I spend a good deal of my working day living inside Google Reader. It is my research assistant, bringing me stories from multiple sources all over the web that I may want to follow up on later. But the continual problem with “multiple sources” is the increasing “noise”, the information overload and the increased likelihood that in among all those stories crowding into Google Reader is the one truly great story, the gem that is going to get trampled by the crowd. That is why AideRSS is becoming an interesting assistant to my assistant!

1: Hyperwords - All in the Right Click!

Think you are safe on the internet because you use Firefox? Think again. With the market share of Firefox increasing daily - more malware and virus authors (and websites) are exploiting this browser to spread their wares.

Fortunately, the open nature of Firefox typically makes fixes come shortly after a vulnerability is discovered, and also allows for addons which can further increase your security online.

Here is a short list of top scripts to help you keep safe while browsing the web. Some of these may exchange usability for security, so see what works for you and go with it!

Not so long ago I got an email from one of the readers asking if there is a way to be notified about site updates when the site doesn’t offer RSS feeds. And since there are plenty of popular sites that don’t provide any feeds I thought it may be a good idea to write about it. So if you’re interested here are some free tools that can do the job.

Monitor Webpages for Changes

If you’re a Firefox user then you can try Update Scanner. It’s an extension that lets you monitor webpages for changes. You have an option to choose how often the website should be checked for changes, and whether it should ignore the minor ones, such as the changes to numbers.

Browster is an interesting program that can be used by many of us, especially for ones who spend lots of time on search engines.

Browster lets you to go through search results more quickly and with less clicks. When browster is installed a special icon appears near each link on the search results page. Hovering a mouse over that icon opens a popup window displaying contents of the destination page. Popup window remians open as long as cursor remains on top of it or link. This way you get to see webpage contents in far shorter time then it would take to open and load page. The idea here is to strip the page from some additional code and present it for a fast preview. If your internet is slow and you get annoyed waiting for slow page loads, I would recommend to try it out, as well. For a visual demonstration roll in here.