By default, Grooveshark is only accessible via a browser. To use it, the usual way is to open your browser (or open a new tab), go to the Grooveshark site and start listening to your music. This isn’t really the most user-friendly way. What if, with the help of some tools, you can have a better Grooveshark experience? Let’s check them out.

1. Control Grooveshark from browser tool bar

Looking to control your Grooveshark without having to switch to the Grooveshark tab everytime? sharkZapper for Grooveshark is a great Google Chrome extension specially made for that. After installation, you can control your Grooveshark right from your Chrome icon bar. You can Play, Rewind, Next the song and even mute/volume control. It even shows the Album Art and a search box for you to search for songs.

In Firefox, you can use the Grooveshark Remote Control to control Grooveshark without breaking your workflow.

2. Block Grooveshark ad

Seriously, I would not want to block the ads in Grooveshark because firstly, I don’t find them intrusive, and secondly, it is a source of revenue for Grooveshark. However, I know that many of you dislike the ads and can’t wait to kill it even before it appears. The easiest way is to install an ad blocking extension. The most popular is Adblock extension (Google Chrome, Firefox). The ad will miraculously disappear after you have installed the extension.

3. Add keyboard support for Grooveshark

For those who prefer keyboard shortcut to mouse click, KeySharky adds the necessary keyboard shortcut for you to control Grooveshark. Once installed, you can press “Ctrl + Shift + Alt + Z” to play/pause the current song or “Ctrl + Shift + Alt + D” to skip to the next song in the playlist. There are also other useful keyboard shortcut like mute, increase/decrease volume. You can even change the keyboard shortcut to other keys that are more convenient for you.

keySharky (Firefox | Chrome)

4. Display lyrics for now playing song

If you love to sing along while your favorite song is playing, Grooveshark Lyrics (Google chrome extension) can display the lyrics when the song is playing.

5. Import iTunes playlist to Grooveshark

If you already have a huge playlist in your iTunes, the last thing that you want to do is to reconfigure this playlist to your Grooveshark account. Groovylist is a web service that can convert your iTunes playlist to Grooveshark format. It supports Last.fm and Spotify as well, so you wouldn’t miss out any of your favorite track.

6. Using Grooveshark as a desktop app

While Grooveshark is great, it will be even better if we could run it as a native desktop app. GrooveWalrus is one such app that allows you to run Grooveshark as a native desktop app. In Groovewalrus, you can search for the songs and mass add them to the playlist. The interface is user-friendly, so it should be easy for anyone to use it.

7. Remote control Grooveshark

There are times where you are not directly in front of your computer, but still want your Grooveshark music to continue playing. This is where remote control for Grooveshark becomes useful. If you own an Android phone, you can install the Grooveshark Remote (market link) app in the market. This app, works in conjunction with a Firefox extension, allows you to control the playback/pause/previous/next of the songs in your play queue. It is rather minimal at the moment, but at least it works.

For iPhone and other mobile devices, there is no native app to remote control Grooveshark yet. What you can use is GrooveBud Google Chrome extension to control Grooveshark remotely from another web browser. In this case, you can open up your mobile safari, load the Groovebud Control Player and control your play song. I have tested it on a first gen iPod Touch and it worked, but the interface is overly simple and nothing to be desired.

8. Download music from Grooveshark

There are plenty of ways to download songs from Grooveshark. Orbit downloader is one of the most popular one. While installing Orbit Downloader, make sure to select Grab Pro in the installation option and check the box for your browser. Once installed, you can then playback the song in Grooveshark and get Orbit downloader to record the song in MP3 format.

GrooveDown is a desktop-based Windows software that can also be used to download music from Grooveshark. The usage is even simpler – search for the song(s) you want and click the Download button.

9. Using Grooveshark on your mobile device

If you can’t get enough of Grooveshark and want to access it even when on the move, Tinyshark for Android is your best choice. With it, you can search and play Grooveshark music while on the move. My experience with it is that it can be laggy at times, but this is the best you can get from the market.

What other ways/apps do you use to improve your Grooveshark experience?

Why do you need this list ?

There are many dashboard widgets in Mac that perform several particular tasks related to Facebook, but not a single one lets you do all of them. So I’m putting in some simple tools that will let you use Facebook’s most performed tasks from dashboard.

The tasks include,

1. Updating your status & viewing your friends’ status.

2. Batch uploading & downloading of Facebook photos listed under your or your friends’ profile.

3. Viewing Notifications like messages, pokes, friend request, group invites etc.

4. Also some related tasks like creating a screensaver from Facebook albums or syncing your Mac Address Book with your Facebook Friend List.

1. Dashboard Widget

This is the best tool that performs notifying tasks for Facebook. This is designed to bring all the Facebook notifications to your Mac OSX Dashboard. Everytime you have a new notification on your Facebook page, this tool updates your dashboard with it. Following are the notifications that you’ll get from this tool.

1. New Messages
2. Pokes from your friends
3. Friend Requests
4. Group Invites
5. Event Invites

The widget updates on its own, but you can also manually update it whenever you wish to.

2. iPhoto Exporter

If you are among those who likes to share their photos on Facebook, this is the ultimate tool for you. Being a Mac user you are surely acquainted with iPhoto, a tool for organizing your images on Mac. The iPhoto Exporter as the name suggests is a free plugin that lets you upload images to your facebook account directly from iPhoto. All you have to do it is install it, select the images on iPhoto and press the Export button. All the necessary instructions on downloading, installing and using this plugin is provided on the Facebook iPhoto Exporter Developer page.

3. Photobook

This is yet another plugin for iPhoto that lets you Import images from your as well as your friends albums. This is a nice app that lets you do the following stuffs on your Mac

1. Download all the images from you and your friends albums to your iPhoto Gallery.

2. View all photos from your and your friends album gathered in the same page and that also without using a browser.

3. It has a enriched tag management i.e you can search all those above photos based on tags. You will also get a runtime search which means the entries will get short-listed based on keywords in the search box as soon as you type them.

4. Viewing those images includes a slide-show environment with pretty nice transition effects.

4. Friendsaver

Well this is certainly not a tool to do stuffs in Facebook. But it is a nice tool to get you reminded of your facebook buddies. The name actually is derived from Friends + Screensaver. So as it says, this tool will create a screensaver for you including the images in your friends’ album. It will automatically drag images that are tagged with your friends name or simply those which are present in your friends album. Everytime your friend adds a new image to any of his album, it gets pulled in & is displayed as your screensaver. There are yet more to it. To know them visit the developer page.

5. Facile

Its a neat and light-weight tool for Facebook. As the developer says, “It is like Tweetie for Facebook”. You can update your status as well as view your friends’ updates using this small tool. That is all it can do, pretty basic but helpful.

6. Facebooksync

Nice little add-in for Address Book lovers in Mac. This tiny app synchronizes your Mac Address Book with your Facebook contacts. This looks for matches in your contact list with your Facebook friend list and pulls in data like name, address, phone number etc from their profile to your Address Book. Not only this, it also does bring in the photo of the contact along the run.

I hope by now, its a much better experience for you to connect with your buddies without having the pain of opening the browser all the time. Share your experience via comments. Happy Facebook-ing!

Below are the most popular desktop applications and plug-in for Google Wave. Now keep in mind, Wave is very simple and doesn’t have a lot of bells, whistles and blinky lights, so the applications don’t really have a lot to work with just yet. I am sure later on, more apps and more features will be available.

1. Waver

Waver is an Adobe Air app, making it the only cross platform app of the bunch. It offers the same basic functionality as going to the site, just in a smaller stand alone window.

Using the two buttons and the search bar, you can manage your contacts, view lists of Waves, create new and reply. There is a search bar just like in Gmail and the same types of search shortcuts.

All of these are pretty much just like you have on the site. The main difference, is you only have one window, whereas the Wave site has multiple panes.

2. Google Wave Add-On

The Firefox add-on is what I use most frequently. It is very basic and more of a notifier/shortcut link than anything.

The add-on resides in the statusbar. When one of you have a new or updated Wave in your inbox, it will display the unread count. To get to your Wave inbox, simply double click the icon; that’s it.

In the settings menu, all there is to adjust is the intervals when it checks for updates, the timeout and your username and password.

3. Waveboard

Waveboard is a Mac only desktop application. It is another simple application that allows you to access your Waves in an identical stand alone screen. There really isn’t any noticeable difference between the web app and Wakeboard aside from the Growl-like notifications. An iPhone app on the way.

This application is a lot like using the next one on the list.

4. Fluid

Fluid (Mac only) isn’t specifically a Wave desktop application, however is does give you all of the same functionality you would get from going to Google Wave’s web page.

If you would like to read more, here is a post from last spring that will explain it a little more in depth.

In a nutshell, Fluid allows you to “separate” a web page from your browser and turn any web app or web page into a desktop app. It even adds a Dock icon. By doing this, the new “application” functions like the web application, but doesn’t need a browser.

As you can see, this will give you all of the functionality of Google Wave, because it IS Google Wave.

Conclusion

All-in-all, these applications are pretty simple. Not because they aren’t doing exactly what you need them to do, it’s because there isn’t a lot to spice up yet. I can see things getting very interesting later on when more people start adopting and defining clear uses for the infant collaboration tool.

What do you think the future applications will need to offer to make your Wave-ing easier?

image credit San Diego Shooter

If you are not quite satisfied with the official Facebook desktop application or other desktop clients have a look at Facebook –Photo uploader. It is a new desktop client for Facebook, released by Adobe with really useful features.

At first you need to download and install the application. You will also need Adobe Air, if you already don’t have it.

To get started with the app you have to enter you Facebook account information as a one time authentication process.

After that you have to grant permission to the application so that it can access your news feed and wall updates. Just click “Allow access” to grant the required permissions. The application will log you in. After you have logged in you will be presented with your Facebook timeline as shown below.

Updating Your status

Updating your status is easy enough. Just click on the last status message and you can edit it and share the new status with all your friends.

Comments

You can instantly comment on any link or story shared by your friends. But the downside is that you can neither see who else has commented in that story nor you can read the comments posted by others.

Facebook chat

This is what makes this app my favorite. You can chat with your Facebook friends from the desktop and without having to visit your Facebook profile in the browser. Just navigate to the chat tab and you can see which of your friends are online.

Mini Mode

If you feel bothered due to the fact that the high resolution mode is taking up much of the screen space, just switch to the mini mode with the touch of a button. Click the small arrow in the top right corner placed next to the minimize window.

Uploading photos

Uploading photos in your Facebook albums in also easily achieved. Just navigate to the “Upload” tab and the app asks you the name of the album where you wish to upload a photo. You can also create a new album and upload your photos to the new album straight away.

After selecting your album click “Add photo” or just drag and drop the image into the application. The photo will be uploaded and added instantly in your album. You can crop a photo, tag it and even rotate it from the application itself.

Apart from uploading photos you can also view the photos of your album with a complete full screen slideshow.

View a profile

Just click the name of any Facebook friend in your timeline and the profile opens up in the desktop client. You can see complete information of your friend including the pages he/she reads and the groups they have recently joined.

Apart from the above mentioned features you can also see the list of all your Facebook friends and various other event invitations that you have received recently.You can even browse to any Facebook profile and read his/her status updates, notes, pictures or other posted items. So if you are a Facebook addict and can’t imagine your life without it, then you must try this new desktop tool. This application runs on the Adobe Air platform so it will run in Windows, Linux and Mac.

Other Facebook desktop clients

Apart from Facebook photo uploader there are two other Facebook clients worth mentioning.

1. Tweetdeck: The popular desktop client for Twitter, Tweetdeck recently added Facebook and Myspace integration. Not as versatile as the Facebook photo uploader but you can read your status updates and the updates of your friends in much the same way you read your tweets. Again it’s very basic and you do not get “The Facebook feel” as they name it.

2. Seesmic: Another desktop application for Facebook lovers is Seesmic. Check them out if all you want is a very basic and compact Facebook lifestream on your desktop.

Syncplicity is an online storage service that aims to make backup, sync and sharing a breeze for its users. By installing the desktop client on your computer, you will be able to easily specified the folders to backup and get it sync quickly and automatically to the server and any other computers that have Syncplicity installed.

Revision control

Other than Dropbox, Syncplicity is the only online storage provider that does a revision control on all your files and data. This means that all the changes (to the files) are recorded and you can easily revert back to the previous version without any fuss. In the event that you’ve accidentally deleted the files, you can retrieve it from the Syncplicity’s Recylce Bin (unless you removed it permanently from the Recylce Bin).

File sharing

With the desktop client, you can easily share your folder(s) and its content with your friends. When you create a share folder, an email will be sent to your friends who you want to share the files with. Upon receiving that email, your friends will be able to view the files in their browsers, or if they are also Syncplicity users, the files will get sync to their computers.

Third parties integration

One thing that I like about Syncplicity is its tight integration with third-party apps like Facebook, Google Docs, Picnik, Scribd and Zoho.

Facebook

When you add a folder of photos to Syncplicity, it automatically creates an album on your Facebook account and uploads all the photos in the folder to the album. You don’t have to spend your time to upload the photo again. You just need to sync it and let Syncplicity do the job in the background.

Google Docs

By creating a sync between Syncplicity and Google Docs, you can now edit your document offline and have it synchronized back to the Google server without you knowing it. Similarly, if you edit the document online, it will sync back to your computer automatically.

Picnik

Syncplicity allows you to edit your photos with Picnik, even if you don’t have a Picnik account. Simply right-click on the image and select Edit in Picnik. The Picnik’s editor window will automatically load in your browser. Once you have completed your editing, the edited image will be automatically sync back to your server and desktop.

Conclusion

Overall, there are several great features in Syncplicity that distinguish itself from the rest of its competitor. The tight integration with the third-party apps have been an useful feature that have saved plenty of my time and effort.

If there is anything to complain, that must be the lack of support for Linux. It is currently available for Windows and they have also released a beta version for Mac. There is no news about any support for Linux for the time being.

A basic Syncplicity account is free and comes with a 2GB storage space. For heavy users, you can sign up for the premium account at $10 ($9.99 to be exact) per month for 50GB of space.

For those who wish to have a larger storage space, but are not willing to pay the monthly fee, you can get more space by inviting your friends to join Syncplicity. Any friends that sign up via your invitation will increase your storage space by 1GB (per signup), up to a maximum of 3GB.

If you have tried Syncplicity, I would love to hear your feedbacks in the comments.

1. GMDesk

GMDesk is a Adobe Air application which runs on your desktop. With GMDesk, you can access most of the Google services, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Picasa and Maps. A good thing about this software is that it is cross-platform compatible and you can access your Google services under your own domain name. The only issue you might face with GMDesk is that some of the fonts in Gmail are smaller than the original one and could be straining to your eyes.

Screen shots illustrating the use of GMDesk

Preferences and setting for GMDesk Application

GMDesk preferences and setting

Access to other Google services using GMDesk

Installing GMDesk

• If you have not installed Adobe Air on your system, download the installer and install it. Ubuntu users can follow this guide to install Adobe Air in Ubuntu Intrepid.
• Either go to the GMDesk home page and click on the GMDesk Flash Installer to install, or if you prefer a manual method, download the AIR application from Google code.

2. Google Gmail Desktop Gadget

Google Desktop is an application that enables the user to search the desktop like how you search in the browser. It also allows you to install little widget-like gadgets such as calendar, clock, games and weather information on your desktop. The Gmail gadget is one of the thing that you can install on your desktop for easy access to your Gmail account.

You don’t really get the full-fledged Gmail, but it will enable you to read your emails and star it without logging on in the browser. In the event that you need to write a new mail, there is a shortcut link to Compose that you can click to access your Gmail account (in browser) quickly and easily. Other shortcuts include Search and Signout.

The Gmail gadget is only available for Windows platform with Google Desktop 5 or above.

Installing Gmail Gadget

• Install Google Desktop
• Download the Gmail gadget and install it on your Google Desktop