The Google streetview car driver makes a stop at the mall to do some Christmas shopping.

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(gotta save a screenshot – because updates happen)

(featured on Google Sightseeing)

Since the release of Firefox v3, it seems like the web has been saturated with Firefox “Top 10 Extensions!” lists. Amazingly, every list is different; which leads me to wonder if there are any two Firefox installations that are exactly alike.

So, who am I to buck the trend? I’ll buck it by listing just my essential extensions – just the ones that, without them, would make my Firefox experience much less enjoyable and productive:

Tab Mix Plus
This extension has yet to be officially released for v3, but test builds can be found here. If there is one extension that has functions which should be built into Firefox, it would be this one. Had there been no way to get this extension to work with v3, I would not have upgraded from v2. The most important options for me are automatically opening new tabs from events such as bookmarks/history, typed URLS, groups of bookmarks and the search bar.

Delicious Bookmarks
Yeah, I know – the Firefox bookmarking system has evolved into a database-driven, tag-enabled wonder. And, yes, tag searching the local bookmarks is a great improvement. I use it everyday. However, I’ve yet to break my remote bookmarking habit. I prefer to keep my most-used links local and use Delicious to tag, bookmark and forget the rest. This extension makes doing that a simple three click operation. The addition of the Delicious sidebar is almost the same having these bookmarks local.

Download Statusbar

Eliminates the Downloads window by placing recent downloads in a neat toolbar just above the status bar.

Forecastbar Enhanced
Get your current and forecast weather at a glance. Includes many options, such as location on the browser (I placed mine on the menu bar to take up all that unused real estate), customizable tooltips and -my favorite- animated radar.

Tooltip - showing Heat Index, Sunrise and Sunset

I can also get to tropical weather in two clicks. Very handy for someone living on the Gulf Coast like me.

Gmail Manager
See your Gmail unread count at a glance and login with a single click (new tab of course.) Also see snipets of the latest ten email in a tooltip. If you’re like me and have more than one Gmail account, you can quickly switch to another.

Google Reader Watcher
Google Reader is probably where I waste the most time online. I take that back – it’s where I waste the most time online. This extension lets me see, at a glance, how many unread feed items I have waiting and logs me in with a single click (new tab of course.)

GUtil
Gives you a customizable drop-down list of all your Google apps and products.

IE Tab
If Firefox doesn’t render a page correctly, just click the icon on the status bar to switch the page on the current tab to the IE engine.

That’s it. Without these, Firefox just wouldn’t be the same for me. The rest of my extensions are icing on the cake.

During a normal web surfing session, where would you think that I spend over half of my time? The answer would be Google Reader. As of this post, I have 120 subscriptions listed there. That means that if feed readers such as Google didn’t exist, that would be 120 web sites I would have to visit each and every session to keep up with the opinions, news and information that interest me. The advantage of RSS can best be described as “Gathering Vs Hunting.” Conventional methods of web surfing involve searching, clicking links and bookmarks, etc. (hunting). With RSS, you just sit back and let the content come to you (gathering.)

So, does this mean that I have to read through 120 sites x the number of articles posted to each site? Not at all. Just scroll through the headlines of each. Reader can be set up to display either full posts or just the title of each.

Expanded Titles

If set to expanded view and the article is ridiculously long, just use the “next item” button at the bottom of the page.

Next and Previous Buttons

See something that you want to save and come back to later? Just click the “star” located at the top and bottom of each item.

Star Items Button

Over time, you may find that you have accumulated many feeds covering the same general topic, but the problem is that they are spread out all over your feed list. Simple solution: just create a folder and move those feeds to that one folder. Now you can click that folder to display all the feeds in it or expand the folder to read feeds individually.

Folders

And I would like to finish with another important factor: Bandwidth. A large majority of feeds only output the text and images of the article itself, which means you won’t have wait for normal page elements to load such as colors, background images and other formatting elements, along with various scripts (flash, java, etc.)

Nah, just a building at the Navy base in San Diego.

It appears that there is still a portion of the western Mississippi Gulf Coast that hasn’t updated to post-katrina (and, no, I still don’t capitalize that word) images on Google Maps. The area where the old blends with the new shows an amazing contrast of just what destruction a hurricane can do.

It seems that there is a big buzz around the blogosphere and internet news sites concerning Google Maps’ return to pre-katrina satellite views for the New Orleans area.

First of all, it could be that I’m just on a renegade Google data center, but I haven’t seen the post-katrina views for over a year now. Big honking deal.

Second, since when did it become Google’s responsibility to provide close-up views of all the devastation that most would rather forget? Go back through this blog and you will see that I’ve had my own criticisms of Google and I’ll surely have more in the future. However, I’ve got Google’s back on this. It’s a free service to you, the viewer. Unless you’re a stockholder, I’m sure Google could care less about your conspiracy theory (whatever that theory may be.) Want/need post-katrina satellite views? Go to the NOAA site. From what I’ve seen, it has better images anyway.

(update – 4/2) Looks like Google has updated again – to post-post-katrina images. Not the flooding images from immediately afterwards, but blue-roof and FEMA trailer shots after the water had receded. Google didn’t give in to the feds before, I have to wonder if they are doing so now.

And I see that the Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool is still going strong.

Now you see it, now you don’t. Looks like Google Maps had a challenge blending post-katrina and pre-katrina shots.

Hope the incoming traffic stops in time…

At first glance, this looks like an arial dogfight.

As it turns out, it’s just some shrimp boats off the Louisiana coast.

This boat remains where Hurricane Ivan left her two years ago. Zoom out and you can see more derelict boats.