Friday, April 23, 2010

DONT USE WIX ITS HORRIBLE

Call me up ill use it for you , and charge you a small fee, it is a very complex web design platform made out of natural accruing carbon fiber.


 

Screenshot of the FUDforum software.

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

 

 

Posted on 25 March 2010 by Deep

Web Design

Building a social network isn’t an easy task, let alone a successful one. As developers our job is to create, build, and bring to life the gears and functions of a social network. When it comes to marketing, well that’s a different department in most cases. We build then later deploy, and in order to develop a highly efficient and functional social network we’ll need to use a few tools.
Most developers are switching from building networks from scratch using PHP to highly-customizable social network platforms that give way to flexibility. Below we’re going to cover several of the most sought after open-source platforms that allow you create your very own social network and run it on a server of your choice. These networks will give you a hyphened control over the front/back end design along with a social networks most valuable asset; the database. Let us know if we’ve missed any and which ones appeal to you the most through the form of a comment!

BuddyPress

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network
BuddyPress is the social network platform version of WordPress. As you can guess WordPress is one of the most popular CMS’s available due to its quality, same goes for BuddyPress, this is one of the most widely used platforms. It’s absolutely free, allows you to fully customize your social network, and offer your users a unique experience through the use of features such as friend connections, extended profiles, discussion forums, private messaging, and powerful plugins.
On top of the social network platform, you also receive the option to integrate WordPress as your ultimate blogging solution for each of your users. Here you’ll find a massive collection of quality plugins.

Sites Running on BuddyPress

CUNY Academic Commons

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

H-Mag

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

Unstructure

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

Pligg

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network
Pligg was created as a social networking CMS. While most content management systems are designed for only a handful of authors, Pligg CMS was designed to manage a site with an unlimited number of authors. All of these registered users are in control of the website’s content. It is a user driven CMS that relies on independent authors’ content and participation to manage news articles.

Sites Running on Pligg

MotoTagz

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

Dezinews

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

GluvSnap

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

Elgg

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network
Elgg is a powerful social networking platform that is backed by a growing community of developers and interactive users. It has great usability, ease of use, various features, and offers added functionality through Elgg plugins.
This piece of software offers pretty much everything you need to develop a social network in no time. Elgg uses and regularly operates on LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) therefore if you’re a developer who likes to get their hands dirty then this is the platform for you.

Sites Running on Elgg

Hedge Hogs Funding

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

TeachBox

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

1st Angel Art Mag

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

KickApps

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network
KickApps gives enterprises, corporations, small/large brands the power to create an interactive social network based on a one of a kind platform that offers an active, dynamic, distributed and data-structured solution. Build your very own community, begin photo/video sharing, easily add widgets, custom video players, other user generated content, comments, ratings, and much more. KickApps can fully operate as a CMS allowing you to manage all of your social media needs in one place.

Sites Running on KickApps

H&R Block Community

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

American Express Publishing

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

Dell’s Community

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

Lovd by Less

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network
Lovd by Less is a widely used and distributed open-source social networking platform that was built using Ruby on Rails. Since it was built on RoR (a full-stack framework), developers will be able to develop using the Model-View-Control pattern, and all you need to go live is a database and a web server. Current and up-to-date features include mutual following, private messaging, comments, user blogs, photo galleries, site-wide friend search, insertion of profile bio, easy to interact with user dashboard, email activity, quick and simple Flickr integration, and YouTube inclusion as well.

Sites Running on Lovd by Less

ImitateLife

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

SchoolPage

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

73S

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

Mixxt

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network
Mixxt is a intelligently designed open source platform that helps you build your very own social network at rapid development speeds. Develop, manage, and run your own community with ease and the help of forums, wikis, a custom design, the addition of photos, and a private network that’s dedicated to your community. You’ll also be able to work alongside other members to build and grow your community.

Sites Running on Mixxt

Design Camp Cologne

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

FuCamp

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

RadioCamp 2010

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

Insoshi

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network
Insoshi housed at Git Hub is a liberal open-source social networking platform written and powered by Ruby on Rails. Insoshi’s source code is free to use and available under the MIT License. This platform was developed by Michael Hartl. It comes with an effective deployment system and version control support. The installation process should take roughly around half an hour. Remember to take your time and make sure you follow every single step.

Sites Running on Insoshi

TomZConsulting

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

Xoops

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network
Xoops is an innovative extensible open-source platform that allows you to create a social network with everything you need. You can actually just begin by creating your own blog and then upgrading it to a social network through the use of several community modules. Xoops is written and maintained in PHP and MySQL.

Sites Running on Xoops

Baqains Medical

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

BikeFlirt

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

CommunityEngine

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network
CommunityEngine is another open-source social networking platform for Ruby on Rails applications. All you would have to do is drop it into our existing RoR application and immediately begin to enjoy all of the extensible features that you would need to start your very own social network. Features such as photo uploading, tagging, private messaging, forums, blogs, events, and customized user profiles are just the beginning of what you can accomplish with CommunityEngine.

Sites Running on CommunityEngine

WeeBabyStuff

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

TennisMetro

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

BugLabs

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

AstroSPACES

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network
AstroSPACES is mostly named as the world’s firriest open source social networking solution that was heavily coded from scratch. It’s extremely efficient, very easy to use, stable, easy to customize and was written in PHP. It also uses the Smarty Template Engine, and is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL)

Sites Running on AstroSPACES

Astro Demo

Top 10 Open-Source Platforms that Allow You to Build Your Own Social Network

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

THANKS MAKEUSOFUS.com again!!!

Moneybookers Ltd.

Image via Wikipedia

Managing a website or an online marketing campaign involves a lot of hours on small, repetitive tasks. These tasks may include signing up on different websites, posting blog comments, submitting articles, and joining forum discussions – tasks that almost anyone can do for cheap. Enter Microworkers, a free website that connects people who need these small tasks done, with people who have some free time and want to earn some money.

 

 

 

 

microworkers

When you sign up with Microworkers, you can be either a worker an employer. As a worker, you only need to select a job, read the instructions, complete the tasks, and send proof that the task is complete. Each job only takes up to 5 minutes to do, earning you a few cents. The employer will then verify that you have completed the job and the money will be transferred to your account.

microworkers

As an employer, you can submit a new campaign by selecting the target country (US or International), setting the correct category, and choose the type of work needed to get it done. Then set the number of workers you need and how much each worker will earn. You will get an estimate for each campaign so you can monitor your budget as you go.

As each worker finish the tasks, review and rate the work whether you are satisfied or not satisfied. You will be only charged for the tasks that you rated ‘satisfied’.

microworkers

One thing that is working very well for Microworkers is their strict guidelines for employers and workers. You can read the full verbose here, which if I can sum it up; the website should not be used to set up campaigns for spam or click fraud. Workers are likewise not also allowed to spam the system by signing up for multiple accounts.
microworkers

Workers can claim their money when they earn at least $9. Payments are sent via Paypal,Moneybookers, Alertpay, and check payments. Workers should also wait up to 30 days before payment is processed.

Microworkers fill a gap that many freelance job sites have missed. Instead of taking on big jobs and dealing with a select few clients, Microworkers does a great job of breaking down specific tasks and finding a massive number of users to complete your campaign. It even cuts the arduous process of dealing with each individual worker, saving a lot of time for both the worker and the employer.

microworkers

This website is also fun for those who have some time to kill and want to earn a quick buck. Although the pay is low, you can race through the tasks and earn some decent shopping money before you know it.

Features:

  • Post and/or accomplish microjobs.
  • Earn money with every completed job.
  • Payments over Paypal, Alertpay, Moneybookers and check payment.
  • Employers rate tasks as satisfied and not-satisfied.
  • Quick and easy to complete marketing campaigns.
  • Earn money through sign-up referrals.

Check out Microworkers @ www.microworkers.com

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Friday, March 12, 2010

How to request review copies or products if you’re a blogger

 

Image via Wikipedia

 

Unicomp Customizer 104 (UNI0P46) keyboard, man...A number of people have written to ask how/why Kinesis, Metadot Corporation (which makes the Das Keyboard), and others send review keyboards or books. The short answer is that I asked, had a reasonable purpose in trying to review keyboards or books, and have a significant enough forum to make it worthwhile. To do the same, bloggers need a number of key features: credibility, good writing, some connection to the topic, and manners.

Credibility

Don’t write to manufacturers two weeks after starting your blog when they can still see the “hello world” post. Anyone can register joeblow.wordpress.com and write a couple of posts, then start clamoring for “free stuff.” If you’re going to request review items, make sure your blog has enough history to make it plausible that you’re a) committed to writing and b) have enough readers. “Enough” is a bit slippery because a blog with the right 50 readers a day who come for a specialized subject might be more useful than a blog with 500 or even 5,000 readers—it’s probably easier to get 500 hits by posting pictures of scantily or unclad teenage girls than it is to get 50 writing about the art of the novel, but if you want to review fiction, the latter group is probably of greater interest to publishers.

Still, all things being equal, more popular blogs are often more popular because they’re better, which causes people to link to them, which causes more readers to find that blog, which causes more people to link, and so forth. You don’t need to be on the Technorati top 100 blogs, but make sure you’ve written enough for people to evaluate your writing skill and for some kind of audience to have found you. As a loose rule, I’d say that you should write at least one substantive post a week for about a year before you request review items.

Write a good review, not a positive review

In How to Get Free Books to Review on Your Blog, “Nick” says:

Note that I didn’t say [that you should write a] positive review. I said a good review. You should not feel inclined to write positive things about the book just because you received a free copy. If you write a fair, honest, and professional review, most publishers will respect your opinion.

He’s correct: you’ll lose credibility with readers if you’re nothing more than a shill, especially in an age when sophisticated readers have their bullshit detectors justifiably set on “maximum.” Bloggers are best when they’re honest, or as honest as they can be; that’s one reason why I include the disclaimer at the bottom of keyboard reviews if the keyboards come from the manufacturer, rather than bought by me: at least readers know the provenance of the items I’m looking at.

I don’t usually do this with books because it’s less important: the cost of a book, usually between $10 – $20, is lower, and publishers don’t expect or want review copies back. But when I write reviews, I make sure they’re meaty enough to justify my effort in producing them and the reader’s effort in reading them by citing as many specific characteristics as possible that justify whatever opinion I’m expressing or conclusion that I’m coming to.

Be (or become) a good writer

There’s nowhere to hide on the Internet and it’s easy to judge the quality of a blogger’s writing simply by reading their work. If the writer can’t explain what they like or dislike and why, they’re probably not a very good writer; many, many bloggers (and mainstream reviewers too) just write “this is awesome!” or “this sucks!” without much elaboration. That tendency towards shallowness is one reason I started writing in-depth keyboard reviews: because they didn’t exist or, if they did, they weren’t readily available. Some novelists have said they write novels that they would like to read but that no one else has written, which is how I often feel about my reviews (and much of my other work).

If you don’t know what good writing looks like, or dispute the very idea that there can be good writing (as some of my students do), you’re probably not a good writer. If you want to become one, there are many, many resources out there to help you, mostly in book form. A few that I like and that have helped me include William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer, James Wood’s How Fiction Works, Harold Bloom’sHow to Read and Why, and the New York Times’ collections,Writers on Writing. In addition, one thing that separates good from bad writers is that good writers read a lot and write a lot.

One note: being a good writer doesn’t mean that your grammar has to be perfect or your blog typo-free, but your posts shouldn’t be riddled with typos and elementary grammar errors either. I’m sure many of my posts, especially the long ones, have typos, but they tend to be minor and easily overlooked; if readers send me notes or leave comments pointing out typos, I silently correct them.

Connection

If you’re writing a blog about, say, cats, and you request a hard drive review unit, you’re probably doing something wrong. If you write hard drive reviews and request a new kind of kitty litter, you’re also probably doing something wrong. Seek things that relate to your niche.

In my case, I started a blog about books and literature because I like to read and like to write; to me, most of the posts on this site are leisure, not work. The first time I got a free book (or “review copy” in industry jargon), a publicist contacted me regarding Lily Koppel’s The Red Leather Diary because I’d written a post about the New York Times article that led to the book. I was surprised: since when do publishers chase bloggers, rather than vice-versa?

I don’t know when the shift happened, but it did, which is why I now include my mailing address in the “About” section of The Story’s Story, and I take a look at everything that passes my desk even if I don’t always write about them. Sometimes I request books that pique my interest.

All this is to show that I have a) a narrowly focused blog and b) the things I request—books—fall into that narrow focus.

The keyboards are tangential to books but still related, and I stumbled into reviewing them by accident: I read about the famous IBM Model M keyboard on Slashdot, the geek tech site, and started doing some research into it and other quality keyboards, like the Apple Extended II. Most of the reviews and comments were not very helpful, especially for Mac users, but they pointed to Unicomp, which manufactures the Customizer Keyboard, and to Matias, which produces the Tactile Pro. I tried both and wrote extensively about my experience with them.

I’m interested in keyboards because I spend a lot of time writing professionally, both as a grad student in English literature and as a grant writer with Seliger + Associates. Writers and programmers are probably more likely to be interested in keyboards than most people because keyboards are a fundamental part of their toolset, and when you use a tool a lot, you want it to be right.

To understand literature, I think it helps at least somewhat to have an understanding of literary production: the publishing environment, the historical circumstances in which a work was/is produced, and so forth. Such factors can’t supersede the work itself, but they nonetheless matter. They also matter for practicing writers, and if a good keyboard means that a writer can or wants to go for an extra half hour or hour a day, that’s a tremendous difference over the course of a year, a decade, or a lifetime. Writing about the tools writers use, therefore, seems sufficiently related to writing and books that I think keyboard reviews are worth posting.

Use your real name

Penelope Trunk’s Guide to Blogging is useful, and one of her posts is on the subject of why you should blog under your real name, and ignore the harassment.

I agree. Your real name lends credibility and makes you seem like (slightly) more than another random Internet squawker; public relation or press people are more likely to want to send something to site run by Jake Seliger than they are to HoneyBunny or l33t48 or whatever. In looking through my RSS feed, I can see that most of the bloggers I read use their real names. Anonymity has its place in blogging, as it does in journalism, but if you’re going to review things you should have your name attached to that review. Some blogs demand anonymity, as Belle de Jour did until recently, but they should be the exception.

Manners

In the Internet age, we’re all supposedly turning into barbarians with the attention span of fruit flies. That’s the stereotype, anyway, and although it has some truth to it I think it largely wrong, at least among the better bloggers. Still, one way to catch people’s attention is to do the opposite of what bloggers represent in the popular imagination. I’ve already covered the importance of attention spans in the section about “good” versus “positive” reviews, but I’ll deal with the “barbarians” idea here.

When you make contact with a publisher or company, figure out how they want to be contacted. There’s usually a public relations, media, or press contact. You should write to that person with a short note that says, briefly, what you want, why, and who you are. Covering those shouldn’t take more than two or three paragraphs. Don’t include your life’s story and don’t be vague: the contact person will decide if they want to send a review model more based on your writing than based on your e-mail, and they’ll be used to dealing with people who are professionals or at least act like them.

In my case, that means sending keyboard makers a note saying that I’d like review their keyboard because I’ve reviewed a number of other keyboards, which causes people to write asking for comparisons, which causes me to seek review models. This bleeds into the “who am I” issue, where I state that I write The Story’s Story and contribute to Grant Writing Confidential, with links to both. From there, they can figure out as much or as little as they like.

If they send the keyboard, I say thanks, review it, and send it back, with another brief note that says “thanks, I appreciate you sending it.” I do that because it’s how I’d ideally like to be treated were our situations reversed, and also so that in the future, if I want to review a new model or whatever, they’ll be positively disposed towards me.

Don’t start a blog for free stuff

If I counted the number of hours I’d spent working on The Story’s Story versus the “pay” I’ve gotten in books or Amazon referral cash, I’m sure I’d be making well under a buck an hour. It’s probably closer to a cent an hour. If your purpose for starting a blog is to get free stuff, you’re doing something terribly wrong because you’re very unlikely to make real money as a blogger. Write because you want to, not because you expect direct monetary rewards. They definitely won’t come in the form of books or hardware; indeed, my bigger problem now is wading through and dealing with the books I don’t want, rather than cackling at the booty from the stuff I do want.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Google voice on iphone by HTML-5

I

 

 

iPhone/Palm Pre: Apple and/or AT&T don't want the Google Voice service to have its own iPhone app, and we think that stinks. Google is finally releasing the next best thing: a mobile site that basically replicates a dedicated Google Voice app.

 

The big advantage of Google's new Voice app (which is already showing up for Voice users at Lifehacker HQ) is the direct contact access. Rather than having to store secondary numbers or use the somewhat old-school-looking Voice mobile site to pull up your contacts, Google Voice's new webapp provides super-quick, as-you-type access to your Google Contacts. The interface is similar to what you see when you visit Voice in a full browser, with the same mobile look and feel as Gmail, Reader, and other products have recently received.

 

 

When you dial, it's not the familiar experience of having Google Voice call you, then call the other person—it's a direct dial to that person, probably using those same secondary numbers Google seems to have stockpiles of.

You'll want to make sure your phone's contacts are synced up with Google if you're keen on using Google's Voice app. It's a free service, and requires a Google Voice account (which we hear they're giving out more regularly).

If you're already seeing the new Google Voice app in your iPhone or Pre browser, tell us what you think in the comments.

Google Voice [via Gizmodo]
Google Voice for iPhone and Palm WebOs [Google Voice Blog]

Send an email to Kevin Purdy, the author of this post, at kevin@lifehacker.com.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Make FKN money before you Die! for real.

Do you want to make extra money? I believe knowing a few ways to supplement your income won’t hurt. You might not need them now, but when you needed them it’s nice to know the available options.

Extra money onlineThere are many ways to earn extra income, but here I make a few restrictions to prevent this post from being too broad:

  1. I only cover how to make extra money online. This way you can work wherever you are in your spare time.
  2. I only cover ways to make money in relatively short time. I don’t include anything that takes weeks or months to get results. That’s why I don’t cover things like blogging or revenue sharing with article sites (because building the necessary traffic could take a long time). On the flip side, most of the ways I discuss here won’t give you passive income. They require you to actively work to earn.

For each of the ways I’m about to share, I list some relevant web sites you can use. I don’t test all of them, so please read their terms before you decide to use them.

Without further ado, here are 9 ways to make extra money online:

1. Writing

Writing is a popular way to earn side income. The world is always hungry for good content and if you have writing skills you will find many opportunities online. Here are some sites that offer article writing jobs:

You can also write tutorials. Tutorials are more difficult to write than ordinary articles since they contain step-by-step guide on a topic. But they also pay more. The sites below pay between $150 to $300 for each published tutorial:

2. Designing

Graphic design skill has a lot of demand these days. You could design logos, posters, or even entire web sites. Browse the sites below to find design jobs:

3. Programming

Do you know how to program? Then what about taking some programming jobs online? You can find them at:

4. Tutoring

If you liked to teach then online tutoring is perhaps the way to go. The nice thing here is you don’t need to physically go to a certain place to tutor. You can do it in the comfort of your home. Here are some web sites that offer the opportunity:

5. Selling stock photos

Many people like photography. If you happen to be one of them, why don’t you sell your photos for profit? These sites help you sell your photos:

6. Microworking

With microworking, you make money by doing simple tasks that you can usually finish in a few minutes. They pay you a little for each completed task, but because the tasks are simple, you could complete a lot of tasks in a day. Here are two sites for microworking:

7. Selling stuff

Obviously, you can make money by selling stuff. Do you have items in your home you no longer need? Other people may want to buy them from you. Just list them at:

On the other hand, you can also sell your own creations. They could be T-shirts, post cards, bags, and pretty much anything you can imagine. Here are some places to sell them:

8. Website flipping

If you’re good at making web sites, you can sell them for profit. It could make you more than $100 for a few hours of work. Here are two popular places for website flipping:

9. Translating

Do you master foreign languages? If you do then translating is something you might want to consider. There are a lot of translation jobs online. Here are some sites that offer them:

***

In addition to the specialized sites listed above, there are sites that offer opportunities in more than one category. Browse them to find various opportunities:

Do you know other ways to make extra money online? Feel free to share them in the comments.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Makthe Most of Chrome with These 13 Excellent Extensionse

 

 

Shortly after Google Chrome's Extensions gallery opened, we rounded up 18 worthy downloads. Now that Chrome's official add-on market has matured a bit, we've dug up more productive, annoyance-fixing, feature-adding extensions that you should consider adding to your collection.

At this point, extensions for Google Chrome work on the Beta and Dev channels for Windows, the Beta for Linux, or the dev channel for Macs. If an extension doesn't work across all platforms, we've noted it at the front of each description.

Checkers & notifiers

Google Mail Checker Plus: There are tons of Gmail and Google Apps checkers in the extensions gallery. So why this one? First off, it handles both standard Gmail and (multiple) Google Apps accounts. Second, its roll-down mail notifier lets you actually act on the messages it shows—archive, delete, spam, mark as read, or reply. Third, if you don't ever want to open the Gmail tab, that's fine—you can read the whole message in the checker window. Fourth, and finally, it offers a wide range of icon styles to choose from, so it meshes with whatever Chrome theme and OS you've got going. Best of class.

Google Calendar Popout:As with Google Mail Checker, this is one of many Google Calendar extensions to choose from. The version made by Google offers a little button badge showing you the time until your next appointment, but for those with multiple calendars, it's a bit annoying, because it only picks up appointments from the primary/personal calendar. This model simply rolls down a mini-calendar (which you can turn off in the options), shows color-coded appointments, and offers the Create Event and Quick Add links that GCal addicts depend on.

One Number: This one's simple. If you're a Google fiend who doesn't want blow-by-blow pings and notifiers, One Number combines all your Google app notifications into one handy window. (Original post)

Annoyance fixers & site improvers

Better Gmail: Our own How-To Geek had previously rounded up a Better Gmail for Chrome to complement the popular Firefox extension, but Chrome's extension system and script support has changed quite a bit since then. A very helpful coder rounded up scripts that are still working into another Better Gmail extension, one that includes a lot of the things we like to see available: folder hierarchies, mouse-over row highlighting, footer appending, and much more.

Clickable Links: Forums, blog comments, really old sites—they're full of links written out in text, asking the reader to precisely copy and load the text in their address bar. This extension updates those annoyingly non-interactive links to the modern day.

A Bit Better RTM: It simply tweaks, improves, and makes shortcut-friendly the Remember the Milk webapp for the convenience of serious task management. Based on the popular Greasemonkey script, Bit Better moves your list tabs to the left, lets you hide lists you hardly ever look at, and makes nearly every action do-able from a keyboard. It does those things and more from the background, too, so that's one less taskbar button to deal with. (Original post)

VidzBigger: This two-for-one add-on reconfigures the layout of YouTube, MetaCafe, and DailyMotion to make the actual videos the (larger) star of the page, and also adds a download link whenever possible to your viewing screen. You can also scroll related videos without having to move your video out of place, which is just the thing for ... terribly unproductive web video binges. Sigh. (Original post)

Other cool stuff

IE Tab: Windows only: As you might expect, IE Tab isjust like its Firefox counterpart: It renders the web page you're looking at in a separate tab, using Windows' built-in Internet Explorer rendering engine. Helpful for developers, and those 476 remaining sites that refuse to accept any browser except IE.

Session Manager:Chrome can automatically pick up your tabs where you left off, and offers a decent tab and web history from its "new tab page." If you tend to open tabs in batches, though, or don't always want to pick up exactly the way you left it, adding Session Manager to Chrome is a nice time saver. Open up a batch of tabs, save them to a new session name, and you're up and running. (Original post)

Everymark: An extension after our own hearts, mostly because these hearts love the light-speed-quick Everything search engine for Windows. Everymark aims to provide that same type of as-you-type convenience for your local bookmarks. Chrome's own OmniBar (that's "address bar," for those who don't buy into Google's super-hype terminology) does a decent job of pulling up bookmarks that you're typing for, but Everymark searches the name, the URL, the date modified, and folder names, all at once.

WOT (Web of Trust):This one showed up in early form, but now ranks as one of the best sanctioned extensions to tell you more about where you're going on the internet. Using WOT's research and input from the community, the extension shows you the trustworthiness of whatever page you're looking at, and provides a link to the rating page with more information.

Firebug Lite: In the hearts and minds of developers who love Firebug, nothing can replace it. But this is a noble first attempt for the Chrome-using set. It comes from the same development team, and it's basically a JavaScript file, molded into an extension, that emulates some of the Firebug features that let you watch in real time as you change a site's code.

uTorrent for Google Chrome: Are you a uTorrent fan who's also a Chrome user? Install this little add-on to your browser and, using the awesomeness of uTorrent's WebUI, you can remotely control your BitTorrent downloads from anywhere in the world (that has web access). uTorrent itself is only for Windows and Mac systems right now, but this extension can be used anywhere Chrome extensions are allowed.


What extensions have made their way into your must-have list, or just your Chrome taskbar for now? Tell us, and link, your favorite finds in the comments.