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Ask any power user, blogger, or journalist which PC web browser is the fastest or the most secure, and the answer will almost always be, "Google Chrome." That's because Google has done a masterful job positioning Chrome as the high-performance, secure browser.

But a bumper crop of poorly performing, quickly coded Google Plus extensions for Chrome threatens to damage the reputation Google engineers and marketers have worked so hard to establish.

A new add-on to Firefox combines resources location and category search to the toolbar while protecting your browsing activity.

AwesomeBar HD is a spin-off from the Home Dash project designed by Mozilla developer Edward Lee to improve browsing and content discovery without the use of a toolbar. AwesomeBar is the opposite of Home Dash: instead of getting rid of the toolbar, it makes the address bar much more intuitive.

Last Thursday we wrote about Firefox's launch of its newest version, 3.6.4. This version separated the browser itself from the plug-ins that ride it. So if a plug-in were lagging, or otherwise going haywire, it wouldn't crash the whole screen. These improvements are restricted to Linux and Windows until Version 4.0, which will include Mac.

Today, Mozilla has announced a further upgrade, to version 3.6.6.

Mozilla Contacts, the experimental project from the organization behind the Firefox web browser, has released a new version of their Contacts add-on which introduces Facebook integration. Previously, Mozilla Contacts allowed you to import your various address books spread out across the Web (think: multiple email accounts, Twitter friends, LinkedIn colleagues, Plaxo contacts, Mac OS X address book, etc.) into the Web browser itself - in this case, obviously, Firefox. Once there, the combined address book information could be used in form autocompletion everywhere across the Web and more.

Now, an updated version of Mozilla Contacts (download link) introduces a number of new features, most notably integration with Facebook Contacts and something called a "person URL."

Korean company Egoing has introduced MonkeyFly, a browser plugin that allows a user to customize their Twitter. For users who feel the abiding need for monkeying around (rimshot) with everything they use, this could come in handy.

Among the features the plugin powers are a grid-style interface, lightbox profile, link tracking and easy photo upload.

A new service from AwayFind lets you ignore your inbox without worrying that you're going to miss an important message. It's one of those ideas that seems so obvious, you're left wondering "why didn't someone think of this already?"

With the new service and its optional web browser plugin, you're able to configure alerts for critical, "can't miss" email messages and can choose to have those alerts sent to you via instant message, Twitter, SMS text message or even a phone call.

This morning, Google launched an "extensions" gallery for their real-time communications product, Google Wave. Within the new gallery, you'll find the tools and add-ons that have been created by the developer community to add additional functionality to the Wave service. Among the extensions are those some Wave users have probably seen before - like the popular "yes/no" voting gadget, for example, which lets you create polls via Wave. However, there are others that you may not have seen yet - like the "iFrame Gadget" that lets you embed webpages into a Wave or the "Likey Gadget" that provides a "like" (and "dislike!") button for showing support for a particular topic, similar to those found on Facebook or Google Buzz.

Google Chrome has begun taking submissions from third party developers. In a blog post written earlier today, Google is asking developers to contribute to the Chrome extensions gallery - an act that will put third party applications on both the Chrome browser and eventually the operating system.