Its method: prompting us to answer some maths problems at designated times - by default Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as "this is the time that most people are likely to need it",. You can change the timings; which is handy if you are prone to long drunken lunches or are an alcoholic.

If your math skills are lacking you can use your windows calculator, if you can find it in your state. If you are really determined to send the email you can, and live to regret it - unless you forget you have sent it. In this case you may live forever in ignorance or wonder why someone is no longer talking to you, has deleted you from SU/Digg friend, is leaving you nasty blog comments …. or the opposite: arrives at your place with all their worldly possessions, asks when you are going shopping for rings…

If you get the maths questions wrong then a new box appears with new questions with the comments “Water and bed for you. Or try again.” If you are too slow in answering the message is “Oops, looks like your reflexes are a little slow. Try again.” I bet they had some fun trying to think of the messages to use here and some of them would not have been quite so politely phrased.

Can you tell that I find this feature amusing? When I read about it I had to remind myself that it was not April 1st and even then go into Gmail to make sure Mail Goggles really existed.

You can turn on Mail Goggles via the Labs tab in your Gmail Settings and then customize it via the General tab.

If, like me, you receive your Gmail via POP mail and have not visited the Labs Tab (how long has it been there I wonder?) there are a few other interesting and useful features that you can enable for Gmail. For example,

• Email Addict which lets you take a break from email and chat by blocking the screen for fifteen minutes and making you invisible in chat. I wish they could come up with a way of blocking my desk inbox (or the pile of things in front of me that need doing) and let me email and chat for fifteen minutes.
• Old Snakey game - for when you want a break from everything.
• Forgotten Attachment Detector which prevents you from accidentally forgetting intended attachments by prompting you if you mention attaching a file, but have not done so.
• Quick Links which adds a box to the left column that gives you 1-click access to any bookmarkable URL in Gmail. It can be used for saving frequent searches, important individual messages, etc.
• Quite a few other ways to customize and improve your Gmailing experience.

Post from: Blogging Sueblimely

Google Gmail Gets Mail Goggles

Features

• Optional addition of some or all of your bookmarking, social networking and photo sites to Lijit will allow search of not only your blog posts but of sites you have bookmarked, your blogroll sites and your social networking contact’s posts and their contacts and bookmarks. Most of the popular sites are included although my favorite bookmarking site, diigo, is as usual not included. There is also a feature to add feeds and site url’s so adding my diigo bookmarks feed solved this problem for me.
  The search result window shows tabs for results from your blog, your network, your content (on any site), and the web. You set your widget’s default search to show one of these tabs as the front page of the results. I have set mine up to show search results from my blog first. I recommend this as you will keep searchers on your own site longer if the search term brings up satisfactory results in your blog (in terms of what the user wishes).

• Choose to have your search results show up only on the Lijit site or in your blog window via a pop up screen.
• Statistics available on your Lijit page will give you information about:
  • the number of times you have been searched,
  • the results that have been clicked,
  • information sources that have provided the most clicked results,
  • blogs that have linked to you,
  • searches that have brought people to your blog .

You can choose to make your statistics publicly viewable.
Widgets can be created to display some recent reader stats on your blog via a list or map:

• An optional “Surprise me!” button produces a list of random content from your blogs and added services - and the results did surprise me as MyBlogLog blogs, that I was not even aware of, showed up there. (MBL automatically adds blogs that you have visited a certain number of times) I may remove MyBlogLog from my options so that results are more relevant to my blog topics.

• A feature named ‘Re-search’ displays extra information for those reaching your blog via a Google search. Here are the results which showed up after I had done a Google Search for “blogging sueblimely images”.For this example, I had to use my blog name in the search terms so that I guaranteed that one of my posts came up in a google search! Options allow you to either display these results below your widget or across the top of your blog.

Below Lijit Wijit

Top Placement - this image was created by a Lijit preview feature

• The widget can be configured to show ‘Popular Searches’ and ‘content’ icons’ I chose not to include these features on mine, being mindful of above the fold sidebar space and page load time, but this is what they would have looked like had I installed them:

• Along with search results comes an option to add a search of the blog you are searching to your browser search engines.
• Lijit uses Google search but also has its own search infrastructure. Om Malik reports that there are plans to add an opt-in ad network to search results and to allow publishers to sell their own keyword inventory in as well as giving them the opportunity to “use Lijit to back-fill the advertising spots”

Advantages of using Lijit Search on your blog:

• Lijit search stats are very useful and are displayed in a simple to understand way.
• The browser search engines feature is useful for yourself to add for a quick search of your own blog as well for others to add to encourage others to revisit your content..
• Searching of your blogroll and social networking contact sites. This could be seen as a resource for your readers as well as a way of recognizing your blogging contacts - another form of link love.
• When results
• Search of your bookmarking sites is another resource for your readers to tap into. I consider my online bookmarking sites a research tool for you, adding links that I think you would find useful relating to topics I cover here, rather than using them for personal purposes. I already display my diigo bookmarks so for me the Lijit search is an extension of this principle. As you will know, if you read this blog often, I tend to ignore SEO recommendations for more incoming links than outgoing as I wish to provide useful information, whether written by myself or others, and to give recognition to the good blog content of my contacts. .
• Keeping the search result window on your blog, rather than purely on the Lijit site, will retain your readers on your site for longer.

Setup was simple and, if you change your preferences, you do not have to alter the widget code as new or changed features are automatically added. The widget itself did not seem to impact my page load time although the search results are a little slow to show up. Disadvantages - yet another widget added to your sidebar and for me another tool to divert me away from my tasks at hand today - my (semi) regular news post and a tutorial on Yahoo Buzz - which now allows anyone to add content a la Digg but with some different and useful features.

Post from: Blogging Sueblimely

Lijit Blog Search Tool - Review and Tutorial

Image Search Tools

Creative Commons Images

• Creative Commons Search by Creative Commons - searches Google, Yahoo and Flickr for Creative Commons works. If you want to use an image on a non commercial site then you can use any image you find here. Additional search options allow you to look for:
  • only CC works that you can modify, adapt, or build upon, and or
  • works that can be used for commercial purposes.

Source: g-hat Flickr

• Compfight is a site that provides a quick method of searching for Flickr images. The results are displayed as quick loading thumbnails, 250 to a page. Clicking on a thumbnail takes you to the photo’s Flickr page. The option is provided to search within tags or all text for Creative Commons usage only or for Creative Commons commercial usage allowed. Still check the CC licence if you intend to adapt the image to make sure this is allowed.

• Flickr’s Creative Commons Page search for photos according to their type of Creative Commons License. I would use this if I knew I was going to edit a photo otherwise I find Compfight is quicker.
• Every Stock Photo - a search engine for free photos from many sources. View a photo’s license by clicking on the license icon, below and left of photos or use the advanced search function to choose which sort of license you want.
• Firefox - Use the Creative Commons search engine that is built into Firefox by choosing the CC icon from the drop down menu to the right of the Firefox search box.

• Wikimedia Commons is a database of 3,089,392 freely usable media files which includes images from these sites.

Source Cool Image Bank Ios - memories of holidays long past

Images without Creative Commons search criteria

• Google Image Search comes up with a treasure trove of images but, as the search results contain images from all Google listed websites, you are unable to use a great deal of them; for copyright reasons. I do use this search but only for ideas when creating my own images and for personal browsing purposes. Today for example after doing an interview with Kuanyin on Blog Blond my interest in Maui was peeked and I ended up searching for images of Hawaiian volcanoes.

Source: mattsabo17 Flickr

• Pixsy - a search engine for images and videos, including stock photos. Allows search to be customized by criteria - vector graphics, black and white, greyscale and backgrounds, digital photos. Categories covered are: News, Celebrities, Sports, Travel, Viral, Video, Entertainment, Music, Stock Photos, Edge and Miscellaneous. (Pixsy is the search engine powering Compfight, Lycos image search, Mokoseek and various other sites that distracted me from writing this post)

Images from people you know

Ask a fellow blogger if they would mind you using an image from their blog - they may be pleased to allow it to get a backlink. How are these for pairs of crocs??

Source: Ultraviolet Observations aka Sueblimely’s daughter

I have justed added a new site to my free image post - a smallish collection as yet but very impressive - unprofound.com

Post from: Blogging Sueblimely

Search for Free Images

Although I have not ventured into online money making I have joined the 30 Day Challenge for the second time. I was newer to blogging the first time round and learned a lot about blog promotion, social networking, blogging tools and search engine optimization. Knowing that new content is produced for each Challenge and that the tools available to us rapidly increase and change, I felt that I would again benefit from participating. There is no pressure to follow each step rigidly and if you cannot find time to view the daily offerings you can catch up another time.

The Challenge actually starts/started on 1st August but it is not too late to join in. There are some recommended “pre-season” preparation activities which are useful in their own right. Not being patient enough to watch videos I read the transcripts of these so that I could pick out areas that I thought may be new to me. This time round the use of the Flock browser is being recommended and there are guides to help you get started with it. I am close to moving over to Flock from Firefox and will do so once I have configured it with my favorite extensions. At present, I always have it open alongside Firefox for its social networking, Flickr and YouTube tools.

I followed Ed’s example by creating a Google Subscribe Link for Sueblimely. You can subscribe via the “Add my expertise to your Google web searches” in my sidebar. Here are the FAQs for Google Subscribe Links if you are interested in creating your own.

You can join up by via my 30 Day Challenge Refferal Link or via the 30 Day Challenge site directly and find me in Team Lightening There are prizes to be won for those with the most referrals. I don’t expect to be anywhere in the running for these but it would be good not to have a referral point value of zero

Post from: Blogging Sueblimely

The Thirty Day Challenge Begins

Entrecard has been a great way of bringing visitors to blogs and creating a means for members to get known but it has fallen short in producing significantly extra comments and expanding individual blog’s reader communities. Entrecard has always had higher aims, with goals of bringing not only traffic but also audiences, readership and community participation. I agree with Graeme, the mastermind behind Entrecard, when he says that “Commenting is the second most important thing for you to do after writing quality posts. It was due to his aim to use “The same credits that power our culture responsible for millions of blogger-to-blogger visits each week … to help power a culture that comments on posts as well” that has resulted in the partnership with SezWho.

Now on to SezWho itself:

SezWho is a commenting/comment rating tool, which calls itself a profiling service and engagement platform. It creates a ‘profile’ for your commenters; hovering over their profile image or “check me out” link brings up a box which shows you the latest comments they have made and their SezWho ratings. It allows you to rate posts and the the comments and follow comments via RSS. If you are not registered or logged in when rating then the rating will be processed as anonymous but this has much less impact on member reputation scores. You do not have to have your own site to register with SezWho.

The Profile that pops up for Colin Campbell’s comments.

Its use is aimed at giving highly rated members “web-wide recognition for their insights and expertise”, “thought leadership”, and an increase in traffic. The theory is that the number and quality of comments on your blog will grow.

The Entrecard connection is that credits are awarded to members who comment on SezWho enabled sites. The amount of credits given is based on how highly the comment is rated by those who vote on it - ranging from 1 to 10 Entrecard credits. The idea is that quality comments gain the most, quick meaningless comments left merely for backlinks and spam comments will luck out.

will give SezWho users who receive ratings of 4 stars or more with credits to advertise on its network of blogs. This is an interesting approach, as it connects reputation with a direct reward.

How to integrate SezWho with your site (currently supported platforms are WordPress versions up to 2.6 (2.6 is beta still), Movable Type, Blogger, Drupal and phpBB):

• Create an account with SezWho
• Wordpress - download and intall the SezWho plugin by upload to your plugin folder, activate it. Then enter the blog id sent to you with your registration confirmation email in the SezWho plugin’s setup.
• Blogger - add the provided code to a HTML/Javascript page element.

You can view your own profile on your SezWho page:

Colin must lead thoughts to better places than I do

As I have only just installed the plugin I do not have any ratings, I do have ‘Star Power’ of 2.5 as this “community ranking” is not purely based on ratings?

Advantages

• If this new system takes off and more Entrecarders do comment, rather than merely dropping on you, your blogs bounce rate will improve.
• SezWho does not host any site content. All published and user-supplied content remains on - and is controlled by - the original site. It does not make off with your comments like some similar programs do.
• Backlinks are created for yourself and commenters.
• If you are an extraordinary commenter, a thought leader among bloggers, then your reputation will spread far and wide. If you are average then it may not make any difference to you, although I am sure the word will get round if particular blogs have generous comment ratings. I am open to that word :-). In my case I am sure I will not want to favor one regular commenter over another so will rate them all well, just because I am pleased to see them here. If you are new then I should imagine that I will vary my ratings although I love my comments so much that no doubt I will be generous - it will most likely depend on the mood I am in and if you are using a name that includes such words as casino. (my jury is still out with regards to the keyword luv plugin but I will save that for another post)

Disadvantages

• Receiving low ratings could lead you to have less confidence in your writing, even though it may be that your particular commenters do not want to use the system.
• It could be looked upon as bribing people to comment *
• If you write quality posts you are going to get plenty of comments anyway (I do not believe this always to be the case as it depends on your type of blog and readership)
• Adding to your workload by commenting on blogs just for your ratings is yet another way to divert you from writing and concentrating on your own readers.

Reading:

• On Entrecard’s blog Announcing the Partnership of Entrecard and SezWho
• Entrecard fan Joe Tech’s Top 10 reasons why the Entrecard - SezWho partnership is Important for Bloggers gives a positive review. The 70+ comments on the post show agreement with this view.
• * Entrecard + SezWho = Meh on Monkey Fables and Tales which talks less favorably about SezWho and not wanting to “bribe” people to comment. The 50+ comments on the post show agreement with this view.
• SezWho in operation on a phpBB forum on the SezWho Support Forum

To give you an opportunity to try out SezWho on this site I am will pose some questions.

• Based on this post or on your usage of SezWho are you in favor or against?
• Do you think this partnership is a positive or negative step for Entrecard.
• Are the multitude of peripheral blogging activities available to us now having a general effect of

• reducing blog posting frequency and quality or:
• taking us away from commenting on blogs? Is blog conversation moving to social media sites instead?

Post from: Blogging Sueblimely

Entrecard Encouraging Comments with SezWho

I have spent considerable time researching the best sites to find online free images/stock images, along with their copyright/ Creative Commons licences. Some of these sites will probably already be familiar to you but others new, as they were to me. I hope you find this of use, as it makes the time spent all worthwhile. Sites are listed in alphabetical order.

Free Images

• BurningWell - a repository for public domain (free for any use) images. Donations welcomed - anyone have any Melbourne images they could upload, Melbourne is not represented there at all!

Waterlillies - Fiji

• Flickr Usage: image pages display their Creative Commons licences
• Free Digital Photos Dot Net - Royalty free images Usage: commercial and non-commercial.
• Free Photos Bank Usage: see terms
• Free Public Domain Photos You may use these images for any purpose, including commercial

Morning Glory

• Freerange Stock free stock photos - Freerange is an advertising revenue supported photographic community - photographers get paid when users click on the ads that appear next to their submissions. Usage: commercial and personal.
• Free Web Page Headers - Usage: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
• freewebphoto Usage: Free for linked web use
• Image*After a free online photo and texture collection. You can download and use any image or texture from the site Categories covered: architecture, art, food, nature, industry, humanoids, human parts, landscapes, objects, vehicles. (pretty much everything) - Usage: commercial or personal but no redistribution.

• Kave Wall - Free Stock Photos, Images and Textures. Usage: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
• morgueFile - free high resolution stock photos. Usage: commercial personal.
• Openphoto is a wiki-based photography site. All images on the site are marked with Creative Commons attribution. Anyone can register and upload images. Users can browse or search by tags to find photos they are interested in.
• Pixel Perfect Digital Free Stock Photos Usage: Personal non-commercial use, restrictions apply for commercial use (also features premium low-cost images from Dreamstime).

• Microsoft Clip Art
• StockVault - stock photo sharing website. Over 100,000 images. Usage: Free for personal and non-commercial purposes.
• Stock.XCHNG - over 350.000 free user submitted images - terms of use vary but are displayed on each image page.

Smaller Free Image Sites

FreeImages.co.uk - over 2,500 free stock images. Usage: Only a link to site required. *

unprofound.com which was started by one photographer, Jim, has now grown to become a “a global collaboration of photographers” all generously sharing their work freely with the only restrictions seeming to be on redistribution of the photos. Check the FAQ if you are unsure. No attribution is required although I think that giving credit is the right thing to do wherever possible. Search is via photo color or photographer and a search tool still to be refined. I had trouble choosing only one image out of this wonderful collection of high quality photos and I hope to see this site grow and become well known.

Specialist Free Image sites

There are so many of these that I cannot mention them all here but I would appreciate it if anyone can recommend any that are worthwhile checking out.

These sites contain images relating to specific topics or genres, those that have been designated as public domain, creative commons or are of an age where copyright has expired.

• Gimp Savvy Photo Archive - images come from three main sources: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Usage: copyright free, some restrictions with regards to privacy for commercial usage.
• Old Book Illustrations includes galleries of animals, plants, landscapes, characters, scenes, buildings and monuments, science and technology and miscellaneous illustrations scanned from old books.

Source

• Plants of Hawaii - Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Agapanthus aka Mt Eliza leprosy Source

• The Best Copyright-Free Photo Libraries - a post on gov.watch with links to specific public domain (copyright free) government photo libraries.
• PhotoEverywhere UK Free Travel Images Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License - Free to share and remix with attribution. *
• Wikipedia:Public domain image resources includes links to sites of historical images, 2,600 realist painters (many in the public domain), copyright expired visual artworks, scanned images from old books, logos, stamps, US government sites as well as general collections.
• wellcome images -
  2000 years of human culture Usage: unless otherwise stated - Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial version 2.0 or Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales

Crystals of a DNA repair protein bound to DNA

Source Bernard O’Hara & Renos Savva, Wellcome Images

Personal Photo Sites

Personal sites where images are offered for download free of charge:

• PD photo.org contains public domain photos taken by the site’s owner, Jon Sullivan who also has a blog, aptly titled, Jon Sullivan

John reminds us that if an image is in the public domain then it must stay there. You cannot claim it as your own nor add any extra restrictions on its use. He also advises that it is wise to assume that no model release has been given for commercial use; unless stated otherwise or indicated by its Creative Commons Licence.

Future posts in this series will include image search engines, directories of free image sites, where to find low cost images, useful image tools and Firefox image tools. I know because most of them are written already

* New sites added since original post. Last update: 17 July 08

Post from: Blogging Sueblimely

Best Sites For Good Free Stock Images

Using a good backup and synchronization program has been a priority for me since a glitch reformatted my data drive as well as my C drive.

I thought I had all bases covered in this eventuality but the backups I had created on another computer, using windows scheduled backup, did not like my long folder structures and contained no files. Restoring image files I had burned to DVD, created using Acronis True Image software, was successful for the most part but, for reasons unknown, it could not restore around 50 of my photos. Despite over 20 years experience of extensive use of PC’s, I was still caught out.

Having decided that encrypted backups were not reliable enough for my liking, I went in search of a solution that would do straight file backups over a network and to removable media with no encryption or zipping. I also needed a program that would synchronize files between my networked PC’s. My research for software recommendations led me to try two programs that do both backups and syncs. Both are free for moderate usage levels but, having set up multiple different tasks, I was advised that to keep using the program at this level I had to pay for the pro versions. The programs are:

Always Sync Pro Version price reduced to US$19.95 until Oct 31st 2008

GoodSync Pro Version $US29.95 ($23.95 with promo code) Additional versions are only $9.95 which is good value if other family members have their own PC’s or you want to use it at work as well as home).

Both programs do their jobs efficiently but I decided on GoodSync by Siber Systems Inc for two reasons. I already use their Roboform Pro password program and have been pleased with their support. I also found Goodsync easier to set up and use than AlwaysSync.

The only files you cannot synchronize/backup successfully using this type of program, which over write older versions of files, are those where changes that are made on two computers need to be saved. In my case this applies to Thunderbird mail and address files and Firefox files. I access other files across the network so the newest version of a file is always the right one to backup. I will explain how I get around this in another post.

Now I feel much more confident that I have regular and reliable backups of all my data and I was able to take my laptop away with me last week without having to transfer any files across to it before I left.

If you use a backup and or sync program you find to be reliable please let us know.

Post from: Blogging Sueblimely

Best Backup and Synchronization Software

Readair is a desktop client for Google Reader. I need say no more as I will now leave it to Molly to explain it all.

What an easy and lazy post this was.

It seems I could not resist saying a little more

Post from: Blogging Sueblimely

Readair for Google Reader

I need to create a site which will allow multiple users to easily add news and additional pages, upload photos to a gallery. I have created a number of sites using the Joomla CMS system so that their users could update the sites themselves once I had set them up. Each time the sites have either remained unchanged or I have had to to the updates myself ; the admin interface was too hard for them to learn.

This time, Wordpress was my main preference; with plugins and tweaks I could get it to do what was needed. It was not ideal but it was the best option that I was aware of - until I found Majestic. Majestic’s inbuilt features immediately attracted me, providing all the functionality I needed, and a simple admin interface means my clients will be able to start blogging without a steep learning curve. I was sueblimely happy with my discovery Not only does Majestic provide a simple blogging solution but has extras that even Wordpress cannot provide, such as more flexible user permissions. Plugins being developed by Injader will also provide more advanced uses if you need them. Apologies if this sounds like an advertisement, I do tend to be enthusiastic about such finds.

Another discovery I made was that Majestic has been developed by Ben Barden, whose blog I have been reading for quite some time and who I know from the Aussie Blogger’s Forums as a knowledgeable and helpful contributor. I have asked Ben to write a guest post to give you more info on Majestic and an opportunity for you to have your questions answered - so if there is any more you would like to know about Majestic please ask in the comments here.

Post from: Blogging Sueblimely

Majestic Wordpress Alternative and CMS

Unless listed as otherwise all of the following are Firefox extensions. For most of the list below I could only point you to the current extension version downloads. This of course may change in the future - so if the extension is out of date for your version of Firefox or no longer exists then do a search from the main Firefox Add-ons window.

Addins marked with * are those I have not tried myself because I do not want to add any more unless I think they are absolutely necessary.

Blogging and Feed Reading

• Text Formatting Toolbar * - allows easy formatting of posts on forums, blog comments and wikis. It supports three formats: BBcode (bulletin board) like used on most forums, HTML, and the format used by Wikipedia.
• ScribeFire blog editor
• Web Mail Notifier *- handy to get immediate notification of blog comments etc..
• BlogRovr - RovR fetches posts from your favorite blogs about anything you’re browsing, and shows you summaries you can open read posts without leaving the web page you were on. Twitter about the pages you’re on from the toolbar, with the link added automatically.
• Google Reader Watcher *- checks your Google Feedreader for unread news.
• Sage Feedreader - I used to use this all the time until I began collecting (I get very behind in reading) copious amounts of feeds and started using Feed Demon instead. There are a few other feedreader addins for Firefox - if you prefer one of these over Sage I would be interested in hearing about it.
• Wizz RSS Newsreader- I have read good review for this one.
• Feed Sidebar - show your Firefox Live Bookmarks in the sidebar.
• Yoolicit Toolbar - pinpoints and takes you to sites that are specifically relevant to those you’ve bookmarked - a bit like the Stumble feature of Stumbleupon. Youlicit site to create your account
• To Read Later
  - bookmark webpages you want to read later by simply clicking on this toolbar button .
• Firefox Universal Uploader *- upload/download to and from Flickr, Picasa, Youtube, Box.net(1GB of free space), Facebook, Webshots and OmniDrive

Designing

When designing or altering design elements in your blog it is very useful to have ways of viewing or editing the CSS and html code before you commit to saving it to your theme. If you are a beginner, being able to view how your own blog or other websites are made up is a good learning strategy. Even for the more experienced it handy to be able to view bits of code on other sites or to edit your own.

• Scrapbook - excellent for quickly downloading your theme/template.The saved page is converted to html it is very handy for styling your page or extras you add. - I am intending to write a tutorial on this as I find Scrapbook invaluable and use it a lot.
• Web Developer Toolbar - Lets you interact with your page code and styling in multiple ways. I wrote a post about this last year - Blog Toolbox 2 - Web Developer Toolbar
• View Source Chart - a nifty little tool which I used a great deal when learning html and CSS. This extension allows you to view a color coded chart of a webpage showing how the different elements relate to each other: I have created a source chart page showing the source code for one of my post pages:
• Firebug - view and edit a page’s CSS, HTML, JavaScript and Ajax. A great extension although I find everything I need and more in the Web Developer Toolbar.
• MeasureIt
  - a ruler to measure elements of a webpage.

SEO

• Sparky - Alexa Toolbar
• iWebTool Toolbar - 30 Webmaster Tools including Backlink Checker, Google Pagerank Checker. Alexa Traffic Rank, Reciprocal Link Checker

Social Networking

• Facebook - search, get Notified, connect with friends, share content Facebook Toolbar, Facebar and Facebook ShareThis
• StumbleUpon Toolbar
• Digg Toolbar
• Digg Sidebar- shows you the Digg stories in real time in the Firefox sidebar.
• Jaikungfu *- enhancements for Jaiku users
• LinkedIn Companion for Firefox
• Orkut Helper * various features for keeping up with Orkut.
• minggl - interact with multiple Social Networking Sites
• Operator toolbar - interact with semantic data on websites - hcard, vcard, microformats. Handy for using the new hcard/vcard feature in MyBlogLog - I am in the midst of writing a post on this subject.
• Twitter Fox - notifies you of your friends’ statuses of Twitter.
• Shareaholic - share, bookmark and e-mail web pages.
  Supported services: bzzster!, digg, del.icio.us, facebook, friendfeed, google bookmarks, healthranker, magnolia, mixx, reddit, simpy, stumbleupon, streakr, truemors, tumblr, twitter…
• Share this - send messages to FaceBook, AIM and regular email simultaneously and without signing in to any other account and post directly to Facebook Homepage
• SiteSays - allows you to post and view comments about sites as you surf in a small window in the corner of your browser. It is a novel way to collaborate and interact…
• gTalk Sidebar * - installs gTalk to your firefox sidebar
• Chat applications - Gabbly Chat and Yaplet Sidebar
• Me.dium - but not your average extension. Chat with friends who are visiting the same webpage.

Social Bookmarking

• diigo Toolbar - interact with your diigo account. diigo allows for automatic bookmarking to other bookmarking sites too.
• GBookmarks via Right Click
• Delicious Delicious bookmarks sidebar - I found this slowed my browsing down so try not to use too many other addins if you really want to use this one.
• SimpleDelicious - another method of working with Delicious bookmarks.
• Onlywire Bookmark a page to various social bookmarking sites at once
• GBookmarks via Right Click *
• Smarky *- manage Simpy bookmarks
• Faves *- for your Faves (formerly Blue Dot) bookmarks
• Furl Interact with the Furl bookmarking application
• Blogmarks toolbar buttons
• magnolia bookmarklet to add to ma.gnolia bookmarks
• If your bookmarking service is not here search the Firefox addins bookmarking category and you may find some tools.

Researching

• warichu bar * - add notes to webpages and discuss the page with others who have added an annotation. I would be interested in hearing the opinion of anyone who has used this. Also available for IE
• Yoono As you are browsing Yoono instantly suggests what others have discovered:
  websites, people and articles and includes a “one-click grab and share” for videos, photos and texts.It also includes a tool to keep your Yoono scrapbook and bookmarks synchronized across computers. Useful for researching and keeping up to date.
• EverNote Web Clipper *- I have not tried Evernote as I am still awaiting an invite - it is still in beta. The extension adds a “toolbar button and context menus to easily add a selection or an entire page to the EverNote Application as a new note.”
• Zotero - collect, manage and cite you research sources Homepage
• MyStickies
  - add notes and tags to pages for reference when you next visit
• Fleck - Save the best of the Web - annotation tool - bookmark websites including your own sticky notes. Fleck Homepage

Useful

• All-in-One Sidebar - always one of the first extensions I install - makes it so much easier to use bookmarks, browse history, deal with your extensions ….
• Tab Mix Plus - another must have for me - to choose my preferences for how links open in tabs
• IE Tab - Good when working on your blog styling - allows you to see what your page looks like in IE
• Extra Toolbar buttons
• Roboform Toolbar - save and easily insert site login details - you need to download the Roboform password manager program to use this. Free version only allows a limited number of saves - I bought the pro version and use it extensively. Roboform Homepage
• iGoogle Sidebar *- view you iGoogle page in a Firefox sidebar.
• Febe - back up your Firefox extensions, themes, bookmarks, preferences, cookies - you can set up an automatic scheduled backup
• Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer
  - Sync bookmarks across computers. this is a popular extension although I have not had success with it - probably because of the amount of bookmarks I have.
• Google Browser Sync - if you use more than one computer this you can choose to sync bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords. - Requires a google identity (gmail address) When you set up for the first time you will be asked to create a pin number which you need to remember for setting up other machines to sync.
• If you do not want the full features of Google Browser Sync GMarks syncs and manages only your Firefox bookmarks.
• PlainOldFavorites * - use your Internet Explorer Favorites in Firefox.

Extensions can slow down your browser and cause crashes so try to use them in moderation. I am an extension addict but because of painfully slow browsing I now have 3 different profiles which I can run at the same time using the Profile Manager extension. Please see my post Speed Up your Firefox Browsing for more details.

If you do install all these extensions you may like to add another - PageAddict which lets you know how much time you have spent on websites and if you have an aversion to MySpace try the AmIOnMySpace.com? which will alert you if you have accidentally happened across a MySpace page. Happy browsing.

Do you have any favorite Firefox addins? Please do tell me about them.

Post from: Blogging Sueblimely

Most Useful Firefox Addins