feedly’s been around a while… and, while I’ve had it installed since it debuted, I’ve only come to truly appreciate what it has to offer just recently.

The list of feedly’s features, like many of today’s niche applications, is short but sweet. In essence, the Feedly add-on for Mozilla Firefox "weaves Twitter and Google Reader into a magazine-like experience."

For example, the Google Reader interface is clean and to-the-point but it’s certainly not exciting to look at. feedly, however, can take your existing GReader content, which looks a little like this:

…and turn it into something like this:

Now, I love Google Reader and the simplicity it brings to the table (something that’s necessary when dealing with hundreds of RSS feeds) but if I’m just checking in with my feeds for a few minutes or so – just to see what’s breaking, I’d much rather look at what feedly has to offer me. The spacious, image-assisted layout has definitely been saving me some time.

In addition to the display options in store for your feeds, the feedly Firefox add-on also brings you the “feedly Mini.” For a detailed rundown of what the Mini has to offer, check out the following post on the official Feedly blog: “Launching Feedly Mini: Twitter and FriendFeed on the Go.”

Basically, though, the Mini acts as a miniaturized, ever-so-faintly-visible toolbar at the bottom of pages you visit. This toolbar quickly tells you how many people have shared the page you’re viewing within feedly/Google Reader as well as how many times it’s been discussed in Twitter & FriendFeed. Not only can you see who’s sharing the content of the page you’re on, but you can immediately do so yourself from the same toolbar: share in Reader/FriendFeed, Twitter it up, email, etc.

(Source)

Overall, feedly’s benefit comes with how well it integrates into existing services. For instance, there are plenty (read: PLENTY) of aggregation services out there but most of them don’t have the option to tie in with other services similar to its own… and for good reason in most cases. With feedly, I have a choice of how I can read my RSS feeds. If I choose to read an article or multiple articles in feedly, those articles are automatically marked as read in Google Reader so that I’m not doubling up on work when I head back to GReader for some in-depth feed scanning.

feedly is a product of DevHD (not much there, yet) and is 100% free. I’m not entirely certain how they plan on surviving (that same question can be asked of so many of today’s “free” applications) unless they plan on selling the product off eventually.

Anyway, if you’re already a big Google Reader user, give feedly a try.

The Google-centric blog, “Google Operating System,” today points out a unique aspect of the new “private browsing” functionality built into the newly-released Google Chrome browser as well as the newest beta-release of Internet Explorer 8: the ability to manage multiple online personalities, i.e., different user profiles, in a single browser session.

The private browsing modes in both Chrome and IE8, referred to as “Incognito” and “InPrivate,” respectively, work the same way in that information such as cache, browser history, cookies for each private browsing window are stored in a separate, temporary location.

Basically, this means that the cookies generated by Gmail.com in one Internet Explorer “InPrivate” window remain completely separate from that of a different “InPrivate” window.

Of course, you’ll have to re-establish your logins for those accounts after closing Chrome/IE8 as the aforementioned temporary information is deleted once a private browsing window is closed. Also, the article to which I’ve linked above states that you can only be logged in to two different accounts at one time: one in a regular window and one in the private window. This is only true with Chrome as Google’s browser only allows one “Incognito” window open at a time. With IE8, on the other hand, you can have multiple “InPrivate” windows open at the same time which means that you can open and manage as many accounts on the same site (Gmail, Twitter, Digg to name a few) as you’d like.

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Technorati : IE8, Web, browser, chrome, google, microsoft

We’ve tested quite a few bookmarking tools and how well they integrate into the Firefox Web browser: Diigo, del.icio.us, Google Browser Sync, Mozilla Weave and more.  The best has always been, and continues to be, the del.icio.us Firefox extension.  The extension’s integration into the Firefox Web browser is unparalleled and offers the following priceless, time-saving features:

• keyboard-shortcut (Ctrl+B) activated search-as-you-type functionality
  (this brings up the sidebar which brilliantly disappears as soon as you find what you’re looking for)
• the ability to add both tags and notes to your bookmarks
• synchronization with your del.icio.us account (meaning that neither a specific browser or the extension itself are necessary to find your bookmarks – just hit http://del.icio.us while you’re on the road and login.)

This is one of the few tools that I use every single day and, unfortunately, it’s core functionality became broken when Mozilla released the beta versions of Firefox v3.  It’s taken quite a while but Yahoo! has finally released an updated version of the extension yesterday afternoon:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/delicious-firefox-extension/message/2204.

I found it took a bit of maneuvering to get to the installation file so I’ve gone ahead and posted it on our site for you to download.  Just save the file, open your Firefox Add-Ons window and drag-and-drop the .xpi in there.  The installation process will proceed and you’ll be prompted to download the update.

By the way, kudos to Yahoo! for listening to their users and pushing out an update to this extension.  The final version of Firefox 3.0 hasn’t even been released so they technically didn’t "have" to release a version yet but they realized there was a huge demand for it.  Are you paying attention, Google?  I only ask because it’s been almost two years since Google Browser Sync was released and very little has been done to keep it updated.  In addition, you’ll notice that almost every post in the Google Firefox Extensions newsgroup remains unanswered.