BEST IE-7 Add-Ons

No web browser is perfect, and no web browser does everything just the way everyone wants it to. So I thought of finding some good add-ons for IE-7.. And I did found some of the below..

Enter add-ons. Also called extensions or plug-ins, add-ons let third-party companies and users with programming skills extend the browser's functionality in different ways. They are your ticket to a customized web.

Mozilla Firefox is known as the world's most extensible web browser, which is a big reason for its appeal among web geeks. But users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7, Windows Vista's native browser, need not be left out in the cold when it comes to add-ons.

Here's our roundup of the best ways to trick out IE7. You can find even more extensions at the Windows Marketplace.

1. ieSpell
It's a shame a spell-checker wasn't built into IE7, but ieSpell corrects that oversight. Once installed, ieSpell does a nice job of staying out of the way until you need it. There are three ways to activate the spell-checker: from the tools menu, from its own top-level menu and from the contextual (right-click) menu. If you happen to use a branded version of IE7 such as those from MSN or AOL, ieSpell will only be accessible from the right-click menu. IeSpell is also available for Internet Explorer 6.

2. Inline Search
Supercharging Internet Explorer's searching capabilities, Inline Search provides find-as-you-type functionality on the web page you're currently visiting. A quick keyboard shortcut (Ctrl-F) will bring up a toolbar at the base of your browser window, a behavior that closely mimics Firefox's built-in search functionality. Inline Search lets you find as you type, highlight all instances of your search terms on the page or make your search case-sensitive. Regrettably, the keyboard shortcuts aren't customizable, so you'll want to memorize the following shortcuts: Esc closes the search pane when it's in focus, F3 or Enter will find the next occurrence of your search term and Shift-F3 or Shift-Enter will find the previous occurrence. Inline Search is also available for IE6.

3. Add Search Providers
Let's face it: Microsoft's Windows Live Search is a dog. But don't worry, you can add new search engines to IE7's built-in search field with ease. Head over to the Add Search Providers page and choose your preferred service's pre-built tool. Don't see your favorite site listed? Just follow the instructions for the Add Search Provider page's Create Your Own tool. IE7 does the rest.

4. Trailfire Toolbar
Leave behind virtual sticky notes on web pages for others to view. IE7 users can install the add-on and start sharing "trailmarks" with fellow Trailfire users. These marks are little notes on individual web pages that can be strung together to form your own interpretive trail across the web. Trailfire Toolbar is also available for IE6.

5. StumbleUpon Toolbar
Haven't tried the random web yet? The StumbleUpon Toolbar for IE7 lets you stumble and bumble your way through the web. Keep clicking the Stumble button as you "channel surf" through sites that like-minded users have marked as interesting, helpful or informative. For background on StumbleUpon, see our review of social bookmarking sites. Caution: It's highly addictive. StumbleUpon also makes an add-on for IE6.

7. GooglePreviewIE
Want to see a preview of a web page before you visit? The GooglePreviewIE toolbar provides customized search-results pages with thumbnail previews for popular sites like Google, Yahoo and Amazon. GooglePreviewIE's thumbnail images are only visible when searching through the toolbar -- a normal web search will still give you default results. It's extra handy for image and product searches. GooglePreviewIE is also available for IE6.

6. Add Search Providers

With this extension you can add new search engines to IE7’s built-in search field with ease. Check out the Add Search Providers page and choose your preferred service’s pre-built tool or add your own.

7. Mouse Gestures for Internet Explorer

Mouse gestures allow the user to execute commonly performed tasks (open/close a window) by drawing a simple symbol on the screen.

8. Wikipedia Toolbar for IE

Wikipedia Toolbar allows you to search and access Wikipedia content from anywhere on the Web. Wikipedia toolbar is easy to install and guaranteed spy-ware free. You can search Google, dictionary, news, images, stocks and weather information right from your toolbar.

9. Star Downloader Free

Star Downloader is a download manager that accelerates your downloads by splitting the files into several parts and downloading them simultaneously. Download speeds are increased further by choosing the fastest mirror sites.

Re-Open Closed Tabs In Internet Explorer

If there's one thing that annoys me in Internet Explorer more than anything else, it's that there is no way to re-open a tab once you've closed it. It's especially annoying when you've done a lot of browsing so you have to sift through your history to find the link for the page you closed.

Thankfully there's an add-on for IE7 called "IE7 Open Last Closed Tab" which will remember what tabs you've recently closed so that you can quickly re-open them.

After installation, you'll notice that there's nothing different in the UI whatsoever… but there are two new shortcut keys.

• Alt+X will restore the last closed tab.
• Alt+Q will bring up a screen to let you visually choose from the recently closed tabs.

Note:

You'll notice there's an Amazon ad at the bottom… you can turn that off by clicking the "Disable Product Bar" button on the toolbar, and then you'll get this message:

I'm not entirely sure why they chose Amazon ads to integrate… but either way you can get rid of them. If you really like the software you can always donate some money their way.

Download IE7 Open Last Closed Tab from windowsmarketplace.com

LG's Watch Phone

It's only a concept for now, but LG's phone-in-a-wristwatch prototype was drawing big crowds at CES on Monday.

Specifications were scarce for the watch phone; indeed, LG reps wouldn't even take it out of its glass case, and from what I understand, the watch on display can't even make calls (although building a GSM or CDMA radio into the wristwatch wouldn't be a problem, I'm told). The cool display isn't a touch screen; instead, a jog dial on the side of the casing lets you scan through the various menus. Bluetooth and SMS messaging would potentially be part of the package, along with voice commands for barking orders, Dick Tracy-style.

Cool concept, right? Although after pondering the reality of a watch phone for a bit, I'm not sure I'd want one; you'd pretty much need a Bluetooth headset for every call, unless you're fine with everyone in earshot hearing both ends of your conversations (assuming the watch has an external speaker, of course, which doesn't seem likely). Still, you can dream.

That said, the LG watch phone looks more like a really cool idea than a shipping product; indeed, the LG reps on hand wouldn't even speculate on pricing or a release date.

SABSEBOLO.com Free conferencing Site!

Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia has launched SabseBolo.com, a free conferencing facility, a few months after launching Live Documents, an online office application.

"Through SabseBolo.com, we are targeting small and medium enterprises and entrepreneurs. But anyone can use this facility. It is absolutely free," Bhatia said.
People can visit the website and register themselves. Once registered they would get a conference ID and PIN, which could be shared for conferencing.

Revenue would be generated through commercials. "Before the conference begins there would be a five-second commercial. We have not decided the tariff as yet. It could be as low as Re 1 per 5-second commercial," Bhatia said.

The idea to set up a free conferencing facility came to Bhatia when he had to make a conference call to his offices in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi. "The existing facilities are too costly. With Sabsebolo.Com, conferencing is free now,"

G4F Verdict : " Its indeed a welcome sign, as Entrepreneurs would get the most of it.. Thus saving Time"

CES '08 ::MacWorld 2008: Apple Macbook Air Steals the Show!

The new Macbook Air – 'the world's thinnest notebook' – was clearly the highlight of Apple CEO Steve Jobs' keynote at MacWorld 2008 which has just kicked off in San Francisco. But here's a quick summary of the major announcements from the keynote:

>Macbook Air – a super thin laptop with an 80GB hard drive or a 64 GB SSD but no inbuilt CD/DVD drive.
>Time Capsule – a 1 Terabyte hard disk which also doubles up as a Wi-Fi base station and allows Mac users to wirelessly backup all their data.
>Free software update for the iPhone – version 1.1.3
>Paid software upgrade for the iPod Touch, which includes new apps like Maps, Mail, Weather, Stocks etc.
>iTunes movie rentals, including HD movies.
>New software and lower price for Apple TV.
>Free digital copies of purchases of 20th Century Fox DVDs



The first two in the list above should be available in India in about a month if recent Mac launches' time-to-India are anything to go by. We suspect though, that US demand for the Macbook Air will delay its availability in Asia and therefore India for longer than four weeks.



The iPhone software update will take a while to be cracked so Indians using hacked iPhones will not be able to take advantage of the update immediately. However, once it IS cracked, the much desired "SMS to multiple contacts" feature will be a welcome relief.



The fact that existing iPod Touch users will have to pay ($20 if you have an iTunes account, which itself is not possible with an Indian credit card!) for the software update is a major downer! If the iPhone update is free, why charge for iTouch? New iPod Touches though will come with the new software, so we advise you not to buy the iPod Touch in India till the new ones have hit the shelves in a few weeks.



The iTunes store is not officially accessible in India and neither is Apple TV so the last three don't really matter to Indian readers of Gizmos4Fun but I'm sure many of our tech-savvy international readers are scoffing at the last item. Nearly everyone who legally purchases DVDs has figured out how to create digital copies of their own stuff, but then again, the movie and music industries seem to be in denial. We're surprised that Disney didn't sign up on this as well, since Steve Jobs is the company's largest shareholder.

GIZMOS4FUN(G4F) Verdict: '' Though looks and sounds good, but without an optical drive and ethernet card, any major computer giant can produce a worlds thinnest Laptop''

Quick USB Ejector

A program that allows you to quickly remove USB devices in Windows. It was originally designed to remove only USB pen drives but will now eject any USB device. It can be run as a non-visual command line program or a normal gui program. Its very useful if you have a USB flash/pen drive, especially if you use a menu such as PStart or the Portable Apps launcher.

The command line options are very flexible, they can be used to:
>Eject the drive that the program is running from.
>Eject a drive by specifying a drive letter.
>Eject a drive by specifying a drive name.
>Eject a drive by specifying a partial drive name.

When run as a ‘normal’ GUI program the tools enables USB devices to be quickly ejected through a mouse click or keyboard press. It’s especially useful when dealing with multiple USB devices and for Vista users who don’t want the ‘now safe to remove this device’ dialog box to appear.

The program has been tested on WindowsXP and Windows Vista but should also work on older versions of Windows.

DOWNLOAD HERE (Current Ver 1.1)

Hands On Review of Moto ROKR E8

The Unusual Motorola!!
The Motorola ROKR E8 has often been referred to as the "morphing phone," and why shouldn’t it? The keyboard actually changes based on what function of the phone you wish to use.When you’re making a call at the home screen, you’d obviously want the full keyboard there. When you’re about to snap a flick, you get zoom in and out keys, a playback key for viewing recently taken photos, and a video camera key for switching to video mode. In music mode, the keyboard displays next and previous keys, a play / pause key, a shuffle playback key, and a repeat key. The actual device is pretty sharp, too. The entire front is like one smooth surface with a huge touch-sensitive "ROKR" (scroll) wheel in the middle.What’s incredible, is that there is absolutely no tactile feedback on any of the keys when the phone is off. It’s just a flat surface with little dots to help guide your fingers. But when it’s on, haptics lends support when you’re pressing a button, but it actually makes the keys press. Hard to explain, but there is definitely tactile feedback on a key press and not just the normal haptics vibrate. As far as we can tell, the Motorola E8 features a 2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth (with various profiles including A2DP), and is a quad-band GSM/EDGE device. You’ll also notice a 3.5mm headset jack at the top of the phone, which is a little awkwardly placed if you ask us. The Motorola E8 runs a newer version of the MOTOMAGX platform, so Motorola RAZR 2 V8 users will have no problem getting used to the new handset. We’re trying to track down a release date now, and we have no word on what carriers here in the U.S. will be jumping aboard to carry it at this point. All in all, it’s not going to take over the world, but with its thin and sleek profile complete with a unique keyboard and excellent call quality, we could see ourselves using this every day.

courtesy:modmymoto.com

Track the Amount of Time You Spend Online in Firefox

Everybody makes New Year's resolutions, and I wonder how many of you made the resolution to waste less time browsing the internet? If so, here's an easy way to track the amount of time you spend online.

The TimeTracker extension for Firefox gives you a really easy way to track the time you spend directly in front of your browser. The timer only ticks if you are browsing, and you can exclude work-related sites from the timer as well.

Once you install the extension, you'll notice a little timer down in the lower right-hand corner.

If you right-click on the clock, you'll get a menu where you can easily reset the timer or get to the options page.

In the options page, you can choose if you want to track the time per day, or cumulative, and you can change a very important setting… turn off the seconds timer so you won't see the thing change constantly (very annoying).

You'll also want to note the "Do not track filter", where you can put in a space delimited list of sites that won't be tracked. This is useful if you want to include work applications, or productivity sites like one of the many to-do lists out there.
It's amazing how much time I spend online… too much.

Download TimeTracker from Mozilla Add-ons