A few recommendations for your blog hopping pleasure

I haven't had time to make cards yet, but while I was sitting here having my coffee, I thought I'd jot a few thoughts about making blog-hopping and web-surfing a bit easier and more fun.

The other day on the Gingerwood stamping forum, someone made mention of TinyURL as a quick way of making long URLs into short ones that are easy to paste into messageboard posts, replies etc. You can go to the site and convert a long link. I use the Firefox add-on version that's called TinyUrl creator. This will convert long URLs with just a right-click, or a control-click for Mac users.

This discussion then turned to CoolIris, which is a cool 3D way of looking at stuff on the internet. I have this as a Firefox add-on, too, but haven't used it much. One thing that's fun to do with it though is to go to a blog, click on one of the images to view in CoolIris, then all of the photos on that blog end up on the 3D wall for viewing. That's kinda fun!

I've mentioned being an avid user of Google Reader. I love to keep track of the blogs that I follow by subscribing to them via GR. I like reading feeds without being surprised by unexpected music. I also like accessing them via Blogger when I want to add a blog roll or something similar to my sidebar. Most of all, I like being able to see new blog posts and read them all from one spot!

Recently, GR did some revamping. In doing that, one of my favorite tweaks was 'broken'. I'd added, via a Firefox Greasemonkey add-on, a script that added a Preview button to Google Reader. It was called GPE. I loved that! Not everyone posts full feeds of their blog posts, so I could click on that little button to see the full feed in Google Reader without leaving GR. I found a tip for fixing it, tried it, didn't work for me. I was bummed. :-( Then I found a different Firefox add-on that claimed to add a preview button called Better GReader. I tried it. It works! I'm happy again!

And since I'm talking about making web surfing easier, I'll mention one more Firefox add-on that I'd hate to do without, and that's Linkification. It basically turns any text link into a clickable link. So, if someone copies and pastes a URL into a message, linkification will turn it into a link that you can just click on. I've always loved this add-on.

So, to make your blog hopping travels easier or more fun, those are just a few recommendations. :-)