Let’s get to that great news first. While the “new” web browser has now been available for download to Windows users for over a year (the beta was first released last September), Mac users only recently got access to a stable developer’s build of Chromium, and that’s far from a release version of the software. Luckily, the new Mac beta is said to be on track for an early December release.

I’ve been dying to use Chrome’s ultra-clean interface and separately-processed tabs for my work online, which often sees tabs numbering in the double digits, spread across many windows and three screens. If I was really diligent about documenting it, I could probably come up with a pretty solid number about how much productive time I’ve lost dealing with recovering or recreating data after a Firefox tab-related crash. That’s what you owe me, so-late-as-to-be-offensive Chrome Mac beta build!

As for the Wave side of things, Google now allows users to “Follow” or “Unfollow” any public wave. That means that important ones will remain or reappear in your inbox as they are updated, while ones that you’re not particularly interested in will remain out of sight and out of mind. Experienced Wave users will note that “Unfollow” replaces “Mute,” allowing you to remove Waves you’ve started or been added to specifically, so that updates to them will no longer appear in your inbox. Google explains the new feature in detail at the official Wave blog (and if you’re still not sure what Wave could be used for, check out “Google Wave Explained” over on our subscription research service, GigaOM Pro)

Even though I’m mad at it for keeping Chrome for Mac from me for so long, I have to admit that Google has been on a hot streak lately when it comes to innovation for web workers. Even if I’m not automatically in love with everything it’s putting out there, I am in love with the fact that they’re putting out so much of it.

Are you looking forward to trying out Chrome on your Mac?

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But the problem with Twitter is that it’s kind of unwieldy. I follow a lot of people, and even though I have multiple accounts to follow different groups of people, a lot gets lost in the stream. Twitter clients with built-in search help, but at a glance, Google Alert-like results would be ideal. Thankfully, there’s a service that does almost precisely that. It’s called TweetAlert.

At first glance, it seemed to me like a way to quickly and easily create your own spam bot, which obviously isn’t something I’d be interested in doing. Upon closer inspection, though, it actually offers a very manageable and unobtrusive way to create a tweet stream with a razor-sharp focus that should prove much more effective than the catch-all net fishing that is Twitter search.

What TweetAlert does is retweet any status update it finds that contains a hashtag of your choosing. For example, you could use #apple, and it would automatically search and retweet any post containing that variable using the account you register with the service. Obviously, you don’t want to use your main account for this otherwise you’ll end up spamming all of your followers; TweetAlert recommends that you create a new account specifically for this purpose.

Once you’ve created an account and set it up on TweetAlert, you can use it in two ways. First, you can follow that account with your main identity to keep on top of that topic. This is especially handy if an account on TweetAlert already exists looking for the same thing you are, so you don’t have to set up a new one. I’m more interested in the second use, which is to add the new account you create to your Twitter client of choice. That way, it’s a simple matter of viewing its timeline whenever you want to check your results, all in one place and without any static from your regular account.

Is it a perfect solution? No, but TweetAlert does go out of its way to make sure it isn’t being too spammy. When it retweets the updates it finds, it changes the hashtag to avoid clogging up regular Twitter search results. That means it isn’t particularly pretty to look at, but it could help you catch something important to your work that you would otherwise have missed entirely, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Are you using TweetAlert? Share your thoughts on the service below.

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printfriendly — Make Any Site Printer-Friendly

Many sites nowadays will have a “printer-friendly” button, which often just strips the web page of any fancy CSS and gives you a bare-bones text document that won’t eat up too much of your precious ink or toner. I know that for all the recent web site work I’ve done for clients, I always make sure to include just such a version. Unfortunately, not everyone does the same.
For those times when the button is missing, and printing the web page with images, etc., would result in too much of a dent in your ink supplies, there’s printfriendly. All you have to do is enter any URL into the field on its main page, and you immediately get a stripped-down version which you can then print or save as a PDF. Webmasters can also get the code for a printfriendly button to use on their own site, so that they don’t have to code a printer-friendly version for themselves.

Geek Chart — Show Off Where You Share Stuff Online

Ever wonder whether you share more stuff on Twitter, YouTube, Flickr or your blog? Geek Chart can help you find out, and then display that info to others in an attractive, easy-to-read pie chart format. Just enter your information for the relevant networks you want to measure (Facebook is unfortunately not yet available), and Geek Chart generates a color-coded pie that shows how much data you have associated with each account.

Mine is currently heavily skewed towards Twitter, but that’s because if you read the fine print, it only takes into consideration your last 30 days of activity. If you spend a lot of time on your social network content, this might be a great way to show visitors to your own page exactly where your attention lies, and what might therefore be the best way to reach you.

trackle — Track Anything, Anywhere on the Web

Google Alerts are a great way to stay up to date with a favorite subject or news category. I have a variety of both blog and news alerts set up so that I receive regular notifications via email when something noteworthy goes on in my areas of interest. Trackle aims to do the same thing, but adds more oomph than Google Alerts is currently capable of.

For example, you can keep abreast of crime in your own neighborhood, or job postings, or even your own web presence (good for those of us who make our business here). Through trackle, you create “tracklets”, or customized web crawlers that return custom information to you based on criteria you specify.

There are tons of pre-made tracklets available to choose from, and you can receive alerts in a number of different ways, including via web through trackle’s own interface, through your phone via SMS, or through email. Also, you can specify the frequency with which you receive updates, and choose to either get them as they occur, or as a collected package once daily.

These tools may not be particularly powerful, nor do they provide any kind of revolutionary service. They do, however, perform small, potentially useful tasks well, and they’re free, which is more than reason enough to consider adding them to your toolbox.

Found any cool tools recently? Let us know in the comments.

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AIR app or not, the real question is: Will this bring Facebook back into my daily professional life?

Facebook has fallen out of favor with me. Sure, I still check it occasionally, but mostly I find myself hiding poll and survey results from my stream, rather than actually interacting with people. Twitter is by far my weapon of choice when it comes to social networking, owing partly to my ability to use it without actually paying a visit to the web-based app. I have lots of Facebook-only contacts that I’d like to interact with more, but the drawbacks of the site prevent me from using it with any real frequency.

With Facebook Desktop, I partly get my wish. Because the interaction I’m after from Facebook is based on my stream, Facebook Desktop gets the job done. Truth be told, I don’t miss having access to the rest of Facebook’s features, since I hardly use them anyway.

Thanks to Facebook Desktop, I now find myself viewing Facebook almost as a more exclusive Twitter user group. I can stay in touch with professional and personal contacts with whom I have deeper and more meaningful relationships, without having to filter through all the distracting stuff that’s almost inescapable on Twitter.

Does it mean Facebook will remain professionally relevant to me? It’s too early to tell for sure. Suffice it to say, it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

Do you still use Facebook for work? Will the new API or Facebook Desktop app affect your Facebook usage?

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