Google gets shiny with Chrome

Posted on September 3, 2008 by glenn

Google has released its experimental browser called Chrome, a new type of browser built on the Webkit rendering engine.

Google have said that this is designed to be a whole new type of browser, built around the concept of web ‘applications’ as opposed to web ‘sites’. The idea is that the new breed of sites are now applications that you spend a lot of time in, as opposed to simply sites that you visit briefly.

The major change is that each tab in now running in its own CPU process, which means that there shouldn’t be the issue of one site’s processor-intensive Javascript or some plugin (Adobe I’m looking at you) locking up or bringing down the whole browser.

From the Google Blog announcement

All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.

My first impressions are very positive. It’s fast, very fast. They’ve optimised the heck out of the Javascript engine. You can see the comparison between Firefox 3 & Chrome’s Dromaeo test results: Firefox’s 1983.40ms compared to Chrome’s 574.60ms. That’s almost 1 & 1/2 second’s difference. Sure that was a fairly unscientific test, I wasn’t controlling for other processes, but the massive difference is indicative of a major improvement in JS performance.

So here’s what I’ve found so far:

Continue reading →

Oh noes, the LHC caused a resonance cascade & took down reddit!

Posted on August 22, 2008 by glenn

Reddit has gone down, & they’re blaming it on CERN. Hopefully Alexis got the crowbar sent off in time for the world to be saved! In other news, I want a pack of these.

Updates & stuff

Posted on August 19, 2008 by glenn

So I’ve been pretty much offline for the last 4 days or so because we’ve been moving house (I’ve got some photos on Flickr). I’ve had a fair few support requests come in in the last couple of weeks for the FriendFeed plugin that I just haven’t had a chance to respond to. I’m sorry, I’m not ignoring you I will try & catch up over the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime there is a beta version of the plugin sitting on the WordPress Plugins site that may fix a number of problems, especially those around WordPress being installed in a subdirectory & the plugin not playing nice with jQuery. So if you’re having issues with the plugin, please download it & try it out. If it all goes wrong the current stable version is always available too.

Google Maps now has Street View for Australia

Posted on August 5, 2008 by glenn

First, here’s the obligatory Harbour Bridge & Opera House shot.

Now, Google has introduced it’s Street View imagery for Australia. And when I say Australia I mean all of Australia

Except Darwin. Sorry Mum & Dad, no street view for you.

Those blue lines are roads where street view is available. This means that some poor guy had to drive all the way across the Nullarbor in one of the camera cars.

Anyway it is quite amazing, privacy complaints notwithstanding, how much detail you can see. Here’s the Esplanade at Manly Beach, where you can see the blurring effect (actually you can see it being a little over-zealous, it’s blurred the traffic light too!) . Here’s the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the ANZAC statue on the ANZAC Bridge, looking back down Leura Mall or down the main street of Beechworth.

It’s a bit of a pity that it was overcast on the days when the shot a lot of the Sydney imagery, but this is very cool. It’s a game changer for real-estate too. The real estate agent hasn’t got a shot of the outside of the house? Doesn’t matter, you can probably look it up. Trying to find a location, now maps can not only give you the directions, but show you what the place looks like too.

This was actually quite handy today. I needed to find a factory to pick up a new trampoline mat & thanks to Google Maps, not only could I find how to get there, I knew what the building looked like when I was looking for the street.

The Google Australia blog has more details and a video about the new release. So go check it out.

Looks like Google and Facebook will be competing with FriendFeed

Posted on June 27, 2008 by glenn

FaceBook has been slowly updating the Mini-feed displayed on a user’s profile page to look more and more like a FriendFeed-esq lifestreaming application, by allowing you to include actions from other sites, and now allowing comments on the items.

Triston McIntyre has a good post on the details and possible implications of these changes on Profy, especially as to why FriendFeed probably doesn’t have to worry too much about this:

In execution, I seriously doubt Friendfeed has anything to worry about. Though Facebook does have a friends feed on each user’s homepage, and individual mini-feeds on every user’s profile, Facebook’s feeds are structured very differently than FriendFeed. Where on FriendFeed, the feed is pretty much the focus, mini-feeds on Facebook are largely overlooked, except perhaps by those jealous lovers and "interested" others (oh, come on, everyone has them.right?).

Facebook is essentially Social 101 for those looking to get connected to friends. Platforms like FriendFeed and Twitter, at least at this point in time, are just a higher level of social media. Adoption of both platforms is increasing, but I don’t think that FriendFeed needs to worry about losing its user base to Facebook-happy comment heads. Sleep easy, FriendFeed, and enjoy the flattery by imitation.

However, Google Operating System has a post today outlining the features in the new beta of the iGoogle homepage. The new iGoogle will have a lot more ‘social’ features in in, including a gtalk chat & gmail directly on the page, but the thing that I noticed was the ‘Updates’ box on the right. This seems to be a feed of all the things you’re doing on Google’s products. The box there has a number of items on it: shared items from Google Reader, photos from Picassa, shared themes for iGoogle, shared gadgets and status from Gtalk. There’s also the ability to add free text (and presumably links) in a box above the list. There doesn’t seem to be any non-google content in there, but I can’t believe that it would be possible to do that. If it’s not a feature now, you know it will be very soon.

So FriendFeed may have some more competition in the not too distant future.

ReadBurner adds FeedDemon clippings feeds, suddenly becomes awesome!

Posted on June 24, 2008 by glenn

Nick Bradbury announced today that shared news aggregator site ReadBurner has added Newsgator (ie FeedDemon) shared items feeds to their site. This means that us FeedDemon users can join all the cool Google Reader kids over there.

Along with including NewsGator feeds, they’ve added NewsGator as a tab up the top of their site along with Google Reader & Netvibes so you can read your feeds without leaving the ReadBurner site. While that’s not a huge feature to me (FeedDemon FTW!) I’m sure it would be handy if you used the Newsgator web interface.

Here’s the instructions from Nick on how you add you Newsgator clipping feed:

Here’s how it’s done:

If you haven’t done so already, share one of your clippings folders as an RSS feed (this screencast explains how this is done in FeedDemon).

Copy the URL of the shared clippings feed to the clipboard (in FeedDemon, you can do this by clicking the “Copy” link from the clippings properties).

Browse to http://www.readburner.com/

Go to the "Add Feed" option on the right hand side of the ReadBurner menu bar, then select “NewsGator Clippings” and enter the URL of your clipping feed.

Also, as Nick mentioned, FeedDemon allows you to share web pages as well as feed items. Just drag the url into your clippings folder & it will get added (Just the title, the content of the page won’t be added).

This is great, and a great boost for Newsgator & FeedDemon as they get more visibility in the RSS reader market place. Remember kids, FeedDemon, along with the syncing ability of Newsgator is free! You need to download it now.

Update: Here’s my clippings folder on ReadBurner. ~~It’s just showing up as ‘Link Blog’ despite me putting in my alias. Oh well, I’d prefer to have my name there, but at least it’s working!~~ Drew from ReadBurner responded to my issue & has already fixed it, thanks Drew! (see comments below)

Jaiku might just be going somewhere after all

Posted on June 13, 2008 by glenn

I just received an SMS from the Jaiku bot saying that their SMS service was back up & operational. I’ve sent a post via the SMS bot and it is working, so it would seem that maybe Google hasn’t completely abandoned the service after all. This would be good. I liked Jaiku when it was first launched, it had a few features that I feel Twitter lacks (channels for one, plus native image posting) without over-complicating the service.

I’ve always thought that with GMail, GTalk, Grand Central & Jaiku, Google had the building blocks for a really comprehensive communications platform. Add into that mix Google Apps & Google Docs and you’ve got a solid business system to work from.

Imagine if Google rolled GTalk, Jaiku and Grand Central into a single app/service. It would suddenly become a serious competitor to Skype if they could get the sound quality and pricing right. Skype was supposed to be the communications platform of the future (if you believed the hype), but due to a number of factors, including the acquisition by eBay and the fact they use a proprietary VOIP protocol, it hasn’t happened. GTalk runs on an open VOIP protocol, so you can talk to non-GTalk VOIP clients. If done right that could be one killer app.

Well, now we know who the most important FriendFeed users are

Posted on June 12, 2008 by glenn

You may think you’re a big user of FriendFeed, you may think you have heaps of followers and everything you submit gets liked & commented on. Sorry, that’s nothing. Google has spoken and the most important FriendFeed members are…

Deepak & Kevin, congratulations. Google says you’re more relevant than the About page, the FAQ or the public feed. That’s pretty impressive!

Additionally, if you go the ‘More results’ page you’ll note that the order goes like this:

Hands up anyone who’s surprised to see Robert at number 4? Anyone, anyone?

New release of Windows Live Writer

Posted on June 3, 2008 by glenn

No question for me that Windows Live Writer is the best product to come out of Microsoft’s Live project/platform/whatever. The Writer Zone blog announced today that there’s a new release available. It’s a CTP (Community Technology Preview), not a stable release because they’ve added a bunch of new SDK plugin stuff along with the updates to Live Writer itself.

Steve Hodson has a great post outlining all the new features in the application, there’s heaps of great stuff in there, including some little things like recognising what lighbox plugin you’ve got installed on your blog & allowing you to set the images to use this. The Auto Linking features is also cool, an automatic glossary. Download the installer here.

Development on a shoestring

Category Archives: Internet