But then you remember that your Android phone is in the other room (so far away!), and you get a little lazy. After all, you’ll remember the milk when you see the store, right?

Well, good news for those of us who can’t be bothered to retrieve our handsets: there’s an insanely easy way to set up Android reminders directly from your PC’s web browser.

Just type a reminder directly into the main Google search box on the web.

The trick: just type your reminder into Google search—yep, the main Google search box on the web.

Type in “remind me to pick up milk tonight,” and a “Create reminder” form will appear, with “Pick up milk” already filled in and “Today” and “7:00 PM” selected in the time and date fields.

You can click on any of the fields to make changes or edits, and you can also click the “Where” option to have Google (or Google Now, to be specific) trigger the reminder at a place rather than a time.

Ready to create the reminder? Click the “Remind me on Google Now” link, and the reminder will automatically be added to your Android phone.

The catch? You’ll need to be signed into your Google account, and you must be using the same account for your Android device.

Click here for more Android tips!

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In fact, you can set any of the four major browsers—Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari—to load as many “home” or “start” pages as you like, all in separate browser tabs.

Here’s how…

Chrome will let you add as many “startup” tabs as you like.

For Google Chrome:

• Click the menu button in the top-right corner of the Chrome interface (it’s the one marked with three short horizontal lines), then select Settings.
• Find the “On startup” section, click the “Open a specific page or set of pages” button, then click the “Set pages” link.
• Fill in the blank next to “Add a new page” with a web address (URL) you want Chrome to open when it first starts up, then click OK. Want more pages to open? Just keep adding URLs one at a time, or click the “Use current pages” button to automatically add the browser tabs you already have open.
• Done adding tabs? Click the OK button once more, then quit Chrome and start it up again.
• Presto! All the pages you just entered should start loading automatically.

Just open the tabs you want Firefox to load as it starts and click the “Use Current Pages” button.

For Firefox:

• Launch a new Firefox window, then open tabs for all the pages you’d like Firefox to open when it first starts up.
• Click the Firefox menu and select Preferences (on a Mac), or click Tools, Options (on a PC), then click the General tab.
• Make sure the “When Firefox starts” option is set to “Show my home page,” then click the “Use Current Pages” button under the blank labeled “Home Page.”
• Close the settings window, quick Firefox, open it again … and there you go.

Keep adding URLs to the “home page” field to load multiple tabs when Internet Explorer starts.

For Internet Explorer:

• Open the Tools menu (it’s the gear-shaped button in the upper-right corner of the browser interface), select Internet Options, then click the General tab.
• You should see a big “Home page” form at the top of the Internet Options window. Start entering the web addresses you want to load as tabs when you start Internet Explorer, or click the “Use current” button if you’ve already got the tabs open in a browser window.
• In the “Startup” section, make sure “Start with home page” is selected.
• Click the Apply button, quit IE, launch it again, then sit back and watch as your tabs load.

You’ll need to create and then select a bookmarks folder to make Safari load multiple tabs when it launches.

For Safari:

• Open a new Safari window, then create tabs for all the pages you’d like to load when the browser first starts.
• Open the Bookmarks menu, then select “Add Bookmarks for These (x) Tabs.” You’ll need to pick a name for your the bookmarks folder you’re about to create; you might want to choose “Startup tabs,” or another easy-to-remember name.
• Next, open the Safari menu and select Preferences, then click the General tab.
• Find the “Safari opens with” setting and select “A new window” from the pull-down menu.
• Then, for the “New windows open with” setting, select “Choose tabs folder,” then select the folder you just created in the window that appears.
• Quit Safari, launch it again, and you’ll see your startup tabs waiting for you.

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Both Windows and Mac systems will open a specific, so-called “default” web browser whenever you click a link in your email client or another, non-browser program.

For a fresh-out-of-the-box Windows PC, the default browser will invariably be Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer, while Apple’s Safari browser is the default browser for new Mac systems.

Of course, any time you open a different browser, like Google Chrome or Firefox, they’ll tempt you with the prospect of making them your default browser—and eventually, you may lose track of which browser is the default at a given moment.

If only there were a single, centralized place on PCs and Macs where you could set your default web browser once and for all, right?

Luckily, there is.

For Windows:

Just select your favorite browser for Windows and click “Set this program as default.”

• Click the Start menu, select the Control Panel link, click the big green “Programs” heading, then click “Set your default programs.”
• A window will appear with a big list of programs that you can set as the “default” for various functions, from email and photo viewers to MP3 players and (yes) web browsers. All the web browsers installed on your PC will be at the top of the list; go ahead and click your favorite one.
• Click the “Set this program as default” option at the bottom of the window. (A second option, “Choose defaults for this program,” lets you pick and choose which types of web files a given browser will open by default; unless you’re an advanced user, I recommend you skip this one.)
• Click the “OK” button. That’s it!

For Mac:

Want to pick a new default browser on your Mac? You’ll find the controls in Safari’s preferences menu.

• Open the Safari web browser, click the Safari menu at the top of the screen, then select Preferences.
• Under the General tab, the very first option should be “Default web browser.” Click the drop down menu, then select a browser that you’d like to designate as the default. (You may see other programs in the list that aren’t web browsers, by the way, so choose carefully.)
• Close the Preferences menu. All done!

Click here for more Windows tips, or click here for help with your Mac.

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Just click the new “show all tabs” button in the top-right corner of the Safari 6.0 interface, and presto: your tabs will simultaneously shrink and spread into a row, giving you a bird’s-eye view of all your tabbed web pages.

Just click the “Show all tabs” button for a bird’s-eye view of your tabbed web pages.

Got a MacBook? If so, there’s another way to activate the new “Tab View” mode: by “pinching” your trackpad while the Safari window is active.

Next, try tapping the arrow keys on your Mac’s keyboard or swiping left or right on your trackpad to cycle through your various tabs.

Find a tab you want to view? Just click it, and it’ll expand to fill the Safari window.

Can’t find the “Show all tabs” button on your version of Safari? That’s probably because you haven’t installed Apple’s “Mountain Lion” system update on your Mac yet.

While you can install Safari 6.0 on a Mac with the older “Lion” system software (just click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of the screen and select “Check for updates”), you won’t be able to turn on “Tab View” until you make the leap to “Mountain Lion.”

For more details on “Mountain Lion,” including what’s involved in updating your system, visit our Mac OS X survival guide.

Bonus tip

 
Want to rearrange the order of your browser tabs in Safari, Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer? Easy: just try clicking and dragging them.

You can also click a tab and drag it out of the main browser window; doing so will turn the tab into a new, separate browser window.

Last but not least, you can drag a tab from one browser window to another.

Looking for more Mac tips? Click here!

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All you need is a Google account and the mobile version of Google’s impressive Chrome web browser, which is now available (and free) for Android handsets.

Update [6/28/12]: The mobile version of Chrome—including the ability to sync your open browser tabs—is now available for iPhone and iPad, as well.

Just tap a button (it’s the one with the arrows in the bottom-right corner) to see a list of all your synced Chrome tabs.

Ready to take your desktop browser tabs on the road? Here’s how:

• First, you’ll need to install Google’s Chrome browser on both your desktop and your Android phone. You can download the desktop version of Chrome here, then grab the mobile Chrome over here.
• Next, you must sync the desktop version of Chrome with your Google account. (Don’t have one? You can sign up for free here.) On your desktop, launch Chrome, click the little wrench in the top-right corner of the browser, select “Sign in to Chrome,” click in the “Sign in to Chrome” button near the top of the following page, then enter your Google email address and password.
• Once that’s done, a pop-up window will ask if you’d like to sync all your Chrome data—including Chrome apps, bookmarks, themes, and other settings—with Google. I recommend you go ahead and click the “Sync everything” button, but you can also click the “Advanced settings” link to pick and choose which items you’d like to sync—and which you’d rather not.
• All set? Time to fire up Chrome on your Android phone. Once you do, you’ll be prompted to sign in with your Google account—and once that’s all set, your desktop Chrome browser and Chrome on your phone will be linked.
• Now, open a new browser tab on the desktop Chrome—say, the New York Times. Done? Then pull out your Android phone, open mobile Chrome, and tap the tab with the syncing arrows in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
• You should now see a list of “other devices,” such as the desktop version of Chrome, that are syncing with Chrome on your phone—and under the heading for your desktop PC, you should see a tab for the New York Times. Tap it, and voilà—you just loaded a browser tab from your desktop to Chrome on your Android phone.

Bonus tip

 
Don’t see the browser tab button at the bottom of mobile Chrome screen? If not, you can tap the “New Tab” button to pull it up again, or tap the menu button (it looks like a column of three dots) and select “Other devices” from the drop-down menu.

Looking for more Android tips? Click here!

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1. Take charge of the bookmarks bar

Anyone who uses Apple’s Safari desktop browser is probably used to seeing the bookmark bar—a handy row of bookmarks that sits between the web address bar and your browser tabs.

So, wondering why Safari for iPad doesn’t have its own address bar? Well, here’s the thing: it does, but it’s easy to miss.

By default, the address bar on Safari for iPad will stay hidden until you open a new tab, and it won’t appear at all if you don’t have any bookmarks saved in the “Bookmarks Bar” section of the bookmarks menu.

So first, try adding a new bookmark to the bookmarks bar (if you haven’t already, that is).

• Visit one of your favorite websites on the iPad, tap the icon with the little curved arrow to the left of the website address, then tap “Add Bookmark.”
• In the pop-up that appears, look at the setting at the bottom of the window; does it read “Bookmarks Bar”? If not, tap it, then tap your way to the Bookmarks Bar folder.
• All set? Tap the blue “Save” button.

Want the bookmarks bar to be visible at all times on your iPad? No problem.

Now, open a new browser tab by tapping the little “+” icon in the top-right corner of the screen—and once you do, you’ll see your bookmarks bar, complete with your new bookmark.

All well and good, but what if you want the bookmark bar visible all the time? Easy:

• Go to the iPad’s home page, tap the Settings icon, then tap Safari in the left-hand column.
• Next, find the “Always Show Bookmarks Bar” setting under the General heading, and move the switch to “On.”

When you return to Safari, you’ll now see the bookmarks bar at all times—and that’s my preferred setting, by the way.

2. Rearrange your browser tabs

Want to change the order of your Safari tabs? On the desktop, you do so by clicking a tab and dragging it wherever you want to go.

So, can you guess how it works on the iPad? Yes indeed—just tap, hold, and drag any browser tab left or right (as pictured at the very top of this article).

3. Manage the way a new tab opens

On the iPad, you can open a web link in a new tab by tapping and holding it, then selecting “Open in New Tab” from the pop-up menu.

Nice, but you can also choose how you’d like that new tab to open: either in front of your other browser tabs (if you like seeing a new tab right away), or behind them (if you prefer to view new tabs after you’ve finished reading the current one).

You can change the behavior of browser tabs and the bookmarks bar from the Safari settings menu.

Here’s what you do:

• Go to the iPad home screen, tap the Settings icon, then tap Safari in the left-hand column.
• Under the General heading, find the “Open New Tabs in Background” setting; select “On” to make new browser tabs open behind your other open tabs, or “Off” to make new tabs open right in front of you.

Looking for more iPad tips? Click here!

Many thanks to reader Reesa for suggesting these tips!

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Now, one way to deal with Google’s browser cookie is to delete it, or tell Google that you don’t want it tracking your browsing habits.

Then again, you could decide that you actually want Google’s online advertising system to have a better idea of who you are, and what you’re interested in—and then, perhaps, you might actually stand a chance of seeing ads you’d actually consider clicking.

If you’re game, the first step is to visit Google’s Ad Preferences Manager. Click here, then click the “Ads on the web” link in the left-hand column.

Scroll down to the “Your categories” section and you’ll see the various types of things that Google thinks you’re most interested in, all based on your browsing habits.

You can tell Google which categories of online ads you'd be most interested in, or delete any wild guesses it made.

In my case, “Movies” and “Film Festivals” came up big—good guess—along with “Smart Phones” (check), “Sony PlayStation” (very true, given that I’ve been circling the new PlayStation Vita game console), “Gadgets and Portable Electronics” (yes indeed), and, uh … “Anime & Manga” (not so much).

Even more interesting is the next section: Google’s guess on your demographic info. As it turns out, Google nailed it: I am, indeed, male, and I’m between 35 and 44 years old (more on the older end of the scale, to be honest).

So, see anything you want to change? If so, just click the “delete or edit” link. On the following page, Google lets you knock out any categories that aren’t working for you; for example, I went ahead and nixed “Anime & Manga” from my profile. You can also add some categories that Google missed, anything from “Arts and Entertainment” to “Travel.”

Did Google get your age and gender wrong? You can change those settings, as well, in addition to specifying your country and/or state. (Google’s demographic profiling won’t venture into matters of geography unless you tell it to, by the way, and it doesn’t deal with race at all.)

Remember, though, that cookies are browser-specific, meaning that Google may have a different picture of you from one browser to another. The Google ad cookie in Safari, for example, thinks I’m between 24 and 34; the cookie in my Chrome browser, meanwhile, thinks (quite accurately) I’m a bit older. Bad Chrome!

Last but not least, there’s a final setting that I covered in a previous post: the option to opt-out of “personalized” Google ads altogether. Click the “Opt-out” button, and Google will stop tracking your browser with its ad cookie.

Have more questions about Google and its “personalized” ads? And which would you prefer: online ads that are tailored (more or less, anyway) to your interests, or random ads with the assurance that Google isn’t keeping tabs on your browsing habits?

Let us know in the comments below.

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1. Google Mail Checker
If you’re a Google user, chances are you’ve also got a Gmail account, and this handy Chrome extension sits at the top of your browser and pings you whenever a new message hits your Gmail inbox. Got a Yahoo or Hotmail account instead? Try X-notifier, a mail-checking extension that’ll appeal to more advanced users.

2. IM+
This free instant messaging app works with services like AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN, Google Talk, and ICQ, and it’ll sound an alert whenever one of your buddies wants to chat. The app will also remember your IM logins, settings, and user preferences once you create a free IM+ account.

Amazon's Windowshop app for Chrome delivers an iPad-like browsing experience.

3. Amazon Windowshop
It’s the same, gorgeous-looking browsing experience as on Amazon’s Windowshop app for the iPad, except this time it’s been optimized for scrolling and clicking in Chrome.

4. Offline Google Mail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar
Worried about losing access to your Gmail and online Google documents if your Internet service konks out? This trio of Google apps will automatically sync your online messages, calendars, and recently-updated documents with your desktop for offline access, even if your modem goes haywire.

5. Facebook Notifications
You’ll know the moment someone “likes” one of your links or sends you a Facebook chat request with this Chrome extension on the case.

6. Evernote and Evernote Web Clipper
One of my favorite online and mobile note-taking apps also excels at “clipping” interesting content on the web. Just add Evernote’s Web Clipper extension to Chrome, and click the green button in the Chrome task bar whenever you stumble upon anything clip-worthy.

Nope, this isn't the usual, online look of The New York Times.

7. The New York Times
Nope, we’re not just talking a bookmark for the New York Times website. Instead, the New York Times app for Chrome delivers stories from the Gray Lady in a classic, newspaper-style format, complete with a choice of more than a dozen layouts.

8. Angry Birds
Yep, we’re talking the complete game here, all in your Chrome browser—and yes, it’s free.

9. Twitter Notifier
Get a steady, real-time stream (or torrent, depending on how many people you’re following) of alerts from your Twitter pals in the corner of your screen.

10. Google Voice
Signed up for a Google Voice phone number? If so, the Google Voice extension for Chrome will ding whenever you get a voice mail, and it’ll even give you a transcribed preview of your message directly from the Chrome task bar.

Got more apps and extensions you’d like to recommend to new Chrome users? Post ’em below!

The post 10 free, must-have Google Chrome apps and extensions appeared first on here's the thing.

You can install web applications in Chrome for everything from Angry Birds and Gmail to Twitter and the New York Times.

And if you have Google Chrome running on more than one system—say, on your desktop PC and on a MacBook Pro—you can set each copy of the Chrome browser to sync its apps with the others, automatically. (Your Chrome browsers will also sync their bookmarks, user information, and other settings with each other, once you’ve signed in using your Google account.)

The Chrome Web Store boasts hundreds of apps for the Chrome browser, many of them free.

Installing an app in Chrome takes seconds, and just a few clicks.

Here’s how to get started…

1. If you don’t already have Chrome installed on your PC or Mac, you can download a free copy right here. Don’t worry if you already have Internet Explorer, Safari, or Firefox installed on your system; they’ll all play nice with Chrome, even if they’re running at the same time.
2. Launch Chrome, and open a new tab by pressing the Home button next to the address bar, or by clicking the little “+” icon.
3. The so-called “New Tab” page is where all your installed apps will sit, and it also boasts a bookmark for the Chrome Web Store. Go ahead and click the Web Store icon.
4. So, welcome to the (recently revamped) Web Store, which looks and feels an awful lot like the App Store for the iPhone and iPad. You won’t find any smartphone apps here, though; instead, all these apps are for Chrome.
5. You’ll need to sign in with your Google ID before installing an app; you can go ahead and do so at the top-right corner of the page. If you don’t have a Google ID, you can always register for free.
6. Let’s start with something productive—say, Evernote, the free note-taking app that syncs with iPhones, iPads, and Android phones. Just find Evernote using the search box, click the search result to open the app detail page, and click the blue “Add to Chrome” button. A pop-up window will appear, asking “Install Evernote Web”? Click Install.
7. Within seconds, you should see the Evernote app install itself onto your New Tab page in Chrome. Click its green icon to run the app.
8. OK, time for some fun. Go back to the Chrome Web Store, and search for—you guessed it—Angry Birds. Install it (yes, it’s free), launch the app, and presto—it’s Angry Birds, running in Chrome.
9. While some Chrome apps may seem like glorified bookmarks, others are capable of more advanced features, including the ability to run even when you don’t have an Internet connection. Angry Birds, for example, will work offline, as will the New York Times and other Chrome apps.
10. Now, go back to the New Tab page where your apps sit—and this time, rather than launching an app, try clicking and dragging one of the icons. The latest version of Chrome lets you rearrange your apps just about any way you want, similar to tapping and dragging apps on the iPhone home screen.
11. Want to move an app to a new tab? Click it, and drag it down toward the bottom of the screen, where you’ll find a pair of existing tabs: “Most visited” (which shows thumbnails of the websites you visit most often) and “Apps.” You’ll also see a third, unnamed tab slide open to the right; go ahead and drag an app into that third tap to move it into a new home screen—perfect for organizing your apps by, say, work and play.
12. Want to delete a Chrome app? Click it and drag it onto the trash can in the bottom-right corner of the browser, or just right-click it and select “Remove from Chrome.”

Have more questions about Chrome, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite browsers? Let me know!

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