The Productivity Portfolio blog runs down three common fixes for the unexpected and highly frustrating bug of hyperlinks going non-helpful—meaning your browser doesn't open, goes to a dead page, or some other problem. The post notes that resetting your browser, re-registering DLL files, and resetting file-type handlers in Windows usually fixes the problem without a re-install, and runs down the steps to do so. The fixes mostly involve working with Internet Explorer, but, as pointed out, you can then just switch your default browser back to Firefox (phew!). .

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Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): If you find yourself regularly selecting, copying, and then pasting text from your browser into emails, Email This! is a definite time saver. A right-click (or toolbar) menu lets you directly compose a new Gmail, Yahoo, or Google Apps web mail message with the selected text, or pass it into a mail client like Thunderbird or Outlook. Those options can be added to or whittled down, and helpful shortcuts (Alt+G for Gmail) makes text sending even quicker. Email This! is a free add-on, and works wherever Firefox does.

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Need pointers to further reading on a certain area you'll be staying or working? Google Maps has added a "Mapped web pages" view to its advanced search options choices, displaying only pegs related to relevant web pages. Google Maps has always offered direct web links for businesses and places found in a search, but this view lets you see non-directly-related sites and a wider range of thoughts on certain places. Seems like a good vacation planning helper, or at least a nifty way to peek around your neighborhood's web activity.

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Link-shrinking services like TinyURL are great for sending long links, but sometimes you might want to share a list of sites with a contact over Twitter, IM, or even mobile phone text. LinkBunch, a free link consolidation service, enables... Read More »

Fans of short messaging formats like Twitter, or people looking for more tab/bookmark management tools for Firefox, will like LinkBunch - an extension which lets you consolidate a bunch of links into one URL.

Once you've downloaded and installed the extension (drag and drop it into an open Firefox window or tab to get the Add-on installation dialog) you just need to restart your browser and you'll see that Linkbunch has become an option in Firefox's Bookmarks menu.

To bunch your current open tabs, open the Bookmarks menu and click 'Create a LinkBunch of tabs'. This will open a new tab displaying a page with the created LinkBunch. The page displays a list of all the links in the LinkBunch, and then there's my favourite link down the bottom - "Open entire bunch". As it says, if you hit that button it will open up each of the links in a new tab (after politely asking you if you *really* want to open them all).

I can definitely see LinkBunch having a place in my browser alongside TinyURL, and active Twitter users will also be interested to know that LinkBunch is also being integrated into Twitter. The feature isn't active yet, but if you follow @linkbunch, you'll be able to send it a direct message with all the links you want to consolidate, and the bot will reply back with your bunch link. Nice.

[via Web Worker Daily]

Link-shortening services like TinyURL are great for sharing complex URLs (hello, Amazon) over email or IM, but most of us would have a hard time pulling a link like tinyurl.com/3yw6ew from the tops of our heads. MeaningfulURL provides a link-shortening service that lets you customise the name your short URL gets. Paste a long link, choose a prefix like "invite.to." or "enter.to," then add your own text after that to make the link, like "http://enter.to/mycoolsite." The bad news is that the freely-provided links expire in 3 days (you can shell out $2 or $3 for certain prefixes), but for a long URL you need to get at from anywhere, MeaningfulURL might do the trick.

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Whether you're a frequent user of large file-sharing sites like RapidShare or frequently get emails with messed-up formatting, you've likely had to spend time copying, pasting and trimming URLs to actually work. Linkrr, a free web utility, has a single purpose and fix for the problem. Type or paste in one or more URLs, and the site creates a page of click-able links, along with a button that can launch them all (assuming it can play nice with your pop-up blocker). Might be worth a bookmark for the next time Aunt Gertie sends along all those links to AOL photo galleries.