This guide will help you understand the advantages of bookmarklets over add-ons, how to install bookmarklets followed by a list of essential bookmarklets that should work across all popular browsers including Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera, IE and Safari.

Why Use Bookmarklet over Add-ons

If you were to choose between a bookmarklet and a browser add-on, both offering similar functionality, here are a couple of reasons why you may want to go with bookmarklets:

1. Add-ins are browser specific so tomorrow if you decide to move from Firefox to Opera or Google Chrome, your favorite add-ins will no longer work. On the other hand, a bookmarklet written for Firefox is very likely to work with Safari or IE.

2. Some add-ins can break (or won’t install at all) if you try installing them on a newer version of the browser. And this is a big problem considering that new browser patches are released every couple of months.

3. Unlike add-ins that require installation, you can add and remove bookmarklets without restarting the browser.

4. Poorly coded add-ins can significantly slow down your browser while bookmarklets have negligible (if any) effect on memory usage as they are executed on-demand.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Whether you are looking to organize your personal life at home or to collaborate on a team project with your coworkers, here are some of the best web-based project management software that can help you stay organized and on top of your work.

All online project management apps discussed here offer introductory free accounts so you can use them at home or school as well without requiring any budget. And since they are online apps, you can successfully manage your projects, tasks and deadlines from virtually any computer.

Popularity: 8% [?]

While there are free viewers available for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, Microsoft does not provide an official viewer for Microsoft Project (.mpp) files. That means if you don’t have the Project program installed on your computer, you can’t read any of those project plans lying in your mailbox.

There’s however an excellent option now that will let you view and print Project files in the browser itself without requiring MS Project. It’s called projec.to.

Popularity: 36% [?]

Popularity: 2% [?]

The content management system you choose can really make a huge difference in how much time you (or your clients) spend keeping a site updated and maintained. There’s a huge variety out there—some estimates put the number at around 1700 different options. Some are great…some, not so much.

Below are ten useful guidelines to consider when choosing a CMS, followed by rundowns on ten great CMS options available and how they stack up based on the guidelines.

Ten Simple Guidelines for Choosing the Perfect CMS

1. The CMS you choose should be really good at whatever the main function of your website is.

What do you want your website to do? Is it going to be primarily a static website, like an online brochure? Or is it going to be a fully-functioning ecommerce site? Or maybe it’s going to be really media-heavy with tons of videos, photos, and audio files. Or is a blog going to be the primary focus?

Whatever your site’s primary function is going to be, you need to define it and then find a CMS that does that particular thing really, really well. If blogging is the main focus of the site, then use a blog platform. If images and video are the main focus, then you need to find a CMS that either has great support for media built-in or has great plugins for enabling those functions. If your site is going to focus on an online store, then the platform you choose needs to be able to seamlessly integrate that online store without a ton of extra work.

Popularity: 1% [?]

JavaScript has always been one of the most popular programming languages on the web, and with the arrival of AJAX it quickly became the number one choice for pro web developers.
With the rapid rise of Javascript and Ajax many frameworks and libraries have been created by developers, namely MooTools, Scriptaculous, Prototype, and, of course the ever more popular and versatile jQuery.

All of these JavaScript cheat sheets are designed to act as reminders and as a comprehensive reference sheet, displaying the many Functions and Methods, Regular Expressions, XMLHttpRequest, Event Handlers… Basically, you will find, every aspect of Javascript and Ajax covered to aid you with development.
You will also find cheat sheets for all the major Javascript frameworks.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Earlier this week we learned that Microsoft would be giving out the Office 2010 Technical Preview to select testers on an invite-only basis. In January, screenshots of the alpha (then still codenamed Office 14) were leaked a week after select testers got them. This time, testers don’t even have the Technical Preview yet, but new screenshots have already arrived (see below). Office 2010 will be available in 32-bit and 64-bit, and both flavors have been leaked.

The most important part to remember here is that this version is build 14.0.4006.1010. The build number of the official Technical Preview, which is scheduled for two months from now, is not known, so it is perfectly possible that this is not the build that testers will be getting.

Office 2010 includes Access 2010, Excel 2010, InfoPath 2010, OneNote 2010, Outlook 2010, PowerPoint 2010, Project 2010, Publisher 2010, SharePoint Designer 2010, SharePoint Workspace 2010, Visio 2010, and Word 2010.

Installation

Honestly, this really isn’t much different from the Office 2007 setup. You may note that not all the applications are here. That is because this setup is for the Professional Plus SKU. I did not bother taking screenshots of the installation for Project, SharePoint Designer, or Visio. Without further ado, here are the screenshots from the 64-bit version.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Adobe Reader is free software that lets you open, view, search, and print Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The latest version of Adobe Reader includes additional features such as:

• Provides better overall performance for faster launch times and real-time zooming and panning
• Enables you to fill out and submit PDF forms from a variety of devices
• Helps you download and organize digital editions (formerly known as eBooks) on a variety of devices, with full support for portrait or landscape viewing
• Lets you display and share Adobe Photoshop Album slide shows and electronic cards, and export images for online photo processing (Note that online photo services vary regionally.)
• Allows you to save a range of files attached to PDF documents, such as word processing documents, spreadsheets, and multimedia files, and open them in their native applications.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Yahoo! Widget Engine (formally known as Konfabulator) is a JavaScript runtime engine for Windows and Mac OS X that lets you run little files called Widgets that can do pretty much whatever you want them to. Widgets can be alarm clocks, calculators, can tell you your WiFi signal strength, will fetch the latest stock quotes for your preferred symbols, and even give your current local weather.

What sets this apart from other scripting applications is that it takes full advantage of today’s advanced graphics. This allows Widgets to blend fluidly into your desktop without the constraints of traditional window borders. Toss in some sliding and fading, and these little guys are right at home in Windows XP and Mac OS X.

The format for these Widgets is completely open and easy to learn so creating your own Widgets is an extremely easy task.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Apple today released the first public beta of Safari 4, which sports a redesigned interface that resembles Google’s Chrome, as well as support for all of the major Internet standards, and a large range of new and enhanced features. Among these new features are a reimagined start page with a speed-dial interface similar to what Opera and Chrome are currently offering, a Cover Flow-like interface for browsing your bookmarks and history, and the ability to perform a full-text history search of your bookmarks.

Overall, Safari 4 feels a lot like the love child of iTunes and Google Chrome. It takes some of the best UI elements of both and mashes them up in a browser that can now easily compete with Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer – though, of course, it does lack the third-party developer ecosystem that has sprung up around Firefox.

Granted, most of the new features in Safari 4 are not exactly new, but, as Apple does so often, it exceeds at putting all of these features together in a very attractive package.

Popularity: 2% [?]

We’ve become so accustomed to the ease and convenience of iTunes and blink-and-you-miss-’em CD rips that we forget how in the mid-1990s, ripping a CD was a time-consuming process fraught with peril. Shoot, ripping a single disc to a 128Kbps MP3 could take eight hours on a 200MHz Pentium! Fast forward a decade and faster hardware and better software have made CD ripping so mainstream your mom does it.

Now, ripping DVDs is our great challenge. Copying and transcoding the disc’s video into more efficient formats involves math an order of magnitude scarier than what’s required to rip audio CDs. A machine that will rip the latest Miley Cyrus CD in mere moments could take hours to extract and convert your copy of Alien vs. Predator to an iPod-friendly format. But with the right software, a quad-core-equipped PC, and a little know-how, you can cut your disc-rip time from hours to 30 minutes. Plenty of tricks and traps still await first-time rippers, but we’ll show you the basics and then walk you through some of the most valuable power-user ripping secrets.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Antivirus and antispyware protection for Windows available to download for free

NEW! LinkScanner® Active Surf-Shield checks web pages for threats at the only time that matters – when you’re about to click that link.

• Award-winning antivirus and antispyware
• Real-time safe internet surfing and searching
• Quality proven by 80 million of users
• Easy to download, install and use
• Protection against viruses and spyware
• Compatible with Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP

Publisher’s Description
The free version of the AVG Antivirus protection tool.

Basic antivirus and antispyware protection for Windows available to download for free. Limited features, no support, for private and non-commercial use only.

Popularity: unranked [?]