Four New Chrome Extensions - Picozu, Page Snooze, MondoWindow, and Wajam

Are you looking for some new applications to use on your Chrome browser or Chromebook? Below you will find four new Google Chrome applications to try. Each application or extension was installed and tested to be able to give you real life comments. Share with everyone in the comments if you try one of these out and what you thought. What other new applications or extensions have you seen?

Picozu (website) - This is a robust photo editing, drawing, and sharing application. It was smooth to use and is loaded with features like brushes, filters, layers, history, batch processing, curves, cropping, and many more advanced tools. You can get photos to edit from your computer, Picasa, DeviantArt, SmugMug, Photobucket, Flickr, Facebook, Instagram, or Fotolog. Then you are able to save the modified image, or a new drawing, to your Picozu cloud account, Dropbox, Facebook, or your computer. It it built with Javascript, HTML 5 and CSS3 (no Flash).


Page Snooze - A great idea! With this extension you can "snooze" a page. Snoozing a page closes it and sets it to be automatically reopened later at the time you selected. When you are on an open tab you can click on the extension button in the toolbar to snooze it for a week, or right click on the page (not a photo or anything) to snooze it for 5 seconds, 1 to 7 days, or two weeks. Within the options all the snoozed pages are listed for immediate access, and each individual item can be deleted if you wanted. I tested the 5 second snooze and it worked perfectly. Snoozed pages are by specific machine and are not synced.


MondoWindow (website) - You are provided your real time location and shown on an interactive map of what is below through Wikipedia, Flickr, and their own data. Next time you are on a flight this will be a great way to pass the time; just connect to the flight's WiFi. You location is not actually acquired through your device; it obtains the location from other data sources. Because of this you can try the app on their website even if you are not in flight. Flight information (speed, altitude, etc.) is given, along with the ability to see your Facebook friends' location.

Wajam (website) - Search, shopping, and travel planning are all modified with your friends' social shares and comments. This is the type of extension you will either love or hate. It will modify sites to include your social data from Google+, Facebook, and Twitter to show you what your friends thought or recommended. Sites influenced are Google, Bing, Best Buy, IMDb, Yelp, Blekko, TripAdvisor, and many more. For the record, I am not a fan of services like these, but Wajam had an easy setup and did not do anything annoying like Tweeting without permission or updating my Facebook stream. It is worth a look!

7 Must Have Chrome Apps and Extensions

Below are what I consider the essential base of apps and extensions for the Chrome browser in no particular order. Depending on what you do and like there are many more that will improve your experience and efficiency; but, start with these.

Embedly - If you live on Twitter.com you can not live without this. Even though Twitter has been integrating more services that allow you to preview content this will take you to the next level.  Videos, audio, photos, posts, etc.; you will see it on without leaving the site.

WOT or Web of Trust - It is a simple extension that assists in keeping you away from harmful websites. Not 100% accurate, but it has saved me a couple times. I recommend to change the searching options to not display on search engines and other sites. It reduces its foot print and lets it do one simple task of warning and stopping you if you are on your way to a bad site.

Cloud Save - An excellent extension that allows you to right click on almost anything and save it to one of many cloud based services (full review). If you are on Chrome OS this is a must have.

Google Sidewiki - This was intended to be a social tool to let you leave comments on webpages for others to see. In my opinion it has failed in that regard, although it does have some use. What I use it for is my browsing history. If you install this and activate it all your browsing history will be sent  and saved to your Google account. Some may be scared of that, but I love it and have referred to it many times.

Secbrowsing - Ensures your browser plugins are up-to-date. Easy to use and out of the way when everything is good on your system.

Scratchpad - Write notes and reminders. The best part is that it will synchronize and save your notes on Google's servers so that you can access them from all your Chrome browsers.

TweetDeck - A social platform that brings in Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, and Foursquare. The interface and functionality are top notch.