Posted 02/23/10 at 10:35:38 AM by David Murphy

I've spoken of the wonders of Chrome's Google Mail Checker Plus extension before.  If you missed the memo, here's a quick hit: Mail Checker Plus drops a little icon next to your address bar that gives you a frequent update as to how many unread messages are in your Gmail account.  You'd think that was it, given the simplicity of what said extension has to do.  However, Google Mail Checker Plus dumps a ton of options into your lap for complete and total customization of this little icon and its functionality, including the ability to drop a preview window that gives you a quick glance as to what said emails actually are, as well as complete color controls and "always-on" SSL connectivity.

Great, eh?  But frequent users of Google's services will note that there's more than just Gmail to worry about.  What's going on in your Google Reader feed?  Any new messages come through Google Voice?  What the heck is Wave and how many unread messages do you have on your watery messaging service?

That's where the simplicity of the extension One Number comes into play.  To find out what this helpful add-on does, and learn all about its extensive configuration options, hit the jump!

Read More

Posted 02/04/10 at 10:00:00 PM by David Murphy

One of Mozilla Firefox's bigger advantages over Google Chrome has just been wiped away and, dare we say, Google Chrome has actually one-upped its rival in terms of overall usability and ease-of-installation. We're referring, of course, to Greasemonkey. You might have heard this name echoed across tech and tweak sites far and wide. As well you should have--the functionality you can achieve by this upgrade to your surfing experience is simply unsurpassed in its depth or scope by any conventional add-on or extension.

It's quite simple, really. You install Greasemonkey to gain access to a gallery of add-ons that benefit your browsing experience just as much as your favorite official "add-ons," if not more. By add-ons, we mean "scripts." In its conventional format, Greasemonkey is a browser add-on that grants you the ability to automatically integrate new Javascript-based modifications to a site whenever you load up the page. You don't have to design these modifications yourself--a huge gallery of scripts (more than 40,000!) have already been written for a wide swath of functions and locations. Consider Greasemonkey scripts to be analogous to extensions for Greasemonkey--itself an extension for your main browser.

Sound good? Because now, Google Chrome users have the ability to tap into Greasemonkey scripts as much as any other browser user. You don't even have to install a separate add-on, since scripts work natively in the browser! 

But here's the catch: not all Greasemonkey scripts work perfectly in Google Chrome. The running estimation is that roughly 20 percent of what's out there is currently broken for Google's browser. That's not great news for a person who's easily frustrated by failure. However, here's where Maximum PC comes into the picture. We've run through a large swath of awesome Google Greasemonkey scripts to achieve two key goals: to see what works and to see which scripts, of the 40,000+ available, are awesome tweaks for your browser. Click the jump for a look at some of the top Greasemonkey scripts you could (or should) be slapping into your Google Chrome browser right now.

Read More

Posted 01/28/10 at 01:00:54 PM by David Murphy

Email encryption is a task that's often misunderstood and frequently confusing. In fact, I can't think of anyone on my list of friends right now--geek or otherwise--who actually encrypts their email. That's not because email encryption is a bad thing. In fact, there are some pretty compelling benefits to being able to conceal the contents of a message. Suppose you have to quickly email a friend or loved one access to your online banking account for some reason. You aren't going to want to just send that information straight into the digital ether. An unhappy coworker or an industrious packet sniffer can pick out the contents of your message and compromise your security in a short amount of time.

You usually have to walk through a ton of hoops to get your hands on powerful email encryption. It's a hodgepodge of certificates, authentications, digital signatures, strings of text exchanged as keys, et cetera. Or, at least, it was. A helpful piece of freeware called Comodo SecureEmail is attempting to simultaneously reduce the headache and maximize the benefit of email encryption. I'm proud to report that it's super-easy to use so long as you know how to work your way around a typical configuration screen. More importantly, it's a great way to set up the encryption handshake between you and new email contacts without rendering you lifeless from all the different options and authentications.

Click the jump to check out Comodo SecureEmail's features!

Read More

Posted 01/25/10 at 02:45:43 PM by David Murphy

It's difficult to envision a life without email. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. Suffice, digital messaging is just a fact of geek life that we all have to deal with on a daily basis. Whether your inbox gets flooded with messages like the Nile during rainy season, or it's barren as one of those outback wastelands that Bear Grylls likes to visit, you probably aren't using your email client of choice to its fullest potential.

That's ok. Neither was I before undertaking the research for this week's open-source and freeware roundup. But now that I have seen the light, as it were, I would never go back to the ol' vanilla installations of Outlook, Thunderbird, Gmail, or whatever one's particular email utility of choice happens to be.  There are just too many interesting ways to tweak and alter the normal email experience to better enhance your ability to read, organize, and shuffle your messages.

That's kind of "the big point" of the roundup this week--making your email work better for you. Click the jump, and I'll show you five apps and utilities for taking your email processing to the next level!

Read More

Posted 01/20/10 at 12:15:41 PM by David Murphy

Whenever you want to download a file in Firefox, you get a little gremlin tagging along for the ride. He's a helpful little monster, and his eerie resemblance to a common "download window" allows you to quickly see the status of, pause, and cancel your file transfers as you see fit. Easy as cake! Simple as can be! Insert more similes here! Seriously, how could one really improve a pop-up window whose sole purpose is to tell you how much time you have left on your download, only to scurry away into your browser's back pocket once the file is done?

I just gave you a clue. But this isn't a Sherlock Holmes mystery, so I'll jump straight to the big spoiler. Your download window in Firefox doesn't have to be a pop-up element that rests overtop your browser. In fact, this can be kind of annoying. Given that Firefox is all about the tabbed browsing, it makes much more sense to pull the download window out of the airspace and chain it to its own individual page amongst your plethora of open tabs. You can't do this via Firefox natively, and that's where this week's Firefox Addon of the Week comes into play.

Click the jump to discover this week's pick!

Read More

Posted 04/13/09 at 05:05:23 PM by Andy Salisbury

Google, never one to sit idly by while there are small improvements to be made on their own web-based email client, announced this week that they would be releasing a new, experimental feature that would allow users to insert images into an email rather then sending them as attachments.

The new feature, aptly named “Inserting images,” will allow users to send email messages with inline images that show up at an exact, user-defined location inside the body of the message. Once you enable the feature in the Labs tab in Gmail’s settings, you’ll be all set to go. So be sure to check it out and let us know what you think!

Read More

Posted 04/02/09 at 05:06:29 PM by Andy Salisbury

The Internet is known as a great setting to exchange well-constructed arguments and thoughtful debate. YouTube, however, rarely houses either of these things, and that’s why two Firefox developers have created OpinionCloud, a simple addon that lets you quickly analyze the comments on a video without having to drag through page after page of mindless keyboard smashing.

Now, I’m not saying that every person that has ever commented on a video on YouTube is a neanderthal (though, it is awfully close). I’m saying that while YouTube features a function that lets users hear their own comments before they post them, there’s still plenty one word quips and streams of anger that make their way onto the video sharing site. So, with OpinionCloud you can quickly see what the active YouTube community is saying about a video, without having to sift through all the garbage! And, as an added bonus, if you see a word that catches your eye in the cloud, you can click it and see who used that word.

According to the official page, the addon indexed 9 million YouTube comments to help build its own dictionary of slang terms and phrases, and this number grows each time someone uses it. So, if you think this is for you, be sure to check it out here.

Read More