Photo by Pinar Ozger, pinarozger.com

“Some businesses literally threw me out of the meeting five minutes in when they realized I asked them to move their emails outside of their firewall,” remembered Google’s  Rajen Sheth at GigaOM’s Net:Work conference in San Francisco Thursday. Sheth is known as the father of Google Apps, and he told his audience Thursday that establishing these apps what a bit of an uphill battle.

Even Google’s executives initially didn’t believe in the idea, and it took months to finally get the approval for one single engineer. Seven years later, Chrome Google Apps have evolved into a huge success story with four million business customers.

However, Sheth already has his next battle picked: He is now Group Product Manager of Chrome for Business at Google, and in this role is trying to sell Chromebooks to enterprise customers. “I feel like it’s a déjà-vu,” he said when asking about the challenges around establishing the device in the enterprise world. Some people already get it, he said, others aren’t quite there yet.

Google officially introduced the Chromebook at its Google I/O conference in May, and is charging enterprises $28 per month and device. Sheth said that Google wants to do to the desktop with Chromebooks what it did with Apps for enterprise IT. The upside for webworkers and companies alike is that the individual device matters much less than before. “We want to get to a point where any device is your device,” he said, adding that he doesn’t even carry a computer anymore. “I know when I log into my Chromebook at home its the same as my Chromebook at work,” he explained.

So how can Google win this battle and repeat the success of Google Apps? Sheth said that the product is continuously getting better, and also implied that there could be products other than laptops and the workstations currently available. “We are building it as a generic operating system,” he said, explaining that it would be up to the CE partners to come up with compelling form factors.

Photo by Pinar Ozger.

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Syncpad Webnotes is actually an add-on for yet another Chrome extension, Syncpad for Simplenote; if you want to install Syncpad Webnotes you must first first install Syncpad (which is a full-featured plain text client for Simplenote). Once you’ve installed both extensions and set up Syncpad with your Simplenote account credentials, you can add sticky notes to any web page by clicking Webnotes’ icon next to the address bar; notes ca be repositioned on the page by dragging and dropping. Sticky notes are automatically synchronized to your Simplenote account and so will also appear other machines that you’ve installed Webnotes on. You can also access these notes in other Simplenote clients; Webnotes just adds a specially-formatted line to the each note to identify that it is a Webnotes sticky note and tell it where to position the note on the page. As a simple way to add contextual notes to a web page, Syncpad Webnotes works really well.

Syncpad Webnotes requires a free Simplenote account.

(via Addictive Tips)

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That’s an impressive result for Google’s WebKit-based browser, which was only released in December 2008. One of the reasons Chrome originally gained so much traction, apart from its novelty, was its clean design, blisteringly fast V8 JavaScript engine and support for newer web standards, which, when Chrome was released, meant it ran complex web applications, like Gmail and Google Docs, much faster than the crop of browsers that existed at the time. Its release forced the other browsers vendors to catch up, even Microsoft, sparking a new round of browser wars. This resulted in an across-the-board improvement of browsers that’s not only good news for users, it’s good for Google, too, as the company wants to make using its web apps feel as close to a desktop experience as possible.

Note: Browser market share statistics should always be viewed with a healthy slice of skepticism, as they can be skewed depending on where the data is collected from. StatCounter Global Stats are based on aggregate data collected on a sample exceeding 15 billion page views per month (4 billion from the U.S.) from the StatCounter network of more than three million websites, but it should be pointed out that Net Applications, for example, reports Chrome’s marketshare at 12.5 percent in May.

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Once installed, the extension adds a new “Snooze” button to the Gmail interface, as shown above. Hit the button, and a drop-down menu appears, enabling you to choose a snooze period from five minutes to four hours, or to be reminded about the email on a specific day or at a specific time:

When the snooze period is up, the extension will then play an alert sound and pop up a desktop notification, reminding you about the email and (optionally) marking the email as unread. In the notification, there are handy links to open the email or to snooze it again:

It’s a simple idea and it’s implemented well. However, it only works on Chrome, so if, like me, you also tend to read your emails on mobile devices it may prove less useful. I’d love to see this as a Labs feature in Gmail itself and have it available on multiple platforms. Note that despite its name, Snooze Your Email for Gmail also apparently works for Yahoo Mail, although I haven’t tried it.

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The new View Later functionality is baked into the browser UI. As you can see in the screenshot above, the “View Later” button — a clock icon — sits next to the familiar bookmarking star in the address bar. Clicking that button adds the current page to the user’s View Later list, which can be accessed from the right-hand strip on the browser. The items are displayed as a searchable chronological list; each item is displayed with an excerpt and thumbnail image for easier scanning. From the demo I’ve seen, it’s a very slick implementation:

Unfortunately, the View Later tool currently doesn’t sync with other popular “read later” tools like Instapaper or Read It Later, nor does it have mobile access, which may limit its usefulness. One of the reasons I like Instapaper is its ability to save articles while browsing on my Mac to catch up with later on my iPhone. However, as the data is stored in your Facebook account, View Later will sync between RockMelt installations on different machines, and Vishria says mobile access could come in a future version.

The browser also gets a redesigned Twitter app. It now makes use of Twitter’s Real-Time API for near-instantaneous updates, and also has a redesigned UI which makes it much easier to access @ mentions and direct messages (DMs) via new tabs. The new interface looks very reminiscent of Tweetie/Twitter for Mac; Vishria describes the changes to the UI as making the app “more Twitter-y”

RockMelt’s integrated Facebook chat has also been improved, with a new unobtrusive chat bar along the bottom of the browser window, which allows users to hold multiple chat conversations simultaneously. Chat windows can be “torn off” from the chat bar and placed onto the desktop, making the browser into a much more capable chat client.

The browser has been updated under the hood, too: It’s now based on the same version of Chromium as Chrome 10, which should make for a snappier experience.

The new beta will start to roll out to users April 1.

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To check out how IE9 compares to its competitors, I installed it (which, unlike other browsers, required me to restart my machine) and ran it through a few different benchmarking tools.

Acid3

Acid3 is a benchmark which checks how well a  browser follows selected web standards. The browser is marked out of 100.

UPDATE: Replaced figure

Microsoft has made an effort to improve the standards support in IE in this release, and as you can see, IE9 scores a creditable 95 (much better than IE8 which scored a paltry 21), but it still can’t match Opera and Chrome’s perfect scores.

The HTML5 Test

Acid3 doesn’t test for HTML5, as it’s a newer web standard, so I also ran the browsers through The HTML5 Test, which provides an indication of how well they support the upcoming HTML5 standard and its related specifications.

UPDATE: Replaced figure

HTML5 support is important, because as more browsers are able to handle its advanced features, developers will be able to build much more powerful apps (see Why HTML5 Web Apps Are Going to Rock Your World). As you can see, although Microsoft has made a bit of fuss about IE9 supporting newer standards like HTML5 (even providing some online demos to show off the browser’s HTML5 chops), it’s actually lagging behind its competitors here, although none of them scores perfectly. However, I’d take this benchmark with a pinch of salt, as the standard isn’t finalized yet.

Kraken

Kraken is Mozilla’s JavaScript benchmark, primarily based on the SunSpider suite. It tests how well a browser handles JavaScript and is supposed to simulate a number of different “real world” scenarios.

UPDATE: Replaced figure

JavaScript performance is vital, because we’re all increasingly reliant on JavScript-heavy web apps. The Kraken score above is a the time in milliseconds it takes for the browser to complete the test runs; a lower score is better. Note that JavaScript benchmarks should be regarded with a healthy degree of skepticism; it’s incredibly hard to create a realistic benchmark that accurately indicates how fast a browser will be in day-to-day use, so these tests can only give an indication of how fast a browser might be. That said, once again, IE is lagging behind the best here: It took twice as long to complete the tests as Chrome, and nearly three times as long as Firefox (although it’s much better than the beta of IE9, which scored around 50,000 ms).

Overall

IE9 is a great improvement over previous incarnations; it has caught up to the pack and now doesn’t lag so very far behind the other  browsers available. In particular, Microsoft should be applauded for its efforts to support web standards in this release. However, unless you really want some of its novel features, like the ability to pin websites to the taskbar, or your choice is restricted by your employer to Microsoft’s browser, I still can’t recommend it over Firefox, Chrome and Opera.

Internet Explorer 9 can be downloaded from microsoft.com; it requires Vista or Windows 7.

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Today, the company announced an extension for Firefox that brings its intelligent data about your contacts to your Gmail account, , and it plans to roll out an extension for Chrome very soon. Gist already has a web app, iPhone app, Android app, a plug-in for Outlook and Lotus Notes and a gadget for Google Apps.

With Gist for Firefox, you get a pervasive widget in Gmail that brings up information about all the individuals mentioned in the “To:” or “Cc:” fields of an opened email. You can choose to view their various social media feeds, their profile, stats that include data on your level of interactions with that person, and notes that you can make about the person at any time.

Gist is constantly measuring the importance of the people you’re interacting with at any given time, based on the frequency of emails between you, mentions in your calendar, and how else you are connected with them such as on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or their listings in your CRM program such as Salesforce or SugarCRM.

Let’s face it: networking is hard. Remembering details about the many people with whom you network is even harder. Having information about the people with whom you are interacting for business is invaluable. Gist is like having a personal assistant whispering key information about someone as they are walking up to you or call you or email — just in case you’ve forgotten a few details. It is also like having that same personal assistant inform you of any important news about that person, or provide you with details of something interesting they said in the social mediasphere, so you can dash off a quick note to them. With Gist, wherever you go, or wherever you are, you can tap into the professional and social profiles of people with whom you want to network.

I think we’re going to see several other savvy companies slowly taking over their market sector by creating a ubiquity of functionality like Gist. See my recent piece on WatchDox’s iPhone app as another example. These companies realize we don’t want to be locked into one platform for accessing useful tools; they understand the value of being pervasive and always at our fingertips.

To take advantage of Gist for Firefox, you must first sign up for a free Gist account then download the Firefox browser extension. You can also read my previous article on the company Gist Adds Public Business Profiles for more about Gist features.

How do you keep up with your contacts?

image by stock xchng user salingpusa

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I’m sure that you, as a web professional, know that it’s important to use a VPN or to encrypt your connection by using https:// whenever you can. But this might be a good time to remind colleagues and friends. And there are several ways of forcing secure connections.

With Firefox, you can use:

• HTTPS-Anywhere, an add-on that comes pre-configured with rules for over two dozen popular sites, including Facebook and Twitter. You can add your own rules, but you’ll need to edit an XML file.
• Force-TLS, an add-on that has a much simpler way of adding sites to connect with securely, but it doesn’t come with any pre-configured sites.

As far as I can tell, these two add-ons coexist gracefully, so you may want to have your less web-savvy colleagues install both. That way, HTTPS-Anywhere can take care of the popular sites, and others can be added to Force-TLS (using Tools-> ForceTLS Configuration).

With Chrome, you can use the KB SSL Enforcer or Force-SSL add-ons. There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent add-on for Safari yet.

For mobile devices, you’ll want to use a VPN. There are a number of VPN apps available for iOS and Android.

How do you keep your web browsing secure?

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The extension blocks all traffic from third-party sites to Facebook servers, which keeps Facebook from gathering any data about your browsing activity on those sites, but (unlike some other Facebook Connect blocking tools) it doesn’t stop you using Facebook itself.

Facebook Disconnect can be downloaded from the Google Chrome Extensions repository. The developer (Googler Brian Kennish) says he plans on adding an omnibox icon to indicate when blocking is occurring, and that, as the extension was built in just one day, there may still be some bugs in it, although I’ve yet to find any (and the commenters on the extension’s home page all seem pretty happy, too). Note that the extension can break third-party apps on Faceboook itself.

(Via Download Squad)

Photo courtesy Flickr user rpongsaj.

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Unfortunately, however, the official TinEye Chrome extension doesn’t do the one thing that would be really useful: add TinEye to the context (right-click) menu. That’s a little odd, because the Firefox add-on does support the context menu, and it’s a much-requested feature in the comments on the official Chrome extension’s page. Fortunately, there’s now a third-party Chrome extension that does just that.

For example, say I’ve found an image of Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch,” and I’d like to find a higher-resolution version. With the new extension, I can now (as in the screenshot above) just right-click on the image and hit the “Search similar!” menu option. A new tab opens with my TinEye search results; in this case there are a couple of versions that are over 3,000 pixels wide, and several over 1,00o pixels wide:

If you’re a blogger, designer or anyone who frequently works with images, the third-party TinEye reverse search extension is worth downloading.

Found a useful third-party extension? Share it in the comments.

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(Via Download Squad)

But when I hear from the folks at Springpad about changes to the service, I always read with interest. Even as my usage has waned, I really have always been very impressed with the service, and the possibilities of what it could become. The latest batch of changes promise to make Springpad even more useful.

I’ve already discussed the transition that Springpad seems to be making, moving away from a structured note-taking app toward more everyday usage, like capturing and then using data around restaurants, movies, books, food and recipes, for example. The company’s own description of Springpad as a “lifestyle application” encapsulates this change and is quite apt. So while I don’t really use it to store the notes and other such data as I have in the past, it’s still a wonderful way to grab information about my stuff and then get presented with more contextual information about it.

I was really excited to read about the new Extension for Chrome, released today. The nice thing about the extension as opposed to the bookmarklet is that not only does it allow me to get info into the app, it also gives me access to the data that already resides there, without having to visit the site. I can quickly view and sort the info in my account. Adding items is easy and it does a wonderful job of recognizing the type of data that I am adding, and can also enhance it with useful information, such as pricing information or addresses for physical locations.

When I clip items using the extension, I can edit the information and add tags. I can’t seem to change the public / private settings at the time of clipping though, which would be nice. I do tend to capture a mix of items and the defaults don’t always match my intentions.

Any application that is supposed to help you capture and organize your information is really only as useful as the tools that are made available to help you get that information into the app. No matter what you can do with the data when it’s there, if it isn’t easy to grab and store it, chances are you just aren’t going to take the time.

I am not an iPhone or Android user so I don’t have access to the mobile applications available for those platforms, but they’ve received a couple of useful updates designed to make that connection even more useful, specifically the ability to send mobile alerts from within Springpad and to quickly push notifications about specific items directly to your phone for easy access. Again, the ubiquity of the data and the ease with which it becomes useful is key. I think mobile users with access to the Springpad application will find the service even more appealing than I do.

Springpad is free, web-based and works in all major browsers. Applications are also available for iPhone, iPad and Android.

I am rediscovering my Springpad — what can it do for you?

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I made a short screencast to show it in action:

It looks pretty slick, but it’s still in alpha and is a little buggy on my Mac: Database errors flash up from time-to-time and it sometimes seems to have trouble remembering my tab groupings. So unfortunately I can’t recommend it for day-to-day use just yet, but if the developers can iron out the issues, it’s certainly a promising extension. In the meantime, Chrome-using taboholics can either switch to the beta of Firefox 4 to take advantage of the Tab Panorama feature, or try the tab chunking strategy outlined here.

If you’d like to try Tab Sugar it can be downloaded from the Google Chrome Extension Gallery.

Are you a “taboholic”? What strategies do you use to manage your tab addiction?

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(via Ghacks)

optimizeLegibility is a declaration that has to be enabled using text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; — if the designer hasn’t included it, the browser won’t use it (with the exception of Firefox, which already uses optimizeLegibility by default on fonts with a size of over 20px).

If you’d like optimizeLegibility to be enabled by default in Safari or Chrome, there are some simple extensions that you can use. For Safari, you can try either Paul Kehrer’s Optimize Legibility extension, Chris Morrell’s Optimize Legibility extension or Jim Ray’s Kerning extension, while John Michel has made a similar extension for Chrome. Apparently using optimizeLegibility could cause a performance hit, but I’ve noticed no problems on my machine.

Do you use any extensions or tricks to improve the legibility of websites? Share them below.

(via Download Squad)

While Chrome doesn’t yet have the gigantic extension ecosystem that makes Firefox a must-have for many users, many of Firefox’s most useful add-ons have already been ported to Google’s browser. Here are some of my favorite Chrome extensions for collaboration:

Bookmarking/Link Sharing

• Xmarks Bookmarks Sync. Xmarks is a popular bookmarks and password syncing service; it provides a simple way to synchronize bookmarks with your colleagues. Note: This extension is still in beta.
• Delicious. This extension makes it easy to save links to your Delicious account. One of the great things about Delicious is that you can direct links to groups of people — so you could, for example, share a tactics link with your sales team, or some great CSS resources with your design team. Note: This extension is still in beta.

• Shareaholic for Chrome. This extension makes sharing links to your social networks, blogs and IM a snap. A must-have if your team is using social media.
• Clip to Evernote. Evernote is a tremendously useful note-taking app when used on its own, but if you use the Shared Notebooks feature you’ll be able to share the contents of your notes with your team. The Clip to Evernote extension provides a fast way to save URLs, snippets of text and images to your Evernote notebooks.

File Sharing

• Drop.io for Chrome. drop.io is a really easy-to-use file sharing service that we’ve written about previously. This extension enables you to quickly create new “drops” (pages for storing/sharing files) as well as to scrape all files from a web page to add to a drop.
• Drop Box. This extension provides direct access to a user’s Dropbox account for easy file sharing and syncing. Note: This is an unofficial third-party extension.

Communication

• LiveChrome. This extension provides access to Microsoft’s Live sevices (Hotmail, Windows Messenger, etc.) Note: This is an unofficial third-party extension.
• Gtalk. This simple extension puts a Google Talk chat window within the browser. Note: This is an unofficial third-party extension.

Which Chrome extensions do you use for collaboration?

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If you find yourself on a distracting website, like Facebook, hit StayFocusd’s toolbar button and then click “Block this entire site.” That starts a timer, which counts down the amount of time you have for browsing that site for the rest of the day.

You can adjust the amount of time each blocked site is allowed (the default’s 10 minutes) and the days the blocking is active (so that blocking’s not active on weekends, for example). The blocking of each site is configurable via the “Advanced options” link, so that you can, for example, block google.com/reader, while still allowing access to other apps on the google.com domain.

I agree with Celine that distraction-blocking tools are likely to lose their effectiveness over time. If I used StayFocusd long-term, I’d probably just find  ways to circumvent the tool; it would be trivial to just switch to Firefox, for example. But for a concentrated burst of effort — to finish off a project and hit a deadline, say — StayFocusd is a simple free tool that may just help you to stay on track.

What tricks do you use to keep your concentration?

(via Ghacks)

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Click the toolbar button, enter your search term into the box that pops up, and the extension returns 20 thumbnail images from Flickr. Click on one of the thumbnails, and it’ll open its Flickr image page in a new tab.  All of this happens without leaving the web page you’re on, which makes it a handy tool for blogging.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to page through to more images if you don’t like any of the first 20 results, and you can’t do anything more advanced than a simple keyword search (the ability to restrict the search to Creative Commons-licensed images would make it a perfect tool for me). However, this is only version 0.3 of the extension, so I’m hoping those features will come in a future release. It sounds like the developer is eventually planning to turn this into a tool that can do on-the-fly searches of multiple stock libraries, which could make it a very useful tool indeed.

Found a useful extension? Let us know about it in the comments!

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(via Download Squad)