Search The Web Faster With Quickrr Search Extensions [Chrome]

Is productivity overrated? There certainly is value in getting things done better or quicker and saving time. But at what price? Do some shortcuts let us miss out on essential experiences, the kind that make life worthwhile? I think it’s worth pondering those questions before we plunge ahead mindlessly. Do save time for what matters in life and maybe some of the extensions introduced below can help.

Quickrr provides a collection of Chrome productivity extensions, which enhance your browsing experience in 25 different ways. One of the extensions, Quickrr Google Maps Search, made it onto our list of Best Chrome Extensions in the category Maps and Weather. This article introduces four more Quickrr search tools.

Quickrr Google Maps Search

This extension is a shortcut to Google Maps. Click the place mark icon within the list of extensions, enter your search term, and hit Enter to see the result in Google Maps. If you need directions, enter a respective search, for example ‘Chicago to NY‘ and you will see a route instantly.

Note that for a new search using Quickrr Google Maps Search, you first have to close the tab from your previous search. Or simply search directly within Google Maps.

Quickrr YouTube Search

Quickrr’s YouTube Search extension for Chrome is almost identical to Google Maps Search. Click the respective icon, enter your search term, hit Enter, and off you go to a list of results in YouTube.

Quickrr Research

Do you often use multiple search engines and sites to research a topic? Maybe Quickrr can save you some time here. Preset with an impressive list of engines, it will make your research a breeze.

Is your favorite resource missing from the list? No problem! Simply do a search for I_Love_Quickrr and the extension will recognize the new engine and ask you whether you want to add it.

Quickrr Image Search

For those of you frequently on the lookout for images, this extension will come in very handy. It allows you to search multiple pages in parallel. It comes equipped with 7 image search engines, but you can fully customize the list. To do a search, click the icon, enter your search term, check the pages you want to search, and click Go.

What impressed me once more is how easy it was to add an engine. We use Shutterstock for MakeUseOf. To add it to Quickrr Image Search, all I had to do was run a search for Quickrr Image within Shutterstock. Quickrr recognized this search and asked me whether I wanted to add a new search engine.

Quickrr Site Search

Tired of searching for the search box on every other website? If this happens to you a lot, you need to try this extension. It simply lets you search whatever website you are currently viewing. No more typing the site name into Google, Quickrr does it for you.

We also mentioned Quickrr Dictionary in the article 7 Chrome Extensions That Help You Look Up Words & Meanings As You Browse.

Summary

Quickrr’s extensions can help you get things done faster and free up time for things that matter. If you like several of their extensions, save some system resources by installing the Quickrr Productivity Kit. This extension includes four of Quickrr’s search tools, as well as Translator, Dictionary, Calculator, Tasks To-Do, Notepad, Calendar, World Clock, Unit Converter, Currency Converter, and Quickrr’s Stopwatch & Timer. Unfortunately, it does not include Quickrr’s YouTube search. However, you can easily add YouTube to Quickrr Research.

What do you think of productivity extensions for your browser. Do they help you save time and work faster or do they just distract and consume system resources? Which ones have worked for you?

The post Search The Web Faster With Quickrr Search Extensions [Chrome] appeared first on MakeUseOf.

Introducing Tall Tweets v2.0

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There are situations when you need more than 140 characters to express yourself but Twitter won’t allow you post tweets that exceed the limit.

Some apps – like TwitLonger – let you bypass that 140-character limit by posting your message to another page and then tweeting the hyperlink to that page. The downside to this approach is that Twitter users will have to leave the Twitter website to read your full tweet.

If you are looking for an alternative, check out the latest version of Tall Tweets. This web app also allows you to publish longer tweets on Twitter but takes a slightly different approach as shown in this video demo.

What is Tall Tweets?

Tall Tweets will slice your tweet into multiple smaller tweets of 140 characters or less, and publishes them all to Twitter in a sequence. The tweets are numbered and are sent in a reverse arrangement such that they can be read from top-to-down inside any Twitter client.

Alternatively, you may choose to publish your long tweet as an image and in that case, the entire text gets published in a single tweet. The image tweets are rendered in the Roboto font (originally design by Google for Android) and thus the text in the images should be readable even on mobile screens.

The main advantage with Tall Tweets is that your Twitter followers can read your entire tweet inside their favorite Twitter client. This is also true for image tweets since most Twitter apps (and the Twitter.com website) offer inline image previews.

To get started, sign-in with your Twitter account, compose a tweet and hit publish. If there are hyperlinks in your tweet, they’ll be shortened using bit.ly. The app uses OAuth and therefore you won’t have to share your account credentials anywhere.

Send tweets as images and bypass the 140-character limitation of Twitter

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This story, Introducing Tall Tweets v2.0, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 29/01/2013 under Twitter, Internet.

Improve Your YouTube Experience With These Chrome Add-Ons

If you watch YouTube videos often, you may have developed some pretty strong preferences regarding how you like YouTube to be. Being a huge Google service, YouTube is not exactly a flexible, customizable service, but with some work and some handy add-ons, you can get rid of some YouTube annoyances, and get a YouTube experience that better matches the way you use it.

In the past, we’ve told you about ways to achieve a more cinematic YouTube experience, and we’ve listed some handy Firefox add-ons that enhance your YouTube experience. Today’s it’s Chrome’s turn. Do you use YouTube mainly to listen to music? Do you like browsing around for interesting videos? Or maybe you have a favorite list of subscriptions you stick to? No matter how you use YouTube, there are ways to make it even better than it is with useful YouTube Chrome extensions.

ChromeTunes

YouTube is a great music source, and while it’s pretty easy to find or create music playlists to listen to, the task becomes even easier with this simple extension. ChromeTunes turns YouTube into a bona fide music player, taking away the videos, the comments, the suggestions, and even the need to load youtube.com. After installing ChromeTunes, click on the red play button to start listening to YouTube music.

The ChromeTunes player has two parts: the player itself, which you can see above, and the settings layer, where you can add or remove playlists, search YouTube, and more. The player itself comes loaded with two sample playlists which you can easily move between using the bottom playlist switcher. The player comes complete with all the usual options such as repeat, shuffle, reload and share. You can also view more video information such as views count, likes, and more.

To add new playlists, either click the search and play button on the bottom right, or click the cogwheel button on the top right. From here, you can search YouTube for more playlists and add them to ChromeTunes.

Hovering over the extension’s button will reveal the name of the song currently playing, the artist, and the song’s length.

YouTube Preview

So you’re watching your daily dose of YouTube videos, going from one video to the next using the ever-present right sidebar. YouTube’s sidebar is a pretty good source of related and recommended videos, but as good as it is, you often find yourself clicking on videos that look promising, only to find out they’re not really what you were looking for. Sounds familiar? YouTube Preview is a handy little add-on that can help you find out more about a video just from looking at the thumbnail.

The first thing you’ll notice are the colorful green and red bars under each thumbnail. These are indicators of how popular a video is, and represent how many people liked this video out of all the users who’ve rated it. If you hover over the thumbnail, the thumbnail itself will start playing, and you’ll see a small walkthrough of the video. While it’s not like watching the full video, it’s much more informative than just seeing a static thumbnail.

Read a full review of YouTube Preview.

YouTube Options

Want to create your very own new and improved YouTube? YouTube Options has everything you need to upgrade and personalize your YouTube experience. With a few checkmarks in the right boxes, watching a video can turn from the regular page you’re used to, to something like this:

That’s right, no comments, so suggestions, to counters – not even a white background. With YouTube Options, you can control every aspect of YouTube you can possibly think of, from ads, annotations and comments to playback, background and layout. To start playing around, access the add-on’s options through Chrome’s Extensions menu.

And best of all, YouTube options doesn’t work solely with YouTube – you can apply your favorite settings to other video websites such as Vimeo, Dailymotion, Metacafe and others.

Read a full review of YouTube options.

YouTube Video Deck

Are you a subscription fiend? If you have many subscriptions on YouTube, keeping track of them all can become somewhat tiresome. YouTube Video Deck is a Chrome app that brings all your YouTube subscriptions under one roof – sort of like Google Reader for YouTube subscriptions. After logging in, you can add all or only some of your subscriptions, and receive notifications when a new video is uploaded.

You can set up the layout to your liking, and check the app every time you’re bored for the newest fixes from your favorite YouTube accounts.

The app is ad-supported, and you can choose to see ads either at the bottom or on the left. If you want to get rid of the ads, you can buy the Pro version for 1.89€ (approximately $2.50).

If you’re not using Chrome, Video Deck is also available as a Web app.

Conclusion

YouTube being as popular as it is, there are endless ways to customize it, upgrade it and generally make it better. Have a favorite way to enhance your YouTube experience? We’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Image credit: circle image via Shutterstock

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