Internet Day to Day Tools - for Geeks Only

As you use the Internet on daily basis, either in work or home or both, for business or pleasure, you spend more and more time in front of your browser. Over the last month, I’ve been trying to cut down the time I spend on daily activities on the Internet. Here are some of the tools that helped me do that and others that introduce some really great benefits that might come in handy for you too..

Essential Tools

•  Firefox: There’s one feature in firefox that IE can’t compete with, and that is Extensions. When I was on the edge between using IE or Firefox, Extensions - and themes also - was the winning card for firefox.* Google Reader: Great Web based RSS reader from Google. Not only you get to follow your favorite RSS feeds through this simple well-designed Ajax interface, but also, you can share the posts you find most interesting directly with your friends, you can also have a URL of page listing those posts. You can also receive links of feeds as recommended by Google (of course, through inspecting your data) which can be very accurate.* Windows Live Writer: very cool blog writer tool from Microsoft. With colorful very nice interface, WLW is open to large number of blogging services, starting of course with Windows Live.* Spell-check dictionaries: you can get spell check as you’re writing e-mails or any text in web pages in firefox by installing the dictionaries of the languages you use. It might be not as accurate in corrections as Office but at least it’s gonna catch the wrong words.* FEBE: Backup firefox data including extensions, themes, bookmarks, preferences, cookies, and many more..

Development and Technology

• CodeProject Newletter: a careful daily selection of 8 IT industry and development headlines with very hilarious comments. You need to register in CodeProject to receive this newsletter.* Jeff Atwood Visual Studio Settings: Great VS color schema for both 2005 and 2008. Download Here.

Bookmarks

• Online Bookmark Manager - StartAid: Haven’t you ever want to show your friend that web site that you bookmarked couple a days ago, but you can’t remember the URL. Bookmarks (or Favorites for IE users) is a great tool but you depend on it too much that it makes you forget URL. StartAid helps you solve this problem by offering an online bookmark manager that has a web interface in a folder hierarchy with the ability to show those bookmarks in a firefox menu just like firefox bookmarks and a side tab to offer search capabilities. Also, sharing bookmarks and searching others’ bookmarks are great features offered by this extension.* Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer: If you’re using firefox on more than one machine, you would like to sync your bookmarks between those machines. This extension helps do that.

Google-Related

• Better Gmail 2: Adds enhancements to the GMail web page. You can prefer Better Gmail, you can read the differences here.* Gmail Manager: manages Gmail accounts and shows notifications of new e-mails.* Google Reader Notifier: notification of Google Reader updates.* Google Gears: this doesn’t really adds direct tool to the browser, but it enables web applications to provide offline functionality using JavaScript APIs. A functionality that is nice to have if you’re using laptop.* Google Browser Sync: This extension from Google continuously synchronizes including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across multiple computers.* Google Notebook: allows you to store notes on web pages using a popup in your browser.* gTranslate: Translates the selected text via Google Translate.

Firefox Interface Customization

• CoLT: Adds a Copy Link Text item to the browser’s context menu along with the Copy Link Location item.* CuteMenus: Adds icons to all menus.* Favicon Picker 2: adds UI for replacing bookmarks icon.* Fission: puts the progress bar in the address bar like Safari.* Tab Scope: Vista-like live thumbnails for firefox tabs.

Other tools

• Skype: turns every phone number on each web page to a click-able link that can be called directly using Skype.* SearchWith: search selected text with various search services from context menu.* MrUptime: Get notified when an unavalible web site starts to work again.* Read it Later: Save pages to read later instead of keeping them as open tabs.

Let us know what tools are you using…