Youtube is the 3rd most visited site in the world as per Alexa rankings. YouTube is serves more than 89% of online video views and with other mind-boggling stats, it just keeps getting better. Unless you live a part of the world that still uses dial-up internet, you might be spending atleast a few hours per week to watch Youtube videos.

Today we have something that enhances your video viewing experience – Youtube Enhancer. This userscript does a lot of value addition to Youtube and makes it a perfect application for viewing online videos. Simply install Youtube Enhancer script (Firefox users will need Greasemonkey addon to install this script while Chrome users won’t require anything and get lots of useful options on Youtube.

Some of the nice features of Youtube Enhancer:

• Hover previews: Simply take your mouse over a video thumbnail and it shows more frames from the video.
• Download videos: While viewing a video, a blue download button appears to the top-right.
• Lights-off: Clicking on the small bulb icon in the top-right makes the screen go black Ento give you that ‘theater-feel’.
• More playback options: You will see some more controls like ‘loop the video’, ‘step forward/backward’, ‘kill stream’ and buttons to see videos in all quality and sizes.
• Autoplay on/off
• Better volume control
• Lots of keyboard shortcuts

There’s no reason you shouldn’t be using this free script. Download & install Youtube Enhancer now!

This is a guest post by Paul from BroadbandExpert.com. If you too would like to send in your posts as guest, just shoot an email to techexplorer.in@gmail.com.

When fast internet is talked about, satellite broadband internet providers come next. The major problem about getting the best satellite provider does not only rest on the connection speed you will get from your satellite internet provider but there are more other things that you need to consider ahead of that. Get me right, I’m not trying to say the connection speed does not matter, it matters but the fact is that almost all satellite internet providers you will come across will offer you seemingly fast speed. What you rather need is the satellite internet provider that will give you a reliable and quality service. How then do you know the one that can satisfy your need?

The fact that the market is full of their demand which has subsequently given rise for the establishment of many of them with their different plans for private use and small and medium business use. There is the need for you to pay attention to some things while looking around for the satellite broadband internet provider of your choice.

List the broadband satellite providers in your area

Go around and garner the list of broadband internet satellite providers in your area. What your list should comprise of would be the price quotes and the plans available for business and home purpose. This list will enlighten you on the way you make your choice about the broadband internet satellite provider you will go for. When you must have gathered the list and have analyzed their price quotes together with their service plans, you will then compare them to each other to know whose plan will suit your need better. Then you can make a right choice between the many broadband internet satellite providers in your list. While making your comparison, you have to cross check you result for better accuracy.

Find out the reputation of the ISP you want to go for

Then the reputation of the broadband internet satellite provider you want to go for is very important. Check for their reputation and take a look at their past records. How has their service influenced people in the past? How viable are they presently? The truth is that if you go for a less reputable broadband internet satellite provider, you have a lot to lose. Try as much as possible to avoid newly established broadband internet satellite providers until they are well established. Don’t for the sake of price go for a broadband internet satellite provider that will not benefit you in any way.

Consider the speed

The speed is also very important to you because not every broadband internet satellite providers are truly what they call themselves. Many will advertise a different data speed as what you will get from their service but after subscribing for their service it’s a different thing entirely you will find. If you can’t get the desired speed from a particular broadband internet satellite provider, you can take another turn and consider other ones. The speed you will get from a broadband internet satellite provider is as important as the price and if you can’t get the desired speed you want from a particular ISP there is no point in going for their service.

Ask existing users to find out about the quality of their service.

Another way to know which broadband internet satellite provider will benefit you well is by asking existing customers about the quality of the services they offer. Users must have experiences to share to you about their broadband internet satellite provider. With the experience they are going to share with you about their broadband internet satellite providers you can make a better judgment about them and know which broadband internet satellite provider will suit you most.

This is a guest post by Paul on choosing the best satellite providers.

[Image courtesy: Geek.com]

Facebook‘s been constantly rolling out changes to the site, sometimes subtle, sometimes outrageous. Recently it introduced a new pop-up kind of a photo viewer whereby the picture opens in a floating black box (aka lightbox in the JavaScript world). This can be appealing to some but I didn’t like it. When I click a photograph, it should take me to the page where the photograph is. There are two simple ways to get back to the old style photo viewing in Facebook.

1) Simply ‘Refresh’ (F5)

When the lightbox opens, simply press F5 and the photo will open just like it used to. You won’t see the floating black box. However, once you switch to another album, you will have to repeat the process.

2) Greasemonkey script – Facebook Lightbox Killer

This is a sort of an automatic and permanent solution to the annoying black box. Install the Greasemonkey addon and then install this script – Facebook Lightbox Killer.

That’s it. No more Facebook lightboxes.

Lately, Google‘s been performing extensive experimentations with the search result pages. First the experimental +1 button integration, then the ‘Best Guess’ feature and now two nifty little features in the search results sidebar – Dictionary and Reading Level.

Till now, many people used the define: operator to get the definition of a word. Now with an explicit option ‘Dictionary’, the task is relatively simple for the novices too. Besides, the ‘Dictionary’ feature shows a page full of definitions from different sources which is quite helpful.

The ‘Reading Level’ feature filters results based on the readability level of the pages. You can click the links ‘Basic’, ‘Intermediate’ or ‘Advanced’ to narrow down your search based on the level of sophisticated language.

Reading level can be handy in many situations. Imagine you are making a school project and need some quality information. The ‘Advanced’ option can quickly clean up the rubbish content written in amateurish language. Or suppose your teacher taught you quantum physics today but you didn’t quite get it. Then, the ‘Basic’ option will show you results that explain the topic in a simple, layman language.

Google introduces new features after giving much thought and thus they are extremely versatile and can be used in a variety of different ways.  

We are starting a new weekly series whereby we will listdown "5 bests" from the tech world. You will find great plugins, extensions, customizations, tips, tricks, etc. in this series. For week 1, we have some great Google Chrome extensions that you’d love to try out.

1. Stay Focusd

So you’ve decided you will never visit that website (read, Facebook again! But 5 minutes later, you find yourself happily browsing it. Stay Focusd will be your nanny and help you stay focused on your work. Stay Focusd limits the amount of time you spend on time-wasting websites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc.

2. Turn off the lights

A very cool extension that darkens other elements of the page when a video is played. This gives a nice theatre feel.

3. Unfriend Finder for Facebook

A much anticipated feature but sadly Facebook doesn’t offer it natively. However, this cool extension will notify you if your friend remove you from their friendlist, block you or deactivate their profiles.

4. Panic Button

You browse your favorite sites during office hours. Yes, you do. But when your boss enters, you either close each tab one by one (quite time consuming!) or the browser itself. You are in the middle of the conversation with someone and boom! you are disconnected. Panic Button is a nifty little extension that simply hides all your tabs at once, with a single click. It hides them, not close them. You can restore them later when the coast is clear.

5. Snippy

A great productivity tool. With Snippy you can take snippets of interesting information, be it text or images and edit them, save them for future use and share them too. You can also add comments to your saved snippets.

In spite of stiff competition from other browsers Google Chrome is undoubtedly the fastest and the most responsive browser. With 11 versions in, Chrome continues to improvise. Google‘s latest experiments with Chrome involves pre-rendering of pages to reduce (atleast visibly) their load times. Pre-rendering means to load an element or a webpage in the background before its link is clicked i.e. explicitly requested by the user. Currently, this feature is in an experimental stage but you can use it nonetheless.

To pre-render a page, web-masters have to include a <link rel="prefetch" > tag to the header. For example, if you wish to pre-load page 2 while the user is on page 1, you’ll include the following line in page 1′s header:

<link rel="prefetch" type="text/html" href="page-2.html" />

The actual process is pretty simple. When Chrome identifies a link with a ‘prefetch’ tag, it renders it in an invisible tab. When the user clicks the link, the invisible tab’s content is instantaneously swapped with RenderView (i.e. a visible tab). In case the user does not, the content is removed from the invisible tab after a pre-defined time interval, which is usually less than a minute. Here’s the simple flowchart:

Pre-rendering is one small but very useful feature. For example a lot of content that needs to be loaded dynamically could be pre-fetched, which can then appear to be load instantaneously when called for. At the least, pre-rendering gives an impression of a faster website. You can read more about Chrome‘s pre-rendering here.

Is it possible to unsubscribe all inactive feeds from Google Reader? Yes. It is. Sometimes you just want to streamline your feeds and remove all the dead junk from your subscriptions. This will also help you better organize your active and relevant feeds. Here’s how you unsubscribe them:

• In Google Reader, click the small ‘+’ icon beside ‘All items‘ and then click on ‘Trends‘.
• Then go to the ‘Subscription trends‘ section, ‘Inactive‘ tab and then click on ‘delete icon‘ beside each feed.

You can also check out the ‘Most obscure‘ tab to see feeds that you read the least and unsubscribe them too. Get ‘em off. Get ‘em off, I say!

Today Google rolled out a nifty little feature for Gmail users – Desktop notifications for email and chat. It lets you know when you receive a new email or chat message. Once you enable this feature, you’ll see a pop-up at the bottom-right of your screen when new messages arrive so that even if your not Gmail window is not active, you’ll still know when someone sends you an email or chat message.

To enable: Click Settings (in the upper-right corner) > General tab > Desktop Notifications section. Set your preferences here. If you just need ‘Priority Inbox’ notifications, you can opt for ‘Important mail notifications’ option.

This feature is currently available to Google Chrome users only. However, Google aims to make it cross-browser compliant.

I have been goofing around with the Facebook Privacy Settings and stumbled upon a very cool feature (which I haven’t seen before, apparently. Don’t blame me though, because there are tons of settings in Facebook ;) – The Account Activity feature.

‘Account Activity’ shows details about your previous user logins i.e. the time and location from where your account was accessed along with the device used. If you ever find an unfamiliar location or device, immediately click the ‘end activity’ link to stop access.

Go to Account > Account Settings > ‘Settings’ tab > Account Security

For additional security, you can also setup login alerts on top. This will send you an email and a text message (if you have associated a phone number with your account) as and when a new devices logs in to your account. Pretty neat, right?

Important: If you are using Firefox 4 Beta 9+, don’t follow this tutorial because you already have this feature built-in. The smart guys at Mozilla have used our method to permanently include this feature into Firefox 4 Beta 9+ ;).

This is the latest solution to the original hack to remove Firefox 4′s title bar. The problem with the original hack was that it was having some problems with beta version 7 and upwards. Also, the addon-bar has been introduced in Beta 7 which is not so pleasant looking. So I modified the original userChrome.css to include the fixes.

Here’s what Firefox 4 Beta 7+ looks like after using the new and improved userChrome.css:

Features and fixes:

• Neat relocation of tab-bar and removal of title bar.
• Engraved effect on inactive tab labels. (This effect was present in initial betas but was removed in the latest one. I liked it so I added it back ;)
• In the original hack, the tabs would overlap window controls in FF4B7+. In this new userChrome.css, I’ve fixed the problem.
• The menu bar is moved to the top. It can be viewed by pressing ‘Alt’ as usual.
• The addon bar’s background is made ‘light-blue’ to complement with the overall theme.

How to:

1) First, right-click beside the URL bar (Address bar) and click ‘Customize…‘. Now drag the ‘Group Tabs’ icon to beside the URL bar.

2) Now download this userChrome.css file (Right click > Save Link As…).

3) Place the file into this folder:

[Windows Vista/7] C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\chrome

[Windows XP] C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\chrome\

4) Restart Firefox 4.

Do note that, you need to have ‘Tabs on Top’ enabled for this to take effect. If you find any problems, do mention it in the comments. If you like this post, please share it.