Demo Girl

There’s still no Firefox browser for the iPhone but the folks at Mozilla have made a handy app that allows you to sync your bookmarks, recent browsing history and open tabs from your desktop, right to your iPhone. It’s called Firefox Home and it’s a free download.

After you install it on your iPhone you’ll need to create a Firefox Sync account by installing the add-on for Firefox on your desktop.  Once the sync is complete you’ll have quick access to tabs that you have open on your desktop, on your iPhone.  You’ll also be able to view your recent browsing history and all of your bookmarks.

To see Firefox Home in action, watch the screencast below:

My Weekly Browsing Schedule is a Firefox Add-on that allows you to create a schedule of when certain Websites should open in your browser.

After you install it you just need to go to “tools” then select “My Weekly Browsing Schedule”.  A window will pop open so you can add the URLs to all of the Websites you want Firefox to remember to open for you.  You can select specific days of the week and times for each Website or you can choose to open certain sites whenever Firefox starts.

There are other options for personalization such as creating a delay before the sites open and you can choose whether or not to open a Website up in a new browser window or tab.

To see My Weekly Browsing Schedule in action, watch the screencast below:

Kikin is an add-on that puts relevant search results for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, eBay, and iTunes above your regular search results from sites like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.  It works with Firefox, IE, and Safari.

After you install it just perform your searches like you normally would.  Kikin will appear on the results page at the top, and there will be tabs for each service (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc) with relevant search results. If you connect your Twitter account you’ll also see all relevant tweets or just tweets from people you follow.  You can also reply and send out tweets right from the results page.

If you’re viewing the YouTube tab, you can watch the videos without leaving the page.  If kikin gets in your way, you can easily minimize it.  To see kikin in action, check out the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

InvisibleHand is a Firefox Add-on that will alert you if a product you’re viewing can be purchased on another Website at a lower price.

The way it works is simple:  Browse for products on sites like Best Buy, Amazon, OverStock, Borders, etc. and if a lower price is available somewhere else, InvisibleHand will slide open (almost unnoticeably) and show you how much you can save and give you a link to the product page.  It works for many items like electronics, beauty products, books, toys, and video games.  A full list of supported Websites and products can be found here.

I forgot that I had installed InvisibleHand yesterday afternoon – I was planning on taking it for a spin but got sidetracked.  This morning, when I was briefly browsing OverStock for a new comforter, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the item I was thinking of purchasing was $10.00 cheaper on Amazon.  That’s how invisible InvisibleHand is.  I completely forgot it was installed until there was a good reason for it to make an appearance.

To see InvisibleHand in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

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Better Twitter is a user script that runs using the Firefox Extension Greasemonkey.  It adds a retweet button to updates, enables auto-load to your Twitter stream, and shows in-line conversations of “in reply to” tweets.

You need to have Greasemonkey installed in order to install Better Twitter, but then you’ll be able to reply to tweets when viewing a single tweet, view “in reply to” conversations in-line, and more.

If you’re into more advanced features, you may want to check out PowerTwitter (previously reviewed here) although I found that it slowed Twitter down so much that I eventually had to uninstall it.

To see Better Twitter in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

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[via Lifehacker]

GButts is a Firefox Add-on that allows you to create a single menu loaded with all of your favorite Google services.

After you install it you can choose to have an icon for each service displayed or a drop down from the Google logo (which is what I chose).  You can select as many, or as few, services as you’d like to include in your button.

To see GButts in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

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If you use Firefox and are a fan of Tabs (check and check!) then you may want to give Desktop a look.  Desktop is an experimental Firefox Add-on that allows you to create a custom page loaded with shortcuts to your favorite websites.  Every time you open a new tab, you’ll see a set of thumbnails which allow you to access the sites you like to frequent.

Besides just thumbnails, you can also add search widgets and folders.  You can also customize the background of your tab page as I did in the image above.

Desktop is experimental so check back often to see if new features have been added and to see which version of Firefox it is compatible with.

To see Desktop in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

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ConvoTrack does one thing, and it does it well:  It tracks any conversations going on about whatever Webpage you’re viewing and displays them in a sidebar pop-out.  All you need to do is install the bookmarklet and you’ll be on your way to seeing what everyone is saying on Twitter, Friendfeed, digg, and on blogs.

If you don’t want to install the bookmarklet you can also simply append the Website URL you want to track to http://convotrack.com.  So, in order to track conversations on DemoGirl, I would simply use http://convotrack.com/http://demogirl.com.  No installation needed!  You can also share the link with friends or co-workers.  It’s a simple tool that will save you from using Google or Twitter search to find out who’s saying what, about your latest blog post.

To see ConvoTrack in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

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[via TechCrunch]

PageTweet allows you to shrink a URL for sharing on Twitter and other social networking sites, but also allows you to add your own 140 character message to the actual link that you’re sharing.  Your message doesn’t appear in your Twitter updates with the link, it appears on the actual site – allowing the people who click on the link to see why you brought them there in the first place.

There is nothing to sign up for and you don’t need to enter in your Twitter username and password either.  Just paste the long URL into the appropriate field on the PageTweet homepage, add a nickname (again, doesn’t have to be related to Twitter), and enter in your 140 character or less comment.  Click on “Create PT” and you’ll be given a link to share wherever you please.

When people click on the link they’ll see a toolbar at the top of the page you are sharing which displays your comment, the source of the link, as well as the number of hits it’s received.

Since it doesn’t appear that you can create an account on PageTweet, you’ll have to bookmark the link in order to keep track of how many people are viewing your link.  Actually, no sign-up is fine with me…

To see PageTweet in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

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[via MoMB]

If you find yourself constantly bookmarking articles you find online to come back to later, then “I Need To Read This” is a handy application that you’ll probably love.  It allows you to easily find articles that you want to read later, without cluttering your bookmarks folder.

There’s not much of a learning curve here – just add the two “I Need To Read This” bookmarklets to your bookmarks toolbar.  Whenever you find yourself too busy to read an interesting article or blog post, just click on the “I Need To Read This” bookmarklet.  Done.  It’s save in your account.  When you’re ready to read an article you saved, click on “Read an Article”.  An item from your saved list will appear.  You can continuously click on the “Read an Article” button to jump to the next item.

To see I Need to Read This in action, watch the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):

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[via Lifehacker]