Four more Google Chrome extensions for bloggers

Last June, I posted a list of 5 social media extensions related to social media. This month, the topic is blogging. The extensions listed below are a blogger's dream - tools that make quoting, linking and productivity much easier.

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Amplify

Bloggers will love this extension. Amplify users can grab entire blog posts, images and quotes from any webpage and share that information to a long list of social networks including blogging platforms, Twitter, Facebook, Delicious and more.

To add someone's blog post to your blog, select the Amplify extension, select "clip this page" and select the portion of the post you would like to share. Amplify will then ask you to create an account using your Facebook or Twitter credentials. Finally, once you have created your account, you can create a post to share to the network of your choosing.

RescueTime

RescueTime measures your productive use of Google Chrome by monitoring what sites you visit and for how long. Sites like Twitter and Facebook are recognized as "very distracting time" - a minus two on the productivity scale while email services like Gmail are "neutral" - zero points on the productivity scale.

Now, say social media is part of your job. Users can tell RescueTime that visits to Twitter or Facebook should count as "productive" - one point - or "very productive" - two points.

Finally, the extension measures your productivity points and compares them to other Rescue Time users. Initially, users should expect their productivity to be very low, improving over time thus making RescueTime our favorite app to hate.

BlogThis

Blogs should always link to sources and articles of interest whenever possible. Chrome's BlogThis extension allows users to simply click a "BlogThis!" button whenever they want to add links to drafts on their Blogger account.

Unfortunately, the button only works with Blogger but Chrome offers a Posterous extension and several Wordpress extensions relating to comment moderation.

After the Deadline

This extension uses "artificial intelligence" to correct spelling, grammar and style while keeping an eye out for biased language, cliches, passive voice and redundant phrases.

The extension can copy edit everything from tweets to spreadsheets to blog posts. Perfect for the hurried blogger looking to post breaking news with minimum mistakes.

BONUS: Mini Google Maps

If you're consistently finding yourself hastily accessing Google Maps before you run out the door, then you know that every second counts. Chrome's Mini Google Maps extension saves time and patience in that the extension provides users with a one-click search bar above a mini-Google Map.

The extension even offers a "Get Directions" link which activates Google's location-a, location-b format again without asking users to load the Google Map's webpage.

Five free tools to better build your blog

BannerSnack
BannerSnack is probably the most user-friendly free banner creation tool on the Web today. The tool lets users create Flash banners (or banner ads) without the use of ActionScript or Adobe Flash. Animate your very own banner using text, images and a number of filters and transition effect. Simply create a slide, decide the duration of the slide and begin designing your banner. Below is a banner I created for the Ben Franklin Project.

Resizr
When I bought my iPad, I ultimately was excited to use the mobile device while i travel. In fact, once I can get my hands on the SD card adapter, I'll probably start using the iPad to get my photos back to the newsroom on a more time efficient basis. However, say I need to resize one of those photos so that by the time it reaches the newsroom, it's ready for Web.

Resizr, a free online photo resizing tool, allows users to upload a photo, set the constrains and download the photo in its new size.

Picasa (or Flickr)
Picasa can work like a color or photo server. Just upload photo albums to your Picasa account and then add them to your site using by either "copying the image location/address" or drag to your desktop and upload the image manually.


Embedr
Posting one or two videos to a story will usually do the page design justice. But if the page will ultimately host a multimedia story (videos, photos, timelines and maps), then a video player that can play multiple videos from one widget will work best. Embedr allows users to play over four videos from one Embedr player while providing an attractive way for users to choose which video they want to watch. To add a video, go through the back end and use an embed code to stream the video through the player.

Build your own custom video playlist at embedr.com

TimeToast
Timetoast allows users to create Flash timelines without the use of ActionScript. Add "events" to your timeline to specify when specific events occurred. The tool does allow html coding to be added to posts so users can add "read further" links to their events which link back to a website. This tool is incredible on a visual basis. Unlike Dipity timelines, where events are always visible which causing the timeline to appear cluttered or messy, Timetoast marks events with black dots and users must place their most over the black dot in order to see the event's description.

iPad Apps at First Glance

I blogging to you via my new iPad. I'm already in love with the keyboard and the screen lock feature but we'll save that for another blog post. I've already downloaded a few social apps that users may find interesting upon first use. Here they are:

Tweet Deck
As I've mentioned in past posts, the Tweet Deck iPhone app is among the slowest Twitter apps on the market. However, the iPad app (so far) doesn't seem to suffer from the same problem. The columns are beautiful, you can set them to refresh at any rate you wish and so far I've seen little to no lag time when I set the refresh rate to one minute.
Bit.ly Tools

Bit.ly recently released Bit.ly Tools for iPhone and iPod Touch. Unfortunately the link shortening service has yet to release an iPad app. To get started with the iPhone app on your iPad, just drop a link into the shortening box, click "shorten" and the app will generate a trackable Bit.ly link.

BlogPress:

This blogging app works with just about any blogging service including Blogger, Wordpress, Moveable Type, Live Journal and the list goes on. I had a couple problems with saving a draft. The save button only appears when you click the title of the post, otherwise there is a photo icon. I'm actually using BlogPress write now to type this post. I'm able to add media, links and basically do whatever I could on a computer. I've very please with this app as blogging is one of the primary reasons as to why I bought an iPad.

This post was written from my iPad....Please excuse any grammatical or capitalization mistakes.