I live on Google Chrome

July 23, 2012

It is not 100% accurate… but let’s say that chrome and its extensions have become my remote office.

If I have my Macbook pro with me, then I use Mail App, iCal, etc… but when I am at my client’s office for a long period of time, like I am now, then I don’t carry my laptop everyday. Instead I log into Google Chrome, and there I have a set of tools that make me feel like at home.

First note that I use chrome on my Mac as a default browser, on my media center, on my Windows machine at work, on my iPad and on my iPhone.

By being logged in into Google with my Apps account I have the following benefits:

  • I can open any of the tabs I have opened in any of the machines.
  • I have all my bookmarks synchronized.
  • I have the history together.
  • The forms, passwords and extensions are synchronized too.

What Extension do I use then

First, Evernote. Is my external brain cell. I keep all my bookmarks, scanned incoming physical mail, books, wine, recipes, you name it…

Then Checker Plus for Gmail, by Jason. All my emails are managed by Google (tokao, norai and torres). This is an awesome extension that gives you from desktop notifications, to an incredible experience without even opening gmail.com

Also from Jason, Checker plus for Google Calendar.  Same great experience but for your calendars.

Then wappalyzer. If you work with websites, then this is a must have tool. It will tell you the technologies the website has: is it a wordpress, drupal or typo3 site… it has google analytics… etc…

Editor lite is just a handy notepad.

Awesome screenshot is just this. An extension to capture the screen or a portion of the screen. I normally have cmd+shf+F4 on my mac, but on my windows I use this and the free tool jing.

Then Synology Download Station. At home I have a NAS, a Synology ds1511+ with 15Tb. It is my photo repository, Dropbox with Cloudstation, and media streaming server. I listen to my music from anywhere and have access to my files.

Addthis is my favorite sharing extension. You can configure the services you use and share anything you see on the web.

Searchall is the swissknife of search. You can configure it and search from wikipedia to whatever you want.

Then there is a couple of extensions you cannot see in the photo but that I use with gmail:

  • Rapportive that brings social media information to the side of the email. So if you are reading an email from John Doe, then you can see his activity on facebook, linkedin, twitter…
  • Boomerang that allows you to schedule emails, so you can write it now and send it at a specific time. You can do more fancy things like if x happens then put it back on the inbox… etc…

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