Project Play

I’ve been reading a lot about productivity and organization lately. It seems like there’s never enough time in the day for everything you have to do – let alone for the things you want to do! How are you supposed to learn and play with these cool new 2.0 tools if you can’t find the time? A couple of books that I’ve been reading on this topic are Getting Things Done by David Allen and Upgrade Your Life by Gina Trapani. I’m sure there are many other productivity books out there – but I’m running out of time!

What does this have to do with web 2.0 tools, you ask? One of my personal goals this year is to learn to use more of the features of programs or equipment that I already have – like my Palm TX, Google Calendar, Firefox, etc. I’m hoping that this will improve my efficiency and productivity – and keep me from trying or buying new things that I find in my RSS feeds every day.

For today’s article, I’m going to focus on Firefox since that’s my default browser. How can your browser help you be more efficient, you ask? Well, by spending oodles of time searching through all the add-ons to find the ones that work for you! Well, not oodles - but if you subscribe to Lifehacker, you’ll find out about the best or newest ones.

How many of you start your day with a cup of coffee? A show of hands, please… Thank you - that’s a lot of you! Well, I’m a Diet Coke girl myself, but I do have my morning coffee every day at work. After I turn on my computer, I open my browser and then open several tabs for websites that I use everyday (and often leave open all day) - Meebo, Gmail, LibraryThing, Evanced (our online calendar) and Passpack. Morning Coffee automates this process for me. I click on the coffee cup icon in my toolbar and five different tabs open up ready for me to log in or sign in. And, since Firefox stores my passwords, I’m a click away from starting my day. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jumble/291133025/)

Now that you’ve heard all about Morning Coffee, I suppose you want to know how to add and install them, too. It’s really easy, I promise! On your Firefox toolbar, go to the Tools tab and then down to Add-ons.

Clicking on Add-ons will open a window that lists the add-ons your currently have installed. To get to the extensions (another word for add-ons), click on Get Extension in the lower right corner. This will open a new tab in your browser for Firefox Add-ons. You can browse through all the add-ons or search for specific ones, like Morning Coffee.

After you find one you like, click on the Add to Firefox button and follow the instructions. You’ll have to restart your browser for new installations to take effect. And, note that some add-ons don’t play well together. Rather than installing a lot of add-ons at once, try adding one a day to make sure everything is working right.

Once you’ve installed the add-ons and restarted your browser, go back to the Tools tab and click on Add-ons. From here, click on the new add-on that you’ve installed and check out the options. For example, with Morning Coffee you’ll want to add links to the websites you want opened every day. You can also disable or uninstall any add-ons that aren’t working or you aren’t using. It’s that easy.

Now to go look for more add-ons…

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