Martin Spriggs

Yesterday I wrote about one of my favorite tools for getting stuff out of my head and into a trusted system to which I could turn when I need to remember or find something from the recent or distant past – Evernote. Today comes the other half of the technological brain extender I use almost everyday — Diigo. The best way to describe Diigo an online social bookmarking tool that lets you “annotate” the web.

I tend to use a few browsers in my professional and personal computing lives for many different reasons, but the one I prefer is Google Chrome – for basically three reasons. Chrome, at least in my experience, is faster. Chrome runs Gmail, Reader and the new Google+ better than the other browsers. And finally, Chrome offers just the right amount of customization to allow me to optimize my time in the browser, which is a lot. So I’d like to just highlight five ways I have customized Chrome to keep things efficient.

1. Set the start page to the Apps window. Many apps exist that can be placed on that screen, so for me it acts like a launcher. I can launch my email (Gmail), RSS reader (Google Reader), task manager (Remember The Milk), image editor (Picnic), and almost any other Web 2.0 application right from one screen. As an added bonus, I have access to my “Most visited” sites and “Recently closed” sites at the bottom.

To get the Apps window to show up first when launching Chrome, click on the wrench icon in the upper right, select preferences and go to Basics on the left. Then make sure “Open the home page” is selected in the “On Startup” group and “Use the New Tab page” is selected in the Home Page Group. BTW, you can add your favorite Apps by clicking on the Web Store icon.

2. Always show your bookmarks bar. This will come in handy once we go through setup #3 below. This will allow you to have one or two click access to your bookmarks. If you don’t have an app on the Apps screen, you can nest all your favorite websites in your bookmarks. So when you click the star icon in the browser to set a bookmark, just be sure it is placed in a subfolder on your Bookmarks Bar.

To insure that the bar is always visible, again go to preferences (wrench icon) under Basics and select “Always show the bookmarks bar” under the Toolbar group. While you are there you might as well click the “Show Home button” so you can always show your Apps listing when you want. (see #1 above)

3. Now on to the cool extensions. Use Xmarks to keep your bookmarks in sync. Xmarks, now a part of LastPass (see #4 below) allows you to add and manage bookmarks in one browser and have them stay in sync on any other browser on any other computer where you have also installed Xmarks. It’s free and works well.

To add extensions, click on the wrench icon one more time, click Tools, and then Extensions. Click the “Get more extensions >>” link at the bottom and search for Xmarks. Follow the instructions and you are on your way.

4. Install the LastPass extension. Many of us have and use more than one password. In fact, everybody should be diligent about varying their passwords from site to site. LastPass makes that easy. I’ve written about LastPass before, so I won’t go into detail here, but in short, it manages all your passwords and then fills them in to the appropriate fields on a website for you automatically. Just follow the same instructions as #3 above to get it installed. Just a note, it is worth the $12 a year to purchase the premium version.

5. Use Diigo. I’ve talked about Diigo before and find new uses for it each day. Diigo allows you to bookmark any site, annotate that site with notes or highlights, and then share that bookmark with otherpeople or groups of people, like your WELSTech friends. You don’t want every site you are interested in on your bookmarks bar (see #2 above). But you do want to be able to go back to and reference sites when needed. Diigo does much more than that of course. I couldn’t compute without it in this Web 2.0 world. Install the extension using the same directions as #3 above.

Well that’s it. You now have a pretty good picture of what fills my screen once Chrome is launched and I’m working on the web. It might improve your computing experience as well.

This post is a part of the
Summer 2011 WELS Hacker
series on the WELSTech Podcast.