Imagine the following situation. You’ve spent half an hour in your favourite webmail client, meticulously writing an email, making sure that it is completely word-perfect. After reading it over for the third time, you decide it’s ready and you anxiously press the send button. Just as you breath a sigh of relief, “Error: Cannot connect to the server!” What?! Quick click back! The form is EMPTY! Aaaaaarrrrrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhhhhh! This is where Lazarus comes to the rescue.

Lazarus: Form Recovery continuously encrypts and stores everything you write as you type it. A simple user interface allows you to quickly bring back any content you lost due to a server error, browser crash, or inadvertently hitting the back button. All it takes is a single click. The current version includes 2048-bit RSA and 256-bit AES hybrid encryption, so you can be sure your data stays secure.

Lazarus works on ordinary web forms, WYSIWYG editors, and even AJAXified comment boxes, and will save you from pretty much any given server, browser, or connection problems that might otherwise cause you to lose your work, or that really pithy blog comment you struggled on for over an hour.

It’s not the kind of addon that you use (or even think about) every day, but when you need it, Lazarus will be there. Just don’t forget you installed it, because it won’t be as helpful once you throw your laptop out of the window. Check out the info page, or simply:

Yes, shh, I can hear you. No need to yell at the internets. I will tell you which addons make up the amazing collection that keeps me firmly rooted. Rather than one giant post though, I’ll focus on a single addon per post over the next few weeks. Keep this page bookmarked as I’ll update it as more posts appear.

My Top Firefox Addons

• Xmarks – Bookmarks and password synchronisation
• Lazarus – Automated form recovery

Every time I install Firefox on a new machine, I go through and add every one of the above addons. Until Chrome can provide alternatives for most of them, I can’t see myself switching. Of course as always, I could be wrong? Is Chrome already the next best thing, or have I missed some addons which would transform my world?

Alas, no

Paul Graham may have saved the world from spam back in 2002, but where is he now that my inbox is being bombarded from all of the random websites that I once signed up for?

image: niallkennedy/Flikr

The Problem

Websites all over the internet require you to register if you want to comment on a blog, upload a photo, or super poke your Aunty. Each one of these sites gives you the ability to “opt out”, but only after you search until the end of the internet for the option. I’m usually pretty good at this, but you try unsubscribing from WheresWally.com! And once you do find it, there’s those websites that just choose to ignore you. It’s an all too common problem, but what can a simple guy like me do? After all, I’m just one person…

The Solution

Mailinator is an instant throwaway email inbox that you can use as an alternative to your regular account.

• Simply make up a random email address @mailinator.com when you sign up to those pesky websites.
• Go to www.mailinator.com and use your made up address to check your inbox.
• Open the email you receive and confirm “your account”

The emails will only last for a few hours, and will automatically delete themselves. It’s wise to choose a fairly unique address, because you wouldn’t be the first person to think of using “test”. And obviously you definitely should not use it for personal information, because it’s not secure in the slightest!

There’s lots of bonus features if you check out their FAQ, including address aliases (so that you can prevent the sender knowing the location of your inbox), and the ability to subscribe to your inbox via RSS. Aside from keeping your inbox clean, you could use it in development for testing your email/signup systems.

With over 25 million emails being received per day, Mailinator is standing strong in the wake of its popularity. Next time you need to post a question to a forum, or sign up to order some of those *cough* pills, save your inbox, and let them eat spam!

http://www.findwaldo.com/

Flickr is almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world.

As I followed the “Magical Feature Tour”, I continuously asked myself, “Why on Earth are all my photos in Facebook?!”

Ok, so that really is a rhetorical question. The power of social networking is huge, and to get anyone to check out another site it would have to be a pretty amazing photo of me exposing Hannah Montana’s real identity. (Sorry folks, I’m not that lucky!) So we have to live with Facebook’s flaws, including the lack of automatic tagging and low resolution images. The real problem though isn’t the photos I upload, but other people’s photos of me.

Back in the olden days, when someone took a photo of me on their Sony Mavica camera, they’d just whip out the floppy and I’d take a copy. As technology advanced and you could take more than 10 photos a night, we progressed to sharing the weekend’s snaps on a compact disk. It worked great, and means I still have those photos of me dressed up as Elvis from when I was 16. (Yes, this is full resolution!)

So what are my options today? I could email all of my friends and ask them to email the photos back to me one by one. That’d take waaaayyy too long, and I don’t necessarily want to have that level of contact with some of my Facebook friends. I could go through every photo, right click, Save Image As…, etc, but that doesn’t sound like my idea of a fun evening!

Well I’ve discovered FacePAD, a Firefox Add-on which is a Facebook album downloader. Once you install it (making sure you have default download location configured for Firefox), you just right click on a link to an album and choose “Download Album with FacePAD”.

The extension will whiz into action, and download each of the photos in the album. UPDATE: So it turns out it only downloads the photos on the first page of the album, and you have to repeat the right click action for each subsequent page. The files will be in your preconfigured download directory, helpfully named with random numbers, and placed in the middle of the rest of your files.

Mmm yeah, it’s pretty rough. Instead of asking for donations, perhaps the developer could spend some of his time cleaning things up a bit. However it does what I need, and I now have a simpler way of getting a copy of my embarrassing memories. I’m not sure that it’s going to be enough to motivate me to do it regularly, but is there anything else I can do?

What is Google Buzz?

Well I’m glad you asked, otherwise it’d be pointless explaining it!

Built right into Gmail, Google Buzz is a social networking slash near-realtime aggregator. Or for my mother is reading, it’s like a Facebook from Google. Basically, whenever you log into your email account, there’ll be a page that shows you all the recent updates from people you follow. These updates can be in the form of status updates, links, photos or other rich media.

Instead of yet another social network hub that nobody can be bothered using because it’s deserted, Buzz pulls the updates from a number of existing sites. This solves the classic chicken and egg problem, making the service instantly useful. While the concept itself isn’t new (with services like friendfeed on the scene), Buzz has the advantage of building on the existing Gmail user base. According to the Official Gmail Blog, tens of millions of people have tried out the service in the first 48 hours alone!

I’ve heard there are privacy issues?

When you first sign in, you’ll be prompted to choose a list of people to follow based on your most commonly emailed contacts. Only a few days after the release, this prompt replaces the original behaviour of automatically following these contacts. The problem was that the people you follow can be publicly visible, and this was seen as a privacy risk that exposes the people you most commonly email. Google said “Oops!” and have since changed the behaviour, but not before receiving criticism from a number of sources.

Well what can it connect to?

As of today, Buzz is integrated with Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, YouTube, Google Reader shared items, and Google Chat status updates. Or if you like pictures:

You can even add the RSS feed of any content you publish, with updates being posted straight to your feed! Of course there’s also the typical “Share what you’re thinking” box that you can post Buzz specific statuses, links, or media.

As you may have noticed, there’s no Facebook support. In fact, only 6 of the 206,741,990 websites in the world are connected! But fear not young reader, our hero Google is coming to the rescue with this quote:

Buzz itself is not designed to be a closed system. Our goal is to make Buzz a fully open and distributed platform for conversations. We’re building on a suite of open protocols to create a complete read/write developer API.

Ding ding ding! That’s the “open” bell ringing, which is what we developers love to hear.

What can’t it do?

Buzz is great at aggregating your content in one convenient place, creating a conversation of comments and likes between followers. Just like other aggregators (such as Google Reader), this conversation doesn’t get back to the publishers, effectively breaking the feedback loop. This deprives publishers of useful feedback or motivation (in the case of small time bloggers like me). It’s a core problem with web 2.0.x, and Matt Haughey’s blog is an excellent discussion on the topic.

How do I get started?

This is as easy as a nice slice of cherry pie!

1. Log into your Gmail account, and click the Buzz logo on the left (under the inbox link).
2. Next choose the people you want to follow.
3. Connect to the sites you want to access.
4. Start Buzzing! (I think I’ve just coined a new verb!)

For those inclined, there’s plenty to read over at the Buzz homepage, and don’t forget to check out Buzz on your phone. Time will be the ultimate test, but I expect Buzz to common place in conversations of the future. What do you think about all the Buzz?

Gravatars are globally recognised avatars (the original image kind), that follow you around the internet. You can sign up to the service for free, upload your chosen image, and it will automatically appear on a number of sites. The comments you make on all WordPress powered blogs (such as this one) support Gravatars by default, thanks to Automattic’s acquisition in 2007. That’s just the start, with a growing awareness leading to an explosion of support, including:

• WordPress.com
• Stack Overflow
• uhh…
• And more!

It’s pretty cool signing up to a site and seeing your face (even if it is cartoonised). As a user it’s a great, simple, no downsides service that makes surfing (is that word even used anymore) the world wide web cooler. As a web developer, you’ve got no excuse for not implementing it in your sites. It’s dead easy, and means you don’t need to mess around with your own profile pic system. You have a lot of control, including setting a rating to censor inappropriate images, change the size of the images, and the choice of default image categories for the users who haven’t woken up yet.

Identicons

MonsterIDs

Wavatars

The process basically involves creating an MD5 hash (helpful online tool) of the user’s email address. You then request the image from the Gravatar server with a simple HTTP get request. So for example, the following request retrieves my Gravatar with a size of 80 by 80 pixels, rated G, and users Wavatars as the default.

You can read all about it on the developer site, as well as reference implementations for a number of different languages. And don’t limit yourself to just the web, with Gravatar’s popping up on the desktop too!

So draw a crazy cartoon head of yourself, and create your Gravatar today!

The main problem with bookmarks that has existed since they were born, is the issue of keeping them organised. These days I use multiple computers, with a number of different browsers, and my bookmarks get out of control. Why would anyone want to use bookmarks anymore? In his post titled “Do We Still Need Bookmarks?“, Jono answers this question with these insightful use cases:

The Todo List. “I want to look at this, but not right now.” Someone gave me a link to a cool video about robots, but I don’t want to watch it right now, because I’m in the middle of something. Or, there’s a web form I need to fill out, but I don’t have the information I need yet. I bookmark the page because there’s an action I want to take later.

Sharing. “Oh man, this is funny!” This time, I found the cool robot video, and I want to show it to someone. I found a hilarious picture, or a news article that proves I was right in that argument we had a week ago. Either way, the value is in the sharing. I bookmark it so that later on I can give the link to others.

Frequently Used. “I want to get back here fast.” The page where I view my bank account status, the central documentation page for the project I’m working on, or a hub from which I often start surfing. I bookmark it because I expect to return often and I want to get there fast.

The Research Collection. “This fits right in to something I’m working on.” I’m a history teacher, preparing a lesson plan, and I’m collecting resources about World War 1. Or, I’m a political blogger, and I’m collecting links about all the ways my Least Favorite Politician has screwed things up. I bookmark pages because I want to add them to my growing collection of data on a certain topic.

This is exactly how I use my bookmarks, as well as everyone I know. We’re all just stuck copying our bookmarks from one computer to another and importing into the various browsers we use. What else can we do? Call Captain Planet and the Planeteers? No, they’re too busy fighting Dr. Blight and Looten Plunder. What we need is Xmarks!

Formally known as Foxmarks, this service lives in the cloud and performs automatic synchronization of bookmarks between all of your computers and browsers. What evolved as a Firefox Add-on, Xmarks now supports the top 4 leading browsers today with a range of plugins and native applications. As it’s in the cloud you have the benefit of your bookmarks being backed up and available wherever you have internet access.

“It sounds ok, but I’m not convinced,” a random reader might say. Well that’s just the start, look at this impressive list of features:

• A simple web interface to access and organise your bookmarks.
• The ability to define different profiles for home, work, etc., to filter which bookmarks are available where.
• Secure sync of stored passwords between when you use Xmarks with Firefox.
• Mobile bookmarks are supported with a special mobile interface directly in your browser.
• The website has a cool blue colour scheme (I like blue).

Now to be honest, the mobile interface isn’t very strong. It’s not a genuine replacement for native bookmarks, but apparently there’s an iPhone application in the works.

Xmarks is my number 1 favourite browser plugin ever. The first thing I do when I use a new computer or browser is download the appropriate plugin, and pull down my bookmarks and passwords. The process usually takes less than a minute, and I have an exact copy of my toolbar links and all of my saved login information. Any changes I make will be synchronized immediately, which makes it perfect for the “Todo List” style of links. For the most important things I’ll place them on the toolbar so that I see them right away when I get home. Best of all, it works over HTTP so you can use Xmarks behind a proxy.

A year ago I would have agreed that bookmarks were dying off. With the power of the cloud, Xmarks brings back bookmarks, big time!