Chrome: Our favorite alternative search engine, DuckDuckGo, has a cool feature called "zero click info" that gives you Wikipedia articles, Yelp pages, and more at the top of relevant searches. Now, their Zero-Click Info Chrome extension will put those relevant links at the top of your Google search results, so you don't have to sift through results to find what you're looking for. More »

Chrome: One of the best features in the search engine DuckDuckGo is the instant answers shown at the top of the results page. If you find yourself more attached to Google for web searches, but want the instant answer feature, DuckDuckGo Zero-Click Info is a Chrome extension that stuffs those results right in your Google searches. More »

There are quite a few options when it comes to the browser that you use to surf the Internet. You can pick from Firefox, IE, Opera, Chrome, and other smaller players that I’m probably missing. Much like mobile devices, the browser has become a powerful platform for developers to build apps on top of.

Google has actually done a fantastic job of highlighting extensions built on top of the Chrome browser in its “store”. I get sent quite a few Chrome extensions these days, but it’s difficult to write an entire piece about each one.

The best extensions serve a single purpose and are drop-dead simple to use. Here are 9 Chrome extensions that you should download and try right now:

Save to foursquare

This simple extension can be triggered from sites like TripAdvisor and Google. All you have to do is click the foursquare button that the extension installs, and it will save it to your “to-do list” within the app. This is the perfect way to use foursquare on the desktop efficiently for browsing to serve a better purpose for mobile later.

Sure, you could stick to browsing foursquare’s website to look for new restaurants, but that’s not a reality.

➤ Save to foursquare

FVD Video Downloader

You’re in the airport and you find a really cool video that you want to watch on the plane, which unfortunately doesn’t have WiFi. How can you easily grab the video and put it on your desktop? There are numerous ways to do this, but this particular Chrome extension makes it super simple.

You can also download flash games, music MP3 format, as well as MP4 or FLV video files in just one click. This baby has kept me entertained on many a flight and train rides.

➤ FVD Video Downloader

Writer

If you’re a blogger, writer, or just a simple note-taker, you probably know that getting the thoughts from your brain to the desktop can be a rough experience. There’s so much going on in blogging editors like WordPress and Tumblr, which distracts you from saying what you want to say.

Writer is a killer extension that gets you away from all of the noise and plops you into a very simple, and feature-free, writing environment that will help you focus on the task at hand. I use this one a lot.

➤ Writer

Pandora to Spotify Playlist Converter

When it comes to listening to music, I don’t stick to just one service. For a random radio-like experience, I tend to stick with Pandora. When I hear a song that I like, I click the thumbs-up button so I can remember the song later and help the service learn about what I like.

When I’m in an on-demand kind of mood, I like to use Spotify. This extension takes all of the things that I’ve liked on Pandora and turns them into playlists on Spotify. I can’t even begin to tell you how cool this is. Go give it a shot.

➤ Pandora to Spotify Playlist Converter

G+Twitter for Google Plus

If you’re using Google+ and don’t want top hop over to Twitter to check your stream, then this extension is for you.

With this extension, you can view your Twitter stream, Tweet, Retweet, and view conversations, all from within Google+. You can also share your Google+ posts on Twitter easily, which is one of its best features.

➤ G+Twitter for Google Plus

Magic Actions for YouTube

This extension kicks your YouTube video experience into hyperdrive. With features like auto-wide, auto-HD, and volume control with your mouse wheel, watching videos becomes a full lean-back experience.

It aims to make you feel like you’re in a movie theater and it does a pretty darn good job of it. This is a must-get for YouTube fans.

➤ Magic Actions for YouTube

Screen Capture (by Google)

One of the tasks that I do the most daily is take screenshots. When I’m reviewing a site or want to grab something really funny to share with a friend, I grab a screenshot.

There are cool desktop applications like Skitch that do a great job with this, but something like this extension makes it really easy to create a PNG file from a full-screen or region of the browser.

➤ Screen Capture (by Google)

Disconnect

Companies on the Web make money from showing us advertisements and directing us to content based on our “likes”. This is done mostly by tracking all of our actions on its sites. For some of us, that’s really creepy.

This extension blocks cookie and tracking requests on sites like Yahoo! and Google, giving you a running tally of everything that it has blocked for you. Turn this on for a day and surf the Web, it might scare the bejesus out of you.

➤ Disconnect

Scroll To Top Button

One of my favorite functions on the iPhone is tapping to jump up to the top of the page. It saves me so much time, I can’t even put it into words or numbers. Why don’t browsers have buttons just for this?

There’s nothing worse than reading a long article and then having to scroll all the way back up with your mouse or trackpad. This extension fixes that and will scroll up or down, allllll the way. Yay.

➤ Scroll To Top Button

There you have it, that should keep you busy for a while. Do you have any favorite Chrome or Firefox extensions? Let us know about them in comments!

Google Chrome now keeps all of your opened tabs in sync across your desktop, laptop, and Android device (if it's running Ice Cream Sandwich and has Chrome for Android installed). You never have to worry now about leaving a web page behind. More »

Google today launched version 19 of its Chrome browser for Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome Frame to its mainstream stable release channel. Besides the usual bug fixes and performance improvements, the highlight of today’s release is the addition of tab syncing to Chrome. With this, Chrome users can now have their open tabs synced across all of their devices, including tablets and phones that run the Ice Cream Sandwich-only Chrome for Android beta.

This feature will allow you to just pick up your browsing sessions on any other computer or device you log in to. One nifty aspect of this is that Chrome will also sync your browsing history, so even your back and forward buttons will work.

Adding tab syncing is just the latest syncing feature Google is adding to Chrome. The browser can already sync your bookmarks, apps, history, themes, extensions and other settings between machines as well (assuming you signed in to Chrome with your Google account, of course).

It’s worth noting that while Chrome 19 is out now, Google plans to roll out the tab syncing feature “gradually over the coming weeks.”

As part of this release, Google also announced that it paid out around $14,500 as part of its security bug bounty program this time around.

According to a note published by Macquarie Equities Research, Google is working on an iPhone and iPad version of its Chrome browser, slated for launch sometime this year. More »

Occasionally, you need to share a password with someone. Maybe it's a shared office-wide password, your family's Amazon login, or maybe you just want to share a Netflix account with your roommate. Rather than sharing it over email, you can more seamlessly and securely share passwords in just a few clicks with LastPass—and even prevent the person on the receiving end from ever seeing the password itself. More »

Chrome/Firefox: Non-US users know the pain of having services blocked from them pretty well, and YouTube is no exception. If you're tired of stumbling on videos you can't watch, ProxTube will fix the problem by unblocking all US-only videos for anyone to see. More »

Dear Lifehacker, More »

According to StatCounter’s collected browser usage data, Internet Explorer 9 is an anomaly among its franchise brethren: IE9 is more popular on weekends than on weeknights.

For some time, the rule was simple: people used Internet Explorer at work, as they had to, but at home they used Firefox and other alternatives (this was true before Chrome, if my memory serves). This lead to Internet Explorer losing market share on weekends, and regaining it on Monday.

In short, higher weekday usage wasn’t that stunning an endorsement of the browser.

However, that appears to be changing as Internet Explorer 9 is picking up more usage points on the weekend than it does during the week, begging the question ‘what the heck is going on?’ StatCounter has its own view:

“We have previously noted that Google’s Chrome peaks at the weekend at the expense of IE. This seems to suggest that many home (as opposed to business) users prefer Chrome to IE. However, having drilled down further into our data, we have released a new statistic which allows the comparison of Chrome (all versions combined) with the individual versions of other browsers. This shows that while IE6, 7 and 8 usage falls off at the weekend, IE9 spikes. This indicates that IE9 is bucking the trend of previous IE versions and is gaining home user traction.”

Essentially, StatCounter is stating that IE9 is making consumer inroads. That’s a big deal, that a version of Internet Explorer has managed to reverse its cycle of decline and derision, right? That’s actually true, but not as much so as you might think.

Here’s my take: IE9 usage is spiking on the weekend because new PCs sold that run Windows 7 have the software installed. Now, here’s where IE9 is doing better than its predecessors: it’s keeping those new users for itself; people who buy new machines aren’t downloading other browsers as often as they perhaps once did. Thus, IE9 spikes on the weekend as people use their newer machines, which have IE9.

That’s not as ringing an endorsement as saying ‘IE9 taking market share from its rivals as its quality shines through,’ but that the browser is holding its own (again, in our estimation) is quite the shift. IE9 is as massive improvement on its predecessors, and that change is showing.