I’m a big fan of cloud based applications so I find myself working increasingly in my primary web browser, Chrome. The extensions make Chrome really shine and enhance my workflow. I know I’m not alone in thinking this so I’m sharing my favorite sock-rocking Chrome Extensions here.
Enhance your web experience
These extensions add functionality to some of the sites I use the most in my workflow.
- Better Gmail – This extension makes gmail prettier. Get rid of adds and remove some of the clutter in the gmail interface.
- Rapportive – Rapportive shows you all the social networking profiles it can for the sender of an open email so you can quickly browse colleagues recent tweets, or click through to their LinkedIn or Facebook Profiles.
- Boomerang – You’ll need to get a Beta invite for this one, but you can ask for an invite on the site and Boomerang will open up soon. The service lets you delay the sending of an email – useful if you remember a birthday a few days early, or don’t want you boss or clients to know you were available and responding late at night and want your message to go out in the morning.
- Reader Plus – The sister plugin to Better Gmail, this Reader Plus is packed with features and themes which are great if you’re a frequent Google Reader user.
- Reader Plus Toolbar button – You’ll need this one if you want to use get Reader Plus to view the most current items from your toolbar.
- PostRank for Google Reader – PostRank adds ratings to the posts that appear in Reader based on the number of comments on each post and the links each post has received on blogs, twitter, delicious, and other sites. This helps you find the stronger posts as you read.
- RSS Subscription Extension – Adds an RSS button to the address bar on blogs and sites with RSS feeds so you can easily subscribe in Google Reader without having to hunt down the feed link, or copy and paste anything.
- Facebook Cleaner – Removes some of the ads and unnecessary text from Facebook sidebars.
Utilities
- Google Mail Checker Plus – gives you the number of unread messages and lets you view them just by clicking the icon.
- Day Hiker – I started using this once I finally got used to Google Calendar’s Quick Add feature. Clicking the icon gives you a drop-down of upcoming events, but more importantly you can copy paste event details in quickly from an email to create a new event.
- Google Voice – This will hyperlink phone numbers on websites so you can start a Google Voice call from your browser by clicking. When you click a number, your phone rings and a google voice call begins, so when you google a restaurant or business to get the number, you can dial the number without having to dial on your phone.
- Google Chrome to Phone – Send a link you find in your browser over to your Android phone so you can read the link later when you’re away from your computer. Useful for sending directions to your phone so you can browse on your way without printing them out or having to navigate and type all over again in google maps.
- Aviary Screen Capture – Get a screenshot of all or a portion of the current webpage. (I used this to create all the screenshots in this post)
- Xmarks Bookmarks and Password Sync – Backup your Chrome Bookmarks to the cloud and sync bookmarks between browsers on multiple computers.
Social Networking and Social Sharing
For most of these I’ve started using my own quick Combined Bookmarklet which has all the same functionality, but if you’re not a fan of bookmarklets these are all individually helpful.
- Chromed Bird – Twitter client in chrome to see homefeed, replies, and lists. The toolbar icon changes color when you receive replies or DMs.
- Hootsuite – Tweet the link and title of the current tab.
- Facebook for Google Chrome – Drop-down to see your Livestream and messages from your toolbar
- Chrome Buzz – Drop-down to browse Buzz updates from your toolbar
- Note in Reader – If you’re fond of sharing items in google reader this one’s pretty handy
- felicious – Browse and search your Delicious bookmarks and add new bookmarks from your toolbar. If you only need the tagging tool and don’t need to browse your bookmarks, you may prefer the Chromium Delicious plugin
- Instachrome – post sites to Instapaper for later reading.
Bonus over to you
What Chrome Extensions would you add to this list. Any add-ons you miss from Firefox that you haven’t been able to find in a Chrome Extension yet?
