My Top 6 Internet Time-Savers

As a person who is online all the time, and seemingly ALWAYS short on time to do everything I want to do, I am always on the lookout for tools to make my life easier, more convenient and fun. Here is a collection of tools I have found and use daily.

1. FoxMarks. As a user of Firefox, I would not be without this plug-in. Foxmarks Bookmarks Synchronizer automatically synchs your bookmarks among multiple computers. When you add a site to your favorites, it works as it always does. Periodically, though, Foxmarks will synch your bookmarks with their servers (the interval is up to you). You can not only access your bookmarks from any internet-enabled computer by logging into your account at the Foxmarks website, but you can also automatically synch your bookmarks with other computers using Firefox. I use it all the time to keep bookmarks synched between my laptop and desktop.
2. Google Reader. My new favorite blog reader. I was using BlogBridge, which is a program which runs locally under Windows. BlogBridge is nice, but it is quite convenient using the web to read your feeds. With Google Reader, the interface is pretty slick (thanks to AJAX). I also like how I can get an instant summary view of the different tags/folders I set up. So, for example, if I want to see what the buzz is in internet marketing, I just check out my internet marketing folder and it will show all the recent activity in my subscribed blogs in that category. Using the internet as the reader, then, means I can access my feeds from anywhere. Even on my cell phone.
3. Firebug. As a web developer, I often am working with code online, sometimes on existing websites. Firebug is a Firefox add-on which allows me to analyze a site easily right from the web browser. You can inspect the DOM of the document, easily find which CSS elements are affecting a particular thing on your page, debug javascript errors, etc. I love this add-on and use it almost daily.
4. StumbleUpon. Alright, I’ll be honest…this one probably shouldn’t go under the category of time saver. In fact, you can waste quite a bit of time with this thing, but this is one of my favorite plug-ins for Firefox. It uses the StumbleUpon community to organize the web and then allow you to “channel surf” the internet. You define your areas of interest and then you can use the toolbar to randomly visit sites others have rated and placed in your interest category. Its a great way to find great websites you didn’t know about, in addition to blowing away an entire weekend surfing the net aimlessly.
5. Live Pagerank. This simple little Firefox add-on allows you to display the Google page rank of a website of the current URL in your browser in the bottom right corner. This plug-in, though simple, is very handy when tracking what Google is doing with your website as well as what your competition might be doing right or wrong that affects their pagerank.
6. Cloudmark Desktop. This is an add-on tool for Outlook and Outlook Express that WILL take your spam problem down to almost nothing. Now, it IS a subscribed service. I pay only $3.99/month for it, but considering the amount of time it saves me, its money well spent. And, it beats the hell out of the built-in filters in any email program. It uses the community of users to dynamically train the filter, so it will be trained to combat most spam right after installation. I heard through the grapevine that they are actively working on a version which will work with Thunderbird, but unfortunately it does not work with Thunderbird as of this post. But, Outlook users will be happy with it. And I’ll admit straight-up that this add-on is one of the primary reasons I continue to use Outlook over Thunderbird.

Well, that’s my list. All of these are tried and true by myself and I use each one of them daily. For me, they’re must-have’s. So, what are your’s?

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