Replace your Firefox bookmarks with del.icio.us Bookmarks extension

If you use Firefox and have longed to integrate your del.icio.us bookmarks with the browser, then you must get the del.icio.us Bookmarks extension. This is the official extension from Yahoo! for Firefox. I have used this extension before, but decided to drop it in favor of del.icio.us Complete because of performance. Before del.icio.us Complete I was using Foxylicious to sync my bookmarks with Firefox. Although these extensions satisfied the basic requirement of providing access to your social bookmarks, they were slow and buggy and never felt completely integrated with the Firefox browser. del.icio.us Bookmarks solves this problem beautifully with a killer feature set to boot.



Not only do you get complete integration of your bookmarks from your Bookmarks menu (all pages are automatically bookmarked at del.icio.us), you also get the ability to search through your bookmarks using tags or keywords in the title of the pages. The search feature opens in the sidebar with a two-pane view. The top pane listing any tags that matched your search and the bottom pane matching any pages. This is not even the killer feature of this extension.



The greatest feature of the extension is favorite tags. You can create a list of favorite tags and then access these from the bookmarks toolbar with a single click. By default firefox:bookmarks and firefox:toolbar are in your favorites list. You can choose to display bookmarks tagged with one of your favorite tags in the bookmarks toolbar. The ability to control your favorite tags and to display all bookmarks with one of your favorite tags allows your bookmarks toolbar to have multiple personalities (without being a disorder). For example, I have my dailies like Gmail, Bloglines, and Digg, tagged with firefox:toolbar. I have my blogging related bookmarks such as Blogger, Feedburner, Google Analytics, and Performancing metrics tagged with firefox:blogging. Now, I can readily switch between my dailies and blogging sites with a single click.





The one minor gripe I have is the order in which tags are organized in the bookmarks toolbar. They are sorted chronologically from right to left meaning that your oldest bookmarks are on the right and the most recent ones are on the left. I would prefer the ability to drag and drop the bookmarks on the toolbar to create my own arrangement. That aside, this is a fantastic extension to your Firefox browsing experience and I recommend you waste no time in downloading it.

Happy bookmarking!

Tags: del.icio.us, firefox, del.icio.us bookmarks

AOL releases OpenRide - Browser, e-mail, AIM, Media Center, Search All-in-one

AOL has released an all-in-one application called OpenRide that lets user's browse, check e-mail, manage contacts, chat, play their media and, of course, search. While this is not for everyone, it is a great app for users of AOL services. Best of all, it is free, but only works on Windows XP. Basically, you can think of OpenRide as a rehash of their subscription software with some enhancements. One of these enhancements is something they call the Dynasizer. Dynasizer automatically resizes the application, normally tiled with other OpenRide applications, to have the most real-estate when you click on it.



Tags: aol, openride

Support a good cause using your computer's idle time

You can volunteer your computer's spare cycles to good causes with the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) project. So, how is this different from SETI@home you ask? Not a whole lot. In fact SETI@home is a module in BOINC. You can use your computer for projects in biology/medicine (malaria control), astronomy/physics/chemistry, earth sciences (climate prediction), and mathematics and strategy games (chess). BOINC is cross-platform and works wherever Windows, Mac, and Linux does. You can download and set BOINC as your screensaver and choose the projects you want to support. You can also specify the percentage of time you wish to devote to each project.



Tags: charity, computing, boinc, setiathome