Web | 2/100 | AddictiveTips

Get Quick Access To Google Keep In Firefox With This Unofficial Add-On

by Fatima Wahab on May 13, 2013

We reviewed an unofficial Google Keep Extension for Chrome when it came out a month back. Since then, Google has released an official extension for its new note takings service but Firefox users can not expect one for their browser because Google doesn't develop extensions for other browsers in order to to keep its competitive edge in Chrome. Firefox users will instead have to rely on unofficial add-ons for the service and if you've been trying to find one, Google Keep is an option that works perfectly. Compared to the Google Keep Extension for Chrome that we reviewed, this one is better as it allows you to upload images to your notes as well. It works exclusively from the location bar, and doesn't offer any other ‘viewing’ modes as there were with the Chrome extension. Read More

Convert Any Blog’s Articles Into Podcasts With Podcastomatic

by Moaaz Bukhari on May 11, 2013

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Listening to text instead of reading is a godsend on weary days. I know, I’ve had my share. When I’m juggling a hefty workload, Notepad++ is my go-to app because of its Speech plugin. To compress extended, hour-long reading sessions into half the time, I rely on the excellent Balabolka. And finally, when I get back home, it’s time to shut out the world and unwind, my feet up on the couch and Podcastomatic playing my favorite blogs softly back to me. Read More

Easily Create & Apply A Graphics Overlay On Google+ Hangouts

by Fatima Wahab on May 10, 2013

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Google's Hangouts feature is one of the easiest ways to have a video conference call. With the integration of apps like YouTube to it, you can now record and upload a hangout directly to the world's most popular video sharing service. Hangouts might sound like an ordinary group chat service but with the apps available, it can be used for so much more. HangoutMagix is one such web app that works with the Hangout Toolbox app for Google+ Hangouts. The app allows you to enter two lines of text and an image, which it then adds to a transparent background. The layout of the graphic generated from the text and logo is similar to what you see when watching interviews on TV, giving the name and brief detail of the speaker or the subject of the video. You can download the image you create with HangoutMagix and add it as an overlay for your hangout, so that people you’re talking to can see that information throughout the hangout. Read More

Easy Access Lets You Launch Apps Installed On Your PC From Firefox

by Fatima Wahab on May 09, 2013

Firefox and Chrome are two of the leading browsers in the market and they've both moved towards developing their own browser-based operating systems. Chrome has gone a little further than Firefox so far in Chrome OS, but both their respective OS are a work in progress. A very interesting by-product of theses browsers and their operating systems are the app launchers that we can use for accessing installed apps, as we've seen in the case of Chrome. Easy Access is a Firefox add-on developed by Mozilla that adds an app launcher to Firefox’s add-on bar. By default, it can perform five functions: launch Notepad, My Computer, Paint & Calculator, and switch to a different Firefox profile. However, you can add any number of other application shortcuts to this launcher, and even set command line parameters to pass to an application when it launches. The applications appear in a menu upon clicking the add-on's button; however, you can add any one of them directly to the add-on or navigation bar for faster access as well. Read More

SyndiFeed Is A Clutter-Free, Magazine-Style RSS Feed Reader

by Moaaz Bukhari on May 08, 2013

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Google Reader is going down this July and it’s high time to abandon ship. But finding a seaworthy alternative is just as important if you want to keep up with all your favorite sites and blogs with as little shock of transition as possible. Among the many other excellent feed readers that’ll compete for your attention this summer, SyndiFeed definitely comes among the top. With the sleek, glossy looks of a magazine and the thoughtful, eye-pleasing format of a great website, SyndiFeed really deserves to be given consideration by those looking to switch, especially in this final month leading up to Google Reader’s demise. Read More

Quickly Translate An Entire Webpage From Firefox Right Click Menu

by Moaaz Bukhari on May 07, 2013

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Chrome users have it made; whenever you find yourself on a webpage in a language that isn’t your default, the browser automatically offers to translate. But Firefox users, while they don’t enjoy an inbuilt translate option, needn’t fret about copy-pasting entire paragraphs to a translation web service, either. Using the right-click context menu, you can translate either selected text via Translate Menu or, better yet, the whole page, via the TranslateWebpageAtGoogle add-on. Read More

Auto-Save Gmail Attachments To & Attach Files From Cloud With Kloudle

by Fatima Wahab on May 07, 2013

Earlier this year, we covered a Chrome extension called Cloudy that allows you to attach files in Gmail from multiple cloud storage services or your Facebook account directly, without having to download them to your desktop first. Kloudle is a similar service that can connect with Box, Dropbox, and Google Drive, and lets you attach files to your emails in a way similar to Cloudy. Kloudle supports far fewer services than Cloudly but coupled with its Chrome extension, the service does something else as well that can be really useful - it allows you to save files from your Gmail account to any one of your cloud drives. Files are saved automatically based on ‘rules’ that you create, and you can create up to ten rules. Think of it as the famous service IFTTT, working entirely in your email. Read More

How To Reset Lost Facebook Password With The Trusted Contacts Feature

by Fatima Wahab on May 07, 2013

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Identity theft is very real; in the past, it has meant someone impersonating your identity to gain unauthorized access to important information and committing crimes under your name. In today's age of digital media, however, it can also mean someone hacking your social media accounts and putting your online reputation at risk. That's why Facebook has introduced the Trusted Contacts feature in a bid to help you fight identity theft and regain access to your Facebook account should the worst ever happen. It allows you to select three to five people in your Facebook friends’ list who can help you recover your compromised Facebook account. Here’s how to set up and use your trusted contacts to regain access to your account. Read More

Postpone Is A To-Do List Web App With Mailbox-Like Task Reminders

by Fatima Wahab on May 06, 2013

The world is an unorganized mess and there is a good chance that merely making a mental list of things you want to do will do you little or no good. It’s precisely why a new to-do app and task manager pops up every other day, and Postpone is yet another service for this very purpose. Postpone groups your tasks into workspaces and with a free account, you can add up to three workspaces. Each task has a title and a description. Tasks can be marked as done, kept in you current workspace's task box, or moved to the ‘Snoozed’ box. Much like Mailbox for iOS, when snoozing a task, you can select when it will return to the main task box. You can use one of the preset time intervals or enter a time and date of your choice. The other noteworthy feature in Postpone is that you can ‘mention’ people who are involved in a particular task, provided they have a Postpone account too. This not only allows them to know when they've been included in a task, but also lets you search your tasks by person. In all objectivity, it’s an immensely productive use of the ‘mention’ concept that is largely used by social media sites. Postpone is currently in private beta and the invite codes can take up to a month to arrive in your inbox. Read More

How To Remotely Access & Troubleshoot A PC Via A Google+ Hangout

by Fatima Wahab on May 06, 2013

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Video chat apps and services aren't very useful if they don’t allow you to send files or invite several people to the same chat session. Another much in-demand feature is the ability to remotely access the desktop of whoever you’re chatting with, in order to help them do something or troubleshoot some problem. There's great news on this front for Google+ users - the feature, has been added to Google Plus Hangouts in the form of an app. The great thing about Google Plus Hangouts, like Gmail Chat, is that your browser is the only thing you need to start a video call and invite multiple people to it, and you can now remotely control someone’s desktop just as easily. Here’s how. Read More

Watch Video Lessons & Take Time-Synced Notes Side By Side Using VideoNot.es

by Moaaz Bukhari on April 29, 2013

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A great way to learn online is through Coursera, an award-winning site that collects video lectures from some of the best university professors and academics out there and makes them available to people around the globe, for free. All you need to do is sign up and try to follow the study guidelines, week-to-week. VideoNet.es is an online, paperless solution to video note-taking, that saves you the trouble of overusing notepad or Evernote while watching Coursera, Khan Academy, Udacity, edx or educational YouTube videos. Not having to first pause the video, restore notepad, and then write your thoughts can make learning even Computational Neuroscience a bit more breezy. Read More

Export Twitter DMs, Mentions, Tweets & More To A Document With twDocs

by Waqas Ahmed on April 29, 2013

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Twitter is undoubtedly the most popular micro-blogging platform on the planet. Back in December 2012, the bird chirping social network introduced an option to users download an archive of all their tweets to their local drive, and it received positive response from users. Although not something really groundbreaking as there were a few services already offering this, it’s a handy feature nonetheless. twDocs is another web app that allows you to download not just your own tweets, but also tweets from people you follow. In addition, it can download your favorite tweets, mentions, direct messages you sent or received, search results and so on. The app can save this content in a number of different formats such as PDF, DOC, HTML, XML, TXT, XLS or CSV. Read More

Hide Watched YouTube Videos, Disable Autoplay & Default To HD In Chrome

by Fatima Wahab on April 27, 2013

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YouTube has been redesigned quite a few times; features have come and gone, and improved upon. With the service offering so much, it's hard to say there will ever be a design or layout that everyone likes, so those who aren't happy with the interface will either have to get used to it, or use an extension to tweak it. There's no shortage of extensions that tweak, improve, or clean up YouTube's interface, and YouTweak for YouTube is another one of those extensions for Chrome. It allows you to remove videos you've watched from appearing as suggestions or in search results, redirect the YouTube logo to point to any URL, disable YouTube's auto play feature, and have every video play in 720px resolution. Each one of these options can be enabled or disabled individually, giving you complete control over the extension. Read More

Use The Mouse Wheel To Quickly Switch Between Tabs In Chrome

by Fatima Wahab on April 27, 2013

If you thought a Batman spinoff on yet another item just wasn't possible, Tabman Tabs Manager is a Chrome extension that will change your mind. It’s a tab manager that adds a Batman-like button to the URL bar, which in turn allows you to switch between the different tabs open in the current window. It'll serve little to no purpose if you just have a few tabs open but for those marathon browsing sessions, it can make finding specific tabs from the countless open ones a lot easier! It’s somewhat similar to Sidewise Tree Style Tab that we covered a few days ago, except that it focuses on switching tabs and provides both a mouse gesture (moving the scroll wheel) and use keyboard shortcuts to open the extension’s panel. If you don’t like switching between tabs via a popup, Sidewise Tree Style Tab works in a ‘Dock’ mode as well, where it separates into another window and allows you to search and switch between tabs from it. Read More

View Recent Bookmarks Sorted By Date & Time In Google Chrome

by Moaaz Bukhari on April 27, 2013

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Bookmarks can be divided into two types: those for sites you want to refer back to in the immediate future, and those for sites you want to keep around pretty much forever. Now, common sense dictates that older bookmarks, the ones you’re storing, should appear at the bottom and newer, more recent ones that you’re probably going to view earlier, should appear nearer the top, for ease of access. Firefox has the coveted “Recently Bookmarked” viewer in its bookmarks panel, but not Chrome. That is, not until Recent Bookmarks for Chrome, an extension that adds a button for quickly viewing your latest bookmarks in a list divided by day and date. Read More

10 Great Chrome Extensions For Twitter

by Fatima Wahab on April 26, 2013

Twitter is a very engaging network; you can open your timeline and before you know it, you've spent the better part of an hour reading links or conversing (read: debating trolls). For this and several other reasons, many users prefer Twitter clients over the web interface. Most Twitter clients not only have better features, but also support notifications for your @mentions, direct messages etc. At the same time, they give you control over the content you see, ensuring that only important things disrupt your work. The problem is that Twitter likes to axe the abilities of third-party Twitter clients by restricting its API, and many users have to turn to its web interface whether they like it or not. It’s situations like this when extensions can be very handy. Provided you have the right ones installed, your browser can act like an impressive Twitter client itself, and we've compiled a list of extensions for Chrome that will help you do just that. Read More

Open Word, Excel & PowerPoint Files In Chrome With Office Viewer

by Fatima Wahab on April 26, 2013

Chrome can open a lot of different files without the need to install any extra plugins, extensions, or scripts. In fact, many modern browsers can open some of the common file types that are used everyday including media files in MP3 and MP4 format, and PDF documents. Granted that browsers aren't the best file viewers for multimedia files, they are still great for quick previews or when you don’t have your preferred app available. The one file format, or rather the group of file formats that browsers don’t normally support by default are Microsoft Office documents, presentations, spreadsheets et al. If you don’t have Office installed on your PC or Mac, you can turn to Google Drive’s web version or services like Box and Jumpshare that offer online file previews in order to view these files. Chrome users on the Beta channel now have another option. Google has released a new extension called Chrome Office Viewer that allows you to drag and drop your Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files to your browser’s window and view them in it directly. The extension is currently experimental, so expect a hiccup or two here and there. Read More

Get A Tree Style View Of Chrome Tabs; Group & Hibernate Them

by Moaaz Bukhari on April 25, 2013

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Chrome is probably the most popular web popular browser out there, but it has often left many power-users somewhat unsatisfied. Imagine you’re a corporate lawyer who needs dozens of case files open in dozens of tabs, or a researcher who needs to keep countless of tabs open at the same time while you write that thesis. Chrome is fast and simple, but sometimes what you need more is endurance. The side-docking Sidewise Tree Style Tabs is an extension that aims to take care of managing all those tabs more effectively. In a nutshell, you can give it any load of tabs you wish, and fully expect it to run those marathon browsing sessions for as long as you want. Read More

ModeFeed Is A Web-Based News Feed Reader That Focuses On Minimalism

by Waqas Ahmed on April 24, 2013

There’s been a lot of debate regarding Google Reader’s bitter demise lately. The 8 years old RSS reader, which most of us have admired for quite long, is coming to an end. While alternatives like Feedly have already taken up the gauntlet to provide a similar experience when Google Reader will no longer be around, having more options never hurts. ModeFeed is yet another Google Reader substitute that you might want to take for a spin. Even though it’s far from looking as good (if not better) as Google’s offering, this intuitive web app is worth giving a shot due to its minimalistic and simple UI that's designed to help you focus on the actual content rather than the UI itself. Lets see how it works. Read More