Twitter Addons for Firefox Browser

Twitter is the most powerful microblogging service and so is Firefox among browser category. Without jumping to other sites, twitter extensions listed below allow you to post tweets, pictures, follow or unfollow friends, filter spam tweets, and much more.
Below is the list of 33 twitter addons for firefox browser that enhance twitter functionality for twitter addicts.

Photo Credit [katsurada]

List of Twitter Tools for Firefox Browser

1) Power Twitter 1.38 – It is a powerful firefox addon that allows you to share pictures on twitter via TwitPic. You can also view the original link behind the short URL, which makes you identify the content. If anybody shares only short link URL with you, then Power Twitter firefox plugin automatically translate the link into page titles. Also allow @mentions of friends on profile pages, link shrinking, facebook status updates and more.

2) Yoono – It is all-in-one firefox addon for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendfeed, MySpace, Flickr, AIM, MSN and GTalk that makes your online social life very simple. Yoono  plugin one installed can be accessed on the sidebar of your firefox browser window allowing you to get all your friend updates, update your status and share links, images and video across Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and more. With its ‘Discovery’ widget, you can discover new websites, products, and videos and then share them with your friends online.

3) TwitrPix Express- Allows you to upload and share photo or images from any web site on Twitter without leaving the site you are on. All you have to do is just right-click on the image you want to share and select “Share using TwitrPix.” Enter your Twitter credentials and click Share. A link to the image and your tweet (status message) will be posted on Twitter. A “view image” button will appear if you want to see the photo you just tweeted. TwitrPix Express also provides you with an option to tag images.

4) TwitterBar- Allows you to post to Twitter from Firefox’s address bar. Just type your tweet in the address bar and click the TwitterBar icon to send it to Twitter. The URL of any webpage can be sent directly just by clicking the TwitterBar icon in the address bar. If you want to know how many characters are left for the tweet, the simply hover your mouse over the TwitterBar icon.

5) Shareaholic – A favorite firefox plugin for social networking addicts. Shareaholic allows you to share links, e-mail, tweet, videos, blogs, and images with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Gmail, WordPress, and more.

6) Echofon- Powerful firefox addon that notifies you of your friend tweets on Twitter and allow you to view updates in a timeline and post your own tweets. Echofon allow you to access multiple Twitter accounts, get unread count in Firefox status bar, handles all the standard Twitter tasks such as direct messages and mentions, Syncs unread tweets with your iPhone and combine sequence tweets easily.

7) monkeyfly – Once you finished installing MonkeyFly, go to your Twitter page and click on the red plus sign next to “Home.” You’ll be able to add the following columns to your Twitter page: Mentions of @You, direct messages to you, your favorites, your tweets, your lists, and if you click on your “Saved Searches” you’ll be able to monitor the latest from Twitter. Apart from this you have following functionalities available which otherwise is not available with native twitter service.

• Profile – By hovering the cursor over a twitter’s profile photo, you can view the latest tweets and profile information. 
• Photo – Using your TwitPic account, you can easily tweet a photo to your followers. The photo will then be displayed as a shortened URL in your status field.
• TinyText – Using MonkeyFly’s URL shortener, you will have more room (more than 140 character limit) to write tweet.

8) Search Cloudlet – Tag cloud allows you to find relevant content quickly by showing you all the keywords. The most important websites are shown with bigger font. Search Cloudlet inserts smart tag clouds into Twitter interface to help you search faster. Just click keywords on the cloud to narrow down your tweet search. Once you install Search Cloudlet, you can view tag clouds on your Twitter home-page, search page, profile page, favorites and even into public timeline. Context-sensitive clouds like Author Clouds, Recipient Clouds and Hashtag Clouds also gets added. The plugin also provide tag cloud for Google and Yahoo.

9) Friendbar – Displays stream of text and photo updates from Facebook and Twitter right on the firefox browser toolbar and allows you to post status updates and reply from the browser toolbar itself. Friendbar allows you to automatically create a tiny URL for current web page you are viewing, post updates, retweets, direct messages, and replies, right from the Friendbar toolbar. This firefox extension also provides number of options for facebook too.

10) Twitter Glossary – While tweeting, most of the times we use some common words (slang). With Twitter Glossary you can define those words and terms that you regularly use in tweets. Once you add such words to your personal glossary, your twitter followers will be able to view the definition of those words as floating ‘tooltip’ text over the word when you use it in a tweet. So, newer ‘followers’ will not have hard time to understand everything in every tweet.

11) Twitter Search – This twitter search plugin gives you quick access to the real-time Twitter search.

12) TwitGlee – Search Twitter and Google together. Get Real Time Twitter as well as General Google results in a single webpage.

13) Twitzer – Allows you to post tweets of more than the 140 character on Twitter. The short or tiny URLs can be expanded to actual links so that you are sure you are clicking on safe links. It also help you in identifying the content of the webpage.

14) TwitJobSearch – If you want to search jobs TwitJobSearch.com then the plugin can help you.

15) Twitthat – Allows you to post current page to twitter via twitthat.com

16) TwitterEyes – TwitterEyes keeps track of your character usage when posting a status update and makes replacements for you if you want to tweet more than 140 characters.

17) Tweetlol  - This extension provides you with a full-featured Twitter client as a Firefox sidebar pane. You can send status updates, follow or unfollow friend, and everything which is possible in native twitter service.

18) Twitalyzer – This add-on inserts Twitalyzer influence scores collected at www.twitalyzer.com to the Twitter web site (www.twitter.com).

19) TwittyTunes – Allows you to submit the songs to twitter you are currently playing. TwittyTunes only requires FoxyTunes in order to submit currently playing music, but if you only want to submit websites and regular updates FoxyTunes is not required.

20) Twitbin – It keeps all of your Twitter conversations on browser sidebar. Twitbin allows you to send tweets, receive messages, status updates, share links, and more.

21) Kutano  - It allows users to discover other twitterers who are interested in the same web pages you are viewing and help you to connect with them instantly, either through @ replies or through easy-to-follow group discussions that can also be found directly beside the web page. Kutano also displays preview of videos and images that your followers have tweeted about, your twitter timeline, @replies, direct messages and follow/un-follow notifications directly into your browser.

22) Tweecious –  It can be used as twitter backup or to archive your tweets online. Tweecious find tweets with links and post them to your delicious account. This way you’ll never lose the links you posted on Twitter.
23) Clean Tweets – Sometime Tweets will land you up to malware or porn sites. In order to get rid of such tweets, use Clean Tweets firefox extension that eliminates spam and completely removes such spam tweets from your screen. It automatically deletes any tweets from accounts that are less than 24hrs old and anyone tweet that mentions 3 or more (or what you decide) trending topics in it will not show up.

24) TinyTweet – Allow you to quickly tweet by simply highlighting any text in a web page. Once you highlight any text you want to tweet, just hit the “tweet this” button to sent the tweet. The addon uses bit.ly service to shorten the URL.

25) TwitKit TwitKit is a Twitter sidebar for Firefox. TwitKit has a 6-section interface, using tabs to separate content. You can view the Twitter public timeline, your user timeline, a list of your friends and their latest tweets, a list of your followers and their latest tweets, @replies made to you, and stats about your account.

26) InstantTweets – This firefox extension lets you send tweets directly from your address bar by simply clicking the blue bird icon. The bird icon will display BLUE if someone is following you and RED if they are not. Just right click on any Image or site to tweet a link to it on Twitter. InstantTweets also shows you “Characters Remaining Countdown” and shorten the Long URLs automatically.

27) Twitter Line - Twitter lines shows your friend’s time line Twitter on your browser tool bar. The addon also allows you to update your status and add/remove favorites.

28) Read All Tweets – It displays only unread tweets in the order beginning from oldest.  If you are atwitter addict and do not want to miss out a single tweet on Twitter time-line, then this extension is the best. It also show replies from users you don’t follow and notifies about new DMs.

29) Bccth.is - Use the Bccth.is button to easily tweet from any page you’re on. Your tweet will be automatically populated with the title and URL of the page you are currently viewing. Also select followers and send them a private message in addition to your tweet.

30) Twitter ToolBar – Allow you to tweet the same message more than once on Twitter, so it is easy to re-tweet your own content again and again. Menu offers links to important Twitter pages, replies to you, and its search page.

31) Twiference Sidebar - Twiference Sidebar searches Twitter every time page changed with the keys extracted from the url. It assembles the results then displays the number of detected pages in the status bar and the tweets in the sidebar.

32) CloudBerry TweetFox - CloudBerry Twitter plug-in for Firefox lets you post excerpts from the websites you visit with a click of the button and attach a short URL to the source page.

33) Twicsy - Realtime Twitter Picture Search Engine – Real time image search of Twitpic, yFrog, flickr photos and more

Courtesy: Binary Head 

JavaScript Array Remove an Element

Following is an example of JavaScript where we will remove elements from an array with Index and Value. There are different methods in JavaScript that we can use to remove elements. We will use splice() method.

Remove Array element by Index

First we will see an example were we will remove array element by its index. For this we can define a generic function removeByIndex().

function removeByIndex(arr, index) {
arr.splice(index, 1);
}

In above code we used javascript splice() method to remove element at an index. splice() method takes two argument. First is the index at which you want to remove element and second is number of elements to be removed. In our case it is 1.

To test the above code lets define a simple array and remove one of the element.

test = new Array();
test[0] = 'Apple';
test[1] = 'Ball';
test[2] = 'Cat';
test[3] = 'Dog';
alert("Array before removing elements: "+test);
removeByIndex(test, 2);
alert("Array after removing elements: "+test);

Also you may want to define removeByIndex method with an array so that you call it directly. For example, in following example, we have define an array test and its method removeByIndex().

test = new Array();
//define removeByIndex method as part of the array
Array.prototype.removeByIndex = function(index) {
this.splice(index, 1);
}
test[0] = 'Apple';
test[1] = 'Ball';
test[2] = 'Cat';
test[3] = 'Dog';
alert("Array before removing elements: "+test);
test.removeByIndex(2);
alert("Array after removing elements: "+test);

Remove Array element by Value

You may want to remove array element by its value and not index. This can be easily done by iterating through it and comparing the values, if a match is found we can remove that element by splice() method.

function removeByValue(arr, val) {
for(var i=0; i

The above code can be written as part of array also:

test = new Array();
Array.prototype.removeByValue = function(val) {
for(var i=0; i

Enjoy…

Courtesy: Viral Patel
Author: Viral Patel

Top 5 Free Microsoft Products

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer may be the worst browser on the planet, and any Mac lover or Linux geek can easily expound on the flaws in the Windows operating system.

However, it would be foolhardy to abandon our objectivity and criticize all Microsoft products. Not only does Microsoft make some great products, but several of them are available for you to use completely free.

Here are my picks for the Top 5 free Microsoft software products and why they are the best.

#1: Windows Live Writer

Any blogger not using Windows Live Writer (WLW) is wasting time and being unproductive. Looking for a better alternative? There is none.

WLW makes blogging a breeze on popular platforms like Wordpress, Blogger, Windows Live, LiveJournal and Typepad. True WYSIWYG editing shows you previews of how your post will look. Easily upload/embed photos/videos with borders, effects, alignment, and resizing. WLW also has an extensible framework of plugins, that let you customize and extend its functionality. Check out our previous coverage of WLW to get more out of this must-have tool for bloggers.

#2: Photosynth

Microsoft Photosynth is a jaw-dropping technology that automatically stitches together your photos to create an immersive 3D view. You can explore hundreds of thousands of synths on the site, or upload your own photos to create your own synth. You can then embed your synth on your website to share with everyone. This can even be used for multiple people uploading pictures of an event. For example, here is the photosynth of Obama’s presidential inauguration made with hundreds of photographs contributed by multiple people. Below is a snapshot of a popular synth of the Statue of Liberty.

From NASA to National Geographic, you can explore fascinating 3D views of places all over the world. Photosynth uses the Seadragon technology that we’ve covered previously on MakeUseOf.

Photosynth is also integrated with Bing Maps. Over 14,000 geo-tagged photosynths comprising 1.4 million photos uploaded by users like you and me can be explored via the Photosynth Bing Maps application – easily one of the best free Microsoft software products.

#3: World Wide Telescope

Microsoft WorldWide Telescope (WWT) brings terabytes of imagery from the best ground telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope to your desktop. It seamlessly combines the data from these multiple sources into a rich immersive world that you can explore from your home. Use the native Windows client for all features, or the web client for a smaller subset. Guided tours from experts are a great way to introduce the stars and galaxies to youngsters. Exploration is possible not only in the visible light spectrum, but also in non-visible wavelengths such as x-ray and infrared.

The user interface and imagery use Photosynth technology and is said to be significantly better than Google Sky.

#4: Windows Live Skydrive

Windows Live Skydrive offers 25 GB of free space to anyone with a free Live ID for uploading, storing, and sharing files and photos. Most online storage services do not provide anything above 2 GB for free, and Skydrive’s 25 GB remains unparalleled. You can choose to keep files private, share them with contacts, or make them public. People are uploading 4 million photos to Skydrive every day. With Office 2010, you’ll be able to directly save a document on your PC to Skydrive.

Check out MakeUseOf’s coverage of Windows Live to get the most out of Skydrive.

#5: Bing

Bing is one of the best free Microsoft software products. While I still use Google almost exclusively myself, I have no hesitation in nominating Bing in this list of the best free Microsoft products. Why?

For starters, Bing is better than Google for certain kinds of queries. Natural language searches seem to be better in Bing. The categories and suggestions offered by Bing on the left are unique and not matched by Google. Check out these 10 Sites to Compare Google vs Bing Results Side by Side and judge for yourself.

But the real reason I love Bing is because it provides competition to Google. The past decade has seen Google become a monopoly in the search business. With Bing’s increasing popularity, Google is forced to innovate. Compare the rate of feature enhancements announced by Google before and after the arrival of Bing and you will agree that Bing makes Google better. That is certainly good for all of us and the web in general.

Courtesy: Make Use
Author: Mahendra Palsule

Five alternatives to Internet Explorer

There are plenty of alternatives to Internet Explorer, but be warned -- no web browser is 100 per cent secure

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox 3.6 is the latest version of the increasingly popular web browser. Mozilla claims it's 20 per cent faster than its predecessor, and features a "plug-in updater" – a tool that detects out-of-date programs that run in your browser (such as Flash, which is used for displaying some animated web pages or watching online videos).

Flock

Flock is a "social web browser" – it acts as a portal for people who want to integrate their Facebook and Flickr accounts, blogs, YouTube page and favourite websites into a single window.

Chrome

Google's web browser handles media-rich websites with ease, and because it treats individual "tabs" – open web pages – as separate programs, meaning that if one tab crashes, the whole browsing session isn't affected. The "incognito window" means you visit sites without saving your browsing history.

Opera

Opera is used on the Nintendo Wii, and Opera Mini is also an incredibly popular browser for mobile phones. Opera has all the usual features (it pioneered tabbed browsing in 2000), and can restore browsing sessions at the click of a mouse.

Safari

The Apple equivalent of Internet Explorer has a similar look and feel to the iTunes music store. Along with tabbed browsing and a built-in RSS feed reader, it also has Top Sites, a window that shows your most frequently-visited web pages.

Courtesy: Telegraph
Author: Claudine Beaumont

How to Use Twitter During Office Hours

Some organizations have this policy that social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. are a waste of time and therefore ban their staff from using such sites during office hours.

Then you also have companies that have no such rules in place and allow unrestricted access to the web as long as the employees are able to deliver what’s expected.

A. When Twitter is Not Allowed in Office

If you are working for a company that falls in the first category (no social media please), its better that you install a Twitter mobile app on your cell phone and not use the office computer at all for tweeting. After all, your boss will get a web usage report at the month-end and he will easily figure out which sites have you been visiting secretly during office hours.

If you don’t have a data-plan on your phone and cannot resist that urge to tweet ever 10 minutes, you may use tools like Posterous or Nutshell that allow anyone to send and receive tweets through regular office email.

There’s another option that will come handy if the twitter.com website itself has been blocked by your office firewall. You can use Twitter indirectly through third-party sites like Brizzly or Dabr.

These sites offer a fresh interface to your Twitter account with all the regular features (retweets, @replies, etc.) but the more interesting part is that they will work even if Twitter domain is inaccessible from your office computer. You can track up to 5 accounts with Brizzly.

Your Twitter friends’ timeline feed is protected by a password but you may still subscribe to it with a simple hack involving FeedBurner.

You can then follow tweets from your friends using Outlook or any other newsreader. Alternatively, you can subscribe to the friend’s feed directly with FeedDemon provided that access to Twitter is open in your office.

If you are allowed to use IM clients in Office, you can add twitter@twitter.com as a buddy in Google Talk and send tweets through IM. TweetSwitch is another free service that lets you send and receive tweets through popular instant messaging clients including AIM, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Skype and GTalk.

B. Use Twitter Without Letting Anyone Know

Now let’s look at the second category – you are very much allowed to use Twitter at work but you still don’t want to give your boss an impression that you are a Twitter addict.

In that case, here’s what you can do to possibly hide your Twitter addiction from boss and colleagues.

You can probably find a gazillion desktop apps for Twitter but if you are looking for something that doesn’t scream to the world that its a Twitter client, try Quitter.

Quitter is a simple twitter client that runs through the command prompt or the DOS window. With Quitter, you can read and reply to tweets, follow /unfollow people or even manage your direct messages. All you need is a Windows computer and no one in the office will ever have a clue that you are engrossed in Twitter.

If you are a Microsoft Office user, Spreadtweet is another interesting option for you. This is a proper Twitter client but in the guise of a spreadsheet so your boss will think that you’re working on an Excel sheet while you are up there tweeting your heart out!

With SpreadTweet, you can send and receive updates, @replies and direct messages all inside an application that looks like a clone of Excel 2007.

The other great option for Microsoft Office users in TwInbox – you probably have Outlook open on your screen all the time and this free Outlook add-in will simply turn your Outlook into a powerful Twitter client.

You can handle tweets just the way you manage your Inbox and the add-in will even let you tweet email messages with a click. The service is integrated with TwitPic so you can tweet pictures by simply dragging them into Outlook.

There’s more – all standard Outlook features like search, mail archiving, categories, etc. will also become available to your Tweets. This screencast explains TwInbox in detail.

Courtesy: Digital Inspiration
Author: Amit Agrawal

How To Do Interesting Things With Twitter?

Twitter Guide: Learn some interesting tips and tricks for Twitter.

Q: I am a blogger and want to cross-post articles from my blog into Twitter?

A: Go to FeedBlitz, type the address of the feed in the Subscribe box and choose Twitter from the subscription options. The other option is Twitter Feed but that requires you to have an OpenID.

Q: I know that TwitPic allows me to post pictures on Twitter but I want to use my existing Flick account with Twitter.

A: Go to TwitterGram and associate your Flickr name with your Twitter account. Now assign a special tag (say Twitter) and any picture that you post on Flickr with that Tag will automatically get posted in your Twitter account as well.

Q: I just ordered a laptop on eBay and the owner shipped it via UPS. I want to track this package on Twitter.

A: Follow TrackThis on Twitter and send this bot a Direct Message with your Airway Bill Number. You’ll be notified each time your package changes location. Works with FedEx, UPS, DHL and USPS.

Q. I want to add events in my Google Calendar using Twitter?

A: Go to Twittercal, add gCal as your virtual friend on Twitter and add events by simply sending direct messages to your new Twitter friend.

Q: I am a blogger. How can I add “tweet this” links to all my blog post?

A: See detailed instructions on how to add ‘Tweet This’ to Blogger or WordPress blogs. The permalinks are shortened automatically in the tweet.

Q: Oh! I just saw a spam profile on Twitter that is using my picture and tweets. I want to report impersonation on Twitter.

A: Send a message to Twitter spam watch team at @spam with the suspicious user name.

Q: My Twitter friend just sent me a tweet in French. I want to translate his message into English.

A: Follow twanslate and send a direct message with the text you want to get translated along with the language code of the target language (en for English, fr from French, etc.).

Q: I want to use Twitter as a Gmail Notifier.

A: Create a new Twitter account and set the status of updates as “Protected” so that the updates don’t appear in a public timeline. Now subscribe to your Gmail RSS feed using FeedBlitz and become mutual friends.

Q: I want to use Twitter as an alarm clock to remind me that I have to pick my daughter from school in 30 minutes.

A: Follow timer – send a direct message with the reminder time and it will ping you at that time. For instance “d timer 30 pick daughter”.

Q: I want to use Twitter for ego surfing.

A: Go to tweetbeep and set up alerts for certain keywords and web URLs. You’ll get an email notification as soon as someone mentions you or your brand or your blog posts in their tweets.

Q: While I like the default Twitter search engine, I want to know about other alternatives.

A: Try Tweet Scan and Monitter. Unlike Summize, you don’t have to refresh the Monitter page each time there’s a new result matching your search query. And it support multi-column search so may track multiple keywords on the same screen.

Q: I want to conduct a quick and simple poll on Twitter. Is it possible?

A: Go to StrawPoll and create a poll. Your Twitter contacts can participate in the poll by simply sending an @reply message.

Firefox 3.6 Released: With New CSS Gradient Feature

Mozilla has finally released Firefox 3.6, the newest version of its popular browser after months of testing. New Firefox is 20% faster than Firefox 3.5, according to Mozilla. It uses Gecko 1.9.2 web-rendering, which improves its load times, startup speed and stability. Javascript execution is faster and smoother as well. There’s also autocomplete form functionality and full HTML5 support. New feature called Personas has been added in Firefox 3.6 which lets you customize your Firefox with a single click and without a restart.

My Favourite feature is the addition of new CSS Gradient API. You can define Gradient effect on any element by specifying simple CSS styles. Thus now you can have CSS Gradient Effect without Images!
Note: All the below examples are Images. In order to view the gradient effect one must use Firefox 3.6

Liner Gradient

To create a linear gradient, you’ll need to set a starting point and a direction (or angle) for the gradient and to define the color stops.

1	-moz-linear-gradient( [ || ,]? , [, ]* )

Starting Point: The starting point works just like background position. You can set the horizontal and the vertical positions as a percentage, in pixels, or using left/center/right for horizontal, and top/center/bottom for vertical. Positions start from the top left corner. If you don’t specify the horizontal or the vertical position, it will default to center.
Example

1	.linear_gradient_square {

2	width: 100px;

3	height: 100px;

4	border: 1px solid #333;

5	background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, blue, white);

6

}

One that starts left (horizontal) and center (vertical):

1	background: -moz-linear-gradient(left, blue, white);

Here’s a simple example with three color stops. Because no point is specified for the first and last colors, they will default to 0% and 100%.

1	background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, blue, white 80%, orange);

Colors will be evenly spaced if no position is specified.

1	background: -moz-linear-gradient(left, red, orange, yellow, green, blue);

Radial Gradients

The syntax for radial gradients is very similar to that of linear gradients:

1	-moz-radial-gradient([ || ,]? [ || ,]? , [, ]*);

Color stops: Just like with linear gradients, you should define color stops along the gradient line. The following circles have the same color stops, but the gradient on the left defaults to evenly spaced colors, while the one on the right has a specific position for each color.

1	background: -moz-radial-gradient(red, yellow, #1E90FF);

2	background: -moz-radial-gradient(red 5%, yellow 25%, #1E90FF 50%);

1	.radial_gradient_circle {

2	background: -moz-radial-gradient(bottom left, circle, red, yellow, #1E90FF);

3

}

4	.radial_gradient_ellipse {

5	background: -moz-radial-gradient(bottom left, ellipse, red, yellow, #1E90FF);

6

}

1	background: -moz-radial-gradient(ellipse closest-side, red, yellow 10%, #1E90FF 50%, white);

2	background: -moz-radial-gradient(ellipse farthest-corner, red, yellow 10%, #1E90FF 50%, white);

1	.repeating_radial_gradient_example {

2	background: -moz-repeating-radial-gradient(black, black 5px, white 5px, white 10px);

3

}

4	.repeating_linear_gradient_example {

5	background: -moz-repeating-linear-gradient(top left -45deg, red, red 5px, white 5px, white 10px);

6

}

Courtesy: ViralPatel
Author: Viral Patel

Windows Live MSN Messenger - Cool Tips & Tricks

Windows Live Messenger, formally known has MSN Messenger (provided by Microsoft), has to be one of my favourite messaging clients. I am on it almost 24/7 and there are a few nifty features that make the experience a whole lot better.

This will be a two part post with the first part covering cool Windows Live tips and tricks that you can do without installing any add-ons, and the second part explains how you can make your Windows Live Messenger experience much more fun.

1. Remove Those Annoying Ads

You may noticed at the very bottom of the Windows Live Messenger main window, they show ads to you. However, if they slightly annoy you from time to time, here is a trick on how to block them.

On your Windows computer, open up Internet Explorer. Click on Tools, then select Internet Options. Click on the Security tab, click on Restricted sites, then click on the Sites button.

Then simply add the URL http://rad.msn.com. This serves as the Microsoft ad server and once you restrict this site, Windows Live Messenger will go from this:

to this:

2. See Which Contacts Haven’t Added You To Their Contact List

One of the most searched for keywords on my website is “how do I find out who blocked or deleted me on MSN”. It is really simple to find the answer and you don’t have to install any software on your computer or spy on your friends.

In Windows Live Messenger just go to Tools –> Options, go to the Privacy section, and under Contact List, click on View. The list that is presented to you are all your contacts that have got you on their contact list. If a contact of yours is not on that list, they have either not added you or have deleted you because they don’t want to talk to you anymore – yes I know the feeling.

If going through that list will take a while, you can also download aMSN (which is a excellent portable MSN program for your USB drive). When you view your contacts, the contacts that do not have you on their list will have a red cross next to them.

Another good thing is that you can send unlimited nudges to your friends.

3. Remote Assistance

MakeUseOf has covered many remote assistant applications such as Crossloop, Instant HouseCall, LogMeIn, uVNC, and Foldershare, but did you know Windows Live Messenger is another one? Just simply start a chat, select activities and click request remote assistance.

Accept all the prompts, then the other person will be able to view your screen, and they can control your computer if you wish for them too.

If it doesn’t work, make sure “Allow Remote Assistance” is enabled by right clicking on My Computer, select properties, Remote, and tick the box.

4. Changing Your Display Name

Want to impress your friends and have a cool name and spell your name like Ĝмдїι.©ǾМ? Well, if you open up Microsoft Word for example, find some symbols that look like characters, or even change the font, you can then paste that text into your display name field on MSN. If you want, you can also draw images like these ones.

Courtesy: Make Use of
Author: Jack Cola

Default https access for Gmail

Gmail has long offered a more secure connection option over Https, and two years ago let users set it themselves as a default. Now Google is making https the default setting for all Gmail accounts, unless you flip it back.

Given their recent security episode in China, and the ever-expanding realm of devices and portals users can get at Gmail from, it's probably a smart step forward to gently goad users into using a more secure connection standard. Google notes that, although using https creates a slight latency, they believe the trade-off is worth it.

If https presents a problem in your particular IT environment, you can still switch it off in your Settings. Here's Google's explanation:

"If you've previously set your own https preference from Gmail Settings, nothing will change for your account. If you trust the security of your network and don't want default https turned on for performance reasons, you can turn it off at any time by choosing "Don't always use https" from the Settings menu. Gmail will still always encrypt the login page to protect your password. Google Apps users whose admins have not already defaulted their entire domains to https will have the same option."

Google also notes that Offline Gmail users who weren't already using https as a default may see some issues, but they suggest a work-around.

Does a default https present problems for your own Gmail account? Happy to see the security struggle moving a step forward? Tell us your take in the comments.

Courtesy: Default https access for Gmail
Author: [Official Gmail Blog]

Your Passwords Aren't As Secure As You Think

If you allow applications to save your passwords, anyone with physical access to your PC can decode them unless you're properly encrypting them—and chances are pretty good you're not. Let's walk through the right and wrong ways to store your passwords.

For the purpose of this article, we'll assume that the people you allow into your house are trustworthy enough not to hack your passwords, and your laptop has been stolen instead—but the tips here should apply to either scenario. Regardless of how you choose to save your passwords, you should make sure to use great passwords and even stronger answers for security questions.

Once You Click "Remember Password" It's All Over
Almost any application that requires you to login to something will also provide an option to save your password, and once you've done that, your password may as well be plain text. Behind the scenes, even if the application encrypts the account information, it's doing so with a static key that can be easily deciphered through some reverse engineering, and somebody not only can, but already has created a utility to recover those passwords.

It doesn't even matter all that much if you've got a tough Windows password; anybody with physical access to your PC can use an Ubuntu Live CD to copy all of your data onto an external drive without modifying anything, and crack your files on another machine whenever they please (assuming you don't have your entire hard drive encrypted). If they had a little more time, they could use Ophcrack to figure out your password, or they could just be mean and use the System Rescue CD to change your Windows password.

Once that person has access to your files, they can recover your passwords with free tools easily—you can recover passwords in a few clicks from Outlook, Instant Messenger, Wi-Fi, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, or any number of other applications. All it takes is a quick Google search to find even more cracking utilities.

Pidgin Stores Passwords in Plain Text
That's right, your favorite open-source, multi-protocol instant messenger client stores your passwords in plain text. If you don't believe me, just open up your %appdata%\.purple\accounts.xml file in your favorite text editor, and you'll see your passwords right there for anybody to read.

The decision to store the passwords in plain text is a deliberate one that's been thoughtfully considered, and while you might initially think it's a terribly insecure way to handle security, keep in mind that you can simply download any number of utilities like Nirsoft's MessenPass and recover the passwords from AIM, Windows Live Messenger, Trillian, Miranda, Google Talk, Digsby, etc. The Pidgin developers point out that their option is actually the preferred method for security:

Having our passwords in plaintext is more secure than obfuscating them precisely because, when a user is not misled by a false sense of security, he is likely to use the software in a more secure manner.

The best answer, of course, is to not allow your IM client to store your passwords at all—but if you must store them, you should at least use the built-in Windows encryption, if not a full-blown TrueCrypt setup. Either option would be better than the pseudo-protection most other applications provide.

Password Managers Are the Only Secure Storage
The only truly secure way to store your passwords is to use a password manager to securely track your passwords, combined with a a great master password to protect the rest of your saved passwords—if you use an easy password for your password manager, it would be easy to crack with a brute force attack. Don't lure yourself into a false sense of security by just using one—your password manager password should be at least 10 alpha-numeric characters if you really want to be secure.

You've got a number of great password managers to choose from, like reader favorite Keepass, a cross-platform tool which has many plugins that help you master your passwords and make using a password manager easier to deal with. And, of course, let's not forget that Firefox has a full password manager built right into the application.

Use a Firefox Master Password (With More Than 8 Characters)
If you want to use Firefox to save the passwords for all your web accounts, you should make sure to enable a Firefox Master Password by heading into Tools –> Options –> Security and checking the box for Use a master password.

Once you've done this, Firefox will store all of your passwords with nearly unbreakable AES encryption—providing you use a password with more than 8 alpha-numeric characters and at least one capitalized letter. If you used a weak and pathetic password like "secret", it could be broken in a matter of minutes with a brute force cracking tool, but a decent 8+ random character password will take at least 73 years for a brute force attack.

Each time you start Firefox and go to a site that requires a saved password, you'll be first prompted for your master password. By default, the master password authentication will be active for the entire session, but you can use the Master Password Timeout extension to lock your master password again after a certain interval, which is handy if you walk away from your desk without remembering to lock it with Win+L.

Use TrueCrypt to Encrypt Everything
Rather than deal with password managers or whether or not to save your passwords, you could simply create a separate, encrypted TrueCrypt drive, and use portable versions of your applications to keep everything totally secure. If you're even more paranoid, you can use TrueCrypt to encrypt the entire hard drive—you will be prompted for a password every time you boot, but you can relax knowing that anything you do will be encrypted, even if you use scripts with your passwords stored in plain text. If TrueCrypt isn't your thing, you can use the built-in encryption functionality in Windows—just keep in mind that if you change your password your data will be inaccessible, and your Windows password can be cracked, giving them full access to your files.
Are you already using a password manager or encryption to keep your passwords secure? Share your best password security tips in the comments.

Courtesy: Lifehacker
Author: lowell@lifehacker.com