Make Firefox speak for you

Ever thought how great it will be if your browser reads the text on a webpage for you?? We read huge articles on internet. How amazing it will be if instead of reading them we can simply listen to them?? It happens that while reading we come across a word which we find difficult to pronounce. How easy it will be if our browser reads it for us to understand how it needs to be pronounced??

Well, it is now possible in Firefox using Text to Voice add-on which simply reads the selected text for you. It seriously makes your life simple in many ways.

Lets start with Text to Voice

Install Text to Voice add-on for Firefox

Restart Firefox once the installation completes.

Open up any webpage and select the text you want to convert from text to voice and click the button on the bottom right corner.

Clicking on the button opens up another tab which would create an mp3 out of the text selected.

Once the mp3 creation is done it will start playing the mp3 file for you.

You can even save the mp3 file generated on your machine for future references by clicking Download mp3 link and specifying the path where it needs to be saved.

To conclude, this is really a must have add-on for people who read lots of articles over the internet. Very helpful as you can save the mp3 files and listen to them later any time you want to.

Font Size and Font Family on Right Click Context Menu in Firefox

It happens that you love a font used on some website and are curious to get its details. If you use Firefox, Context Font is the add-on which helps you with this. After installing this add-on for Firefox you get the font-family and font size in the right context menu for the selected text.

Steps to use

Install Context Font add-on for Firefox

Once installed Restart Firefox. Select and right click on the text whose font details are needed and it displays them in the right click context menu.

To conclude, it is a great add-on for font lovers, web designers to quickly know about fonts on any website.

Rename your Facebook friends - Firefox add-on

MyFacebook is a Firefox add-on using which you can rename your Facebook friends easily. You can simply right click any of your Facebook friend and rename them with whatever nickname you want. Isn't that fun???

How it works

Install MyFacebook add-on for Firefox

Login to your Facebook account

Right click the friend you want to rename and select Rename

Type the name you like for your friend and click Rename

That's it! Your friend will be renamed in Facebook. You can even Undo Rename once you have renamed any of your friends.

Check the video below to see it working.

What do you Suggest - Google Suggest

I've already spent hours exploring on whatdoyousuggest.net. For some reason I just keep wanting to come back to have another play.

Lets see it working

When you load up the site it tells you to Start Here - or - choose from one of word, letter or question. Lets take "Strange" as the seed. Just type Strange in the text box and hit enter. From there, it takes whatever you've given it and gives back Google's suggestions for the next word in your sentence.

The suggested words appear in the order in which Google suggests them and are each connected by a line of varying thickness representing the number of search results you could expect if you did a Google search on the phrases which that word, its predecessors and ancestors in the tree would create.

The suggestions provided by Google Suggest represent real searches which in all likelihood have been performed millions of times each by people from all around the world. 

Lets click Facts and see what it returns

Lets click Of and see what it returns

In the end lets click Life to get the search results

To conclude this site is real fun and uses Google Suggest very well to give you the next keyword suggested by Google.

Visualize the tabs using thumbnails in Google Chrome

Earlier I had written about 3D effects to Firefox Tabs with FoxTab which gives Firefox tabs a totally refreshing and 3D look.

Google Chrome has come up with a similar extension named Visual Tabs which can make navigating though tabs easier and fun. Its not as powerful as Firefox Tabs for Firefox but a good add-on to have for Google Chrome if you love 3D thumbnails.

Using Visual Tabs for Google Chrome you can:

1. Navigate through the tabs easily with the help of thumbnails

2. Navigate through the tabs by scrolling your mouse

3. Change the background color of the window which displays the thumbnails

Start using Visual Tabs for Google Chrome

Start Google Chrome and Install Visual Tabs extension for Google Chrome

As soon as the extension is installed you are ready to start using it. Just click the icon for Visual Tabs next to the Address Bar in Google Chrome to start.

You can switch between the background colors by clicking the color you want of the available six colors. Lets see how White and Yellow looks in the background.

To conclude, as said before this add-on is a real treat for people who love their tabs in 3D views.

Monitor who accesses your Shared Folders

It might happen at times that you share a folder for a person to copy certain things and then forget to unshare it. People having access to this folder can access it anytime without you being notified which might end up hitting your computers performance. Moreover there could be chances of sharing files with people which you don't want to.

ShareWatcher is a simple application which sits in the System tray notifying you whenever someone tries to access a file/folder on your machine.

Using ShareWatcher you can further see the users who are currently accessing shared folders on your machine and the folders being accessed by them.

It also shows the Logs of users who accessed the shared files/folders with date time stamp.

You can further customize how ShareWatcher should behave from Options --> Settings. You can mark Ignore self to ignore notifications when you access the shared folders. Checking "Only Show Files" wont log or notify you when folders are accessed. You can add list of files you want to ignore.

To conclude ShareWatcher is a nice tiny application if you want to keep an eye on who accesses the files you have shared.

Download ShareWatcher for Windows

Forgot attaching files to Outlook emails?? Not any more with FAD

It happens at times when we write email in a hurry and send them forgetting to attach that important file mentioned in the same email. Then we reply back to all recipients with apology and attaching the file. Forgotten Attachment Detector is a great free add-on for Outlook from OfficeLabs which helps you avoid such embarrassing situations. 

Whenever you send an email containing terms such as attachment, attached, enclosed etc. but does not actually have a file attached, it alerts you before you send your email.  Then, you can go back and add the attachment you intended to before you actually send the email.

Start using Forgotten Attachment Detector 

Download Forgotten Attachment Detector. Click Try It on the page to download the setup file. Once you have downloaded the file, go ahead and install it. Its better you exit Outlook before installing the add-in.

You can uncheck the checkbox in the above screenshot if you do not wish to participate in Usage metrics and Auto updates.

Carry on with the setup till you completely install the add-in.

Once the installation is complete start Outlook. At the first start of Outlook after installing FAD, Outlook asks you to verify that you want to install the add-in. Click install and you will be ready to use it.

Now, whenever you compose a new email and mention anywhere in the email about attachment but don't actually attach a file FAD will display a pop-up alarming you about your act.

Clicking the Show Snippet button shows you exactly what text in your email triggered the alarm.

Customizing Forgotten Attachment Detector

FAD adds a button to your Outlook Menu using which you can customize the way FAD works.

Using the setting you can add or remove the keywords that triggers the alarm for attachment. You can add / remove keywords and phrases depending on which FAD will alarm you about attachments. FAD can also notify you about emails missing Subject Lines which can be enabled/disabled from settings.

To conclude Forgotten Attachment Detector is a cool utility rarely used but saves you from huge embarrassments.

Desktop Notifier for Google Services - Google Calendar

Google Code has come up with a piece of software which notifies you about updates of your Google Services. For now it supports Google Calendar and would soon be supporting Google Reader updates too. Click here for an alternative for Google Reader as of now.

Google Services Notifier is a simple .NET utility which uses Google's API to notify you about updates. Google Calendar is the supported application from various Google Services as of now.

How to use Google Services Notifier

Download Google Services Notifier and install it on your machine.

Once installed start Google Services Notifier from the Start Menu. It silently sits in the System Tray. Right click Google Services Notifier icon and select "Change user name/password".

Specify your login credentials for Google Services in the Credentials window

That's It!!! You are done configuring Google Services Notifier and now its time to enjoy it.

Whenever an appointment on your Google Calendar comes up it notifies you about it with a small pop-up in the System Tray.

Other than notifying for next events you can also get a list of today's/tomorrow's/week's events. It also takes you to your Google Calendar by clicking Go To My Google Calendar.

To conclude Google Services Notifier is a nice application if you use Google Calendar for all your appointments. It will gain more importance once development on Google Reader notifications is complete.

Get notified for new Google Reader items

Google Reader is a good RSS companion but lacks notifications. It does not alert the user when a new item arrives like we have Gmail notifier or email notifier with Gtalk.

There are 2 ways to get notified about new items on Google Reader.

Google Reader Notifier

Google Reader Notifier is a tiny Windows application which sits calmly in your system tray and informs you at a set interval incase there are new items in Google Reader.

Google Reader Notifier is customizable as per your needs. Using preferences you can setup the items for which you should be notified, refresh interval and specify your Google Reader account details.

The notifier displays the number of new items in the popup window clicking on which opens up your browser pointing to Google Reader. 

Download Google Reader Notifier for Windows

Google Reader Watcher - Firefox Add-on

This add-on adds the functionality provided by Google Reader Notifier plus some additional features to Firefox. It adds an icon to Firefox Status Bar displaying the count of new Google Reader items. The add-on is customizable as per your needs using its preferences. You can set up the frequency at which it should check for new items, specify the feeds to be filtered using labels etc. under General tab.

Under Account Information tab you need to specify your Google Reader logon credentials.

Under Tooltip settings tab you can customize the way tooltips are displayed. Under Window opening settings you can select the action which would open Google Reader window.

Hovering over the icon in status bar displays you the list of feeds and the count of unread items under each feed.

Google Reader Watcher is a great add-on to have if you are a big user of Google Reader.

Download Google Reader Watcher for Firefox

Run Flash videos on low quality to improve performance

On slower machine flash videos become a bottle neck on performance. It is annoying if there's a site you love to read that just so happens to load 20 flash advertisements next to the article text and your machine gets low on performance.

This happens to be an issue with older computers, cheap netbooks and cellphones using Firefox Mobile.

Low Quality Flash is a Firefox add-on which uses JavaScript to alter OBJECT and EMBED tags on a page setting Adobe Flash objects to "Low Quality." It automatically sets the video quality to low for all the flash videos played on the webpages improving the performance vastly.

Using this add-on for Firefox you can read your favorite article with 20 annoying flash advertisements on old computer or even on Firefox Mobile.