Wizz RSS is a “feed reader” for anyone who doesn’t like RSS programs or can’t remember to check online readers (like Google Reader or Bloglines). It’s a very accessible alternative and keeps things very simple for the user.

It’s not immediately intuitive, though, for those who are still new to the use of feeds to keep track of their favorite sites. In today’s video, we’ll cover the basics to get you started with Wizz RSS.

If you aren’t using any RSS reader yet, pay attention: You are missing out. If you use your feeds right, it can be one of the greatest time savers you can take advantage of. So please give it a try, for your own sake!

-Garrett

Piclens is an addon for Firefox that allows you to browse popular sites in a fluid 3D context. This may not sound real practical right out the door, but wait ’til you see it in action… if you’re not sold on Firefox yet, you may be after seeing this! This addon is available for both Windows and Mac.

Piclens currently supports:

Get Piclens!

Oh, and let me know how you like the video format, or if you prefer the Youtube.com videos instead. This one is BIGGER!

-Garrett

Click To Play

Anyone who has lost their bookmarks from a computer crash or accidental deletion knows the pain of losing those “blazed trails” on the Internet. Bookmarks help us keep our bearings in the very big world that is the Internet. So, it makes sense that we should not only back them up, but use them to their fullest in today’s web world.Welcome to the world of social bookmarking.You’ve probably heard of “Del.icio.us” and wondered what it was and whether it could be useful for you.

“First, you can get to your bookmarks from anywhere, no matter whether you’re at home, at work, in a library, or on a friend’s computer.

Second, you can share your bookmarks publicly, so your friends, coworkers, and other people can view them for reference, amusement, collaboration, or anything else. (Note that you can also mark bookmarks on del.icio.us as private — only viewable by you — if you like.)

Third, you can find other people on del.icio.us who have interesting bookmarks and add their links to your own collection. Everyone on del.icio.us chooses to save their bookmarks for a reason. You have access to the links that everyone wants to remember. You can see whether two people have chosen to remember a link, or whether it was useful enough for a thousand people to remember — which may help you find things that are useful for you, too.” – Del.icio.us

This method of bookmark-management is quickly becoming the defacto/preferred method for millions of people. Del.icio.us has already provided extensive information in getting set up with your browser (however, I’ll show you a quick visual of the sign up process on the video) so we will move on to the different things you can do with it once you’re ready to go:

Del.icio.us Registration (this will get you set up with an account, browser buttons, and import your bookmarks -if you want-)
Del.icio.us’ Help Page (great information source)

Also, watch the video to see how I prefer to situate Del.icio.us in Firefox (I prefer to use Firefox’s Quickbar and hide Del.icio.us).

What Now?

So, let’s talk about some of the practical uses for Del.icio.us. I will be using the Firefox version for this article, but the IE version is similar.

Tagging a new site:

From now on, when you want to bookmark a site, you will use the tag button.

• URL: Shows the current address.
• Name: The clickable name that will show up in Del.icio.us and in your bookmarks.
• Notes: Good for communicating the nature of this page to others or simply to remind yourself why you liked it.
• Tags: Important! Separated with commas, you can use these keywords to help yourself and others locate this bookmark later.
• Do Not Share: If you check this box, you are the only Del.icio.us user that can access/search this bookmark. Good for private links.

To sort and browse through the bookmarks you have tagged, just click the . More on using this tool can be found here.

Using Del.icio.us to Find New Sites

This is, perhaps the most important function of Del.icio.us, in my opinion. It pulls everyone’s non-private tags, notes, and links together to create a user-based search engine. It won’t replace Google for most types of research but it is perfectly suited for discovering popular sites.

Method 1:

Go to Del.icio.us and type something into the search bar at the top (or just use the quick search in firefox).

I typed in “learn italian” and these were my results:

The “Best” Match is the bookmark that has the best combination of relevance, recency, and number of saves (others who have bookmarked this site).

Further down the list, however, I see a page that has 1,790 saves. While it may not be the “Best” match, it’s probably worth checking out because so many people considered it worth bookmarking.

In this case, it seems that the numbers were right. The BBC site is very cool. The LearnItalianPod “Best” Match was also cool, though.

It’s usually worth checking at least both the “Best” Match and the result with the most saves.

Method 2:

If you simply go to Del.icio.us, on the front page you can see the hottest pages. These pages are recent and have been rapidly accumulating saves, so it’s a good “buzz” board.

To the right of the “hotlist” you can see some of the tags that are experiencing unusual activity:

On both the “hotlist” and the “tags to watch” areas, simply click one of the tags to get instant results for just that topic. Here’s what I got after clicking “gtd” (“get things done”):

This is a great way to discover new and useful sites or pages on the net.

Sharing Your Links With Others:

Although all your non-private links are shared with everyone already, I’m assuming you might like to specifically share some links with friends or family. Here are the two most common ways to share your links.

Go to Del.icio.us and click “your bookmarks” to see all of your bookmarks. You can link someone there simply by copying the address at the top of your browser. For instance, mine is http://del.icio.us/justaleaf. Anyone can view this page and see my non-private bookmarks.

If you’d rather link someone to a specific set of links, just click the tag that contains those links (ie: “design”) and copy the new address instead. http://del.icio.us/JustaLeaf/design <— the tag is appended to the address.

Whether you are on a account page or looking at a specific tag in that account, you can also add it to your RSS reader (or your friends could) which will alert you whenever new links are added to this list.

Beyond This

Del.icio.us is a very powerful service and there are many, many, ways to utilize it. You can have your links dynamically display on your blog or website, streamline del.icio.us (adventurous only!), view cloud views of your bookmarks, and more. You can also make the interface easier on the eyes, as in the screenshots above, by using this greasemonkey script.

Stay tuned for my next article and video episode. For more tips and tricks, sign up for the Official Tech-Bites.com Newsletter! You will be the first to know whenever I release new articles and videos and receive special subscriber only articles and product reviews.

Sign-up today!

Part 1

Click To Play

Part 2

Click To Play

Most websites are built to accommodate the “masses”. Yes, we are just a face in the crowd to most web designers! It’s time to take things back into our own hands and customize the web for ourselves!

Greasemonkey is a local Javascript plugin for Firefox (and some other browsers like Opera, Safari, and Flock) that allows the user to edit the websites they are viewing through the use of scripts.

Say what? You don’t know how to write scripts (code that changes part of the website you are viewing)?

Well that’s not a problem with the active Greasemonkey community. There are already thousands of free scripts you can download at will . You can do everything from removing ads and changing the look ‘n feel of a site to adding functionality or speed to another (like ebay!).

First things first.

Installation:

You can install the Greasemonkey Extension here.

If you are running another browser, you may have to do more work to find a way to install it. Here are a few popular browsers that can run Greasemonkey Scripts (not officially supported):

• Opera (already compatible!)
• Safari
• Flock

Getting Scripts:

Once you have installed Greasemonkey in Firefox, you can start installing scripts to your heart’s content.

A couple great resources are:
UserScripts.org
LifeHacker.com

You will probably see user scripts all over the place though, now that you are looking for them. They are more widespread than you might think.

Managing Scripts:

You can turn Greasemonkey on and off by clicking the little monkey face on the bottom-right of your browser.

Turn individual scripts on and off (or add/remove) by right-clicking the monkey and clicking “Manage User Scripts”.

Recommended Scripts:

I highly recommend the Better Gmail add-on for Firefox for Gmail users, which is actually just a collection of user scripts. (Firefox only)

As for individual scripts… there are just SO many! Here are a few though that I really find helpful day-to-day:

• Profanity Filter – Substitutes swear words for sillier words (ie: “pile of poo!”). Actually very fun to have!
• Ebay Ad/Iframe Remover – eBay just got a major slow down by adding many larger and animated ads. This blocker will ensure eBay.com performs well in Firefox again.
• Mailto: Compose in Gmail – Puts a little gmail icon near email addresses on the web you can click to automatically begin composing in Gmail (rather than a default email program).

Besides these though, head over to userscripts.org and run searches on your favorite sites. Most popular sites will have scripts written for them that improve them in some way. Google and Yahoo! sites get particular attention. Once you start using Greasemonkey, I’m sure you will find it to be essential to your browsing experience.

Stay tuned for my next article and video episode. For more tips and tricks, sign up for the Official Tech-Bites.com Newsletter! You will be the first to know whenever I release new articles and videos and receive special subscriber only articles and product reviews.

Sign-up today!