If you are a web developer, designer, SEO, or do anything web-related, you absolutely should be using Firefox simply because you can download and use some fabulously useful extensions (now called add-ons). Here are my 10 favorite Firefox add-ons, in order of each extension’s usefulness to me.

1. AI Roboform Toolbar for Firefox - I’ve used Roboform for years, and I probably utilize it at least 50 times per day. I use the paid version so that I don’t have to worry about any limits being placed on how many sites’ login info I can store. I have hundreds and hundreds of items stored. I’m sure I could probably delete most of them, but the whole point is that I don’t have time to deal with those kinds of nitpicky details, so I just let Roboform do all the work for me. You can also utilize Roboform as a nifty form filler for things such as directory submissions. Nice.
2. Web Developer - This is the ultimate tool for web developers. It’s got everything but the kitchen sink thrown in and I use it often. There are far too many functions for me to describe in detail, but if you aren’t already using this one (and most of you probably are), and you do any kind of web development work, you absolutely must go see what you are missing. It will literally change your development life.
3. MeasureIt - I use this handy little screen measuring tool several times a week. Need to know if a widget will fit in to your sidebar? Forgotten how wide your sidebar is? Click on MeasureIt, draw a rectangle on your monitor’s screen from one edge of your sidebar to the other, and find out exactly how many pixels wide it is. I own lots of sites, so there’s no way I can store in my memory how wide or tall each piece of site real estate I have available for widgets or ads. So, I just measure the space with MeasureIt. Quick, easy, accurate.
4. SEO for Firefox - Right click on a webpage and find out instantly what SEO information is available about that page, including PR, Google cache date, number and types of backlinks, site age, Alexa rank, and lots more useful info. It ALSO adds all this information to the Google and Yahoo search results for anything you search on. Very powerful stuff. SEOs will use this one a lot!
5. Search Status - Similar to SEO for Firefox, but chock full of other goodies as well. I use this most often to display the PR and Alexa rank in my status bar, but another of my favorite features is that it can display all nofollow’d links on a page in pink. But there’s lots of other info you can quickly grab such as whois info, archive.org data, and much more with a simple click.
6. Adsense Notifier - I don’t know what I would do without my little ticker at the bottom of the browser that shows me how much money I’ve made at any given time from Adsense for the day. Yes, I do know what I would do. I’d be logging into my Google Adsense account umpteem times per day, wasting lots of time. I know, because that’s what I did before Adsense Notifier existed. My eyes glance down at the growing $amount a few hundred times a day, I’d guess.
7. ScreenGrab! - This is a fairly new add-on for me, but it’s already come in handy a few times. If you ever wanted to get a screenshot of an entire web page (no matter how far down it scrolled off-screen), you were out of luck. There was no easy way to accomplish that. Screen Grab! makes it a 2-click process. Click the button, and then click the option you want. The options are: Grab a screenshot of the entire page (this is what I use it for most often), grab a screenshot of the area you’ve highlighted, or grab a screenshot of just what is showing on the screen at the moment. Genius.
8. del.icio.us Bookmarks - If you use del.icio.us, then this little button gives you quick and easy access to your bookmarks. Need to find that color wheel you liked so much in a hurry? Just click the button, type in [color wheel] as the tag search term, and get there fast.
9. Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer - Great for making sure your bookmarks are the same on different computers. In my case, when I occasionally open up my laptop after a few months of it collecting dust, I love knowing that all my bookmarks will be there. It doesn’t matter that I’ve added and deleted bookmarks 50 times on my desktop computer since I last used the laptop, all the changes I’ve made are sync’ed up. Sweet.
10. StumbleUpon - What can I say? How would I EVER fill my bored time without StumbleUpon? I not only find amusing webpages, but I even discover useful things that literally change my world. This probably should have been listed much higher up, since I use it a lot, but I decided it would make me look like all I do is goof off all day, so I put it at the bottom of the list. (Note that I do actually find work-related stuff too).

I have some ideas for some sorely needed, kick-ass Firefox extensions, but I’ll need to think about how to make them happen. If I ever release them, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Technorati Tags: favorite, top 10, firefox, extensions, add-ons, web developers, tools, seo

Original post by DazzlinDonna

Ok, that title is a little sensationalist, I admit, but it wouldn’t surprise me either. Wired is letting people submit things they’ve found via the new Google maps feature, Street View, that um, maybe Google shouldn’t be photographing for all the world to see. If you live in a big city, where Google has been, be afraid. You may have been caught coming out of a strip club, picking your nose, or any of a number of other private things you didn’t really want to share with the entire world. You can also find some links over at Boing Boing, including Google cameras peeking into someone’s living room.

I’m just grateful I live in a teeny tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Not that it would matter much if Google caught me on tape. Everyone in town already knows all my business. That’s the way small towns work.

Original post by DazzlinDonna

Academia has embraced RSS as a means to educate, but scrutinizing how educational institutions are using RSS feeds in their daily routines show RSS is utilized can vary across different industries.

RSS and Academics

Original post by deucetwo

Any good SEO will tell you that keyword research is your very first priority. There are several keyword research tools available. I’ve tried them all, and let you know what I think of them. Today I’m going to focus on what may be the best of the best. Wordze is one of the newest keyword research tools to hit the netwaves.* It’s less than a year old, but it has the flair of an old experienced SEO tool.

Wordze pretty much blows other tools right out of the water because it goes so much farther than any of the others that I’ve tried. It doesn’t just stop at giving you the historical data and KEI. It digs into the competitions’ sites, giving you information on what they are aiming for. It assesses the competition, showing you just how tough it will be to rank for a keyword phrase. You even get to see the average number of links that the top 10 sites are building each month. Other goodies include site age, number of .gov and .edu links, and more info from the top ranked sites for a phrase…and then compare it to its own database of keyword and demographic data to give you the information you need to make decisions.

Keyword research is important, but going that step further, into keyword difficulty analysis (which they call WordRank) is what makes me like this particular tool so much. There’s tons more features such as:

*import keyword lists from other services
*see current top searches
*export in various formats
*manage unlimited projects

You can see details about all the different features by taking the tour.

The combination of good keyword research data, combined with good keyword difficulty analysis data is what makes this one a winner, in my opinion. It’s great to see some innovation in this area.

* Netwaves are like broadcasting’s airwaves, but for the Internet. Yeah, I just made that up. Yay me.

No, this is NOT a paid review. I just finally got around to taking a look at this SEO tool. I did, however, go ahead and sign up for their affiliate program, so those are affiliate links up above.

Original post by DazzlinDonna

After reading some of the comments on this blog from non-sales folk, I’m convinced that there are a fair number of businesspeople who neither like nor respect sales pros – especially the ones working in their own company. That attitude can be a major impediment to getting things done, …

Original post by Sales Podcast Blog

What gives this top-of-the-line Mercedes its appeal, besides its high price tag?

Original post by Renee Houston Zemanski

If you want to prevent employees from leaving to work for a competitor, a noncompete agreement may not be your best bet.

Original post by Geoffrey James

Learn how advertisers and publishers can benefit from Google’s new advertising model that aims to turn ads into action.

Original post by Geoffrey James

Whether you’re looking for something to read while eating lunch or lounging on the beach, these out-of-the-ordinary books will make you excited about getting back to work.

Original post by Geoffrey James

The Google Analytics Web site monitoring service suffered an outage that affected some users for more than 24 hours this week, prompting many to vent on blogs and forums their frustration with the situation and with what they perceived as unresponsiveness on Googles part.

Most affected users reported problems on Tuesday and Wednesday, although some still experienced problems on Friday. In seemingly all cases, users could access their accounts but found that the Analytics dashboard reported significantly reduced or even zero traffic to their sites.

Original post by deucetwo