If you?re a user of Google?s internet browser Chrome, their arguable answer to Mozilla?s Firefox (offering much of the same functionality and performance that places these two competing browser?s well ahead of Microsoft?s stagnant Internet Explorer), there?s a good chance you also use Gmail.
With Chrome now supporting extensions, a long overdue addition to its impressive features, we have a new extension that augments your Gmail experience. Called Better Gmail for Chrome, this is an unofficial extension that renders your use of the popular email service a bit more manageable.
After its installation, you?re ready to begin taking advantage of it. To access the extension?s features, click on the wrench and select Extensions -> Better Gmail Options. Looking at the list of options, simply click on those you?d like to toggle for activation. An upcoming update that includes support for POP3 Email is said to be on the horizon.
Those of us in the Computer Geeks office have no real preference between Chrome and Firefox, finding both to be far preferable to Internet Explorer. If you have a favorite extension to use with either browser, feel free to share it with us!
Users of Facebook know that it has a chat client which allows them to instantly message their Facebook friends when logged in. Until recently, that service was limited to just Facebook, preventing users from communicating with their Facebook friends when using other instant messaging clients (AIM, etc.) — unless those friends were already included in the user’s buddy list.
Some time ago, Facebook announced plans to link Facebook chat?s compatibility with XMPP-Jabber, the chat protocol implemented for Google Talk. Doing so would make Facebook Chat available for use with any IM client. After those plans were announced, Google never elaborated upon its development, leaving many to suspect the plans were scuttled.
However, just yesterday, Facebook announced the development of the chat client had been completed. With this available, users now have the option of using Facebook chat with any instant messaging client of their choice.
For those already using a multi-protocol client, configuration for use of this new feature is simple. All you need do is add a new Jabber or XMPP account, with the username following the username@chat.facebook.com model. Your password will be the same one you use for Facebook. For those who have not yet created a Facebook username, you?ll have to visit your settings page to create one.
After setup is complete, your Facebook friends will appear in your buddy list, becoming immediately available for chat sessions. Initially, it might prove a little confusing, as those Facebook friends who aren?t included on a friends list will appear in your instant messaging client?s buddy list. Without being automatically sorted, you?ll have to organize your friends by creating separate buddy lists. Though this might seem somewhat aggravating, it?s merely an additional step for those of you who absolutely need your friends organized in distinct groups.
This new service includes everything from your Facebook chat client, including profile thumbs and the ability to set your status as idle. Being new, the discovery of glitches are inevitable. Feel free to share them with us.
Social networking is all the craze, and this is just another means of staying tuned in to what your friends are up to.
You can read about the new Facebook Chat feature here.
With the internet occupying much of our time when using the computer, a number of services have become integral parts of our online routine, from twitter to flickr. Juggling the use of these services can become involving to some, requiring multiple keywords and applets to manage their use.
Quix is an astoundingly cool helper that consolidates commands for each service in one utility, significantly cutting down the time it takes to use these services. It works for both desktop and mobile browsers, giving you the ability to assign just a few keystrokes to the execution of popular features you make use of while using the internet.
Using just a simple window, you can send email, capture pages and clip them, run searches, update your twitter account and more. The list of available commands is impressive, sparing you the task of using multiple bookmarklets.
Pulling up just one window, enter your command and see the desired task completed.
Essentially, when using Quix, you?ll see a considerable diminishment in the time you spend configuring your browser for the use of these services. Once Quix is up and running, the benefits of its use will become immediately noticeable — it?ll almost become second nature after a few uses.
Being a writer, distractions have always been problematic, their intrusion on the process of writing an annoyance that can often render a presumably easy writing task into one that occupies more time than you’d like.
CreaWriter is a very helpful tool that frees you of the many distractions that exist when using a word processor. Whether it?s that flashing icon in your task bar or the minimized Firefox tab that?s calling your attention, the modern experience of writing has become an endeavor hindered by our immediate access to other forms of information.
This tool wipes away all of those distractions, leaving a clean slate (literally!) on which to ply your writing. ?As seen above, nothing else exists no your screen but the page to which you?re putting your words. You can further customize it, including the ability to add both background images and ambient sounds ? both of which can be disabled, if you prefer just a white space.
In the digital age, distractions are inevitable, no matter how determined we are to avoid them. However, programs such as CreaWriter mitigate the frustration that results from them, making it a little easier to finish what you?re trying to compose.
This is a free program that?s available for Windows only, and you can grab it here.
Last week, I told you about a neat tool that adds certain features to your right-click Windows context menu. Well, here?s another helper of sorts, with an even more impressive array of features that render the right-click context menu an immediately available ? and quite powerful ? tool you can use to manage files and folders on your computer.
Lammer Context Menu updates your right-click context menu with several useful additions that many of you might find handy.
With this tool, you can:
Mount a virtual drive
Copy paths
Select specific file types within a folder
Search within a folder
Register DLL files
Open a command prompt
As you can see, some of the features are a good deal more powerful than your basic commands. Additionally, it offers even more advanced options, allowing you to access the path operations screen where you can manage files based on wildcards.
This is a free utility available for use on Windows (working with both 32bit and 64bit versions).
Want to maintain strict control over what?s running on your computer, keeping an eye on the use of your resources and restricting the operations of any process all the way to the farthest depths of your system?
WinPatrol Plus is a popular and extremely powerful tool that allows Windows users to monitor every aspect of their system, taking the core features of your Task Manager and amplifying them considerably. From controlling what launches at your startup to alerting you of any sudden change in your system, this is for the you users who always exercise vigilance when operating your system.
Normally retailing for $40, the developers of WinPatrol Plus have announced a special promotional offer, making it available for just 99 cents!
Good for ONLY today, this is an offer you might find difficult to ignore.
