Just as extensions add functionality and about:config tweaks change behaviour, you can style Firefox’s “chrome” using the userchrome.css file. The chrome includes menus, toolbars, tabs, and the address bar—all the outer control area in Firefox—and web developers know that CSS sets colors, sizes, visibility and more. We’ve already covered how…
Collaboration webapp Taskbin shares and manages to-do lists among groups. Flag tasks in order of urgency to prioritise, and write notes for yourself or share them with group members. What separates TaskBin from other tools is that it doesn’t force you to enter deadlines; it’s a simple list manager that…
Gnome 2.20 has been released and the (expansive! easy to read!) release notes say it includes: “Improved support for right-to-left languages; desktop search integrated into the file chooser dialog; convenient new features in the Evolution email and calendar client; enhanced browsing of image collections; simplified system preferences; efficient power management…
Google Maps has quietly added a sweet new feature which has greatly improved its “get directions” function. You can now easily alter the route it’s planned for you with a simple drag and drop – which is great if you can see that it hasn’t generated the optimal route for…
US-centric: Check Google Maps mashup RottenNeighbors before you move to a new neighbourhood to get a heads-up on the potentially noisy folks next door. Just go to the site and search by your zip code. If you want to add your rotten neighbour to the database and help out future…
Convert documents, images, audio and video files, or even units of measure to virtually any format with web site You Convert It. Similar to previously mentioned Zamzar, all you need to do is upload the file and provide the site with your email address so it knows where to send…
Sure we love our Tab Mix Plus, but there’s a ton of tabbed browsing features baked right into Firefox that don’t necessitate the extra baggage of an extension. Power web surfers need close control of the dozens of tabs they chew through in a day. From extensive keyboard shortcuts to…
Less than two years after their beta release, Yahoo Mail has begun rolling out of beta after releasing an onslaught of innovative feature improvements along the way. On the other hand, a whopping three years into their beta release, Gmail remains one of the most popular but stagnant web-based beta…
Here’s a YouTube tutorial on a quick and dirty way to use aluminium foil, a template and some glue to make a Wi-Fi extender. As a bonus, it looks like a tin foil sail, and it’s called a Windsurfer. Slightly better than a Pringles can, yeah? 🙂 They use a…
Telephony geek Brian Aker controls his entire home phone system using the free, open source Asterisk software which does some crazy stuff, like IM’s him whenever the phone rings, sets custom MP3 hold music, and—my favorite—forwards annoying telemarketing calls to the very loud sound of monkeys screaming. Hit the play…
The folks over at PS3Tag got bored and decided to do a little digging into who exactly owned the Sony Defense Force website. Seems PS3Tag is affiliated with SonyProtectionGroup.com, and were tired of getting associated with the SDF. As it turns out Narutoboy of the SPG was emailed by one…
IAC recently purchased the majority of indie developer and Torque engine creator GarageGames, and today the two companies announce the fruits of that transaction. InstantAction.com will eventually be a completely web-based action gaming portal, dedicated to serving high-quality video games without requiring downloads. I’m imagining it as a sort of…
Windows only: Add transparency to your Windows taskbar and give yourself slightly more usable desktop real estate with freeware application TransBar. While the latter claim (more desktop space) may seem like nonsense, it’s especially true for two-row taskbar folks like myself who don’t like auto-hiding the taskbar. Whether you want…
Windows only: Mount remote drives over FTP, SFTP, WebDAV or iFolder to your desktop with freeware application NetDrive. Once mounted, you can navigate your remote drive like any other folder in Windows Explorer.
Turns out shoe polish can shine up more than your kicks. Real Simple magazine says it can take nicks and gouges out of wooden furniture as well: Apply a pea-size dot of wax shoe polish, then use a soft cotton cloth to buff it in, as you would on shoes….
Webapp TwitterNotes separates notes to yourself from all the other chatter on Twitter. Simply log on to Twitter and type a note to yourself prefixed by the + sign, and check TwitterNotes to retrieve it later. Organise your TwitterNotes with tags by surrounding tag words in the tweet with asterisks,…
Google finally rounds out their web-based office suite with the addition of a Presentations to Google Docs. Create a whole new slideshow in Presentations or upload an existing PowerPoint file to get started. Kick your web-based presentation into slideshow view mode and invite others to see it real time as…
Firefox only – thanks to Paul’s comment on our post about how to open a set of bookmarks with one click, I’ve learned of a nifty (admittedly not new!) Firefox extension. Paul says: “If you prefer to have different sites open on different days of the week – ie you’ve…
US-centric – Find plenty of free or cheap cardboard boxes for your next move at U-Haul’s box exchange forum. Their forum is pretty basic, divided regionally into sections for finding free used boxes or for buying and selling boxes—though according to the Cool Tools weblog, there are plenty of people…
If and when that terrible day your Mac dies finally catches up to you, you can be back up and running with all your applications, settings and data in under 5 seconds with a bootable system clone. By mirroring your entire Mac’s hard drive to an external FireWire drive, you…
“With proprietary operating systems increasingly designed to restrict and control the user, with digital ‘restrictions’ management, their users are subjugated even more now than before. If you don’t want chains on you hand and foot, your only escape is to switch to a free operating system.”—Richard Stallman
Search engine Youlicit calculates the popularity of search results based on user votes rather than web site links. Call it a social bookmark tool if you will: search by URL or key phrase, and related sites ranked by Youlicit users appear. To get in on the voting yourself, install a…
Wired’s Compiler blog tells us that Yahoo has launched two new features – Shop by Color and MapMixer – which came to life from an internal staff ‘hack day’. The new features were written up in a Yahoo blogpost here. Shop by Color adds a colour picker to Yahoo Shopping…
If you’re lucky enough to be in the company of highly intelligent people, it’s a good idea to try and soak up as much of that as you possibly can. Self-improvement site Quick Sprout has a few ideas for making the most of being around these kinds of folks: Join…
Make your mouse even more powerful with Web Worker Daily’s list of nine mouse energising tips, including vertical scrolling, mouse gestures, and controlling productivity applications with your scroll wheel. I realised my mouse was woefully underused after reading this list; however, I intend to rectify that right quick. What’s your…
