Internet
CategoryHow to automatically translate Skype chat messages
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Skype is a wildly popular VOIP and chat program used both by millions of users every day. With such wide-spread and international adoption, especially in the corporate world, it’s a little surprising that Skype lacks the capability of translating conversations from a foreign language into your native tongue. The global economy is a clichéd term but also rings true. It isn’t uncommon to have to converse with international business partners today. Obviously this can be a challenge for most of us not blessed with a diverse language background! Clownfish is a simple and free utility … Continue Reading
Downloading all YouTube videos of a user, playlist, or channel
YouTube – the great time-sink of our generation. Many an hour is lost each day by millions of users watching content online, specifically on YouTube. Logistically it’s impossible to consume all the content you wish to watch – with playlists or user subscriptions it’s easy to inundate your senses with days worth of quality content. It’s not hard for it to quickly become impractical to view all the media while online. While all smartphones have the ability to view YouTube videos, if you depend on this feature and don’t have an unlimited data plan then … Continue Reading
Listing all modified Firefox about:config preferences
One of Firefox’s awesome strengths is its vast manner at which it can be tweaked or configured. The browser extension model is no longer unique to Firefox but it still remains arguably the best. Chances are, if you’ve used Firefox long enough you’ve also dabbled in about:config - the under-the-hood preferences system where Firefox can really be customized to fit your needs. While not for the faint of heart, about:config is still relatively painless to dive into. If you heavily rely on the array of about:config changes you’ve made over the years you no doubt … Continue Reading
Enabling two-factor authentication on your Google Account
Two-factor authentication greatly enhances the security of any system behind it. Generally, the concept of two-factor authentication can be simplified by the phrase something you know and something you have. Logically, something you know is your account username and password – the foundation of even the most simplistic security system. Expanding, something you have means a physical item. Clearly the necessity of a physical item immensely complicates any would-be hacker from compromising your account. Two-factor authentication is starting to gain some traction as more and more users are educated on security best practices. Your online banking … Continue Reading
Setting a portable browser as the default browser in Windows
Every shipping browser today includes the ability to set itself as the default browser for the current user. The default browser is what is launched any time a user clicks on a web link or otherwise opens a web document. It’s actually quite common nowadays for a user to use multiple browsers throughout the day – often by leveraging portable installations of the second browser. Briefly, a portable browser is one that can be self-contained to a single folder, either on the computer itself or a removable thumb drive, and does not write to … Continue Reading
Have Firefox launch quicker by loading tabs on first access
Now that the folks at Mozilla have adopted the Chrome mantra of release early, release often, the fanfare around major version releases has greatly subsided. Recently, Firefox reach the 8.0 release but outside of a prompt by your browser to update to the new release you’d be hard pressed to notice any changes unless you really dug in deep. While Firefox has slowly improved over the years, it’s still a big sluggish to get up and going at launch. The problem is further exacerbated when you have the preference set to reload all the … Continue Reading
Configure Gmail in Google Chrome to auto-correct spelling errors
Spellcheck is quite the modern godsend, isn’t it? As much as we all want to proclaim that technology is making us lazy and dumb, very few would be willing to forgo any of the luxuries it affords. Yes, it’s important to understand the underlying concepts, in this case – how to spell, when it is all said and done spellcheck affords efficiency. While spellcheck has its roots tightly bound to word processors such as Microsoft Word, the feature has logically crossed over to other applications such as web browsers or email clients. We’ve all … Continue Reading
Adding the HTTP display back into the Firefox address bar
Like Google Chrome, Mozilla has recently made a stylistic change to the way website URLs are displayed in the address bar. If you were paying attention or otherwise around in the web’s infancy you probably recall a time where web addresses were literally verbalized as h t t p colon slash slash. It wasn’t too long before the web protocol of http:// was redundant in conversation and web browsing – individuals or browsers knew the intent and therefore the preceded text on web addresses became unnecessary. However, true to its roots, web browsers continued … Continue Reading
Exporting Mozilla Thunderbird contacts to Google Gmail
It wasn’t long ago that the webmail interface was viewed as merely a convenient way to access your email – being able to get to your email from any device with an Internet connection was obviously pretty powerful. However, the webmail platform’s power wasn’t remotely comparable to the traditional desktop email client like Outlook, Thunderbird, or even Eudora. A lot has changed over the years however, and it started around the time Google rolled out Gmail. Today, webmail, and specifically the Gmail platform, are more than enough to over-throw even the most die-hard desktop client … Continue Reading
Displaying the Google Bar across all websites
Frequent users of Google or Google services – or basically most everyone – are familiar with the Google Bar that is displayed across the top of your browser window any time you are within a Google site or property. The bar provides quick access to all the Google offers but it’s major compelling point did not come to fruition until the launch of Google+ – Google’s social network platform and their answer to Facebook. With Google+, the Google bar will display notifications of activity of your friends or acquaintances or really anyone you’ve added into … Continue Reading
