Friedbeef’s Tech

One of the things I love about Firefox is that it can be whatever you want it to be.

Here’s a quick list of 5 Firefox Extensions worth trying.

Session Saver: Whenever I close my browser, this neat extension will automatically save whatever tabs I had open at the time. This gives me the freedom to pick up right from where I left off my last web session.

Flashblock: I truly abhor Flash advertisments. They’re distracting, they suck up bandwidth and make my pages slow to load. This extension will block ALL the Flash from loading on your browser.
Of course, not all Flash files are evil, and there are times where you might want to see some Flash. As such, you can disable the filter with just one click, and also allow trusted sites to get around the filter. If you like this, you can also try Adblock.

IE View: Once in a very long while you are going to hit a site that only runs properly on IE. Should this happen, just click the icon and Internet Explorer will open, and point to your current page for a near seamless experience. You can also set a website to “always open in IE”

PDF Download: PDF files, while useful can be a nuisance at times if it’s on the web, as it may take ages to render in the browser. Now, everytime I click on a PDF file, This extension will tell me how large the PDF file is, then ask If I want to save the file, view it normally, or view it as HTML (Stripping out images for faster loading).

Answers : Hold down Alt (or Option on a Mac) and click on any word to get a quick definition, an up-to-the-minute reference and more from Answers.com. You don’t even need to highlight the word. Simple, fast, and really useful.

Related Links:

What are Firefox Extensions?

Get more Firefox Extensions at:
Mozilla
Mozdev
Roachfiend

Bonus Link: A collection of Firefox Related Avatars for Instant Messaging here

Technorati Tags: firefox, extensions, mozilla, answers, ie, flash, pdf

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Below is a train of thought which goes on in my head more often than it really should.

I’m not a member, I just want to read ONE article from your site.

“Register for NYTimes.com.”

I really don’t want to sign up for anything

• “Breaking news and award winning multimedia
• New York Times newspaper articles
• Arts & Dining reviews
• Online Classifieds”

That’s great, but I just want to read that ONE article.

“It’s free and it only takes a minute!”

Can I please read that article now?

If the above is how you feel when you see a signup screen when all you want to do is read a story, read on.

If you love filling up forms, click here

Thankfully, the nice folks at bugmenot.com have created a community where like minded individuals can have access to the free logins that others have created and submitted to the site.

If you go to Bugmenot.com, you just tell it what website you want a login for, and it pulls up login details which users have submitted.

A faster alternative would be to use a Bookmarklet or the Firefox extension (which I personally use), which allows you to get the login details right away without having to visit the Bugmenot site. Both these tools can be found on their site.

All your questions on how legal (it is - paid content is not included on the site, only free content is available) and how ethical it may be (that’s up to you), and how you can remove your site from Bugmenot listing can be answered here

Technorati Tags: bugmenot, firefox, extensions, bookmarklet, free, news

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I hate file size limitations on email attachments.

Yes, I suppose they’re there to prevent abuse of email… but when I need to send something large right away - it can be downright annoying!

Thankfully, we live an age where abundant online storage for consumers is available for little or no cost - leading to a number of free solutions to address our issue for today. One of the services which clearly stands out in the crowd is a little service called YouSendIt.

How it works:

• Send an email from YouSendIt, and attach your very large file.
• What YouSendIt is doing is it offers up temporary storage space on the web and you are actually uploading your files to it when you attach the file.
• YouSendIt will send that email along with a link to the recipient, who can then download the file from the web.

If you do decide to try YouSendIt, you should register (free) for their enchanced beta version which includes new features, which includes a proper status bar, as well as contacts list, and a tracking system to see who picked up your file.

You have the option to use a stripped down version of the service where you don’t have to register, but the features there leave much to be desired.

Here’s the weird thing… Yousendit.com does not seem to provide a direct link to the registered version after you’ve signed up… so you may want to bookmark http://beta.yousendit.com for easy reference after you’ve registered.

Specifications:

At this point, it allows 25 downloads per file, up to 50 recipients in a single email, and you can send files of up to 1 Gig in size, and stores it for 7 days, which is pretty solid. You can also set emails to appear as if it came from your own email address, not a YouSendIt address so it does not confuse your recepient.

You can read more at techcrunch, which gave this service a good review.

Security:

Everyone of these services tell you they are secure, but if you’re paranoid concerned about security like me, you might want to zip up the files, and add a password. Of course, send the password to your recipient using your own email, not in the YouSendIt note!

Other services:
I’ve also tried Dropsend, which seems to be a bit more limited than YouSendIt, but I do consider it robust enough to be a backup solution. New services like these are popping up everywhere!

Here is a very good list of similliar services that you can try.

Bonus tip: You can also try this more conventional, but slightly more inconvenient workaround that works with Winzip.

Related Links:

YouSendIt
YouSendIt (enchanced) Beta
Dropsend
Collection Of Online Storage/Email Services
Winzip

Technorati Tags: yousendit, dropsend, online, storage, email, winzip

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