Google AdSense is one of the biggest revenue generator for small and medium traffic websites. The AdSense team have been revamping their reporting interface which makes it easier for publisher to see their earnings and other related reports.

As a publisher I have always been comfortable using desktop reporting software to keep an eye on my AdSense earnings. However, of late most of the software have stopped working.

Also Read: Useful Tips and Tricks To Grow Your AdSense Income

This means that I have to constantly login into the AdSense web interface to check on my earnings every now and then. However, thanks to Google that will now be a thing of the past. Google has released a extension for Google Chrome which will allow AdSense publishers to view basic details of their earnings in Google Chrome.

The AdSense Publisher Toolbar extension (Download) allows you to view your current days earnings, yesterday’s earnings, current months earnings and last months earnings. In addition to that it also displays the top custom channels and lifetime earnings.

Once you have installed the extension, you will have to click on the extension icon and then authorize your Google account. If you use different account for AdSense and Gmail, you can easily sign in to another account thanks to Google’s multiple account sign in.

The AdSense Publisher extension is definitely a nice way to keep an eye on your AdSense earnings without having to constantly login to the actual AdSense website. I would highly recommend this extension if you are in a habit of checking your earnings multiple times through a day.

Of course, it is always a healthy habit to login to the actual AdSense reporting interface to check on detailed reports and performance of your channels and other data from time to time to increase your performance.

Don’t Forget to Read Other AdSense Tips and Tricks

• One Tricky AdSense Policy That Might Get You into Trouble
• View Google AdSense Earnings for Different Geo-locations/Countries
• Best Google AdSense Placements for Blogs/Websites
• Best Google AdSense Placements for Forums

The web is not as beautiful, as it was 10 years back.

It is certainly rich in information but no longer beautiful, thanks to all those widgets, advertisements, plugins and social media buttons plastered across each and every website you come across.

Organizing information is another big, big problem. Bookmarking is so 2007, it just doesn’t work anymore. Reading and accumulating information gets really troublesome, when you are running sort of time and hurrying through the finer details of a story.

Evernote’s Clearly changes all this.

Clearly (nice name) provides a simple way to read only the text version of a webpage, right inside Google Chrome. No advertisements, no banners, no buttons just the content, you and your browser. Following is an example of how clear a webpage becomes, once you hit the magical Clearlybutton:

Clearly comes with three preset themes to choose from, so if you are fond of reading articles on dark backgrounds and green text, you can always create your customized reading environment. The advantage of turning a webpage into its text only version is that you can read a lot faster, without getting distracted by nearby ads. Furthermore, it is super easy to copy excerpts, scroll, use the real meatand be done with it.

There are tons of other distraction free reading tools out there but Clearly has a unique offering. You can clip an article directly to one of your Evernote notebooks, or assign a unique tag to it. That way, the URL of the webpage is saved to your Evernote account, which can later be synched with the desktop client. The benefit here is that you can quickly bookmark important stories without getting lost among a pile of 2 dozen news items.

If you launch Clearly on a multi-page article, it will automatically turn it into a single page, so you can read the entire story at one place without having to click, click and click ….. all the way to the 10th page.

As of now, Clearly supports only Google Chrome while extensions for other browsers is a work in progress. Clearly wont let you save images or files but it is indeed a better alternative of Readability. Watch the following video to see Clearly in action:

Tabbed browsing has definitely changed the way we access webpages in browsers. However, I have faced a few problems with multiple tabs, one of them being   a scenario where I have 20 tabs open in Google Chrome and one of them suddenly starts playing loud video or music.

Finding the offending tab is often like finding a needle in a haystack and the best recourse is to just mute your system music. But what if you are playing music on another app? You would mute that too right. Another solution would be to just close all the tabs at once and get rid of the annoyance. Neither of these solutions are really graceful.

There have been several forum threads about this issue, but Google engineers have stated that it is hard for them to isolate a tab which is playing music or video and allow users to mute them, thanks to limitations in the operating system.

However, there is an option in the form of a Google Chrome Extension which will allow you to mute music or video sounds in all the tabs at once, using a toolbar option or a keyboard shortcut (Alt + W).

The extension in question is the Chrome Toolbox Options, which also provides with several other interesting features to enhance your Google Chrome experience including preventing Google Chrome from closing down when you close the last tab and more.

The “Mute all tabs” is definitely a great feature, but what if you want to now find and close the tab which is playing the loud music or video? Are you going to go through each individual tab and find the culprit? Well, that would take a long time. Well, another extension called “Mute Tab” can come in handy.

Mute Tab is an extension   which will allow you to find out which tabs are playing videos, music or flash and then allow you to mute them. This is definitely handy if you want to find a culprit tab and shut it down rather than having to browse through individual tabs.

That’s it, using these two extensions will save you a lot of trouble, and probably embarrassment when you are using Google Chrome. Do feel free to post your own suggestions if you use different methods to get rid of this annoyance.

Remote desktop utilities are indispensable, if you often find yourself in a situation where you need immediate control of a remote computer. Maybe your mom is just beginning to learn how Windows 8 works and you don’t want to attend half a dozen phone calls in office, just to answer really basic questions. Or if your business client is not as tech savvy as you are, save yourself from the frustration of writing emailable tech support and do the stuff right from your own computer.

For a remote desktop connection to work, you need two things. An Always ONInternet connection and a remote desktop utility which will connect your computer with a remote computer via an authorization access code. There are quite a good number of remote desktop applications for Windows, Linux and MAC but most of them have the disadvantage of not supporting all platforms and operating systems. You want a single application which can provide remote support on any operating system – be that Linux, MAC or a primitive Windows computer. At the same time, you don’t want the app to be messy and bundled with tons of settings and useless features. That’s because the person on the other side is most likely to be clueless about these options and he will ring you back to know Where should I click?

The Chrome remote desktop extension by Google changes all this.

Chrome remote desktop allows users to get access to another computer or share their own computer with anyone else, using a secured one time authentication code. You can use the extension to provide tech support to anyone who is using Google Chrome or a Chromebook, and has the extension installed.

Here is how to get started with the Chrome remote desktop extension:

1. Install the extension, sign in with your Google account and grant extended access permissions to your computer by hitting the Continuebutton:

2. On the next page, hit Allow access

3. If you want to let your computer act as the host computer, click on Share this computer. This will launch the app in a new browser tab and you will be given a one time access verification code, as shown in the following screenshots:

To let your partner gain access to your computer, pass this one time 12 digit access verification code via email or IM (don’t tweet though). When your partner has access to your Chrome remote access code, he can click on Access a shared computer, enter the code and see your desktop in a new chrome tab on his computer.

As a remote user, you will be able to completely control the entire host computer from your remote desktop, and not just the browser where the remote desktop app is running. You can open up Windows start menu, create new files, browse through Windows explorer, install applications, delete files and folders, access the command prompt and perform any action on the remote computer. It works the same way as other remote desktop utilities work, the difference lies in the fact that this one works directly from your browser and requires one time installation only (if you are using Google Chrome sync that is).

Google says that the goal of this beta release is to demonstrate the core Chrome remote technology and get feedback from users. Additional use cases such as being able to access your own computer from another remote computer are coming soon.

In 2009, Google added it’s own dictionary, called Google Dictionary. Many people used it and loved some of the features, such as the ability to “star” some entries and recall them later.

On August 5th, Google suddenly declared that it had shut down Google Dictionary. This prompted a flurry of questions in the Google support forums. One person in particular voiced their concern in a big way:

You shut down “Google Dictionary”. I HATE you for the first time.

If you go to the Dictionary site now, you’ll see Google’s sweet little message telling you that “Google Dictionary is no longer available.”

In response to a few furious users, Google employees responded with the following explanations.

Hi everyone,

As many of you know, we’ve recently introduced a dictionary tool into Google Web Search to help you quickly look up the definition of a word,. Because the dictionary tool offers the same functionality as Google Dictionary, we’ve decided to discontinue dictionary.google.com.

For your definition needs, you can type your query right into the search box and use the dictionary tool located in the left-hand panel on the results page, or you can type [define (your word)] right into the search box.

I want to thank those of who who’ve been loyal users of dictionary.google.com and welcome you to share your feedback on how the dictionary tool can be improved.

Cheers,

Kelly

Google is right about that. You can still access most of the same functions from the normal search box at Google.com, by typing the word “define” in front of the word you want to search for, as shown in the following image.

If you click on the word “More >>” at the end of the first result, you’ll be tossed over to what’s left of the now defunct Google Dictionary page. So, all is not lost, except for the “star” feature.

There are some nice alternatives if you still want quick access to dictionary definitions. The first one is the Google Dictionary extension for Google Chrome web browser. This extension allows you to double click on any word in a web page and get a quick pop-up definition. It’s very nice, and once again, clicking on the “More >>” link sends you over to the old Google Dictionary page.

If you are using the Firefox web browser, I recommend the Answer.com addon. After installing it, point at any word, hold the Alt key (Ctrl in Linux) and click. A pop-up will appear on the screen, explaining the term.

Now you can comfortably keep on HATING Google, while looking up every crazy word in the world.

Google Chrome is the most widely used web browser. Google is taking every possible step to increase Chrome’s growth rate. Recently, we saw Google introducing Angry Birds on the Chrome Web Store. This has definitely got a huge number of people to switch over to Chrome. However, one of the primary reasons why many people use Chrome is because of its speed and the availability of a number of extensions. One such extension that I highly recommend is Smooth Gestures, which will speed up many tasks that you usually use to navigate through the web.

Smooth Gestures is a free extension for Google Chrome that allows you to browse the Internet by using mouse gestures. The extension helps you browse the web quickly and easily, by allowing you to execute commands without having to use the keyboard, menus or toolbars.

Also Read:  Google Chrome Extensions List

The extension comes with pre-defined mouse gestures. It also allows you to set your own gestures, according to your feasibility. It enables you to use gestures to perform usual tasks like opening and closing tabs, go forward and back in history, view source code, list all stored cookies, reloading a page, and so on. It also has gestures for less used tasks like undoing closed tab, merge tabs, pin tabs, etc.

However, the extension does not work on the extension website, or other built-in chrome pages due to security restrictions (including new tabs and Speed Dial). But it does work on almost all http:// and https:// pages.

Learn How to: Install Google Chrome Extensions in Firefox with Google Chrome Extensions Manager

To begin with, install the extension on your Chrome browser. Once done, hold your right mouse button down and do the gesture shown below. It would open up the Options page for Smooth Gestures.

The Options page is pretty self-explanatory. It shows how you gestures work and how to use them. As you scroll down the Options page, you would see several pre-defined gestures that you can use right away. If you scroll down further, you will find some difficult gestures to perform, however to start with, you can get used to the easy ones.

Creating Your Own Gestures

Although there are common gestures that are already pre-defined, you can still create your own custom gestures. Here’s an example of how I created a gesture to load Techie Buzz.

Click on the + Add Custom Actionto define an action. Click save after you have filled in the details.

Click the “+” button to create a gesture. A pop-up window will open where you need to hold the  right  mouse button and draw a shape (gesture). In my case, I drew the letter Twhich was then auto reshaped to a properly curved design. Once you are satisfied with the shape, you can save it.

You can see that I have added a gesture to load Google as well. The shape resembles the letter “G”. Now, if I have to open Techie Buzz or Google, all I have to do is draw a Tor “G” anywhere within the browser’s  work space or display window. Simple!

Go on, play around with it. I’m sure you will love it.

If you want to uninstall Smooth Gestures, then right click on the logo in the address bar and uninstall it.

Let us know how useful the extension is to you by adding your feedback in the comments section below.

We are all human beings and definitely love to have friends. However, unlike friends we meet in real life, Social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ allow us to get in touch with people we have never met (or may never meet) in our lives.

That said, initially people do accept your friendship but as time goes some of them may unfollow you or unfriend you. There have been ways to find out who unfollows you on Twitter or who unfriends you on Facebook, but what about Google+? Well, thanks to a new extension called GoogleMinus, you will be able to find out when someone removes you from a Google Plus circle through a notification. As Read Write Web points out, GoogleMinus is an unfriend tracker for Google+.

The extension works in Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari. However, you will have to install another extension called Kynetx before you can start using GoogleMinus because it is built on that platform. Kynetx is a browser platform which allows developers to build browser apps that run on multiple browsers without having to write separate extensions for each of them.

One annoying thing I found with Kynetx is that you will have to first create an account there before you can install any extension. You will have to do it only once and can then use the extension on any browser. However, you will have to install the Kynetx extension on all the browsers you choose to use this extension on.

If you decide to run through all these hoops, you will get a notification as shown in the screenshot above whenever someone decides to aha remove or block you from their circles. Find it useful? Then go ahead and install the GoogleMinus extension.

Advertisements are important to finance the free distribution of high-quality content on the internet. However, some websites are loaded with annoying banners and intrusive popups, so surfing the internet has become quite annoying on these sites. Adblocking extensions for Google Chrome therefore are becoming increasingly popular.

Which is the best adblocker?

The two most popular extensions in the Chrome Webstore currently are AdBlockand Adblock Plus. Both extensions promise to do the same thing: Block all ads on every website. But what is the difference between the two, and which one is the better adblocker?

AdBlock was originally created for Google Chrome. It is the older one of the two and still has more users. Adblock Plus was only recently ported to Google Chrome, but the numbers of users are growing quickly. In no time, it has become the second most popular of all Chrome extensions. It is the equivalent to Adblock Plus for Firefox, with more than 120 million downloads, and is the most popular browser addon in the world. Chrome Adblock Plus is based on the same code as the Firefox version which has been developed for years as an open-source project by an international community of voluntary helpers.

When comparing the two extensions, it is noticeable that Adblock Plus has a much more sophisticated code base. While both adblockers have the same effectiveness in blocking ads, Adblock Plus is more stable and doesn’t cause the browser to slow down. Also, on video websites such as youtube.com, the normal blocking mechanism doesn’t work for ads embedded in the video. Adblock Plus has implemented a workaround so that blocking those ads becomes possible. So while both extensions do a great job, Adblock Plus works a bit faster and more reliably.

Setting up Adblock Plus

You can download Adblock Plus from the Chrome Webstore or the official Chrome Adblock Plus website. Setup takes only a few seconds, once installed, all ads are gone automatically. During setup you will receive a warning that extensions can access private data, such as your browsing history this is a standard warning in Chrome for all extensions that modify webpages. Adblock Plus does not actually infringe on the user’s privacy.

After the installation, Adblock Plus does its job quietly in the background and no actions from the user are required. However, if you want to support a website such as techie-buzz.com you can easily disable Adblock Plus from blocking ads on this particular domain. Just click on the ABP logo in the right corner of the address bar and uncheck the Enabled for this sitetickbox. This way, creators of great content don’t miss out on advertising revenues, while all ads on other websites are still blocked.

Add additional filter lists

Adblock Plus itself doesn’t block anything – the elements that are blocked are determined by filter rules. Advanced users can add filters themselves. Users without the time or knowledge to create filter rules can subscribe to one or more of many free filter lists. In the default setting, the EasyListis enabled, which blocks all ads on websites. If a user wants to block additional elements, such as malware domains, advertiser tracking or social bookmark buttons, the respective filter list needs to be added manually. Many free filter subscriptions can be found here.

To add a filter lists, it’s URL needs to be inserted into the Adblock Plus interface using copy & paste. After having copied a filter list’s URL, the user needs to right-click on the ABP icon and choose Optionsand the Filter liststab. There you will find a field to add the filter list’s URL. By pasting the URL and clicking the Add URLbutton, the user has subscribed to the filter list.

For example, if you want to get rid of all Facebook like-buttons, you just need to add the Antisocial list by adding the following URL to your filter lists:

The next time you visit a website such as techie-buzz.com, all social bookmarking buttons will be gone. This is especially useful for users who never bookmark anything or are concerned about their privacy, because Facebook is well known to track and store user data from visits to websites which have the like-button implemented.

=== About the author ===

Simon Miller is one of the editors of chrome-plugins.org, a non-profit project featuring high-quality apps, extensions and themes for Google Chrome.

The usage of cloud-based services is increasing every day. Though good search features are offered by Google for Gmail and Google Docs, it is not always as fast as desktop search. Also unified search results across multiple services are not provided. CloudMagic was developed with these requirements in mind. It offers extremely fast, offline, search-as-you-type feature for online data.

CloudMagic has been launched with Gmail and Google Docs. CloudMagic can search across multiple Google accounts for presentations, spreadsheets, documents etc., and present a unified search result. It also offers instant email message previews as well as drag-and-drop feature for search results.

Online data is indexed and stored in your local hard disk. Relevant text data is indexed leaving out all kinds of attachments and binary data. Only a fraction of the entire data is indexed. So it occupies very little of your hard disk space. The index gets updated automatically when you are online. The indexed web pages need not be kept open for updating an index. You do not need to store passwords with any third party servers because the index is stored in your local hard disk.

Currently CloudMagic is available for Firefox and Chrome. Here are the installation instructions for both the browsers.

Installation on Mozilla Firefox

1. To install CloudMagic in Firefox click Tools > Add-ons in the menu bar to open the Add-ons window and search for CloudMagic.

2. Click on the Add to Firefoxbutton. The following license agreement window is displayed.

3. Click Accept and Installbutton .Then click on Install Now in the Add-ons window. Once the installation is complete, restart Firefox. The CloudMagic icon will appear in the toolbar as shown below. Click on it to open the CloudMagic page in a new tab.

Installation on Google Chrome

1. To Install the plugin in Chrome open Cloudmagic homepage in Chrome and click the Install Now button.

2. Once the plugin download is complete, click Install as you are prompted to.

3. When the installation is complete the CloudMagic icon is displayed in Chrome.

4. To use CloudMagic you need to add your Gmail accounts first. Click on CloudMagic icon and then select Manage Accounts drop down arrow beside the search box.

5. In the following page, one more click brings you the add account page.

6. Add as many Google accounts you wish.

7. Next click on the Preferences link to set the search preferences. You are now all set to use CloudMagic.

The next time you open your GMail or Google Docs account you find a CloudMagic search box as shown in the screenshot below.

Isn’t that great? If you are power user of Google docs and Gmail, CloudMagic is an indispensable tool. Try once and you’ll love the instant search that the tool provides. With tons of emails stuffed in your mail this certainly makes your life easier. Happy searching. Do let us know if this has made your search experience better.

The Questionsfeature in Facebook may be useful to some folks, but I don’t find it useful for a couple of reasons.

First, the questions are more geared towards fun and virality rather than usefulness. I agree that the nature of questions depends on the people you’re connected to but I have hardly seen anyone praising the usefulness of Facebook questions.

Second, whenever there is a world event like the Royal wedding or the launch of a new gadget, my timeline suddenly gets filled with dozens of irrelevant questions in which I have no interest at all. Worst thing is that the same question appears multiple times in the timeline, whenever there is a new answer or someone posts a comment to the question

And the notifications.Mr X has answered Mr Y’s question. After a while, this gets really annoying and the sad part is that Facebook does not allow you to block Facebook questions like you can block a particular application, game, invites or a user.

Here is what the FAQ page reads

As with other Facebook applications like Photos and Events, there is no way to turn off Questions.

If you’re fed up with the spammy nature of Facebook questions and want to turn off the clutter, try the Hide Facebook Questions extension for Google Chrome. The extension hides every evidence of the “Questions” feature so your news feed doesn’t get cluttered with polls.Once installed, you will need to refresh Google Chrome and the Questions feature will vanish from your timeline.

And so will the notifications that used to come when one of your friends answered a question asked by another Facebook friend of yours.

Firefox fans can try the more advanced FB purity add-on which lets you fix some other annoyances apart from hiding Facebook questions in Firefox. For example, FB Purity allows you to use the older Facebook commenting system, where pressing Enter or Return adds a new line to your comment, and pressing the “Comment” button submits the comment.

Both the browser extensions works out of the box there are no options to configure and nothing to tweak.