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 ]

Soovle is a search engine for people who might not know exactly what they're looking for. As soon as you start typing a search term, Soovle will begin to offer suggestions for related terms that may help you refine your search. And it doesn't just offer suggestions for one service, but for 7: Google, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Answers.com, Ask.com, YouTube, and Amazon.

If you want to take Soovle up on one of its suggestions, just click on the text and Soovle will change the contents of the search box. If you want to change the default search engine, just click the icon below the search bar and when you click Soovle, you'll get your search results from Google, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, or whichever service you selected.

You can also save Soovle suggestions in a browser cookie or as a text file.

[via TechnoSpot]

Hold the phone! The opinions of arm chair quarterbacks, movie critics, CEOs, and political commentators are about to start mattering! Now they can tell other people what they should do via the Internet. And really, has the ever been a more effective way of doing things than through the Internet?

Should Do This, a quick project from the folks behind 43Things, is positioning itself as the Internet's suggestion engine. Simply enter a "who" and then enter a "what" and post it for all the world to see.

Here are some examples form their tag cloud:

• My iPhone should handle images better in Mail.
• Barns and Noble should add like 20 more armchairs in every bookstore.
• Google should add Blogger to Google Apps for your domain.
• People that live next to airports should never complain about noise.
• Microsft should embrace ODF - Open Document Format.
• Jack Bauer should run for president.
• Human Kind should seek intelligence far out in space.
  

See, now isn't this a useful tool? It is like a whole social network just for bossy people.

Google loves a good April Fool's joke, and you may remember that last week Google promised a new service called Gmail Paper. The concept was that you could request a hard copy of all of your emails, and Google would ship a box with printouts to your door.

Sounds silly, right? But the idea of being able to back up your email is anything but. Sure, you can configure Outlook or Thunderbird to work with Gmail to collect your messages. But wouldn't it be great if there was just a button you could press to export some of your 2.8GB of email from Google's server?

Well, it looks like that might be more than just a pipe dream. Google has a new Gmail suggestion site up, where you can select from a list of features you'd like to see implemented. You can only select 5 of the 45 options, but here are a few of our favorites:

• Export messages to a CD for storage
• Filter outgoing messages
• Change the label system to folders
• Hierarchy of label systems (i.e. sub-labels)
• Sort messages by size, date, sender
• Turn conversation view off
• Ability to add or remove messages from conversations
• Integration with Google Calendard/Groups/Reader/Picasa/News/Blogger/Orkut/Google Talk
• To-do list
• Import messages from other email accounts
• Delete attachments from messages
• Add notes to messages
• Multi-person chat
• Have Gmail do my laundry

We're pretty sure that last one is in there just to make an even 45. Still, it gets our vote.

[via ZDNet]

Do you have a favorite utility or application, and just wish it would do one little thing, that would improve your experience with the program? I get that feeling all the time. It can be a helpless feeling for us non-developers, since we're sort of at the mercy of the software we can find to do what we need done. But there is hope. Below I'm going to provide a few tips that can help you to get changes affected in your favorite software, if you're willing to be patient, careful and very respectful.

1. It might seem obvious, but use software that is being actively developed. I can't count how many times I've found myself using a program and wishing that something would be fixed or improved with it, only to find that it's an abandoned product that hasn't been updated for two years. If that's the case, it really may be worth the trouble to ditch the old software and find something comparable that is being actively developed. Now, I'm not suggesting you go and throw away perfectly good utilities if they do everything you need them to. If that's the case, rock on - who cares if it's getting updated. But if you wish something were different, the tension you feel with the product is probably already high enough to make a search for something better worthwhile. Luckily you know a site that brings you tons of useful downloads every day.