Best Firefox Add-On Redux

Once I was introduced to the world of Web 2.0 I couldn’t stop.

I got a random email about a Firefox Add-on called “Stumble Upon”. I thought it would just be a kind of dumb link aggregator – a way of discovering the next dumb YouTube video or gimmick website. The idea behind Stumble Upon is that you will never actually go out and find all the amazing websites and resources that pertain to your interests and hobbies yourself. You depend on friends for that. Stumble Upon replaces your friends quite handily by surveying some of your interests – there are over a hundred specific categories to choose from in music, sports, news, technology, careers, and hobbies – and creating a toolbar at the top of your Firefox that allows you to “stumble upon” relevant, peer-tested websites.
Like cooking? Find Cooking By Numbers, a site that profiles what you have in your fridge and tells you what you can make from it. Like theoretical physics? Find TenthDimension.com and discover the meaning of dimensions 4 thru 10.

Basically, Stumble Upon is the reluctant procrastinator’s nightmare. A toolbar button just sits there at the top of my browser, begging to take me to the next life-changing website. It’s cool to use if you have downtime in the middle of a project, or if you’re sitting at your desk waiting for your life to slowly end. But don’t take my word for it! Check it out!

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Shielding Yourself From Your Corporate Overlords

I had a little extra time the other day and I decided to check out some of the crazy add-ons for the Mozilla Firefox application. (If you don’t already know it, Mozilla’s Firefox is an internet browser like Safari or Internet Explorer that is open source, meaning new capabilities can be created and shared by a community of users).

There were some cool extensions. One made it so I could quit and save my previous browsing session. Another made it so my entire browser could have a Biblical-theme.

But the best and most dangerous extension by far is the Adblock Plus extension. This add-on not only blocks pop-ups, it prevents advertisements from loading on any website you view. Myspace, blogs, and news sites, all with faster loading times and no annoying ads giving you cognitive dissonance.

But non-product web-based enterprises make all their money through ads. Sites that charge for some content, such as the New York Times, are increasingly allowing free access because of ad revenue. So if we can Tivo out ads on our internet browsers, the potential for robust web content, which comes with good funding, could be severely compromised. Which may not be such a bad thing, considering the poor quality of that robust web content. Case in point, this blog. (Note: Please click one of the ads at the right! I make 10 cents a month off of those!)

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