Want to tweak the heck out of your Gmail interface, but don't want to install dozens of Greasemonkey scripts one at a time? Lifehacker's Gina Trapani has whipped up an updated version of her awesome Better Gmail 2 extension for Firefox. The latest version adds support for Firefox 3, plus a few other nifty features. Here are a few of our favorites:
HTML signatures
Gmail Redesigned skin, which makes Gmail look more like a desktop app. An awesome desktop app.
A few other slightly less awesome skins
Hide Spam count
Include icons for file attachments
Once you install Better Gmail 2, you can find the options dialog in the Firefox Tools menu. Just check the boxes next to the features you want to enable and refresh your Gmail window.
Google Reader is the RSS aggregator of choice for many a Download Squad reader, but everyone has an idea of how it could be improved in one way or another. There are some popular Greasemonkey scripts that enhance the experience, but what if these scripts could be rolled into one Firefox add-on?
Lifehacker has set out to do just that. A while back they released Better GReader, a Firefox add-on that collect some of the best Greasemonkey scripts for Google Reader. And this week they've update Better GReader with a few new skins and other tweaks. The add-on basically does three things:
Institutes keyboard shortcuts
Maximizes the viewing area
Bypasses the Google's annoying default subscription mechanism
To get the Better GReader Firefox add-in, head over to Lifehacker's site and install it. After installing the add-in, you'll see the above preference pane in your add-ons menu allowing you to customize Better GReader to your hearts content.
Ever wish you had a butler who would regularly come visit your PC and pick up after you? The clever folks over at Lifehacker have released a virtual Mr. Belvedere called, well... Belvedere. The program is basically a clone of Hazel for Mac, and lets you create rules for dealing with the files that start to clutter up your Desktop and PC folders over time.
Belvedere comes as a single executable file. No installation necessary, but you'll need to manually add a shortcut to your Windows Startup folder if you want to run the application every time Windows boots. Once its running, you'll notice an icon in your system tray. Right click and select Manage to set up rules. You can tell Belvedere to regularly scan specified folders and look for files by name, extension, size or date. Next, set a rule by telling Belvedere to delete, move, rename, copy, or open these files. That's it.
If you regularly download music, movies, images, and other media files to a central download folder, you can use Belvedere to sort these files into separate folders according to their attributes. Or if you want to delete any file in a particular folder that you haven't used in a few months, you can tell Belvedere to scan for files that haven't been modified in a while and delete them.
There's good new and bad news in the fact that Google is rolling out an updated version of Gmail. On the one hand, pages load quicker and there's an advanced contact manager. On the other hand, many of your favorite Firefox extensions for tweaking Gmail may have stopped working.
For a while now, personal productivity site Lifehacker has been rolling up some of the best Greasemonkey scripts for Gmail into a package called Better Gmail. And Google went ahead and broke pretty much every single one of those scripts with its new version.
Now Lifehacker has released the initial version of Better Gmail 2. It doesn't have all the features of Better Gmail 1. In fact, right now there are only about 6 options, compared with more than 25 in the old version of Better Gmail. But considering the fact that most users are just starting to see the new Gmail interface, we suspect it will take a little while before the Greasemonkey coders get around to making all of their hacks "newer version" compatible. In the meantime, Lifehacker promises to continue updating both the Better Gmail 1 and Better Gmail 2 packages until Google eliminates the "older version" option. Then all development will be on Better Gmail 2.
Lifehacker has updated their Windows Janitor script for keeping your Windows "junk drawer" clean. Most of us have a folder or two on our hard drives that are filled pretty much with things we don't need.
This could be your web browser's default download directory, which fills up with e-mail attachments, installer files, music, and videos. But whatever directory it is, odds are it's taking up more hard drive space than it should.
Windows Janitor lets you monitor a folder and regularly delete any file that hasn't been updated for more than 30 days. In principle, this should automatically clean up all the files you don't really need. But proceed with caution, because some files you download may think they haven't been modified in 30 days or more when you first get them. In other words, do not set Windows Janitor to monitor a folder if you've got files you can't afford to lose in it.
Of course, there are plenty of other ways to keep downloaded files from cluttering your hard drive. For example, you could set your desktop as your default download directory. You'll regularly be confronted with every file you've downloaded, which should serve as reminder to either file away or delete each downloaded file when you're done using it.
The system clipboard is possibly one of man's greatest inventions. Just think how often you use that little piece of functionality, and how much time it saves you every single day. But, are you using it as effectively as you could?
Lifehacker put together a list of 10 clipboard tricks you can use to increase your productivity, and amaze your friends -- ok, your friends probably won't be amazed. Still, it's a top ten worthy of a look and, you just might learn something.
Lifehacker has been on a bit of a tear lately, releasing their very own utilities as downloads, like the Better Gmail Firefox extension. This latest one is a Windows-only utility called Swept Away, which will automatically minimize running applications that are not in focus based on a timer.
The application is very reminiscent of Spirited Away for the Mac, (warning, link is not English, but the download link is easy to find on the right-hand side of the page) which is a very popular utility to hide running windows that are not actively being used.
Gmail could very well be one of the most hackable web services of all time. One only needs to check our Gmail tag to see what tools are available for enhancing one's experience, and now we have a slick new cross-platform Firefox add-on to link to from our friends at Lifehacker: Better Gmail. As its name suggests, Better Gmail rounds up a number of popular Greasemonkey scripts and other extras into a handy management UI, complete with links to homepages if you need to find out more about any of the included extras. As you can see, this add-on packs a wallop, including many of our old (and new) favorites such as the Macros script (for many more keyboard shortcuts Gmail should really have in the first place), an Unlabelled label hack and a Filter Assistant which brings that handy email client functionality of building filters from a currently selected message. Of course, one could run out and find all these scripts on their own, but Better Gmail takes the clicking out of that process and wraps all this great stuff into one handy extension, complete with the ability to disable it all in one fell swoop in case you need to get back to Gmail's basics.
In one corner, the lightweight FileVault with its home directory encryption designed to keep your files reasonably safe without too much intrusion. In the other corner stands Bit Locker, the 800lb gorilla of whole drive encryption; a roach motel for data.. once it goes in, it doesn't come out (unless you have the key).
The verdict? Gina says, "I'd choose BitLocker - simply for the total-lockdown factor." Adding, "Yes, the annoying repartitioning rigamarole and cost of Vista Ultimate or Enterprise suck, but a thief ain't gonna come close to anything on that drive, no matter where it's stored, and I like it that way."
Side by side on your PC, happily... Well, you get the idea. Lifehacker points to a neat new beta installer for Ubuntu that will drop a little Ubuntu love on your XP box (Vista not supported yet), without the need for a brand-new partition. It's kinda like a liveCD without the CD. Get it? Pretty neat if you just wanna be an Ubuntu voyeur. It's still pretty beta-fied, so YMMV (and you have been warned).
Posted Dec 31st 2006 1:26PM by Ryan Carter Filed under: Fun
What will happen in 2007? Who knows what the future holds, right? I am willing to bet that you already have a good idea what will happen next year. Care to share? I want to hear what you are most looking forward to this year, are there any apps that you think will go critical and be the next big thing? Also, what was your favorite app of 2006? Let me know. In case you can't remember your favorite app, you can consult LifeHacker's roundup of the best apps of 2006. It is a good chance that their favorites were some of yours. Many of mine are on the list. Let me know what your favorites are!
I'm a big fan of services that help me keep spam out of my inbox, and I'm an even bigger fan of services that make it dead easy like 2 Prong. Like many, many other services 2 Prong gives you disposable email addresses that you can use when registering for web sites that require a valid email address and clicking on an emailed validation link. What makes 2 Prong special is that it reduces this to a two-step process that's just as easy than using your own email address. All you do is visit 2prong.com and it will give you an email address (it even copies it to your clipboard for you, which may be an annoyance for some users). Then you fill out the registration form on the site you want access to and, by the power of Grayskull Ajax, the activation email will pop up on the 2 Prong page as soon as it's received. You don't even have to register with 2 Prong or give it your real email address, unlike similar services. On top of that, 2 Prong intends to provide continually changing domain names so that sites can't get wise to their game. Very cool, very easy.
Gina over at Lifehacker has a wonderful Geek to Live post up today called Essential tools for the placeless office. I found the term "placeless office" to be interesting, and apparently Gina picked it up from our (Weblogs Inc's) very own Barb Dybwad. Basically, it's the virtual place that you work if you don't have a consistent office you go to every day, or maybe it's the virtual place you work when working on projects that are not part of your day job.
The post outlines the tools that the Lifehackers use to get their jobs done. And while at Download Squad we don't have an official list like this, if we were to make one I would venture to bet that it would look very similar. All of the tools mentioned in Gina's post are high-quality stuff, and my only real quibble is that the list is very Google-centric, although to be fair, I use all of the same Google services. So I guess I have no complaint. Check it out.
In her never-ending quest for interface perfection, Lifehacker Gina Trapani has written a great Geek to Live tutorial called Consolidate Firefox's chrome. In it she teaches you how to pare down Firefox's menus, toolbar, address back, and bookmarks toolbar until all that's left is what you absolutely need. To be specific, you'll learn how to eliminate entire menus from the menubar, how to keep toolbar buttons hidden when they're not available, get rid of the Go and Search buttons, and how to organize your bookmarks for maximum accessibility and minimum clutter. The tutorial does require you to edit Firefox's userChrome.css, so if that makes you squeamish, well... now's as good a time as any to get over it.
Lifehacker has printed a nice set of tweaks for Firefox 2 to make your browsing experience happer. There's six tweaks, including changing the tab scrolling behavior, modifying prefetching settings, and limiting its RAM usage. None of them are mind-blowing, especially to Firefox power-users, but there's few things that make me happier than undocumented tweakage. If you have your own Firefox 2 tips and tweaks, please post them in the comments or send them via our tips form.
In related news, Microsoft's Internet Explorer team reportedly sent the Firefox developers a cake to congratulate them on the release of the new browser. "No, it was not poisoned," says Mozilla Corp.'s Fred Wenzel.
Side by side on your PC, happily... Well, you get the idea. 
