Category: Side Project

New Google Meet Extension

Tim Leave a comment

In today’s remote workplace, often Google Meet is the primary way companies communicate. I often chat with a coworker then realize a video call would make it quicker to come to a solution. This usually involves opening a new Chrome tab, browsing to https://meet.google.com/, clicking on the new meeting button, copying the URL, and sharing the URL in chat. These few extra clicks gave me the idea to create a one-click solution using a Chrome Extension called New Room for Google Meet.

The extension is simple and does the work of creating a new Google Meet Room and copying it to your clipboard. Chrome extensions are great for small utility programs that enhance your web browser. If you are a Google Meet user, check out the extension and let me know if you have any additional ideas for features or similar tools. Pro tip: Google offers a few shortcut URLs for creating new Docs(docs.new), Sheet(sheet.new), Slides(slide.new), and Meet(meet.new).

Click here to Install the Extension

Dynamic Social Media Share Images

Tim Leave a comment

To improve the experience when sharing an AtomicQuote URL on Twitter or Facebook, I needed to dynamically generate share images that include the quote and author with multiple background images. To do this, I could have generated millions of photos. Based on the number of quotes that AtomicQuote currently has, this would result in 17,673,360 images. Each image is around 60kb. So to store all the images, it would take over 10 TB of storage. To avoid paying for this storage, I planned to generate them on the fly and cache the result for a few days. So far, this has worked well and has improved the sharing of quotes on social media. See the example below: Read More

Introducing AtomicQuote

Tim Leave a comment

I’ve always been a fan of quotes. Quotes can motivate, inspire, teach, and more. When things get tough, many people turn to a motivational quote for a bit of inspiration. We are most open to change when we feel change is needed. So, we search the web when we have had a tough day at work to find that perfect pick-me-up quote to feel just a bit better. Once we locate the excellent quote, we are filled with inspiration and motivation and may have the courage to take on the world.

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Chrome Hiding Extension Icons By Default

Tim 5 Comments

Back in June 2019, Google Chrome started hiding extension icons by default when users first install a new extension. This can be very frustrating as a developer that users may not know how to “Pin” the extension to their toolbar. In my case, my Weather Extension, Link Shortener Extension, and Bitcoin Extension are all toolbar extensions that need to be pinned for easy access.

Instead of allowing extension icons to appear one after another to the right of the search box, the Chrome Extensions Platform team is trying out a design change that hides the graphical buttons in a menu accessed by a puzzle piece icon. Personally, I believe this is causing a lot of confusion and needs to be changed. If the extension has a click action, it needs to be pinned by default. This would allow the user to immediately see the extension and try it. Then they can always unpin it later. To me it’s strange to install something then it disappear into the menu. Read More