Let me put this in perspective for you – I had less than 4 hours to research a topic for my next article (from scratch), think of the angle which should be presented to you (the readers), write the article, proofread it and submit it – all within the four-hour time frame. I’m not saying that it’s impossible but really, quite close to the limit.

Since then, I got myself a UMTS device and luckily from a provider which offers unlimited usage for a fixed monthly fee. I know for a fact that a lot of other providers out there charge by the megabyte. Those of you with such a tariff and are looking for a way to reduce your internet usage, read on.

Both of these issues (battery life and restricted internet usage) can be addressed with one simple application – BashFlash. You see, flash is a major pain in the ass. It appears in ads as animations and online video players. And it does two things very well; firstly, it takes up a lot of your internet usage because of those damned flash videos that masquerade as advertisements which automatically load whether you want them to or not; and secondly, when flash videos play, it uses a whole lot of CPU power, heating it up, and draining the battery because the fan has to run and cool it back down again.

Here’s where BashFlash comes in. It’s a menubar app that detects the activity of the Flash plugin. Whenever Flash takes up a significant amount of processing power, BashFlash’s menubar icon will turn from grey to red, allowing you to kill the Flash plugin.

Now, before you download BashFlash, know this: you need to be running an Intel Mac on Snow Leopard at 64-bit. Don’t know if you’re running at 32- or 64-bit? Check this page out, basically you need to have at least an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. Also, you need to use Safari in order for BashFlash to work. Firefox and other browsers doesn’t run Flash as a separate plugin so BashFlash can’t kill the process.

If you happily fulfill both requirements, then let’s see what BashFlash can do for you. After installing it, BashFlash places its icon on the menubar. If there is no Flash content running in Safari, the icon will appear grey. Once a flash-enabled ad or video loads, the icon will turn red and subsequently allows you to kill the Flash process.

And look what happens immediately. The plugin is temporarily disabled and the video stops playing, CPU usage goes back to normal, internet usage normalizes, and battery is saved. All is well.

Reload the page and everything starts up again, including the Flash plugin. Nothing is permanently disabled so you get to choose exactly when and how to deploy the Flash killer.

Again, BashFlash will only work with Safari and Intel Macs running on Snow Leopard at 64-bit. Do you get annoyed with flash ads that suddenly spike up your laptop’s core temperature and start spinning the fan unnecessarily? What do you do about it?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• Quiet Read Saves Weblinks For Later Reading [Mac] (2)
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I would use a social bookmarking website but honestly, I don’t find them very useful since I’m almost always on my MacBook and I hardly use another computer. In this case, the perfect solution would be a desktop app to store all my links of interest so that I can go through them slowly after I’ve settled down.

In a previous article, I’ve detailed the steps needed to use Stacks to store URL’s so that I can browse them later. This minimizes bookmarking clutter since it provides an alternative location to temporarily store bookmarks. The problem is, I tend to forget about the URLs after a while. The Stack doesn’t exactly yell out, “Hey, look at me! You have 20+ sites yet to read here!” I needed a more centralized solution that would display the number of sites I have saved but haven’t yet read.

That’s exactly what I found with Quiet Read.

This app sits quietly (no pun intended) in the menu bar awaiting links. Whenever I’m in the middle of a power search (you know, those frantic searches where you open lots and lots of webpages in the hopes of finding the thing you’re looking for but hardly ever do) and I think that I’ve found a seriously awesome app, I’ll drag the link and drop it over Quiet Read.

The indicator refreshes automatically to display the number of items it currently holds. That’s one of my favorite features; I don’t get that when using Stacks. In fact, nothing else happens whenever I add a link into Quiet Read, proving it to be really very unobtrusive, thus permitting me to carry on with my power search or whatever it is I was doing.

Now, allow me to elaborate. What exactly can you store in Quiet Read? Basically, any web link in almost any form can be saved. I can click and drag a link from any browser; in this case, I’m using Safari, and drop it in the menu bar icon. Links are listed chronologically, not alphabetically — which again, is really great because I can determine the order in which they were saved. I can also click and drag the favicon from the address bar and drop it into Quiet Read. Additionally, any highlighted (selected) URL can also be dragged into the app.

Now, maybe I feel that some of the URL titles don’t really work for me. Some of them aren’t very descriptive. Well, Quiet Read allows me to edit them by Option-clicking on a title. When I’m done reading a saved site, I simply click on the menu bar icon, select the title and press Command-Delete to remove it from the list. Easy peasy.

I like Quiet Read because of its simplicity and the fact that it doesn’t do much more than it’s supposed to. No frills — just the way I like it.

Quiet Read is completely free and runs on Snow Leopard.

What do you use to put aside websites to read later? Bookmarks? Read It Later Firefox extension? Tell us in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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• Use Stacks To Save Websites For Later Reading [Mac] (17)
• Manage Your Bookmarks & Reading List with Instapaper (7)
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The Sidewiki’s intent is to pool together the mass of readers who visit a webpage and use their collective knowhow to enhance the content already present with their own website reviews. Don’t muddle it with Searchwiki, that one was for search results. This one is for annotating webpages.

Google Sidewiki installs as a browser sidebar. As you visit a webpage, you can read commentaries and inputs from others who have passed through before you. This information can broaden the original information contained in the webpage by way of additional reference links, tips, inside information or simply a critical website review. The stream of comments is intended to further conversation around a topic.

Google’s page on Sidewiki draws out several examples of potential uses and benefits. So, let’s check if it’s worth the swipe.

Installing Sidewiki

The browser tool for Internet Explorer and Firefox installs as a sideswipe sidebar. It’s a default part of Google Toolbar. So all of us who avoid the Google Toolbar, or any toolbar as such, tough luck.

It’s also a part of the toolbar’s enhanced features which involves sending user browsing info back to Google.

Once installed, you can click the Sidewiki icon or click a little blue tab to open the sidebar to view comments.

Reading, annotating and sharing

As this is a new service, most of your frequented sites won’t have many entries. In that case, you can log in with your Google ID and publish your own. Put in your two bits for the whole page or select a specific section to remark on.

Sharing some info could be a direct benefit. It’s quite simple – click the Share link at the bottom of an entry and pass it on using email, Twitter or post it on Facebook. You can also click the chain icon to copy the link and paste it anywhere like instant messengers. Blogger post integration is also there for those who have one.

Sidewiki entries are coupled with Google Profiles (i.e. those who us them). You can read the other entries by the author and his complete bio on Google Profiles.

Sidewiki website reviews can be edited and deleted any time. You can also disable Sidewiki by clicking on the wrench icon for the toolbar settings and going to the Tools tab. Uncheck the box for Sidewiki.

Sidewiki’s intent as explained by Google is not to have a free-for-all commenting platform. A ranking program is inbuilt to weed out the useless info from the ones that are relevant. The exact tech behind the show is quite beyond me but it does take heed of user feedback (voting), commenting track record of the author and relative quality. Ranking is something Google is good at, so hopefully Sidewiki will show the worthy ones.

Is the footnote clear yet?

It’s still early days so the jury is still not out. Looking at the comments floating around on the web, opinion seems to be divided. Yes, universal sharing of knowledge seems to be a great idea. Questions though remain how strong will the ranking system be? Will it filter out comments which express opposite views? How will webmasters take to this ‘intrusion’? In-site comments can be controlled and blocked, but Sidewiki is open to all. Early indications say that not all comments will make the grade. Algorithms will ensure that the most relevant will appear first. Also, Google’s intent seems to be of adding value rather than start a town square hullabaloo.

Sidewiki’s success is not assured because it’s a Google baby. Annotation tools and web highlighters like Diigo, DotSpots, Trailfire and Fleck are among a few. It will be the value of raw words that might determine Sidewiki’s quality.

What are your early thoughts on sideswiping Sidewiki? Comment or annotate away.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Basically, Greasemonkey allows users to write and implement scripts that customize the way you interact with websites.

Until now, people who knew nothing about writing scripts have been limited to just installing scripts made available by others.  Well, not anymore my friends!  Now we have a whole new, user-friendly, no scripting necessary way of changing the way we interact with our favorite websites.  Sound too good to be true?  I thought so too!  Please check out the Customize Your Web Firefox add-on.

The way this add-on works is really neat.  Basically when you are on a site you want to customize Firefox, click on the hand-dandy icon in your Firefox tray and start customizing.

In this post I would like to walk you through how to set up a few customizations I have found useful.

Automatic clicking

With this add-on you can make it so that a specific button is clicked upon the load of a website.  For instance, when I head over to the login screen for my blog, timmyjohnboy, I always have to click on “log in.”  I already have the username and password fields auto-filled but perhaps I’m just too lazy to click the stupid button.  Come on, you can’t tell me you’ve never felt that way!

Anyways, just click on the icon (or press F10) and you’ll be given a bunch of options.

You’ll also notice that as you move your mouse across the site, the objects highlight and if you click them, you’re given some options.

For what we want to do, and that is saving us from the overbearing task of clicking the “log in” button, click “click.”  Then a window pops up giving you the options you’re looking for.

Make sure the left button is chosen and make sure that the repetition behavior is set to “run always” if you want this to happen every time.  Then, hit “OK.”  Then, in the script properties sidebar, click save for the settings to be saved.

OK, now I can be automatically logged in just by making a few adjustments!  This can obviously be done for any website where you want to automatically click any button.

Get ride of elements you don’t want to see!

For the sake of demonstration, let’s head over to GodlySheep and get rid of Brett’s nifty little sheep icon!  OK, I am not saying that I don’t like the icon, I really do!  It just makes a really good object to make an example of!

Basically just follow the same steps (browse to godlysheep.com, click the icon in the tray, and click on the sheep graphic) but this time click on “remove.”

Just like before, make sure that the repetition behavior is set to “run always.”  Then click the same “save” button.  This is what you should now see:

Cool, huh?  This trick can be applied to many different objects, including ads!  For instance, if you’re like me and you hate those MySpace ads, all you have to do if remove them!

Move objects or elements (cut, copy, and paste)

Let’s say we also want to rearrange the sidebar on GodlySheep.com to better suit your usage patterns.  Let’s move the banner below the navigation links.  All it takes is some simple cut and paste actions.  Click the banner and then click cut,

choose the appropriate settings, and then click the navigation area and click paste after.

That’s all it really takes.  Always make sure you save your changes.

It is also necessary for me to mention that changes you make can ALWAYS be deleted so don’t worry too much about ruining something. You can also do many MANY more modifications with Customize Your Web, including toggling the visibility of objects, keyboard shortcuts and so much more!

Whilst exploring this add-on to customize Firefox, let us know what tricks you like the most!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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AdBlock blocks the advertisements on websites and lets you browse distraction free. Quite a few people don’t make the switch to alternative browsers because none of them can support AdBlock. That said, you can still block display ads using most of the popular browsers so let us see how you can block ads in other browsers that are not Firefox.

There are different hacks around there like special proxies and selective content blocking that you can use depending upon which browser you use. Here we will be using mainly using Adsweep. Although the project is not being maintained anymore, it provides a simple and easy ad blocking solution that just works.

Adsweep is essentially a user javascript (think Greasemonkey) that hides the page elements that contain advertisements. Setting it up is a little different for different browsers, lets have a look.

Chrome

• Download AdSweep.user.js
• Open Chrome user data directory. Use the following information if you are unsure about its location:
  • Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default
  • Vista: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default
  • Mac OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default
  • Linux: ~/.config/google-chrome/Default
• Once you are in there, create a folder named User Scripts

• Copy the file you downloaded above into this folder.
• Now we need to close Chrome and restart it with the ‘–enable-user-scripts‘ switch. You can do so from the command line or simply right-click on the chrome icon on your desktop and click properties. Add ‘ –enable-user-scripts‘ at the end. Click OK and double the icon to start Chrome with User Scripts enabled.

• Visit the AdSweep website.  If you see a red notification in the top right corner, everything went fine. If you don’t, recheck that you performed the above mentioned steps correctly.

If you use the development build of Chrome and have extensions enabled, then you can click and download the Adsweep extension for Chrome and spare yourself some work!

Opera

• Download AdSweep.js
• Within Opera, go to Tools > Preferences and then to the Advanced tab.
• Choose Content on the left side and then click on Javascript Options.

• Click Choose and browse to the location where you downloaded the file in Step 1

• Hit Refresh and notice the difference

Here is a quick before and after:

How to Block Display Ads In Internet Explorer

This is where you would have to leave AdSweep (it won’t work on IE) and take things into your hands. First and foremost, upgrade to the latest version of IE – Internet Explorer 8. IE8 has a feature called InPrivate filtering which can be tweaked to block ads. Here is how:

• Enable InPrivate Filtering from the Safety Menu (or press Ctrl + Shift +F)
• Now you need a filtering list of some sorts, that can identify ads on a page. Just Google around and you can find plenty, even AdBlock lists. Download the XML file onto your computer.
• Click on Safety > InPrivate Filtering Settings. In the dialog that opens, lower the Show content by providers used by this number of websites to the minimum. click on Advanced settings.

• In the Manage Add-ons dialog that opens, choose InPrivate Filtering on the left and click on import, browse to the XML file you just downloaded and the rules will be imported.

Keep in mind that you won’t block each and every ad with these methods, because the rules have to updated frequently to take care of new advertisers and other changes. On the flip side there would be times when genuine third party content will be blocked as well (specially in the InPrivate Filtering Technique). In any case, this should rid you of a considerable amount of ads and improve the overall browsing experience.

Do you know of any other ways to block display ads in Internet Explorer, Chrome or any other browser? Sound off in the comments, we would love to hear about them.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Being an Opera long-time fan (back to the days of Netscape vs. IE), I’m also curious about what goodies Opera 10 has to offer. So I gave Opera 10 – Mac version for me – a test drive, and here is my Opera browser review with several nice features that I like.

Speed Dial those pages

The first thing that users will notice is the “speed dial” page which will always be shown every time a new blank page is opened. The idea is that users will be able to access their favorite pages using these pre-configured “dial-pad”. Something like “Top Sites” in Safari.

There are nine default boxes, click an empty one to add a web page and click on an assigned one to go directly to that page.

Users can configure how many dial-pad boxes they want – from 4 (2 x 2) to 25 (5 x 5), what background image to show, or whether they want to hide or show speed dial.

What makes this feature special is the ability to synchronize these speed dial boxes to other Operas in other places, even under different OSes and different devices.

Link with Opera Link

The synchronization process discussed above is done using a feature called Opera Link. Using this service, users can synchronize Speed Dial, Bookmarks, Personal Bar, Typed History, Notes, and Searches.

But before using it, users should sign up first for an Opera account.

I think this synchronization feature could be Opera’s strongest selling point because of the existence of Opera Mini. As one of the leaders in mobile browsers, Opera Mini could “persuade” its users to try the desktop version just to have all of their data synchronized between devices.

Playing with Panels

Opera has a customized side panel which can be opened by clicking the “Panels” button next to tabs.

Users can fill in the panels with useful tools like Bookmarks, Widgets, Notes and History, by going to Tools –> Appearance menu

and then choosing the Panels tab.

Mail and Chat

Opera has an email client built-in the browser. Even though some users might prefer a stand-alone client, others would likely embrace the idea of Mail-Browser integration.

The first step of using this client is creating an account.

Beside email, there are other kinds of account that could be set, such as Newsgroups and IRC chat. (I wonder whether anybody still use these two classics and I also wonder why Opera included them).

Peeking through tabs

This one is a simple feature which I think is very useful. Users can peek into the background tabs just by hovering the mouse above the tab.

Turbo-charge the browsing experience

Opera 10 has another unique feature called Opera Turbo. Opera claims that this feature is able to boost the Internet bandwidth speed on slow connections by using Opera proxy servers to compress data and image traffic before they reach the browser.

To enable the feature, just click on the Opera Turbo’s teeny-weeny button on the bottom-left corner of the window.

Users should customize the turbo setting first before using it. There are three settings available: Automatic, On and Off.

Those with slow internet connections will be grateful for this free service provided by Opera as there are many similar services out there that charge high monthly fees for more or less the same features.

Surely, there are many more features in Opera 10 such as mouse gestures and widget support (similar to addons for Firefox), but for now, I’ll limit myself to these favorite features of mine.

And if you think you still need a little bit “nudge” to try Opera, please look at the CPU usage comparison between Opera and our favorite Firefox. (Those are dynamic numbers which always change slightly from time to time, but you get the picture, right?)

One more thing, for this Opera browser review I used Opera for Mac, but I assume the features would be the same under different OS. Opera 10 is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, QNX, OS/2 and BeOS.

Do you use Opera? Which features do you like? Share your thoughts and opinion in the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Let’s today shift the focus slightly towards a few external Firefox tools that can be used to optimize Firefox:

SpeedyFox

SpeedyFox is a cool little Firefox tool which lets you optimize Firefox for speed. Firefox stores a lot of information in an sqlite database, which grows over time.

SpeedyFox takes care of any database fragmentation and thus makes Firefox zippier. You might not see a difference if you try SpeedyFox on a fresh Firefox install, it works great after you have been using Firefox for some time. Just close Firefox, run SpeedyFox and point it to the profile you want to optimize.

The optimization may take some time depending upon how much data SpeedyFox has to work with. Also don’t forget to check out The ultimate guide to speeding up Firefox 3.5

Silence of the Foxes

This simple Firefox tool lets you create custom Firefox installers which you can use to deploy Firefox’s preconfigured settings and add-ons. It unpacks the original Firefox setup, lets you add your own extensions, themes, preferences and then repacks to give you a silent installation package.

Although this Firefox tool was designed a long time back for a now obsolete version of Firefox, it worked pretty well for me. Download and fire it up, choose a new project and point the application to Firefox Setup that you downloaded from the web. It will extract the files, detect your Firefox profiles and show you the files that it will add to the silent installation package.

By default it adds your preferences and bookmarks, if you want to add themes and extensions you will have to download the .jar and .xpi files and add them to the files to be added to the installer. Once everything is done, it will create a file sfirefox.exe which is your new silent installation customized package. You might want to go through the readme file for some advanced tinkering.

FirePasswordViewer

Firefox can remember the login details for your favorite websites. All these details are encrypted and then stored in Firefox’s profile database. FirePasswordViewer lets you view these details for any Firefox profile you point it to. You can use it to get back passwords you might have forgotten and some other purposes (use your imagination here).

The Firefox tool will not work if you have enabled and set the Master Password. So it might be a good idea to set your Firefox Master password to protect yourself from such hacks. It can be set via the Security tab inside Tools > Options in Firefox.

FireMaster

Just when you thought setting the master password protected all the sensitive sign-on information, we present FireMaster. FireMaster can be used to recover the master password in case you forget it. However, like always, there are inherent limitations as with any password recovery tool – FireMaster uses a combination of dictionary and brute force attacks so it would take a very long time to recover any moderately strong password. All the more reason to use strong passwords. Refer FireMaster page for usage tips.

Do you know of some other tools you can use with Firefox for similar purposes? You can tell us all about them in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Unite eliminates the need for a third party server that would normally proxy or relay the content, such as Flickr, Twitter or Yahoo Messenger. It’s essentially like setting up a web server on your own computer, without the hassle of manually installing various software, configuring them and getting a DNS (Domain Name System) account. It also makes the installation of new functionality a “point and click” process.

I’m sure we’ll have a review of Opera 10 shortly, but let’s focus on Unite for the moment. Here are the steps you need to take in order to use the various Unite services.

1. Click on the propeller icon on the left sidebar.
2. Click on the icon labeled ‘Home’ and then on ‘Start’. A wizard will appear. Click next.
3. Create an Opera account for free or sign up for a new one. It is extremely simple and fast, just choose an username, a password and enter an email address.
4. Choose a name that would describe the computer. If you install Unite on more than one computer, this will enable you to differentiate between them and enable sharing. A descriptive name could also help a friend who wishes you to send photos, for example – naming one “The home PC” and another “The office laptop” can easily distinguish the two. Using UPnP port forwarding poses some security issues, but it allows access to your files from outside the local network (Internet) without using Opera’s proxy server which provides a speed boost. If you want a direct connection without UPnP, add port (8840) in your router’s ‘Port Forwarding’ list.
5. Click Finish to save the settings and close the wizard.

You will now be able to start any of the services listed in the left sidebar, such as file sharing. They are designed to be extremely easy to use. For example, to enable File Sharing, click on the File Sharing icon and then on Start. To protect your privacy, it will ask you to select the folder that you want to share.

After you click the OK button, a web page will open that will showcase the content you selected in the previous step. On the left, you’ll see your files, on the right the instructions for sharing with your friends and the permissions. All your friend has to do to access the files is to paste the link given in the right sidebar. A regular webpage will appear in your friend’s browser along with download links for all the files.

All the files are hosted on your computer and are never transferred to Opera’s servers. For the duration you wish to allow users to connect to your Unite services, you need to have the computer and browser open. Be aware that transferring unencrypted sensitive information is not recommended, as all transfers are done using HTTP. The Photo, Media and File Sharing use the same underlying technology while adding specific controls for each media type like a Flash music player and photo thumbnails.

This technology is not limited to the 5 bundled applications: Fridge (secure notes), Lounge (instant messaging), Photo and File Sharing, Media Player. It’s open to developers and uses well-known open standards such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Below is a screenshot of the Lounge, a quasi-instant messaging application. To invite other people, the host needs to send a link to the other participants. They can use any modern web browser to join the discussion.  It is similar in functionality to a private IRC channel.

The Fridge application lets you leave notes for friends or yourself, similar to the ‘Wall’ on Facebook or direct messaging in Twitter.

You can write applications — in the form of Opera Unite Services — that use this server to serve content to other Web users. Why is this exciting? Well, it allows you to interact with contacts, sharing data and services without the need for any third-party Web sites/applications to be involved at all. –Opera Developer Blog

Opera lets the geeks get a taste of the next paradigm shift in web browsing, a great way to win hearts, minds and developers. I’ve radically changed my tune about Opera after hearing from tens of fans and Thomas Ford, Communications Manager.

I invite each one of you to give Opera Unite a try. Download the alpha which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux; and let us know what you think in the comments. What applications should the developers start working on to further extend Unite’s functionality?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Yes that is why you learned about your Web History and cookies. You even know how to delete them when you are done with your porn your research. But what happens if you forget? Will you be fired, divorced or worse?

If this has you worried then Close N’ Forget is the plug-in for you!

Simply browse on over to their plug-in page here (in French) and you can do your due diligence and read up on it here in English.

After running through the plug-in installation you will have a right click option that looks like this:

The red X followed by “Close and erase cookies for the current site” is Close N’ Forget’s icon. Now for easier use we will add it to our FireFox’s favorite quick links by following these steps:

• Right Click on your tool bar at the top of your browser. And choose Customize.

• Select the Close and forget button, you might have to scroll down. It will look like this:

• Simply drag and drop the icon to your favorites bar and you will see it as the red x icon like this:

Now that we have the icon readily available to us let’s look at the options. This is what will happen when you hit that magic red x. We can see and configure the settings by going to our add-on manager within Firefox. You go to Tools –> Add-ons.

Select Close N’ Forget and then hit options. You can tweak exactly what it will junk with the options above.

The Author says:

Thanks to a few simple options, you can control how your privacy is protected when you close a tab with Close’n Forget. To do that, simply go to the extension manager and open the Close’n Forget options dialog.

You can then activate or not the cookie removal, and you can extend it to all subdomains of the current page’s domain. For example, if the page currently loaded in the tab is http://www.foo.com/bar.html, you can remove cookies for www.foo.com and for .foo.com, but also for media.foo.com, ad.foo.com, tracker.foo.com and so on !

You can also remove the visited site from the browser’s history.

Now let’s put it to work!

You do some super secret browsing and then you go and hit that red X on your toolbar. The button glows an eerie redish brown when you hover over it to help you distinguish it from other  buttons. Hit the button and it closes the active tab and displays a message at the bottom of your browser like so telling you what it did. If nothing appears nothing was removed:

So with the right options selected (all of them!) you can safely and securely remove whatever site you want from your browsing history. But remember if someone is watching you with monitoring software this will not help!

How do you protect your browsing history and how do you get rid of nasty entries from your history? Do you automate it or do you do it manually? Share your methods with us in the comments.

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These days, many news articles, long winded stories and message boards all contain several pages that we have to scroll through, one-by-one. It would be nice sometimes to bring some of these huge, bloated, multi-page articles into a single page that we could scroll through. This is where PageZipper comes into the picture.

PageZipper, from the makers of PrintWhatYouLike, is a small bookmarklet that you can place in your bookmarks toolbar, or install as a Firefox extension that converts just about any multi-page site or article into one single page that you can scroll through until the end, without every clicking another link.

After adding a simple bookmarklet to your browser of choice or install the experimental Firefox extension, you can begin taking advantage of some of PageZipper’s unique features. It not only converts multiple pages into a single one, but it also does some nice things with images and photo galleries as well.

Along with standard web pages, PageZipper adds the ability to scroll through photo galleries with ease by simply pressing a Ctrl-Down keystroke. Each stroke takes you to the next image in the gallery. Also if an image isn’t fitting into your defined screen size, PageZipper can even AutoFit the embedded web image into your screen automatically.

If you’d like a better understanding of how exactly PageZipper works, they have a provided a nice screen recording of all of its different functions.

After discovering PageZipper and it’s functionality, I thought of many different situations that I could use this in. Even on MakeUseOf, you can simply click the bookmarklet and never click to browse to older entries. You can scroll for days on end, until you reach Aibek’s first blog post, way back when.

Another great place that I first tested this was on a message board. Having the ability to scroll through several different sections of threads and boards was incredibly helpful.

The small ability that PageZipper provides may be small in hindsight, but is definitely something I’m going to keep in my toolbar for some time to come.

Do you know of any websites that you might find this useful? Are there any other tools that you know of similar to PageZipper that provide this functionality?  If so, please let us know in the comments!

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As a result, readability suffers at times. If you come across such a site or you would like a consistent look and feel across all the articles that you read so that you can scan them faster, here are some ways to make reading articles easier on the eyes and (thus easier to print as well). So, how to print a web page the way you want it?

Subscribe to RSS feeds

Number one on the list and an absolute must do if you are into serious reading. One – it would keep you updated with all the latest content. Two – Many sites offer full text articles so you would be able to read, print, email article from within your RSS reader without having to visit the site. Try out Google Reader if you are getting started with RSS. If you never subscribed to sites using RSS feeds before, you should definitely give it a try. Here is the MakeUseOf RSS feed.

Readability

Readability is a simple yet wonderfully useful idea. Visit Readability and choose the basic setting as in how you would like to view the page. Customize it with the help of the example to see how you would like it best. Click and drag the bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar.

Now whenever you visit a site you would like to spend some time reading upon, just click the bookmarklet to view it according to your selected settings. It doesn’t work on all sites as you might expect it to. Try it on MakeUseOf (it didn’t work correctly when I tried it.).

Firefox – Aardvark

One of my favorite extensions for Firefox, Aardvark lets you play with the structure of a webpage. Want a distraction free view of only the article on any website? Just Start Aardvark, hover over the article till you see a red rectangle bounding the article, press i (to isolate) and enjoy the view.

Additionally you may use Ctrl + + or Ctrl + Mouse Wheel up to zoom into the page to make the text look bigger. This may seem too much of a task at first but just try it for a day or two and you will make it a habit. Requires just 2 key presses (and some mouse positioning) and bam you’ve got your content.

There are a number of other options for Aardvark, it has been covered previously in detail on MakeUseOf.

PrintWhatYouLike

A site similar in concept to what Aardvark does. You enter the URL of any site and then it would allow you to retain only the content you want and remove all other distractions. Both Aardvark and PrintWhatYouLike also make excellent choices while formatting a page to be printed. They can help you save some ink and paper by only printing the content you really want and not all the accompanying links and navigation.

TidyRead

Same concept as Readability, but offers greater control via a Stumbleupon-like toolbar of sorts. Using the toolbar you can modify the options on the fly without having to create separate bookmarks for each setting.

Using Custom Style Sheets

You can use custom CSS (Firefox users see Stylish, Opera has it built-in) on any website to make it work according to your needs. Add in some Greasemonkey scripts and you can even get rid of the so called “clutter” and focus only on the content.

If you are into some serious reading you would greatly realize the power of the above methods in allowing you to get through the content fast and easy and print the web pages the way you want them. You might also have figured out some cool ways of your own to do the same. Please share them in the comments!

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• View A Multi-Page Article On One Single Page With PageZipper (14)
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• Use Stacks To Save Websites For Later Reading [Mac] (17)

The average number of hours that a person is reported to surf the internet is approximately 1 hour/day. I’m guessing that those are the “regular” people and the sample population doesn’t include “techno-geeks” like us who spend the better part of the day browsing the Web.

For those of us who work online, we’d spend up to 10 hours/day browsing and researching about anything new and gripping. The problem is: there is never enough time to browse through everything. Because of the infinite number of links that tempt us, there are always some left-over. Sometimes, some sites just might seem interesting but you couldn’t really go into it at that moment. So what do you do?

Do you bookmark it? Do you open it in a new window and leave it there?

I have found that if I bookmark a webpage, I tend to forget about it the next time I open Safari. Luckily, I’ve run into a pretty clever way of using Stacks to keep sites temporarily until I have the time to browse through them some time later.

By creating a new folder anywhere (I put mine in Documents but anywhere is fine, really) and naming it “To Read Later” then adding it as a Stack on my Dock, I can just drag the favicon from any website from Safari into that Stack. It will be saved as a .webloc file (which is basically just a URL). This way, all of the websites which you need to read a little later are displayed right on your Dock. With Stacks, you will always know if there are sites pending to be viewed.

This next step is entirely optional because it’s merely eye-candy – you can add a Stacks drawer overlay so that the folder icon won’t pop up with the Stack is empty. Instead, it will show a blank drawer icon and you will know that you’ve gone through everything that needs to be read!

Here are some Stacks drawer icons. Download it, mount it, then add the icon of your choice into your Stack. If the drawer icon doesn’t load properly, just remove that Stack and add it again to your Dock. The icon should always appear in front of the contents of your folder. If it doesn’t, you will need to arrange it by ‘Date Modified’.

How else do you remember which sites you need to come back to read slightly later? Are you using Read It Later Firefox extension that we covered earlier? Do you rely solely on bookmarks? Let us know in the comments.

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Through Fashion Your Firefox, Mozilla offers recommendations to some of the most popular and useful addons. The recommendations are based on what you really use the internet for. So if you are a search junkie or like to research about topics on the web, then check out the “Finder and Seeker” category and see what addons can be used in your work. If you are an adept Firefox user than chances are you might already be using some of them. If so, just pat yourself and check out the other categories.

There are recommendations for all kinds of users:-

Finders and Seekers – For finding information online quickly.

Social Butterflies – A set of addons to go along with your social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Shutterbugs – A set of addons to help you download, browse and upload photos and videos to a large number of sites.

Digital Pack Rats - Addons to help you sync and keep track of your bookmarks and sites you visit often and your favorite blogs.

Rock Stars – Very cool addons to help you control your media player, discover music and go to your favorite Last.fm stations from the Firefox address bar.

Shopaholics – For those of us who can’t get enough of online deals and auctions.

Decorators – Some awesome themes to spice up your browsing.

News Junkies – Get weather, news and website updates delivered to you instead of you running behind one of these!

Executive assistants – Addons to aid in your day to day tasks with calendars, to do lists, alerts, password management and so on.

Hmm….let’s see, I am a bit of a Finder and Seeker, a News Junkie and perhaps even a Shutterbug if we limit it to discovery and download! Anyway, what’s your poison? Let us hear in the comments. Oh and by the way, you don’t have to install each and every one of them, just check the ones you find interesting and let it know when you are done. You will get only the ones you selected instantly. Not only this, sometime in the future you might also get the ability to share your fashion with friends and let them know what you are running to have them come along.

If these Mozilla recommendations are not enough for you then check out some of the best extensions that won accolades in the Extend Firefox Contest held some time back.

So much for Mozilla recommendations, how about we throw in some MakeUseOf recommendations to the list? Here we go.

First check out some addons to help you get the most out of tabs in Firefox. Find out some extensions that help you capture screenshots and others that are best for microblogging. Finally, check out our round-up on best extensions to manage your bookmarks better.

Phew….those are some addons. However knowing the Firefox user you are, one can never say that the list is exhaustive. There is always room for something new that I may not have covered. So let us know if you have a favorite extension that missed Mozilla’s or our eyes. You know we would love to hear about it!

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For all those who are still not sure what Cooliris is, it is a browser plugin that enables you to surf the Web with a cinematic style. The wall on which it shows thumbnails of images, videos, news pulled from various sources and so on, allows you to be fully immersed in a 3D environment. You can easily surf the Web simply by dragging, sliding, clicking and selecting the thumbnails with your mouse.

On the iPhone, you will get a similar experience to that in your computer browser. There is the same 3D wall loaded with rows of picture thumbnails. What is different is that you are using your finger to slide, click and select rather than using the mouse.

To slide the 3D wall across the screen, you just need to do a ’swipe’ left or ’swipe’ right with your finger. Alternatively, if you are too lazy to use your finger, simply tilt iPhone up, down, left, right and you can see the wall move accordingly to the direction you tilt.

When you tap on a thumbnail, Cooliris will zoom the image and position it to the center of the screen. Description of the image and its URL will be loaded at the bottom of the screen. There is also an ‘email’ and ‘download’ icons so that you can easily share the image with your friends.

To checkout the image’s URL, simply tap on the URL and the mobile Safari will load within Cooliris. Once you are done, tap on the ‘Webview’ and it will bring you back to the Cooliris interface.

There are two main features in Cooliris for iPhone: ‘Discover’ and ‘Search’. The Shopping function that is found in the browser version is not available in this iPhone version.

In the Discover section, Cooliris can cleverly detect your location and serve you the information that is closely related to your locale. It is just like an image-based StumbleUpon for iPhone, except that it is more customized to your preferences. You can also select from the channels to get it to display interesting images/videos/news. Personally, I like to use the Wallpaper channel to discover and download new wallpaper for my iPhone.

The Search function allows you to search from a variety of sites, including Google, YouTube, Yahoo, Flickr, deviantArt and SmugMug. I do not have any success with the YouTube search. When I perform a search in YouTube, nothing loads up even after 5 minutes of waiting. I have no problem searching and playing video in the in-built YouTube app, so I guess this is one of the bugs on the Cooliris app. Other than this, the search on the rest of the search engine works perfectly fine.

Cooliris for iPhone has given a new definition to Web surfing on the iPhone. This is not just another app that you use to ‘wow’ your friends, but an app that truly maximizes the touch action and accelerometer of the iPhone and brings your Web surfing experience to the next level. This is definitely the app that I would recommend to everyone.

Cooliris for the iPhone is available for the iPhone/iPod Touch and can be downloaded for free in the iPhone App store.

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I assume you already know that Google can be also used as calculator, currency converter and even measurement unit converter. But what about using Google to search for nearby pizzerias or checking movie showtimes in local cinemas.

Basically, there are several handy Google search operators that you can make use of on a daily basis. Today we ask you to vote on your top 5, the ones you find extremely useful and use (or at least see yourself using) on a regular basis. And if you’re one of those who has no idea about search operators here is your chance to learn a few.

Please Vote!

Did we miss your favorite search operator? Add it in comments.

You can find get more details on specific search oprator here and here.

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