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About a year ago, Google launched Chrome, their super fast, open source web browser. Since then it has grabbed just over three and a half percent of the world’s web browser market, according to Net Applications. That’s not bad, but still puts Chrome firmly in fourth place behind Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. One of the reasons why Chrome has been stuck in fourth place: extensions — Chrome hasn’t got them.

Or more precisely, ChromeChrome

doesn’t have them yet. At least, not officially. If you ask most FirefoxFirefox

fans the main reason they won’t switch to Chrome, a good majority of them will probably cite its lack of extensions. But that might change, because Chrome extensions are coming — perhaps soon. And for users of the developer’s build of Chrome, they’re already here. So for those of you brave enough to use the unstable developers release of Chrome, here are 6 extensions that social media addicts will want to install.

Where to Find Chrome Extensions

Chrome only has extensions enabled in the developer release. To get that release, you have to subscribe to the Chrome Dev Channel. Once you’ve downloaded the developer’s version of the browser, you can begin to install extensions.

For now, the best place to find and install extensions is probably from the ChromeExtensions.org directory, which offers one-click installation of extensions from its categorized listing. You can also find extensions via the ChromePlugins.org and GoogleChromePlugins.com forum communities, and via the My Chrome Addons blog.

However, GoogleGoogle

has recently dropped hints that an official extensions gallery may be coming soon, which also indicates that support for extensions in the stable release of Chrome might be right around the corner.

Once you’ve installed some extensions, you can manage them by navigating to chrome://extensions in the address bar or clicking on ‘Extensions’ in the tools menu. Chrome extensions are still a very new animal, and Chrome’s developer build changes frequently, so be prepared for the extensions listed below to break on occasion.

6 Must-Have Social Media Extensions

1. Gmail Checker

Staying up-to-date with email is one of the most important tasks for social media fanatics, and Chrome makes that task easier for GmailGmail

users with the Gmail Checker extension. It’s one of Google’s official sample extensions and adds an indicator icon next to the address bar in Chrome that shows you how many unread messages you have in Gmail.

The extension only works if you’re logged into Gmail, but that’s nice because it means you don’t actually have to share your password with any third-party.

2. Chromed Bird

There are a bunch of TwitterTwitter

extensions for Chrome, but the best one might be Chromed Bird. It’s a fairly polished extension that lets you read and reply to tweets directly from within Chrome. It worked very well in my testing today, though you do have to share your username and password with the app (no OAuth support).

Chromed Bird’s icon changes color when you have new tweets waiting, which is a nice visual cue, but the extension has no support for @reply or DM notifications, even though it has (non-working) tabs in the UI for filtering those types of messages. In all, Chromed Bird is very barebones, but functional as a basic, in-browser Twitter client.

You should also check out Metrist, which is highly rated, but in Chinese (and I couldn’t get it to work properly).

3. Twitter Ticker

If you’re less concerned with tweeting, but would rather just stay up-to-date with tweets in your stream, then Twitter Ticker is a great extension to have. Once installed, the addon will scroll tweets in the bottom status bar of the browser as they happen. Holding your mouse over the scroll will pause it.

On its own, that’s not very impressive, but when used in tandem with Chrome Bird — which, lacks advanced tweet notifications — Twitter Ticker is definitely very useful.

4. Micro Last.fm

Micro Last.fm is a very simple set of controls for Last.fm radio. It certainly lives up to its name by offering a super tiny UI that lives in the bottom status bar in Chrome. One of the nicest things about Micro Last.fm is that it doesn’t need your login credentials — and you don’t even need to be logged into Last.fm for it to work!

The extension functions by opening up Last.fm radio in a new tab in Chrome, and then linking itself to that tab so you can control the radio station.

5. TPGoogleReader

There are a bunch of Google ReaderGoogle Reader

addons for Chrome, but most just display your unread count or allow you to subscribe to feeds in Reader more easily. TPGoogleReader does a lot more than that, however. Made by the same person as Micro Last.fm, it is one of the most complete Google Reader extensions currently available for Chrome.

Perhaps its most compelling feature is that you can set it to automatically open stories in a new tab in Chrome as they come into Google Reader and mark them as read. For heavy RSS readers that might be a nightmare, but for those subscribed in Google Reader to just a handful of feeds, the feature offers a way to get news pushed to you as it happens throughout the day without ever having to actually visit Google.

Also check out Google Reader Checker, which just checks Reader for unread items, but does it in an elegant way.

6. Facebook Notification Checker

Facebook Notification Checker works just like Gmail Checker, but for FacebookFacebook

. It adds an icon next to the address bar in Chrome that alerts you to new notifications in Facebook. In my testing it was a little finicky and didn’t always catch new notifications, but for avid Facebook users it will nonetheless be useful.

One of the nicest features of Facebook Notification Checker is that it doesn’t require you to give it your username and password — you just need to be logged into Facebook in order for it to work.

What other Google ChromeGoogle Chrome

extensions would you recommend to social media addicts? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphotoiStockphoto

, Mike_Kiev

Artists that produce photorealistic sculptures, for the most part, aim to show us our bodies and life as it really is.

Technically, artists who strive for a high resolution level of detail in painting or sculpture are called “hyperrealists”, although all hyperrealists are also considered to be photorealists.

Every detail is slavishly recreated as close to the real life model as possible, even if the sculpture is larger than the original scale.

Photorealistic sculptors create truly amazing sculptures that will make you feel wonder, revulsion and the sense of looking in someone else’s mirror.

In this post we feature sculptors Ron Mueck, Evan Penny, Jamie Salmon, Duane Hanson, Sam Jinks and Adam Beane who produce sculpture that seems alive in every detail, right down to veins and rashes on skin. This compilation should give you a cross section of modern photorealistic sculpture.

Ron Mueck

Ron Mueck is one of the premier names in the photorealistic sculpture field. He used some of his talent to create visual effects for the 1986 movie Labyrinth.

After that he opened up a studio to produce visual effects for the advertising industry, which he was successful at for some time. In 1996 he transitioned completely into fine art, devoting all of his time to photorealistic sculpture.

He is best known for faithfully reproducing all aspects of the human body in either a larger or smaller than life scale. His work has been featured in art galleries all over the world, including the Tate in London.

Evan Penny

Age spots, wrinkles, and every detail of a face are featured in the work of Toronto artist Evan Penny.

He generally produces head-and-shoulders busts larger than life size, and implants each hair one strand at a time while creating his sculptures.

Like Mueck, Penny has an extensive background in special effects for film, and his effects have been featured in X-Men and Johnny Mnemonic.

Jamie Salmon

Vancouver sculptor Jamie Salmon uses human hair to help accentuate his photorealistic sculptures.

Together with fellow artist Jackie K. Seo, they form Avatar Sculpture Works. Salmon uses a complex, multi-stage process to create each piece that can take weeks to months to acheive the realistic details that he is known for.

Duane Hanson

Hanson was one of the pioneers of photorealistic sculpture.

After acheiving a Masters of Fine Arts and teaching high school art, he created his first photorealistic sculpture in 1966.

He specialized in horrific tableaus, such as his first work, Hanson’s Abortion, which documented a “backroom” abortion. He started producing more simplistic, single-person sculptures in the 1970’s.

Sam Jinks

Australian sculptor Sam Jinks creates hyperrealistic sculptures from silicone.

He too has been a film and television special effects wizard for 11 years, having spent the last 5 years primarily on his own art. His works feature oddities such as a fox’s head on a man’s body and a man hanging by the armpits on pegs.

He names renaissance artists such as Bosch as his inspiration.

Adam Beane

Beane only began sculpting in 2002 and developed his own material, called CX5, to lend even more detail to his hyperrealistic action figure sculptures.

The material handles like clay when warm, but is as hard as plastic when it is cool. He is known primarily for his posed action figures.

What do you think of this form of art? Share your thoughts with us…

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How much time should you spend on social media? In some ways, the answer is: “how long is a piece of string?” And yet, you can set up some simple guidelines. They might be a bit different than you think. By the way, I’m writing these from a business perspective, but remember that I think of religion and nonprofits and all kinds of other applications as business-related, too. Here’s how I look at it:

Social Media Time Management

The way I’d do it is to break it up into 4 chunks, and then you decide the amount of hours to devote (2 hours a day is a minimum for MOST efforts).

• 1/4 for Listening – Start your day by listening and finding what the world is saying about you, your competitor, your marketplace, etc. Need help with listening? See grow bigger ears. In this space, I also count reading (reading other people’s blogs and other online materials).
• 1/2 for Commenting/Communicating – Spend time commenting and replying back to people on the various channels where they reach you. If that’s Twitter, email, or wherever you hang out, fine. In the commenting timeframe, I also include sharing. Be sure to tweet links to great articles, use StumbleUpon, Delicious, Facebook share, and all the other various tools that help people find the good stuff. In Google reader, a simple SHIFT-S gives an article a whole lot of new potential fans. In here, I might also add the act of linking in and connecting with people on various networks.
• 1/4 for Creating – Your efforts in content creation are every bit as important as your connectivity and communication. This might include blogging, making video or audio, creating email newsletters, and anything else you’re building to contribute something to the space. It might be posting those event photos in Flickr and on Facebook. Whatever it is, creating content of some kind should take up 1/4 of your social media efforts, as this is the way you get found. Search engines thrive on new content. Humans seek out new material. The more you can be helpful, the better your opportunities.

Your Mileage May Vary

It doesn’t necessarily have to be this mix, but if I gave you that as a starter method, you’d know what to do with some of your time, right? You’ll note that there’s a lot to get done in that time frame. You’re busy. It’s not like you’re in the typing business (that’s me). If you had to cut a little bit of something, maybe it would be in creation. You might salvage a few minutes in there. Just realize that sacrifice in any area takes away from the balance of your opportunity to build a system that gets you results.

What’s your take on this? How would you change the mix? Could you see this overlay into your other communications (be that marketing or whatever) efforts?

For more information, see also How to Prioritize Your Social Media Efforts for a larger framework.

photo credit Aaron Geller

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Tagged as: business, communication, howto, marketing, socialmedia

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Henry Markram says the mysteries of the mind can be solved -- soon. Mental illness, memory, perception: they're made of neurons and electric signals, and he plans to find them with a supercomputer that models all the brain's 100,000,000,000,000 synapses.

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