interests, based on these interests you can “stumble - upon” really cool sites.

The way they match you up to sites is pretty nifty I think because most of the time I’m finding out really cool stuff. You can even “tune in” to a specific channel and get nothing but websites related to that topic. Every time you get a website from SU you have the chance of saying “I like it!” or “no more like this”. Using one of these two options gives the system a better idea of what you like and continues to narrow down topics that are more likely to appeal to you. You also get to see pages that your friends have voted as “I like it” or “thumbs up.” SU also offers a bunch of other social networking tools. Blogs, messaging, groups are all part of the SU offerings, but its core is serving you new pages, fresh and original content is its forte. A great combination of your preferences, your voting for “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” and a good mix of your friends’ own preferences continues to serve really cool pages time after time.

This is another extension or add-on that I must have in almost every installation of Firefox I use.

This is one of my new favorite extensions. I believe (by looking at the interface) that it is a revitalized version of an old add-on. I used it before and I love it but it broke with one of the Firefox upgrades. I forgot the name of the original. In any case, this addon is awesome, it synchronizes (as the title says) your bookmarks. If you use more than one computer to surf the web, then you want Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer in your list of extensions or add-ons for Firefox.

It is super easy to use. One major difference from the previous add-on, is that this requires you to sign up to their server. This gives you a place to synchronize your bookmarks up to. It automatically and periodically checks your local bookmarks and synchronizes them against the ones in the server. But don’t worry, it is free to use.
Within moments, all your bookmarks are the same, no matter which computer you are on at any given time. This add-on gets a two-thumbs up from me. I can’t live without it since I started using it.

So today, my buddy from Slazyk.com turned me into Delicious… or del.icio.us and its pretty damn cool. So I signed up and will be sharing my stuff soon but this lead to finding a new plugin for wordpress. Its actually not new but Its just new for me.

Its called Social Bookmarks and its awesome. It adds (as you can see) links to 26 of the major bookmarking sites out there. To name a few… Digg, Del.icio.us, Technorati So if you find an article you really like on my site it gives you the quickest way to add the link to your preffered service… I’m a fan of Del.icio.us now, Thanks David…

I’ve been a loyal fan of Stumbleupon for years now and both of these are included alongside a bunch of other ones that I’ve never even heard of. Digg away
—
update: I’m no longer using Social Bookmarks on this site.