Chrome/Firefox/Internet Explorer: Facebook Chat now includes a feature that lets you know when a friend has read your message—or when you've read theirs. If you'd prefer to keep that information under wraps, Chat Undetected will do it for you. More »

Chrome/Firefox: When friends on Facebook share a link with the social reader apps popular with web sites like the Guardian or Yahoo, it means you need to install the Social Reader app and share that you just read an article if you want to read it. Unsocialize is a Firefox and Chrome extension that adds a right-click menu to read those articles without sharing or installing anything.More »

Chrome: Twitter is a great source for news, articles, and a good way to stay in touch with friends, but if your friends are obsessed with some annoying celebrity that you have no desire to read about, Purge Twitter Trends is a Chrome extension that strips specific celebrity trending topics from your feed so you can read in peace without being forced to unfollow them. More »

The new Google+ layout is pretty nice, but if you're looking at it on a widescreen monitor it adds a lot of whitespace. If you'd like to cut down on that whitespace and center everything, Whitespace Remover for Google Plus is a Chrome and Firefox extension that does just that.More »

Chrome: Select Search is a Chrome Extension that pops up a ballon with a number of search engines when you select a block of text. When you double-click on a word or phrase you can quickly pop open a search in Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, Binsearch, and others.More »

Chrome: If you're still looking for a way to easily make your posts on Facebook appear on Twitter or Google+, Publish Sync is a Chrome extension that gives you the flexibility to post the same thing to one or all of your other social networks at the same time. More »

Start Google Plus is a great extension for Chrome and Firefox that lets you update Twitter and Facebook from within Google+, also adding feeds from both social networks onto your main page. We mentioned it in our Facebook to Google+ migration guide, but felt it deserved to be highlighted on its own because it's so useful. More »

Filed under: Social Software, Mobile

The official Twitter for iPhone app has updated, and with the latest update it became a universal app, meaning it has native iPhone and iPad versions. While the iPhone version continues to incrementally improve, it's the iPad version that is really remarkable.

It took me a little while to get used to it, because the user interface is fairly busy. But you get a heck of a lot of bang for your buck with all that busy-ness. While most Twitter apps on the iPad work best in portrait mode, and Twitter for iPad works fine that way, it really seems optimized for use in landscape mode.

This Google gaming and social network story is really boiling over. In the last month, Digg's Kevin Rose tweeted that Google has a social network in the works, an assertion backed up Quora's Adam D'Angelo and possibly by this document.

In mid-July, TechCrunch said Google had invested $100 million in social gaming platform Zynga and was striking a deal with that sensational startup.

Now the Wall Street Journal reports (paywall warning) that Google is in "talks with several makers of popular online games as it seeks to develop a broader social networking service that could compete with Facebook."

But isn't this the worst-kept secret in high tech? I could resort to snarky commentary about traditional media outlets merely building off of blogs like TechCrunch, but they do a much better job of trashing mainstream media.