Keeping Track of the World with Chrome Extensions

In recent weeks, we saw not only breaking news, but erupting, stunning and unveiling news! To keep myself from drowning in the news flood, I found that using a few Chrome extensions can help me keep track of it all.

If you're a media enthusiast like I am, there are many Chrome extensions that can help you stay on top of your favorite media sites. With the Financial Times extension, you can quickly browse the financial and economic headlines. At the same time, you can keep up with the latest in politics and art with the NPR extension. A neat feature is that you can also listen to episodes of "All Songs Considered" and other NPR programs. Fan of cricket, Formula 1, or rugby? ESPN has extensions that give you one-click access to top headlines and live scores while you browse the web.



For those who prefer using Google Reader to manage your news feeds, you can quickly preview subscriptions in a pop-up using the Google Reader Notifier extension. Interested in a particular story? You can open your Google Reader in a new tab or go directly to the article.

Sometimes I want to see all of my content in one, easily accessible page. Feedly organizes your content from your favorite sites and services such as Google Reader, Twitter and Flickr into a stylish, magazine-like start page.

These are just a few extensions to help you stay in the know, and you can find many more in the Chrome extensions gallery. You can also check out this video to see some other features you can add to your browser.



Posted by Koh Kim, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Tip: Going Undercover

Sometimes you don't want to leave traces on your computer of some site you visit. Google Chrome's incognito windows are made just for this. Visit a website in an incognito window, and when you close the window, the browser has no record of you having been there.


Of course, you probably knew that. What you might not have known is that you don't have to use the Tools menu in the upper corner of the window to get an incognito window. Just hit ctrl-shift-n, and one will pop right up. (And it's command + shift + N on a Mac.)


If there's a particular link you want to open in incognito mode, you can right click the link and select "Open link in incognito window", and you'll navigate to it without leaving any tracks.


Posted by Peter Kasting, Software Engineer

Unmuting the web with Google Chrome

We’ve long felt that not enough people know what a browser is. Too many people just use the browser that comes with their computer. The time has come for browsers to speak up and be heard. Even though we’ve experimented with visual improvements in the way of 3D stereoscopy, we think it’s time for browsers to push the boundaries of what’s possible by using sound to create a magical, immersive experience.

Taking an earful of inspiration from the HTML5 audio tag, we’ve spent the past few months deep in psychoacoustic models, the Whittaker-Nyquist-Kotelnikov-Shannon sampling theorem, Franssen effects, Shepard-Risset Tones, and 11.1 surround sound research to build a cutting-edge audio-driven user interface for our users, available through a new Chrome extension. With this extension, Chrome will provide audio feedback as you browse to web pages and interact with the browser.

To experience the web with auditory feedback, download Google Chrome (if you haven’t already), install the extension, turn up the volume, and enjoy the biggest increase in your browsing productivity since the blink tag. Mundane operations like opening and closing tabs, searching, navigating, even debugging the browser and much more will never be the same.

Now that we’ve nailed sight and sound, we’ll look at bringing olfactory magic to the browsing experience. We hope to deliver that by next year at this time.

Posted by Kay, Rakowski, and Chan from the Psychoacoustics Research Division of the Google Chrome Team