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Youtube Disco is now open..

February 15th, 2010 by Ken

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That quintessential streaming service, Youtube, has just launched a music delivery system called Youtube Disco. Something of an addendum to their already impressive catalog of music videos, this service is still in its infancy, which becomes obvious when you notice its lack of more advanced options available elsewhere.

Still, it serves its fundamental purpose — which is to stream music.

Easy to use, you’re given two options for your music search: You can search for an artist and all of the songs they’ve crafted, or you can find music that’s in the same vein of the music you originally ran a search for.

Barebones but simple in its execution, this is a great means of discovering new music and finding songs from some of your favorite artists.

Visit Youtube Disco here.

This is for the writers amongst you..

February 4th, 2010 by Ken

Being a writer, distractions have always been problematic, their intrusion on the process of writing an annoyance that can often render a presumably easy writing task into one that occupies more time than you’d like.

CreaWriter is a very helpful tool that frees you of the many distractions that exist when using a word processor. Whether it’s that flashing icon in your task bar or the minimized Firefox tab that’s calling your attention, the modern experience of writing has become an endeavor hindered by our immediate access to other forms of information.

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This tool wipes away all of those distractions, leaving a clean slate (literally!) on which to ply your writing.  As seen above, nothing else exists no your screen but the page to which you’re putting your words. You can further customize it, including the ability to add both background images and ambient sounds – both of which can be disabled, if you prefer just a white space.

In the digital age, distractions are inevitable, no matter how determined we are to avoid them. However, programs such as CreaWriter mitigate the frustration that results from them, making it a little easier to finish what you’re trying to compose.

This is a free program that’s available for Windows only, and you can grab it here.

Tabberwocky improves Firefox tabs

January 28th, 2010 by Ken

Well, here I am with another Firefox extension.

Like the one I touched upon earlier today, this is an add-on that will greatly enhance how you use the internet with this popular browser. Looking for a simple means of customizing how your tabs appear and function in Firefox?

This is the extension you’ve been searching for.

Called Tabberwocky, this extension builds upon the functionality of your tabs to an impressive degree, altering everything from their appearance to how you navigate between each one.

Installation is just as easy as it’s been for every other extension you’ve put to use. Once that’s complete, your first order of business  is looking at the available options : Tabs – Menus – Advanced.

These options afford you an opportunity to tailor the extension to your liking. For example, looking at the Tabs option, you’re able to adjust how your tabs behave and how they respond when clicked upon or closed.

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With the Menus options, you can assign keyboard shortcuts, adjust your context menu, and determine where you want new links to open.

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Lastly, using Advanced options, you can configure it so that the “progress bar” appears  on your tabs instead of in the Status bar. Advanced options will also allow you have multiple rows in one tab.

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Not everyone will want to put this to use, finding that the default functionality of Firefox’ tabs suits them just fine, but this might pique the interest of you Firefox geeks that love to tweak this brilliantly customizable internet browser.

You can grab Tabberwocky here.

Give Firefox a little breathing room

January 28th, 2010 by Ken

When using an internet browser, be it Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Mozilla’s Firefox, you’ve probably used the full screen option that’s available when pressing F11. This is great for those of you who want a bit more breathing room while viewing the content.

Yet, in spite of how liberating that option can be, there are those times when you’d like to have some your browsing features available – such as the status bar or the address field. As in the past, I’ve happened upon a neat Firefox extension that introduces a new way of browsing, just one of a myriad of add-ons that significantly augments your browsing experience.

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It’s called Hide GUI Bars, and it allows users to select which elements they’d like to remove from the browser, ultimately freeing up the viewing area on Firefox.  Those segments that you can specify the removal of include the navigation bar, the tab bar, the menu bar, the status bar, and the bookmark bar. Multiple combinations – if you, for instance, only want the bookmark bar visible — are available when using this extension.

There is a default hot key (CTRL-SHIFT-A), but it can be changed to suit your preference by using any other combination of keys.  Absolutely free, this is yet another example of the ingenuity that has propelled Firefox to the head of the browsing class.

You can grab Hide GUI Bars here.

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