But now Mozilla is also coming to the game to replace the blank page with something useful to enhance your browsing experience with “Cognitive Shield”. The cognitive shield will some place work similar to Google chrome it will keep track of your recent and frequently visited pages but instead of filling up the blank page with thumbnails it will show you a dull set of icons for those pages. If you don’t take your mouse over the blank screen there is chance you might not notice but if you do it would show you color full favicons of your most frequently visited websites. Unlike Google Chrome you can also disable this behavior by clicking the asterisk in the bottom left corner of the screen.

To test the prototype you can simply download from here or read more about it on Mozilla’s blog.

What is Song Bird?
Songbird is an opensource music player build on Mozilla technology, VLC Player & SQLite. Purely based on Mozilla’s Gecko engine, the same engine that powers Firefox. Like Firefox, Songbird allows for tabbed browsing, themes and addtions of add-ons to customize the extendibility of your media player. So far packed with more then 90 Add Ons you can customize SongBird as you want.

“Songbird promises to be the Firefox of media players” according to Aaron Boodman, Greasemonkey.

SongBird is currently in its early stages but have a very active development teams, this week they released there 1.0 release, powered with an addition in features, performance according to their blog post

• Drastically Faster Search: Searching in Songbird is now anywhere from 10x faster for small libraries to 1000x for large ones.
• Reduced RAM Usage: There’s a 70% reduction in RAM usage when importing and using large (100,000 track) libraries.
• Faster Media Importing: Importing media into Songbird is now 2-4x faster.
• Reduced Startup Times: Large library users (10,000 tracks or more) will notice that Songbird startup times are now twice as fast.
• Efficient Scrolling: Scrolling through your library now uses half the amount of CPU.
• Snappier Sorting: Sorting your library is now 3-4x faster, which adds up to significantly smoother browsing when scrolling and filtering.
• Optimized DB Size: We’ve optimized the database in Songbird and reduced its size by, on average, 60%. This leads to a variety of performance improvements throughout the application.
• Fewer Crashers: We’ve worked hard to identify and fix 11 of the most common crashes in Songbird.

Features of SongBird:

• Mashtapes > Discover Flickr photos, YouTube videos, last.fm biographies, Google news (and more) for the currently playing artist.
• Last.fm scrobbling > Integrated Last.fm support allows you to scrobble, love, and ban your tracks
• Concert Tickets >Discover upcoming shows in your area based on the artists in your library. Event listings powered by Songkick.
• Shoutcast Radio >?Stream music using the integrated SHOUTcast Radio directory.
• Add On’s >Enhance Songbird with community contributed add-ons like MediaFlow or build one of your own.
• Media Importing, add media to songbird by importing from your files , system or iTunes
• Play MP3, FLAC, Vorbis on all platforms, WMP or WMA DRM on windows and AAC and Fairplay on windows or mac
• Create dynamic playlista that automatically update based on criteria you set
• Browse the web with Songbird as it comes with an integrated web browser
• Works on Windows, Linux & Mac
• Multi Language support with over 25 completed languages and growing
• Browse organize and sort and search your media
  

Download Songbird and try it out, also let us know what you think.

Releavent Links:

• SongBird
• Add Ons Songbird
• Why Apple Should be worried about Songbird
• Download.com Songbird
• Wikipedia Songbird

What is youPlayer?

YouPlayer is a firefox Add one that adds a video player right inside your browser. The player has an interface similar to Winamp and support multiple file formats like, mpeg, rm, avi along with video from online video sharing sites like youtube, MetaCafe, MySpace etc.

You can create play list with the player by simply dragging and dropping the files or links into the player and then double click to play the files. A must have plugin to list down videos of your choice into a playlist and then watch them over the browser.

As the player is build inside the browser so with YouPlayer you donot need stop your browsing you can watch videos while you browse the net.

How can it Improve or our Idea
So far the youPlayer only lists a playlist but a major improvement would be saving those play lists and then sharing it with your friends or even digging it along the site.

Which Site do youPlayer support ?
Currently supported sites: Google Video, MetaCafe, MySpace and YouTube. You cal also even drag local files from hard drive into playlist and watch them!

So far 400,000+ downloads!

How does it work ?
Simple first install the plugin from here and then once configured i.e. restart your firefox and start dragging and dropping links of video into the player.

Where should i get it ?

You player is a complete freeware and can be downloaded from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5709 & supports Firefox 2.0 & 3.0.

Make Firefox Address Bar a Google Search Bar

By default the Firefox Address bar is already a Google search bar but it takes you to the first result page that comes up. Although if you would like to you can easily turn your address bar into a Google search box by modifying the firefox configuration. Open the browser in the address bar type about:config. In the filter bar type keyword.URL and there modify the string and replace it with : http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q= save and restart firefox. After this your address bar will become Googles search bar what ever you type will show results from Google.

Using Firefox in Stealth / Incognito Mode (no history no trace)

This feature was initially introduced by IE and seems like now Google just copied it into there new browser considering the face that many people loved it in the name of privacy rather then stealth mode it could be more of a porn mode where non of you browsing history is stored or any record is kept in the browser. In Google’s chrome you can simply open it in Incognito Mode and you browser will go stealth but in Firefox by default this functionality is not avaialable but you can add it with the help of Firefox Plugin Stealthier 1.6.0.

Once installed and enabled Firefox Stealthier will disable Browsing History (also in Address bar), Cookies,  Downloaded Files History, Disk Cache,  Saved Form Information,  Sending of ReferrerHeader and Recently Closed Tabs list thus making your browsing experience without any trace.

Make Firefox Look like Google Chrome

Well not only functional but you can also change the looks of firefox as well, if you have become a die heart fan of Google chrom’s user interface then you can simply deploy that user interface into Firefox with the help of ‘Chrome Packs‘ a Firefox Plugin to make firefox look like Google Chrome.

What really Ubiuquity is ?

According to Mozilla the main goal of Ubiquity is to give users the power to create mashups that can fetch data of there choice with a single command from different websites. It can be a sort of web agent that instead of forcing you to search will get data of your choice from your recommended web properties. With Ubiuquity you can set up commands to manipulate web tasks like mapping, translation, shopping or retrieving entries from Wikipedia, Yelp or Google Maps any many more.

What can i do with Ubiquity ?

If you happen to plan vacation your process of planning would be to first search the list of good vacation spots, then you would find about air fares and available flights, then hotel reservation and compare their price and then of course you want to fetch the map of the location along with pictures of the spot this kind of task can consume allot of your time. For each task you make searches, sort and compare records. But with ubiquit you can simply set up a command line stating ‘vacation’ and create mashup that will fetch data from various websites of your choice including vacation spots, air fares, hotel reservation, and Google maps of the location with just one command line ‘vacation’ & help you compare and make descions. Thus instead of spending more time on search you can create your own web agent that will perform all such tasks for you.

How to install configure Ubiquity ?

The current version is prototype and is available at Mozilla website for free download, you can follow their tutorial to install the application here.

Mac Users > You’ll need to install Growl. This is a Mac OS X system extension that applications can use to display unobtrusive transparent messages. Ubiquity uses Growl notifications to show you the output of commands and tell you about errors.

Windows Users > On Windows (XP and later), you don’t need to install anything special, as Ubiquity will use the operating system’s built-in “toaster”-style pop-up messaging.

Linux Users >On Linux, we don’t have a good messaging system yet. If you have a suggestion for how Ubiquity can display messages on Linux (preferably in a way that will work on all major distros and window managers), please tell us about it.

Source Mozilla Labs, Ubiquity Tutorials

Still if you want you can change the theme and a get a new look you would need:

1. Mozilla Firefox ( a free web browser)
2. GreaseMonkey or Stylish (firefox plugins)

If you don’t want to use Mozilla Firefox you can change the orkut theme with Internet Explorer as well just install

1. Internet Explorer 7
2. Trixie Plugin for IE

Once you have installed the plugins restart you browser, and then either go to [orkutplus] or go to userscripts install the scripts and start enjoying the themes. Though previously orkut experimented by releasing a theme for Holi an Indian holiday for Indian users only so very soon orkut will be officially launching the ability to chose your own theme.

Well here is the catch nodoubt its easy to recover passwords but its unsafe as well so firstly. So lets how unsafe they can be. To see which passwords you have saved into Firefox simply go to :
Tools >> options >> security >> Show Password
There you will find the URL’s and usernames of all the sites who’s password you have saved in Firefox now to reveal the password simply click on “Show Passwords” and firefox will show you all the passwords. This is good way of recovering your passwords but very unsecure as well as any one using your computer can easily steal all your passwords and you can’t do anything thing about it. But there is a way..

To protect your passwords follow the same path go to :
Tools >> Options >> Security >>
and there you will see a check box asking Change Master Password check it true and a window will open asking you setup a password type your password click ok and close it now if you go back to password recovery location and once you click it to ask to show all passwords it will ask you for the Master Password.

source [firefox facts]

Google has been a great help in that regard and i have been using it for a while, with google you can check the current time of any location around the globe by just typing location of the city or country in the Google search bar e.g. ( time : Paris ) and the result page will come up with the exact time of that location.

Another option for global time check could be with the help of Firefox Plugin, though if you want to keep a very strict eye on the clocks around different regions you can simply install FoxClocks , which lets you keep an eye on clocks around the world by putting up small clocks in your statusbar. You can set you own time formats, color code different clocks move them to toolbar or switch icons for it. FoxClock also comes packed with Zone Picker tree to browse virtually the world’s time zone by country / region or city.

Check out more on FoxClocks or download it

Social Networking Addons for Firefox
1- Facebook Extension for Firefox.
First Comes “Facebook” with an average of above 150 million user subscription, facebook has made its self the no1 social networking website. So the “Facebook toolbar for Firefox” is an essential.

Once installed the Facebook Toolbar brings your facebook life to your browser every time you open up the browser you are logged into facebook, you can search facebook, get notified of the pokes, friends requests and messages you receive. A pop-up will notify when friends update there status, write a note or interact with you on facebook. You can also open your friends sidebar, sort them and keep in touch with them. Apart from that if you run groups or a network on facebook you can share content directly from your browser what else do you need.

An essential facebook extension to keep in touch.

Facebook Toolbar Download , Addons Page

2- Twitter – TwitBin
Are you addicted to twitter just like me ? well if yes then you can add more to twitter, you can answer the question “What are you doing ?” right from your browser, simple download and install TwitBin Send and receive messages to all your fellow twitterholics, right from your firefox browser. While you browse you keep your Twitter alive.

TwitBin Download, Addons Page

3- Social Network Content Sharing – Shareaholic
Share, bookmark and e-mail web pages quickly without leaving your browser.

Shareaholic makes it easy for you to submit the web page you’re on to your favorite sharing or bookmarking service, including: digg, del.icio.us, facebook, friendfeed, google bookmarks, magnolia, mixx, reddit, stumbleupon, tumblr and twitter. You also have the option to e-mail the web page directly to a friend.

Shareaholic Downalod, Addons Page

3- YouTube & Video Sharing Website Add On
Video Download Add on, this add on adds the capability to download any video you see in the web. Download the Add on and then once installed, just right click any video and download. With this ad On you can download videos from YouTube, Metcafe, MSN Soapbox, Yahoo Video and many more.

Video Download Add One, Download, Addons Page

4- Get an Internet Explorer Inside Firefox.
This is the essential for web designers, web developers who have to spend hours after hours fixing the cross browser issues. IE Tab ads a tab and Opens any webpage as IE inside Firefox. The interesting part is it creates its own session and maintains its own history. So far i am not sure which version of IE it opens but my rough guess is IE6.0.

Addons Page

But there are two way to bi pass the download limit by mega upload :

1. Firefox Add-one Megaupload SX.3.2 3.2
   Download Here
   This Add one find free slots from slots from Megaupload for other countries and for United States.All you have to do is download and install this Add one and before you download at Megaupload just enable this add on start the download and switch it off.
2. MegaUpload Country Blocked Killer
   Download Here.
   MegaUpload Country Blocked Killer will bypass the country download slots check and you will get a shot to download your file.This tool is in Spanish, but you can get the menu’s important notes/instructions translated to English by using tools like Google Language Tools. Anyway, I’ve got that covered for you.

Source : BlogsEverything