Happy Tuesday, folks. This email is coming at you from Denver this week, because I’m in town for the NICAR conference. (Anyone else? Let’s meet up!)
First, a caution: Last week I recommended Hola, a VPN that makes your web-surfing more private and less easy to hack. A couple readers quickly emailed me back to say Hola might be a little sketchy. Basically, if you’re using the free version, there’s a chance your computer could be involved in some questionable activity. If you’re not okay with that, the cheapest paid alternative seems to be Cloak, which Dan recommended a while back. If anyone knows of a free VPN, be sure to let me know!
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This week’s tool is DownThemAll. It’s a Firefox add-on, meaning you need to install the Firefox browser and then install the add-on (it’s the equivalent of a Chrome extension, if you use Chrome).
The key function is to highlight a list of links (like this one here) and download them all in one go. It can do the same with images or other media files. DownThemAll is very good at what it does – I basically just have Firefox just so I can use DownThemAll.
Unfortunately, that’s about all it can do. A more robust tool that tackles the same thing is OutWit Hub, which I’ve already recommended. Next week I’ll have something a little more advanced for you, so stay posted!