take screenshots of web pages using fireshot

Sometimes you want to get an exact screen shot of the web page you are viewing. The windows method of taking screen shot of the screen( hit "print screen" key then paste the image to "microsoft Paint") does not for two reasons that
1.It takes screen shot of the entire screen including the caption bar and the taskbar
2. Only the cuurently visible part is recorded into image. If the page is longer than the screen height then the bottom part of the web page is not captured into the image.
3. It is very difficult to make quick edits on the image using paint.If you want to write some caption on the image or highlight some part of it then it is painfully difficult in paint.
Fireshot is a free firefox addon that makes all the above tasks very easy. It can
1.Take screen shot of the entire webpage, including the area which is below the screen and save it to your harddisks in just one click. You don't have to open paint or any external program.
2. Make quick edits like circling some portion of the image or writing some captions inside the image is very easy.
3. Email the image to your friend.

You can download this addon from Fireshot download .
The basic version is free to use which is capable of doing most of the reguler things. But you can also buy a more advanced version.
Taking screen shot with fireshot is very easy . All you have to do is to right click on the web page that you want to take screen shot and select firshot then selcet take entire area.

If you select "save" it will be saved to  saved to your harddisk and if you want to edit the picture you have selct "edit". Then you can make quick edits to your web page screen shot within fireshot.

 

Shutdown your computer at a scheduled time

There are many occations when we have to go away from the computer but there are still some unfinished programs running in your computer that you don't want to terminate.We encounter such situations when the defragmentation still running or your favorite download is for 4 hours and will take another 2 hours to complete. With "Autoshutdown" software you can schedule your computer to shutdown after a certain period of time even if you are not in front of your computer. If you schedule a shutdown say after 2 hours, then the autoshutdown software will shutdown all the programs running and shutdown your computer automatically. It also have options to hubernate, standby, local or  remote wakeup.Two free autoshutdown softwares are  You can also set it such that shutdown occurs when a particuler program terminates. For example, you can set it shutdown occurs after the defragmentation is over. Also, it can monitor the internet bandwidth usage and shutdown when the traffic goes to 0. So, it will shutdown the computer when your favorite download completes.

1. Auto shutdown (Download)
2. Dsshutdown (download)

Hybernate your pc to shutdown it very fast

If you have to shutdown your windows xp for some time then comeback and reboot your pc , then there's a great way to minimize the time taken for shutdown and restart your pc. This is a method called Hybernation. When you Hybernate your pc it saves the state of your pc( which softwares you kept open), and shuts down very quickly. When you comeback and restart your pc it automatically starts the the softwares exactly as you left them while hybernating the pc. This way  it saves alot of time for both shutdown and restarting your pc.
By default, hybernation is not activated in windows xp. To activate it
1. Right click on your desktop.
2. Select "properties".
3.Go to "screen saver" tab.
4. Click The "Power" Button.
5. then go to "hibernate" tab and check the "Enable Hibernation" checkbox. Also check the amount of space it reserves for hibernation.
6.Now, when you are going to turn off your pc, hit the "shift" key and you will see the "hibernate" option in place of "Stand By".
 Remember, if you don't have that much amount of free space  in your windows drive then this feature will fail or make your windows xp awkwardly slow. So, if you have installed windows xp in c drive and your ram is 1 GB, then you must leave 2GB free space for swap memory(2 * size of ram) + amount of space required for hibernation.

FireFTP a cool free ftp client for your firefox browser

FireFTP is a cool addon for mozilla firefox that can be downloaded for free.Those who upload and download files through ftp and don't want to spend money to buy ftp client software will find it as good as any commercial ftp client.Fireftp ftp client interface is very simple and and easy to use. This is an addon for everyone's favorite browser firefox. So you and install it directly inside firefox and use it as ftp client directly inside firefox. You have to download and install this free addon from the site fireftp donwload.
After you download and istall it to firfox, you have to restart firefox , then go to Tools -> FireFTP to start the ftp client.
In fireftp you can create different accounts for different ftp sites. To create an account dropdown the Accounts combobox on top left of fireftp and choose "create accounts". Then write the a new account name and ftp-address, username and password.Fireftp will remember these information, and next time you want to connect to that account, you just have to select that account from the accounts combo box and click connect.
After you have connected to the ftp site , you will be able to see the files and folders of your ftp site on the right side pane and the files and folders of your computer in the left hand side. You can just drag and drop files from local computer to ftp site for uploading files. Similarly, if you drag files from ftp site to local computer the files will be downloaded to your local computer.

Download and install this free addon from the site fireftp donwload.