Bye Bye Floppy disks.. Farewell to them at PCWorld.

There were times when Floppy Disks (lovably called as 'floppies') were the main medium for porting data. No one could forget the days when these little disks were carried in 'pockets'. The days are over. Floppy is dead.

In the era of USB and Internet, the physical size of the floppy disk is considered big and its storage capacity of mere 1.44 MB is nowhere near the mega USB sticks, which has 2000 times better storage capacity. It is not the physical size or the capacity that lead to the demise of the floppies. The unreliable nature of the floppies was the main culprit. The floppy disk looks increasingly quaint and simply isn't able to compete.

PCWorld Computer superstore is one of the world's biggest shop for computer accessories. It said it will no longer sell the floppies, once existing stock runs out. It is with mixed feelings that the computer store has decided call time on the floppy.

Some interesting facts about floppies:

• The first floppy disk was introduced in 1971 by IBM and heralded as a revolutionary device.
• An eight-inch plastic disk coated with magnetic iron oxide, the nickname "floppy" came from its flexibility.
• In 1976 the disk shrank to five-and-a-quarter inches.
• By 1981, Sony shrank it some more - this time to three-and-a-half inches - the standard used to this day.
  
• In 1998, an estimated 2 billion floppy disks were sold, according to the Recording Media Industries Association of Japan.
  
• In 2003, Dell banished disk drives from its high end machines.
• Only 2% of PCs and laptops currently sold by PC World still have built-in floppy disk drives and by the summer it will phase even these out.

When the rest of the world is saying Good bye to floppies, Microsoft stands out. It pays homage to floppies by still keeping it as the icon for file saving in its Office 2007 suite!!



Technorati Tags: Floppies, Floppy Disks, PCWorld

How to insert hidden emoticons in yahoo messenger

Emoticons are a great way to express our feelings and moods. Yahoo messenger comes with a default set of emoticons. Using the default emoticons doesn't need any special effort. We insert emoticons by two ways. One is to click the emoticon icon to get a list of default set of emoticons. The other way is to type the character combinations to display the desired emoticon. For example, type :) to get the first emoticon.

Many of us do not know that there are many emoticons that are not listed in the default list. Then how do we access it? Again there are two ways. One is to type the character combinations. The other method is the subject of this post, Accessing the hidden emoticons.

We need to install a plugin for it. It works with version 8 and above. Let me explain it step by step:

Step 1:

Download the YEmotePlus plugin from here. When you click the 'Install Now' button, you may get this warning:

You can safely click 'Launch application'.

Step 2:

Login into Yahoo messenger.

Step 3:

Open an Instant Message conversation window with any of your contact.

Step 4:

Click 'Actions' and then select 'Choose a Plugin...'


You will see this screen:


Step 5:

Click the Start button of YEmotePlus.

There are two lists on the above image. The first set contains the default emoticons and the second contains the hidden ones. Once you click a emoticon, the character combination is displayed on the typing window. Then, when you click 'Send' or press 'Enter', the emoticon will be sent.

Check out the bottom. There are four radio buttons. All self explanatory.

Enjoy!!


Related Posts:

How to find Invisible Yahoo users
How to get Yahoo Instant Messages in your Mobile
How to use instant messengers without downloading them


Technorati Tags: Emoticons, Hidden emoticons, Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Messenger Plugins, YEmotePlus, WackyB

Neutral Riddle - Exciting and Challenging Puzzle

Okay, I give up! I am still struggling to move on to the next level of this stunning Riddle. Neutral Riddle an addicting time killer.

What is this game?

Basically, this is a game where you have to get to the next screen, in any possible way. You'll have to change URLs, search google for answers, and many other things... It's not easy, so don't give up too early...

You need to find the url of the next level by the image and hints. For example, this is the first level image:


Using this image, try to find out the second level screen's URL.

These are the hints given for first few levels:

Level 1:Come on, read the title... where do you want to go??

Level 2: Hell... the title again... read it, then decode it...

Level 3: Apparently, you'll just need the pic here... never heard of that number?? google it!

Level 4: Man, again you'll need google... what kind of code is the one in the pic?

Level 5: Please, get to the source code... well, how?? google again!
(2nd part): name the animals... and try to form an english word...

Level 6: Imagination... pic + title + source code maybe?? from now on, do this on every level

Level 7: OMG it's dark... what is the title referring to?? it's exactly reffering to this!

Level 8 - 70: No more help... you're on your own from here... don't forget to check the source on every level...

Honestly, I am not able to move to 2nd level.. (lack of time, seriously) let me know if you can!


Tags: riddle, neutral riddle

Cool display images for Instant messengers

I have been repeatedly asked about the display images i keep in my Yahoo, MSN and Gtalk Messengers. I feel like a hero when my friends ask about it curiously. lol. There are many sites that offer colorful display images. Recently I have been using a site called ImageChef. It has stuffed with nice funny images. Its always fun to have funny images. It displays your mood and attitude.

Here is the link: ImageChef


Tags: display image, yahoo messenger, msn messenger, aim, instant messenger

How to open your favorite folders in 2 clicks.

We are going to talk about a cool little freeware application to make your Windows PC experience little easier.

What is this tool all about?

Its all about managing your folders in Windows PCs. Opening our favorite and often used folders with dozens of mouse clicks (like this: c:\yourname\fun\music\rock\..) is irritating, isn't it? One alternate to this problem is to have shortcuts to those folders in desktop. This idea is irritating too when you have opened up many application windows (like firefox, media player, messenger, other folder windows, etc) and forced to minimize all the windows in order to bring the desktop screen visible.

Just imagine how easy it would be to have shortcuts to the desired folders in the right click menus (also called contextual menus or shell extensions). That is what this small tool called 'Folder Guide' does. It is a small application that you can download and install for free.

After downloading and installing, the only thing you need to do is to add your favorite folders in the right click menu. See the screenshot below:
Thats it. Once you added the folders, it will be add to the right click menus. See how it looks:


You access the "Folder Guide" menu by right-clicking anywhere in the following:

• File, Directory, Directory Background (right pane) of Windows Explorer
• Common Open/Save dialogs
• Desktop
• Start Button [this is very useful ]

It has a very good features of importing / exporting your alias of paths which will be very useful if something happens to your system.

Click here to download the application.



Tags: Folder Guide

Listen to music within Firefox. No need to open any player.

Do you love to listen to music while working? I do. I always work in Firefox. To listen to music, we are forced to open an application like Windows Media Player or Winamp. Firefox has a cool extension that enables us to listen to music from within Firefox itself. Its called FoxyTunes. You never need to leave your browser window. It avoids the usage of extra memory by the Players.

It supports WinAmp, iTunes, Yahoo Music Engine, Pandora, foobar2000, Windows Media Player, Xbox Media Center, Musicmatch, Quintessential, J. River, jetAudio, XMPlay, MediaMonkey, Media Player Classic, Sonique, wxMusik, Real Player, XMMS, Noatun, Juk, Amarok, Music Player Daemon, Rhythmbox and many other players.


FoxyTunes Home page


Tags: FoxyTunes

Watch Popular TV Channels for FREE

TVU Network is a China based company that brings you Free Online TV Channel that you can not get in local cable TV providers. It has a big list of channels that includes but not limited to ESPN, HBO, MTV, Chennel V, Animal Planet, Star and Bloomberg amongf others.

TVU networks uses P2P technology to broadcast TV programs live over the Web.

You need to download and install the TVU Player to watch the Channels. Download the player from here.


Technorati Tags: TVU player, TVU Network

Dont know how to use ATM? Dont worry. A Thumb is enough.

In developing countries like India ATMs are considered to be modern and HiTech and is almost used only in urban areas. This sophisticated facility is not available in rural areas mainly because of the high rate of illiteracy. This scene may change soon.

A new technology that is going to help people to use the ATMs without the ATM Card and PIN hassles. It is called Biometric ATM. Just thumb impression is enough to use it. Indian government is planning to launch 15 Biometric ATMs at village kiosks in five districts across southern India. This would benefit more than 100000 users in and around the villages. They will use a finger print scanner instead of ATM Cards to access the Machine.

This move by the Indian government is closely monitored by Biometrics companies. If the experiment is going to be a success, then in future, all the ATMs including ones in urban areas will be Thumb impression enabled.

As in any other new technology, there are a few negative points about this is being analyzed and discussed. The main supposed-to-be drawback may be this:

In some of the more crime-ridden areas of the country, fingerprint IDs could lead to a new sort of crime where the criminals chop off fingers in order to withdraw cash from ATMs. Without a PIN code, a robber would be able to enter an account using a severed thumb. Giving option to use the finger he/she wants to access the system may be a solution for this problem. Still some people may argue 'what to do if the robber cuts off the wrist itself'.

Overall, this idea will surely give huge benefit to farmers and low paid workers in rural areas. The government should not stop this project stating unacceptable reasons as they do normally. Let us hope to see this project go live without any scam or behind the scene politics.


Technorati Tags: ATM, Biometric ATM

A free yahoo mail ID sold for $355 !!

What do you call this? A great business tactic? or Unethical trade?

A guy has sold a free yahoo email ID for a whopping $355 at EBay. The email ID is iPhone_Wholesalers@yahoo.com. The guy stated starting bid at $20. Amazingly the auction proceeded pretty fast and landed at $355. Goodness gracious me!!


It is very clear that selling yahoo IDs is a violation of Terms Of Service. We have to wait and see how yahoo reacts to this issue. This incident may lead to many more email id auctions in future.

Interestingly, the EBay site says that the seller is no longer a registered user of EBay.

There are few more Yahoo IDs similar to this like 'iphone_wholesaler', 'iphonewholesaler', 'iphonewholesalers' are not available too. We may see those being put in auction soon if ebay or yahoo (or any other web based email providers like gmail and hotmail) takes no action to prevent these kind of unethical trades.

I am just thinking about the man who won the auction. Is it really worth to get a free email ID for a huge price? Is it really going to help to promote his business? An iPhone itself costs lesser than this email ID! A web based free mail ID for a company doesn't attract many customers. It would be interesting to get an answer from the man himself for the reason he bought (!!) this free ID


Thanks JohnChow for reporting about the auction via Bob

Technorati Tags: EBay, Yahoo, iPhone, email sold

Update: Geni.com Bugs

We wrote about Geni.com last week. We have found a few serious bugs with the site on 21st Jan 2007. We have the responsibility to update our readers with the latest reviews. Here are the bugs we found:

• We entered an email ID of a contact wrongly. Surprisingly the tool doesn't have any provision to alter the email ID. So, we were unable to invite that contact to participate in the tree
  
• More serious bug: One of our friends made a blunder. Somehow he entered his mom's data wrongly. He entered his mother as his step mother by mistake. He was trying in all possible ways to correct this serious data entry error but he couldn't as there is no provision for it.
• The help page says you can delete a family contact if YOU had added him/her to the tree. This feature is still buggy. The system doesn't let us delete the contacts that we added. To some contacts it shows the delete option. No one knows what the criteria is.

So, add your family tree at your own risk, or wait till they come out with a solid bug free version.


Technorati Tags: Geni, Family Tree

'Less Security = More Publicity' for MySpace

The social networking site MySpace needs no introduction. It is the most visited site in 2006. MySpace is one of those sites that needs no dedicated marketing wing to promote it. The spot at the headlines for wrong reasons it gets from time to time is the biggest advertisement for ZERO money.

Whenever it is sued, the free publicity it gets is unmatchable. Recently, four families have sued MySpace and News Corp. after their underage daughters were sexually abused by adults they met on the site. This is not the first time the Site being sued. Every time, the victims are underage children.

Why is it happening again and again? What are the measurements MySpace folks are taking to prevent unlawful acts?

MySpace has reacted fast with added efforts and partnerships with law enforcement teams. One of the promising methods is that the company has placed restrictions on how adults may contact younger users on MySpace. Another notable technology they are developing may let parents see some aspects of their child's online profile, including the stated age. That tool is expected this summer.

The company is making Millions of bucks. The site is a great place to hangout. Let us hope they come out with a serious solution.


Technorati Tags: MySpace

Do you love your family? See this amazing Tool.

Creating family tree is not new. It has been there for ages. The look and feel of the concept has been changed from time to time. Geni.com is an amazing new 'family tree' tool. It uses flash technology beautifully.

Geni works like this:

The website allows users to create a family tree through a fun easy interface. When the user adds a relative's email address, that relative is invited to join the tree. That relative can then add other relatives, and so on. Each tree continues to grow as relatives invite other relatives.

This is what the CEO, David O. Sacks has to say:

"The rise of social media makes it possible for humans to collaborate and solve problems in new ways. One such area is genealogy. Mass collaboration via the internet finally puts us in a position to understand how every human being on earth is related. Not only can we learn who our ancestors are, we can create a living family network of all our relatives. That is our goal."

The conventional family trees shows only direct ancestors. This is where Geni differs from others. It allows us to include siblings, cousins and their families too. This is fantastic.

At present the tool is free to use. The company generates revenue by advertising.

Over a period of time, separate trees will start to overlap. They say we can merge it if we want. What is the logical spot that two trees can merge at? How are they going to organize the huge number of scattered tree lists? Lets see.

Update [22nd Jan 2007]: Few bugs have been found. See this post.


Technorati Tags: Geni, Family Tree

Try this new search engine Wikiseek

Directory search engine specialist 'Searchme' has launched a new search engine called 'Wikiseek'. The official announcement will be made later today. The uniqueness of this Search engine is that it searches only sites that Wikipedia has indexed and sites that are linked to and from Wikipedia.

That means, it is a search tool that helps to search Wikipedia articles. What I don't understand is, when there is an in-built search tool available in Wikipedia itself, why is this new product? I have written to Randy Adams, founder of 'Searchme'. I will update if I get any reply from him.

One nice feature of this site needs a special mention about it. The result page offers a tag cloud that contains Wikipedia categories containing the search term. Below is a screenshot that shows how the tag cloud looks for the search term 'Blogger'.

In addition to the search facility, it has a search plugin for all major browsers like Firefox, IE and Opera.

Source: TechCrunch.


Technorati Tags: Wikiseek, Wikipedia

6 Tips on Buying Cell Phones Online Securely.

Are you planning to buy mobiles online? Smart decision. Make sure you are not a victim of any online scam. You can make a good Online deal if you follow some basic rules. Here are 6 tips for best Online shopping experience.

1. Make sure your computer is secured:

It is the most important thing before you start any online trading. If your computer is infected with spyware or virus, your private data like passwords, Credit Card No, etc. may be stolen. There are many free and premium antivirus and antispyware tools available on net. After performing the necessary scans clean your system, if any evil is found. Using a firewall like Zonealarm or McAfee is recommended.

Use a secured browser. I recommend Firefox 2 with some security extensions. Internet Explorer 7 and Opera 9 are other options. Safari is a good option for Mac Users.

2. Select Well Secured Online trading sites:

There are thousands of sites that do online trading. Select the best ones. How to determine if it is best or not? Consider these things:

• Read 'About Us'.
  
• Contact them via phone. If they don't have a phone, write them a mail and ask them to clarify your doubts.
• Read testimonials, if given
• Read reviews about the site at sites like InfoPlease or ResellerRatings.
  
• Make sure the page where you enter your sensitive data operates on 'https' protocol. See the URL, if it starts with https instead of http, then its a secured site.
• Look for the 'lock' symbol at the status bar. It means the site is encrypted.
• Use McAfee Siteadvisor to verify the site.

I recommend Wirefly.com. Its a very good and reliable site for buying Mobiles online. It has a huge model list to choose from. If you are thinking to get the service of Cingular cell phones, then this is the best bet.

As I mentioned above in the tips, there is a phone no. given in the site's home page itself. You can call them and get clarified with your doubts.

3. Be aware of the service charges:

As there are many parties involved in the process, they would charge you for their services at various levels. The best solution is to call or mail the concerned parties and find out the service charges.

Select your favorite Mobile based on various considerations. Tips on choosing the correct mobile is out of scope of this article. I may write a separate article about it soon.

4. Compare the price:

After choosing the site you are going to buy the Mobile from, Compare the offer with other offers from other sites. Froogle is one of the best sites to compare prices. Search 'Compare mobile offers' in google on your local domain (Eg. google.co.uk) to get more comparison sites.

5. Before making the payment, Make these things clear:

• Make sure that they give after sales service for the products.
• Check out what is the guarantee period duration.
• Make sure the product has warranty period.
• Check out all the accessories that comes with it.

6. On Receiving the product:

• Make sure that the product's package is not tampered.
• Make sure that you received all the necessary documents with the product.
• Make sure that all the accessories are there and in good shape.

When I am writing this article, I have found that Cingular cell phones has announced great offers. I am planning to grab one for myself. Select the best deal and Enjoy!



Technorati Tags: Mobile, Mobile phones, Cell phones, Online Shopping, Wirefly

Learn or Test HTML with this simple site.

You may be a newbie or a regular user of HTML. Testing HTML is as important as using it. There are many tools available. Most of the tools are biggies. Meaning, you need to install it, open the application and obviously, it eats memory. For testing simple HTML tags and their attributes, we wouldn't like opening an huge application. There is an online solution for it.

Real-time HTML editor is a simple online HTML editor.

You type your HTML on the upper part and magically it displays the result on the lower half! It is as simple as that. Enjoy with HTML with this simple tool!!

Technorati Tags: HTML, HTML Edit, HTML Editor

How to find Invisible Yahoo users

The ability to login in invisible mode and stay offline for users in Yahoo Messenger is one of its most used features. But, we are in the receiving end at times too! Our pals hide themselves in invisible mode. They may be invisible to all or to you only. Do you suspect them to be in invisible mode? Do you want to find them? Read on...

There are many ways to do it. I will share those techniques one by one.

Technique 1: The Doodle Method.

Click the Imvironments button. Then select 'Doodles' from the list.

You will see this:

Now the verdict:

If the white board keeps saying 'Waiting for your buddy to load Doodle', then your pal is really offline. Dont suspect her/him!!

But, If the screen changes to blank like this:


Then it means that your pal is online and has hid himself/herself.

Technique 2: Conference method.

Invite your pal for Conference. Open IM with him, Click Action and select 'Invite for conference'.

Yahoo will tell you 'Voice could not be started', if he/she is offline.


Or it will enable the 'Voice', if he/she online but invisible.

The above said methods have one problem in common. That is, when you apply these tricks, the person you are suspecting will know that you are testing them, if they are online but hidden.

Technique 3: Using a third party tool.

The third technique is simple. The person will not know that they are being tested. This is a third party tool. I can not give guarantee for the results, though it gave us correct results when our team tested it with many combinations and scenarios for more than 100 times.

Here is the tool : BlockStatus

Bonus: You can find the status of MSN, AIM and ICQ users (Technopark team has not tested these utilities) with this site.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Status Checker, Yahoo invisible mode

How to get back deleted Outlook mails?

Do you use Outlook? Do you have the habit of deleting mails by pressing Shift+Del? Ever been fired by boss for a deleted mail? Then, this post is for you.

Dont worry. You can get back those mails. Follow this method:

Step 1:

First go to Start-Run and Type 'regedit'


Step 2:

Go to: \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\EXCHANGE\CLIENT\OPTIONS
registry key.

Step 3:

Right click options and add new DWORD VALUE (data type is REG_DWORD)

and then right click and rename to DumpsterAlwaysOn. It is case sensitive.

Step 4:

Then right click and modify and make the value 1 to turn the Recover Deleted Items menu in Outlook choice 'on' for all folders or enter 0 to turn it off. Make sure it looks like this:

Step 5:

Go to Outlook ,

1. Click Tools
2. Select 'Recover Deleted Items'

Thats it!

Note: This procedure can recover mails which were deleted by pressing shift+ del in the past 30 days.



Technorati Tags: Outlook, Outlook Mails, Regedit

Find your home on the EARTH with WikiMapia

You must have heard about Google Earth. It is a free software that presents us the image of globe by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS over a 3D globe. The picture at the right side is the Screenshot of Google Campus in California using Google Earth.

The dark side of this tool is that you must download it to use. It take a large amount of memory too.

This post is not about Google Earth. I am going to talk about more easy way to find your home on earth. Wikimapia is a site that has the same basic functionality of Google Earth. One great thing about this site is that it works from browser itself. No Activex or critical technologies. Simple concept but great utility.

Just visit the site, select your country, state and city and Zoom in. Thats it!!

Some samples: (click the pictures to enlarge)

Taj Mahal:

Pyramids:


2 KM from Center of Atlanta, Georgia, USA:

Enjoy finding your home and post it here in comments. I will upload it in this post. If you cant post the image in the comment, upload it somewhere like Imageshack or Photobucket. I will take the picture from there.

Technorati Tags: Wikimapia, Google Earth

How to add Trackbacks in Blogspot Blogs

What is Trackback: [Wikipedia definition]

"Trackback is a system that alerts and allows a blogger to see who has blogged about posts on his or her blog. The system works by sending a 'ping' between the blogs, and therefore providing the alert."

Unfortunately, unlike Wordpress, Blogspot does not have this facility by default. So blogspot blogs need to use third party tools.

Haloscan is an immensely popular tool. It provides a free, easy to use commenting and trackback service for weblogs and websites, allowing visitors to leave feedback, share their opinion, or comment on the subject at hand.

One more good feature of this tools is that you can include images in your comment.

I have installed it today.

What do we need to do?

Register for free with Haloscan and follow its simple procedure to include the code into your template. Be careful to take backup of your template before any modification.



Technorati Tags: Haloscan, Trackback, Comment

How to get Yahoo Instant Messages in your Mobile

Almost all the netizens have Yahoo! ID. They access Mail, Games, Calender, Notepad and Flickr among others through this ID. Instant Messaging via Yahoo is a part of life for many. I am not going to teach you how to use Messenger! Its quite simple. The topic here is:

How to get Yahoo IMs when you are offline? Is it possible? YES. Possbile.

You can Chat with your IM friends with your mobile through SMS. The notable part is, Yahoo does not charge anything for this service, but your Mobile Operator may charge you for SMS.

Here is a small tutorial on using Yahoo IM on mobiles:

Step 1:

Download and Install the latest version of Yahoo Messenger, if you are not having it already.

Step 2:

Login into yahoo messenger using your Yahoo ID.

Step 3:

Click 'Messenger' menu and select 'Sign into Mobile Device'. Ctrl+Shift+D is the short cut for this action.

You will be greeted with this screen:


Step 4:

Select your country and type your mobile number. At the time of writing this article, only people from these countries can avail this service:


Step 5:

After entering your mobile number, you will receive a 4 digit code in your mobile through SMS. Enter that code in the screen that follows. It may look like this:


Check the option 'Automatically sign me into my mobile device when I log out.' if you want to be online on your mobile.

On successful completion, you will get this screen:

Click 'Done'. The Registration of mobile device is over.

Step 6:

Now, When you log out from Messenger, you have two options.

1. To logout.
2. To sing in into mobile device

If you choose the second option, you will still be visible to your messenger contact with a caption 'I am on SMS'.

If anybody sends an IM to you, you will receive an SMS. You can reply to them via SMS.

Note: Your reply is must to receive more than 3 messages from a contact. See this example:

Adam: Hi THERE
Adam: Good Morning
Adam: How are you doing?

Adam: Are you there?? [YOU WILL NOT RECEIVE THIS MESSAGE AND ANYMORE FROM Adam. YOU MUST REPLY TO CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION]

Technorati Tags: Yahoo Messenger, SMS, IM, Instant Messengers, Mobile Messaging

5 Firefox Extensions I can't live without.

Firefox is the heart and soul of my online life. The first thing I do after I log in to XP is to start Firefox (Mainly because it takes time to start! lol! Its OK. Even my wife takes time to start too!!). I have the latest version 2.0.0.1. I have customized it to my convenient. That is the power of Firefox. It lets us customize the look and feel and functionality (to some extend) too.

Extensions are the real power of Firefox. It adds functionality and dynamism to the browser. I have installed many Extensions and I am used to live with that. Sometimes (very rarely) I have to work from my friend's computer or from a net cafe. At that time, I feel isolated without my set of extensions.

Here, I have listed the extensions that I can't use Firefox without:

1. McAfee SiteAdvisor

This is an absolute essential Extension for any Firefox user. Earlier it was simply called 'SiteAdvisor'. After McAfee aquired it, it is called 'McAfee SiteAdvisor'.

What does it do?

It monitors the sites you open and tells you if the site is good or evil. It has a very big (really big) list of sites, so it can judge almost all the sites you open. Of course it does not know about some new or unknown sites. It has an easy procedure to add sites to its database. It has a detailed report on every site it monitors. Give it a shot. Click here to download.

2. NoScript

This is also a security related tool. It deals with Java Script. As you may know already, Java Script is the technology that gives dynamism and interactivity to the web pages. It is a powerful scripting language. Having said that, we must understand that it is the same Scripting language that bad guys use to do evil to our computers and privacy.

It is like knife. It can be used for both good and evil cause. Now, this Extension 'NoScript' gives us the ability to control the usage of Java Script. You can decide which sites to be allowed to use Java Script and which to be banned (from using Java Script). Get it here or here.

If you make it a habit to browse with these two tools installed, chances of getting infected from virus or spyware are very less.

3. GMarks

Saving bookmarks on the web itself is very important. If something happens to our browser or computer, we may loose all our bookmarks saved for months or may be years. Google bookmark is online bookmark storage tool by Google. The Extension I am talking about helps us bookmark directly to google bookmarks in one click. Very very useful.

4. Diigo toolbar for firefox

Diigo is a Social Bookmarking site. It has this extension for Firefox that gives us many functionalities.

• When you come across something interesting on web, you may want to share it with your friend immediately. With this extension, you can simply mark the content you want to share and click to email it.
  

• Select a word, you will see a context menu. From that menu, you can find meaning for that word from many customizable sources like wikipedia or answers.com or search for that word in google or other search engines
• Just hilight and bookmark for future reference for you and other diigo users.
  
• Last but not least. Very simple but very useful feature. Just select a word or phrase. A menu will appear. Select 'copy' in that. Simple. No need to right click.

Get it here.

5. Google Browser sync

Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions. Very nice utility. Works silently. Click here to get it.

Apart from these 5 extensions, I use these too:

AdBlock, FEBE, Flashgot, FosterFox, Google Notebook, Internote, Google Toolbar, PDF Download, PermaTab



Technorati Tags: Firefox, Firefox Extension, McAfee SiteAdvisor, SiteAdvisor, Noscript, GMarks, Diigo, Diigo Toolbar, Google Browser Sync