Google’s browser Google Chrome launches browser’s capability to add extensions. A similar feature on Firefox is known as Firefox Add-ons. This is one of the major features Chrome was missing. Lots of users were refraining from using Chrome because of its inability to add extensions. Updating Chrome to have Extensions will definitely increase its users instantly. I have been going through all these Chrome extensions for the last few days. Today, I will describe my experience and mention a few extensions I have tried and found useful.

As an Internet Entrepreneur, I have four different browsers installed on my computer, and with the exception of Internet Explorer, I use the other three browsers on a daily basis. These three browsers are:

Google Chrome
Firefox
Flock

I noticed that there are some significant differences between Chrome and Firefox Add-ons which you will find out these differences right away. For example:

Chrome extensions are a lot easier to install and uninstall than Firefox add-ons
Unlike Firefox (to access Firefox add-ons, you need to click on tool in the toolbar and then click add-ons), Chrome extensions and access to modify extension options sit in front of your face (on the top right where extensions are added – right click to uninstall and change options) and it’s very easy and convenient to maneuver extensions
Does not slow down your browser noticeably

Some of the extensions I tested and liked:

- Chromey Calculator: A handy calculator based on Google’s web search calculator
- Handy Google Shortcut: Gives you access to all Google products
- Web2PDFConverter: Lets you convert any web site to PDF document
- Countdown: A simple timer to keep track of time when you are online
- Google Tasks: Access Google task
- Chrpmepad: Take quick notes
- Time Tracker: Track how much time you spend on websites

There are so many extensions that I have not yet been able to finish checking them all. Take your time to go through the Chrome extensions and I am sure you will find a few of them to make your Internet browsing experience easier and more productive.

More Google Articles:

A Dawn Journal Google Archive

Google Chrome Extensions

How To Undo Your Sent Email

How To Use iGoogle To become Efficient, Productive, and Save Time

iGoogle is a personalized, customizable online homepage where you can add other websites, weather, stock market summary, sticky note, calendar, currency converter, Google Docs, Gmail, and many other interesting stuff across the web. If you know what to add and how to arrange stuff you usually use on a daily basis online, iGoogle will make you’re a life a lot simpler, easier, and will save lots of time. Today, in this video clip, I will show you how to use iGoogle and what are the main elements to add to effective and efficient online. Presented by  Canada’s Personal Finance Website – A Dawn Journal.

A Dawn Journal Google Archive

Google Main Page

iGoogle

A New Google Finance

This morning, while checking the markets at around 9.50, I noticed that Google Finance Canada has changed its layout. It took me a few moments to get acquainted with the new look; however, this new design seems to be more user friendly and neat. Here are a few things I noticed and Google mentioned on its site:

- Current market summary and charts, top stories, Bank of Canada daily digest, and Trends are put in the middle – easier to find when you come to the site
- World market data, currency data, and portfolio are put on the top right – hard not to see
- A new left navigation bar added to move sections of the site in a single click
- Each section can be moved around the page, minimized, or can be moved up and down
- Recent quotes can be customized to view absolute change or percentage change
- Charts are customizable

There are more features available – you need to experience all these by yourself to enjoy free global and local market information that only Google technology can provide. Here are the links to visit:

Google Finance

Google Finance Canada

Google Finance New Look

NB – I noticed that Google Fiance is showing ads but Google Finance Canada is still ad  free.

More Google Articles

Google’s Daily List Of 100 Hot Topics

Google Calculator

Google Ate FeedBurner

Microsoft, Yahoo and Google

Google Finance Canada

Who Uses Yahoo These Days Anyway?

Saying Goodbye To MS Word And Excel

How Google Determines the Order of Search Results

33 Million Cool Dollars to Compete with Google

Your New Google Chrome Browser Is Ready

How To Undo Your Sent Email

Have you ever regretted pressing the “Send” email button and then realizing it’s too late? This used to be one of my routine mistakes – especially when I sent emails without attaching the right pdf or word file, and then realizing it’s too late. Google Gmail now offers a feature which allows you to cancel sent email.

This “Undo Sent” option lasts only for 5 seconds once you hit “Send” button. This feature has to be activated first for it to work by going to your Gmail Settings.

Do the following to have this feature activated:

1. Click on the Settings at the top right of your Gmail screen

2. Click the Labs button

3. Scroll down to “Undo Send” and enable it

4. Scroll down to “Save Changes” and hit “Save Changes”

5. You are now ready to use “Undo Send” feature. Each time you send an email, you will notice an “Undo” option at the top of your email. If you decide to undo it, hit “Undo” and your email will be returned to you without sending. Remember, Undo option will remain active only for about 5 seconds. You need to act fast to stop your sent email.

Some hand-picked related and non-related posts:

What Is A Recession

How To Buy An Island

The Internet and Personal Development

PayPal Is One Of The Most Powerful Forces In E-commerce

Can’t Afford To Buy Physical Real Estate? Buy Internet Real Estate!

I found out about an hour ago that Google just launched a new web browser called Google Chrome. I downloaded Google Chrome without hesitation to test – so I can let my readers know. What noticeable features are most important? Let me put them in order:

• The first thing I noticed that it is very simple. I always like simple stuff. They are easy to use and does not give you headaches.

• There is no search box built into Google Chrome. You just need to type your search words into the address bar and Chrome will show you all the matches. If you have done a site specific search before(such as if you have searched something on ADJ), Chrome will show that too.

• Tabs are at the top of the browser, not at the bottom of the address bar.

• You know how annoying when your whole browser crashes. Google Chrome won’t let that happen. Only specific troubled tab will crash, everything else will remain intact.

• Starting page shows recent sites, pages, search engines, and bookmarks you visited.

I have abandoned Internet Explorer long time ago. Firefox has been my browser of choice since then. As it stands, I am not ready yet to make Google Chrome my default browser. I am going to test Chrome a bit daily, and once I find it more useful than Firefox – I will do the switch. But for now, I am sticking to Firefox.

Google Chrome is available here – Google Chrome

A New Search Engine

New search engine CUIL (pronounced “cool”) was launched on Monday, July 28. Priced at a hefty thirty three million dollars, CUIL was created by former Google and AltaVista engineers to compete with Google. However, is it really going to make people switch from Google?

How Is It Different?

CUIL engineers are emphasizing the following:

• World’s largest search engine – indexed 120 billion web pages, three times larger than the size of Google’s index.
• World’s fastest search engine.
• Does not invade privacy. Unlike Google, users search histories are not logged.
• Does not use any Algorithm or ranking (read my recent article How Google Determines the Order of Search Results ) system like Google. Search results are instead based on website contents.

My Own Experiences

CUIL shows search results in 2 or 3 column formats which I find visually appealing. However, it’s somewhat impractical as it takes longer to find what you are looking for. Also, the results are filled with irrelevant information. For example, a “Canada personal finance websites” search brings results such as online casinos, Association of Research Libraries, fool.com, Internal Revenue Service, etc. Not a single Canadian site to be found.

What’s My Take?

It is good to see competition; however, I am not convinced enough to switch from Google. It took a long time for Google to become a number one global brand and it would be unrealistic to think CUIL can crush Google overnight, or maybe even in decades. I will stick to my Google and check in on CUIL every once in a while to see how they are doing.

If you are reading this page via RSS reader, you can visit the main page here – Canada’s Personal Finance Blog

The following article is dedicated to my nephew, an ADJ reader, Shayan Mannan. At 21, he is a musician, an entrepreneur, a soon to be professional blogger, and a Law & Society student at York University. He just got his first album released, titled “No Cure.”  Check out his music at his MySpace Page I listen to new age music, and after listening to his album my first comment was, “This sounds just like a professional musician. I could not have noticed that this was not made by well-known composers like Vangelis or John Barry.” A couple of days ago, he asked me, “What is PageRank?” Instead of giving him an answer, I thought I would write an article on this so everyone could benefit.

ADJ Scores Higher PageRank

Recently, Google just updated their PageRank, and A. Dawn Journal (ADJ) scored a higher PageRank. Previously, ADJ PageRank was 1, and now ADJ gets a PageRank of 3. You may ask, “What is PageRank and why it is important?” Today, I am going to discuss what PageRank is, why it is important, and how Google (or other search engines) decides the order of search results.

How Google Determines the Order of Search Results

When you input keywords into Google’s “Search” box to perform a search, there are many factors that decide the order of search results. Google uses a mathematical formula called an Algorithm to display search results in order. This formula has roughly two hundred components and each component is looking for a specific part of a website to determine the total score of each website’s search results. Based on these scores, websites will be placed high or low in search results. For websites, it is very important to appear on the first few pages of search results – most people are not going to sift through some 20 million or so search results.

What Components Google Looks For

Here is just a few of the 200 components Google looks for:

• PageRank
• Placement of keywords
• Use of keywords
• Themes
• HTML coding
• How old is the domain?
• Website traffic
• Where the website is hosted

What Is PageRank?

PageRank is Google’s way of deciding how important a website is. PageRank represents a numeric value from 1 to 10, one being the lowest and ten being the highest. To the best of my knowledge, only six sites have PageRank 10. These sites are:

• Adobe
• The White House
• US Government Website
• National Science Foundation
• World Wide Web Consortium
• Google search

What Determines PageRank?

If a site is linking to another site, Google counts this as a vote and the more votes there are, the more important a site is. This sounds very simple, but there are many other elements to it and the whole PageRank thing is very complicated. Let me give you an easy example: ADJ is a personal finance website. If another high-ranking website such as Get Rich Slowly links to ADJ, it will be very good for ADJ PageRank. However, if a junk website links to ADJ, it will hurt ADJ PageRank. If you are interested in finding out more about PageRank, do a Google search for PageRank and read a few sites or visit Wikipedia’s PageRank page

Why PageRank is Important

PageRank is the heart of Google search and is one of the most significant components that determine the order of search results. Newer sites usually have zero, meaning no PageRank. It is every webmaster’s dream to achieve a higher PageRank, thus attracting more traffic. That’s why PageRank is so important.

If you had performed a search last week by typing “Canada personal finance” in the Google “Search” box, you would have seen ADJ after five or six pages of results. Alternatively, a search for “Canada personal finance blog” would have put ADJ on the second or third page. But now, a search for “Canada personal finance” pulls up ADJ on the second or sometimes the first page and “Canada personal finance blog” search is steadily putting ADJ on the first page.

Only Because Of You

ADJ is a relatively new site and going through tremendous growth. The higher PageRank and momentum in growth has only been made possible because of readers like you. I would like to take this opportunity to thank ADJ readers. Thank you for all your support and thank you for reading ADJ regularly. I know that all of this is only possible because of you and your support.

Google Docs is a free, hosted service where you can create and share documents such as word process, spreadsheet etc. The feature I like most is that you are not tied up to your own computer. Also, users can share and collaborate in real time. This is very useful if a group of students or a team of Internet Entrepreneurs are working on a project and would like to share and edit as they go along.

Recently, Google added limited PDF functionality to Google Docs. It can now upload, share, “copy and paste text” and “save as PDF”. Although Edit feature is not yet available, Google is expected to implement it shortly.

I have never been a fan of Microsoft Word and Excel. In this digital age, users are looking for a simple product with an emphasis on sharing ability. MS office failed to meet customer demand and ignored to address customer’s needs. Until now, I had no other choice but using MS Office. But now that there is an alternative , I am not going back to MS, and it is time to say goodbye.

You have got to check Google Finance Canada out. Because it’s a Canadian financial site and from Google. Google lunched Google Finance Canada in August 2007. Google Finance Engineer Dion Roy, a Canadian, stated in his blog that Canadians are the second largest users of the original Google Finance and Google Finance Canada is a localized version tailored specifically for Canadians. I like Google Finance Canada for the following:

• Unbelievably simple to use. Looking for a stock or a company? Just start putting the name or trading symbol in the search box. Let’s say you want to know about Bombardier, and you don’t know the trading symbol. Just write bom and see what happens. This autocompletion feature is really a brilliant idea. Try it now.

• An Ad-free site (yes, it is ad-free but hard to say how long it will remain ad-free).

• simple layouts. Easy to navigate.

• Create a portfolio to watch your stocks. Google has made this so simple. Try it out. You can even add Price and Number of Shares to monitor how much money you are making (or loosing).

• Watch Canadian financial news, Canadian economic data, Canadian stocks and mutual funds data – all in one page.

You will not find lots of tools(like Yahoo Finance) on Google Finance Canada because it is a very new project. I am sure Google will be improving this site rapidly and will be adding lots of features. Another positive feature Google Finance Canada has is that it does not have too many things crammed up in too little space, unlike Yahoo. Click here to visit Google Finance Canada.

It is not surprising that Google wants to enter the rapidly growing RSS Feed ad market. FeedBurner has gained so much popularity that it will be an easy access for Google into the RSS world. This is a very smart move and my guess would in the future, Google would want to buy sites like Technorati, Netvibes, StumbleUpon etc. We have to wait to see how many more sites Google acquire. A Dawn Journal uses and recommends FeedBurner and congratulations to FeedBurner.