Firefox is my browser of choice. Why? There are many great things about Firefox but my No. 1- Extensions. Extensions do just what you think they extend the abilities of the web browser. There are many I can not live without. There are hundreds if not thousands to choose from.

The one I am featuring today is Copy Plain Text. It is very simple but very good. It does just what it says it gives you the ability to highlight any text on a web page and copy it as plain old text. For anyone that does research or writing from the web knows that when you copy from a site you often get rich text instead of plain text. I often kept a Notepad window open and copied to Notepad first and then copied again from Notepad to my Word doc. Otherwise when pasting into Word or whatever office app you use you would end up with poorly formatted rich text. The days of double copy and paste are over. Simply install this Firefox extension and your right click menu will now have an option that says “Copy Plain Text.” This is a small extension that you may just find you can not live without. The author’s description is as follows…

Have you ever copied text from a website and pasted it into an email program, such as Thunderbird, but been frustrated that the text formatting (bold, italic, font, etc.) were copied with it? This extension copies the text without all the formatting.

Try it out and let me know what you think. Do you have any Firefox extensions you can’t live without?

When the may sweeps are over and real tv goes on the hiatus for the summer months there is NOTHING on television. But I digress. The new science fiction based show Heroes was a new favorite of mine. It recently came out on DVD. So I immediately went out and purchased it because well there is nothing on tv right now. The set is basic 7 discs, special features, deleted scenes, etc. The packaging is pretty simple. No book with pictures or episodes capsules. I did manage to get a free comic book by purchasing it Best Buy.

The promo for the DVD set had hyped a 73 minute pilot never before seen. Now the promotion has apparently caused some confusion. The first episode of Heroes shown on television was presented with limited commercial interruption. Yeah not without commercials just a limited amount. So anyway as the first episode was originally aired it was 52 minutes or so. So the 73 minute un-aired pilot is NOT 73 minutes that have never been seen. Instead it is the first episode plus 20 minutes. Ok but then here is the problem with the DVD. I assumed (yeah we all know what happens when you assume.) that the episode 1 (chapter 1 in this case) in the regular menu would be the 73 minute version. This is incorrect. After watching the 52 minute episode 1 then did I realize that the 73 version is located under the Special Features section of Disc 1. So at this point I had already watched episode 1 and did not want to watch again.

Overall the series is great and I have enjoyed the DVD’s. I have kept tabs on the new season. Check out my google reader TV tag here. There is also a feed.

Sports is an interesting area for Web 2.0 to seep into. Most users obtain their sports info from the big Guys. Based upon metrics ESPN.com, CBS.Sportsline.com and CNNSI.com rule the roost. You can get your news and fast at that. The following Web 2.0 players seek to add something additional. The ability to select your teams and get only news for your teams. Community or the ability to interact with other fans. The ability to blog and to comment. The ability to be a reporter and post user created photos and videos from the game. This is an interesting part of these Web 2.0 startups. The leader has to be FanNation. CNNSI is a formidable backer against some of the smaller startups. However the startups can gain a piece of the pie through innovation. After all that only benefits the end user. Anyhow here they are….
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The point of having a blog is to present your own content correct? I thought so. A blog is the average person’s chance to tell the world just what they think. I can be a columnist and publicize, criticize, or simply rant about anything.

In comes ListPipe – http://www.listpipe.com. This new startup will create you a blog and post content “relevant content” to it on a regular basis on any subject of your choosing. From the about page:

“We’ll create a free blog website for you, and posting Powerful Custom Content to your site every week.”

Pricing starts at $46/month. They will even throw in custom artwork for a price. Check it out. Blogging has so jumped the shark. See Alexa ranking.

iStatsFitness – http://istats.com.au – I recently posted an article on 15 Web 2.0 diet/fitness sites. Here is a new player in that game. They are currently in Open Beta. There Beta badge reads “Beta its not our fault.” Thats funny I thought. At least they admit their reason for being beta. The site is clean and what we except from Web 2.0. So check it out. Also see Killer Startups post. Web 2.0 Design by NovaNate.