Orangeinks

OutWit Hub: Image Harvester

OutWit Technologies is a publisher of free applications that aims to simplify the data collection on the web. They developed a powerful and simple Web search and collection platform for everyone to use for free. They currently went to the public beta stage for the application called OutWit Hub.

OutWit Hub is a Firefox extension that functions as a data harvester which is particularly useful for downloading multiple images. What it does is let you easily save images found on pages of the web. While OutWit works best with images, its functionality does not end there. It can also be used to gather other form of data from a certain page. You can use it to get email address, page source codes, links and text content.

This version is a Swiss knife, mostly designed to showcase the technology to advanced users. It contains dozens of features to automate tedious collection tasks and produce structured data out of Web searches. The identification of data structures, object types or object collections in HTML pages (or other documents) is based on OutWit’s original structure recognition technology. One of the most interesting features is the recognition of lists and tables even in non-tabulated pages and document without rigorous formatting. The next applications based on our platform will be one-purpose tools, destined to a wider audience: OutWit Images, OutWit Jobs…

This is very useful if you are gathering images from the pages of Google or from other pages with thumbnail images. OutWit Hub will automatically download for you the original size of the images. It actually downloads all the images on a particular page and neatly arranges them in a manner that will save you the trouble of checking the image one by one.

In order to start harvesting, you need to download and install the extension that can be found in Mozilla’s add-on pages. A tiny button will appear near your Firefox’s search bar and you will be just a click or two away from harvesting tons of images on the web. Check out one of their tutorials below.

You can also download the OutWit Hub at Mozilla.

Tags: add-on, extension, Firefox, outwit hub, outwit technologies

FireShot: Firefox Screenshot Editor Plugin

What makes Firefox so great is not because it’s a fast browser. From my experience, Opera is still a faster browser than Firefox and consumes even less memory. Even if the older versions of Firefox are having memory issues, a lot of people including me still use it as the primary browser. This is because of the huge amount of add-ons available for Firefox. Those add-ons are the key to the success of the browser.

Here’s another extension that you might find of great use, especially those who take a lot of screen shots. The add-on is called FireShot. It’s a screen shot editor which you can run along with your Firefox browser. You can use it to take quick screenshots of web pages and edit them right away. You don’t have to open Photoshop or other editing tools to crop and edit your screenshots. Just right click on the page and select capture and edit. The editor will pop out and you can make take advantage of the tools which lets you quickly modify captures and insert text and graphical annotations.

Click Image for Larger Version

Another feature of Fireshot that I find useful is that it can take a screenshot of the entire webpage. This is very useful if you have a limited screen size and need a larger screen shot scale.

The plugin is free to download. The pro version will give you some upgrades but nothing that big if you’re not a heavy user. You will get the pro features for the first 30 days and will automatically switch to simple mode after that, which is still very useful.

Note: FireShot is also available for Internet Explorer users.

Tags: add-on, editor, extension, Firefox, fireshot, internet explorer, Plugin, screenshot

Firefox Read It Later Bookmarking Add-On for Offline Reading

Read It Later is a Firefox extension that allows a user to bookmark and save pages for later reading. Even though that I would still prefer an online bookmark service, Read It later is quite a useful piece of application for your Firefox Browser if utilized properly.

How to Use:
After downloading Read It Later and installing it, you can use it like any normal bookmarking plugin. Just click the Read Later button to bookmark a page you want to read later. After reading the bookmarked page, you can Mark it As Read and it will automatically be removed from your list. If you happen to really like the page you are reading and save it for later, you can easily add it to your online bookmarking service in just one click. It lists popular online bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, Digg, reddit and Stumbleupon. You can also choose to add the page to your Firefox Bookmarks.

It Gets Even Better:

The newest version of Read It Later is designed for Firefox 3. They added a simple check button which lets you bookmark an URL by simply pressing the check button. To mark as read, just remove the check on the URL and it will disappear from your list. This makes the add-on a lot easier to use.

Another Useful Feature:

There is another feature that I find particularly useful in Read It Later. The Read Offline feature lets you download your entire list for later reading. Just put a check on the page you want to bookmark and access the Read Later menu. You will see there a link saying “read offline” this will automatically download the pages in your entire list. If you have a rather large list, then it may take a while for the download to finish. It might be a good idea to properly manage your list before proceeding with the download. The downloaded list will be available for you to read even if you’re offline. This can be quite useful for users using mobile computers.

This Firefox Add-on tip was contributed by Nishadha of RumblingLankan who made a comment about it on the LaterThis post. Thanks Nishadha.

Tags: add-on, bookmarking, extension, Firefox, Plugin