Chris Betcher

I was cleaning out a drawer in my home office this morning and found this collection of old USB memory sticks dating back quite a few years. Remember those days when you thought you were so cool because you had this little storage drive full of all your stuff in your pocket? I recall working in a school back in those days where we actually mandated that every student had to have a "USB"*, such was the apparent importance of these things. The intention was for students to keep their personal data safe and secure, but we used to constantly find them left behind in the USB ports of the classroom computers after a lesson. Or they would sometimes mysteriously just stop working. Or the kids would lose them. USBs may have been cool, portable and handy, but they were about the most insecure method for managing data I can think of. *(Side note: Calling them simply a "USB" seems stupid to me, because USB - or Universal Serial Bus - is a data interface standard, not a name fo...

It seems that yesterday's post where I listed some of my favourite extensions was quite well received, as I had a number of people contact me to say they found it useful. So I thought I'd add a Part 2 list with a few more. Remember, there are literally thousands of amazing extensions available in the Chrome Webstore, so do take the time to have a browse. In the meantime, here are a few more, again in no particular order... PixelBlock - Sending an email which includes a graphic is a technique that some companies use to track whether you open their email or not. Sometimes they do this sneaky thing where they hide an invisible single pixel in an email - you can't see it, but it helps them track you. PixelBlock does exactly what it says, and blocks that invisible pixel. Google Calendar - Gives you a nice glanceable preview of your Google Calendar, from any webpage, without needing to open your actual Google Calendar. But if you do want to open your actual Google Calendar, ...

One of the nice things about Chrome is how easily it can be enhanced with powerful and useful extensions. Extensions give the Chrome browser additional "superpowers" that it doesn't have by default, giving you the ability to add some really useful extra features to Chrome to suit the way you use your computer. Here are some of my favourite extensions, in no particular order... Extensity  - The one extension to rule them all, Extensity is an extension manager that gives you the ability to easily enable or disable your extensions. I find myself installing far more extensions than I really need to use at any one time, so I like to turn off any that I don't need to use right now. It's as easy as clicking on their name. Extensity also has a "master switch" to turn them all off, which is handy for those few times when you might need to troubleshoot some rogue extension that could be causing trouble. Text Blaze  - A amazingly useful text expander that can take ...