Increase Firefox Address Bar Font Size

Increase Firefox Address Bar Font Size: "

Most web browsers have some features to change the layout of the web browser and some elements on the websites that get loaded. This includes changing the font sizes of the pages that are visited which is very helpful for users who prefer or require the font sizes of the websites to be bigger. What’s not changing are on the other hand the web browser controls including the address bar of the web browser. Users who have difficulties reading text in the normal font size on websites will surely have troubles reading the text in the address bar of the web browser as well.

Firefox users now have an option to increase the Firefox address bar font size; The Firefox add-on Make Address Bar Font Size Bigger changes the default text size of the address bar making it bigger so that it becomes easier to read for users with troubles reading the normal address bar text.

The text size of the address bar text increases quite a bit after the installation of the add-on, probably two or even three times the original size. This on the other hand means that there is less space to display address bar text in the Firefox address bar which usually is only a problem for long urls.

Make Address Bar Font Size Bigger can be downloaded directly from the Mozilla Firefox add-on repository. It is compatible with all Firefox 3.5+ releases.

"

DVD Burning Software ImgBurn Updated. Turns Adware

DVD Burning Software ImgBurn Updated. Turns Adware: "

Ever since we discovered the DVD burning software ImgBurn we never looked back and used it for all our CD and DVD burning tasks as it came really close to the perfect program for that.

ImgBurn was recently updated by the developer. The new version is available at the developer’s websites. Regular users of ImgBurn will notice some changes besides the updates to the program itself.

There are two adware related entries that might get installed during the installation of the DVD burning software if the user is not carefully selecting the options.

The program tries to place a Uniblue shortcut on the desktop and to install the Ask Toolbar. Both of which can be unselected so that they are not installed.

More problematic than those choices are three new entries in the Tools menu of the burning software that also lead to the Uniblue website.

These options do however not reduce the value of ImgBurn itself. The developer has fixed more than a dozen bugs in the new version and added or changed dozens of other features as well. Most of these new features and updates are under the hood and will likely not be recognized by most users.

The latest version of the DVD burning software ImgBurn can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

"

Integrate Youtube, DailyMotion And Soapbox Into Windows Media Center

Integrate Youtube, DailyMotion And Soapbox Into Windows Media Center: "

Windows Media Center can be extended with plugins to add new features or services to the entertainment software. The MacroTube plugin for Windows Media Center integrates the three popular online video services Youtube, Dailymotion and MSN Soapbox into the program.

The developer provides a 32-bit and 64-bit version of the program so that both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system are supported.

The new video services are installed in the Extras section of Windows Media Center. Selecting Extras and then MacroTube displays the three video services that are currently integrated.

A search is provided that can be used to search for specific videos on the site. The videos can then be sorted by rating, views or relevancy. Selecting a video will load it in Windows Media Center.

All the usual controls are also available during playback. The process is straightforward, robust and very responsive.

Windows Media Center users can download the 32-bit or 64-bit edition of the Macrotube plugin from the forum post where the plugin was announced. (via Into Windows)

"

Free Web Proxy Checker

Free Web Proxy Checker: "

If you work with anonymous web proxies you will encounter proxies that are not working at that time. That is a big problem if a huge amount of proxies are needed on a regular basis. It is possible to check them all manually which would however take a long time.

Proxy Checkers on the other hand can automate the process so that the proxies can be verified in a fraction of the site that a manual process would take.

The Free Web Proxy Checker has been specifically designed to test so called web proxies. A web proxy usually consists of a form on a website that a user can use to access another website from. This is different from standard proxy servers that need to be added to a program’s proxy settings before they can be used.

The web proxy checker has lots of settings of which most are not needed for basic verifications.

All that is basically needed is to paste a list of web proxy urls into the application’s interface. The program will test the proxies against the Gmail website to see if it is displayed correctly. This can be changed to any other website if necessary.

A click on the Start button will initiate the web proxy scan. Good proxies will be saved in the goodprox.txt file while bad proxies in the badprox.txt file.

Advanced users can tweak many different settings in the program from simultaneous threads over timeouts and retries to whitelist or blacklist specific countries, changing user agents and running a distribution web server.

Feature Overview of Free Web Proxy Checker

Check SOCKS4/SOCKS5/HTTP/HTTPS proxies with and without authentication.
Format of proxies with authentication: proxy_user:proxy_pass@proxy_host:proxy_port.
Format of proxies without authentication: proxy_host:proxy_port
Check for connect to the specified host:port.
Check for URL.
Load and combine proxies without checking.
Multithreaded.
Handle redirects.
Download proxy lists from the web.
Customizable User Agent.
Customizable HTTP Headers (Accept, Accept-Encoding).
Built-in proxy distribution web server.
Proxy country detection.
RBL (DNSBL) check.

Free Web Proxy Checker can be directly downloaded from the developer’s website

"

Youtube Disco

Find, Mix and Watch. That is the slogan of Youtube’s newest addition Youtube Disco. The new feature is basically a music exploration service. It begins by entering an artist, band or song in the search form on the start page. Youtube will then crawl its vast database and display a results page that consists of a music playlist of songs by that artist, related artists, artist information (if available) as well as two additional playlists.

The first playlist mixes the original artist with related artists while the second displays only related artists and their songs.

Songs from all three playlists can be mixed together and viewed on the same page.

Youtube Disco can obviously be used to either play only songs from one artist or songs from that artist and related artists. The latter seems to be the main use of the service as the other option is also possible directly on Youtube.

The music videos that are selected in the playlists are not necessarily high quality videos as they can also contain live or fan made videos.

The music discovery service is without doubt one of the core features of Youtube Disco. It is easy to use and seems to yield good results most of the time.

Youtube Disco is an official Youtube service

"

Internet Explorer Commercial Remover

Every web browser offers some form of blocking advertisements or commercials from being shown when loading websites. Firefox users have adblock plus or Noscript, Opera users have a built in option to block elements or BlockIt, Google Chrome users have also the choice between multiple ad blockers and Internet Explorer users can either use a plugin like Adblock IE or make use of the restricted zones to block specific hosts on the computer.

The last solution is being used by the small application IE Commercial Remover which adds known advertising hosts to the restricted zone so that connection attempts to those hosts will be rejected by the web browser. This in return means that the ads that should be displayed on the website will not be displayed due to that.

The portable software program displays a simple interface upon startup. Its three buttons can be used to add the filters to the restricted zone in Internet Explorer, remove the filters again and to close the application.

The program will add a total of seven different ad serving hosts to the restricted zone in the web browser. That’s not much considering that usual ad blocking lists contain hundreds of hosts. The method itself however is less intrusive than installing a plugin or third party software to handle ad blocking.

IE commercial Remover can be downloaded from the developer’s website. The developer does not provide compatibility information. It worked flawlessly on a Windows 7 Professional test system.

"

Google Buzz Introduction

Google Buzz Introduction: "

It feels like there is not a day where Google is not updating or publishing a new service. Google Buzz is the latest service that is being rolled out from today on to all Gmail users.

It is a social networking service to share updates, photos, videos and more with contacts. If you think Twitter, MySpace or Facebook then you got the general idea what Google Buzz is about.

Gmail users who have already been invited to the service by Google will see a notification the next time they log into Gmail.

If they chose to use Google Buzz they are redirected to a Gmail website that looks still pretty much like Gmail but comes with a few changes.

The left sidebar has been extended as it now contains a Buzz link which leads to the Google Buzz page in Gmail.

The Buzz page contains buzz posted by the owner of the account and by the followed users. This resembles Twitter. Google will automatically pick a few contacts that will be followed automatically and will post Google Reader shared items, Picasa Web public albums, and Google Chat status messages automatically on that page.

It is furthermore possible to connect additional sites to the Buzz account. This includes websites that have been added to webmaster tools, additional Google services like Youtube or Blogger as well as Twitter and Flickr. All those services and websites can be added so that updates are posted automatically in Google Buzz.

It is possible to add buzz messages which can be compared to Twitter messages sans the 140 char limit. Links and photos can be posted in the buzz message. A link will automatically be resolved and added with the website’s description while photos need to be uploaded. They will be displayed as a thumbnail directly in the message.

Some links will also be displayed directly including Youtube urls that can be played directly in the message.

Messages can either be private or public. Private messages are only accessible to specific users while public messages are visible for everyone (meaning they will be indexed and accessible by all users, not just the contacts).

Messages that have been posted can be commented on. Other social features include emailing messages, “liking” them (yes you can like your own posts).

The messages that have been posted to Buzz are accessible in Google Profiles, a service that can also be indexed in the Google search engine.

Google Buzz will be a successful service. It is linked to Gmail and all Gmail users see the notification upon login. That’s a guarantee that it will quickly reach a critical mass of users.

The real question is if it can compete with Twitter or Facebook on the same level. The answer to this has to be no unless Google has an ace up their sleeve and plans to add more functions to Google Buzz.

Have you already had a chance to test Google Buzz? What’s your opinion?

"