Android: Among a flurry of mini mobile announcements today, Google announced a new application called Google Goggles designed to let you search Google using your Android device's camera. Just point, shoot, and search.
The video above gives you a good idea of how it works—and how it doesn't. In a nutshell, Goggles wants to take search beyond typing and voice recognition (both of which Google Mobile search does pretty well on most smartphones). According to the developers, Google Goggles works great with objects like business cards, paintings, landmarks, wine, books, and logos, but it's not great with things like food, animals, and plants. It even does some small augmented reality work for businesses using your device's location awareness and compass skills.
Right now Goggles is only available for Android users, but we'd imagine they're working on Goggles for other devices as well. If you've got an Android device and you give it a try, let's hear how well it works for you in the comments.
Google's extension gallery for its Chrome browser opened for business this morning. We've taken a look around the offerings—most of them, anyways—and pulled out a few picks that deserve a spot in your formerly pristine browser.
Actually, rating these extensions by "worth the slowdown," as is often the case with Firefox, doesn't seem applicable here. Chrome renders pages just as snappily on a Linux install with eight extensions loaded, and the memory use seems not all that different. Your mileage may certainly vary.
We pulled out extensions from the gallery for highlighting that do something a bit different from widely-available bookmarklets, or at least fill a crucial need for those who use the web productively. You can disagree with our picks or tell us how blind we must be to miss a great one—do so in the comments, and if we missed a really great one, we'll update the post.
You need to be running either the Windows dev version of Chrome, the just-released Linux beta, or a daily build that supports extensions. Mac users are, unfortunately, left out of the add-on party for the moment. Google Mail Checker: Just what it sounds like. It sits in your address bar, keeps track of your unread messages, and opens Gmail when you click it. Take note that the author states it "does not yet work well" with Google Apps mail. RSS Subscription Extension: Puts an RSS icon in the address bar when standard feeds are detected, and delivers the feed to a reader selection page when clicked. You can add custom readers beyond the standard five using URL syntax. Xmarks for Chrome Beta: Just like the early Chrome alpha, this extension ties Chrome into your Xmarks bookmark account, synchronizing you between Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and across multiple profiles, if needed. iMacros for Chrome: We haven't had nearly enough time to discover what this cool tool is capable of, but it seems like a nice solution for anyone missing their crucial Greasemonkey scripts and other Firefox-only helpers. Aviary Screen Capture and Picnik Extension for Chrome: We've already spilled some digital ink on the neat Aviary extension, but Picnik does the same type of instant web page capture—and also lets you pick a particular image from a quick list that pops down. Flash Block and FlashBlock: Both do the basic task of turning off Flash on all web pages, until you turn it back on for all pages from that domain. FlashBlock uses a keyboard shortcut, while Flash Black has a settings dialog with a list you can edit. AdThwart and AdSweep: As you might guess, they both block ads, though they use different blacklists to do so. We've previously covered AdSweep in its early days. At the moment, AdSweep's gallery page returns an installation failure—from Linux, at least. AdThwart is proving more popular, perhaps due in part to AdSweep's troubles. Brizzly: The helpful, time-saving, at-a-glance Twitter/Facebook client for the web integrates smoothly into Chrome. Click the button, and you get a quick read on what's happening in your social streams, with images automatically shown and videos embedded. You can, of course, also tweet or update Facebook from here. Google Voice Notifier, Google Wave Notifier, and Google Alerter: The first two do just what you'd think they do, but make lots of sense for services you want right away and might only occasionally check, respectively. The last is a kind of uber-notifier that checks Gmail, Wave, and Reader for new items. If you're a heavy Reader user, you'll obviously want to turn those pings off in the settings. Chromium Delicious Plugin: All your recent bookmarks from the Delicious bookmark service, as well as quick saving of bookmarks from selected text/links or manual creation. ChromeMilk: There are many, many tools that bring to-do manager Remember the Milk into your browser, but this one's notable for popping up your task list right from the address bar—and offering Remember the Milk's very slick iPhone interface as an option for pro membership owners. LastPass: As previously mentioned, this extension fills in the gap that Xmarks' lack of password syncing leaves on Chrome. Fittr Flickr: Adds keyboard shortcuts, additional photo information, lightbox-style galleries, and more to Flickr photo pages, in the style of Gina's own Better Flickr for Firefox. What have you found that's worth installing, and bragging about, in the Chrome Extensions Gallery? Share the links and love in the comments.
Last week we asked you to share your favorite outlining tool and then we rounded up the top five nominations for a vote. Now we're back to share the results.
Leading the pack was Microsoft OneNote with 30% of the vote. Although not a dedicated outlining application, its outlining functionality combined with ease of use and ease of capture made it a strong contender. Following OneNote was FreeMind (22%) a mind-mapping application many readers have repurposed for use as an outlining and organization tool. Rounding out the top three was Microsoft Word with 13%—not the most sophisticated outliner in the world, but it's on millions of computers and it gets the job done.
For more information on the winner and the runners up, check out the full Hive Five. Have a topic you'd love to see covered in the Hive Five? Fire off an email to tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line.
Not everyone likes—or is good at—negotiating to get the best deal on what they want. Finance guru and author Herb Cohen says the process will be a lot easier if you keep three crucial variables in mind. Photo by Sklathill.
Over at personal finance weblog Get Rich Slowly, J.D. Roth breaks down Cohen's classic negotiation advice. In his book on the subject, Cohen says to some degree we negotiate with lots of people every day, from family members to co-workers and friends. If you bear three factors in mind, however, you stand a lot better chance of a successful outcome for everyone, and Roth runs down each of Cohen's three variables: power, time, and information.
Time also plays a role. In negotiations, the side with the most time generally has an advantage. Patience pays. No matter how pressed you are, you should always keep your cool, maintaining an appearance of calm. "Your deadline is of your own making," Cohen writes. Don't ignore deadlines, but don't follow them blindly, either.
Hit up the post over at Get Rich Slowly for more details on how power and time play into the equation and to read up on other factors. The video above is an oldie but goodie talk from Herb Cohen from ten years ago on the subject. These tips may not work every time and in every situation, but they're worth keeping in mind when you need to stand your ground and come to an agreement with someone.
How do you feel about negotiating? Does it bring out the competitor in you, or do you avoid it like the plague? Talk about it in the comments.
Like using the pinned tabs feature in Chrome but wish you could make your pinned tabs permanent? Combine the --pinned-tab-count command switch magic and a list of your favorite pinned web sites to do just that. Note: We highlighted this tip in a tips box post a few weeks ago, but here's a more thorough guide for Windows users who like the idea. If you're using Firefox, check out the very cool App Tabs extension. Before Normally you have to use the "Tab Context Menu" to create pinned tabs in Chrome, then repeat the same actions again the next time that you open the browser. Doing so once in a while is okay, but it quickly gets tedious if you have to do it every time.
Setting Up Permanent Tabs
To get started you will need to locate and right click on your shortcut(s) for Google Chrome. Select "Properties".
Once you have clicked through, you will see the "Properties" window with the "Shortcut" tab displayed. Now you are ready to modify the "Target Path".
There will be two parts to this:
In the address area for "Target:" you will need to add the following command to the end of the target path making certain to leave a single space in between the final quote mark and the "pinned tab count command". Enter the number of permanent pinned tabs that you would like to have in place of the "x"…for our example we chose "5".
It should look like this:
Now for the second part. You will need to add the URL for each website that you would like to have as a permanently pinned tab after the "pinned tab count command". Make certain to leave a single space in between each URL and the "pinned tab count command" as shown below.
Once you have that finished, click "Apply", then "OK". After
Once you start Chrome (and each time thereafter) you will have a very nice set of permanently pinned tabs ready to go.
Accessing the "Tab Context Menu" you can still temporarily turn the permanent tabs back into "normal ones" by clicking on "Pin tab Command" to "deselect" it. You will also be able to close the tabs in the normal fashion if you do not need them at the moment. If you love using pinned tabs in Google Chrome and have been wanting to make them permanent, then you should definitely give this a try.
Google Docs already has an option to export every document you check off, but checking them all off is a time-wasting pain. Now it's much more simple to grab everything, 2 GB at a time, in zipped-up files.
The Digital Inspiration blog points out the new addition to Google Docs' export options. Simply select any file by checking the box to its left, then hit the More Actions menu and select Export. In the box that pops up, there's a check box at the bottom to "Export all your files (up to 2 GB)," which, for most users, covers just about everything. Those with more will be prompted with a list of the files that couldn't be exported, so you can grab them next. You can also choose what format your files are downloaded in, which is mighty helpful as well.
Mobile advertising network Greystripe is rolling out its ad formats for the Android this morning, offering Android app developers with an an Android SDK and an opportunity to monetize their applications. Greystripe, which has delivered ads into over 300 million ad-supported games and applications on the iPhone and Java platform, says that with the success of its ads on iPhone apps, it makes sense to expand to the growing Android market.
Greystripe’s Android SDK supports pre-roll, interstitial and post-roll inventory. A few developers are already using Greystripe’s Android ads including the Casual Games Network, Adam Schmelzle, and Jump Games. It should be interesting to see how the dust settles following the recent acquisition by Google of competitor AdMob. While it seems doubtful that Google would close the ad market off for Android, the fact remains that Google develops and produces the Android OS and AdMob has Android-specific ads on its network.
The recent acquisition has left other ad networks scrambling to make their offerings more attractive. Greystripe recently launched a guaranteed download program and introduced a guaranteed CPC program. Google has high hopes for AdMob and it should certainly continue to be the leader of the pack in the future. AdMob also launched ad formats for Palm WebOS recently.
That being said, Greystripe has been able to raise an impressive amount of VC funding and even got a $2 million infusion from NBC. Greystripe maintains that its rich media full-screen ads generate higher click through rates and are able to generate better revenue to its publishers. Although Greystripe claims its rates are higher, we’ve heard they are on par with AdMob’s rates.
Google's extension gallery for its Chrome browser 
Not everyone likes—or is good at—negotiating to get the best deal on what they want. Finance guru and author Herb Cohen says the process will be a lot easier if you keep three crucial variables in mind.
Like using the pinned tabs feature in Chrome but wish you could make your pinned tabs permanent? Combine the 
