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Filed under: Utilities, Productivity

Tabberwocky is a slick tab management add-on for Firefox

Tired of accidentally closing important tabs in Firefox? Tabberwocky, a useful tab-manager add-on, lets you protect a tab, open a duplicate tab next to the original, and lots more. Tabberwocky can move the 'close tab' button to either side of a tab, highlight unread tabs, retain a tab's history when you open a link in a new tab -- and that's just the beginning! This tiny 25kb add-on has a list of options about a page long.

Tabberwocky's main competition is the popular Tab Mix Plus add-on, which offers very similar features. What Tab Mix plus has that Tabberwocky still doesn't is the session manager, so you can save and restore sets of tabs and windows, even after a crash. Tab Mix plus has been known to slow down Firefox's performance on some systems though, so Tabberwocky might be a lighter alternative to try if you've been having problems with TMP.

[via ghacks]

Filed under: Internet, Security, Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Windows x64

PortableTor is an easy way to anonymize to your browsing

There are plenty of ways to utilize the Tor network for a little added browsing privacy - like OperaTor, for example.

If you'd prefer a single anonymity solution that can handle any browser, portable or not, give PortableTor a try.

It's Tor, Vidalia (a GUI frontend for Tor), and Privoxy in a single, portable package. All you need to do is launch PortableTor and edit your browser's proxy settings to point at 127.0.0.1:8118 (the port can be changed).

Even if you're not going to run it from a USB flash drive, this is still an uncomplicated way to anonymize your desktop browsing as well. All three apps use a combined total of about 26mb of memory, the bulk of which is consumed by Vidalia.

The Sourceforge project page also list several Firefox addons that you may want to add for extra browsing security, like NoScript and No-Referrer.

PortableTor is a free download for Windows only.

Filed under: Internet, Mozilla, Freeware, Social Software, Browsers

BuzzBox Fast Forward adds smarter "Stumbling" to Firefox

First off, let me clarify: I'm not saying that StumbleUpon isn't a very complex, smartly built addon. It's just that I don't go stumbling off to a (somewhat) randomly selected site all the time. Sometimes I'd like walk a path that has been trodden by others searching for the same things I am.

Fast Forward
by BuzzBox is an excellent alternative, suggesting possible destinations based on where other surfers clicked through. The addon installs as both a drop-down menu in the main toolbar and as a simple button in the status bar.

The dropdown presents the top destinations for you to choose from, while the status bar icon zips you off to the most popular one with a single click. Two other nice features of Fast Forward are its small size (the .xpi is only 69kb) and the fact that no registration is required.

There is a privacy policy that you may want to read - this is, after all, a recommendation engine and it needs to gather information about your browsing. According to the policy, "BuzzBox does not attempt to determine the identity of any BuzzBox user by analyzing Web usage paths. "

With only 245 total downloads from Mozilla's site, it's going to take a little while before you start seeing suggestions on every site you visit, but Fast Forward has tons of potential and is well worth a download.

[ via TechCrunch ]

Filed under: Internet, Security, Adobe, Browsers

Protect yourself from Flash Player's clickjacking vulnerability

Flash settings

Adobe has announced that there is a known clickjacking vulnerability in the current Flash player. If you're looking to protect yourself, there are two possible remedies.

Adobe has a workaround posted on their web site. Visit the Flash player settings panel and click always deny on the global privacy settings.

Firefox users would do well to install the NoScript addon, which has updated clickjacking defenses. "ClearClick" protection was added in version 1.8.2, but is now enabled by default. It's designed to prevent user with UI elements that are not visible. In layman's terms, it should keep you from clicking on a button that you didn't know was there.

[via Hackademix]

Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Productivity, Web services, Freeware, How-Tos, Unix, Browsers

Speed up browsing on low-speed connections with Toonel.net

Toonel.netIf you frequently find yourself browsing on a low-bandwidth connection, you can potentially speed up your browsing experience by using the compressing proxy server at Toonel.net. The concept is simple: install their application on your computer (versions are available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Sun Solaris, and even Windows Mobile and Symbian), then set your proxy settings to point to your localhost IP address on port 8080 (127.0.0.1:8080). Once you do, all of your web traffic is routed through Toonel.net's server, which compresses it before it gets to you.

The compression used is lossless, which is required to ensure the pages show up as expected, though there are image-specific options that allow you to change the compression that is applied to JPEG and GIF images. This is likely only worthwhile on a very slow network, since it takes the server a bit of time to recompress images before your browser can download them, but could be handy on a struggling network.

I wouldn't recommend running Toonel.net full-time, or even at all if you're always on a broadband connection, but if you find yourself struggling with a lack of bandwidth, this is a great trick to have in your back pocket.

[via TechRadar]

Filed under: Utilities, Productivity, Web services, Social Software

Use iBreadcrumbs to retrace your steps on the web

iBreadcrumbs is a browser toolbar you can use to record the websites you visit while you're working on a particular project, so you can find your research again or share your sources with someone else. Sure, you could do this manually, by posting your finds to del.icio.us or a similar bookmarking service, and giving them all the same tag, but iBreadcrumbs makes that look like way too much work. All you have to do is click start, and everything gets saved automatically.

Your sessions (Breadcrumbs) each get saved to their own dedicated page, where you can organize them and add additional notes. You can combine a new Breadcrumb with an existing one, which makes the service useful for longer research projects. There's also a social aspect to the site: you can add friends for easy collaboration. iBreadcrumbs is flexible enough that we're sure it can be applied to all sorts of non-research functions. Don't be put off by the "University" field in the sign-up process - this service isn't just for academics.

Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, Internet, Web services, Yahoo!

Location based photo browsing with Yahoo Zurfer

yahoo zurfer location based photo browsing

Zurfer is straight out of the Yahoo! Research Berkeley facility. This handheld application is a location based photo browser. What it is in basic terms is Flickr for your mobile device.

The Zurfer application is currently being developed in the Yahoo research labs, and will -- when loaded on mobile phones -- showcase photos taken around you based on current gps co-ordinates. You can also pull in the latest photos from friends, take photos and add them to your Flickr collection, and perform searches in Flickr for images using the mobile software.

The Zurfer application is in testing phases, and could quite possibly contain bugs, so download at your own risk. It is available, and has been tested on Nokia S60, Motorola RAZR V3X and a few other devices.

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Web services, Google, Freeware

Google Toolbar 4 beta

On Monday Google released Google Toolbar 4 beta which has a number of cool new features. The biggest new feature, in my opinion, is a bookmarks menu that's accessible from anywhere a la Foxmarks, but some might be uneasy about entrusting their bookmarks to Google's servers. The second big feature is the new custom buttons API that lets developers easily create little buttons on the toolbars that can do things like respond to RSS feeds and do custom searches—think of them as tiny widgets. Also new in Toolbar 4 is a smarter search box that'll suggest searches, alternate spellings, and results from your History as you type, and a new "Send to" menu that automatically drops the current page into Gmail, Blogger, or an SMS message. Google Toolbar 4 looks pretty cool, but there's one big caveat: For now it's only available for Internet Explorer on Windows. Boo.

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Macintosh

Pimp my Safari, please

SafariFirefox may take the cake as far as extensions, plugins and the kitchen sink goes, but OS X's Safari browser has its own plugin following that's hot on Firefox's trail: PimpMySafari.com.

From dev tools that can copy the HTML of a whole site with a single hotkey, bookmark managers and browsing scratchpads, this quickly expanding collection of Safari plugins, helpers and accessories has everything an OS X web surfer or developer could need.

Be sure to check out my personal favorite: Concierge. It's a "bookmark assistant" who's main appeal for me is a super-handy side drawer that can act as a browsing scratchpad. Great for doing research or holding onto some temporary links without having to actually bookmark and organize them.

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With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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