Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love you tomorrow... your'e only a day away...
O, yes! Just one more day away and I will finally get to give all my loving to that phone that I've been wanting to own since it was released last year. I introduce to you my beloved Samsung Omnia.
It's sleek. It's glossy. It's simply sweet and I'm loving it!
Here are a couple more pics of the Omnia compared to two of its competitors, the iPhone and the HTC Touch Diamond.
Is it just me or does Facebook really feels like giving license to stalk one another?
Think about it. The site just goes on and publish every single action everyone within your network has ever done even prior to your being a member. You get to see who's friends with who and when; you'll see someone's in a relationship with someone; you see who wrote on who's wall and who commented on who's comments, etc. etc. etc... And when you log in, the first thing it asks is: "What are you Doing right now?" Now, what's that all about?
Just last night me and two office mates were discussing this hype about social networking and I totally agree with one of them who said that these sites are being used as data miners.
Sign up and the sites ask you tons of personal questions; it wants to know your preferences, hobbies, interests and whatchamacallits. These information are powerful and indispensable tools for marketing.
Not that there's anything illegal about that; none that I know of, at least. In fact it's an ingenious way of doing things. Instead of them paying big bucks for services that do real data mining and research on market preferences, they do it themselves and get possibly more accurate data from willing participants. Instead of paying people to fill out surveys (and these people are really just doing it for the money which gives a high probability that the data that provide are inaccurate), they get people to willingly give out information they need and instead of them trying hard to find people who would give them the data, they let the members do that for them. It's a win-win situation. Simply genius, no?
I might be wrong and I may have just given them an idea on how to better use their sites, but it just isnt such a far-off idea. But, hey! Who am I to complain? I signed myself up for the service, didn't I?
This is not an in-depth review of the browser, nor will it be a head-to-head comparison with any browsers in the market, but comparing it to other browsers can't be helped, of course.
Interface
The first thing I noticed in Google Chrome's interface is that it didn't have a title bar. In it's place is the primary element of the browser: the tabs. It's remarkably minimal design includes no full-scale menu bar; the simple controls can all be found in two icons to the right of the address bar - which, by the way, also functions as the search bar. It's a clutter-free interface, no unnecessary and distracting elements that take up your screen space.
Google Chrome was designed to improve on the way other browsers handle JavaScript, one of the technologies used to make Web pages more interactive and more like desktop software applications. This focus makes sense because JavaScript can eat up computer processor power, and if poorly used by a Web site, can bring down the browser. However, this focus on JavaScript misses the point on better browser performance.
When browsers slow down, this is usually attributed to JavaScript hogging up system resources. Yet JavaScript is not the real culprit but another technology used to make Web pages more interactive: Adobe's Flash plug-in. It's the program-within-a-program that plays YouTube videos and those annoying "splash" pages that some sites employ to dazzle you with animations before letting you do anything useful on the site.
The Flash plug-in uses tremendous amounts of computing power. It eats up processor time to the point where nothing is left for other programs and does this even without you doing anything. Simply having a page with embedded objects played by Flash open will hog power from your system's CPU.
This is a problem, not just with Chrome, but with all browsers. Luckily, there are plug-ins for the other browsers that allow you to prevent Flash files from automatically running on page load. This is what Chrome lacks. It's controls are quite basic and they don't allow much customization either.
On the other hand, Chrome allows you to diagnose problems with rogue plug-ins easily. It features its own task manager that tells you what pages are using up which resources and allow you to get rid of that particular resource-hogger without closing the whole browser.
I noticed that Chrome may sometimes be a bit unstable - understandable as it's still a beta. Browsing through the history, for some reason, may sometimes cause the program to crash; and when Chrome crashes it doesn't allow you to restore your previous session unlike other browsers.
FeaturesChrome includes a number of features that appear in other browsers, like a private browsing mode called Incognito, tools for Web developers to view and troubleshoot source code, and the ability to restore all tabs from a previous session. I've already mentioned that Chrome allows tab isolation where you can shut down a trouble-making tab without taking down the whole browser. Internet Explorer 8 also offers this feature but Chrome takes a notch further by adding its own task manager. Unfortunately, this needs manual configuration.
Another bright feature from Chrome is the download box at the bottom of the screen. It lets you access your downloaded files and put them where you want them to be. The download progress can be seen from this box so no more separate window for downloads which makes tracking easier. You may also view all the downloads on a separate tabs; again, conveniently no separate window for downloads.
However, there are a couple of features that Chrome lacks. Bookmark management is not as easy and the browser does not offer any way to email links. This is probably because it's still a beta, but it would have been nice to see these features early in the browser's development.
I just had to post this and let everyone know how great this browser is.
It's an all-in-one solution: tabbed browser, email client, bit-torrent manager, feed reader, and so many other things in one package. It's even got its own fraud and malware protection built in.
Here are some of the features particularly like:
Mouse Gestures: This is my most-beloved feature in Opera. You won't find this in any other browser.Common actions like moving forward, backward, or openning a new tab is accomplished by simply moving your mouse. Wonderful!
These are just some of the great features of this browser. One blog entry won't cover all the good stuff.
Really! The best way to discover Opera is to try it.
