I am not interested in starting a browser war. If you use Safari, Chrome, Opera, or (god forbid) Internet Explorer, you can find your own list of useful extensions elsewhere. But below, in no particular order, is my list of the 7 Firefox add-ons everyone should have.

1. Adblock Plus

This is essential. With one click, you can kill banner ads that suck up your bandwidth and distract you with their “make 5 goals and win a prize” shtick. (I used to always end up playing that crap). Or, if you prefer, you can individually annihilate annoying ads while letting the rest load. It’s up to you. But you need it.

2. Morning Coffee

If you are any kind of Internet user, every day you check your vitals. Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, assorted blogs – they all get opened in tabs when you first get your dose of Webz in the morning. You can let this little extension take all that work out of your hands. Morning Coffee automatically opens up all your designated websites in tabs with one click from your navigation bar. You can even set up different sites for different days of the week or different times in the day. You fiend.

3. Down Them All

This, if I had to choose, is probably my favorite extension. It is essentially a download manager that allows you to quickly download all of the links or pictures on a site with a simple right click. So, for example, if you went to a music blog and wanted all the songs on the page? Right click and Down Them All. It automatically recognizes the MP3s. And it’s fully customizable.

You can also use the One-Click feature to instantly pull down a link to your preferred download folder without fussing with “Save Target As…” Genius.

4. Skip Screen

Do any of these sites ring a bell: zSHARE, MediaFire, YouSendIt, MegaUpload, RapidShare? If so, you are probably familiar with having to wait for 20 seconds to a minute to download your file. Annoying.

Skip Screen ends that, bypassing the stupid queues and making you effectively a premium user. Another music downloading essential. If you’re feeling bold, try the beta version to get the latest features first. (Nice, because the downloading sites are starting to fight against Skip Screen. One even threatened a lawsuit.)

5. Colored Tabs

This is not a useful extension. But it still makes the list because of its aesthetic awesomeness. It basically turns all your tabs from bland gray into different colors. You can specify what colors you want and fine-tune the fading. A nice way to add some spice without changing the theme.

6. Bit.ly Preview

If you are a Twitter user, you are accustomed to seeing lots of shortened URLs (Tiny URL, bit.ly, etc.) Unfortunately, you can’t see what’s under that link until you click on it. You run the risk of getting sent to dead pages, malware, and, worse, this. You can eliminate the danger with this extension.

When you hover over the shortened link, a box pops up with the full link, the name of the page, and the number of clicks the link has. Works for bit.ly and others. A little buggy, but I find it really useful. (You didn’t click that link above, did you?)

7. Word Reference Search Box

Language students or anyone studying abroad, you must have this installed. Basically, you can use your little Google search box to jump straight to Word Reference for look up and translation.

It’s a little annoying because you have to switch (in the drop-down menu) from Google to WR, but it’s still a time saver. I have English->Spanish and Spanish->English installed. Most major languages are available.

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This is a short list, there are probably dozens more that you find equally or even more useful then the above. Cool! Don’t hate; leave them in the comments. And don’t talk about Chrome. Nobody cares.

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Kelly had initially set out to go Amish and abandon all forms of technology, but pressure from her teacher to not create the suggestion that she had possibly died combined with an unawareness of just how many things constitute as technology prevented her from doing so. After all, Metrocards and indoor plumbing are technically technology as well. Instead, she spent the week denying herself things like MyLifeIsAverage and, as I’m sure you can imagine, she quickly became bored. HerLifeIsAverage.

Rather than being physically and mentally tarnished, like this poorly narrated video commentary some guy made of her experience would suggest, she was mostly just lethargic the whole time. That video also notes that she twittered away most of her time, but I think that was just an unintentional and unfortunate double-meaning, because Kelly claims to have not tweeted even once that week. Instead of utilizing the countless hours she did not spend on Facebook to cure Cancer, she spent more time sitting around her dorm, playing Solitaire (the kind that doesn’t involve your computer). In fact, the only problems she had were related to NYU, which means it was a completely normal week. Ironically enough, it’s practically impossible to get a book from Bobst without using a computer to locate it first.

However, she was able to recall some peculiar behavior during the arduous week. In order to cope with her lack of relevant political information during her time in Solitaire confinement, she went so far as to purchase what some scholars have historically referred to as a “newspaper,” but then noted that nothing really happened of any importance anyway. Some of her conversations needed a little catching up, as one friend wished to speak about that week’s episode of The Office, but alas, Kelly had not seen it. Kelly claims they are still friends anyway. She also missed the premiere of Lady GaGa’s Bad Romance, which is truly the closest parallel of this experience with that of Ray Bradbury’s “All Summer in a Day.”

When I asked her how it made her feel to be tortured like this, she realized that in light of the fact that she had been eating earlier and sleeping both earlier and longer than usual during that week, it made her like an elderly person. In fact, she even told me in the interview that she couldn’t stand all the noise in Bobst without her iPod. Perhaps all our grandparents need to feel relevant again is an iPhone, provided they use it correctly.

The line between people who live in a box and students who shopped Soho for the most rumpled clothing possible has become so unclear that “Hobo or NYU Student?” is a legitimate pastime while walking through campus. (The pedestrian’s version of a car game, if you will.) If you’re not in the mood to walk all the way to campus to play, check out Hipster is the New Homeless for a digital alternative. The site is dedicated to “those who continue to blur the line between hipsters and homeless people,” but we think they could have summed that up more concisely by just dedicating it to NYU.

Behold Porn 2.0, a look at pornography in an increasingly digital age. Just a couple minutes into your beholding, you’ll meet Princess Donna, Tisch grad and director for Kink.com in San Francisco. But before you start silent-panicking about graduation and picturing yourself in some hairy dude’s basement telling two butterface girls to “do that, but faster,” The Princess has a few word of wisdom: “Almost everybody has a college degree…porn is becoming a choice; it’s not something you do because you can’t do anything else.” In fact, even a lot of the “models” have degrees, she notes while liberally applying sparkly eye makeup before heading to the office. So there you have it, kids: the old “if all else fails, I can always do porn” standby may no longer be an option. But just think of all the web porn you can watch while unemployed!

According to Mashable, “On October 29, 1969, the first November son download.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#History” target=”_blank”>two nodes of ARPANET were interconnected between UCLA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and SRI International (SRI) in Menlo Park, California.” In normal person speak? It’s the internet’s 40th birthday!

This is a momentous occasion. Let us take this time to revel in the wonder of this day with some beautiful things the internet hath wrought:

• The fun of “warning” a friend on AIM in middle school.
• The grave importance of keeping your AIM profile up to date with the latest Blink 182 quotes and initials of your best friends.
• The creation of “memes” which have given us more trite bullshit to discuss during awkward elevator rides.
• Your 8th grade Xanga that got you grounded because “stuff” is not a clever code word for “Smirnoff Ice.”
• The increased societal acceptance of unparalleled narcissism.
  
• The ability to break up with someone via GChat.
• P. Diddy’s Twitter (LET’S GO PEOPLE!!!!)
• The death of journalism, grammar, cable, [insert old people gripe here].
• The proliferation of porn and the ability to be exposed to it way before you’re 18.
• The “academic endeavor” of turning a classic work of literature into nothing but emoticons.
• 2D love
• To Catch a Predator
• This:
  

Ah, sweet nostalgia. Happy 40th, Internet!

In a very timely fashion (Geocities is shutting down forever this month, and nerds everywhere are crying into their Domo-kun pillows), a new project has been born out of the Interwebs to immortalize these forgotten formats and fonts. Internet Archaeology, founded by a dude named Ryder Ripps, aims to preserve the spirit of the Internet we all grew up with by archiving old websites and such.

Their mission statement says it best: “Internet Archaeology seeks to explore, recover, archive and showcase the graphic artifacts found within earlier Internet Culture. Established in 2009, the chief purpose of Internet Archaeology is to preserve these artifacts and acknowledge their importance in understanding the beginnings and birth of an Internet Culture.”

Remember these gems? Me neither, but I remember sites like them. It’s like nails running down a chalkboard in my brain remembering trying to navigate this sludge. But like prohibition and jazzercise, we have to remember what came before so we can learn from it.

Anyone who has a copy of the real AP Stylebook sitting abandoned on a shelf (or possibly be burned in effigy) will understand the particular satisfaction that comes with watching that godforsaken book being ripped to shreds. You can really only read so many rules about how to abbreviate various street designations before going batshit crazy. So in honor of an anonymous destroyer of arcane journalistic writing rules, we are deeming FakeAPStylebook the Official Favorite Twitter Account of NYU Local, at least for today.

Enjoy a few recent gems of appropriate language usage below and after the jump.

• A “cougar” is a large cat native to North America. An older woman who pursues a younger man is “embarrassing herself.”
• When faced with a challenging name, simply refer to the individual by nicknames like “Scout” or “Champ”.
• If you must, use asterisks in the place of letters in the middle of swear words. But, come on, spell it out, pussy.
• Make use of ellipses and question marks in headlines to entice readers, e.g. “Family of four… found dead?”
• To make extra money, subtly insert paid advertisements into your work and always drink Pepsi.
• Use the inverted pyramid structure for your story, as this pleases Apophis, the Egyptian god of darkness and chaos.
• Use “undead” for the first zombie reference, followed by “completely played-out fad” on subsequent mentions.
• “A-Rod” is the baseball player, “a rod” is a round piece of wood or metal, and “A. Rod” is our favorite porn star.
• Robots should only be referred to by gender-neutral pronouns, no matter how sexy they may be.

*Should an overzealous classmate or professor question your new style of writing, point out that you “researched it on the internet. So don’t worry, it’s cool.”

The “executive summary” of the report was that “95.7%” of us (19 million college students in the U.S. for fall 2009) “go online at least once a month.” (To which we respond: who are the 4.3% who don’t?) Although this was not the only “duh” stat from the report, overall it’s a very extensive and informative analysis of how young people are consuming the internet and different kinds of media.

After the jump, old people’s discoveries about young people, broken down into bite-sized portions to please our internet-addled brains.

Twitter: After all the commotion and hullabaloo from this past summer over younger demographics not using the micro-blogger, the numbers are actually rising. According to a Youth Trends survey, 15% of students were using it in spring 2009, up from 2% in spring 2008. The numbers are growing and the skeptics who thought we would just float past this new medium were wrong. When Kanye unnecessarily interrupts something or some kid pretends to be in a balloon, we all look to Twitter to see what people are saying, and if this information is true.

Yesterday, eMarketer’s blog went even further and reported on Pew Research’s new study. In their post “Young People Flock to Twitter” they cited Pew’s numbers which stated that 37% of 18-24 year-old internet users use Twitter, the highest percent out of any demographic. At NYU, this also rings true. For example, NYU’s Modeling Club and Steinhardt’s Undergraduate Student Government both created Twitter handles recently. Last spring Ashton Kutcher and CNN blew up Twitter, and the post-college demos flocked to it for business/marketing purposes. We laughed because we either thought the word Twitter sounded funny or because we had already been obsessed with texting and micro-communications via our phones. But now that the buzz is dying down, we’re investigating the conversations, we’re tracking them and we’re finally engaging in them to build our student organizations and have our voices heard on endless topics.

Mobile: Especially at a private school like NYU, we have all witnessed  Blackberries and iPhones spreading like swine flu. According to a Youth Trends survey from May 2009 55% of college students own a smartphone, 13.3% plan to purchase one in the next 12 months and 21% of college students access social networking websites on their internet-capable phones. According to a survey by EDUCAUSE 73.7% of us are planning to “aggressively increase” mobile internet usage within the next three years.

Google: According to comScore Media Metrix Google sites are the top visited sites by users 18-24 (86.8%). This is probably obvious to most of us but it is still very important to be stated. Google does have the best search results, host the best email service, and is arguably about to revolutionize email altogether with Google Wave.

Online Video: According to a 2009 survey by YPulse Insights, 73% of college students watched TV online. This is true for very simple reasons: Cable is incredibly expensive, and we don’t need Fox, NBC, HBO or any other network to program for us. We need them to provide good content but we want to watch TV when it’s convenient for us. Running between classes and internships and club meetings and parties probably makes us one of the busiest demographics. We must find a way to program for ourselves, whether it be turning our computers into DVRs or watching TV online.

Whether or not you’re into 30 page market-research reports like I am, reading eMarketer’s college roundup will give you some great insights into how students consume media and how you can expect major advertisers to start targeting you. We’re going to see more iPhone and Blackberry App advertising, bigger and fancier Facebook Fan Pages and creative ways to sponsor online TV content. All I hope for on behalf of college students everywhere is that marketers remember to engage us in their brands, start conversations and give us tons of free shit.

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I’ll give you a moment to process this: Moby the longest book in the history of mankind Dick. In emoticons. And not just any emoticons, either. Benenson will be using Japanese Emoji symbols– the sort commonly available on Japanese phones– for the task. It gives the whole project a rather international edge, don’t you think?

While some might argue that this is the most pointless thing maybe ever, Benenson has already raised $3,676 of the $3,500 he needs for the project via Kickstarter (which is awesome, by the way). So either the economy truly is turning around and boredom spending is coming back into style, or more people than expected saw  the “Call me Ishmael” translation above and thought “brilliant, I must know more!”

Check out his “Emoji Dick” pitch here and let us know if you see the point in this deeply perplexing project. In his pitch, Benenson says he’s trying to “confront a lot of our shared anxieties about the future of human expression (see: Twitter or text messages) by forcing a great work of literature through such a strange new filter.” We’re leaning more towards publicity stunt or bored academic.

*Name updated from “Berenson” to the correct “Benenson” after we realized that the referenced CNET article misspelled it.

The idea is this: students and employers are matched up for one time and part time jobs via a dating site-style compatibility algorithm based on students’ self-professed proficiency at tasks from dog walking to C++ computer programming. The site’s currently in beta and sign up is fairly easy, though it does require handing over your address and phone number, which brings out my inner paranoid a little.

The four NYU students who started  the site based on a class project have yet to turn it into an actual money making business, but co-founder and CEO (ha) Robyn Fukumoto says they eventually plan to “offer a premium service with a pay per post model along with a service for large scale events that would require multiple students for an event.” Last month, only 27 students were matched with one time jobs, so the site’s not really in a place to collect much yet. But if they can actually turn Jatched into legitimate job matching source for NYU students, they deserve anything they can get.

For now, sign up for a profile, hope the mysterious algorithm recommends you for a job and enjoy the endless laughter/vomit potential offered by perhaps the most embarrassing entertaining “about” page ever.