Last week, the world saw Apple’s long anticipated tablet device, the iPad, for the first time. In the aftermath since that announcement, a few things have become clear: it will be great for some people, but its apparent lack of flexibility (at least in its first iteration) may leave something to be desired. It’s increasingly looking like the best alternative will be Google’s Chrome OS, which is clearly on a collision course with the iPad. And tonight, we’ve come across some very impressive mockups of what Chrome OS may look like on a tablet form factor.

The photos have been posted to the official Chromium site (Chromium is the open source project behind Chrome and ChromeOS). And while Chromium is not actually part of Google, it appears that these mockups were put together by Glen Murphy, Google Chrome’s designer. In other words, there’s a good chance that the final version of Chrome OS will resemble this.

Update: Be sure to watch this video to see a mockup of the tablet in action.

It’s worth pointing out that there almost certainly will be multiple “Google Tablets”, given that Chrome OS won’t be tied to a single device. That said, Google is working with select hardware partners to ensure that it runs on devices that are up to its specifications, and there may be one tablet device that is designated as the “Google Tablet”, much like the Nexus One is the “Google Phone”.

Via TheChromeSource.

Greasemonkey scripts are an easy way to create single-serving enhancements for Firefox, and now they work natively on Google Chrome, too.

Google Chrome 4 and above now natively supports many Greasemonkey scripts.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

In a blog post Monday, Aaron Boodman, the developer of the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox, announced that Chrome version 4 and later will support most of the JavaScript-coded Greasemonkey scripts without any additional tweaking necessary. This includes all available builds for Windows (stable | beta | dev), Mac (beta | dev), and Linux (beta | dev). Chrome converts the JavaScript directly into a Chrome extension as it's being installed, and the new add-on lives as an extension in Chrome's Extension management window.

While this potentially adds 40,000 Greasemonkey scripts to Chrome's growing extension catalog, Boodman estimates that between 15 and 25 percent of them won't work on Chrome because of coding differences between Google's browser and Firefox.

He rightly warns readers that Greasemonkey scripts can give the script author unfettered access to personal data, so it's important to check reader comments and ratings before casually installing one. In my test of Flickr Image Size, a script that forces all available images sizes to appear as links in Flickr, I encountered no problems.

Chrome has become my favorite browser by far.

Orli Yakuel noticed that Google has quietly added a new icon in the ‘Compose Mail’ window of its free webmail service Gmail, enabling users to run search queries from within the interface and insert results and URLs straight into drafted e-mails or open chat conversations.

This is an expansion of a Google Labs feature, simply dubbed ‘Google Search’, that was introduced back in April 2009 as an optional setting in Gmail.

The first iteration of the labs feature added a ‘Web Search’ box next to the main column (left side on the screenshot) that provides much of the same functionality, only you needed to remember to go to the side column to run a search. Now, enabling the feature also adds an icon to the top toolbar in the ‘Compose Mail’ window, where you can also customize colors and fonts for your message, add links and emoticons and more.

It’s unclear when the icon was added, but we can’t retrieve any mention about this on the Gmail blog and today marks the first time we’ve seen it.

The icon opens up a search box at the bottom of your screen and lets you run a search like you would using the regular Google search interface. A small arrow opens up a limited menu where you can paste results, paste URL and send by e-mail (which is kind of redundant in this case, since you’re already in a new e-mail). If you have a chat conversation open in Gmail, you’ll also get an extra option to send search results to your contact.

Obviously, this isn’t a ground-breaking feature, but if you’re a Gmail user you might want to (re-)enable the Labs feature in Settings. Guaranteed to save you quite some time.

CrunchBase Information

Gmail

Information provided by CrunchBase

If you're still using anything other than Gmail... just stop. Move to Gmail. Now.