Google’s Chrome initiatives have been a major topic of interest given Google’s long term goals to incorporate as many of its products into intertwined, revenue-generating aspects of its company. But what about all the other browser add-ons that have long since known what Google is going after with so much browser integration?
VideoSurf is the latest to create a browser add-on that seeks to add value to what we already experience on the web. The newly released VideoSurf Firefox extension offers videos at a glance, giving you the ability to see what’s behind shortened URL video links, among other things (download it here).
But let’s talk about the shortened URL preview option, considering the buzz that’s been going around today about Tr.im dead-pooling and the concerns it’s brought up regarding the Twitter third party app market. Shortened URLs are among the easiest ways to spread spam and malware around social media sites such as Twitter, giving VideoSurf the attractive feature for seeing what’s behind the shortened URL before clicking on it. If you already have Firefox then you’re able to see the full URL behind a shortened URL, but VideoSurf’s Firefox extension takes things a step further by giving you a video summary complete with the video title and a thumbnail.
Some other highlights of VideoSurf’s new browser add-on include Google and Yahoo search enhancements, giving you additional video results based on your initial query. VideoSurf results pull from Hulu, and Fancast, among others. Hover your mouse over the search results thumbnails and you’ll see a short preview of the video.
This is an interesting search enhancement, given Google’s own video search results, which are often separate from the main search results, as well as Yahoo, which has recently teamed up with Microsoft, adding to some of the multimedia results already present on Microsoft’s latest project, Bing.
But for some added Google search result enhancements, VideoSurf also perks up your YouTube queries as well. Based on searches performed on YouTube, VideoSurf will also give you results from other sites across the web. If you’d like to see full-episode web clips for certain queries, this particular feature is right up your alley.
Admittedly, some browser extensions can be overwhelming and annoying, especially those that act automatically based on something as basic and as frequent as web searches. To curb any hatred towards its new Firefox extension, VideoSurf has made its tool pretty customizable so you can turn it off and on with one click, and pick and choose which features you’d like to use for your personal preferences.
Of course, VideoSurf is pretty niche in its service offerings, and you’re only going to appreciate this tool if you’re a video junkie (I actually do know a few of those). Nevertheless, I tend to appreciate the browser approach towards solving certain problems. VideoSurf has selected some handy features for its new Firefox extension.