An agreement between Google and Twitter that enabled Google to include live Twitter updates in their search results through a special feed was discontinued last year in July as Twitter chose not to renew the agreement. With that real-time updates from Twitter were no more showing up on Google’s search results.
However, a really cool Google Chrome extension called HashPlug allows Chrome users to get real-time results on the latest topics that they search on Google. The extension adds a search results widget on the right hand side of Google’s search results page, displaying the latest tweets of that particular search term.
The results are updated automatically along with which you can retweet, favorite or even reply right from the widget box itself.
HashPlug integrates Twitter search results into Google in an unobtrusive manner – so that you get real-time results on latest topics like Election, Storms, etc. It also allows you to favorite, reply or retweet any result.
The Chrome extension is developed by a Indian start-up called Fenopix, which is based out of Bangalore, who claims to love building apps on HTML5, JavaScript and Windows 8. According to the developers, “while you are searching on Google it picks up the search term and displays real time results in an unobtrusive manner. It also allows you to favorite a tweet, reply to a tweet, or retweet any result. ”
The team have also stated that they have plans to extend the tool and integrate Facebook results as well – “As of now it only supports twitter results. But we have plans to integrate Facebook results too in future.”
This tool can also be helpful if you’re finding reviews about movies, books, or any products. Check it out and tell us what you think – HashPlug Chrome extension
Translate Google+ into More Than 50 Languages
A good number of friends in my Google Plus circle share links or add posts that are in regional languages. The posts become useless, at least for me, since I do not understand the language. This becomes an issue, and generally people get annoyed, especially when a post looks interesting and worth a read.
When it comes to translation of text or a website to English or any other language, Google Translate serves the best. However, it’s more like a pain to copy-paste text from Plus to Google Translate, to understand what exactly the content is all about. Well, now that isn’t an issue anymore.
Leading frontend and mobile development for Google Translate Josh Estelle , announced in a post that the Google Translate team have developed and come up with a Chrome extension called “Google Translate for Google+”, which uses the power of Google Translate, to automatically translate any post into more than 50 languages.
The extension basically saves Plus users from having to open the Google Translate page and translate the post into another language. The Chrome extension is available at the Chrome Web Store. Click here to install it.
After having the extension installed and refreshing your Google Plus page, you should notice a Translatelink button next to the Commentand Sharelink buttons.
The extension works incredibly well, just like the Google Translate feature. When you click on the Translatelink button, the post gets translated instantly, without reloading the page. By default, the extension sets yellow as the background color for the translated text. However, you can change the color to any of the 12 available colors in the extension options.
You can also change the default language that you want to translate a post. Also make sure you have checked the Always Add to Google+option. This will always add the translate feature (translate link button) to all the posts in your stream.
However, Josh also mentioned that – “the extension is currently experimental, as we figure out the best way to integrate translation into the Google+ community.” So if you have any suggestions or idea to improve the extension, you can add a comment here, or send feedback by clicking the Send Feedbackbutton.
Surf the Web with Chrome and Google Will Donate To Charities on Your Behalf, No Kidding
We have all received those silly email and SMS forwards promising that some rich guy (often Bill Gates) or big corporation (Google, Facebook, Yahoo etc.) will donate towards a noble cause if you just pass the message along to everyone in your contact list. Most of us knew better. However, Google is now actually doing something as unbelievable.
All you have to do is install Google Chrome, install the “Chrome for a Cause” extension, and surf the web. For every tab that you open, Google will donate to one of the five chosen charities. Here’s what your tabs are worth:
- 10 tabs = 1 tree planted
- 10 tabs = 1 book published and donated
- 25 tabs = 1 vaccination treatment provided
- 100 tabs = 1 square foot of shelter built
- 200 tabs = 1 person’s clean water for a year
This is a win-win situation for Chrome users, and might even get a few people to jump ship. This scheme will be valid only from December 15 to 19. So go ahead and make the world a better place with Chrome.
Instant Weather Reports with ForecastFox
A few months ago, I told you about the fresh looking Google Chrome extension called Aniweather. It gives you a quick weather report and five day forecast, simply by clicking an icon in your web browser.
After reading a post from the Madras Geek, I decided to try out another instant weather tool called ForecastFox. It gives me the same types of weather info, but it offers just a little bit more. You can use ForecastFox in both the Firefox and Chrome web browsers.
In Firefox, you’ll get a new toolbar in the status section at the bottom of the browser. When you hover over each icon, you’ll get different reports.
In the Chrome browser, the ForecastFox icon is at top right of the browser.
Here’s what the weather reports look like in Chrome:
When you click on the map, you will be directed to the AccuWeather website to see the maps there.
To see the details of each day’s forecast, you can click on the day in the left sidebar.
ForecastFox offers the forecast for more days than Aniweather (shown below), however the Aniweather pop-up is much nicer looking, and it’s information comes from weather.com.
Internet Explorer? Here’s an Accuweather Toolbar.
Techie Buzz Verdict:
The ForecastFox addon/extension is excellent for keeping me up to date on weather. It stays out of the way and does it’s job with no visible hit to my system performance. It deserves a thumbs up.
What are Chrome Web Apps?
We recently told you that the developers of Google’s Chrome web browser have released version 7 of Chrome. In order to use it, you have to be running the dev channel version of Chrome or the new Canary build of Chrome. One of the interesting new features in Chrome 7, is support for Chrome web apps, which will be available in the Chrome Web Store in October.
The question I’m raising today is What are these Chrome web apps?. An answer at Wikipedia was useful, but as I expected, it’s full of techno-jargon that immediately makes me skip through most of the article. I’ll save you the trouble of trying to sift through the jargon. In most cases, a web app isn’t any different than many existing pages on the internet. Any time you visit Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Google Docs, or even Youtube, you are using a web app. A web app is a web page that performs a specific job or set of jobs using your web browser. Usually web apps require that you download files and data that they need to function. Chrome extensions also have the same requirement and they offer you the ability to change the way pages look or add tools and services to existing pages.
So what’s the big deal? Why are they even called web apps instead of extensions? My best guess is that they are doing this to make it easier to market (sell) these downloads. However, even though web apps aren’t much different from Chrome extensions, there are a couple of differences.
One big difference is that you’ll only find most of them in the Chrome Web Store. Some of those web apps will be free, but most of them will likely cost you a few dollars. Google will make money on them and so will the people who create them.
Another difference is that the tab for a running web app looks different from a normal tab. Here’s a screen shot to show that. The tab on far left is a Gmail web app. It’s a single icon with no text. Next to it is a normal tab showing Gmail.
You’ll also be able to see all of your installed web apps on the Chrome New tabpage.
I love the fact that only the icon is showing on web app tabs. That’s great for those of us who have lots of tabs open in the browser. Other than that, what is there to like about web apps rather than extensions? At this point, I don’t think that there’s much to like unless you like paying out money. It’s a great deal for Google and the web app developers. It’s not a great deal for the average surfer.
If you’d like to play around with Chrome’s new web apps, DownloadSquad has a page telling you how to install web apps. I’m not going to be using them much unless they are free.
If you have tips or opinions about Chrome web apps, be sure to comment below or email me.
Schedule Emails in Gmail and De-Clutter Your Inbox With Boomerang
One feature which I miss in Gmail is the ability to schedule emails so that they go out at a certain time. Scheduling emails is similar to scheduling tweets in Twitter but scheduling emails have a lot more advantages. One of them is that you get an opportunity to review and correct mistakes in your messages before they go out (which do happen at times).
Gmail does not allow you to schedule emails as of now, and they might not do that in near futue. However, Gmail does offer users with an option to undo send a message for up to 20 seconds. Nevertheless, it would always be nice to have a feature which would allow you to schedule your email messages too.
In comes Boomerang, a Google Chrome and Firefox add-on which allows you to schedule email messages to go out after a certain period. As you can see from the screenshot above, Boomerang allows you to schedule messages to go out after a set time and even allows you to schedule an exact time for the message to go out.
Once you schedule the message, Boomerang will store the email headers on their servers and send it out at the specified time. Pretty neat solution for an online email service.
Boomerang’s usability does not just end with scheduling email messages in Gmail, it also allows you to de-clutter your Inbox by hiding certain emails and only displaying it after a certain time. For example, if you get an email from someone about something you have to do tomorrow, you might star that email or add it to your TODO list. However, Boomerang will allow you to hide the email message for now and show it in your Inbox at a specified time.
This can come in very handy when you receive a bill and have to pay it after few days, you can have Boomerang show that message in your Inbox after few days so that you remember to pay the bill on time.
Techie Buzz Verdict
Boomerang would cause several users to freak out about privacy since it has full access to your emails. However, the company makes it clear that they only store the email headers of a message on their servers so that they can identify it, and do not store the email body.
Other than that, Boomerang adds a very impressive feature to the already impressive Gmail and also helps you to de-clutter your Inbox and view important messages when you want to. Overall we would highly suggest our readers to try this out.
Though Boomerang is invite only, the link below might allow you to download the extension for Google Chrome and Firefox.
Rating: 4.5/5 (Excellent)
Update: Download link no longer works, just head over to http://www.baydin.com/boomerang4gmail/ and use the invite code “techiebuzz” without the quotes to download the extension.
Instant Website Safety and Traffic Rank – Ultimate Chrome Flag Extension
I recently reinstalled a copy of the regular Google Chrome browser after getting rid of my dev channel version. I also had to re-install my favorite Chrome Extensions once again. I decided to check out the most recent WOT (Web of Trust) extension, just so I wouldn’t accidently advise anyone to go to a bad website. While looking around, I found a new extension that you may like.
The Ultimate Chrome Flag extension gives you instant safety and web site information on the pages in your browser. The types of information that are displayed:
Website country location
Google Page Rank
Alexa Page Rank
Google Trends
McAfee Site Advisor ratings
WOT safety ratings
After installing this extension, you’ll see a new icon at the very end of the address bar in your browser. By default, the icon displays a country flag and a WOT rating (red, yellow, green) for safety. All you have to do to get information on a site is to click on the icon. Here’s what you’ll see at a bad website:
Always keep your eyes open for the red dot on the country flag. As shown here, this site can’t be trusted. You can find out a great deal more in each category by clicking on the blue text in the pop-up.
Just for contrast, I’ll show you the information for a good website. Do you see how the dot on the flag is green instead of red?
There are a some very nice options that let you change the information displayed and the icon displayed. Here’s a screenshot of the settings page:
Get the Ultimate Chrome Flag extension
Note: For those using Firefox, a similar addon called FlagFox is available.
Techie Buzz Verdict:
If you are using the Chrome web browser, and you’d like more information about sites you aren’t familiar with, this is an awesome tool. The Ultimate Chrome Flag extension is definitely going to be one of my favorite extensions. Maybe it will be one of yours now.
Perform Inline Google Searches in Chrome’s Address bar with Inline Google Extension
Google Chrome is probably the only browser which supports searching from the address bar by default. It works simple – you specify a default search engine in the browser settings and type the keywords or phrase in the address bar. The search results show up in a new browser tab which is useful, because you don’t have to open the home page of your favorite search engine again and again.
But if you have the habit of working with multiple tabs, this feature can get a bit tiring. Whenever you search, the results are shown in a new tab and you have to close or navigate away from the page you were reading.
This is where Inline Google comes in. It’s a nifty little chrome extension which adds pop up functionality for performed searches. The search results are shown in separate pop up windows and you can see the results without leaving the current page you are reading.
To use the extension, hit the “G” icon placed just right of the chrome address bar. This will open a pop up window where you can type your search query:
Hit the “Search” button and the results will be shown in the same window as shown below:
Clicking a search result opens the page in a new browser tab. Currently the extension supports searching web, images, videos and news results.
Techie Buzz Verdict
The Inline Google extension is very simple to use but there aren’t any options which you can tweak. I would want some options being included – loading the search results in the same frame or may be opening the clicked link in the same tab.