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Newer versions of Chrome spruce up the New Tab page by adding some shortcuts to your most-visited Web sites or Chrome apps. A previous extension I wrote about, New Tab Page adds the weather, some headlines, and links to Chrome apps. Onefeed does all of this, plus a custom newsfeed and social media updates from Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and Instagram. You can also attach your Dropbox account, if you really want to.

To get started, just install a copy of Onefeed for Chrome by visiting their Web site, then click the Get Onefeed button. You won't see a new icon appear, but you should see an alert from Chrome saying that the extension has been installed.

(Credit: Screenshot by Nicole Cozma/CNET)

Open a new tab in Chrome and you will see option... [Read more]

Contactive is a caller ID contact overlay for Android that displays various information updates from callers.

Contactive acts and feels like an extension of the contacts or address book that exists within native Android 4.0. When you receive a call from a friend, Contactive will also pull up the caller's most recent online activity.

By default, Android's own native People app touches upon social network updates, but only within Google+ vs. Contactive's wider cast of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and more. The philosophy behind displaying a caller's activity on the Incoming Call screen is to act as a kind of "cheat sheet" for conversation topics before answering the call.

Having an elegantly miniaturized news feed being displayed does indeed offer some convenience, but it's not without its flaws. Because Contactive relies on its own global directory, in addition to the standard Web services like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., its effectiveness is dependent on just how much information you share with the application.

The app, itself, also requires you to register an account with an e-mail and password, likely for identifying unknown callers. Contactive already aggregates information from a wide variety of publicly available sources, which can save you the trouble of verifying a caller's identity should they attempt to falsely represent a gro... [Read more]

Chrome App Launcher for Windows.

Chrome users who want to open their Web apps without having to first fire up the browser can do just that via the Chrome App Launcher for Windows.

Initially released in February as a developer preview, the App Launcher now is finished and in completed build mode for Windows users.

To grab the App Launcher, open Google Chrome and surf to the launcher link in the Web store. Click on the button to Get the launcher. The App Launcher icon then appears on your Windows taskbar and desktop. Close Chrome. Now, anytime you want to open one of your Chrome Web apps, simply click on the App Launcher icon, choose the app you wish to run, and it automatically pops up in Chrome.

Mac OS X and Linux users still need to stay tuned. Google is reportedly still working on versions of the launcher for those two systems.

(Via Engadget)