It’s no secret that near everything Google touches turns to gold, but as of yesterday the company has plans to embed an entirely different metal on your desktop - Chrome.

Google Chrome is a new Internet browser that has been designed from the ground up to simplify the user interface and, perhaps more importantly, streamline and speed-up the multitude of processing that happens behind the scenes when you visit a Web site.

As would be expected from a modern browser, all the bits…

It seems like ages ago that Mozilla Firefox, and all its mod-loveliness, replaced Internet Explorer as my net browser of choice. And when I saw the company also offered an alternative to Outlook Express, it wasn’t long before I switched all my e-mail habits to Thunderbird and bid Microsoft farewell.

The one thing that Thunderbird always lacked, however, was a slick task/event/calendar interface, a fact that very nearly caused me to dig into my dusty MS Office folder to run the rather…