Dan’s Wall of the Insanely Useful

First let’s go over the best resources for firefox info, tips, and tricks.

1. Know your firefox shortcuts
2. Check out lifehacker’s Firefox 3 Power User Guide
3. Tweakguide’s Firefox tweaks
4. Bookmarks backup and view on any computer with the delicious plugin or foxmarks (discussed below)

First let’s go over the best resources on the web for top firefox plugins:

1. QuickOnlineTips’ “50 Best Firefox Extensions”
2. BestCollegesOnline’s “50 Firefox Plugins that Will Change the Way You Surf”
3. eConsultant’s “I want a Firefox extension to…” (BTW eConsultant has some killer tool lists)
4. Mashable’s “FIREFOX GOD: 300 tools for firefox”

More will be added to this list as I discover additonal resources.

Ok, so here is my outstanding firefox plugin list:

1. Adblock Plus with Easylist subscription:  blocks web advertizing
2. All-in-One Sidebar:  provides an easier-to-manage interface for firefox features
3. Autofill Forms:  Auto-fills web forms. But personally, I use 1Password on the mac.
4. BugMeNot
5. Delicious Bookmarks:  Replaces the firefox bookmark function: this is Bookmarks On Steroids. I use it to throw any useful useful bookmarks in there that I find on the web.
6. DownloadHelper
7. DownThemAll
8. Fast Dial
9. Firebug
10. FireGestures:  Essential. Allows most firefox features to be applied by simply moving the mouse.
11. Foxmarks:  Essential resource for backing up your firefox bookmarks, if you don’t use delicious.com
12. Gmail Manager:  Useful if you need a persistant gmail checker and you don’t have another program that does this.
13. Greasemonkey:  Some people swear by this. It can add custom features to your favorite websites.
14. GTDInbox
15. IE Tab:  Important for firefox on windows. Switches to viewing the current page in Internet Explorer (if firefox isn’t viewing it properly, which is a rare event unless it’s some stupid Silverlight site you’re trying to look at.)
16. Link Diagnosis
17. SeoQuake
18. Web Developer
19. Yoono

I’ve learned some amazing tools since I started really trying to understand what is going on on the web and how to capitalize on the information explosion that’s happening all around us. These are the questions I tried to answer:

• What’s hot on the web right now? Hot subjects, hot websites? What news/links/blogs/social sites are increasing/decreasing in popularity? What keywords/tags are those sites are using?
• What are people typing into search engines (keywords)? What keywords are increasing/decreasing in popularity? What is the intent behind the search terms used – news? products? etc.
• So I’m looking at a website. What info can I get about it’s place in the web? What’s it’s ranking, how often have social websites bookmarked it? What keywords are people using to bookmark? How high does this site rank, and what terms does it rank for? What are other popular URLs that are similar to the current URL? (How do I quickly find related sources of information?)
• What are some easy ways to search various search engines without going to those websites?
• How do I bypass website registration tactics or control your social identity/logins/passwords to all my web accounts?

This may be a strange set of questions to ask. My intent is not to becomes some sort of internet overlord. My intent is to use the full power of the web, as it was meant to be used. Here are some of the strategies I’ve developed. Read the rest of this entry »

With this post, I’m targeting the average PC user running some form of Windows. I don’t have to tell you that windows machines screw up a LOT. These are the things you really need to know and steps you can take to avoid most computer problems you might face when using Windows.

Read the rest of this entry »