Have you tried Google’s new browser, “Chrome”?  It’s fast and it rocks.  But there’s no Google Toolbar!  How can you bookmark pages to a central location (Google Bookmarks)?  Here’s how, in just a few quick and easy steps .

1. First, download Chrome (duh!) .
2. If you don’t already see a bookmarks bar (right below the address bar or “omnibar” and above the actual web page) turn it on by hitting CTRL-B (you can hide it anytime by hitting CTRL-B again).
3. Visit this help page on Google Chrome and bookmarking.
4. Go ahead and—you guessed it—drag that little box to the bookmarks area of Chrome.

VOILA!  Now whenever you want to bookmark a page, just click on that little bookmark.

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But what happens when you want to find that page again?

Well, for one thing, Chrome’s omnibar is pretty damn smart… even smarter than you might initially expect!  Try typing just a few letters from that site’s URL or title and it may very well show up for you in the omnibar .  But if you still want to see all your bookmarks, you can do one of two things:

• Revisit Google Bookmarks OR
• Check out the cooler experience of Google Notebook, and you’ll find all your bookmarks under the UNFILED folder (click on the left), where you can annotate, group, and optionally share your favorite bookmarks with friends.

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Hope these tips help you enjoy Chrome even more!

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EDITED on Wednesday, September 3 to add:
Thank you to Simon B for the improved link to the bookmarklet!

My friend Greg and I just had a fascinating and extensive discussion about the concept of airlines charging their customers by the weight of their bodies + luggage. 

The way we envisioned it, all airlines tickets would be composed of exactly two fees: a seat fee (fixed) and a weight fee (variable).  This is hardly our original idea; I’ve seen similar suggestions pondered on the web before.  But nonetheless, I thought it’d be interesting to reflect upon some implementation ideas as well as pros and cons.

Have you heard about TipJoy and the still-very-small phenomena of tipping (real money) on the web?

It’s quite fascinating, in my opinion, and I certainly have very mixed feelings on this issue.

PLUSES:

• I admire how the founder gets “out there” to talk about his service… but not only about his service. 
• I think there’s a true need to reward outstanding authors/contributors on the web with real money, and I think tipping is better than huge ad clutter / massively off-topic ads.
• In particular, I love the idea of tipping in the context of supporting artists and art online.  Give me great MP3s, and then give me a culture in which MANY of us offer tips… even $2-7/album, which’d be WAY more than the artist would normally get via CDs or iTunes, etc.
• TipJoy is pretty easy to use.
• The fees seem reasonable.

Do you use Gmail?  The new “Quick Links” feature, offered via Google’s Gmail Labs project, can help save you time and highlight important mail.

WHAT QUICK LINKS DOES
Think of it as sort of a “Saved searches” feature .  Basically, you can take any search and “save” it so that it appears as an option under a Quick Links menu on the lefthand side of your Gmail screen.  For instance, one of my favorite quick links is this saved search: “TO:me IN:inbox.” When I click on this link now, it shows me all mail that’s been sent to me personally that’s still in my inbox, weeding out all the “junk” bulk mail… e.g., newsletters, ads from vendors, etc.  Other options could be showing mail just from a specific time period that has attachments, mail that is starred but not in your inbox, etc.

Today I completed my third yoga session.  The class is taught by an apparently-quite-skilled (and patient and helpful!) instructor here at the main Google gym, and she’s noted that it’s essentially “Iyengar-flow” style.

I, however, have decided to nickname it D’oh-whoa style.  D’oh: not in a painful sense, but in a OH HAI I HAZ HIDDN MUSSELS kinda way.  And whoa: just absolute wow in watching my classmates.

Tuesday I will be in Mountain View.  Tomorrow I will be in Frankfurt with good friends and many drunk loud Germans screaming at a big TV. Tonight beyond the witching hour I declined an adventure in Koeln, being the wise or stupid one.  Today I was rocking out with people from 10 to 79 and also teaching a tango dancer to waltz to a band playing surprisingly damn good cover songs.  Also today I unexpectedly toured Bonn for two hours with a beautiful new also-unexpected friend, played piano for an entire wedding in Sankt Augustin, and ate a breakfast of bread, sausage and cheese for the many-hundredth time.

I like paying for things with a credit card.  It’s typically pretty fast (especially with those merchants that don’t require a signature for <$25 purchases).  It's secure.  And I earn travel rewards for every dollar I spend.

So when it comes to the occasional purchase online that I can only buy via PayPal I cringe.  Why?  Because PayPal really really really doesn't want me to pay with a credit card, and they'll harrass me about this during every checkout, creating a user-hostile experience each and every time I use their dog-forsaken service.

A friend recently lamented that it took eight clicks for them to buy something on PayPal.  That sounds about right.  You see, PayPal defaults users to paying from their bank account… so we have to search for a tiny “more funding options” link and then select the credit card, then be subjected to a long whiny please “Are you absolutely positively sure that you don’t want to pay from your bank account?  It’s really a better option yadda yadda yadda...” followed by a charmingly shifting yes/no set of buttons.

Look, PayPal, I want to pay by credit card.  I’ve told you this more than a dozen times.  I’ve also read/skimmed/ignored your stupid please-don’t-pay-by-credit-card notice more than a dozen times.  And, by the way, I’m well aware that you already pass on extra associated charges to your merchants when buyers pay by credit card.

So SOD OFF!  Either let me set “pay by credit card” in my preferences somewhere, or leave me the frack alone.

In the meantime, I’m hoping you go out of business, to be replaced by a company that doesn’t repeatedly spit on its users.

ADDENDUM / DISCLAIMERS:
- I work for Google, which offers a somewhat-competing service called Google Checkout. I use and like that service, but am not part of the Checkout team.
- My anger towards PayPal may seem heavy given the seemingly light-transgression described above.  But it’s just the last straw.  PayPal has a history of thumbing its corporate nose at its users, and I’ve had the displeasure of using PayPal for many years as a buyer and seller on ebay.

Today’s entry is short and wonderful.  Behold, in the video below, Matt Harding… “dancing” around the world, one city at a time.  At the 54 second mark, watch the video really come alive when he delights countless locales who join in the dancing… and, i guarantee, charms all of you watching, too .

For more information, see www.wherethehellismatt.com.
Also, you really really must see his other videos (linked under his name).

Edited on June 23 to add: Thank you to Bee for pointing out my URL typo! Now fixed

Once again, I was off to Germany… home of good friends, heavy food, wacky long sentences, and Lufthansa, the airline whose plane I was unceremoniously squished into not like a sardine, but wurst.

I had the foot-munching-tray aisle to my right, and a stupendously larger-than-life and dumber-than-devil-fossils young fella to my left.  To his left sat an acquaintance of his, seemingly of equal gelatinousness and dimwittedness. For the purposes of this entry, we’ll call them Slad and Elad, respectively if not respectfully.

* * *

Slad had no sense.  No sense of etiquette, culture, space, or time.  No sense at all, really.  And he was happy to share this nonsense with me, loudly… cheerfully interrupting the safety instructions which were actually melodious and fascinating in comparison.

Slad: HEY!
Me: Hi.
Slad: THEY’RE TALKING GERMAN!
Me: Yeah.
Slad: WHY ARE THEY TALKING GERMAN?
Me: It’s Lufthansa, a German airline.
Slad: [A look even blanker than usual]
Me: ...And we’re going to Germany, so there are Germans on board.

Only the first part had sunk in.  And barely at that.

Slad: LUFTHANGLE?
Me: Lufthansa.
Slad: YEAH!?  BUT THEY’RE STILL TALKING GERMAN!
Me: [speechless]

About 30 minutes into the flight…

A friend of mine just let me know of a frustrating and seemingly unfair issue in his neck of the woods:  A popular and much-loved priest in South Dakota is apparently about to be deported due to what seems to be a pretty lame bureaucratic snafu (pemanent residency application accepted but later lost/misplaced).  An advocacy site is here: HelpFather.