The Abode of the Freaky Genious: Today's Special

Hi People,

We'll I'm back after a long time. I have decided to dedicate my today's post to my all time Favorite's List. This List encapsulates (or atleast tries to ;) ) my all time favorites.

My Favorite Browser:

FIREFOX Rocks!!!! We'll no points on guessing correctly the winner in this category, Firefox wins Hands Down.

This browser is a clear winner because of its ease of use. It is expandable mainly due to the brainy little sweet nothings incorporated into it called as Extensions.

Extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to
Mozilla applications like Firefox. They can add anything from a toolbar
button to a completely new feature. They allow the application to be customized
to fit the personal needs of each user if they need additional features,
while minimizing the size of the application itself.

The best part about this browser is the inbuilt stability that comes with Open Source Software. It is as stable as a bull, and as gracefull as an Arabian Horse.

A very good tutorial step-by-step article on how to install, configure and use Firefox is located on The Open Source Articles' Introduction to Firefox Page which can be found here.

You can download firefox from the Firefox Central Page here.

A List of the Most Popular Firefox Extensions can be found here.

A List of the Most Popular Firefox Themes can be found here.

A List of the Most Popular Firefox Plugins can be found here.

Firefox Extensions: As talked about before Extensions are nothing but small additions which add new functionality to the software. This is a nifty feature which helps in improving stability to the software.. Instead of bundling all the functionalities into one single file, what they do is add it to the software at run-time. so if in case there is a problem with a particular functionality or feature, then that feature/functionality itself can be simply removed or disabled till in the future a patch is made available.

This is more convinient rather than removing or not using the entire package itself.

Now that you all have been enlightened a bit as to what exactly extensions are lets get into the main issue of my favorite extensions.

Greasemonkey - Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ("user scripts") to any web page to change its behavior. In much the same way that user CSS lets you take control of a web page's style, user scripts let you easily control any aspect of a web page's design or interaction. A list of greasemonkey user scripts can be found at Userscripts.org which boasts of a collection of over 2 Million (2,000,000) Nifty Scripts.
Adblock Plus - Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them. Right-click on a banner and choose "Adblock" from the context menu - the banner won't be downloaded again. Or click Adblock Plus icon in the toolbar to see all elements of the page and block the banners. You can use filters with wildcards or even regular expressions to block complete banner factories.
DownThemAll! - DownThemAll! is a download management tool that is fully integrated into firefox. Once installed the interface is quite simmilar to that of the popular Download Accelerator Plus. So if you have used DAP before you'll simply love this Extension.
Fireftp - FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers. The latest version is 0.94.

New in Version 0.94:
Added ability to keep directories in sync
Greatly improved Directory Diff
Greatly improved Drag and Drop support
Greatly improved Cut and Paste

Also recently new (since version 0.90):
Added support for IPv6 connections
Added Hash Computation (in Properties)
Added Toolbar button
Added Import/Export
Added Save Temporary Accounts
Added Create File
And fixed crashing on uploads for all platforms!
Performancing - Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right in your Firefox browse and lets you post to your blog easily. You can drag and drop formatted text from the page you happen to be browsing, and take notes as well as post to your blog.

Performancing for Firefox was developed by Performancing.com, the worlds largest organization of professional bloggers.

The file itself was written by Jed Brown, and coordinated by Nick Wilson, both of Performancing LLC.
Google Preview - This nifty little Extension inserts preview images (thumbnails) of web sites and Amazon products into the Google and Yahoo search results pages. This lets you like of you know "see" the web-page before you see it.
Gmail Notifier - As the name suggests, if you have a Gmail Account then this tool updates you with the current status of the mail you are receiving in that account.

Favorite Email Client: Again here as I am a Open Source Freak I go the open source way with Thunderbird winning the category.

Simple to use, powerful, and customizable, Thunderbird is a full-featured email application. Thunderbird supports IMAP and POP mail protocols, as well as HTML mail formatting. Easily import your existing email accounts and messages. Built-in RSS capabilities, powerful quick search, spell check as you type, global inbox, deleting attachments and advanced message filtering round out Thunderbird's modern feature set.

Some of its popular features include:

Built-in Junk Mail Features - Each email you receive passes through Thunderbird's leading-edge junk mail filters. Each time you mark messages as spam, Thunderbird improves its filtering so you can spend more time reading the mail that matters. Thunderbird will also use your mail provider's spam filters to keep junk mail out of your inbox.
Anti-Phishing Protection - Thunderbird protects you from increasingly common email scams—also known as “phishing”—which try to fool you into handing over your passwords and other personal information. Thunderbird will tell you when it thinks a message might be a scam.
Advanced Security - Thunderbird provides enterprise and government grade security features including S/MIME, digital signing, message encryption, support for certificates and security devices. Attachments are never run without your express permission, protecting you from many worms and viruses.
Automatic Updates - The new Software Update feature makes it easy to get the latest security and feature updates to Thunderbird. Thunderbird automatically downloads these small updates in the background and prompts you when they are ready to be installed.
Customisability - Select new button controls for your toolbars, install extensions to add new features, or change the look of your browser with themes—the way Thunderbird looks and works is under your control.

You can get your copy of ThunderBird from here.

Favorite Messaging Systems:

Yahoo! Messenger simply becasue it gives the best IM experience on the planet that I have come across.. You name a feature it has it. Be it conferencing, voice chat features, PIM. Best website integration I have come across. get your Yahoo! notes, mail, alarms, games, blog(360*), info and updates all seamlessly through Y! Messenger... To add to it they have now added support to add MSN Members into your yahoo client itself. so no more shifting between to clients. Just junk the other one... Another nifty feature that people do not use are nt more known to is the capability to send files via IMs that too upto sizes of 1 GB. It is more stable too. though the current beta does have some glitches and does act up sumtimes... but over all is far more better in features and usablity than any other IM client currently in the market.

Favorite Websites:

Search:
- Google - No surprises here... google is not the best search engine on the internet. Be it Blog Search - Find blogs on your favorite topics, a host of Web Search Features, Language Tools. It helps us search for a variety of things like Images, News, Google Group posts, Scholarly Papers, Book Texts. The list is virtually endless. The innovative way in which Google has evolved itself over the years is simply amazing. There is therefore no challenge to it as a search engine... however with the advent of its free email service Gmail it has completely revolutionised the way people check e-mail....
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