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!

I’m in apartment-hunting mode, and have amassed a set of criteria for my search that I thought you might benefit from… and be able to easily add to!

With the new release of Google Docs and Spreadsheets (horrid name, super product), I can now do all sorts of cool stuff!  For instance, I’ve embedded the spreadsheet below for you to read… but I’ve also included links at the bottom for you to:

• EDIT ONLINE:  Load up the spreadsheet online in edit mode!  Your changes will be reflected within five minutes on the document AND this page, so please be both thoughtful and nice (I can revert as necessary, of course).
• EDIT OFFLINE:  Download the CSV and load it up in Excel or Excel imitator .
• VIEW: ...as PDF, HTML, TXT, and in other formats as well.
• SUBSCRIBE:... view Atom or RSS

Pretty neat, eh?  And now, on with the show!

I recently noticed that a fellow Googler posted some thoughtful tips about interviewing at Google, and -- now that I'm a bit more comfortable blogging about Work -- I figured I'd contribute to the conversation a bit by offering my own, unofficial tips.

Note the unofficial part. I work in Search Quality; aside from occasionally being asked to interview candidates (like most Googlers) -- I have nothing to do with our recruiting, recruiters, etc., nor do I pretend to speak for the HR folks. The stuff below is based on my own observations and opinions.

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Application and interview tips

Broadly: be interesting, be humble, demonstrate outstanding competence in your direct area, briefly highlight your well-roundedness (academically, workwise, and personally), and clarify how you are an excellent fit with both the position you're applying for and Google overall. 

Admittedly, with an insane number of applications a year, it is a bit of a numbers game.  Some outstanding people get rejected.  And, though I haven't witnessed this personally, I'm sure some jerks get offers.  Luckily, Google's been overhauling its hiring processes, and I'm optimistic that particularly the percentage of great people getting overlooked (in relation to the number of apps) will decrease.

Some specific tips and notes:

Lots of folks have noticed that five very cool new features debuted today in Gmail:
1) Enhanced UI, with Reply and other handy features placed at the top of conversations.
2) Notification when new messages have been made in the conversation since you started drafting your reply.
3) Forward an entire conversation (all messages).
4) Send chat messages to your friends using Gmail chat or GTalk even when they’re offline (the messages’ll be held for them).
5) Get Gmail on your mobile phone with a rich app (not just slow Web pages).

[Read more about these new gmail features]

But what I have to share with you is even more deliciously glorious… especially for those of you who are on lots of mailing lists or who have boring (albeit perhaps well-meaning) friends who just won’t shut up.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, and—as always—I have so much to say.  I’ll use my recent and upcoming schedule as a crutch for providing some musings and commentary

Last week:

- Monday:  Special Google Event and Hakone Gardens private party.
Early in the day I got to test my Event Planning mettle.  It all came out okay!  No one was electrocuted.  No one went hungry.  No one fell or was thrown off of large balconies.  Reviews were good, and I wasn’t fired.  In the evening, I joined a friendly group of geeks at a private party at the beautiful Hakone Gardens in Saratoga, California.  Free sushi!  Company presentations in the blissfully short form of one haiku each!  Plus prizes, a Futurist presentation, and much more.

- Tuesday:  The Fifth Annual Google Dance and included “Meet the Engineers” event
I was responsible for planning this year’s Meet the Engineers event upstairs during the Google Dance, enabling lots of Webmaster’y-type folks and Googlers to chat informally about largely search-focused ideas, questions, and more.  Overall, it seemed to go pretty well, though I certainly got some good feedback to improve the event for next year (feel free to add more feedback in the comments below if you’d like!)  And in the general party there were battling robots, lots of cheese, wacky green-screen dancing karaoke, demo’ing and dunking Googlers, and lots and lots (thousands!) of geeks in various stages of buzzed revelry

- Wednesday:  Search Engine Strategies Conference (continued from Tuesday) and yet more geek parties
The Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, California is one of the largest events of its kind… four solid days of learning ‘n’ camraderie in the Web Marketing / Search Engine Optimization space, with four evenings of networking, drinking, and playful debauchery.  My colleagues sumo wrestling!  Geeks Gone Wild on the dance floor!  And, on a serious but equally important note, it was a great chance for me to meet some fascinating heavyweights in the industry and for me to do my best representing Google… answering questions, gathering thoughtful bits of feedback, and happily putting names with faces (“Ah, you’re THAT blogger…”).

- Thursday:  My first speaking engagement on behalf of Google!
My boss, Matt Cutts, is one of the most articulate and likeable fellows in the search engine realm.  When he speaks, people listen!  When I speak… well, I really hadn’t ever publicly spoken on behalf of Google before, so as you can imagine, I was a bit apprehensive and also quite excited.  Making matters even more interesting was the fact that all of my fellow panelists (from Yahoo, MSN, and Ask) came prepared with Powerpoint presentations and I came prepared with… nothing.  Well, that’s not exactly true.  I had spent quite a bit of time thinking about the subject at hand (how Google looks at links on the Web) and was pretty confident about my ability to answer questions… but I certainly hadn’t thought of making an opening statement.  It was a “Q&A” session, after all!

Well, luckily, during the few minutes of the others’ presentations, I managed to quickly shuffle a reasonably organized selection of thoughts into my head and then out of my mouth in a basically impromptu four minute speech.  I even squeezed in a bit of geek humor, specifically a reference to Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” book… which was, to my pleasure and relief, pretty well-received (yay, fellow geeks with good taste in literature!).  I was asked some great questions and had answers for all but one of them, for which I admitted “I don’t know.”

Overall, it was an enjoyable and worthwhile experience, and I look forward to speaking at another industry event.

I’ve been at Google about four months, and it’s been a hell of a great ride so far.  I really need to write more about this later, but in a nutshell… my colleagues rock, the flexible and trusting environment is awesome, and I’m very excited about what I’m working on. 

However, I do have to admit to sometimes being a bit freaked out :o.

I love RottenTomatoes.com.  It’s one of the most useful and addictive movie sites I’ve found, right along with IMDB.com.  Now I can look up movies on either database in a snap by using a surprisingly little-known Firefox feature that lets you assign a keyword of your choice to any search on any site.

A couple of months ago, I became a Googler.  Since my boss—Matt Cutts—has already so kindly introduced me on his blog, I feel this is probably a good time to say a few words about my new job

The short version:  I’m honored, humbled, a bit nervous, and yes, very happy.  As a lifelong geek who’s been excited about search and Google in particular for many years, it’s hugely fascinating to be experiencing new adventures from the “inside.”

Okay, now for the longer version!

Bookmarks.  Favorites.  Most of us save a list of sites we often visit or want to re-find again… either by adding them as a Bookmark in Firefox or as a Favorite in Internet Explorer or even adding the site to our online list residing on del.icio.us or Spurl, and so on.

Also, lots of us have browser toolbars by Yahoo! or Google or other folks.  Unfortunately, there’s a huge disconnect here.

I visit Salon.com regularly.  Same with Google News, SlickDeals, and many other sites.  In Firefox, it’s very easy to assign a shortcut to access any one of my favorite sites; for instance, I can type sd into my Firefox address bar and be immediately whisked to SlickDeals.net.  Even cooler, I can type gns lindy hop and instantly be brought to the search results page of Google News that shows me if there are any recent articles about Lindy Hop.

The downside?  If I want to use any of these shortcuts on other computers (at a friend’s place, at work, when visiting my parents), I have to somehow copy over my Firefox preference files over via a thumbdrive or whatnot.  Or, if they don’t have Firefox, I’m screwed. 

This is where browser toolbars come in—or, rather, where they SHOULD come in.

I haven’t had a chance to watch more than the first few minutes of this film, but Waterborne has been generally well-reviewed… and you can watch it for free either below or directly on Google’s site through January 15, 2006.

Rather than spoil even part of the plot, I’ll instead invite you to begin watching it now without preconceptions, with a note that it’s a serious film focusing on characters rather than explosive action.