I’m going to keep this one short because I don’t have a lot of time and I’m short on energy for this here topic. But it goes something like this, “Dear, All-You-Chromy-Whiners: Stop it. You’re embarrassing yourselves.”
I said it once and I’ll say it again — Google is not terribly interested in entering the web browser business. They do, however, want to ensure that their applications/services run quickly and smoothly in whatever browser their visitors elect to surf with. Surprise! So, along came Chrome, and just in time for the release of their _Android_ mobile phone package. Imagine that.
So all these so-called tech bloggers shouldn’t be totally flabbergasted that the Chrome Engineers didn’t implement a bunch of tiny tweaks to enhance every single product produced by Google. That wasn’t the point of the release. Google is not a an overnight venture start-up dedicated to one product. They’re a multi-billion dollar Brand committed to making money, which they do by selling adverts through online services. Correct me if I’m right.
AND, umm…do you get why there was no Mac release? Or at least why it wasn’t a release one priority.
If Chrome catches on, demanding reasonable market share, and there is a need for further development, then Google will implement damn near everything that everyone is crying about. But until that happens, let’s all be happy with the current EULA update and be about our merry ways. If we really want to make a difference, let’s bang on the doors of our current browsers to implement all the cool features of crhome. (You can get most of the Chrome features in Firefox already through Addons.)
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure I have more than one account on both Myspace and Facebook, all of which I use to say ridiculously nonsensical things to a bunch of people I don’t know. Sort of like my blog, except Myspace and Facebook don’t allow me to run google adsense, or really do anything I might want to do that they don’t approve of. Including, if you’re on Facebook, spamming a hundred of my closest contacts. What the deuce?
This isn’t about me, surprisingly. This is about the Facebook’s spammer-fighting system. If you slip up by emailing too many of your friends, adding people too quickly, or giving a poke too many, then you’re likely to have your account automatically disabled. It’s a fun little game. “stay in touch, but not too in touch, and not too quickly, and definitely not with too many people at one time.” Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Does it?
On the other hand, we have Myspace, and I’m not even sure I can say anything about it because I don’t have anything nice to say. Which is to say you’re just as likely to find stupid people on either of the two social networking platforms.
Ultimately, the comparison is stupid because both are essentially the same thing with the exception of their user base. I won’t make a bunch of stereotypes, but Facebook did a good thing in limiting its early users to a very specific group of people. However, if you’re going to generate content on the Internet, do it in your own space. Use web 2.0 services to market your own brand and product, which in most cases is yourself.
In an effort to support the efforts of th@talldude (Shawn Kirsch), I’m taking another moment to share with you the really cool Firefox addon known as SocialBrowse which allows you to easily follow the liked web pages of peers who are also active SocialBrowse fans.
Shawn’s intent is to expose other active page taggists, the people who don’t make the leaderboards but still enjoy sharing when they have time or find something worthwhile. (I’ll admit, I click through a lot more SB links than I share.) And after seeing Shawn’s post, I decided to be more active in supporting a service I enjoy.
One of my favorite features is seeing which links on a page have already been tagged by fellow SocialBrowsers. That’s pretty cool, and saves me a bunch of time because I am more likely to follow page links that have already been tagged by people I’ve decided are worth following.
But let’s wrap this up. I’m a fan of the service. I have a few invites left. I’m recommending you give it a try.
It’s true, it’s true. All anyone has been talking about today is the latest and greatest from the online Interweb beast we call Google. Of course, it’s only being talked about online and not so much because we’re actually interested, but because it’s the thing to do.
Chrome is Google’s newest piece of potential greatness and it’s coming in the form of a top notch web browser, but we’re mostly left saying “so what?”. Even if Chrome wasn’t going to be the fastest most secure browser on the market (which it will be), people like us would still take it for a spin and be in awe of its features because that’s the type of fanfolk we are — we love new tech and we really love it from Google.
The truth of the matter is, Chrome is likely to take market share from Firefox than Internet Explorer. As it is now, more than half the Internet surfers are still using some crippled version of IE, which is to say, “if Firefox is clearly the superior browser then why aren’t more people using it?” I’m guessing it has something to do with regular people being less than bothered by their current default browser. And this upsets me because we’re on the verge of having really awesome web browsers, except most people are a long way from using them. THAT drives me crazy.
Except, thankfully, Google isn’t interested in entering the web browser world so much as it is interested with ensuring a high-quality platform for its many cloud service products (smartly so.) So they’ve written and tested loads of code, including the very important V8 javascript engine, to help along the current scene. Regardless of whether or not Chrome catches on and is adopted by everyone, the source is Open so that both Firefox and IE can take the highlights from Chrome and improve their browsers. At least they will if they know what’s good for them.
It isn’t very often that I come to you with one of my many Firefox Add-ons, but this latest one from Mozilla Labs is pretty darn great and you need to know about it. It’s called Ubiquity, and the following video will give you just about everything you need to know. Check it out.
They’re using it on a Mac, but don’t let that throw you off. I’m running it on an XP box and so far haven’t had any problems. Support for Linux isn’t yet available, but I’m sure it’s just around the corner.
Install Ubiquity. Take it for a spin. Let me know what you think.
