Jose Arvelo

I’ve been using Google Chrome, more specifically the development version of Chrome known as Chromium, for a little over two months now. I jumped off the Firefox bandwagon a couple of years ago in favor of Apple’s Safari browser. Now that Google has made extensions available to the general public, I find myself not being able to live without some of them. Below is a list of my personal favorites.

• Adblock - My first time using Adblock was years ago when it was released as a Firefox add-on. Back then, you had to manually edit a file containing URLs of known advertisements. Since then, that has been automated and this extension which has graciously been ported over to Google Chrome. This extension does one thing really well: It blocks ads!
• Chromed Bird - Personally, I can’t stand 98% of all Twitter clients. Most are cluttered and ugly (especially the Windows clients!). I prefer simplicity over a bloated product, so I use Chromed Bird when not using my client of choice: Tweetie.
• Digg for Chrome - I’ve used Digg since Paris Hilton’s cellphone was hacked years ago and still use it today. What’s convenient about this particular extension is that I can not only “digg” stories directly from the browser, but I can also share the stories/links on Facebook and Twitter so it’s almost like getting three extensions in one!
• Google Mail Checker - If you use Gmail, then you need this extension.
• Google Voice - Of all extensions, and honestly all Google services, Google Voice is the product that excites me the most. I love being able to SMS, manage my messages and make calls directly from the browser. It even identifies phone numbers on any web page you browse and gives you an option to call it!