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Why I Switched From Firefox To Chrome, and How To Do It Painlessly
Feb 26th, 2010 by The Practical Nerd

chrometoolbar

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:

chromegbookmarks

  • 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).

chromegoogle

  • 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.

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How One Tweet Saved Me $60+ This Month
Jan 26th, 2010 by The Practical Nerd

Photo courtesy of Matt Hamm [Flickr]

Everybody’s million-dollar-question is “How do you make money on Twitter?” Well, I managed to “make” over $60 this month, thanks to one simple tweet. Here’s the backstory (this also answers the OTHER million-dollar-question, “What’s the point of being on Twitter, anyway?”):

I keep my checking account with ING Direct right now, and I love it. While I am moving to a joint checking account with my lovely fiancé, my ING account is all mine and currently, I still pay some bills out of it while I make the switch. But for a period of time, I also had my “emergency” checking account with Guaranty Bank.

The reason for this was simple: ING has no branches, and in case I need to make an emergency transaction, I can deposit cash or checks immediately into my Guaranty Bank checking account, and then pay a bill if I need to. Except the big issue was that, once in a while, I would accidentally pay a bill out of my Guaranty Bank account while all my money was in my ING account.

For example, a few months ago, I accidentally drew my Bank of America credit card payment out of my Guaranty Bank account without realizing it. So, the money for the payment was sitting in my ING account, and Guaranty Bank winds up paying the bill and then charging me $37. That’s fair. It was my mistake.

But I accidentally did it again last month. This time, disaster struck. Guaranty Bank decided not to pay the bill. So when the charge came through, they took it, charged me $37 for a returned check fee, and then sent it back. Bank of America, for some reason, decided to try sending it through again. So Guaranty Bank took it, charged me $37, and sent it back again. Guaranty Bank does not have any type of email alerts or anything – they send a letter. That’s right, a snail mail letter. They might as well have given it along with a flask to a guy on a horse. By the time I got this letter, I was well over $70 in the hole and my credit card payment had not been paid.

Now, at this point, it is my fault. I’m not trying to skirt responsibility here. However, I do take issue with the idea that the bank could suddenly change its mind about how it handles these issues and then literally notify me days after the fact that this happened. If I have ever overdrawn on my ING account, an email pops up on my phone before I get my keys out in the parking lot.

So I closed the account with Guaranty Bank. I was done. If I needed another brick-and-mortar bank, I’d find a different one. I paid off the debt and closed the account after five years (and I used to work there!), because they took away fee reversal privileges from the tellers since I left there. I called Bank of America and the woman said she didn’t know why the payment was sent through twice, and that a cash advance was going to be taken off the credit card to pay the account and I would have to pay the associated fees, along with the late fees and the returned check fees. I asked if I could make the payment over the phone right then and there – after all, I still had the money! She said I could not, because this process had already begun and there was nothing we could do. It didn’t make sense to me, but I accepted it because that’s apparently what they do.

I waited, and the next week, I noticed all the fees hit, but the cash advance was not processed, and I had a double payment due the next month. I called back, and the next woman told me she didn’t know why I was told this, but they don’t take cash advances to pay accounts. She didn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to make a payment over the phone – and that money was gone at this point. She also reiterated that the payment should not have been attempted twice. She then told me she would reverse the late fees and the returned check fees, and I would owe about $130, much less than the nearly $200 payment I originally owed. I thanked her and went on my way.

The following week, I saw that the fees were reversed but the payment was still almost $200. I called and complained, saying I had already altered my budget twice now for wrong information. The gentleman said there was nothing he could do. I hung up. Angry, I called back once more and spoke to another woman. She attempted to reverse another $40 (which she did), but it did not affect the payment due. She said she couldn’t do anything about it.

Furious at this point, I went to Twitter. I was shocked to see @BofA_Help on Twitter. I decided to publicly send them a message:

TwitterBofA 

Like I said, I was angry. I wasn’t really expecting anything to come out of it, it just was my way of venting.

Next thing I know, I get a response asking for my contact information. I then get a phone call and I explain my situation to the woman. She calls me back later and says she doesn’t know how I got all this incorrect information, and she’s clearly not thrilled about doing this, but she tells me to pay the $130 and then notify her and she will adjust the rest of the payment.

I did. And it was taken care of within a day.

Now, I’m still not exactly a big fan of Bank of America. I think they need better training for their reps, as I received so much wrong information in such a short period of time that severely impacted my budget. However, I have to give them props for being so responsive and having a dedicated team on Twitter to help their customers.

It doesn’t stop there – there are plenty of companies on Twitter, and sometimes it’s easier to get access to REAL people by going the Twitter route. If nothing else, you should be on Twitter to have your voice heard by the customer service reps for the big companies that tend to treat you like dirt. That one tweet above was a throwaway thought, but it wound up finally getting me what I was told I was going to get. All my fees were reversed and I still paid the money that I rightfully owed.

Thanks, @BofA_help.

Do you have any cool Twitter stories to share? Drop them in the comments, we’d love to hear them!

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John Mayer Sums Up How Stupid The 2000s Were
Dec 21st, 2009 by The Practical Nerd

If you are on Twitter and not following musician John Mayer, you’re doing it all wrong. Mayer continues to have some of the funniest tweets, but last night he had a beautifully-done series of tweets on how stupid the 2000s decade was as it draws to a close. Here’s a screenshot of the tweets:

JohnMayerTweets

Now, they are in reverse-chronological order, so they start at the bottom. Also, please try to ignore the side picture of him wearing a t-shirt with a plunging neckline and looking deep into your eyes. Unless you’re a lady, because I think that’s what he’s going for. What’s your view on the 2000s?

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Use Google’s New Real-Time Search To Keep Tabs On The Game While At Work
Dec 15th, 2009 by The Practical Nerd

packerstwitter

It was one of the biggest games of the season. Any season, really. Any time my Green Bay Packers are dueling with the Chicago Bears, it is must-see television. Regardless of standings and divisions, the Packers-Bears rivalry is fierce. And to be honest, it was bigger than usual, because the Packers are trying to push their way into the playoffs. Every win counts.

At my church, we were having a pot-luck lunch. I was eating a little shredded beef and watching Ryan Grant take it to the house on the first Packer play of the game. We were having fun, and the Packers were winning.

Then I had to go to work.

I sat in the car at the office parking lot while listening to the last precious few minutes of the game that I could hear. I didn’t have a radio at work, so this would be it. After this, it was going to be word-of-mouth.

Thank God for Google.

My computer at work blocks just about everything: email, Twitter, Facebook, ESPN, whatever. But it doesn’t block Google, and I can’t think of a workplace that would. So, when I want to keep up with a game, I type the team name in the search box, and the first result on Google’s results page is a scoreboard with a game clock. I just hit “refresh” every time I check in to see the score, and I’m okay.

This game was different, though, as the Packers were up 13-0 when I left the car. After a few refreshes, it was 14-13, Bears. I was stunned. I had no idea what was going on; who was in? Who wasn’t in? Did anybody get hurt? Did we give up a big play? WHAT?!?

Then I saw a little box that was updating with Twitter results down the page. It wasn’t blocked because it was google.com, not twitter.com! I moved to the options section (see above picture) and clicked “Updates”. Up came a scrolling, constantly-updating commentary on the game from the Twitter universe.

packerssearch There’s no game on as I write this, so you’ll have to imagine it.

It was beautiful. I could just keep checking, and any big play was commented on by plenty of people! It was like having a crowdsourced play-by-play of the game (and the Pack won, too!). I could see when somebody missed a field goal, when Jay Cutler threw an interception (or two), or any big defensive stand.

If you’re at work and you want to keep track of the big game, just search for the team name on Google and click “Updates”. Then you can see what the world is talking about as it happens.

This has other great implications, too:

  • Monitoring big news developments. Want to know the latest on Tiger Woods having sex with people? Type in “Tiger Woods” and watch everybody comment on stuff that isn’t their business all day!
  • Keep tabs on your fantasy football players. Search for the player’s name and you can see any big play they come up with, so you can monitor performance (and thank you, Quinton Ganther!).
  • Watch other live event happenings in real-time. The Oscars. An Apple convention. A big press conference. People are tweeting about this stuff all the time. Keep up with it all at work!

Anything you can search Twitter for, you can use this for. Obviously, you want to work hard and make sure you’re getting things done, too. But if you can’t miss the big news or game, Google’s new real-time search is a killer way to do it quickly and easily.

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Sharing The Love: Hilarious Twitterers, Positivity Mistakes, Pocket Notebooks, and Glue
Nov 2nd, 2009 by The Practical Nerd

Tweet Humor: 10 Twitter Users That Crack Us Up [Mashable]

Twitter can be a very educational place, whereby following the right individual or brand, you can learn from their tweets. In fact, we’ve already highlighted usability experts, entrepreneurs, authors (fiction and nonfiction), environmentalists, foodies, and musicians that we think are must follows.

But Twitter can also be a medium ripe with humor and capable of making the masses laugh with a single tweet that resonates throughout the Twittersphere. So now it’s time to a take a more comedic turn, and point out 10 LOL-inducing Twitter accounts that break the monotony of our work days, add spice to our weekends, and make Twitter a more entertaining place to be with their colorful characters.

Do You Make These 5 Common Mistakes When Switching To A More Positive Attitude? [The Positivity Blog]

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice”
Wayne Dyer

“For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use being anything else”
Winston Churchill

If you are reading this then there is good chance that you agree with me that positivity is pretty awesome. But it is not always easy to adopt a more positive attitude and there are some pitfalls. So today I’d like to share a few mistakes that I have made in this area and that I think are fairly common.

14 Ways a Notebook In Your Pocket Can Save You Money [The Simple Dollar]

Melinda writes in:

“You constantly write about how having a notebook in your pocket all the time helps you in life and saves you money. I get that you can write down your ideas in it all the time, but I’m not a creative type. I don’t see how having a notebook on me at all times can save me money at all.”

Aside from the fact that I’m able to use the notebook to write down my ideas – my career’s bread and butter – a pocket notebook constantly comes in handy for many other financial reasons as well. (FYI, I usually just keep a simple small Mead reporter’s notebook in my pocket, along with a good pen that doesn’t run out of ink.) Here are fourteen ways I use that notebook to directly save money.

Glue Suggests Movies, Music, and More [Lifehacker]

Once you sign up for a Glue Account, you can begin flagging things you like to build a profile of tastes. What kind of things? Glue can suggest books, music, movies, video games, wine, artists, and movie stars. You can log in using Facebook or Twitter and Glue will not only suggest items based on your own tastes but on the tastes of your friends.

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