Friedbeef’s Tech

Based on my web stats, if you’re reading this, there’s a 72% chance that you’re already on the Firefox browser - in which case you’re in the perfect position enjoy the browser extensions and tweaks below.

If you’re one of the 24% STILL on Internet Explorer, it’s time to consider a free upgrade :)

Link Alert - What happens when you click on a link? Are you going to open a new window? download a file? read a document? Now you’ll be able to quickly find that out. By simply hovering your mouse over the link, your cursor will change to indicate what will happen next.

Tab Mix Plus - Even with Firefox 2.0’s improved tabs, this extension is still powerful. Aside from enabling you to do just about anything with your tabs, I love that it incorporates a session saver where you can save all your tabs for later use.

Download Them All - DownThemAll is the ultimate downloads manager. It features an advanced accelerator that increases speed up to 400% and it allows you to pause and resume downloads at any time.

• Continue reading or Please leave a comment... (13)

I can never get enough bookmarklets or screen real estate, and that’s why I love Blummy-the-bookmarklet-manager.

Bookmarklets are tiny java programs that can be saved like normal browser bookmarks, but function as simple “one-click” tools that can add features to the bookmarks.

If you’re using Firefox, these bookmarklets are usually stored on the bookmark toolbar for easy access, but a few of them can really fill up your toolbar quickly. Enter Blummy, the single bookmarklet to rule them all.

Blummy is a service which stores all your favourite bookmarklets online so you can access them from anywhere. Equally as important is the fact that it creates a drop down menu for your bookmarklets, so it does not take up unnecessary space on your bookmark toolbar.

Here are my Top 10 favorite bookmarklets you can try with Blummy, all of which are available for free use from their site.

1. del.icio.us - Bookmarks your current page to this popular social bookmarking site.
2. Gmail Send - Creates a new Gmail message with the URL of your current page in it, ready for you to send.
3. Tiny URL This - Shortens the current page’s URL. Useful for ensuring long URLs don’t break in email.
4. Wikipedia Look-Up - Select text, then click this button, and you’ll automatically look it up on Wikipedia.
5. DiggScapeRedlicious - The All-in-one social bookmarking tool that submits the current page to Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and del.icio.us
   • Continue reading or Please leave a comment... (1)

I don’t need to tell you PowerPoint isn’t perfect.

PowerPoint offers up 31 different slide layouts for you to choose from - but does not allow you set your preferred default slide layout.

Instead, it always creates a new presentation with a slide with the ‘Title’ layout, and a ‘Text’ slide every time you insert a new slide.

This setup may be useful for most people, but there are times I have to assemble a slide deck which would contain a lot of very specific slides - for example, completely blank slides for a picture heavy presentation.

Fortunately, when I posed this question on Google Groups a friendly Microsoft MVP stepped in to provide this lovely free add-in you can download which sets default slide layouts.

Enjoy!

• Please leave a comment... (4)