"Daddy, what's a bookmarklet?" A childish question, perhaps, but not a question a child might ask. The kid might also call them favelets if he was raised on a diet of Internet Explorer. A bookmarklet, or favelet comes from "bookmarks" and "favorites" that you would save in your browser. Bookmarklets are Javascript applications in the form of URLs, and wherever you can store a URL, you can store a bookmarklet. Usually you drag them from the page to your bookmark bar, or you can add them like any favorite or bookmark.

A bookmarklet functions much like a button, but instead of just taking you to a website (like your garden variety bookmark), it does something at that website as well. As I said, it is an application. Some bookmarklets are used to modify a website, even if the effect is an illusion on your machine. Javascript can do some crazy cool things in a browser, and bookmarklets can similarly do some crazy cool things. Unfortunately each browser handles Javascript just a bit differently (and different versions of a browser will behave differently), so your mileage may vary.

Bookmarklets are commonly used to quickly tie into websites that allow you to share information. For example, this handy Delicious bookmarklet that allows you to easily save a URL to your Delicious bookmarks. Normally you'd copy the URL, go to Delicious, then paste it in to the right place and fill out the metadata. With the bookmarklet you simply hit the button (the bookmarklet in your bookmarks bar, or elsewhere in your bookmarks) and it will take whatever site you're on, send you to Delicious, and fill out the URL and title. It usually suggests some tags as well.

Lots of sites provide handy bookmarklets, including VodPod, Tumblr, Reddit and FriendFeed. But here are a few resources you might find handy or fun:

• The Internet Archive has a Wayback bookmarklet so you can see previous versions of a website instamagically (scroll down a bit).
• Prank your friends with the ability to edit any website (well, not Flash sites) using this fun bookmarklet.
• Opera users? Here's a pile of bookmarklets just for you.
• Ever wanted to read some text on a web page in big text, one word at a time? Check out the nifty Spreeder bookmarklet to do just that.
• Finally there's the spiffy Rollyo, which adds a search to any page you visit. Plus, you can save your searches for later.

If you missed it the first time, Lee recently put together a list of 15+ handy bookmarklets.

[Hat tip to Lifehack for another excellent list of bookmarklets]

Venerable New York Times technology columnist David Pogue recently posted a list of his productivity tips and tricks that allow him to be uber productive. The list is good in that he tries to generalize and talk about ways of doing things instead of specific software or hardware. For example, Pogue talks about using macro utilities instead of specifically naming utilities like Quicksilver for the Mac or Launchy for Windows.

While some of his tools seem somewhat outdated, it's not a surprise given the time investment he has in them. And really, although we all to a greater or lesser extent have a case of "shiny object syndrome" and need to try the latest and greatest of everything, the truth is that if a tool is working, the most productive thing to do is to just leave it alone.

Of particular note (at least for me) is Pogue's first tip that he uses text expansion software. It's not so much that he uses it, but how he uses it that intrigues me; Pogue has expansion words configured for even the smallest word. For example, to type the word "the" he needs only type the letter "t". That's some serious configuration, but I can definitely see how it could be very useful once in the mindset of always using abbreviations.

What do you think of Pogue's tips, and what is your best productivity tip?

If you ever need to open a command prompt window from a Vista right-click menu (example: you sit down to use your computer and a message suddenly pops up -- "open a command prompt window from a right-click menu your computer will blow up"), how would you go about doing it?

The process is simple: hold down the shift key, then right click on a folder icon, in a folder, or the desktop. An "Open Command Window Here" option will appear in the menu as a result of the shift key's ability to, well, shift stuff. Finally, when the command window opens, take a look at the current path: it's whatever you clicked on.

Have you ever had 15 tabs open and wished you had opened them in a different order? People that visit certain sites with regularity and despise it when the tabs aren't in their usual order, will enjoy the sheer simplicity of this Firefox tip. Unbeknownst to most, Firefox actually allows you to drag and drop tabs wherever you want to.

Just click on the tab that is out of place or otherwise out of line, and drag it to the area on the tab bar you want it to be at. A little purple arrow will help you find the right spot. Drop it and rearrange other tabs as necessary. Before you know it, your tabs will all be where they should without even requiring an extension or plug-in to accomplish the task.

It's little treats like these that get us fired up about what Firefox 3 holds in store for us. If you're looking for more Firefox and browser tips, remember to check the DownloadSquad search.

• If you want to close an app, hit "Q" when it's highlighted
  
• If you just want to hide an app, hit "H" when it's highlighted.
• If you decided you want to stay in the app you had active when you invoked Command-Tab, hit ESC.

I just found out about hiding apps with "H", so hopefully some of you will find this information useful as well. And if you have additional tips, share 'em!

Today seemed like it was gonna be a low-buzz day for Vista's impending retail release, until I came across this tidbit: Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is scheduled to appear on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart on Monday, just an hour before Vista's midnight launch. As Candace Lombardi over at CNet points out, John Hodgman, who plays the PC on Apple's "I'm a Mac" ads, is a regular Daily Show contributor. I really hope Stewart & Co. can get the two together for some hijinks. We'll be sure to post some video as soon as we can get our little paws on it.

In other news, remember that huffing and puffing over Vista's copious DRM cruft and the response on Microsoft's Vista blog? Well, of course there's now a response-to-the-response. Peter Gutmann, who wrote the original "Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection" to which the Vista blog post was in reply, has added an addendum to the original article in, er, reply. Gutmann calls Microsoft's response "PR spin" and makes a pretty strong case, but I'll leave it to you to judge for yourselves.

Lastly, a Vista tips from the fine folks over at Lifehacker: How to disable annoying "Need your permission to continue" prompts. To quote our own David Chartier: "What happens when you try to save your users from your own security and usability mistakes over the last 15 years or so? Apparently, they revolt and hurl your solutions right back in your face."

In case you're not all caught up, you can check out the previous three days of our Vista Countdown over here.

If you're an avid tabbed browsing fan and upgraded to one of the Firefox 2 betas or release candidates in previous weeks, you undoubtedly noticed that the new version does tabs a little differently, giving tabs a fixed minimum width and displaying scroll arrows at the ends of the tab bar if you run out of space. This isn't a bad behavior, but compared to Firefox 1 which would show dozens of tabs all scrunched next to eachother without making you scroll, Firefox 2, which maxes out at a dozen or so when you've got your window maximized at 1280x1024 (and who maximizes anymore, really?), seems a tad limited. Of course, there's a way to change this behavior if you're willing to poke around, and Lifehacker gives you the stop-by-step how-to. In short, you go to about:config and change the browser.tabs.tabMinWidth setting to something smaller, or 0 if you want to revert back to the Firefox 1 functionality.

Whenever I'm troubleshooting Windows network issues (which is disturbingly often) I tend to look for Network Connections in My Computer (rather than Control Panel), but of course it's never there. Until now. Tech-Recipes has a great tip for adding a few new items to My Computer. Through an easy registry tweak (at your own risk, blah blah) you can add not only Network Connections but also Administrative Tools, Printers and Fax Devices, Scheduled Tasks, My Network Places, and Recycle Bin. Tech-Recipes says that you have to reboot your computer after making the changes, but in my case all it took was refreshing My Computer (F5). I'll be very happy never to have to dig around for Network Connections again.

[Via Lifehacker]

Update: Here are a few more entries that you can add to My Computer not mentioned by the Tech-Recipes article. I dug these up by poking around the ControlPanel\NameSpace section of the registry, and they may or may not be useful under My Computer. Anybody know of any others?

Portable Media Devices: {640167b4-59b0-47a6-b335-a6b3c0695aea}
Scanners and Cameras: {E211B736-43FD-11D1-9EFB-0000F8757FCD}
Folder Options: {6DFD7C5C-2451-11d3-A299-00C04F8EF6AF}
Fonts: {D20EA4E1-3957-11d2-A40B-0C5020524152}
Taskbar and Start Menu: {0DF44EAA-FF21-4412-828E-260A8728E7F1}

I stumbled across a cool feature in Trillian Pro today completely by accident. I was trying to rearrange some contacts when I accidentally dragged one of them outside of my buddy list, which created a second, mini-buddy-list. I'm sure this isn't new to everybody, but it's new to me, and I thought it was cool. Just click and drag any contact, meta-contact, or contact group off of your buddy list and drop it elsewhere on your desktop, and now those contacts will be available in a little collapsible, dockable list of their own. I realize that half the reason for using Trillian is to get rid of multiple buddy lists, but this seems handy for keeping certain contacts available while you've got the rest of the buddy list hidden away. I'm not sure if the free version of Trillian has this feature--can anybody confirm?

I'm happy to say that I've only had this happen to me once before: Windows really, really won't boot. You can't even get to safe mode. All you get is "Windows NT could not start because the below file is missing or corrupt" and a prompt to reboot over and over again. This usually seems like a reinstall moment (especially if you ask tech support), but it doesn't have to be so: Short-Media is running a guide called Repairing Windows XP in Eight Commands. The trick is getting into the Windows Recovery Console (which requires your XP install disc), rebuilding Windows' boot files, running CHKDSK, and fixing the boot sector. It may sound complex, but it really is just eight commands. However, be sure to read the whole article to avoid a few common gotchas.

[Via Digg]

I've been using Excel for a long time and might even consider myself a power user, so I'm surprised I never came across this tip before: You can toggle a formula view to see all of a spreadsheet's formulas at once by pressing Ctrl+`. That little fleck, in case it's not entirely clear, is a backtick (or, as this site takes way too many paragraphs to explain, a gravé), i.e. the seldom-used character that shares a key with the tilde just to the left of the 1 key on most keyboards. Press Ctrl+` once to show all of your formulas, press it again to switch back to the regular data view.

[Via Digg]

Here's a nice trick I didn't know about until today, courtesy of Lifehacker: Windows has the built-in ability to rename whole batches files at once. Just highlight all of the files and press F2 (or right-click on them and choose Rename), and type in the new name. I suspect that the reason I never figured this one out is that when you press F2, your highlighted selection goes away, but rest assured  that once you type in a new name and press enter, all of your files will be renamed (with "(1)," "(2)," "(3)," etc. tacked onto the end). The functionality is pretty limited, but for, say, renaming a bunch of DSC####.jpg files to something more meaningful, like an event's date or name, can go a long way in keeping things organized. If you need more power, I recommend reading the comments over at Lifehacker, where readers recommend all manner of free and cheap apps for getting the job done.

Over at the TiVo community there's a cool hack to enable an undocumented feature in TiVo Desktop for Mac OS X.  By default TiVo Desktop lets you share music, photos, and TiVo-recorded video between networked TiVos. With some command-line magic, however, users have found out how to make any TiVo-compatible MPEG video file show up on networked TiVos' Now Playing list. Cool.

[Via Street Tech]

Too lazy to make an unattended XP install disc but don't want to stare at nothing but progress bars while it installs? Turns out it's easy to run Pinball, Minesweeper, or Solitaire while the Windows XP setup grinds along. User Boofis on the Whirlpool forums explains: "You just have to wait until the right moment the pinball files are copied. Sometime after where it asks you for the product key and a question or two after that, where it says 'copying files'." Then you can press Shift F10 to get the command prompt, navigate to the appropriate folder, and run your game. Head over to the forum thread for the full instructions.

[Via Digg]

Before its final release, Windows XP's Remote Desktop function had a feature it now lacks: multi-user mode, whereby more than one person could log on and control the PC at once. When the final version of XP shipped, though, this feature was disabled, meaning if you log on with remote desktop, any other user must be logged off. Fortunately, there's a way to unlock the original functionality, but as won't surprise you it's a bit of a hack and definitely at-your-own-risk. The process is detailed by Riccardo Raneri in his blog, but basically involves downloading an old pre-release version of termsrv.dll and making some setting changes. XP still has a hard-coded limit of three simultaneous users, but that's still a lot more than one.