Cool Tools - Slingpage extends stickies and sharing to Firefox users

Slingpage, which announced its social browsing extension for Internet Explorer last month, will introduce an equally feature-rich version of its service to Mozilla Firefox users next week.

Slingpage offers a way for Web surfers to find information about favorite topics via "Slingcast" feeds as well as create custom feeds for friends. It does more than offer just feeds, though. It also allows you to "sling" Web pages directly at friends and also leave sticky notes on these pages as well. Sort of like the "comments" feature in Microsoft Office but interactive and, well, better. With chat. And it's Web-based.

OK, let me paint a clearer picture with a little story:

One of my favorite coworkers (we will call her "Sally") has little yellow sticky notes all over her computer monitor to remind herself of tasks. Sally also often places sticky notes to nudge herself to remind me to do things. That's beside the point. Relative to Slingpage, sometimes she makes notes about music and movies and blogs and news articles. Her monitor begins to look like a large oddly-shaped sun by the end of the week.

Slingpage offers a virtual way for my teammate to do all of this (without turning her monitor into a bright yellow orb) with me and her other friends by:

• Installing the Slingpage extension
• Connecting to me and others
• "Slinging" pages to us
• Leaving notes on the slung pages
• Opening a chat with a friend about the slung page
• Plus she'll benefit from being on the receiving end of the above

If Sally wants to find more articles or blogs or movie recommendations or music sites to sling she can subscribe to a myriad of feeds on the site that compile interesting resources by category. When I logged in I immediately signed up for the "Hot Slings" slingcast which is a feed of the most talked about items. I also have the ability to save my favorite slung pages in my own private feed -- a nice bit of a social bookmarking element. It somewhat takes the concept of life streaming right to the browser itself. Oh, and Sally can easily find people to sling stuff at by importing her email contacts and Slingpage integrates with Facebook.

Sure, Sally could've done this all along with Internet Explorer but like millions of others I'm a religious Firefox user. I'm not sure which browser she uses so who knows, perhaps she's been slinging with everyone but me? All I know is come Monday, now that Slingpage offers this for Firefox, there will be a serious decrease in yellow sticky notes on Sally's monitor.

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