Are you ever looking at a web page with great information but want to find out if there's a simple, more easily-digestible version in video form? That's when it comes time to search on YouTube—except then you have to make another window or tab or leave the web page to perform that search. Search On YouTube is a Chrome extension that puts a tiny little YouTube viewer in your toolbar so you can search easily and trouble-free. More »

Chrome/Firefox: Ever run into a video that's blocked because you aren't in a supported region? It's annoying, but ProxMate is a simple extension for Chrome and Firefox that unblocks region-specific content from YouTube, Hulu, and Grooveshark.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 »

If you're an avid YouTube watcher who switches across tabs a lot, you might finding pausing a video or adjusting volume a little difficult. Video Controller is an extension for Chrome that places a simple control panel on your toolbar to quickly pause or adjust volume regardless of which tab the video is in.More »

Technology blog GHacks reports that YouTube is testing a new homepage design and that anyone can force this new design by adding a cookie to their browser. Here's how to do to so for Chrome and Firefox. More »

Chrome: Google has released two official Google+ extensions for Chrome allowing you to quickly share links and get notifications while browsing, as well as new YouTube integration for your Google+ profile.More »

Chrome: If you want to skim through your Facebook news feed without stopping for each YouTube video someone posts, the Facebook Video Player extension will play videos in the upper right-hand corner of your window, allowing you to keep browsing as it plays. More »

Chrome/Firefox/Safari (User Script): If you're like me, you probably avoid most YouTube links because you don't know what's on the other end, and you don't want to waste time finding out. User script YouTube Link Title saves you from NSFW videos, rickrolls, and things that just aren't worth your time by warning you what's on the other side. More »

Chrome: Watching YouTube videos almost always generates ideas for more videos to watch, but initiating a new search means closing the current video. With YT Background Search, you can look up what you'll queue next without closing the currently playing video.More »

YouTube comments are some of the trolliest on the web, but you don't need an extra add-on to block them—just use Adblock Plus. More »

Q:

When Apple’s MobileMe service goes away in June 2012, what happens to the stuff I have stored on iDisk? Will Apple still store my material someplace else remotely on one of its servers that I can access via my laptop? Will I still have some sort of .Mac mail system that I can access when on the road and using a computer other than my own?

A:

Apple says it won’t continue to have the equivalent of the iDisk online storage system, accessible directly from the cloud, after MobileMe gives way to its new iCloud service. It advises iDisk users to copy their online files to their Macs or PCs before next June. However, it says the new service will still support mac.com and me.com email accounts, and they will still be accessible via the Web. It promises details later, but has in the meantime published a document answering common questions about the transition at apple.com/mobileme/transition.html.

Q:

Is there a good program that will allow me to capture a Web video, especially a YouTube video, and convert it into an MP4 format file so I can play it on my Android-based Iconia tablet while offline on an airplane?

A:

Chrome: YouTube is great, but some of its features are annoying. With the YouTube Options for Google Chrome extension, you can suppress in-video ads, remove comments, disable annotations, and more. The extension allows you to completely change the look and feel of YouTube. More »

Chrome (Beta/Dev): Voice input is now baked into Chrome's Beta version and soon to hit the standard, stab

YouTube seems laser-focused on amping up its overall content quality as of late, with the acquisition of original video site Next New Networks just last week and today’s news that it has acquired digital video technology company Green Parrot Pictures.

“Some of YouTube’s most popular or moving videos are shot using low-quality mobile phones and video cameras. Take, for example, videos of recent protests in Libya. Although emotionally captivating, they can be jerky, blurry or unsteady.

What if there was a technology that could improve the quality of such videos — sharpening the image, reducing visual noise and rendering a higher-quality, steadier video — all while your video is simply being uploaded to the site? You can imagine how excited we were when we discovered an small, ambitious company based in Ireland that can do exactly this.”

Not too long ago, Microsoft released an extension for Google Chrome which enabled H.264 HTML5 video playback. Now Google has returned the favor by offering a WebM plug-in for Internet Explorer 9 users. In a move which we can only describe as oozing with self-confidence, Google points out that there are some known issues -- visit this page, and revel in its blankness.

If you plan on using IE9 but don't want to miss out on all the WebM videos which are popping up, download and install the plug-in now. The plug-in only works on Vista and Windows 7, but conveniently the same is true for IE9.

Chrome: Smart Video Enlarger is an extension that adds two great viewing features to the YouTube web interface. More »

These days, you no longer have to be an esoteric nerd to sport a dual-monitor setup. Heck, many of us use three monitors, and some have been known to use entire walls. Now, when you have such a setup and try to watch a YouTube video in full-screen, you quickly discover an irritating fact: While you're watching a video in full-screen on one monitor, any click on another monitor collapses the video back to its tiny windowed size.

There are ways to get around this by replacing specific Flash DLLs with tweaked versions, but really, who wants to mess with system files like this? Window Expander for Chrome is a far less invasive solution. It adds a button to Chrome's Omnibar which you can click to display a full-screen window with the video you're currently watching. Since Chrome has so little, well, chrome, it's the next best thing to full-screen. Window Expander is simple, and it works. Go give it a try!

We've featured a few Chrome extensions for Google services before, but today Google released three official extensions. With them, you can view your Google Calendar, clip web pages to Google Docs, and view your YouTube feed right from Chrome's navigation bar. More »

Users can subscribe to channels or other users on Youtube, which has the effect that they will receive notifications in their account if a new video has been posted on the video portal. That’s a great way of keeping up to date with videos that are produced by specific users or channels, and to make sure that no video is ever missed.

Subscriptions are shown in the user profile, which makes them a bit uncomfortable to work with.

YouTube Subscription Monitor offers an interesting alternative for Youtube users who use Chrome to access the site.

Once installed it can be used to monitor the subscriptions of one Youtube user. One great aspect of the extension is that it is possible to monitor the subscriptions of any Youtube user, not just the subscriptions of the own account.

Before subscriptions can be accessed, the account that should be monitored needs to be added to the program’s settings. This is done by right-clicking the Tube icon in the Chrome status bar and selecting Options for the context menu.

The options contain several additional settings, including the interval of the update checks and the number of videos that are displayed by the extension. The option to display new video notifications is enabled by default, and can be disabled in case that is not needed.

It is now possible to left-click the icon in the header of the Chrome browser to display the latest new videos in a menu.

Each video is displayed with a small thumbnail, the video title, playtime, uploader and date it was uploaded. A left-click on a video opens the video in a new tab in the web browser.

Youtube Subscription Monitor is an interesting option for Youtube users who make use of the subscription feature and use the Chrome browser to view the videos on the video site. The extension can be installed directly on the Google Chrome Extension’s website.