A while back, I posted an article detailing my switch to Google Chrome as my main web browser. Even as I have switched to Ubuntu (and also to the awesome Chromium daily builds – all the latest features of Chrome come to my browser every day), I believe that Chrome is the best browser on the market right now: it’s quick, it has great extensions, and it keeps innovating the web experience. While updating and improving my Chrome setup, I discovered two extensions that give my browsing more speed, and are easy to install and implement.

AdThwart

FlashBlock

Click “play” above to see me demonstrate how the Readability bookmarklet works with Evernote to create clean web clips without having to manually take out a bunch of garbage (blog comments, ads, etc.). Then, head on over to the Readability setup page to get yourself the bookmarklet!

As always, if you can’t see the “play” button at the top of the post, click on the title! Thanks for listening!

Google Chrome is one of those programs that has been around for a while, but when you first tried it, you weren’t that crazy about it. It was somewhat buggy, it didn’t have any type of customization available, and you couldn’t block ads. As much as I wanted to make the switch (being the Google nutjob that I am), I couldn’t do it without a few features that just weren’t available:

1. I needed ads blocked. Period. Even most of them would be sufficient.

2. Add-ons. I want to be able to customize it.

3. A way to integrate my Google Bookmarks so that I can use them like regular bookmarks.

Then one day a couple months ago, I heard that extensions were finally hitting the mainstream. Google Chrome Extensions were a great idea, but you needed to download Chromium, which was the “guinea pig” version of Chrome (which means it doesn’t always work properly), and you had to do a lot of nerdy command-line work to get it up and running. It wasn’t pretty. Once one-click extension support came around, it was time to dive back in.

Now, a few months later, I couldn’t be happier.

Why Switch From Firefox?

Hey, Firefox is a great product. Go ahead and download it if you’d like. It’s stable and it’s popular. But Firefox is very prone to bloatedness. After a while, it takes forever to load Firefox. Chrome just pops right up. It just feels light. Check out the screencast I took below of a comparison between a Firefox start and a Chrome start and you will see what I mean. The little box that pops up in the middle is Launchy, which is my application launcher. In layman’s terms, the box pops up and I start typing the name of the program. When the box disappears, that means I hit “enter” and the application is starting. First I try opening Firefox, then Chrome. Check it out:

If you time it, Firefox takes a full 7 seconds to load up for use, and Chrome takes about 1/2 a second – that means Chrome, in this situation, is 14 times faster loading!

Interested yet? Here are my full reasons why you should give Chrome a chance:

1. Speed. See the above video.
2. Full script support without any extra extensions. One of the best plugins for Firefox is Greasemonkey, which allows you to install “scripts” that will modify a particular website for you. For example, I have a script installed that makes my Google Calendar go full-screen without any sidebars by hitting the “F12” button. But working through Greasemonkey is a little abstract for the average user. In Chrome, you can just go to a site like UserScripts.org, find one you like and click “Install”. Chrome does the rest – and if you like wasting time on Facebook with Mafia Wars and FarmVille, they have tons of scripts to make it a more awesome experience for you (if you’re into that sort of thing).
3. No restart necessary. Want to install an extension? Go for it. It’ll just show up. You don’t have to interrupt your entire browsing session to install one script or extension. They’ll just be there for you.
4. Speaking of no restarts, the whole application won’t crash on you. Say you are in Firefox and you have a problem with a website that causes your browser to close. That sucks. Now you have to restart and possibly “restore” your session. In Chrome, only that tab closes out on you. So if you have a bunch of open tabs, they don’t depend on each other – minimizing the interruption.
5. More screen real estate – look at sites, not toolbars. I had to install plugins and customize Firefox to get as much screen as possible for browsing. Chrome’s got it all set up already. In fact, it doesn’t have a bottom toolbar, giving you even more room for surfing.
6. Turn web pages into applications. Sometimes I just want to open up straight to Gmail. I browse to my Gmail, then click the little page icon in the upper-right corner and click “Create application shortcuts…”. I can put a shortcut on my desktop, in my Quick Launch, and/or in my Start Menu. It will go straight to that site in a full window, just like an application (i.e., no address bar, etc.). I have that set up with Hootsuite as well.

Okay, okay – enough gushing. Time to get into the nuts-and-bolts: how do you set this thing up? Remember – it needs to do all the stuff that my awesome Firefox setup could do.

After installing Chrome, you need to block some ads

This is easily the most complicated part of the process, but it’s not that hard, really. Without a true contender to the ad-blocking throne, the best way to do it, in my experience, has been through a program called Privoxy. There’s a 7-step process to it that is awesomely-simplified in this post by Lifehacker and Geekzone. Just follow it, step-by-step, and you’re done. Bada bing.

Throw on your bookmarklets

Remember from my Firefox setup, I make full use of bookmarklets – little bookmarks that can do some awesome things in your Bookmarks Toolbar. I’ve found the easiest way to do this is to open up a Firefox window next to your Chrome window and literally drag your bookmarklets from Firefox and drop them into the Chrome toolbar. If you don’t have that, here are links to my bookmarklets and what they do. Instead of clicking on the link, just drag it up to your Bookmarks Toolbar:

• StumbleUpon Toolbar – All the fun of StumbleUpon with none of the bloated toolbar taking up space.
• GmailThis! – Like a page/article and want to quickly email it to your buddy? Click this icon and a new “Compose Email” window will pop up with the site title in the subject line and a link to the page in the body. Very handy!
• Subscribe in Google Reader – If I find a new blog, I can just click this button and it will automatically open up Google Reader and subscribe to it for me.
• The Hootlet – If you use Hootsuite to share stuff on Facebook and Twitter, clicking this will automatically open a new “hoot” with the title and shortened link to the site. GREAT for link sharing on Twitter!
• Lifehacker Random – The latest addition to my bookmarklets: Lifehacker just put out this button to go to any random article from their vast archives. What a great site.
• Readability – After setting this one up, you can just click it and it will clear your webpage of anything except the article text and pictures. Very useful with Evernote (I’ll be doing an article on that one soon).

Get some sweet extensions

Like Firefox plugins, these add-ons help you further customize your browsing experience. There are plenty out there, so feel free to browse around. Here are mine:

• GBX – Google Bookmarks For Chrome – This is a third-party extension that inserts my Google Bookmarks into the bookmarks toolbar to work like any bookmarks on a browser. Probably my favorite extension, just because I never think about it.
• Evernote Web Clipper – Like a page/article and want to save it for later? Just click this button and it will save it and set up a new note in your Evernote for you.
• Google Docs – One-click access to your most recent Google Docs, which is great if you just want to open up one quick document (or create a new one right away).

• Handy Google Shortcuts – If you like Google like I do, you use a lot of their products. This is a nice drop-down box of Google products (customizable, too) so that you can go straight to your Gmail, Reader, YouTube, or any of your favorite Google stuff.

Take it to the next level with scripts

No complicated Greasemonkey stuff. Just click “Install” on these bad boys:

• Facebook Fixer – There’s not enough room to fit all its features in here, which is why I wrote a full post on it a while back.
• Facebook Purity – Don’t care what quizzes people took? Annoyed by FarmVille announcements? God bless you. Hide them all with this script.
• Remove Facebook Ads – Privoxy doesn’t catch these. It does as promised.
• GooglePreview – Adds a little screenshot of each web site in the Google search results. Helps you figure out where you’re headed before you click on it.
• Google Images Enlarger – When doing an image search, this allows you to mouse-over the thumbnail and see a full-size picture without having to click through to the site. Very handy and a big time saver!

Your turn

Am I preaching to the choir? Do you already use Chrome? What are your favorite extensions/scripts? Why should we encourage more Chrome usage? If you’re a diehard Firefox user and you’re not convinced, tell us why. If you’re an Internet Explorer advocate, seek help immediately – we cannot help you here.

The internet is awesome. There’s no denying it. What was once a breeding ground for dorks everywhere has turned into a social gathering place for millions of people of all ages. What happened? What caused those changes? What made the internet so gosh-darn inviting for so many people? Let’s start at the top.

The Early Internet

The internet of the mid-‘90s was something else. Dominated by *shudder* America Online, the Web browser was the afterthought, because AOL wanted to be its own gathering place for people with common interests. If you wanted to hop on the internet, you likely went through AOL at the time (50 hours for FREE!). Here’s what you wound up getting:

I hope you like text!

Computers and servers weren’t as far along back then. We’re talking the days of processors in the MEGABYTES (and hey, if you don’t know what that means, just ignore it and move on to the next sentence. I’m trying to say “They were SLOW”). So as a result, once you got past the header of a web page, the rest was usually text. And I’m talking about all-the-same-font kinda text. Sure, they tried to mix it up with underlining some words or maybe making some words bold, but in the end, it was just flat-out boring. You were there to read, and pretty much nothing else. Graphic designers hadn’t started on the concept of “Web design” just yet.

Forums and chat rooms? We got ‘em!

If you wanted to interact with other people on the internet, you did it through forums and chat rooms.

Forums were, initially, the only thing on the internet. And they were called “bulletin boards”. You and other people that generally resembled the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons would go on there and wax intellectually about the latest episode of The X-Files or something. It was a place to share opinions with a bunch of people who won’t listen to you, not unlike many forums of today (I guess not everything’s changed).

Chat rooms were a whole ‘nother beast. They were real-time, and generally useless. You went into a chat room to really just insult each other and marvel at who you were talking with, or who they were pretending to be, anyway. You’d go into a chat room, type “hi everyone a/s/l”, and then get bombarded with people saying stuff like “hi there! 19/f/Honolulu”. Riveting. Regardless of the fact that the person was probably 29/m/Detroit, there was zero point in any conversation in chat rooms. You didn’t go there to communicate with people you knew. You were there to, again, talk about the latest episode of The X-Files, or watch people lob insults at other people.

Really… really crappy web pages in general.

When I was 12 years old, I thought it would be awesome to have a web page. With sites like GeoCities, Angelfire, and Tripod offering free web pages, I thought it would be the coolest thing ever. So I put together a web page about pro wrestling (I was cool), with some of the pre-loaded backgrounds and stuff from GeoCities, and I had myself a web page! I cannot stress to you enough how useless this web page was and what little value it had to other people. I was 12. I had nothing to talk about.

And I wasn’t alone. That was the bulk of the internet at the time – a bunch of kids who knew nothing about stuff like “graphic design”, “HTML”, or “being interesting”.

The Turning Point

Thankfully for all of us, the internet changed for the better. But it wasn’t immediate:

Napster pulls music sharing out of IRC

The first CD I ever burned was through my oldest brother’s computer in late 1999, using music I found through his IRC client. Internet Relay Chat was the first way to get music, and it was the most tedious, mind-numbing process around. You went in to a music-sharing community, had to request a song, and wait for somebody to respond by sending you the file. It was clunky, slow, and generally awful. But I was able to put together a CD of my own mix. It was a huge moment!

Once Napster hit the scene in 1999, all bets were off. Napster was, at that time, easy to use and a lot quicker. You were still waiting 20 minutes to an hour per song, but the interface was something you could conceivably understand. You now had a logical reason to own a computer hooked up to the internet.

“I’m on the phone with you AND I’m on the internet! How cool is this?!?”

Ah, dial-up internet. When you wanted to hop online, you first had to sit through this (click "play" and then shudder a little). The biggest problem with sitting around on the internet? You were tying up the phone line! Unless you were rich and had a second phone line, you were paying per minute on dial-up, and you couldn’t make calls in the meantime.

Broadband changed all of that. First, it set up an entirely separate connection for your computer’s modem. Instead of paying per minute, you had a continuous connection to the internet at a flat rate. Then, it was about 87 billion times faster (approximately). Now you could sit on the phone with somebody and talk about the web page you’re looking at! Wicked!

Today: So much awesomeness for so many people.

The stage was set: file sharing, legal or not, was on the rise. Computers were getting faster. You had a continuous connection to the internet. It was time for things to boom. And boom it did. Here are the things that make the internet of today the most awesome thing since… um, the last awesome thing that happened:

Search engines help you find stuff quicker than anything else ever created.

It started with Yahoo!, and then Google perfected it. Heck, even Bing has it down pretty good. As more and more people were connecting to the internet, more information was being shared. For you to find that information, you need a search engine. While Google has become the Kleenex of search engines (how many people ask for a “tissue”, anyway?), several companies out there all make it dead simple to find whatever you need, and especially stuff you don’t need. Whenever somebody is looking for an answer to something, what do you tell them to do? “Google it.”

For example, I dropped my cell phone in the toilet yesterday. No, I wasn’t texting while doing my business. It literally flew out of my shorts pocket and square into the toilet – nothing but net. In the old days, I would worry that my phone was ruined forever, and that I needed to shell out another $200 to get another phone (phone insurance? peh.). But I hopped on Google and typed in “cell phone in toilet”, and got about 5-6 different strategies for drying out your phone, along with endless testimonials from people saying their phone works as good as new.

[Side note: if you ever drop your phone in the toilet, pull it out immediately, take out the battery, clean the thing, then throw it in the oven at 150 degrees for an hour or so. Dries the sucker right up and you’re back in business.]

Online shopping means freaking cheap prices.

So many people resisted it for so long out of fear for their credit card numbers, but as secure transactions rose, internet shopping became hotter. Amazon is the de facto place to get just about anything. Struggling to find whole, fresh rabbits for dinner at the supermarket? Amazon’s got it. Thinking about getting a little romantic on your next camping trip? Get your tips from this great book! She won’t get intimate because your back hair is thicker than Sasquatch fur? Amazon to the rescue! 

On top of all that great stuff, sites like eBay and Craigslist make it easy for you to get top-dollar for that antique peach de-fuzzer that you’ve had in your family for generations. Instead of trying to unload it at a garage sale, you can snap a picture of it, put it on eBay, and get $475.24 for it. On the flip side, your search for antique peach de-fuzzers is over. [Note: here's what a search for "peach de-fuzzer" turns up.]

BitTorrent: Making Napster Look Like Tape-Recording-Off-The-Radio Since 2001

Peer-to-peer file sharing has certainly evolved since the days of Napster. Your Limewire, your Ares, your BearShare, KaZaa, and WinMX are almost all but dead at this point. BitTorrent allows you to not just download from the person who posted the file, but from everybody else who’s downloading it or has downloaded it before. You know what that means? That means the latest album to hit the shelves can be downloaded inside of a minute. The latest episode of The Office (premiering tonight!) can be on your computer within 20 minutes of it hitting the Web, and under 2-3 minutes the next morning.

This is not a discussion of the legalities of BitTorrent use. The point is, downloading from the Web has completely turned the corner and become near-instant. Add to that the legal methods like iTunes or my Zune Pass subscription (so awesome and so few people use it!), and music is everywhere these days.

Streaming stuff lets you watch “FAIL” videos without clogging up your computer, and makes cable TV obsolete

We all know parents and grandparents who have no idea what they’re doing on the computer. You wonder why their computer is so slow, then you find a “Downloads” folder with over 350GB of videos that somebody emailed them ranging from a guy setting himself on fire while wearing a banana suit to that stupid dancing baby from Ally McBeal. You know why? Because in the old days, when you wanted to watch a video from the internet or listen to an audio clip, you had to download it. The first video I ever saw that was from the internet was the music video for “Buddy Holly” by Weezer.

Once YouTube rolled in, streaming video became easier than ever. In fact, you can even embed the stuff right into web pages, so now you can watch all those great videos I just mentioned quickly, without having to put anything on your hard drive. Observe:

[Warning: before you hit “play”, the first video is the banana one, then there are like, ten other examples, many of which are riddled with profanity, a naked butt, and hundreds of idiots whose parents were too busy to teach them not to do stupid stuff like this.]

And for cable TV becoming obsolete, I submit the following examples: Hulu, network television websites, and Surf The Channel. I rest my case.

Wikipedia answers your endless questions about Small Wonder

I discovered Wikipedia as a giant time-suck a couple years ago, and I love it. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that is generated and monitored (for the most part) by its users. While it can be edited to reflect false information, it does cite most of its sources and also allows you to check out random information about little-known stuff. Wikipedia is one of the most influential sites when discussing the power of collaborative thinking. It also is really useful when you didn’t read the novel you were supposed to write a paper on for your class on 19th-century British Literature.

And if you are wondering about the reference to Small Wonder in the heading there, click here to check out Wikipedia’s entry on this ‘80s television series featuring a little robot girl.

WordPress and RSS syndication make everybody an author, for better or for worse

Obviously The Practical Nerd would be an example of “for better”, but WordPress made it insanely easy for anybody to start a real web site, and customize it in a way that people would actually want to look at it and read it. There are literally millions of blogs on the internet right now, and many – not all, but many – of them offer some interesting and useful advice. In the old days, you had to go get a book based on newspaper book reviews for this stuff. Now, you can just Google it and find a blog that caters to your interests. Done and done.

In addition, the development of Real Simple Syndication, or RSS, feeds offer a method of subscribing to a web site’s content without having to check in on it every day or every couple of hours. It saves many people time and energy.

Mozilla Firefox lets you control how you want your browser to look and act

Remember Netscape Navigator? Ugh. Ugly, slow, and clunky. Internet Explorer? A little better, but slow and behind the times. Enter Mozilla Firefox. Firefox lets you add plug-ins and install different “skins” for your Web browser. There are an infinite number of ways you can alter Firefox and make it work the way you want it to. As I previously wrote, plug-ins and add-ons make Firefox the best browser around, in my opinion. They let you create the experience you want for your internet surfing (do people still “surf” the internet, anyway?).

Social media breaks the mold of how to share your life with your friends and family

When I took my last trip to Taiwan, I took about 300 pictures over the course of two weeks. In the old days, if I had done that, I would have to get home, develop all that film, and then get together with everyone I wanted to show the pictures to. Instead, in a hotel room in Los Angeles on the way home, I plugged my camera into my laptop, uploaded all of the pictures to Facebook, added captions, and sent everybody an email with a link to the album. People saw my pictures before I even got home.

Facebook and MySpace let you keep in endless touch with your friends. Flickr and Google Picasa allow you the opportunity to bring pictures to anyone you want. YouTube makes showing people that video of your kid doped up on laughing gas a cinch. Twitter lets you do any of those things to anyone who’s on Twitter, as easy as possible. All these things are now going real-time, too. Scheduling with your family or friends can be easily done with a shared Google Calendar, and you can get reminders of anything sent to you via text or email from Google Calendar or Remember The Milk, or just about anything that helps you organize and schedule your life.

Knowledge that you want to share with others is easier, too. There are bookmarklets and plug-ins that make sharing as easy as clicking a button. If I find an interesting political article that I want my friends to see, I can click a button that says “Share on Facebook” that will do just that. If I see a cool game or blog post about personal finance that I think is useful for the general public, I can click “Tweet This” and it will go to all my Twitter followers. Knowledge and information is being spread quicker than it ever has in the history of the world. Word-of-mouth can go across states, countries, and the entire globe in seconds, instead of years.

“Dude, I just met Hugh Jackman!” “No way, I don’t believe you.” “Okay, well check out the picture I just sent you!”

Mobile computing is taking instant communication to unheard-of levels. And if that Bill Curtis guy from those “get the internet anywhere” commercials are any indication, you can send and receive anything at anytime, anywhere. You can snap a picture on your phone and send it to your Facebook account, or email it to your buddy, or send it directly to someone via MMS. Everybody is with everybody, all the time.

Mobile computing also has lots of business implications as well. Entrepreneurship continues to rise as people can take their laptops anywhere and log onto their Google Apps to write up a document or edit a spreadsheet. The big, envious symbol of a successful blogger is somebody with a laptop on the beach, sipping a drink with an umbrella in it. While that’s not every blogger (and certainly not me!), it can be done. Computers have gone from the size of warehouses to the something that fits in your pocket. All the coolest things you can do on the internet can be done on your phone.

The internet isn’t just a meeting place anymore. It’s a method of delivering an endless stream of content, knowledge, and anecdotes of your life to the people you care about. It’s no longer necessary to get emails with “Fwd: fwd: fwd: FWD: Fwd:” at the beginning of them. It’s no longer necessary to sit and wait for downloads. The internet has made computing easy and fun for anyone. It has a purpose now. That’s why it’s so awesome.

What makes the internet awesome for you? Share with us in the comments!

Yeah, the internet is awesome – heck, I'm planning a full post on how the internet's changes have made it supremely great. But it ain't perfect, just like everything else in the world. Firefox has the capabilities to make some real, honest changes that will make the Web that much more pleasant to be on. My favorite:

Blocking Unnecessarily Obnoxious Ads

Without question, obnoxious ads are out of control on the web these days—you can barely move your mouse across a page without ads moving around, popping up, taking over the screen or pretending to be a dialog window indicating impending doom if you don't pay for a system scan NOW. These ads can be put in their place easily, using everybody's favorite Adblock Plus

extension. Lifehacker is, of course, an advertising-supported site—so we'd be grateful if you'd keep us on the whitelist—but it'll do a charm for those flashing, pop-up-ing, overlaying, obtrusive ads all around the web.

Posted via email from tommeitner’s posterous

Okay, so you read 6 Ways The Average Person Can Use Twitter Without Feeling Like A Loser. You’re convinced you want to try this thing out and see where it takes you. But when you hop onto the Twitter homepage and sign up, you still don’t quite “get it”. And that’s okay, because to be honest, the native Twitter interface is kinda clumsy and is missing several key features. You want Twitter to be easy on the eyes, contain what you want it to contain, and be insanely easy to use. Enter HootSuite.

HootSuite is billed as the “professional Twitter client”, but it’s much more than that. I was looking for a place to handle multiple Twitter accounts (for business purposes). I found every Twitter-related need fulfilled under one roof. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Need #1: Sending out a new tweet.

Easy as pie. The Hootsuite box at the top lets you type up a new tweet with a running counter of what you’ve got left (for those unfamiliar, Twitter only lets you use 140 characters in a tweet). I can click on the profile picture of whichever Twitter profile I want this to post to (it will put a little green checkmark on top of the selected picture). If I want to, I can post to all of my Twitter accounts, or just a select few. It also has a wonderful little box for you to enter in a URL to shrink using Ow.ly, HootSuite’s URL shortener.

Need #2: Scheduling future tweets.

When you click on the “Send Later” link, the box opens up to reveal a little scheduler, allowing you to post tweets for the future. This is a great piece of integration. Just like URL shortening, tweet scheduling was something that previously needed a separate service. Here it is, just a click away. For example, I will be scheduling a tweet to announce this post that will hit Twitter tomorrow morning. I’ll probably still be in bed.

Need #3: A clean, sharper, customizable interface.

On Twitter’s official site, looking at all these different things shown above had to be done on separate pages. Here we can see them all at a glance: your home feed (where your tweets are integrated with the tweeters you are following), your mentions (when somebody makes a public reference to you or replies to something you tweeted), your direct messages (private tweets sent directly to you), and the tweets that you’ve sent. These are all columns I added. They can be moved, rearranged, or deleted. Other column options include search terms (great for monitoring a topic of discussion), among others.

At the top of the page, there is also the ability to add tabs – in my case, one for each account that I am managing – and a “Featured” tab, which has two columns: one with Hootsuite’s official Twitter stream, and one of their favorite tweeters. This “at a glance” feature makes it easy to navigate your Twitter account.

Need #4: Twitter Statistics.

Now here’s where things get good: sharing a link on Twitter is great, but it’s nice to know if people are clicking on your links at all. Previously, this meant using a specific URL shortener – bit.ly is the most popular one – and checking back with it to see how it is performing. HootSuite’s URL shortener tracks the link for you, and provides the statistics in real-time with just a click. In this case, it turns out 4 people were interested in watching the 12-minute video of a guy beating Super Mario World on YouTube (hey, give me a break, it’s late at night). When posting links to The Practical Nerd, this can come in handy, so that I can determine how my links are performing.

Need #5: Easy sharing.

If I had a nickel for every service I’ve used to automatically tweet a link… well, I’d have about 15-20 cents. But that’s not the point. When I want to share a link on Twitter, I like to use a solid bookmarklet for one-click access. My most recent move was using TBUZZ, which automatically inserted a shortened URL for me to share with the world. The only snag was that I constantly had to open a new pop-up to log into Twitter any time I started a new Firefox session.

But HootSuite again solves the problem with the Hootlet, a cute name for a sharp little bookmarklet. When I’m on a webpage that I want to share with the world, I click the Hootlet in my bookmarklets toolbar, and up pops a little box for me to fill in:

As you can see, the Hootlet has already shortened the URL for me (using their shortener, meaning I can track the link’s performance), adds the title of the page, and has all the other features of a HootSuite tweet: selecting profiles, scheduling for later, etc. It’s also lightning-quick.

Conclusion: It’s a winner!

HootSuite has all the features that I could possibly think of, under one roof. This is a completely integrated solution for any Twitter user, professional or recreational. It makes tweeting as easy as a few clicks. Want to make it your desktop solution, as opposed to a web-based program? I use Google Chrome’s great feature that turns any web page into its own desktop application. Then I use TrayIt!, a simple little program that allows me to minimize HootSuite to my system tray:

Now Hootsuite runs in the background (using Google Chrome’s extremely lightweight browser), and if I ever want to bring it up, I just click on that little owl there.

Do you have your own favorite Twitter client? Or have you tried HootSuite? Share with all of us in the comments!

Remember when it was just about connecting with people you don’t see all the time? And when it was just open for college students? Now, all of a sudden, my friends’ parents are asking me to join a mafia with them or something. It’s not the same. So what do you do? Do you just “delete” your Facebook profile and forget about it? Nope. You get Facebook Fixer.

Facebook Fixer lets you clean up your home page and display what you want. As an example, here’s my Facebook home page in Google Chrome:

Looks about right. You got your stupid filter on the side that nobody uses, and a bunch of suggested “friends” based on the idea that if you know one person, you know everyone that knows that person too (or my favorite – “You both went to Wisconsin Milwaukee”. Hey, that’s great, so did, like, TWENTY THOUSAND other people last year!!). Now, check out the same page (with a couple updates from friends, apparently) in Firefox with Facebook Fixer:

Notice: the filter pane is gone. So is the suggestions thing. The “Sponsored” pane is a new sight for me – AdBlock Plus usually kicks those things out. Facebook must have figured something out to sneak that one back in. Hopefully an update will take care of that in the near future.

Now, is that worth the trouble for you? No? Well, how about a few more features:

• When you roll your mouse pointer over any small profile picture, a full-size version of it will pop up.
• You can translate text automatically with Google Translate – useful for my friends in Taiwan whose statuses are always in Mandarin.
• Detach the top bar – instead of having to scroll to the top of the page to click on “Home” or “Profile” or do a search, the top bar will move down the screen with you.
• Add birthdays to your Google Calendar with one click!
• About a billion other cool things.

To get Facebook Fixer, you need to first install Greasemonkey. Then you can head over to the Facebook Fixer website and click the “Install” button. That’s it! Now when you hover your mouse pointer over the “Settings” button at the top of Facebook’s page, there will be a “Facebook Fixer” settings option, and you can customize it to your delight.

Do you know of any other really cool Facebook tools? Share them with all of us Nerds!

No matter how hard I try, I can’t quit Firefox.

I use Google Chrome along with Launchy to quickly access any part of my Google life, if I just need to do one quick thing. Chrome loads so doggone fast, it makes sense. But, Firefox is infinitely more customizable, and you can make it work EXACTLY the way you want it to. I’ve learned a lot about Firefox in the last few months, and I think I’ve hit upon a build of Firefox that is pretty fast, easy to use, and easy to set up. So let’s dive in to my “power user” setup of Mozilla Firefox, and let’s see if we can’t find something in here that you might want to use.

First: The add-ons.

Add-ons are the meat of what makes Firefox so great. To find add-ons that you might want, just click on “Tools”, then “Add-ons”. You’ll see what’s already been installed, and there’s a tab there to search for add-ons. Installing is as easy as clicking “Add to Firefox”. Here are the ones that I think make my Firefox the cream of the crop, and links to where you can get them.

Adblock Plus

The above is a screenshot of ESPN.com, largely known for having a bunch of advertisements that slow the site down to a crawl sometimes. But wait, there’s no ads in that picture! That’s because of the wonderful Adblock Plus. Imagine a Google search with no “Sponsored Listings” in your way. Picture a Facebook without stupid, useless ads cluttering up the side of the page! It speeds up the internet infinitely, and it’s insanely easy to install and forget about. I don’t even notice it anymore, unless I go onto other people’s computers.

Download StatusBar

So you want to download something. By default, Firefox pops up a box that says “Downloads”. Then you have to watch the bar fill up, and then you have to close the box. Stupid, right? The Download StatusBar gets rid of that stupid pop-up and inserts a little progress bar at the bottom of your screen. It doesn’t interrupt your web browsing, and the screenshot to the left shows all the information you need to see just by hovering the mouse cursor over the status bar. Clean and simple.

On a side note: go to “Tools”, then click “Options”. Look at where your files are being downloaded, and change that to the Desktop. It will save you lots of time clicking over to the folder where you have the file. Then, you can just minimize Firefox and work with the file right away. Plus, you’ll delete any useless, temporary files (like installer and setup files) right away to clear your desktop.

FacePAD

I don’t have a screenshot of this, because it’s pretty easy to explain. FacePAD is an add-on that allows you to download full Facebook albums with one click. I needed this add-on when I decided to back up all my photos to Google Picasa. While it’s great for sharing, I didn’t feel like Facebook was the best, most organized place to keep all my photos. So, I had to download the photos and then upload them to Picasa. If you are ever in the market for downloading Facebook albums, FacePAD is the way to go.

GButts

Yeah, yeah.

I love me some Google. I use many Google services, because I like simple, easy-to-use programs with clean user interfaces. That’s why I like Google stuff. But I used to have to go to the Google homepage, then click on whatever I needed at the top. Last week, I discovered GButts, an unfortunately-named Firefox add-on.

GButts lets you have quick access to any Google services you use. In the settings and options for GButts, you can specify what Google services you want to include.

Now, if I want to check my email, look at my appointments for tomorrow, analyze my wonderful traffic statistics, look up something on a map, or search for a video, I can just click the little Google icon and open the drop-down box that will help me find what I need.

Some of you may not need this one if you don’t really use Google services. But then I would have to shake my head at you and wonder why you’re not. Just kidding. I love you all, regardless of your software loyalty.

Google Bookmarks Button Reloaded

Google Bookmarks is a recently-discovered (by me, anyway) service that allows you to store your bookmarks online. I really liked this idea, as I am prone to a number of computer maladies and have had to rebuild my bookmarks list several times. I tried using Delicious for this, but it just didn’t feel right. And I was uninterested in the social aspect of Delicious. Google Bookmarks is a simple way to go. Plus, I take my bookmarks with me anywhere, so I can browse the same web pages on any computer I want.

But I liked the feel of the Bookmarks menu in Firefox. Enter this little gadget: the Google Bookmarks Button Reloaded adds a little star icon to your toolbar, and you can bring up a drop-down box to use your bookmarks just like a regular bookmarks menu. Simple idea, right? Plus, if you want to bookmark a new webpage, you just click the star and it will bring up a box for you to choose what folder to put it in, and it will sync that with the rest of your online bookmarks. Easy as pie.

Google Preview

Quick, Tom! Have more Google stuff! Geez!

Google Preview is a nice little add-on that brings up screenshots of websites in the Google search results. This is great when you want to verify that a site is actually something you want to visit and not an annoying sales letter-type site. Take a peek at what you’re getting before you get there.

Personal Menu

If you noticed at the top of this page, I have no menu bar at the top anymore. Why bother?

What I liked about Chrome was that it saved lots of screen real estate for the actual web page. With toolbars and other useless gadgets, Firefox can quickly take up half your screen, leaving you little space to actually navigate web sites.

Enter Personal Menu, a nice add-on that pulls that top bar off of your screen and deposits it into a little button for you. Now, on the rare occasion I need to use any of those menu items, I just click on the button and navigate to it.

It’s also highly customizable. You notice I have no Bookmarks section (which I have in my Google Bookmarks button already), and no “Help” menu either. I never used it. I just wanted to keep things as simple as possible.

Then, the hidden secret of the internet: Bookmarklets

To me, bookmarklets are possibly the coolest thing ever. While add-ons are great for Firefox, load up too many and you start to lose on performance. Bookmarklets are links that you drag to your Bookmarks Toolbar (right-click the toolbar and make sure there’s a checkmark next to “Bookmarks Toolbar”). You get one-click access to a TON of stuff, and you don’t bog down your computer one bit. I’ve linked to the pages where the bookmarklet links are. Go to the page I’ve linked to, and drag the link on THAT page up to your Bookmarks Toolbar. Here are the ones I use, from left to right:

StumbleUpon: I love using StumbleUpon. It’s a great way to find useful stuff on the internet, as well as waste a TON of time if you’re not careful. But the StumbleUpon Toolbar takes up so much gosh-darn space. With this bookmarklet, I go to my StumbleUpon account page. There’s a “Stumble” button there that opens up the Web Toolbar within the web pages – all the functionality of StumbleUpon without the bloat. If you’re a StumbleUpon user, give this one a try.

Clip To Evernote: I use Evernote to store all kinds of information and resources. If I find a page I like, I just click on this bookmarklet and it puts the whole page into a note for me, if I so desire.

Gmail This! : If you are an avid Gmail user and you like to share links, this is a great, easy way to do it. Clicking on this bookmarklet opens up a new “Compose Email” window, and it copies and pastes the title of the webpage into the subject line and the URL link is pasted into the body of the email. I love using this with Posterous. In fact, most of my “Around The Web” posts as of late have been done using this method. It makes it quick and easy.

Google Tasks: Simple task lists are what I need, and Google’s got it covered. But, unfortunately, you have to go through Gmail to get to it all the time. Instead, just drag this link to your Bookmarks Toolbar. It’ll open up your task list right away when you click on it. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s all I need.

My two “GSignatures”: Gmail is my hub for all email correspondence, both personal and business. I’ve been manually typing in signatures for a long time now, but I just discovered these instructions on creating Gmail signature bookmarklets the other day. I created a personal one with a link to this site and my phone number, and I created a business one with a link to my business web site and my business phone number. Now, when I type an email, all I have to do is click the button for whichever signature I need, and it automatically inserts it for me.

New Document: Shocker – I use Google Docs. I have been using Open Office, but for simplicity’s sake, I’ve been converting over to Google Docs. If I need to type up a quick document for something, all I need to do is click the bookmarklet for that, and it automatically opens a new Google Doc for me to write in. This link also has bookmarklets for new spreadsheets and new presentations, if you need them.

Subscribe: As I stumble my way through the internet, I occasionally come across a new blog that I want to subscribe to. Previously, I had to remember the name, go to Google Reader, and then search for the blog. Now, I can just click the “Subscribe” button, and I instantly can add it to my Reader without any hassle. To get it, go to your Google Reader, click “Settings”, and then the “Goodies” tab. You’ll find it there.

Tweet: I renamed this one (and actually, I’ve renamed a lot of them – right-click on a bookmarklet and click on “Properties” to do so yourself), because the original name was TBUZZ. TBUZZ is a great tool, and might finally be the Twitter bookmarklet I’ve been looking for. A big part of Twitter is sharing links, and I like to do so quite a bit. Now, when I’m on a page I want to share, I click my “Tweet” button, and it shortens the URL and pastes it into a tweet for me to add my comments to. Then I click “Update” and it does the rest. An additional bonus to this one is that you can quickly see what other people are saying about the same link. Sharp stuff!

Share on Facebook: Finally, there are some links I want to share with my close, personal friends. You know, all 300 of them. If I want to bring a link to people’s attention on Facebook (which I will do with this article for sure), I use this bookmarklet from Facebook. It will open a window, all set to go for your comments, and you can just post it like that.

Now: your turn!

Whew! That was a lot of stuff! It looks overwhelming, but give some of it a try. Once this is set up, your internet moves faster, cleaner, and almost anything is just a click or two away. It saves me TONS of time, and some of this stuff might really help you out. But I know I’m not the only one who uses Firefox add-ons and stuff – what is your favorite add-on or bookmarklet for Firefox? Share it with us in the comments!

One of the hallmarks of being a Practical Nerd is the ability to legally get the most functionality out of your computer without having to pay an arm and a leg. But there are so many people I talk to out there that have no clue about most of these options. Therefore, I am begging you to share this article with everyone you know! It needs to be spread around. There are a few great benefits that come with using these Practical Nerd Alternatives:

• You will literally save hundreds of dollars in most cases.
• About 98% of the general public will still retain all the functionality that they need, if not more.
• You will, in most cases, be able to jump right into the program and know how to use it easily.
• All of these options are perfectly fine to use, even if you are sharing files with someone who is using a more bloated program.
• When these programs get updated with new features – you get them, without having to buy a whole new piece of software!

1. Your office program (word processing, spreadsheets, etc.).

Cooler People: Microsoft Office.

Practical Nerds: Open Office, or Google Documents.

Why?: Microsoft Office is the standard-bearer in office products. Everybody has them, and they do fine work. But in 2007, Microsoft Office started messing around with what worked – they added a “ribbon” interface at the top, which looked really cool. The problem is, people who start using it have NO idea how to find anything! In addition, we all know Microsoft Office is freaking expensive. According to Microsoft’s web site, the retail price for Microsoft Office Standard is $399.95! Yup, and this is a suite of programs that does NOT come with Windows.

Open Office replaces your Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint, while also having a handful of programs of their own. Functionality is simple, but loaded with plenty of features. You can use it to open Office documents – even those created in Office 2007, which Office 2003 can NOT do – and save in those same formats. So, if you need to swap files back and forth with someone using Office, there’s no problem!

Google Documents is a suite of office products online – you do all your work in a web browser. Google Docs is much simpler than Open Office, but still has a host of features that make it comparable for most word processing and spreadsheet needs. It also has the ability to create forms that will then supply data for a spreadsheet automatically, and it has Presentation, which replaces your PowerPoint. All files are hosted online, so it is an automatic backup solution as well. Like Open Office, Google Docs also handles all Office files as well.

2. Your web browser.

Cooler People: Internet Explorer.

Practical Nerds: Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.

Why?: Internet Explorer is junk. It takes up way too much resources and slows your computer down. Most of IE’s features over the last few years have been in response to other web browsers’ features that have proven to be very popular.

I’m a Firefox man, and I’m proud of it. You can customize Firefox to handle all of your web browsing needs and then some. It is a powerhouse, and it has a wizard on its official website to walk you through customizing it to your liking.

Google Chrome is a new kid here on the market, and I know plenty of people who really enjoy it. If a web site causes Chrome to crash, it only crashes the open tab, not the entire browser. It is also simple and clean, allowing you to fill the page with websites rather than toolbars.

3. Your antivirus protection.

Cooler People: Symantec, Norton.

Practical Nerds: AVG, Avira Antivirus, Avast!, Panda Cloud Antivirus

Why?: Because antivirus protection should be free. If you are paying for antivirus protection, it is an absolute waste of your money. Use any of the free solutions above and you will be more than protected. Plus, check out The Practical Nerd’s hands-on review of Panda Cloud Antivirus.

4. In-depth photo editing.

Cooler People: Adobe Photoshop.

Practical Nerds: GIMP.

Why?: Photoshop has become the Kleenex of photo manipulation. If somebody has edited a photo, we say they “Photoshopped” it. It is the biggest thing going – and it costs $699. GIMP is free, and it is powerful. It does just about anything the average person would need. If you are used to Photoshop, try GIMPshop, which is a version of GIMP designed to function very similarly to Photoshop for an easy transition.

5. Your note-taking.

Cooler People: Microsoft OneNote.

Practical Nerds: Evernote.

Why?: OneNote is a powerful program and is a great way to hold all your notes – but it costs $99.95. In my experience with OneNote, backing up your notebooks is a big hassle: when I did, in fact, backup my system before I reinstalled Windows, I could not restore my OneNote backup for anything, and there is very little information online to help out with that. So I lost my notes anyway.

Evernote has both a desktop client and an online note-taking platform for you. They sync automatically, so your notes are always backed up and accessible anywhere. Evernote has plenty of great features, and yes, it is free.

6. Burning CDs and DVDs.

Cooler People: Nero or Roxio.

Practical Nerds: DVDStyler and CDBurnerXP.

Why?: How lame is it that you have to spend a couple hundred bucks on software to use something that came with your computer? Why is this not integrated with any software that comes with your computer? CDBurnerXP handles any CD or DVD burning that you want to throw at it. Want cool menus on your DVD? Use DVDStyler. They are both dead-simple to use and make burning any discs a snap.

7. Playing back music and movies.

Cooler People: Windows Media Player.

Practical Nerds: KMPlayer.

Why?: KMPlayer is my newest discovery, and it might be my favorite. Windows Media Player, while free, is fairly confusing to the average user. If you don’t have the right codecs or something is goofy, it won’t play your video. KMPlayer comes with every codec under the sun, and it plays music, movie files, DVDs, VCDs, you name it – “out of the box”, meaning it just works. Install it and then just use it. It’s slick-looking, and it can handle whatever you want to throw at it. Many people online will tell you to use VLC Player for this, but I find VLC to be just a bit confusing for the average user, and it did not always work properly on my XP machine. KMPlayer does, every time.

8. Handling all of your emails and scheduling.

Cooler People: Microsoft Outlook.

Practical Nerds: Gmail and Google Calendar.

Why?: Outlook is also in the Microsoft Office suite, meaning we’re already talking about paying hundreds of dollars just to use it. Gmail allows you to organize all of your email accounts in one place, enables you to search deeply through all of your emails, and you can download a notifier to sit in your system tray to let you know when you have new mail, just like Outlook. Plus, Gmail stores everything online, so you free up a LARGE amount of space on your computer! Gmail also has a new feature called Gmail Offline, which allows you to work on your email offline and sync it up with your Gmail account when you restore internet access. It’s all free, and there are more features than I can even talk about here – I plan to put together a user’s guide to Gmail in the near future.

Google Calendar allows any type of color-coding, will automatically email or text you reminders of events (if you want it to), imports any number of calendars, and you can even share calendars with other people (handy for families that need to work off of one calendar). And like Gmail, Google Calendar stores everything online, which means it is accessible anywhere.

9. Handling your finances.

Cooler People: Microsoft Money, or Quicken.

Practical Nerds: Spreadsheets (both Open Office and Google Docs have checkbook templates online), Mint, Thrive, ClearCheckbook, many others.

Why?: Is it ironic that money management programs cost so much? Microsoft Money costs $59.99, and it has a ridiculous number of features that nobody is ever going to use. Quicken is $39.99 and is pretty much the same. Also, a new version comes out for both and you are stuck with outdated software.

One of my more anticipated posts in the next week or so will be how to manage your money for free and get all the functionality you would use out of Money or Quicken. By combining a spreadsheet with an online account aggregator like Mint or Thrive, you get all the reports you need, plus extra (and useful!) features that only online offerings present. But in brief, spreadsheets allow a neat, safe way to track your expenses while the program does the math for you. Plus, it saves paper, if you are into that sort of thing.

Whew! That’s a lot of different options! But as you can see, mainstream, well-known programs are not always the best options for you. You’ve just been using them because everyone else has. Now you can drop those bulky programs and still do everything you are used to doing! Do you disagree with any of these choices? Do you use a different option not listed here? Sound off in the comments! Let’s hear it!