Until now, the only way to get extensions for Chrome on MacOS was available for limited users that were able to manually build Chromium (the latest "test" version of Chrome) on their machines.

Thanks to a simple application provided by TechCrunch, you can have Chromium installed on your Mac in seconds, totally ready to accept your extensions. The application was primarily built to automatically update Chromium, since the browser has been improving almost every day. However, in my case, it proved to be very useful for installing Chromium in the first place.

Get the application here.

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The process is very simple, and all you need to do is:

1. Paste the following formula on the desired cell: =GoogleFinance("CURRENCY:EURUSD")
2. Replace EUR and USD with the currencies you want to convert. Check here for a list with all currency symbols.

Done. The next time you open your spreadsheet, it will automatically pull the latest rate from Google Finance.

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Check out this cool demonstration of Google Docs. If you are not a Google Docs user, you'll understand it in less than 3 minutes. If you are, just watch it to see a cool way of communicating a product.

The demo was created by Common Craft, who is specialized in creating this type of videos, and have on their portfolio companies such as LinkedIn, Ford Motors, Intel and Twitter, besides Google.

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You can browse the available options by type (Presentations, Spreadsheets, Documents, Forms) or by category (Letters & Faxes, Personal Finance, Holiday, etc..). You can also sort them by Ratings and number of users for each template.

The page offers a mix of templates created by Google and selected partners. As of today, there are 435 templates available.

Take a look here.

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When using web applications, there are many situations where you need to go back and forth in different browser tabs to get the information you need for your Google Docs doccument or for writing your blog post, for example.

There is a feature in Google Chrome that was created to solve this problem. As you can see on the video, simply drag the tab to the side of the browser and it automatically re-sizes the windows to provide a side-by-side view. Very handy.

The feature is available on Chrome 2.0 only. If you don't use Chrome yet, download it here (Window only - as of today).

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ThinkfreeFox is a Firefox add-on that lets you view office files (.xls, .doc, .ppt, and others) inside Firefox, without the need of having an office suite installed in your computer. After you install this small extension, Firefox automatically adds an icon on web pages to let you view any of these files with a single click (see image below). Your file will be opened with ThinkFree viewer, that runs on ThinkFree servers.

Based on my tests, I can say the experience is very smooth and the formats were kept for .xls and .ppt. On the .ppt case, even the slide transitions worked really well.

ThinkFree is one of the best online office suites available, along with Google Docs and Zoho. They are around for a while, and offer a very robust and similar alternative to Microsoft Office.

ThinkfreeFox is still on experimental phase and can be downloaded here.

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The advantages of web applications are many: access from any computer, no installation needed, collaboration, and the list goes on. However, there are some downsides of having your apps running from your web browser: there is no direct icon sitting in your desktop to launch the program, you can't drag and drop files to open them, the navigation browser buttons don't help you feel you are running "real" softwares.

Today, I wanted to present 3 programs that offer solutions to these issues:

Google Chrome

1. Click the Page menu
   
   .
2. Select Create application shortcuts.
3. In the 'Google Gears' dialog box, select the checkboxes where you want shortcuts to be placed on your computer.
   • Desktop
   • Start menu
   • Quick launch bar
4. Click the OK button.

When you double-click a shortcut icon, the web application opens in a special streamlined window that gives you as much working room as possible. Learn more about application windows.

If you don't use Chrome yet, download it here.

Bubbles

According to the website:

Bubbles is an application platform, based on Browser technologies. It detaches Web Applications from the classic Browser and offers them with the familiar accessibility, capabilities and always-on nature of Desktop applications.

Also Windows only, Bubbles is a software you install in your computer and allow you to add extensions related to specific apps. Among the most popular extensions are Google products such as Gmail, Calendar and Reader.

Besides the interface and alias for launching the apps, Bubbles provide 2 very handy functionalities: notifications (see above) and drag and drop ability. The Google Docs extension, for example, allows you to drag and drop an Excel file to have it open.

Download Bubbles here.

Mozilla Prism

I've been using both Chrome and Bubbles so far and the experience really helps in using web apps more comfortably. Hopefully Linux and Mac versions will be added to these programs soon, but in the meantime Prism seems like a great option for non-Windows users.

Enjoy!

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