Flash Render Quality changer. When you want to reduce the video strain on your computer.

I've mentioned before that there are various sites, like EarnHoney, Earnably, Perk, Branded Surveys and Swagbucks, which pay you to watch videos.

There can, however, be a problem with that.

And that's that some of the videos on such sites can use Flash, which means they may put a hefty strain on your computer, your browser and your RAM, slowing your machine down and causing it to heat up.

Fortunately, if you use Google Chrome, there's a way to help reduce that problem - and that's to add an extension called FRQc (Flash Render Quality changer) to it. Once that's on there, you can use it to choose the quality level of  any Flash-based videos that are playing in your browser and, therefore, reduce the level of strain they're putting on your machine.

Having had such videos bring my laptop grinding to a near-halt in the past, I know how useful such a feature can be. Therefore, you can find Flash Render Quality changer at the Google Chrome Web Store. This isn't an affiliate link and I won't make any money from you using it.

Curious Cat. The quick-paying survey app.

Curious Cat is a survey app I've just downloaded to my phone and given a quick try-out to.

It offers surveys from sources that'll be familiar to all regular survey takers, such as Samplicio and the somewhat unfortunately named Cint and is a quick, easy and no-nonsense way to do them.

As with all sites that offer such surveys, rewards are variable. Some are clearly generous and some aren't really worth bothering with. It all depends on how much time you're willing to spend earning a particular amount of money.

There's also the familiar problem of getting screened out of surveys, which clearly happens a lot.

Having said that, the ones I tried screened me out almost instantly, so at least not much time was wasted.

But easily the main selling point for Curious Cat is that you only need to earn £1 in order to cash-out, which is done via PayPal, and you receive your money almost instantly.

In the half hour since I downloaded it, I've earned 45 pence, so I've still got a way to go before a cash-out. From reviews I've seen online, it seems there are no problems with Curious Cat stumping up the money it owes you, so I'd see the app as being promising. I'll post more information as I have it.

Curious Cat is available for both IOS and Android. You can find out more and get the app by going to the official Curious Cat site, right here. This isn't a referral link, so I won't make any money if you use it.

Payment method: PayPal. Minimum payout: £1. Time for payouts to be processed: Instant. My rating: Too early to say yet but intriguing. DOWNLOAD CURIOUS CAT.

Prolific Assistant. Make sure you never miss out on a Prolific study again.

As I've mentioned before, by far my favourite, "survey," site is Prolific, which pays you to take part in academic research studies, mostly of less than half an hour in length. The studies are usually interesting and, generally, have a healthy pay rate.

There is, however, one problem with Prolific, and that's that it hardly ever emails you to let you know there are studies available. On top of that, studies are often snapped up within minutes of appearing, meaning you can miss out on them completely.

To get round this problem, you can always have the site's Studies page permanently open, with Super Auto Refresh set to reload the page every minute or so. However, that isn't necessarily the most convenient of things and, if everyone does it, it's in danger of slowing the site down to a halt.

Fortunately, there is a better way. And that's to use Prolific Assistant, an extension to your browser, which alerts you whenever a Prolific study's available. At the moment, Prolific is testing a new Beta version of its site, which isn't yet, it seems, compatible with Prolific Assistant. However, the extension still works fine with the old version of the site and I'd assume the extension will be updated to work with the new version of the site before too long.

If you do use Prolific Assistant, make sure to have it set to listen for changes to Prolific at intervals of more than 60 seconds, so that it doesn't put too much strain on the site's servers, which could cause problems with page loading.

Prolific Assistant is highly recommended and you can get it by going to the Google Chrome Web Store. Rest assured that's not a referral link and I won't make any money from you using it.

This, however, is a referral link. Use it to sign up to Prolific and both you and I could make money from it.