I get quite a lot of questions about my Chrome setup, so I figured listing them out here would be helpful to reference.
Extensions:
Adblock Plus – Arguably the most valuable! Advertising has waged a hard war on the attention and time of the 21st century. And I believe Gary Vaynerchuk would agree that for the most part, it’s either losing or has already lost. I have never seen an ad on YouTube that I actually wanted to see. And if this is you too, you’ll love this extension. It basically makes sure you’ll never see another annoying ad again! It will however continue to display inconspicuous ads that don’t interrupt your browsing (which I’ve found to be perfectly great).
Blur – This allows me to “mask” / “blur” my contact info when entering it in forms. For example if I’m wary of inputting my email because of spam etc, I can click to “hide” my email and it will automatically input a unique forwarding address that I can control in the dashboard. So if I in fact do end up getting spam, I can click one link and it self destructs the email. They also have this feature for credit cards, phone etc!
Bookmark Manager – I have a TON of bookmarks about all sorts of things, generally because I want to be able to come back to important things. However, if you have more than a couple hundred bookmarks, it’s nearly impossible to do so. This app slightly changes the amount and quality of data that it picks up when bookmarking, which drastically increases the ability to search and recognize the things you’re looking for! It needs some improvements to the UI, but overall has already been valuable by helping me find things quickly later (which is the only reason I bookmark stuff).
Chrome Remote Desktop – Sometimes the ability to see what your computer sees from your phone is really useful! This allows you to do so (considering you have the proper hardware and software).
Clearly – I wish that all websites were beautifully designed and easy to read and consume too, but sadly this is rarely the case. Not to mention the frequently annoying sidebars or moving images and more! This brilliant piece of software allows you to simple right click, and select “Clearly” with the little lamp icon, and it will automatically “scrub” the page and display it extremely cleanly for your speed reading pleasure.
FullContact for Gmail – I’ve mentioned FullContact and its brilliance before. This Extension brings the fantastic personal CRM to your Gmail! I know many of you were also likely disappointed about Rapportive more or less being left to rot after getting acquired by LinkedIn. So this came at a dire time of need, and not only does just as well as Rapportive, but one-ups it by including your FullContact database information which expands the utility even further because now it’s all synced across your devices and network!
Hangouts – Hangouts is second only to Skype in how powerful and helpful it is, and even that is becoming more and more debatable! This extension makes Hangouts much much more usable and consistent.
Hide YouTube Comments – Simple. Name says it all pretty much. The reason is that sadly there’s rarely anything of value in the comments in recent years, regardless of what video I’m watching! So this plugin saves the mental drudgery of low quality comments and keeps things looking very clean and much less distracting.
iCloud Bookmarks – Since I use primarily use a Windows desktop, and iPhone, this helps cross the gap between these two platforms. It’s very spotty, but works most of the time. Sadly I’m not aware of a lot of options in this area.
Kill News Feed – Again, a simple name, and a simple outcome. But an incredibly valuable plugin! I love engaging with awesome people on Facebook, but the problem is that the News feed is a for all intents and purposes, infinite amount of new information to consume. Which is an incredibly addicting activity which can seduce you at the most important times of the day and devour whole hours of your time. The reason is because Facebook itself isn’t the problem, it’s the great posts, articles, videos, links, websites, etc that people share through it. So 10 minutes of the Facebook News Feed could result in hours of content, which might all be great content! But if it’s interrupting you from getting important work done, that’s a problem! I’ve found that installing this plugin alone often results in 10-20 hours increased time freedom! Presently, I normally use this time to engage more in specific topical groups where the content is more moderated by other like minded humans. And the quality is more guaranteed valuable. It’s also easier to perform “portion control” in a group than the endless scrolling feed.
LastPass – A great application for storing details such as passwords and other low impact sensitive information. This will drastically help you increase the overall quality of your online credentials.
Momentum – Simple extension to display a beautiful picture and some other helpful information when you open a new tab on Chrome. It adds a nice splash of beauty and features to an otherwise boring page. The feature of entering a daily “focus” is actually very valuable if used correctly.
Motivation – This is a bonus since it’s an alternate to Momentum as you can’t have both extensions display sadly. It displays your exact age in decimal every time you open a new tab, which can be awesome for reminding you if you should really spend the time doing what you were about to do.
Point – One of my favorites and most used extensions! This is too much to explain here and really requires it’s own piece. Simply put; it allows you to quickly share, comment, and engage socially with nearly any page on the web! I use this dozens of times a day for business and personal. It’s extremely useful if you work anywhere near the web space.
Pushbullet – This bridges the cap between iPhone and PC by allowing me to send links, images, and other content to or from my iPhone or other computers. For example while reading something on my PC, I might find a really cool application for my iPhone. But instead of dealing with the hassle of syncing or trying to find the application in the app store from my phone, all I have to do is right click the page and “Send to iPhone”. When the notification pops up, by tapping it, it takes me directly to the app in the store and I can download it.
RescueTime – This is another application that requires a separate post. This is worth it’s weight in gold! By installing this plugin, you can get a really clear picture of where one is spending their time and how they can be more productive in the future. One of the most important things I have installed.
Save to Pocket – Since even with Kill News Feed, I come across dozens of really cool articles and sites all the time, and I need to be careful to manage my activities. So this allows me to Defer certain activities until the right time (which might not arrive, at which point the Pocket is cleared).
Stylebot – Sometimes websites aren’t just the way I like them. And if I use them all the time, and it’s not my website, I love being able to change certain things quickly. For example changing the background of something, the font size for readability, or the removal of buttons I never use that clutter up the interface. And being able to simply undo or entirely delete these changes at any time is wonderful.
TimeDoser – If you’ve heard of Pomodoro, this simple extension is one of the better options I’ve found for tracking and utilizing the pomodoro technique