It feels like every day, I see another person realising how little privacy they have online and saying “enough.” Upset about the state of our relationship to tech companies, they’re quitting Facebook and Twitter, avoiding Amazon, and giving up Google.

I started my writing career off over a decade ago at a site called DownloadSquad. We covered “Web 2.0” companies back when “Web 2.0 companies” was a term people used. I wrote a zillion posts for them, or at least a few thousand. The amount of those articles that are still online: zero.

You might be unfortunate enough to have an annoying coworker in your vicinity. You know, the one that talks about how much he loves eating quiche for breakfast. Let's call him Chad. While you (probably) can't put Chad's headphones in jello to get back at him for pinning last week's soccer loss on your bum knee, you can slowly drive Chad mad where it hurts the most: in his precious YouTube goofing-off time.

When I’m trying to do work, every little thing distracts me. Google autocomplete, my inbox, even the page that Chrome loads when I open a new tab.

Well, the helpful page Chrome used to load. Because for the last few years, I’ve run the Chrome extension Blank New Tab Page.

When I open a new tab or window in Chrome, I get an actual blank page. Nothing is there to distract me.

Google Earth is one of those things I like playing around with but never do. This week I came across a Chrome extension that makes that exploration a bit easier.

I'm a huge fan of night modes. Night/Dark modes are easier on your eyes and your device's battery, and frankly just look better, in my opinion. This week I came across a Chrome extension that adds a dark mode to Instagram on the web. Called "Night Mode for Instagram" the extension transforms your Instagram feed into something a little easier to look at.

The quest to find the perfect movie on Netflix can sometimes be a difficult one. Better Browse aims to make that process at least a tiny bit easier by sorting Netflix’s content into additional categories.

About half the time I go to look at a piece of research I read about in a news article, the actual research is trapped behind a paywall.

Chrome: If you do all your work in a browser, you can end up with dozens of tabs in one window. You could open new windows for different projects and shove tabs around, or develop the monk-like discipline to stop opening tabs. Or you could manage them practically by treating your browser like an operating system.

The Chrome extension Workona organises your tabs into named windows, which you can easily switch between and save for later. It’s like a sophisticated version of Chrome’s bookmark and tab-sorting features. And it rescues you from tab overload without punishing you for it.

You may want to spend less time on sites like Facebook and YouTube, but actually doing it can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. HabitLab is an open-source project from Stanford that attempts to make cutting back on habit-forming sites a little bit easier.

We know we aren’t supposed to let email run our lives, but we do it anyway. We use email as a to-do list, as an idea saver, as a place to email ourselves notes. And if that works for you, then here’s one more tool: The free Mailist extension for Chrome and Firefox collects your unread bookmarks and emails them back to you once a week.

It’s harder than it used to be to accidentally lose all your work. Apps come with auto-save, and Chrome tries to warn you before you close a tab with unsaved work. But hit enter too fast, or suffer a crash, and you could still lose a lot of writing. It can happen to a Facebook update, an application form, or a blog post.

For someone who writes for a living, my Twitter feed has an embarrassing number of typos. I typically notice them the second after I hit post and am immediately faced with the decision "Do I delete this tweet and pretend it never happened or just roll with the typo?"

Using a "dark mode" on your favourite website, app or operating system feels great. It's perfect for dark rooms or aeroplanes, when you need to conserve your battery a little, or you're just tired of having sore eyes from staring at a screen for hours.

I'm a tremendous fan of dark modes. They're easier on your eyes and your computer's battery, and I think make using sites and apps a lot more pleasant. Unfortunately, not every site offers a dark mode (this one included). However, this week I came across a web extension that can make the magic happen anywhere you want it to.

At this point, it seems as though there's a new data breach every week where users usernames, passwords and other personal information has been exposed to hackers. Keeping track of them all can be quite the undertaking.

If you like using an alternate site to watch YouTube videos (like the minimalist Tube, which we recently covered, or the more minimalist Surprise.ly, which we covered long ago, then you can set up a Chrome extension to redirect you every time you click on a YouTube link.

Google Chrome comes with its own built-in security measures to warn you about dangerous websites and weed out phishing scams, but it never hurts to have more (or better) safeguards when you're browsing.

We only get so much time in this life, and yours is running out, friend. That might seem scary, but it doesn't have to be - it can be motivating. Sometimes you just need a reminder that you need to make it count. This tool sets your Google Chrome homepage and any new blank tabs you open to a clock slowly ticking toward your demise.