One of my major problems while using the web is having too many browser tabs open. At the end of the day I’ll have 10 tabs open on Google Chrome and an additional 5-10 on Firefox. Not only does this slow my machine down, it’s annoying to keep track of.

Why do I keep so many tabs open? Usually, it’s because I want to go back to them later, but don’t necessarily want to clog up my bookmarks with random links. It’s a silly system, but since I work at a lot of coffee shops and see a lot of other Internet surfers, it looks like I’m not the only one.

So what if you could snooze a web page like you can with an alarm? Now you can thanks to the Page Snooze Chrome extension. It’s a genius idea and works like a charm.

Go away, tabs

Once you install the Page Snooze extension for Chrome, you can simply CTRL click on any page, and you’ll be shown options on how long you’d like to snooze a page. You can choose anything up to 2 weeks, and as soon as you snooze the page, the tab promptly disappears.

When the snooze period is complete, the tab will automagically re-appear. This is perfect if there’s a page you’re tracking for a short period of time and it doesn’t necessitate a bookmark. Perhaps it’s a product page or a piece of news that you want a quick update on, snoozing the tab is the way to go.

By clicking on the extension’s options, you can see your currently snoozed tabs and click-through to the pages if you’d like.

I’ll be using this extension quite a bit, and staggering out the snoozed pages will keep me from piling up tabs like I tend to do.

➤ Page Snooze

If you’ve ever used someone else’s computer, you know how frustrating it can be to not have all of your bookmarks and information to surf the web with. Equally frustrating is setting up a new computer and forgetting to export all of those bookmarks and settings.

Google Chrome has changed all of that with its latest update. The browser now supports multiple user sign in, which will bring along all of your bookmarks, apps, extensions, history, and other settings.

It’s magic!

When you start-up the latest version of Chrome, simply click the wrench icon in the top right hand side of the browser, and you’ll be presented with the option to sign in.

Your information is tied to your Google account, so make sure you’ve signed into Chrome properly so that everything is stored and can be ported to another device.

This is also very helpful if you have multiple people using one computer in your home. It’s not meant to be a security feature, but more of a personalization one.

Check out the video below from the Chrome team, explaining the new sign in process:

The apps, which are currently free, are essentially just bookmarks to existing websites. But that wil all soon change as the keyword here is “store.” As cool as Google’s Chrome OS is, there’s no way publishers are jumping onto yet another platform to hand out free apps. Smart publishers only want to create new apps for platforms when those apps will make them money.

The Google Chrome Webstore, and other browser app stores like Mozilla’s similarly announced endeavorer, will be a landmark opportunity for publishers to charge for content whether it’s on the Web, a smartphone, an iPad or any yet to be seen tablet.

So will it work?

With the appropriate amount of scale, the app market has the potential to offer content providers an entirely new and unexplored avenue for distribution.  Thus, if an applications market can develop outside of the current model, and convince consumers to purchase the devices that service those ecosystems, then media companies have a chance to benefit from this exciting new addition to the app marketplace. –Howard Mittman, Publisher of Wired

First and foremost, Google’s Chrome Web Store gives publishers a presence.

Steve Kurtz, VP of Digital Development at USA TODAY, who has already placed an app in Google’s Chrome Web Store says, “I think it gives us the opportunity to execute our business strategy, whether that’s paid content or display advertising or a combination of both. What’s beneficial about the Web store is that it makes these applications easier to find and may attract new customers that may not be using our other applications or visiting our website.”

But beyond presence, and brand recognition, publishers need to make money. For the market to work, consumer’s buying habits have to warrant charging for content. Simply put, as buyers we can’t want or have free everything anymore. Google and publishers are banking on the fact that Apple’s iOS store, Android’s Marketplace and iTunes have changed the average user’s mentality so that they are now willing to pay for content, whether it be movies, music, books or news, if it’s easy for them to do so.

USA Today’s Kurtz agrees:

“Certainly consumers are willing to pay for the right content and experience. Everyone is in the early stages of figuring out that formula and the next year should provide some interesting case studies,” he says.

It’s been done before. Now it seems, it’s Google’s turn to do the same.

“One of the big dreams of the whole Web platform is that on the Web, you can create something once and it can be viewed across all the different browsers. Apple said if you want to play in our space you’ve got to do it this way and we had to because of Apple’s massive adoption Since Apple allows us to charge money, it made even more sense.,” says Mark Mangan, CEO and Publisher of Flavorpill.

The NYTimes app is free for now and available through the Chrome Web Store. But readers will be asked to pay for access to the content of the app when The Times launches its pay model next year.

“We currently enjoy a digital business dominated by advertising. The introduction of our pay model for our digital products will enable us to add another lucrative revenue stream. We expect in the future that all our products will have dual revenue streams in some measure,” says Denise Warren, Senior VP and Chief Advertising Officer for The New York Times Media Group and GM of NYTimes.com.

Publishers can potentially start making money for these “Web apps,” where they haven’t been able to before because consumers are not used to paying for websites. Currently, the “apps” in Google Chrome’s Web Store are HTML5 websites that have been designed to look like apps. Chrome enables certain functions that won’t work in other browsers and users also can’t buy or “install” an app except in Chrome. One major long term benefit for publishers is that HTML5 allows for offline usage, and slicker, more app-like features with polished designs.

“As the Web continues to evolve, we are harnessing new tools – like HTML5 – to enhance how our readers interact with The Times and to develop a more engaging experience,” said Warren of The New York Times. “This app is a unique opportunity for our advertisers to align their brand with The Times’s affluent and influential audience on an innovative new platform.”

With offline storage, users will be able to download a game, magazine or book to enjoy even when they’re not connected to the Internet. Google and publishers are hoping that with that a new consumer mindset and HTML5 functionality, that Webstores will be what iTunes and app stores are for mobile, but on the Web. With the Chrome Web Store, Google TV and Google eBooks are their way, it seems as if Google is thinking of becoming a much more transactional entreprise.

So how will Google profit? In a recent CNET interview, Google Engineering Director Linus Upson described what sets Chrome Web Store apart from the other Web stores. First, he says, while the Chrome Store will collect a fee when it sells an app, Google is not trying to make its store a profit center. “We collect only enough to cover our costs,” Upson says. According to the same interview, Google will process several types of payments for developers such as up-front purchasing of an app, recurring subscription fees, and in-app add-on purchases through Google Checkout. Developers will also have the option to put Google ads into their apps–and this is where Google will likely make most of its money. When Mozilla launches their own Firefox app store, it will also benefit publishers greatly as Firefox currently has a larger audience than Chrome in the US and worldwide. And Google’s Upson implied to CNET that Google would either contribute to this effort or adopt its final spec.

In 2008, the publishing world realized it was serious trouble. Glossy magazines became emaciated. Newspapers folded into twilight. People were no longer picking up magazines and newspapers like they once were. But we still hungered for content, we just didn’t know how or where to turn. Many believe the industry has now been saved by something tangible, yet digital, a connected tablet on which we can read all of our daily news, watch all of our favorite movies, tv shows, play our favorite games, and communicate with our social networks. We’ve got a few devices with different browsers and operating systems to access content from, but how will it all come together in a seamless way?

This is exactly what Google is aiming to do. Will Google’s Chrome Web Store be a real gamechanger for publishers? The real question is, will you pay for richer Web-”app” based content?

On one hand, Google’s Chrome Store, like Apple’s iOS App Store and Google’s Android Market benefits content distributors and publishers because it’s one more place to get their product out in front of customers, but it’s also one more place that publishers and developers have to stock.

For publishers, the Chrome Webstore is an opportunity to work within a browser that works well, really well. As more users adopt Chrome, it will be better platform choice for publishers and content distributors who worry about their content bleeding or not running in less popular browsers.

With the proliferation of Chrome, the decision for publishers to move into the Chrome experience will become easier. But going forward all publishers will be presented with the same issue: how to tailor their products for each platform.

Publishers who’ve already created apps for the Google Chrome Web Store include news sources such as the NYTimes, Salon.com, Onion News Network, NPR and USA Today. If you go into the NYTimes Chrome Webstore app, you’ll notice a similar experience to their iPad touch screen application. But that’s tricky, warns Jack Cheng, the Co-Founder and Creative Director of Disrupto, a New York City design and development studio. “Navigating with a mouse and navigating with your finger are two different things.”

“If you’re building an app for a web browser experience. How is that different from your website? You’re calling it an app but its functioning in the same container,” explains Cheng.

Publishers are still trying to figure out how people are going to use this thing. It’s paired with Google’s Chrome OS so they need a way to deliver apps on that OS. How will an app look any different from the design of publisher’s normal website? And how much overlap will there be between this and Google’s Android Marketplace?

For some publishers, Google’s Chrome Web Store will just be one more platform they’ll have to design for. For big established content distributors like Gilt.com, any opportunity to push the technical boundaries may be worth exploring. “The Gilt for Chrome App allows you to engage with our product outside of the confines of a website. The app experience goes beyond just a website destination,” says Gilt.

But for small publishers, it’s hard enough to produce content and maintain an editorial focus across all the different platforms. There are already opportunities within mobile marketplaces like Apple, Android, Blackberry; tablet marketplaces; Web TV marketplaces; and now we are welcoming the rise of browser web-stores.

But again, it all depends on adoption. Most of the time, publishers will produce the same feed with slight nuances across different apps and platforms, tailoring certain content for paid, subscription based services like iPad apps. “You can take a gamble and be one of the first ones in there like the NYTimes and NPR but when it comes to a new platform, smaller publishers, like us, will likely wait and see,” says Mark Mangan, the CEO of Flavorpill, a culture and media outlet.

It seems that at the starting bell, there isn’t a real advantage to being one of the first through the gate.