1. Lightning and its related addons

If you are looking to use Thunderbird to replace your Outlook (or Evolution in Linux), then Lightning is a must-have extension. It adds calendar and task management capabilities to Thunderbird and allows you to manage your daily schedule all within Thunderbird.

At the same time, there are also several Lightning-related extensions that further enhances the functionality and capabilities of Lightning.

ThunderBirthday and MoreFunctionsForAddressBook: MoreFunctionsForAddressBook is an extension that increases the number of fields that you can include in your address book. You now have the option to include the birthday, photo ID, spouse name etc. ThunderBirthday, on the other hand, extracts birthday information from your address book and updates it to the Lightning. With this, you don’t have to manually enter the birthday entry in your Lightning and you won’t ever forget your best friend’s birthday again. 

.vcs support: This extension allows you to export your Lightning entries to .vcs format. Currently it only supports .ics, .csv and .htm format.

Remember The Milk Integration: This is still an experiemental addon, but it is in no way inferior than the rest. If you love Remember The Milk, then you are going to love this extension as well. As its name implies, this extension will integrate and sync RTM with Lightning.

2. Thunderbrowse

When someone sends you a link, wouldn’t it be great if you can open the link and browse the Web right within your Thunderbird? Thunderbrowse is here just to serve that purpose. After you have installed this extension, whenever you click on a link within your mail, the message pane will become a full-fledged browser and allow you to view the website without having to open up a browser window.

Like Firefox, it supports tabbed browsing and javascript. In addition, with Thunderbrowse, you can install the Thunderbird extension within itself. There is no need to download the xpi file and install it via the Tools -> Addons section.

3. Foxclocks

If you are like me who always corresponds with partners all around the world, you will appreciate the usefulness of Foxclock. Foxclock is an extension that lets you keep watch of the time around the world by putting small clocks in your statusbar. Next time when you send an email to your partner, you will know why he doesn’t reply to you instantly. He could most probably be sleeping in his country.

In addition, Foxclocks also integrates well with Google Earth. If you don’t know where Budapest is, simply right click and choose  ‘Google Earth…’. It will bring you to where it is. Read more…

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Questionable Content

This web comic has been around for a LONG time. Jeph Jacques’ fantastic strip about the lives of some coffee shop dwellers is one of the top web comics on the net today. There is quite a bit of backstory, but the gist of it can be picked up with some limited browsing. It’s amazing how funny and original Jacques manages to be every day of the workweek. He’s also very social on Twitter, updating his account frequently. On top of that he’s made special accounts for each of his characters. Their conversations are like bonus material! Find them in the list of people he follows.

Sinfest

I only discovered Sinfest a little while ago, but I’ve been pretty impressed with it. It’s a spunky comic about a bunch of walking stereotypes (and their pets) as they navigate the landscape of the modern American psyche. A lot of the episodes have a political slant (not favoring anyone too particularly), but it’s much more a commentary about modern day capitalism than an overt political admonition.  Plus, it’s pretty funny and very wacky! Read more…

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Finding the Best Tools to Watch TV on Your Computer

While the world of VidIP has a long way to go before it can capture a large portion of the video broadcasting market, it has made a great deal of progress over the past few years.  Most people don’t realize that there are now enough options available online so that you can permanently trash your cable TV subscription and still have access to some of the best entertainment video content available.  The only prerequisite is that you have an excellent broadband connection and a computer or laptop.  To get free content, you have several options available - either Video On Demand (VOD), streaming Internet TV, or standalone PC applications that connect via the Internet.

Movies and Network TV Shows

There are a whole range of websites that provide the ability to access cable TV online. Some offer more content, and some have higher quality streaming video. My own experience is that streaming quality is far more important than quantity, since there’s nothing more annoying than trying to watch sports when the screen keeps freezing up every minute or two.  Luckily there are plenty of options available.

Hulu is a popular website that offers the option to legally download full episodes and video clips of your favorite network shows and major motion films. Browsing through Hulu, I discovered an episode of my favorite show, “The Office.”  The quality of the video is smooth and clear.  Hulu has organized the selection of shows based on categories like “Comedy,” or “Action and Adventure,” so finding your favorite show is easy.

Sling offers popular channels like FX, CBS, NBC, FOX, and SciFi. The variety of shows Sling offers is impressive, with full length episodes identified by a TV image next to the show title.  Were you a fan of the 1980s hit show, “The A-Team?”  Well, on Sling you’ll find 61 full-length episodes.  Similar to Hulu, Sling also offers an impressive list of popular movies for free.  I fired off one of my favorite movies, “Behind Enemy Lines,” and within less than a minute the Sling player launched the movie in amazing detail and virtually no skipping, even in full-screen mode. Read more…

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Awesome alternative search engines that are certain to help you search faster and more efficiently on that World Wide Web.

Music & Video

MP3Realm

If you’re one of the countless people today who gets their music digitally, then MP3Realm is for you. The site features a basic search for MP3’s as well as song lyrics.

MP3s can be streamed, added to playlists and of course downloaded. The advanced search option also lets users browse MP3’s by genre (a ton to choose from) or by artist.

TuneFind

I’m sure that some part of all of our lives has been spent in front of the television and I always manage to find a song that catches my fancy no matter what I’m watching. That’s where TuneFind comes in; the site is dedicated to providing users with the names of artists/song titles that have appeared on their favorite television shows, and even movies.

You can even reverse look up artists, to see which films and shows their music has been featured on.

MuviBee

A site dedicated to the best of both worlds, MuviBee lets users search for music and music videos (via YouTube) that might be associated with the song. The site proves to be versatile and certainly unique, providing users with Top 10 Charts from iTunes, the US, UK and Germany as well as direct links to Amazon and iTunes if you should decide to purchase music you like.

ClipBlast

ClipBlast features short videos from a variety of mainstream sources, including Hulu, TBS, BBC etc. The site is easy to use and loaded with enough content to keep you busy for hours. Read more…

• Top Search Engines and Directories List

I would like to share my favorite essential security downloads that have helped me keep my system secure over the last 2-3 years. Check them out and tell us what you think in comments.

1. AVG Anti-Virus (Windows)

AVG is a free anti-virus program, also a really good one. In the past I have tried Norton, Kaspersky, NOD 32 and several others but finally settled on AVG. It’s been my preferred anti-virus program for the last couple of years. MakeUseOf readers seem to agree as well.

We have already reviewed the AVG on MakeUseOf before so if you want to know all the details check out Mark’s AVG review here.

To get an idea here are some of the things you get with AVG:

* real time virus checking
* automatic daily updates
* scans incoming/outgoing emails for viruses
* removes malicious tracking cookies from the browser
* scans search results (ex. Google) and warns about non safe links.
* option control the speed of virus scanning process

2. MalwareBytes Anti-Malware (Windows)

Malwarebytes is an easy-to-use and effective anti-malware application. With over 8 million downloads MalwareBytes is ranked as the 6th most popular software download onDownload.com and second in spyware removal category. The users ratings and reviews are pretty good as well.

Malwarebytes’ claims to detect and remove malware that many of the other well known spyware removal programs fail to detect. I can’t really confirm that but after using it for about 2 months it has become my primary spyware removal/scanner app. I must admit I haven’t been using this one long enough yet but so far it has done a pretty good job.

While MalwareBytes doesn’t offer as many features as other tools in that category, it has a comprehensive library of threats to protect against. It’s also very light on your system resources.

The program does have a few more options open to you. For instance, it adds a contextual right-click option to scan individual files. This second option is handy for times when you have to download a file that you think is suspect or need to open someone’s flash drive.

There are some other handy addons as well. You can read more about MalwareBytes in a previous MakeUseoOf article Stop & Delete Spyware With Malwarebytes.

The Basic version which consists of a spyware scanner and removal tool is free. The Pro version costs $24.95 and comes with an additional Protection Module that can detect malware before it can do any significant damage.

Read more…

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