Boost your online productivity

- Enough said about browser wars and enough jokes on IE. In this blog I will be talking about browser extensions I use and how they can help boost your productivity and potentially save some bucks.

For those who are new to browser extensions, they are neat little programs that can be added to your browsers and are designed to do some specific task. I mostly use Chrome browser and it's extensions can be downloaded from here. Following are the ones I am using currently.

• LastPass: Free to use on Desktop/Laptop but costs you $1/mo on mobiles. This utility frees you from the burden of remembering all your passwords. It also generates strong and unique passwords for you to use, so that you don't have to have one password for various logins.  You don't even have to type the passwords during login, LastPass does it for you automatically. I find this especially useful on mobile phones since I am a heavy mobile phone user for browsing. Why don't you try it out here?
• Cloudy Calculator: As the name suggests, this is a simple calculator add-on where in you can do your calculations and also see your calculations history.  I find this better than doing it in the browser omnibar
• Chrome Notepad: How many times have you scrambled for a paper to write down your friend's number or address? And how many times have you misplaced it? This is why I find this extension to be very useful, to jot down to refer later.
• PriceBlink: You are shopping for a smartphone on Amazon and what if you are told that the phone is cheaper by $50 on eBay? Wouldn't you buy from eBay? This is what PriceBlink does. It tells you promptly if the same product is being sold for cheaper somewhere else or if you have found the best price, so that you don't get into buyer's remorse later. 
• WebOfTrust: Remember those distracting ads on your favorite website for weight loss? Or the
  get rich quick secrets? Once you click those ads, they will not cut to the chase and instead throw crap at you. Worse, if you are having a bad day, your system might even be infected with malware/virus. Web of Trust (WOT) helps you in this regard by letting you know how trustworthy and safe the website is. You can even add your rating, comments for others to be safe.

  

  Check the reputation before you browse

• Adblock Plus: What if there is a way to block the above mentioned annoying ads altogether which you routinely see on your favorite websites? Adblock Plus is one such extension which blocks ads on most of the websites and keeps you focused and safe.
• Ebates and FatWallet: These extensions make it easy for you to earn cashback while shopping online. To learn more about these extensions, please refer to my earlier post  on how to earn cashback.
• Hover Zoom: This extension helps you zoom into the pictures without clicking on them. Very useful if you just want to briefly look at a picture without annoying new  browser windows.
• Camel Camel Camel: One of the best apps to shop at Amazon. This app tracks most of the product prices since their inception on Amazon. So the next time you shop at Amazon, you can easily find out if the current price is the lowest or highest and postpone your purchase. You can even set price drop alerts so that you can buy them for lower price. 

  

  CamelCamelCamel: Your ticket to save on Amazon

There are few other extensions like Flag for Chrome, which provides country or region name, Google PageRank, Alexa Rank for the current website and Honey which shows you coupons for the site you are currently shopping.  I do not use them often though.

So, which of the extensions do you use ? Do mention them in the comments below.