FacePad lets you download Facebook Albums with a click of a button

I have been a regular member of social media networks such as MySpace, Orkut and more. I always knew about Facebook and I had a lot of friends who were using it, and they recommended that I join.  I did join, but never used it. It’s probably because I find it hard to switch from one platform to another.

When I left my job and started blogging full time, I actually got the time to explore and learn more about Facebook and today, I’m more than happy to be a part of it. I can definitely tell you that there is no way you can compare Facebook with any other social media website. It offers the most unique and attractive features with maximum comfort and security.

To make things a bit easier, developers are experimenting with Facebook and trying to produce new browser extensions that promise to make things much easier for you. Recently, I confronted a Firefox add-on that allows you to download an entire Facebook album with just a click of a button. I really find it hard to download pictures one by one but I guess that is not going to happen anymore. With FacePad, I can easily download any photo album I want in hardly a few minutes and, more importantly, I can do my work while it downloads all pictures on its own.

Upon Installation, you will be able to see an extra link that says “Download Album with FacePad”.  Simply click on it and wait for FacePad to download the entire album for you.

The best feature of Facepad is that it doesn’t limit itself to your profile only. That means that you can download your friends’ Facebook albums, Events albums, and Group Albums with the click of a button.

Check out FacePad

SiteLauncher Makes Bookmarking Even Faster

If you’re like me, you have a lot of Bookmarks, and they get used daily. Many of them are sites that everyone else visits such as Digg, Facebook, or YouTube. It would be nice to have an application that allows instant keystroke access to these popular sites, and that is exactly what Sitelauncher does.

If you go to the Sitelauncher site, you can download this Firefox plugin for free and, in a matter of seconds, you will have an efficient way to get to your favorite sites even faster. Once it is installed, it will automatically appear on Firefox’s Toolbar, and it already comes with several popular sites already loaded on it. For example, a for Amazon, y is for Youtube.

All you have to do is hit the default Alt plus Shift plus the proper character, and you will have a new tab that will open up to that site. It is quite easy to program it, and if you want to see the menu, just hit Ctrl plus Spacebar.

I’ve tried it out, and it really works well! I found a little flaw. According to the instructions, any character key can be associated with a site, so you’re not just limited to a-z, 0-9. However, I tried to program zMogo as Alt+Shift+8, and it wouldn’t recognize a numerical key. However, when I brought up the menu and hit 8, it worked just fine.

Still, Sitelauncher is clearly the way Bookmarking technology is going. No more going to menu and navigating through tabbed folders. I guess our time surfing the web is so precious that any seconds that we can shave off of it is worth it.

Source

Quick Hands-on with Fennec, Mozilla’s Mobile Browser

Mozilla is looking to spread the success of their Firefox browser into the world of mobile phones, and have moved one step closer with the release of the latest alpha version of Fennec.

Fennec, Mozilla’s mobile-based counterpart to Firefox, hit alpha version 2 this past week. For now the web browser only works on the Nokia N810 line of internet tablets.

Even then it is only designed for testing purposes, so that users can work out bugs and web developers can give feedback and suggestions. Users can also install it on any Windows, Mac, or Linux machine for testing purposes as well.

A quick install of the latest test-version of the program shows a fairly sparse but simple interface, with big, easy-to-read text and straightforward controls. These controls are pretty clever, allowing you to view the full width of a page while still allowing access to bookmark tabs and other controls by sliding the screen to the left or right.

Zooming also works fine, allowing you to move in for a closer look at a webpage, leaving out little to none of the details you would normally see when browsing on your desktop or laptop.

Fennec appears to simply be Firefox for mobile phones, which in my opinion definitely isn’t a bad thing; Firefox is a very solid browser with good security and many useful features, and I can’t even remember when I last used another browser as frequently. If Fennec can incorporate many of Firefox’s best features, such as tabbed web browsing, simple and usable interface, and strong security, I can see no reason why it won’t be successful.

But the most interesting feature of Fennec is its potential to bring third-party and open-source add-ons and plug-ins to mobile web browsing; one of Firefox’s most cherished features is its open design, which allows users to create and download an enormous selection of user-designed add-ons that improve, change and customize Firefox.

Fennec is no exception to this trend, as plug-ins are already being designed for it. On the Fennec website Mozilla even encourages users to give feedback and write add-ons, expanding the capability of even this very early version of Fennec.

A few plug-ins have already been designed, including the NoScript add-on, which improves Fennec’s security, and the TwitterBar plug-in, which integrates Twitter-posting capabilities into the address bar of Fennec.

New features in the latest alpha release include faster panning and zooming, and improved responsiveness.

Overall, if Fennec is half as popular as Firefox we could see it become the de-facto standard for mobile phone browsing, and so far there doesn’t seem to be any reason to think that it won’t be; it looks to offer everything that Firefox does, in a mobile-sized package.

Try out the latest version of the Fennec Alpha for yourself, right here.