We all love Google Chrome to surf the net. As an added fun and functionality, Google Code Labs have came up with something very interesting called “Google Chrome Extensions” and there is an array of such extensions available to suit your kind-a-needs.

Now, what are Google Chrome Extensions?

Extensions are small software programs that can modify and enhance the functionality of Google Chrome. You write them using web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

Though there are hundreds of Chrome Extensions are available from the Google Chrome Extension Site, still we have handpicked some 12 Extensions to share with you.

Lets Check them out !

Google Mail Checker Plus:

Displays the number of unread messages in your Gmail and Google Apps inbox. Preview mail, read, delete, archive and mark as spam!

Google Translate:

This extension translates entire webpages into a language of your choice with one click. This extension adds a button to your browser toolbar. Click the translate icon whenever you want to translate the page you’re visiting.

The extension also automatically detects if the language of a page you’re on is different from the language you’re using for your Google Chrome interface. If it is, a banner appears at the top of the page. Click the Translate button in the banner to have all the text on the page appear in the new language.

Learn more about Google Translate at http://translate.google.com/support/?hl=en

Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (by Google):

Automatically previews pdfs, powerpoint presentations, and other documents in Google Docs Viewer. This one is one of the very popular extensions of Chrome.

Google Buzz Notifier:

With the launch of Google Buzz, here comes quickly the Chrome Extension as well. This one is one of the coolest new member of Google Chrome Extensions. With this check your Buzz right from Google Chrome!

Webpage Screenshot:

Fast & Simple solution to save JPG screenshots of any webpage. The first extension that captures the whole page. Fast & Simple extension to capture the whole webpage. Even long pages are saved in one image file. This extension lets you save PNG image of any webpage. Designers can choose to resize the window before capturing.

It works as a local extension. It means that the extension doesn’t send ANYTHING to any server. It can work even when there is no internet connection.

Feedly:

Feedly organizes your favorite sources in a magazine-like start page. A magazine-like startpage. A fast and stylish way to read and share the content of your favorite sites and services. Provides seamless integration with Google Reader, Twitter, Delicious, YouTube and Amazon.

RSS Subscription Extension:

This extension auto-detects RSS feeds on the page you are reading and upon finding one will display an RSS icon in the Omnibox, allowing you to click on it to preview the feed content and subscribe.

The extension comes with 4 feed readers predefined (Google Reader, iGoogle, Bloglines and My Yahoo) but also allows you to add any web-based feed reader of your choice to the list.

Google Dictionary:

With this extension, you can:

1) Double-click any word to view its definition in a small pop-up bubble.

2) View the complete definition of any word or phrase using the address bar dictionary.

Both features are configurable via the options page.

One Number:

This “One Number” checker extensions and you think that your Chrome toolbar is just a little too crowded, and you want to free up some of those buttons but you can’t bear to sacrifice the functionality.  What if you could gather your favorite Google services into one button… the unread counts into One Number?

One Number offers previews of unread items, a UI that fits with Chrome, the ability to selectively choose which services you want to check with One Number, and two-click access to open all services with unead items at once.

Orkut Chrome Extension:

The orkut chrome extension allows you to receive orkut updates and scrap notifications. The popup menu allows you to quickly jump to a friends’ page, search on orkut, visit your home/scrap/photos pages and share sites on orkut.

Have fun really! With Chrome Orkut Extension, your Orkut friends are even more closer, Isn’t it?

Blog This (by Google):

Add a BlogThis! button to the browser toolbar, which lets you post to your Blogger blog from any webpage with just one click.

Once you add the BlogThis! button to your browser toolbar, blogging will be a snap (or rather, a click). Click the button to open Blogger in a new application window. The new post is pre-populated with a link to the web page you’re on, as well as any text you’ve highlighted on that page. Edit the post to your liking and post it instantly to your blog!

Google Voice Extension (by Google):

Notifies you of new messages and gives you quick access to calling and free SMS via Google Voice. It adds a button to the toolbar, which displays the number of unread messages in your Google Voice inbox.

Please note that SMS is only available for accounts with a Google Number. SMS is not available in voicemail only accounts.

Overall, please note that when installing the extension it says “This extension will have access to all browsing history and private data on all websites” This is the default warning for any extension that needs content script access to all websites. These extensions does not collect any data about any website.

Guys, hope you will enjoy installing and working with these Google Chrome Extensions. Don’t miss out RSS Subscription to get updated with some more exciting stuff !

We all love Google Chrome to surf the net. As an added fun and functionality, Google Code Labs have came up with something very interesting called “Google Chrome Extensions” and there is an array of such extensions available to suit your kind-a-needs.

Google brings Nexus One to enter into Smartphone arena

Here is the internet supergiant Google in the world of smartphone with its latest product Nexus One and in direct competition with Apple iPhone. Google is now vying the smart phone market and is trying to establish and build its market presence in the world of communication coupled with Web technology.

Nexus One is powered by Android Mobile Technology Platform 2.1 and Snapdragon 1GHz core processor. It is the look of the latest Google smart phone that is mind blowing. Nexus One is slimmer, slightly thinner as well as lighter than the iPhone. Nexus One measures 119mm in height, 59.8mm in width and 11.5mm in depth. Additionally, the weight of Nexus One is slightly lighter than iPhone that is 130 gms in comparison to 135gms of iPhone. This high-end smart phone from Google is Android’s signature gadget.

The display of Google’s smart phone will be through 3.7 inch WVGA-AMOLED capacitive touch screen with picture clarity of 800 x 480 pixels. It is through this screen that most of the navigation happens and is quite a pleasure to watch. The snapdragon processor is fast and is able to handle multiple applications without much discomfort.

Officially the phone has up to 7 hours of talk time, 5 hours of internet use and up to 250 hours of standby time on 3G, 7 hours of video playback and 20 hours of audio playback.

Now we see how the new Google Nexus One gives competition to other Smartphones, specially with Apple iPhone.

Keep Reading !

Google Voice: An internet based telecommunication service

Its telecommunication, that Google has been experimenting with in recent pasts. Google voice is a service or application that integrates all your phone no.s into one and takes away the worries of managing many contact no.s. Originally, it was GrandCentral, who started the service but Google acquired GrandCentral in 2007 and re-launched the service on 11^th March 2009 with the name Google Voice.

This service is available as invite only. When you sign up for Google Voice first time you can choose between your any of the present numbers and a new Google number as the single point of contact. The calls coming on this no. are forwarded to other phone numbers that user configures while signing up. Depending upon the caller group, calling time and calling number you can decide which number should ring when.

With this as the basic feature let’s have a look at what else Google voice has to offer us:

• It offers free calls and SMS in US and Canada
• International calls are US $ 0.02 per minute. Can it get cheaper than this?
• Call Screening :

1. You can divert calls directly to voicemail box.
2. Notification or announcement of callers based on their numbers.
3. Blocking calls from specified numbers and automated identification for blocked numbers.

• You can record your calls and archive it online.
• Voicemail transcripts: You can view your voicemails as messages online or you can listen to them on any of the phone numbers.
• Voicemail messages are notified through SMS and e-mail.
• Voicemails can be forwarded and downloaded also.
• Based on the calling number we can set personalized greetings for the caller.
• It also provides the facility of conference calls.
• While a call is in progress you can switch phones without disrupting the call.
• Caller’s id is also forwarded along with the incoming call to your various phones.
• When you make a call, you need to make it through the Google Voice service by calling Google Voice no. and using menu choices or by using the web-based portal to place a call.

This unique concept of centralized number is only available in US as of now but Google has given indications about launching it in other countries as well.

Microsoft, as an answer to Google Voice is planning to launch Bing Ring in January 2010 in a limited beta version.

Keep reading to know more about Bing Ring….

SPDY: Protocol that will make web 2 times faster.

Its Google again, all set to make the web at least 2 times faster. SPDY (pronounced as SPeeDY) is the research project that it has taken up to make this happen. As Google puts it “SPDY is an application layer protocol for transporting content over the web, designed specifically for minimum latency.” In simple terms, it aims at making the interaction between browser and server faster.

It creates a session between the HTTP application layer and the TCP transport layer, above SSL (Secured Socket layer) and uses several techniques to make the interaction between browser and server faster:

• Multiplexed Streams: It permits multiple and concurrent streams over a single TCP connection, unlike HTTP. Streams are bi-directional flow of bytes across a virtual channel with in a SPDY session.
• Request Prioritization: Using this technique a client can request as many items as it wants from the server and assign a priority to each request.
• HTTP Header compression: SPDY compresses request and response header, which results in fewer packets and fewer bytes to be transmitted.
• A major enhancement to HTTP is server initiated streams, which is not found in HTTP. Server initiated streams enables the server to transfer content to the client, even when client does not make a request. This is done in two ways:

1. Server Push: Server pushes data to client via the X – Associated – Content header. This header informs the client that server is sending the information to the client before the client asked for it. This will remarkably increase the initial – page download speed.
2. Server Hint: Using X – Subresources header, server suggests the client that it should ask for certain resource. Server will wait to send the resource until the client asks for resource.

So far Google has developed a prototype SPDY enabled Google chrome browser and an open source web-server. After conducting a test by downloading top 25 web sites 10 times, it was found that the download speed increased by (up to) 55%. The browser and the web server have to be upgraded, where as no changes are required in web pages.

After testing under lab conditions, Google has a major task to make it work in real-life condition and make it compatible with other browsers like internet explorer, Firefox.

Google comes up with Google Commerce Search

Google Commerce search is a product that is hosted on cloud and is a software-as-a-service offering aiming at online retailers. When a consumer visits an e-commerce portal, searching for a product or a number of products is one of the basic and most widely done tasks.

Hence, in order to make it a pleasant experience for the consumers to find a product, collaboration with Google search technology for the same, makes it fast and customizable.

Let’s have a look at the features of Google Commerce Search:

• Visitors to the online shop can take the advantage of parametric search i.e. sort their search by category, price, brand and on many similar criterions.
• It provides automatic spell-check, advanced synonyms and stemming option coupled with Google speed, search quality and ranking capability.
• Site administrator has the privilege to manage product promotions and in this capacity he can promote specific products, vendors or product categories at the top of the search results.
• You can change the look and feel of both your search engine as well as search results and can integrate search results into other application using the XML API.
• As it is a software-as-a-service offering, the deployment and maintenance is very simple and economic. As soon as there is an enhancement that is developed, it would be available to the online retail enterprise. There is Google Commerce Search support for assistance in case of any difficulty.
• Use of integrated Google analytics enables the enterprise to have customized      reporting and statistical analysis.
• Google Commerce Search being a hosted solution, it ensures the continuity of good quality search experience even there is a sudden rise in site visitors specially  during the holiday period, hence it provides immense scalability.

It’s working:

After signing up for Google Commerce Search, the steps to be followed by a site administrator are:

1. He must submit the product data to the Google Merchant Centre and Google Product Search and upload the items through www.google.com/merchants via data feeds, direct upload or API
2. He should log into the administrative console to manage product promotions, upload synonym dictionaries and control parametric search option.
3. He can get an idea about the site usage and effectiveness using Google analytics.

Its pricing model is based on the number of products in your data feed and the number of search performed on the site each year.

Also, check out the video at YouTube :  Google Commerce

Check out http://www.google.com/commercesearch/# to have a real experience of the latest product from Google which is right in time with holiday season approaching.

Did you know that just weeks after Microsoft announced the launch of Bing, its search engine with advertising and marketing blitz of $80 million in June, Google came out with its new operating system Chrome that is meant to cut on the dominance of Microsoft Windows.

This is the first time that Google is in for some serious challenge in the world of search engine. Microsoft has teamed up with Yahoo and if the deal rolls out effectively, then by next year the Microsoft-Yahoo duo will account for almost 28 percent of online searches.

The trade secret of the search engines is their unique algorithm. Just as Coca Cola has its own secret formula, in the similar way for search engines it is the complex set of instructions that holds the key to determine what and which will be shown in search results.

Microsoft’s Bing has been acclaimed critically as well. Bing is better described as Decision search engine and it has been designed with emphasis on four major categories of search-shopping, travel, health and local. It has been observed that the search results of Bing are displayed with two parts. The central part reflects the search results that Bing compartmentalize into logical categories while there is the navigation part on the left hand side that the user clicks on related searches. Bing also throws up a video preview that allows the user to hover the cursor over the video thumbnail and one can see video highlights automatically.

It is expected that the search results of travel by Bing will be the differentiating factor. If you do a Google search for inexpensive hotels in San Francisco or just want to get the best airfare deals, Google throws up lot of promotional sites and the outcome is close to useless. It is here that Bing will checkmate Google with Farecast technology.

What is Farecast Technology? Based on recent trends, it is designed to locate the cheapest hotels and flights. It will help to chart out the high and the lows of relevant room rates and airfares over a period of several months and can also put forth prediction as when the prices are expected to be low. The Farecast predictions have been recently audited by some independent companies and they have concluded that predictions are almost 75 percent accurate.

Google spokesperson have commented nothing in specific to Bing but said that the company takes every competitor seriously.

So why not Google Bing and see for yourself.

Here are some tips to optimize on Bing SEO (or DEO):

• If your website is around for some time, you are game with Bing SEO. Yes, the relatively new domains do not stand good chance with Bing SEO search results.  Additionally your sites should be content rich. Bing likes pages with text, at least minimum of 350 words.
• Outbound links to other sites that is simply no-no for Google have greater importance in Bing engines. So linking out is important and you will see smile in your faces with the search results in Bing.
• Title that correlates with the subject helps your website to rank in the top of Bing search results. So, Bing SEO puts preferences to those websites that have keywords in domain names.
• Bing is flash friendly so upload some jazzy videos with content-rich text and check out the difference in search results.

On a final note, I would like to share a link which is a unique one to see the best of Google and Bing:

Click here to Search with Bingle !  (Bing and Google), check out …

Google wave

Google wave is the project that Google team took up 2 years back, to revolutionize the way we communicate over web. This project code named as ‘Walkabout’ was revealed at Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009. It is a new real time, open source browser based communication tool that integrates on one single platform, all the ways in which we communicate now on web, like IMs, e-mail, social networking, blogs, wikis, project management. 

Wave : Its features and terminologies 

Waves are hosted XML documents that enable and synchronize a threaded conversation. We have to create a wave and add people to for a threaded conversation. The wave can be created for anything like conversation with a friend or for real time group editing of a document by any number of people or for both of them simultaneously. It offers a richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and feeds from other sources on the web. Users can give a reply or edit the wave directly. You can add a contact to a wave at anytime by just dragging the person from the contact list to the wave. 

Key features: 

• Real Time: You can see what your friend (who is involved in the wave) is typing at the very moment. This holds true both for instant messaging and editing docs in collaboration. This feature can be disabled by writing your text in draft mode. We can know who is editing the doc (among the several users) by seeing their name outlined by a bright coloured box. 
• Open Source: Google wave will be an open source application so that developers can extend its functionality and make best use of it. 
• Play back: This feature empowers one to catch up with smallest details of what has been happening in the past in that particular wave. 
• Drag and drop file sharing: We just need to drag a file we want to attach and drop it in the wave.  
• Waves can be embedded on any application, blogs, sites etc. 
•  Spell check: It can autocorrect spelling and grammatical errors and also provides automated translation for 40 languages. 
• Wiki Functionality: All conversations and documents on a wave are shared. Hence we have the liberty to edit, append or comment on any information on the wave. If we want to have a private conversation with someone in the wave we can easily break off from the main league but we still stay in the flow of the wave. 

The Jargons in Google Wave: 

• Wavelet: A wavelet is a subset of a wave. For Example if we consider a history of conversation, considering one IMs conversation from that will be analogous to considering wavelet in a wave. 
• Blip: Blip is an individual message in a conversation. Blips can have sub blips called children associated with them.  
• Document: The characters, words and files in a blip are called a document. 
• Embedded wave: This is the wave that is embedded to another website or blog. 
• Extensions: Extensions are the applications we can use in our wave. Two types of extensions are : 

1. Gadgets: A gadget is an application that users might use for different purposes similar to  the face book applications we use. 
2. Robots: They are automated users which are basically used to gather more information from different source and assist users in different actions.

Google wave consists of three layers namely: 

1. Google Wave product: The HTML5 web application, built on Google Web toolkit is the product users are going to use to access and edit waves. 
2. Google Wave Platform: This platform provides rich APIs used to build applications that work in a wave and embed waves in other web services. 
3. Google Wave Protocol: This is the format of storing and sharing waves which includes live concurrency control. 

The people who are making this happen:  

It was Jens Rasmussen, to whom this concept clicked for the first time and the team that is working in Google’s Sydney office to make it happen includes Lars Rasmussen and project manager Stephanie Hannon (The same team is responsible for developing Google maps also). 

The reason of this web application being named as Google Wave has its roots in the frequent reference to the popular T.V. Series ‘Firefly’ in which ‘Wave’ is an electronic communication. 

This phenomenal application is open for developers to have a hands-on and give a review. On September 30, this year, Google Wave will be made accessible to 1, 00,000 users who register on http://wave.google.com and later this year it is expected to hit the markets.

P.S. : For all WordPress lovers, there is a new plugin available to try out Google Wave called ‘Wavr’ , though at beta stage. Chill out !