First Google Chrome Extensions

A design document shows an example of Google Chrome extension. For now, extensions are just fancy wrappers for user scripts, but there are plans to make them more useful by exposing browser features and allowing developers to create interfaces.

Before trying to install the extension linked at the bottom of Google's tutorial, you need to have a recent developer build or Google Chrome 2.0 beta.

To enable the support for extensions, edit the target field of the shortcut you use to launch Google Chrome. Right-click on the shortcut, select "Properties" and append to the Target field a space followed by:

--enable-extensions --load-extension="c:\myextension"

Download the extension, extract the content to c:\myextension and launch Google Chrome. The only visible effect of the extension is that it replaces the logo from Google's homepage with a lolcat, but you can edit the file foo.js and enter a different URL for the image.

Google Chrome 2.0 Beta

Google fixed many of the bugs from Chrome 2.0, released as a developer preview in January, and you can now try a more refined beta version. I've been using the new version since January and it's very stable. Here are some reasons why you should try it:

* Chrome 2.0 uses more recent releases of WebKit and V8, so it has a better performance. "The best thing about this new beta is speed — it's 25% faster on our V8 benchmark and 35% faster on the Sunspider benchmark than the current stable channel version and almost twice as fast when compared to our original beta version," explains the new Chrome blog.

* Full-screen. It may not mean much, since Chrome already minimizes the space used for the interface, but it's sometimes useful.

* Full-page zoom. Chrome no longer resizes just the text from a web page, so the enhanced zoom adjusts the entire page proportionally. Too bad that text zoom hasn't been preserved as an option.

* Form autofill. The browser saves the text from input boxes and you only need to type the first letters of a previously entered text to select it. "The next time you fill out the same text boxes, Google Chrome automatically shows you what you've entered previously, if what you're typing matches what you've entered before. This text appears right below the field you're filling out. To auto-populate the text field with the saved info, simply select it with your mouse or arrows on your keyboard," mentions the help center.

* Sort the bookmarks by title. Open the bookmark manager, select a folder and click on Organize > Reorder by title.

* Scroll using the mouse wheel.

* Mouse gestures for resizing windows: you can drag a tab to various locations on the screen to place it in a docking position or to maximize it.

* Greasemonkey support, with some limitations. Not all the Greasemonkey extensions will work, there's no user interface for adding scripts, but it's a simple way to extend the limited features offered by Chrome.


The beta version has a special download page and it's the same as the version 2.0.169.1. For a complete list of release notes, check this page.

In other Chrome news, Ubuntu users can try a very early release of Chromium for Linux, a pre-alpha build that lacks basic features like tabs. I installed this version in Ubuntu Intrepid, but the web page view didn't display anything, even the browser appeared to load pages.

{ Thanks, Stefano. }

orkut Birthdays in Google Calendar

orkut, Google's social network, lets you keep track of the birthdays of your friends. There's a birthday reminders section that can be enabled in the settings and you can add a gadget to Google's personalized homepage.

orkut's blog announced that there's another way to view the birthdays: in Google Calendar. "Now, in conjunction with Google Calendar, you can see all of your orkut friend's birthdays for the whole year. If you've already used Google Calendar before, you will shortly see a link (right below the "upcoming birthdays" section) where you can add your orkut friends' birthdays to your Google calendar."

If you don't see the promotional link, use this URL to subscribe to the calendar. Google uses a special kind of calendar that requires authentication and doesn't support notifications. That means you won't be able to receive email or SMS notifications that remind you of the birthdays.


{ via orkut blog and ToThePC. }

Ads Next to Picasa Web Albums Search Results

Google started to display text ads above the search results from Picasa Web Albums. In the recent months, Google turned to the services that weren't yet monetized to improve its financial performances: Google Image Search, Google News, Google Finance and now Picasa Web Albums.


"We've been testing different advertising formats for years (some have been more successful than others), and over the next few months, you'll see us continuing to experiment with new ads in new places. (...) Whenever we make changes like these, we carefully evaluate users' reactions to ensure we're holding true to our basic principles: that ads by Google should always be relevant and useful. Of course, these experiments benefit Google because they generate revenue from new sources — but by ensuring that we show the right ads at the right time to the right people, we'll add value for users too," explained Google in November.

Now that the revenues from advertising grow much slower than in the past, Google will probably launch more paid services like the App Engine or Google Apps Premier Edition. Even Google Checkout, a service that has been subsidized by Google for years, will use the same processing fees as PayPal from May.

How to Sort Tables in Google Docs

The word processor from Google Docs lacks a sorting feature for tables, but Firefox users can try an extension that adds the missing feature. Install TableTools, the best extension for managing tables, restart the browser and open the document that includes tables.

To use the extension, you need to right-click on the table and select one of the available options: sorting, filtering, copying data as tab-delimited text or as HTML. Google Docs replaces Firefox's contextual menu, so it's necessary to press Shift + Right-click in order to bring back the original menu. Select from the menu "Sort table column as" and choose the appropriate data type.


If you want to copy a table from Google Docs to Google Spreadsheets, select the cells, choose from the contextual menu: "Other table operations < Copy as tab-delimited text", and paste the text in a spreadsheet using Ctrl+V. Unfortunately, the filtering feature from TableTools doesn't work in a rich-text editor, but it's very useful if you visit a web page that includes long tables.

Google's Market Share in Your Country

Hitwise reported that Google's market share in the US was 72.11% in February. "Yahoo Search, MSN Search and Ask.com received 17.04%, 5.56% and 3.74%, respectively, and are down year-over-year at -17%, -20%, and -10% respectively." comScore has different numbers and they show that Google's market share in the US is much lower: 63.3%.

A report from the AT Internet Institute shows that Google's market share in France was 91.23% for February 2009. The major search engines that trailed Google were Yahoo (2.43%) and Live Search (2.29%).

Most of the news articles that discuss Google's market share only include the US, but it's interesting to see how popular Google is around the world. That's why I created a Google Spreadsheet where you can enter Google's market share in your country. Make sure to provide a reliable source for your information and to include recent data. The spreadsheet can be edited by anyone and it's not necessary to log in using a Google account.



{ via Zorgloob }

Google, the Thinking Machine

"Google, la machine à penser" ("Google, the Thinking Machine") is a 50-minute documentary produced in 2007 that tries to explain Google's extraordinary success by analyzing its principles and idiosyncrasies. The documentary shows many of the things that define Google's corporate culture: from the colorful lava lamps, the hiring process to the recreation facilities and the internal debates.

Michael Malone, columnist at Wall Street Journal, describes Google as an "enormous predator" that manages to dominate almost any market it enters. In his opinion, Google is a huge organization that takes pragmatic and sometimes cynical decisions, while trying to portray a friendly image. At some point, a Google engineer says that Google Analytics is the most used analytics service because it's free and it works equally well for personal use and business use.

Unfortunately, the video is in French and I couldn't find an English subtitle, but there are many images from Googleplex that could be interesting even without a translation.