Firefox add-ons

A couple of useful add-ons for Mozilla Firefox.
I've been using mouse gestures in Firefox for a long long time, but I realized a lot of people haven't caught on to this. Fire Gestures is an add-on which works for the latest version of Firefox. There are a few other options: All-in-One Gestures and Mouse Gestures are also good options, but they work for older versions of Firefox. Mouse gestures are the use of the right click and moving the mouse in predefined directions to perform various browser operations such as open tab and close tab. I am addicted to this now, and find it really useful.
ReloadEvery can be used to reload a webpage every few seconds. The time between refreshes can be controlled while turning on the ReloadEvery menu. Right clicking on a webpage shows an option called "ReloadEvery", which also gives options to choose the time between refreshes. Useful for pages which need constant refreshing, but are not provided by the website host.

Awesome Highlighter

This website provides a neat interface to highlight parts of webpages. The way it works is simple. Enter a webpage in the field provided on their homepage. This opens the webpage within their website. You are provided with a yellow highlighter, which can be used to mark parts of pages. Once you are done, the website provides a URL, which can then be shared and saved. Pretty neat utility to share pages with specific highlighted passages.

YouSendIt

YouSendIt is one of the many websites which can be used to send large files. It allows files upto 100MB to be sent across for free. However, the reason I am most impressed with this website is this. This is a stand-alone add-on which can be used for either Windows or Mac. I have used it for Windows and found it very useful. After installation of this add-on, right clicking on a file in Windows explorer also provides an option which reads "Send By YouSendIt". This enables sending of files directly without having to go to their website and selecting the file to upload. I think that is pretty good functionality.

Recycling CFL bulbs

With the increased use of energy efficient bulbs also known as CFL bulbs comes the problem of dispsing them. Since they contain a very small amount of mercury, disposing them with the rest of the trash will end up putting in mercury in the groundwater. The best way of getting rid of used bulbs is to contact the local garbage disposal guys to check if they provide recycling facilities. The other option is to drop them off at local recycling facilities. A good link providing info about recycling CFL bulbs is this. Another good website to provide more information about recycling facilities and locations is Earth911. This website also provides good information about recycling other household items and waste as well.

svchost.exe

I'm not sure how many other people have experienced this problem, but I have had my Windows system freeze for no apparent reason when there aren't too many programs running. A quick look at the processes in Windows Task Manager reveals that a program called svchost.exe hogs around 95-99% of CPU. Killing this task immediately frees up the CPU and my computer starts working fine once again. However, this seems to be a recurring problem, and I wanted a permanent solution to it.
A google search of svchost.exe reveals multiple threads discussing this issue. After reading a few pages, I realized that svchost.exe is a Windows system process, and the most common reason for the system freeze happens to be Windows Automatic Updates. So, it is suggested that instead of using the Auto Update and Install option in Windows System Update, choose "Notify me but do not automatically download or install updates". The way to do this is on Windows XP is: Open an explorer window, keep going up levels to the topmost level. Right click on the My Computer icon and choose Properties. Choose the Automatic Updates tab, and choose the third option. This should prevent the svchost.exe problem.

E-rewards

On the same lines as e-miles is e-rewards. Again, you get paid for answering surveys. But, this website is fairly clever in terms of getting good responses. You get paid with e-rewards currency for answering survey questions. $25 in e-rewards currency can be encashed for a $25 travel certificate or various other items. The catch however is this. The surveys are well designed to prevent people from faking results and opinions. Instead of simple Yes/No questions, there are multiple filters which decide whether you are eligible or not for a survey. Further, some of these filters are not relevant to the current survey, so in some sense you do not know which questions are really the ones deciding you eligibility. In any case, you get paid $0.50 on the average if you are not eligible. If you are found eligible and complete the survey, which can take anywhere between 5 and 20 minutes, you can earn around $5-6 on the average. That, according to me, is pretty decent cash for doing something in your spare time.

Free Software

This website gives free software every day. Each day, the full version of a licensed software will be available for download for free, but these links for download and activation will only be valid for 24 hours starting 12 midnight PST. The software changes each day, and it also has an active community, whose members provide good feedback on the quality and utility of various software. I have personally found some very good utilities here. The catch is that none of these software are eligible for updates and upgrades, so if you end up upgrading to a newer version, you will invariably lose the full functionality of the software. A very good website nevertheless.

E-miles

A program that pays you in frequent flyer miles for time spent answering 2 or 3 survey questions at a time. The frequent flyer miles can be deposited in any airline of your choice. I think this is reasonable compensation for a couple of minutes of time. I have earned over 2000 miles on this to date. The website can be found here.

Visualizer Photo Resize

Visualizer Photo Resize is a free utility to resize jpg files to a lower resolution. I think this is extremely useful since the resolution of digital cameras seems to be increasing everyday. It is quite irritating when someone sends a digital photo, which is 3MB in size with a resolution of 3k by 3k pixels. For view photos on a computer screen, a resolution of 1600 x 1600 is more than sufficient. I find this utility very useful to resize photos in bulk and email to friends and family. This free software can be downloaded here.