Thing 27: Power Up Your Browser

I love starting new "thing." It gives me opportunity to explore new tools that I would never have thought about looking into before. I decided to take this opportunity to explore new add-ons and extensions. People are always mentioning to me different add-ons and I wonder why I don't take the time to search around, so here I am capitalizing on that opportunity.

"Pocket Icon" (Image created in Awesome Screenshot)

I started by reading 50 the Best Google Chrome Extensions. I saw that in the assignment "Pocket" was mentioned and it was mentioned again in this article, so I decided to start with that. I was very pleased with the simplicity of this extension, both in layout and setup. I instantly added it onto my desktop, ipad and phone. Now I will be able to save all the articles, videos, and images I want and view them at a later time without the need of internet. This will be wonderful when I am traveling this summer... a time in which I plan to catch up on all my reading.  I was extremely impressed with a few of the features. First, right after I added the extension, it placed an icon on my toolbar as a saving shortcut. Then I went to find an article on Twitter to try my shortcut out and I noticed there was a "pocket icon" as an option, right in the Twitter post. Second, I loved how they make recommendations of articles based on what you currently have saved. Then the final feature that I loved was that it recognized other things that I have saved in places such as Facebook and asked me if I wanted to add them to my list.

The next Chrome extension that I tried was Awesome Screenshot. This extension allows you to capture all or part of a screen and it lets you annotate, edit and blur parts of the image. It can then be shared as a URL or dragged to your desktop as a .png. Although, I love the capabilities of this extension, it wasn't as seamless to use as I had hoped. Even though there is a shortcut button for your toolbar, I couldn't get mine to work. It would allow me to select the area that I wanted to capture, but when I went to capture the image, nothing would happen. However, if I went directly to the website itself I could upload an image and edit it with ease. Once I edited & annotated the image, I dragged it to my desktop and used it to showcase the "Pocket icon" on Twitter. As you can tell the annotation was cut off and when I went back to edit the image again. It wouldn't let me change my previous annotation, I could only add a new one. So that was a little frustrating. I was going to try and make a new one, but you are only allowed 30 free ones before you need to pay. I can really see myself having a need for this tool, so I decided not to waste one of my free ones on making an additional one for this assignment. I was also hoping that you could trash one of your items and your numbers would be replenished, but they weren't. :( Overall, it seems like it will be a useful tool for me and am glad that I took the time to explore it!

After trying 2 of the extensions that were mentioned in the assignment, I decided to do a little "shopping" of my own. I was super excited when I found "Google Tasks." I use tasks while in my mail, but I didn't realize that there was an extension for your toolbar so that you can access it from wherever you want. I am one happy women! I now have an icon with a little checkmark on my toolbar and all the items that I had added when I was in mail are all in it. This is going to be much more convenient for me. :)

I loved this assignment and am going to start searching extensions and even add-ons in the future. I felt like this was a fun "shopping experience"