Windows/Mac/Linux: If you're living life on the bleeding edge of Google's Chrome browser, good news: Google just pushed out an update to the dev channel, improving HTML5 audio and video for all platforms, bringing extension and bookmark sync to Macs, and more.

The Windows build didn't see many changes, but Mac users should be particularly happy with the update. Having been excluded from extension support when the Chrome extension gallery first opened, Mac users can now officially join in the fun. (See these 18 extensions worth downloading for Chrome to get started with Chrome extensions.) Mac users also gain support for much-needed bookmark sync and support for favicon-only pinned tabs.

Chrome only: Google's Similar Pages for Chrome extension adds a button to the toolbar that uses Google's search algorithms to find other web sites similar to the one you are currently browsing.

Once you've installed the extension, you can simply click the new button in the toolbar to see a list of related pages, complete with thumbnail previews, descriptions, and a link. The related sites are usually fairly accurate, but where it seems to work best is when browsing more permanent articles on a specific subject—for example, using the similar pages button on the Wikipedia article on Shadow Copy brought back a list of useful related pages, but if you are on the home page of a site, the results will be more general.

If you need to do a lot of research and can't always think of the right query to use on Google, this extension could come in handy. Google Similar Pages is a free download, works wherever Chrome extensions do.

Chrome only: Notifier extension One Number checks for unread messages in Gmail, Wave, Voice, and Google Reader and displays the unread count right on the Google Chrome toolbar.

Once you've installed the extension, you'll immediately see the button added to the toolbar, where you can see the previews for each service, and access the settings page. You can enable or disable services that you don't use, and customize the colors or how often the extension checks for new unread messages. It's a simple extension, but if you've been looking for an unread message notifier, One Number might be worth a try. One Number is a free download, works wherever Chrome does.

Google Chrome extension A Bit Better RTM is one of our favorite ways to tweak the popular Remember the Milk online to-do list web app, and now it's been ported as a native Google Chrome extension.

We've mentioned the A Bit Better RTM Greasemonkey script twice before as one of our favorite user scripts for Greasemonkey in Firefox, and the the native Chrome version works much the same way—the most noticeable feature moves the tabs over to the left, saving precious vertical space for widescreen laptop users, and making them more readable in general.

In addition, you can rearrange the lists, hide the lists you don't use, use keyboard shortcuts to switch between them, and even move an item to a folder from the keyboard. It's an extremely helpful extension, and this author, at least, is thrilled to finally have it on Chrome. A Bit Better RTM is a free download, works wherever Chrome does. Thanks, CookingCat!

Google Chrome (on Windows): Password saving and management webapp LastPass offers a single space to drop your web site passwords and quickly use them on any browser—now including Chrome, through an extension available to development channel users.

LastPass works on Chrome similarly to how it does on Firefox and Internet Explorer, and it's a bit more convenient and functional than its . The concept remains the same: you only have to remember your LastPass login, and LastPass remembers all your other passwords and, if you want, credit card and form data, too. Before you ask, here's how LastPass justifies its safety and encryption.

Chrome extension WOT adds the Web of Trust community web site rating service to the Google Chrome browser, so you can check the trustworthiness of a web site without leaving the page.

Once you've installed the extension—by simply clicking on the link and accepting the install—you will see a new icon in the Chrome status bar that shows the community rating for the site you are browsing. Clicking the icon will display a dialog on the page with full details about the trustworthiness of the site, and a link to the rating page for more information. You can configure which of the rankings to use in the settings, but unfortunately you can't move it from the status bar to anywhere else.

The Google Chrome developers have released a new version this week with enhanced support for extensions and—dare we say it—a proper extensions menu item so you can access Chrome's extension manager with ease.

Windows and Linux versions received some minor tweaking. The updates to the Mac version include fixing a slew of keyboard commands and updating the way secure HTTP sites are displayed, to more clearly alert the viewer that the site has a bad security certificate.

Windows/Mac/Linux: The official, actually-made-by-Google Chrome OS won't hit netbooks until late 2010, but you can try out a custom-built Linux distribution that's somewhat stripped down and puts Google's browser at the center of everything.

"Chrome OS" was built using SUSE Studio, a distribution and virtual appliance builder spawned from the OpenSUSE Linux distribution. It loads up with a Chrome icon, uses built-in webapp links to Google Calendar, Gmail, and other Google services as apps, and carries a copy of OpenOffice, just in case you need some straight-up desktop editing done. Most importantly, it holds the latest development copy of Google Chrome inside, along with a pre-built Flash plug-in.

Google today released a new browser plug-in called Google Chrome Frame that creates an unholy union between Internet Explorer and Google Chrome, rendering web pages in IE using Chrome's rendering engine.

That rendering technology includes Chrome's support for HTML5 and its lightning-fast JavaScript engine. How does it turn IE into Chrome? By creating a new frame inside of Internet Explorer that basically embeds the Chrome browser. It's sort of like the previously mentioned IE Tab tool that embeds IE in Firefox, so users can access the now-rare IE-only sites. In this case, though, it's embedding Chrome in IE instead of the other way around, for the much more common dilemma of sites that won't render correctly in Internet Explorer.

Windows only: Chrome turned one year old just a couple weeks back, and as a belated celebration, the folks at Google have just pushed out a brand new stable release in the form of Google Chrome 3.

Chrome 2 (stable) hit servers back in May, and while the folks at Google are currently on Chrome 4 in the dev channel, those of you who haven't been eager to play on the bleeding edge of Chrome releases have a lot of nice improvements in store for them in Chrome 3, including:

Google Chrome: Want to keep track of what you've got open in Google Chrome? The experimental SessionSaver extension can save and load multi-tab, multi-window sessions and restore them with a few clicks.

Installing SessionSaver, or any Chrome extension, requires running Chrome's developer version, available using the Channel Changer tool, and adding --enable-extensions to the end of your Chrome launching shortcut, right after the chrome.exe bit. Once that's done, head to the link below and click on the first link to download and install the extension.

Using it is fairly simple. There's a save-icon-like button installed in Chrome's bottom status bar. Click on it to get load, save, and settings options, where you can save either just one window's tabs, every window's tabs, or load a previous session into your current tabs. Helpful for starting up multi-tab projects or saving your web progress when you're venturing into crash-prone territory.

The latest developer builds of Google Chrome enable extensions by default, add support for skins, and even improve compatibility with Windows 7.

If you aren't using the developer releases of Chrome, you'll still need to download the Channel Chooser and switch to the development stream, but you won't have to mess around with command-line parameters anymore—extensions have been enabled by default. This means you'll be able to install themes for the browser, and while there are only two themes to choose from at the moment, the theme specifications have been published and there is likely to be an explosion of new skins released very soon.

The other noteworthy fix, although not mentioned in the linked article, is that Google Chrome's "Application" shortcuts will now show up as separate taskbar items in Windows 7, a very helpful change for those of us that use them extensively.

Linux: If a lack of third-party plug-in support (i.e. Flash) kept you from trying out Chrome on your Linux system, then avoid no longer. The "early developer version" now supports many plug-ins, and they seem to work pretty well.

You'll need to add --enable-plugins to your Chrome shortcut's command line operation to get the "buggy" plug-in support, but it seems worth the hassle, as YouTube and Hulu videos are playing relatively stable and smooth. Google's updated their alpha-level Chrome builds to include the newest start page tweaks as well, and it's generally a browser worth checking out, even if a few standard settings and convenience items are still missing.

Grab an Ubuntu-ready package from the link below, or on any Linux system.

Windows only: Until Google graces us with a real extension manager, an enterprising user put together an impressive batch file that can handle enabling, disabling, or even uninstalling Google Chrome extensions.

Once you've downloaded the batch file, you can simply double-click to open it up in a command prompt window, where you'll be presented with a menu that allows you to enable, disable, or uninstall extensions, or even run Chrome with extensions enabled. It's definitely not the ideal way to deal with add-ons, but it's a great, workable solution until Google puts a real extension manager together—and you have to admire those kind of batch scripting skills.

Hit the link for the download, and remember to right-click the batch file download link and Save As, giving the file a *.bat extension.

Windows only: The experimental chromegestures extension for Google Chrome adds a full set of mouse gestures to those using the development releases of Chrome.

Installing the gestures requires first switching to the development channel, modifying your Google Chrome shortcut to include the --enable-extensions parameter, and then heading over to the download page to install the extension (by simply clicking on the ChromeGestures.crx link).