Used to be desktop applications were essential to getting the job done, whatever the job may have been, large or small. Now, with all the nimble web apps to choose from, the idea of firing up a huge application for a small task seems almost, well, unproductive and wasteful.

Yeah, sure, no one is suggesting you do away with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Illustrator, Photoshop, Quickbooks and other heavy hitters. However, there are excellent tools on the web where less, in many ways, is actually more. Here are 10 of my favorites.

1. ScribeFire - essential Firefox add-on for bloggers. Allows you to to easily drag and drop formatted text from the Web into your blog(s), post entries, take notes, and optimize ad inventory, directly through the Firefox browser.

2. Firefox - great web browser whose charm lies in all those irresistible add ons that make the whole interwebs experience that much sweeter. Once you pimp out your Firefox, it seriously is difficult to function on anything else. Yes, there are the crashes and other peccadillos, but they're easy enough to overlook especially if you are truly in love.

3. Skitch - this is the best, quick image editor and photo sharing web app that is dead simple to use. For quick screenshots and sharing photos, you cannot beat it. For Mac only though. Sorry.

4. Gmail - I've done away with Outlook and Mail and rely on Gmail for several reasons: free, 7090 MB capacity, integration with Google calendar, Gtalk, great search functionality, and the portability is sweet.

5. Google Reader - free, powerful feed reader which allows you to share items with your friends and slog through all your news feeds as fast as your bleary eyes will let you. Bonus - I'm playing with Feedly (Firefox extension) which provides a magazine like start page of your feeds with complete Google Reader integration and Twitter and FriendFeed and more. So far I like, but Google Reader is still number one for now.

ScribeFire is a Firefox add-on that lets you write blog posts while surfing the web. It provides a WYSIWYG editor that works with most popular blogging software. And it's free. We've always wondered how ScribeFire plans to make money, and now we know. The team recently launched a private beta of ScribeFire QuickAds, a service that makes it easy for anyone to monetize their blogs.

All you have to to place ads on your blog is click an ad size and then choose a location on your blog where you'd like the ad to appear. When you first register your blog with QuickAds, ScribeFire will automatically add a bit of code to your blog template allowing the program to place ads in your page.

Right now ScribeFire will pass all the earnings on to web publishers, but we expect we'll eventually see ScribeFire take a cut of the action. Ads will come from a variety of networks, and ScribeFire will attempt to determine which ads will generate the highest payouts. You can also keep track of your ad impressions, earnings, and other statistics online by viewing your ScribeFire Dashboard.

As we mentioned, ScribeFire QuickAds is currently in private beta. But the first 100 people to send an email to l downloadsquad@scribefire.com will get a registration code. Everyone else can request an invitation online.

You can find out more by checking out the video after the jump.

How many of the applications you use on a daily basis are web-based as opposed to locally installed native applications? For me, the answer is way more than I ever would have expected.

Had you asked me this question a few years ago, I would have vehemently denied that the future of development is on the web. As much as I could see and understand the value of a ubiquitously available web-based application, there's just no way to approach the level of power and integration (not to mention the ability to be always-available) that is possible with well conceived and developed desktop software.

Of course, back then I didn't imagine that web applications could become as useful as Google Calendar or Remember the Milk. I also didn't imagine that light - yet still useful - versions of these apps would be available from my mobile phone almost wherever I was.

In fact, and much to my surprise, today most of my personal data today is tied up in online services: Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Backpack, Remember the Milk, Facebook, Newsgator, and Evernote to name just a few.

Most of these are probably pretty familiar names, but one is a newcomer in the web space: Evernote. Still in beta, the new version of Evernote contains a full-featured web version, but synchronizes seamlessly with desktop software on either Windows or Mac platforms. And it's a breath of fresh air.

The folks at lifehack.org, (not LifeHacker.com) have cooked up the 17 best Firefox extensions that will make blogging easy. I'm sure you've seen some of these before, but just in case you haven't seen them all, they are:

1. Google Notebook
2. Session Manager
3. coComment
4. Speak It
5. DocuFarm
6. ScribeFire (formerly performancing)
7. Deepest Sender
8. Resizable Text Area
9. Spellbound
   
10. Google toolbar
11. Tabinta
12. Split Browser
13. Copy Plain Text
    
14. Copy As HTML Link
15. Web Developer
16. SnagIt
17. Picnik

There are some widely-used extensions on the list, such as ScribeFire (formerly performancing), Split Browser, Session Manager and Google Notebook, but there are some that aren't so well known, like Picnik, DocuFarm, Deepest Sender, and Tabinta. Once installed, these extensions greatly help the organization and communication of information.

Are there other extensions that should have made this list from lifehack.org? What are the best extensions that make blogging easier, fun, or enjoyable for you?

via TechCrunch