Optimize Your Web

Many users, such as myself, enjoy the great addons to customize and enhance their internet experience for Mozilla Firefox. Well there’s more than a few add-ons out there and most are housed here. Here is a good list of add-ons that may interest you, especially for web development and design, along with blogging and search engine optimization (SEO).

• Aging Tabs – Makes unused tabs fade with age and highlights the selected tab.
  • Great for people who bog down their system with their endless tabbing and want a quick reference to see where they can free up some memory by closing an old tab.
• Better Gmail - Enhances Gmail with a compilation of user scripts and styles.
  • If you use Gmail and Firefox then you must try this addon and get the most out of your Google mail.
• ColorZilla – Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies.
  • If you do any type of web design, photoshopping, or anything related, this addon will help you quickly grab any color from any picture or site.
• Delicious Bookmarks - Access your bookmarks whenever you go and keep them organized.
  • This is a great addon for anyone who uses delicious bookmarks, which if you bookmark on multiple computers or want to share bookmarks with peers or friends, this is a must.
• Download Statusbar - View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar.
  • If you are tired of having the default status window, this one is easily customizable to allow small notifications of downloads.
• FireFTP – FTP client.
  • Enough said. Since Firefox does not render FTP connections correctly, this will do it for you.
• IE Tab – Enables you to use the embedded IE engine within Firefox.
  • Great for those sites that were not optimized for Firefox or that require IE. I don’t enjoy those sites, but have this as a little work around. (An example is the stattracker program for Yahoo! Fantasy Sports).
• SEO For Firefox – SEO Information inline with Google and Yahoo! search results.
  • Enabling this addon in the bottom right of your browser and do a search on google. This gives you all sorts of great information about the sites along with a Keyword analyzer.
• User Agent Switcher – Adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.
  • Can be used to hide your User Agent information that can be see in website analyzers such as Google Analytics. Also, you can pretend to be an indexing bot like GoogleBot and see if you can view some things only GoogleBot is supposed to see!
• Web Developer – Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
  • You can see more things than you probably want to with this addon, such as css, image properties and lots more.

Many people know about Ebay and want to make big bucks by buying those, “How to Make Money in Ebay” books. One of the drawbacks of Ebay is that it’s known by everyone. Therein lies the problem that if someone finds a “deal” so will someone else. And after the bidding wars finish, you are normally left with prices that are the same as buying it off of reseller site such as Bestbuy once you add in shipping.

Another notable problem is the ability to rip someone off with wording and shipping costs. Many people may only charge a small amount for the item, but list the shipping for an outrageous amount, actually costing more than if you bought it local or through a retail store online. Wording can also get people into trouble. Some people will sell information to a good deal on <insert item here> and some people think they are selling the actual item. With these problems, that’s why I suggest Craigslist.org

Craigslist.org is free to use, buyer or seller. It was offered a buyout, but Craig (the owner) who has a very small office in California (San Fransisco, I believe), did not budge because he believes in it staying free. Another benefit is that everything and anything is listed on Craigslist, such as dating, and services. There are local versions of each site for your nearest large city, so give it a try.

One thing I must note is that Ebay does have quick payment and has checks in place to fight against fraud listings and buyers/sellers.

Lastly, I must just ask that you give craigslist.org a try and see how you like it. And if you do, feel free to give it a little donation for staying free for everyone and remaining what the internet should be about.

People want free stuff. I do, my friends do, and I’m sure you do. One site that aims to do this is FreePay.com. Don’t be too skeptical because I myself actually took advantage of their offers and won not only an iPod Shuffle, an iPod 30GB Photo, but a Nikon Digital Camera, and an Xbox.

(continue reading…)