Web Talk

Web of trust is an interesting add-on for Firefox whose goal is to advice you against those websites which try to cheat and scam you with artful fake pages. It also reports if a website contains spyware, malware, spam and other threats which could be installed on your computer without your permission. But how does it work? The main idea behind Web of Trust is quite simple but very effective. As a matter of fact, its strength is based upon people using it who report if a website is secure or not once they visit it. No third party company to rely on, no expensive software nor update to buy. Everything is done by surfers who, by using this wonderful free application, come together to create the most powerful anti-pestware community ever made! Deborah Salmi working at Web of Trust wrote me this interesting article to let me and all Web Talk’s readers know more about the add-on.

People-driven security, an approach that lets individual Internet users join forces in the battle against online threats, is gaining momentum. Web of Trust, a free browser security tool, combines the collective power of millions of human eyes with data from automated blacklist services to keep your computer safe from spyware, adware, spam, viruses, browser exploits, unreliable online shops, phishing and other Internet scams.
As you search with Google, Yahoo!, Gmail, Wikipedia, Mahalo, Digg, del.icio.us, AOL, MSN and others, you will see a tiny icon beside the link—green for go, yellow for proceed with caution and red for stop. WOT has data for over 18 million websites, and the reputation database is updated every thirty minutes, so information is fresh.
The Website Reputation Scorecard lets you see the reasons for a website’s ratings. It supplies data on popularity, a WHOIS link, detailed rating information with graphics that mirror the add-on’s rating popup, and a section for comments and references.
WOT has an impressive 4.5/5.0 star user rating on CNET and is a recommended add-on for Firefox. It also works on Internet Explorer. Watch the demo, anddownload WOT today.
Thanks to Francesco for supporting Web of Trust.

Deborah Salmi

If you installed Windows Genuine Advantege (WGA) addon in your Firefox browser, at a certain point you could wish to uninstall it from your computer and your life. This software serves only the purpose to bother you, and makes you curse at Microsoft when you try to download something from Microsoft Download Center. As a matter of fact, if you try to download restricted software, your browser will prompt you (thanks to the addon) to download and install WGAPluginInstall.exe which, once installed, will check if your Windows Vista or Xp is valid. WGAPluginInstall.exe installs npLegitCheckPlugin.dll and nsILegitCheckPlugin.xpt into Mozilla Firefox. Microsoft, as usual, has not given any way to uninstall the plugin, but luckily for us there is a little trick to get rid of it. Go to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins folder, and then delete the npLegitCheckPlugin.dll file. Then, go to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\components folder, and delete the nsILegitCheckPlugin.xpt file. At this point, if you want to see if you have really removed the plugin, on your Firefox address bar write: about:plugins. If any info related to the plugin appears you are done!

Some time ago I spoke about the best Firefox add-ons available on the Internet. You can read the article here. There are a lot of add-ons available for this excellent browser and I have spoken about them broadly. To have an idea what I am talking about you can click on this link here to know more. Anyway, since I am always looking for new things to broaden the variety of topics Web Talk covers on a daily basis, today I want to speak of some new add-ons which could be useful if you like playing with images while surfing. Here is a list of the best image add-ons available for Firefox. Continue reading »

If you have a PDF file but you don’t want to use any software to open it, the only solution you have is to convert such a file, thanks to an online application, into a flash webpage readable directly from your preferred browser. Thanks to PdfMeNot reading a PDF file without using Adobe Reader (which, in some cases, slow your computer down) is not impossible anymore. As a matter of fact this nice website lets you converter any PDF documents located on your computer or in any website with a couple of simple steps. But PdfMeNot goes beyond all this. In fact, it lets you download a Firefox extension to have such an important resource always at hand in your browser. Besides, if you are a webmaster PdfMeNot may be very helpful to you. In fact, if you want your visitors to read important PDF documents within your blog’s pages, you can do it by embedding a special code provided by PdfMeNot once a certain document has been converted. Look at the example here. I like this website a lot and I strongly recommend it to bloggers who are always looking for applications to embed documents and pics in their blogs in an easy and painless way.

Firefox is the most used browser in the world. It is more secure, reliable, well-done and bug-free than a lot of other browsers promising to surf at light speed. Notwithstanding what Microsoft says about its Internet Explorer 7 and the fact that now it has changed and blablabla, I can tell you that I have got more viruses thanks to IE than going to an hacker website and shout: somebody send me a virus if you dare! That’s why I decided to stop using it and since then, well my Internet surfing experience has totally changed. The only flaw Firefox has, is its slowness when you open it. Things are going to change anyway! In fact thanks to Firefox preloader, one for the last Firefox tabu has fallen. This add-on loads parts of Mozilla Firefox into memory before it is used in order to improve its start-up time. I am using it right now and I have to say that it really works. The only bad side is due to the fact that it sucks some of your computer resources. According to Cybernet it takes around 4-5 Mb from your RAM. Honestly speaking I don’t see any difference in my computer performance so I think to keep it. If you are, like I was, concerned about your Firefox strat-up download Firefox Preloader now!

This cool add-on for Firefox lets you listen to whatever you want from any website. Speak It uses Microsoft tts engine (that is already available in your operative system) to read a content from the Internet. The most effective way to use it is to right-click your mouse over a sentence you want to listen. At this point a menu appears and among its options you will find “Say it”, click it and start listening! Alternatively you can also select the text and press CTRL+ALT+V. This plugin is very useful for those people who are studying English and want to have a good idea how to pronounce a word or a whole sentence. Among its features there is one that allows you to slow the pronunciation down, just in case you don’t manage to follow the speaking. You can download it here.

This add-on for Firefox is a nice companion for your Google Docs. In fact with it you can drag and drop your documents inside its sidebar to upload them. You can also search and filter them with it. There is not a lot to add. gDocs bar is a very interesting add-on. It is a pity the website doesn’t provide a lot of infos about its features. They could add a nice video or some pics instead of a sad bare bone homepage with a couple of writings. Anyway apart from this it is worth being tried.

This wonderful add-on is able to add many new features to your Internet Explorer 7. We all know that IE is far from being perfect and there are many other browsers which are better than it such as: Firefox and Opera. This little piece of software is able to add many new features to narrow the technological gap with its rivals and improve your surfing experience. Here are the features that IE7Pro adds to your tired Internet Explorer: Tabbed Browsing Management, Spell Check, Inline Search, Super Drag Drop, Crash Recovery, Proxy Switcher, Mouse Gesture, Tab History Browser, Web Accelerator, User Agent Switcher, Webpage Capturer, AD Blocker, Flash Block, Greasemonkey like User Scripts platform, User Plug-ins and many more. Try it now!