Did you know that even Google has jumped onto the Firefox band waggon? Maybe it isn’t with both feet riding all the way to browser town, but it is a good start. There are many Google created and Google related toolbars and extensions for Firefox out there.

Google Toolbar Beta

This is the same old Google Toolbar we once knew and loved when we were using Internet Explorer. It comes with all the fixings as well, such as: Spell Check, Auto Link, Auto Fill, Word Translator, Page Rank, and more! So if you want a lot of Google functionality right at your fingertips, the Google Toolbar is the way to go.

Googlebar

If you want to use the Google Toolbar, but want something that feels a little more “home grown” then you might check out the Googlebar. The Googlebar was created before Google released a Firefox version of its own Google Toolbar. It comes with lots of the same features, so you aren’t losing anything there. Some might even say it is better than the Google Toolbar!

Google Send to Phone

This extension from Google made for Firefox is pretty cool. The extension enables you to send short text messages of Web page content to your mobile phone. For example, you might text message yourself a phone number, an address, or directions that you find on the Web.

Google Suggest for Firefox

Google Suggest for Firefox is an extension that completes your search terms as you type them into the search box located to the right of the address bar. I have always had fun playing with the Google Suggest features, I don’t however find it very useful though. Usually when I search for something, I know what I want to type in. I don’t need Google to hold my hand there.

Have any more Google related Firefox goodies that I might have missed? Let me know, and I’ll make sure I check them out and let you know what I think!

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Mitch’s PSP,
originally uploaded by Mitch Keeler.

Yep, I finally got a PSP as I mentioned the other day. Oh man, do I love this little thing! I’ve already loaded the newest firmware updates and have my own custom wallpaper as well. Might have to do some Web Hosting Show wallpaper for all ten of my fans out there. I’ve played with some of the video and audio features too, got to say I am impressed.

What game did I get? I picked up Lumines, and it is a addictive little thing. The reason I picked it up is because I don’t have any other puzzle games, other than on my PC. So in all, I got to say the PSP is very nice. I am not retiring my GameBoy Advance SP just yet. I don’t see any reason why I should pick up a Nintendo DS though.

What do I have to do now? I need to hook the house up with a wireless conection so I can take this thing Online. I don’t have a cellphone, I don’t have a PDA… so I am looking forward not to having to walk across the house to see if I got new mail in my Yahoo! Mail account. I’ll let you know more about that bridge when I cross it though.

I know what you are thinking. This Firefox extension has to have something to do with the outdoors right? It gives you statistical information about how many trees have been cut down in your favorite forest, right? Wrong. OutSidebar brings your sidebars to the outside of the browser.

When you usually open up a sidebar within Firefox, your content window gets resized so that you can see the sidebar, right? Well with OutSidebar, your sidebar no longer resizes your content. What it does is brings your sidebar out to the left of the window, leaving your main content window alone.

This is a nice extension for folks that have a lot of desktop space and don’t like to feel like Firefox is cluttered with lots of different windows, pop ups and extensions flying at them from every direction. Yet another Firefox extension that does a simple task and does it well.

Web hosting is a difficult and confusing business to get yourself into, but sooner or later just about everybody thinks about starting a Web site for themselves. No mater if you are starting up a Web site for your child’s baseball team or for your own corporate business, the things you need to look for to succeed are them same for all.

Go Download the Thursday Special from the Web Hosting Show!

One option in Firefox that I think a lot of folks take for granted is the fact that you can customize Firefox’s toolbars. You can do more than just make the icons smaller and drag and drop a few things here and there. With a little free time and some imagination you can really make a better browsing experience for yourself.

The first thing I usually do on a new Firefox installation is make all the icons “tiny”. Personally, I just don’t like big icons. To do that, all you need to do is right click the main toolbar, then select “Customize…”. After you have done that, you should see at the bottom of the pop up window a place to change your icons at the bottom.

From here you can: show icons, show icons and text or just show text. I have that set to just icons. To the right of that you see a check mark box that says, “Use Small Icons”. I have that selected as well.

Now that isn’t the only thing you can do from here. You can drag and drop new icons onto any of the existing toolbars you have set up. you could also take away icons you don’t use that often. You could take away everything, and just be left with the file menu if you want to be hardcore.

You can also create new toolbars or take some of the existing ones away. It is totally up to how you want to use Firefox.

Yeah, I just ordered my PlayStation Portable last night and it should be here tomorrow. Am I excited? You know I am. I have a feeling it will not be replacing my GameBoy Advance SP though. Instead it will hopefully just be yet another toy for me to play with.

Why the wait? Well, I am never really the first to buy anything. I like to wait things out and see how something does before I jump on the band waggon. The jumping has been done now though, so now all I have to do is wait. Man, do I ever hate having to wait for something to get here.

Sure copying a URL to save or post somewhere else is nothing new right? We have been doing it for years now, and there is no better way of getting it done. On that point, I have to say you are wrong. There is a better way to do it, and with the Firefox extension Copy URL Plus, you can do just that. Just what? You can get it done in a “better” way.

Still a little confused? Here it is, so easy anybody could understand it.

The Copy URL Plus extension enables you to copy to the clipboard the current document’s address along with additional information such as the document’s title, the current selection or both.

You might find this behavior useful when you want to send (IM, email) an interesting link to a friend and out of convenience you don’t want to copy the link and an explanation of what the link is in a single step. The explanation can be as short as the document’s title or it can be a descriptive text from the document.

You never would realize how much you have been missing this tool till you finally have your fingers on it. After using it, I can’t remember how I survived without it. This is definitely one Firefox extension that has not gotten its proper time in the spotlight.

Monday is here and that can only mean one of two things. You either need to go put the trash out from the party you had this weekend or you need to go listen to the Web Hosting Show. I can promise you that listening to the Web Hosting Show will be a little more fun, so let us leave the trash for somebody else to handle. Along with the rest of the Web hosting goodness we produce week after week, on this week’s show we talked about ISPCON’s new blog and the Web hosting industry’s new interest in VoIP.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Podcast 31!

Running Time: 19 minutes | File Size: 4.44 MB

For those of you who do not know, ISPCON is the event for both wired and wireless ISPs out there. Every year it seems like Web hosting is playing a bigger part in the event. They now have a blog as well, it is called Inside ISPCON.

The Web site looks very nice, it has the look of your standard blog. I like the idea that the folks at ISPCON are blogging because it makes me feel like I have an easier place to understand what it is they are doing there. ISPCON is not just a big event for ISPs out there. It is also a big event for the Web hosting world as well. They even have a section marked for podcasts, so I can’t wait to see what they produce.

Now why are Web hosts getting so excited about offering VoIP solutions? What do I mean? Well read part of this press release I got delivered to me today.

MonsterHosting.ca, a Canadian web hosting and e-commerce solutions provider, announced today that it plans to launch a Voice over Internet Protocol service, making it the first Canadian web host to do so, and opening a new chapter for the British Columbia based company.

This seems to be a slow trend in the Web hosting world. I see more and more Web hosting companies moving into the area of VoIP (Voice Over IP). What do I think about it all? I think it is a smart business solution for the companies out there who can afford to move down that road. It is obvious that VoIP is going to be the way of the future and I am happy to see that once again Web hosting is playing a key part in the world’s innovations.

The thing that keeps this from being big news is the fact that nobody knows exactly why these companies are doing it. How is my Web hosting company going to benefit from moving into the Voice over Internet Protocol world? Untill that is easy to explain as Web hosting itself, then I don’t know how much media hype is there for such an event. Right now it seems as exciting to the public as a Web host buying a new server. What I want the Web hosting world to do is explain it to me and give me a reason to get excited about it.

If Internet Explorer and Firefox had a love child, then it would look a lot like Firexplorer. This marriage made in Mozilla labs is an odd one to say the least. What if you wanted all the form and functionality of Firefox, but you wanted it to look like Internet Explorer?

Here is what the creators had to say about the project:

The Firexplorer began when Andy (Cobaltfish) and I were working at a large accountants, we wanted to install Firefox on a batch of new PCs yet still have our users think they were using Internet Explorer. It was a real pain in getting it to work, and we eventually gave up but started adding our findings to this website. From there corporate sponsors became interested, and we currently have a version of Firefox 1.0 repackaged very nicely.

This is a good idea if you have friends that are not ready to make a big shift in the way they surf the Internet. It is also nice for those folks out there who might actually like IE’s interface better than the standard Firefox one. The screenshots are well worth check out if you are interested as well.

Now I’m not one to usually bash other Web hosting related Web sites, but this one takes the cake. I was over on Web Hosting Talk this morning, reading a thread about WHIR TV. It seemed like not that many people liked what they were seeing, so I posted on the thread asking for folks to compare the Web Hosting Show with WHIR TV. Seems simple enough right? I’m giving back to the conversation.

Around 20 minutes later I get this in my E-mail from Web Hosting Talk:

This is an important message from WebHostingTalk containing information about how your post has violated Forum Guidelines.

This e-mail is to inform you that you have received 10 warning points, which are set to expire at midnight US EST on 2005-12-24, for “Self-Promotion.”

You now have a total of 10 warning points. If your aggregate point value reaches 30 or more, your account will be disabled until enough points expire that it falls below the 30 points banning threshold.

Anybody have any good ways for me to spend my other “20 warning points”?

Gee, and people wonder why alternative Web hosting forums are getting more popular? I’ll take Web Hosting Chat over this crap any day of the week. It isn’t like I was saying, “Hey folks! Click here! Click here!”. I was just listing another option that is out there. It just happens that I am the other option.