Chrome: Music Plus is an extension for Google Music that adds popup controls, HTML5 notifications, Last.fm scrobbling and bios, song downloading, global keyboard shortcuts, and lyrics to Google's nascent cloud-based music player. Basically it takes Google's pretty cool web-based music player and makes it awesome. More »

When we talk Chromebooks with our developer friends, a common reaction we get is “I can see why my [insert-relative-here] would use it, but I need my PC for coding”. Over the last few years, browser-based coding has grown from a research topic to a viable practice. You can already find many development apps on the Chrome Web Store today. Some are conventional code editors and IDEs, built right into the browser. Others are oriented more around prototyping and design. There are also many tools for project management.

First up, IDEs. You can now code, debug, and deploy real programs from the browser. A popular example at Google IO was Cloud9, an IDE for JavaScript, Python, PHP, and Ruby. Cloud9 uses the HTML5 FileSystem capability and AppCache to sync files, so you can even code offline. There are many other IDEs in the web store too, such as Kodingen, Codey, Akshell, eXo Cloud IDE, and PHPAnywhere.

It’s not all about coding though. There are also apps focusing on web design, for people who want to make a web page without coding or perhaps experiment with a few concepts early on. Being able to edit and design web pages inside the tool that will display them is a very powerful concept. BuildorLite and BuildorPro let you construct a web page via a graphical user interface, and publish it straight on their servers. Handcraft and Mockingbird are two apps aimed at design and prototyping. And if you want a scratchpad to try a few coding experiments, check out JSFiddle.

Launching software isn’t just about designing and coding your apps; it’s also about managing the entire workflow, from planning release schedules to triaging bug reports. One example is GitHub Issues, providing a quick, app-like, way to track project issues. Another is Launchlist Pro, a checklist you can use to launch your website.

Chrome aims to bring simplicity, speed, and security to all users, and that includes developers. Being cloud-based means these tools are always up to date, and running inside the browser’s sandbox minimises the security risk to your machine. There’s no complicated install process and the only dependency is Chrome itself, which is automatically kept up to date. Just install the app and get coding.

We’re especially excited about what this means for new developers, as programming tools have never been more accessible to everyone. So whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just looking to get started, visit the Chrome Web Store today and build something awesome in your browser!

Jolicloud, once only a cloud-focused Linux distro for netbooks, has been re-branded as Joli OS. The company's focus has shifted slightly, though the goal is still to provide access to a fun, easy-to-use Internet experience. In addition to offering the OS itself, the Joli "cloud" portion will become a Web-based launchpad which users can install in Google Chrome (already available), Safari, Firefox, and even on the iPad.

The company has also announced a set of changes in the Joli OS 1.2 update, which brings an integrated file browser, an automatic Jolicloud login option, and Guest mode -- for those times when you want to let a friend take your Joli OS-powered notebook for a spin.

We've shared a handful of Google Chrome context menu extensions before, and this weekend we discovered a new one which is oozing potential: Cloud Save.

Install Cloud Save, and you'll add the ability to right-click files on Web pages you visit and zap (or sideload) them to various online services like Google Docs, Dropbox, Picasa, Flickr, Posterous, CloudApp, and Box.Net. The extension appears to be based on drag2up, another handy little Chrome extension, as you'll see some of the auth dialogs refer to it instead of Cloud Save.

By default, Cloud Save shows you desktop notifications when a transfer completes -- though you can shut them off if you like. It's a handy extension for zapping found files to your cloud storage without having to download them to your desktop first.

Chrome-only: If you often find yourself discovering images and files you want to save but don't really want to deal with them right this moment, Cloud Save attempts to solve that problem. By right clicking on an image or download link, you can opt to send that file to one of many cloud-based services. More »

Google recently released Cloud Print, a web feature that allowed you to print documents on your home printer from anywhere. Today, they're going to start rolling out that feature for mobile Gmail, so you can print straight from your smartphone. More »

Fiabee is a relative newcomer to the cloud-to-mobile storage game, having only released its iOS app [iTunes link] back in June. The company has now begun focusing on Google's platforms and has made beta versions of the Fiabee app available for Android devices and Google Chrome.

The Fiabee Chrome app is no bookmark -- it's an extension app (all its HTML, JavaScript, CSS, images, and fonts are stored on your system) that provides a much different experience from the Fiabee website. Install the app and create an account, and you're given 1GB of cloud storage which you can use to share files from your desktop Chrome browser to your Android handset. Open your favorite file management app, find the file you want to upload, and then drag it on to the appropriate drop zone -- the blue box saves it to your cloud storage, while the green box takes the additional step of notifying your Android device that a new transfer is available.

Google demoed its upcoming Chrome OS this morning, giving us a closer look into how it's actually going to work on real-world devices—including their pilot program hardware.

Google's planning to host your printer drivers in its cloud to make the Chro

If you believe that Google might look at your passwords and the other data you send through Chrome's integrated sync, worry no more. Starting now, you can use a password for increased sync security.

The passphrase option is currently only available in Chrome's Dev Channel, but these things usually trickle down to the Beta and Stable channels pretty quickly. You can find it in Options > Personal Stuff > Sync > Customize > Encryption tab. Once you set up your passphrase, you won't be able to sync any data to another Chrome install without entering it there as well. Also, Google won't be able to see any of your synced data, since it will be stored encrypted on their servers, and your passphrase itself never leaves your computer(s). One thing to keep in mind is that once you've set a passphrase, you can't remove it without clearing your sync data.

This is a neat addition to the sync feature, yet for complete peace of mind when passwords are involved, a dedicated tool like LastPass will probably work better. Granted, that does require an additional download and setup routine, and some simply won't go through that trouble -- so it's definitely cool that even integrated features receive additional security.

Quanp, the online storage service that gives you a whopping 10GB of free storage space has now come up with another way for you to utilize your account – Microsoft Office Addin. If you are not aware, quanp has been pretty active in developing interactive widgets recently to get people to use their storage services. Widgets like quanp send, quanp.drop and quanp.on are useful stuff that you can make use of.

With this latest quanp Office addin, you will be able to download, edit, upload and share your document directly from your Office. /> id="more-20574">

Installation

The installation of the quanp addin is pretty straightforward. Simply download the exe file and double click to install it. If you have opened your Microsoft Office, you will need to close it for the installation to proceed.

When the installation is done, you will find the quanp icon in the ribbon of your office.

With the evolution of cloud based file hosting services, more and more users are attracted to online file back up services which allows you to store files on the cloud.

This is because a 260 GB hard disk is not enough anymore. You need more and more space and most importantly, you want to access those files from any computer you want.

With an online file hosting service, you can sync all your computers and mobile devices with ease. One of the very popular services is Dropbox. The free plan of Dropbox allows you to store up to 2 GB of data in the cloud and the pro plan costs $9.99 a month for 50 GB while $19.99 for 100 GB of space.

If you are looking for a cheaper alternative of Dropbox, here is another web service called iDriveSync, which offers considerate plans with more space. /> id="more-20351">

Foreword: My dear American brethren and sistren, stop reading now: Spotify isn't available in your country. Rdio should be out soon though!

Spotify Chrome Extension is a bit of a misnomer. It's not an official extension, nor does it really utilize any of Spotify's functionality, but it is a whole lot more useful than any other Chrome extension out there. Once it's installed, you can select some text (an artist's name), hit the new Spotify button on your browser chrome and BOOM! you're rewarded with search results from Spotify's extensive music database. Click a result and the song starts playing in Spotify. Neat.

The problem is, you can only search by artist. You can't select the name of an album and search for that -- neither can you do the same for record labels. Also, there's no way to push the button and enter your own search string -- you're only given that option if a previous search returns no results.

So, it does one thing and it does it well; I just wish it did a bit more. It would be a few seconds' work to add album searching. But hey, perhaps I'm being a little unfair: the extension is brand new. I just hope the developer hasn't abandoned this neat little extension -- it has promise!

I'm sure most of you have used Google Docs in one form or another. You might've shared a document with a friend or collaboratively planned your trip expenses in a shared spreadsheet -- maybe you've even used the new 'public sharing' feature for more nefarious purposes!

Even if you're looking forward to Microsoft's Office Web Apps, the point remains: we're doing more and more processing in the cloud. The platform that matters is no longer Mac or Windows or Linux, but rather which Web browser. And let's be honest, Web browsers still have a long way to go before they're as usable as operating systems. Sure, one day you'll have a Windows 7 Superbar at the bottom of Firefox, but not yet -- and that's why we have EXTENSIONS!

I should probably get to the point of this post: the Google Docs blog has collated a bunch of handy extensions for making the most out of... Google Docs. At their most basic, they provide 'New Spreadsheet' and 'New Doc' buttons next to your address bar, but advanced extensions like Snippy allow you to copy and paste entire sections of websites to a new Google Doc.

That's Chrome out of the way, but now someone needs to collate a bunch of Firefox add-ons for Google Docs integration. I found 'Send to Google Docs', but I'm sure you guys know of some other great add-ons? If so, share them in the comments!

Those of you who -- like me -- run Google Chrome and Chromium on multiple computers with different operating systems probably find its built-in sync abilities incredibly useful. They've been steadily expanded from initially only handling our bookmarks to now syncing just about every personalization option available.

Preferences? Check. Form auto-fill? Check. Theme? Check. Extensions? ...

Maybe not yet, but we all knew it was just a matter of time. With Google pushing the "your apps everywhere" philosophy in Chrome OS, there was no question that our Google Chrome extensions would be added to its preference sync options soon enough.

This morning, extension sync appeared in the Chromium source code. Better still, it's enabled by default -- meaning there's no need to flip a command line switch to turn it on.

Filed under: Internet, OS Updates, web 2.0