Orangeinks

Jabbify: Unobtrusive Chat Plugin for Websites

There are lots of chat client widgets/plugins for blogs and websites. Most bloggers do not use chat widgets mainly because it reduces commenting on articles and it consumes sidebar space. For sites or blogs which offers a service or a product, a chat widget is a handy tool to have.

Jabbify offers a widget that you can place on your blogs/websites which will not consume space from your site. It can sit on the bottom part of the browser so that it will not interfere with your content or waste sidebar space. The user has the power to turn it off or pop it out in a different window. What I like about Jabbify is that a user can register his name and the URL of his/her site in the chat widget. The user’s name will link to the URL he/she entered and will be available in the conversations. This way, the owner and other visitors of the site can check out the participant’s respective blogs or sites. It’s pretty much like a comment system on blogs. The only difference is that Jabbify is live.

Setting up the plugin is very easy. You can either get the java script tag which works on any site or if you are using a blogging platform like WordPress or Blogger, there is a quick how-to guide that will help you setup Jabbify easily on your blogs. After installing the plugin, all that’s left to do is to use your Jabbify to register your website.

If you are looking for an unobtrusive chat plugin for your blogs, Jabbify is worth a try. Just head over to their site and sign up.

Tags: blogger, Chat, jabbify, Plugin, wordpress

The Google Translate Gadget

Page translation tools are great if you want to reach out to more readers, especially those who do not speak/read the language you are writing in. I have been using a language plugin for WordPress for quite some time now and I was quite happy with it. Then, I found this Google Gadget which pretty much does the same. The only difference is that it features more languages compared to the plugin that I was using.

Users may already be translating your webpage using Google Translate, but you can make it even easier by including our “Translate My Page” gadget.

You can also prevent some content from being translated if you wish to. Just head over to the Google Webmaster Central blog and get the codes. There is also the AJAX Language API that you can use to automatically translate your pages. I don’t exactly know how the API works but if your pages will automatically be translated depending on the location of your site visitor, then I would not recommend using it. The users should have the freedom to translate the content themselves. There are users on other parts of the world who may be comfortable with the language that you are using and do not wish your pages to be translated automatically to the native language of that specific location.

You can get the codes for Translate My Page Gadget here.

Tags: gadget, Google, Plugin, translate

ChunkIt: View the Web in Chunks

Search engines are a great way to find information on the internet, but the problem is that the search results that they give are very short and does not always provide the information that we are looking for. They only give a part of the indexed pages which most of the time is insufficient data. We have to browse the links provided only to find more links and less information. If you are doing research about a particular topic and using a search engine to do it, chances are you’ll end up browsing more than getting what you need right away.

ChunkIt is a Firefox plugin that will help you get information faster and better with your search results. What it does is browse the pages that appeared on let’s say Google search results and get chunks of information related to the keywords that you used. It highlights the keywords within the content which will allow you to access the information faster.

• ChunkIt searches within the pages of your engine’s results to find your search terms in context. You can then preview the resulting multicolored “chunks” for relevance without clicking on the actual page.

• ChunkIt digs deep inside a Webpage and all of the webpages it contents links to, leaving no stone unturned as it searches for information relevant to your search.

The plugin will divide you screen in two displaying the Chunked texts on the right side and the original page on the left. You can get chunks from browsers like Google and Yahoo and directly from websites. Chunking directly from websites is useful especially when you are browsing a huge website like Wikipedia.

ChunkIt is a great Firefox plugin but it is far from perfect. When I tested it, I experienced several errors and bugs. If you would like to test or try out the plugin, might I suggest that you go over their FAQ page first to find out about the errors. It also showed some conflicts with the current FF plugins that I’m using.

Check out the video below on how to use ChunkIt.

Tags: Chunkit, Firefox, Plugin

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

Blog Editor Alternatives: ScribeFire

…continued.

This is the continuation of the post for Blog Editor Alternatives. Here is the second part.

ScribeFire

ScribeFire is a very cool Firefox Extension that really brings blogging to a whole new level. It enables users to easily drag and drop formatted text from the Web into their blog(s), post entries, take notes, and optimize their ad inventory, directly through the Firefox browser.

This is a great Firefox Add-on for bloggers. You can easily make posts to your blog by clicking the SribeFire button on the bottom of your Firefox browser. It will allow easier blogging as you do not have to login to your blog’s dashboard to start writing and posting. You can also edit previous blog entries easily. You can modify time-stamps, add Technorati tags, place trackback URL’s and pings.

You can choose to open ScribeFire in split screen mode, in a new window or a new tab. The application also allows you to easily share pages to social networking sites such as Digg, Furl, Mahalo, reddit, Facebook and a few more.

ScribeFire allows you to:

• Categorize and tag your blog posts
• Upload images
• Set timestamps
• Save works-in-progress as notes
• Post an entry as a draft
• Share your posts on social websites
• Upload files via FTP

You can also make money with ScribeFire by registering to ScribeFire Ads. Although this service is still in private beta, it promises easy “point and click” functionality in placing banner ads to blogs and have access to a dashboard to track your site’s earnings with no minimum payouts. This means that you can cash in every month no matter how much you make with your ads. Neat!

If you are blogger who finds it hard using your current blog post editor or someone who wants to try out something new, ScribFire is a “must try” Firefox Add-on. It’s also great for managing multiple blog accounts especially multiple Blogspot (blogger) accounts.

Tags: add-on, alternative, Blog, editor, Firefox, Plugin, scribefire

PodiPodi Opens to the Public

You may have noticed the flashing black thing every time you visit Orangeinks. It’s a plugin called PodiPodi. In case you missed our review on PodiPodi, it’s a website enhancement tool that lets you upgrade your website and packs it with multimedia viewing features, Google searches and lots of other cool stuff. PodiPodi is embedded in a page as a java-script gadget, but thanks to its unobtrusive architecture it doesn’t change the page layout.

Anyway, I would just like to inform you all that PodiPodi is now on public beta. You can register for free and try out the plugin in your own websites. You can tweak the features inside your PodiPodi account and choose which features you want to be available in your blog or website.

Added Features:

•find: just type in find and some text (e.g. find widget) and PodiPodi will search and highlight for you all the matched words in the page containing the searched text.

•Google Gadgets: this is probably the most exciting update! Now you can customize your PodiPodi with thousands of Google Gadgets and bind them to whatever commands you’d like to give to your users, from weather reports to news or games! If you are a developer you can create your own Gadget, post it to Google Gadgets and embed it in your PodiPodi box.

•admin tools: we have worked on the administration pages, now it’s possible to change the password, the name and URL of your website.

Tags: Plugin, podipodi, web tool, website enhancement, website upgrade