663 – Expand what your browser can do: Tom talks Chrome Extensions

Episode 663 – Chrome Extensions
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody, is Tom here with episode 663 of Screw the Commute Podcast. We're back to one of our training sessions here, and that would be on Chrome Extensions. That's what today's episode is about. See, Google's Chrome browser is one of the most popular browsers around. Everybody uses it and the functionality of it can be enhanced if you use extensions, and most of them are free. But you've got to be careful. I'm going to tell you about that later. And I mean, I started using the Chrome years ago because one of my tech guys says, Man, it's lightning fast compared to the other browsers. And it was so. So that's what we're going to talk about today. But at the end of this episode, I'm going to tell you how you can totally prank somebody using Chrome extensions. It's hysterical, but you've got to be careful. Okay. Now, I hope you didn't miss episode 662. That was William Vanhout. He called in from Barcelona, Spain, and he's a self-described digital marketing nerd. And we talked about viral marketing and how you do not have to be a celebrity to strategically make viral things happen. I've been doing it for years, and I'm not technically a household world word, that's for sure. So that was episode 662.

[00:01:50] Any time you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash and then the episode number that was 662. Now, I want to thank everybody that's started contributing to our Patreon account. I hope that you decide that you want to do it also if you haven't. We just got started with it and all the proceeds minus the patron fees are going to go to the scholarship fund for persons with disabilities, every nickel of it. So please check out screwthecommute.com/patreon, or Patreon.com/screwthecommute. Either one. Please kick in. You can start as little as $3 a month and you get all kinds of perks. So please kick in something to help us with this scholarship fund. So thank you very much in advance.

[00:02:43] All right. Let's get to the main event, Chrome extension. So I mentioned in the beginning that Chrome extension simply enhance your browser so it can do certain tasks for you. So now let's talk about how to find ones that you want and then I'll tell you how to install them a little bit later. So currently when I'm recording this, there's 137,000 Chrome extensions, and this is according to software testing Health.com. And and there's other there's another, I don't know, 20,000 of some things that aren't even technically called extensions, but that also help you.

[00:03:21] So I'm going to tell you that what they called the 12 most popular and I don't know what many of them do, and I'm going to tell you what I think they do, and I certainly don't use all of them, but you just pick the certain ones out of all that are available and I'll show you how to find a whole bunch more later. But it can really help out doing task for you. And like I said, most of them are free. All right. So here's a list. I think there's 13 here instead of 12. All right. And I think they're in order of how popular they are. But first is Google calendar. Everybody knows what a calendar is. Number two is Scribe, and these will be in the show notes to folks so you don't have to worry about writing them down. Number two is scribe, and it helps create step by step instructions for employees or customers or whatever. Number three is grammarly. I use it all the time. In fact, sometimes I've got to turn it off because it's bugging me when I don't need it. So that's an extension. Loom is a video email extension. That's a great thing that you can actually put videos that work in email. People have tried this years ago, but just not very successful. So that's loom.

[00:04:41] Hubspot sales and that's usually for really big business CRMs, you know, customer relationship managers, LastPass. Now I happen to use robo form, but LastPass is a password manager, which is just critical nowadays with all the different accounts you have and online services and everything. So it encrypts your passwords, it makes them handy for you. Number seven they list as ever our This helps track time spent on projects so you can do time management with that. Number eight is called Awesome Screenshot. So it's a screenshot manager that makes it easy for you to do screenshots. Number nine is Checker plus for Gmail and I think it tells you how many emails you have at at a glance in your toolbar, in your browser without actually opening Gmail and sifting through them. And I think it does other stuff too that'll alert you of important ones and so forth. Number ten is called Stay Focused, and it's kind of funny in that you can block the websites that distract you. So you choose, Well, I'm going to block Facebook for the next 3 hours, but you can always turn it off. So if you just you know, if you're so addicted, you got to go to Facebook. But anyway, it's called Stay Focused and it's popular. Number 11 is rescue time. This one keeps track of the time you spend online doing various things and gives your report. So you say, oh, man, I'm wasting a lot of time over here and I should be spending more time over there.

[00:06:26] That's number 11 rescue time. Number 12 is Buffer. It's a social media management tool. We use it here for various things. And number 13 is I think it's called Oubre Low and it's an Alley Express product importer. So if you do a lot of business buying stuff from Alley Express Alley and then Express, then it helps you with that. All right. And then I'm going to put a link in the show notes because it's a real long, crazy link, but it's a link to 70 of the best Chrome extensions, and it covers productivity, ones, security, social media, search engine optimization, sourcing your contents, finding content and blogging. So that's 70 more of them and it's at a very reputable site. So I'll put that link in the show notes for you. Now, remember, I'm going to tell you about these funny prank extensions a little later. Oh, man, this cracks me up. But again, you got to be careful. Remember, if maybe some of you know this about me, I owned a practical joke company, which was like Candid Camera, but it was live. We did over 4000 custom designed practical jokes in and around the Washington, D.C. area. So I know how to I only got the SWAT team called me once out of 4000 jobs. So that's pretty good.

[00:07:54] But you do not want to get in trouble for doing pranks. But I'm going to show you some really funny ones. All right. So how do you install these things into your Chrome browser? Well, I'm going to have a link also to the Chrome area of Google. But all you have to do is pretty much Google Chrome Web store. And then you find and you select whatever extension you want. You can search for them and then you click add to Chrome. And it's not very hard, but some of the extensions will let you know if they need certain permissions, like if it's some video thing, you probably have to give permission to your webcam, something like that. And then even Chrome will try to protect you a little bit in that if it's not a real. Well used, well known, reputable extension. It might be there and it may work, but the chrome is going to say, hey, this isn't really from a developer that we know is trusted. So proceed with caution, you know, something like that. But you always should proceed with caution before you install extension and make sure they have tons of downloads and tons of reviews and then you're pretty much safe. Now to use the extensions? Well, there's usually an icon in the right top of your address bar up near the top of your your browser. And some of them just work.

[00:09:25] I mean, you don't have to do anything. For instance, like I said earlier, I have grammarly spelling and grammar checker as an extension, and it's just pretty much works. It highlights things and lets me click on it to fix misspellings and things like that. He said, I have to turn it off sometimes because some things I'm trying to slam down some quick notes and I don't need to fool with it. But but it's there and it just works. Some of them you have to click on him to work. Now you can also install these on your cell phones and tablets, and there's all kinds of info in the web store on how to install on your phone. And again, the link will be in the show notes, but you can just Google Chrome Web store and you'll go right there. Now, a lot of people worry that the extensions can steal your information. Well, they can view activities that you're doing online, especially in Chrome. And some of the extensions may remember what you've been doing. But, you know, if you stick with trusted extensions from major developers, you can usually avoid having problems with that. But again, there's never any guarantees with this stuff. But these productivity tools are there to help you and they're free, so they've got to get paid somehow. So I imagine some of them are selling information, but probably not personal information from you.

[00:10:45] Probably aggregated like 10 million people downloaded the extension and 3 million of them visited, you know, CNN or wherever they were. So that's not really identifying you personally. Now, before I tell you about the funny ones, I love the you know, I love a good practical joke. But anyway, back to the Patriot thing. I really would appreciate your help if, you know, we've done 600. What is this? 661. This is episode 663, and I think about 200 of them are just straight training. The rest of them are interviews with top entrepreneurs. And so I'm hoping that some of this stuff has helped you. And hey, if you want to really get hundreds of thousands of dollars of free training, just go to screw the computer comp training. And that lists all the training episodes. But anyway, I really want to help fund this scholarship deal for persons with disabilities. So if you can visit screwthecommute.com/patreon or Patreon.com/screwthecommute. Either one. And you know, it starts as little as $3 a month and goes up from that and you get all kinds of perks and, you know, all kinds of good stuff. So check it out and help us out with this scholarship program. Thank you so much. All right. Let's get to the funny ones. Now. Remember, you do these at your own risk, All right? I'm not responsible if you make someone really, really mad or cause them to spend a bunch of money, if they think their computer's broken and then they've got to get it fixed right now, here's the thing.

[00:12:31] You have to have access to their computer to install these extensions or a cell phone. Now, I speak from authority as as I said, I only had the SWAT team called once on me over 4000 practical jokes when I have my entertainment company. So that's a story for another day. But anyway, here's some funny ones. One is called Cornify. And what it does, it puts unicorns all over every screen somebody goes to. And if they hate unicorns, it's even funnier. The reason I say be careful, because they might think they got hacked and immediately call a tech. People and pay money to get this removed. So you got to better stay close and and go along with it and then reveal the joke so they don't spend any money or, you know, but anyway, puts unicorns all over this thing. Now, this other one called prank, which is funny because my company and my registered trademark was Prank Masters. But the prank them prank. Apostrophe M, it's cool because it'll do all kinds of things and like, it'll blur the screen, it'll hide the person's cursor, it'll rotate the screen. All right? It'll fade the screen in and out. And. And you can.

[00:14:01] And here's the thing, though. You can get it to do randomly either a tiny percentage of the time. So it just kind of pops up and bugs them a little bit or a high percentage of the time. So it's doing it all the time. So that's called prank. And here's what really cracks me up. It kind of reminds me of that one where they have that guy singing a song, Pop in for you. I forget what that's called, but but this is called the Nicolas Cage Replacer. And so it replaces every graphic on the screen with a picture of Nicolas Cage. So. So there's a few funny ones. I'm sure there's more out there. But anyway, Chrome extensions can really, you know. Well, you can have a lot of fun as long as you don't get in trouble for pranking somebody. But. But all the ones out there sift through them, search through that article on 70, you know, really powerful chrome extensions covering all those categories and find the ones that suits you, learn how to use them and it'll increase your productivity all like crazy. I mean, that was just one category. They'll do all kinds of things for you. So and then also visit our Patreon please at screwthecommute.com/patreon or patreon.com/screwthecommute. All right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.