I like helping people become more productive, particularly if that means they’ll get my work done faster or more effectively. ;) With that in mind, here’s a set of five awesome Firefox add-ons to help virtual assistants and other people who do lots of Web research for other people:

• Google Search Keys – open Google search results with numbered keys (1 for the first result, etc). Saves you from having to move the mouse to it.
• CoLT – copy link text and location as an HTML link, plain text, BB Code, FuseTalk, or Wikipedia markup. Great for when you need to report your results.
• All-in-one Sidebar – open webpages or search results in the sidebar so that you can refer to them easily.
• Scribefire – use this not only to create blog posts and manage blogs, but also to take your notes. You can paste the content into e-mail afterwards.
• Ubiquity – check out the video for some amazing stuff. Requires a bit of geeky setting up, but I think it’s definitely worth it.

This assumes that you already have all the usual good stuff, like Greasemonkey. And if you don’t have Greasemonkey yet, you should get it, and then you should check out UserScripts.org for lots of useful time-saving scripts.

What are your favorite tools?