Wherever you go online, there’s a glut of celebrity news coverage that may or may not be of interest to you.  If you’re like me, it’s all either interesting or easily ignored, but some people are a little more… ahem, intense in their dislike of celebrities.  Say you hate the Kardashians, or Lady Gaga, or whoever else.  Best avoid every website ever then?  Not so fast my friend.  Meet the greatest Google Chrome extension ever:  Silence of the Celebs.

Silence of the Celebs (developed by Gesture Theory) is an extension for Google Chrome’s web browser that removes celebrity results from a multitude of popular websites, including Twitter, The New York Times, CNN, Huffington Post, Google News, Gawker, Mashable, and TMZ.  Amazingly enough, the Twitter blocks occur in real time, so if you’re sick to death of hearing about Rebecca Black, you can ban her from your Twitter timeline posthaste and free yourself from Friday-related news.

If this extension works half as well as it promises, this is going to be one of the most popular things ever released for Google Chrome.

When it comes to internet browsers, faster is better.  It’s not just the speed of your connection that determines what faster is, but also your computer itself, your operating system, and most importantly, your web browser.  Those milliseconds that separate Chrome from Firefox are crucial in a world in which the average person has no attention span and even less patience.  I know when I want to look something up online, if it’s not available immediately, that’s entirely too slow.

Well, unbeknownst to me, there are other factors that can slow down your browser.  Namely, whatever add-ons you incorporate into your browser.  Mozilla, the company behind Firefox, is stepping up to the plate to fight browser bloat by embarking on a crusade to name and shame the slowest of the slow browser apps.

Here’s Mozilla’s list of slowest Firefox browser add-ons.  They’ll be updating the list weekly, so developers can know what to change (or if they need to change) to fix the cause of the slow-downs.  Now it’s time for Mozilla to figure out what makes their browser itself slower than Chrome (and probably IE, though I don’t remember what IE was like anymore) and then maybe they’ll be onto something.

The cold is being replaced, grass is growing again, and spring is rapidly approaching.  With spring comes spring cleaning, and with spring cleaning comes some much-needed reorganization efforts, improvements, and de-clutterings.  Not that I do any of that stuff, mind you, but other people apparently do these things.  In that spirit, PC World has put together a list of 10 must-have free or donation-based computer programs for the PC.  Uniformly, they improve the function and functionality of your old desktop, and thereby improve the function and functionality of your working life.

Of the programs listed, there’s only one I can swear by.  That would be CCleaner; I use it on my personal computer, on my laptop, and I generally install it on every computer I have anything to do with maintaining, just because I think it’s one of the most useful programs on the market.  If you want to remove unwanted software, CCleaner is the way.  If you want to clear off your hard drive’s blank space and remove all those little fragmented file bits, CCleaner is the way.  If you want to improve computer performance… well, you get the picture.

If you’re not using CCleaner, you’re missing out.  I haven’t tried CCEnhancer, but now that I know it exists, I’ll be downloading it too.

If there’s one thing I can’t resist, it’s bundled things.  I may not need them, but I kind of want them anyway, just in case.  For example, those bundles of dirt-cheap public domain movies you can get at Walmart for $10?  I love them!  Such is the case with the MEGA Mac Sumo Bundle from AppSumo.  If I had a Mac and the slightest interest in any of these pieces of software, I’d be all over it.

The best thing about this app bundle is that it covers a variety of things and a variety of applications.  It leans heavily on productivity software, from download managing program SpeedDownload and window manager Cinch to screen capture program Skitch, the Wondershare video converter, and YummyFTP file transfer manager.  There’s also a wide variety of personal organizing software suites in the bundle, from the MacJournal program to TaskPaper’s user-generated to-do-list.

CNet’s Cheapskate blog has a full round-up of the MEGA Mac Sumo Bundle, for more informaton.

The future of software has debuted on the Apple network, and I’m sure fans are lining up to get a piece of the pie as we speak.  The long-awaited Mac App Store has been released to the public, launching today after a CES speech from Apple head honcho Steve Jobs.  Here’s the interesting thing:  the digital downloads are able to be used on every one of your Apple computers, so long as it’s a computer registered with your Apple ID or iTunes account.  Surprisingly progressive from Apple, isn’t it?

“With more than 1,000 apps, the Mac App Store is off to a great start,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs.  ”We think users are going to love this innovative new way to discover and buy their favorite apps.”

There’s a catch, thought.  You have to be using Snow Leopard 10.6.6, the latest edition of Apple’s 9-year-old operating system, OSX.  If you’re not, then no App Store for you (yet).  It’s categorized in a way that will be familiar to users of the iPhone App Store and other Apple App distribution centers.

Image by Poorly Drawn Portraits, via Gizmodo.