this is very usefull, thank you for this post. I've been thinking about something like this for a while. It always looks good in serp's when your title does not get cut off half way on a word. I've changed it up a little though.
This line of code for skin1/main/product_details.tpl , i've added a maxchar limit to where google truncates the title tag:
Code:
<tr>
{if $geid ne ''}<td width="15" class="TableSubHead"><input type="checkbox" value="Y" name="fields[product_page_title]" /></td>{/if}
<td class="FormButton" nowrap="nowrap">{$lng.lbl_product_page_title}:</td>
<td class="ProductDetails"><input type="text" name="product_page_title" maxlength="64" class="InputWidth" value="{$product.product_page_title|escape:"html"}" /></td>
</tr>
or what would be even better than this is a char counter on the text box that would show you how many characters you have left before Google truncation, but still allowed you to make a longer title tag.