ReadWriteWeb

Opera just launched the first alpha version of Opera 11, the company's first version of its desktop browser with support for extensions. As the browser wars continue to heat up, Opera remained one of the few players without a vibrant extension ecosystem. This new version aims to change this and while there are currently only a few extensions for Opera 11, the company promises that adapting existing extensions for Opera should be rather easy for a developers who have already written similar extensions for other browsers.

Browser maker Opera announced two major updates today: its upcoming desktop browser will finally include extensions, the add-ons that let users customize their browser with additional features, and a version of Opera will be designed just for Android handsets.

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.

While furiously trying to organize my digital life this past weekend, I found myself as I often do - with an obscene number of tabs open at the same time while hopping from thought to thought. It was in the middle of this confusing mess that I came across list.it, the self-described "simple, free, open-source note-keeping tool to help you manage the tons of little information bits you need to keep track of each day."

Put out by the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, the browser extention is a "tool to help people cope with information overload and to stay organized" that has since helped me keep track of the common threads of an often multi-threaded day.

First released just over a year ago, Chrome has come to occupy 6% of the browser market worldwide, becoming the third most popular browser behind Internet Explorer and Firefox. As it continues to add features, it is poised to gain even more ground. Last December, the addition of browser extensions filled one of the browser's biggest shortcomings, and today the little browser that could has taken another step in the right direction by adding support for Greasemonkey scripts.

Greasemonkey, previously only a Firefox add-on, lets you customize the way a website is displayed using small bits of Javascript, and we're excited to see it added to one of the faster, tidier browsers available.

Google just released a new stable version of Chrome for Windows PCs that includes two of the most frequently requested features: extensions and bookmark sync. This change won't affect those users who are already using these features through Chrome's beta or developer preview channel. Windows users who are using the stable version of Chrome, however, will finally be able to use extensions and sync bookmarks between multiple machines.

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.

Google will unleash 100,000 invites to use Google Wave later today. While Wave itself is obviously an exciting product, Google is also trying to create a developer ecosystem around Wave and has selected six Wave extensions to feature as good examples of what developers will be able to do with Wave: a competitive Sudoku game from LabPixies, a teleconferencing extension from Ribbit, video chat from 6rounds, travel planning from Lonely Planet, a weather widget from AccuWeather, and a map widget courtesy of Google Maps.

Google just released an update to its cutting edge developer version of Google Chrome that adds a lot of polish to the way Chrome handles extensions. Interestingly, while the stable versions of Chrome are still stuck with the 2.x series, the versions in the developer channel are now already designated as 4.x versions. At this point, users of the developer channel version can already easily install extensions, change themes, sync bookmarks, and profit from a faster rendering engine, while users of the more conservative stable version don't have access to any of these features yet.

Zotero, the popular open-source research and bibliography tool, just announced the latest version of its Firefox plugin (1.5b1), which now allows users to synchronize their databases between different machines, as well as a number of smaller updates that will make it even easier to create and curate bibliographies with Zotero.

Zotero also announced a new online component to its plugin, which, in conjunction with the new synchronization features, automatically creates an online backup of your database on Zotero.org.