Chrome Extensions

I don't have a ton of time tonight, but I wanted to post about Chrome Extensions.  Let me just say that I don't know how we browsed the internet before we had extensions.  Seriously!  I love the agility, speed, and convenience extensions offer.  Anyway, on to some screenshots:

So this is a screenshot of my new tab (when you push ctr+t or open a new tab); now, I'm not going to speak specifically to the webapps which are the pretty icons taking up the bulk of this page, but rather divert your attention up to the top right-hand corner of the page where all the little icons are just to the left of the tiny wrench (your chrome 'options' menu).  Those icons each represent a different extension I've installed.  Another screenshot:

This is a list of extensions I have installed (well, partial list).  You access this menu by right clicking any of your extensions and choosing "Manage Extensions".  In this tab, you can disable, uninstall, check out settings, or update your extensions.  On to my favorite extensions:

-Google voice.  Oh beautiful thing you are GV.  So if you'll notice in the screenshot above, I have one of my extensions, Google Voice, opened.  When I click on the little phone within the speech bubble, it brings up my google voice inbox, so I can quickly see recent texts as well as any missed calls to my phone.  I can also (as shown above) send a quick text to whoever I want (all synced with my google contacts info!).  Let me tell you how much I love this feature while in class!  The perfect solution to texting in class and......letting others know you're in class and can't talk of course! (*smirk)  Anyway, I love it and use it all the time.

-Another icon above is a little vice grip with a green box it's clamping down on.  This is my goog.le URL shortener extension which instantly transforms any URL of a page I'm on into a mini version that looks better on twitter/facebook/etc.  Love it.

-On the very far right is a blue icon with a 'd' in the middle.  This is actually my newest favorite extension as it allows me to put sticky notes on webpages (and they reload when you come back to the webpage!) as well as save notes from a webapp, and even entire webpages to 'Read Later'.  I'll post more on this in a later post when I discuss webapps.

-A few other extensions don't have icons up in the toolbar, but rather live in the background.  Ones that I have installed include: Google Dictionary (lives in my omnibox for easy defining of words), Google Translate (automatically detects websites not in English and offers to translate them for me), Highlight to Search (when you highlight something on a webpage, a little magnifying glass pops up and you can search the term in a new tab), PriceBlink (automatically recognizes when you're buying something on a page and checks a bunch of other sites to see if there are cheaper prices), Read Later Fast (by Diigo, save webpages to see later), RescueTime Productivity Meter (ha! this one is funny, it tracks your browsing data and gives you stats on how distracted you are), and RSS Subscription Extension (any page that has RSS, you can click this little guy and it adds it to your Google Reader RSS feed, nifty!).

Anyway, I love extensions, they rock.  More on the netbook coming soon......

-quinnj