"A couple of things: not sure why you expected any kind of extension of anything from Google. As several commenters have already posted, Google went out of their way to not tie Google's apps and services into Chrome. Listen to the latest Gillmor Gang podcast (if you haven't already) with two members of the Chrome team making this point several times: http://gillmorgang.techcrunch........ Part of the confusion comes from the initially poor reporting that happened on the blogosphere about Chrome and web apps. Even in it's beta form, it's by far the best browser for running web applications: dead simple UI for creating dedicated web app short cuts (you should really play with that feature), very fast Javascript engine and tabs that run as separate processes so one of them can't crash the entire browser. WebKit is way ahead of IE and Gecko for advanced standards support and support for HTML5. Google Gears is built-in, so it has support for off-line web apps right now. You can..." - Albert Willis
"There's seems to be a disconnect here. Chrome is just a web browser, not some kind of extension of Google's web applications or a competitor to Mozilla's Ubiquity. That's not a flaw or oversight, that was the intention from the beginning. Chrome has the most advanced architecture of any browser available today. It's super fast in rendering pages (thanks to WebKit) and runs Javascript-heavy pages and web apps without bogging down, thanks to the V8 Javascript engine. It's already faster and more reliable than FireFox, Internet Explorer and Safari, which have far more mature code bases than Chrome does. And to be clear: each tab runs as a separate process whether it's showing a web page or is running a web application and is treated as such by Chrome. The value here is that something on the page could cause that page to crash, but your other tabs will keep running. That's huge. Who wants their Google Docs session to die just because some other site caused their browser to crash? I think..." - Albert Willis
Overlay.TV, a startup that lets users augment streaming videos with customized text, audio, images, and links, has launched to the public. The service overlays videos from a number of video sharing sites with a new layer containing this customized content, which can be used for entertainment purposes or as an easy (and potentially effective) means of monetizing video. - Albert Willis
As we've said many times in the past, the viral video audience votes with its mouse. And if viral video views are any indication of voter intent, Michelle Obama's star is on the rise. In fact, her address at the 2008 Democratic National Convention has attracted more views than Hillary and Bill Clinton's combined. - Albert Willis
Send your Flickr pix to Twitter and show people what you're up to. To disable posting simply enter your flickr username, select the disable checkbox below it and click Submit. - Albert Willis
Software and webapps rock at being calendars: You can update them from any computer or your phone, they don't have to triple-check when Columbus Day is, and they never get coffee stains on them. But your online or desktop calendar can do a lot more than just hold dates and tell you about them. Free programs and tweaks can integrate appointments into your email app, embed a whole-month view into your wallpaper, schedule birthdays without a single phone call, and improve your faulty memory for everything. Take a look at 10 free and customizable hacks you can apply to your own appointment-keeping system. - Albert Willis
