Tips Happy Thanksgiving Day

Launch Apps in a Flash With Launchy

The more programs you have installed on your PC, the harder it becomes to find the one you want. That's why I can't live without Launchy, a simple but incredibly useful application launcher that saves me having to sift through the dozens of programs in my Start menu.

Launchy is keyboard-driven. You invoke it by pressing Alt-Space (or a hotkey combination of your choice), then type the first few letters of the program you want. For example, to launch Google Picasa, I merely type "pic" and then press Enter. For iTunes, I type "itu." Excel is "ex." You get the idea. Usually you can find what you're after with just two or three letters, though occasionally you may have to type a few more.

Launchy also serves up Web favorites. To head straight to PCWorld.com, for instance, I type "pcw." It even indexes files, so you can load, say, Word documents or iTunes music with just a few keystrokes. (If all this sounds familiar, it's because Microsoft added similar functionality to Windows Vista's Start menu.)

Using Launchy may seem a bit unusual at first, but trust me when I say you'll grow to love it.

Back Up Your Bookmarks

If you're like most users, you've accumulated years' worth of bookmarks in your browser--a collection you definitely don't want to lose. Fortunately, it's a snap to back them up to the most logical place I can think of: the Web.

Firefox users should install the free Foxmarks plug-in, while Internet Explorer users can accomplish the same thing with BookmarkSync. These tools automatically copy your browser favorites to the Web, where you can access them from any PC (handy if you're working on someone else's system and need to recall a favorite) and restore them to your machine if the need ever arises.

Even better, both plug-ins can keep your bookmarks in sync across multiple PCs (home and work, for example), which is handy. I've also used this feature to help with migration to a new machine, as it sure beats trying to manually dig up the browser's Favorites file, copy it over, import it, and so on. Foxmarks recently added the option to sync your passwords, another incredibly useful feature.

BookmarkSync and Foxmarks are freebies. I can't recommend them highly enough

Bring the PermaTabs Extension Back to Firefox

Much as I love Firefox 3, several of my favorite extensions still haven't been updated to support the new version of the browser. Chief among them is PermaTabs, which lets you make any tab "temporarily permanent" (meaning it appears each time you run Firefox).

Thankfully, a coder by the name of Deos decided not to wait for the original developer to update PermaTabs, so he whipped up PermaTabs Mod. It functions just like its namesake, but works in Firefox 3. Happy day!

After installing the extension (which is free, of course), you can make any open tab "permanent" by hitting Alt-P. (You can also right-click a tab and choose Permanent Tab from the context menu.) Said tabs turn yellow so they're easily distinguished from regular ones, though you can choose any color by dipping into the Options menu.

Honestly, I'd be lost without this extension. I use it as a kind of temporary-bookmark feature, so I can easily return to sites I want to revisit in my next session. It's a must-have for Firefox users.

BugMeNot

Registering with a Web site often means making a deal with the devil. You give the site information such as your name, e-mail address, and potentially more private data such as your mailing address, phone number, and age. But what happens with that information? You may be inundated by spam, your name may be sold to mailing lists and advertisers, and possibly worse. But for many Web sites, if you don't register, you can't log in and use the site.

This add-on solves the problem. Go to a Web site, right-click in the user name or password field, and select BugMeNot. A valid user name and password will then be entered into the form. You can then use the site without having to register. The add-on works in concert with the BugMeNot Web site, which has many user names and passwords for multiple sites.

Download BugMeNot | Price: Free