I just got my first sad tab in Google Chrome. Surprisingly it was in Gmail and it cascaded to Google reader. All other tabs were fine. You can reload the sad tab which is pretty cool if you haven’t just lost a long email. Still it’s better than losing all your tabs and you are always just a reload away from getting back what you were looking at.
Aw, Snap! is the message. This is just so Google. No cryptic error message, just the reality of the situation.
Adobe Creative Suite 4 is set for a September 23 release date. Adobe has a registration form up for a September 23 web broadcast of CS4. I always look forward to the Adobe products, especially Photoshop. This is a program I have grown to really know and I’ve used it since version 3. Even though I love this program, their are some little issues that bother me, so I thought with the release coming up I would create my personal wish list for CS4.
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Google Chrome was officially released today and of course being the Geek that I am I had to download it at work and at home and yes I am writing this blog entry from Chrome. Although I have not spent a long time with it, so far I like it, and for a first beta launch it is remarkably polished. This of course is nothing new for Google — they have a reputation of releasing extremely polished beta products. I also fully expect Chrome to be in beta for at least two years, but by then everyone will long since forgotten that it is a beta.
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The web is buzzing with news of a Google browser. The news was launched via a 39 page comic. The browser is called Google Chrome, and at last check the site was offline but rumour has it that it will be back online tomorrow. Google has also announced on their blog that they sent out the news a bit early by accident. Personally I think they may have just been trying to generate blog sphere buzz and it has worked
This is really big news and probably really bad news for Microsoft. Google has already released Gears a browser add-on which allows Google to jump start browsers ahead into more modern standards. Chrome will use webkit, the same engine that Safari uses, but it will not use the webkit Javascript engine. It will use it’s own, which should make apps run much faster and with more features.
Could this really be Google’s entrance into the desktop market? I believe the future of applications is online. Everything is headed in that direction. More and more people are accessing their apps and data in multiple places and on multiple devices, and right now the major player in that space is Google.
Update: Google Chrome - first impressions are the most important
More info at TechCrunch:
Meet Chrome, Google’s Windows Killer
First Images of Google Chrome
No Joke: Google Introduces The Chrome Browser With A Cartoon
We all know that spam is just bad and wrong and plagues us daily with useless garbage. Why don’t we feel the same about telemarketing?
I recently got a new cell phone and was going to transfer my regular phone number to the new cell, but then thought about how many telemarketing calls I get a week. On weekends sometimes I get 2 or 3 on Saturdays alone. There is constantly messages left on my machine too. These are not places I do business with either. It’s always a survey, or I have been selected for a really great interest rate, or if I could just give a few moments of my time. No I can’t give any of my time. My time is important to me, especially on the weekend. No you can not have one moment of my time, if you are my client and you want to pay me for my time then fine, I’ll hear you out, otherwise buzz off and stop calling me. I am always as polite as I can be, but I do interrupt them as soon as I realize it’s a sales pitch. I usually cut in and say I’m very sorry I’m not interested and could you please take me off your call list. I do not allow the conversation to go beyond this point, but usually as I’m putting the receiver down I can still here the sales person on the other end pleading for one more moment of my time just before the click of the receiver.
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If you own an iPhone you may have noticed that you can bookmark websites and add them to your home screen. These are called Webclip Icons and they are either a snapshot of the website or an actual website icon similar to a favicon that shows up in a desktop browsers address field. If you want to add an iPhone icon to your site it’s very easy to do.
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In a survey by Wired, Canadians may have one of the fastest 3G iPhone experiences in the world. There’s even a cool interactive map of the world showing the results. I guess in the case of Rogers expensive does mean better. That said, it always makes me chuckle when I see the extremely high download claims followed by ridiculous limitations, although the iPhone has admittedly made Canadian options better. Basically we have great speeds that allow you to instantly use up your bandwidth allocation and pay the telecoms big overage fees.
I have to admit that with the smallest 400 MB package I can easily surf, read email and chat every day without worrying about going over my limit. I could however easily surpass this limit if I did not stay away from YouTube and streaming radio, something that I don’t really need but none the less would be nice to have. Luckily for me, Toronto has a lot of WiFi hotspots. That said, I still look forward to the day that the big three have more competition, and that day is approaching quickly.
Another interesting tidbit is that many of the 3G connection issues iPhone users are facing are now being reported on the Blackberry Bold. This shows that the issues may be with the carriers and not the handsets themselves. As much as I and others love to blast Rogers, my Fido (Fido is owned by Rogers) connection has been fantastic, and I have only experienced one dropped call in the three weeks I’ve owned an iPhone. With the price I pay I would expect nothing less.
The blog sphere has really beat up the Canadian cell carriers over the past few months and rightly so, but I and many others still gave in and bought into pricey long term iPhone plans with loads of hidden charges. At the end of the day it just seems like the Canadian carriers only goal is to confuse their customers into spending more money than they actually want too and further destroy their brand. One can only hope that the new national carrier Globalive will make a difference. Right now they run yakMobile which seems to have honest pricing. By honest pricing I don’t mean cheap (although they do have cheap pricing), I mean I want to pay what they say I will pay on the plan I have chosen. Why can’t all these useless fees just be part of the total fee, because that’s what they are. They aren’t special fees to the government or taxes, they are just carrier fees that are part of your plan but are not listed in the total price of your plan so it looks more attractive than it is. It’s dishonest advertising.
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It seems like FaceYourManga.com has gone mega viral, so viral that one by one my Twitter buddies are being transformed into their cartoon equivalents.
FaceYourManga is a site where you can create a manga / anime style avatar of yourself. The sheer number of options from the type of head you want, colour of skin, and other characteristics like beards, glasses, lines and sideburns leaves ample room for creativity. Only a few of my Twitter followers have converted themselves into cartoons, but so far they do look a lot like there real human counter parts.
Anyone can make one and within moments of completion your new avatar will be emailed to you. Be warned though that you cannot go back and edit your avatar once completed. This would be a nice feature and would probably make the site a little more sticky. This one drawback is why mine has brown eyes instead of blue.
Although this trend may be short lived, it’s kind of cool seeing all these unique cartoons of people you know showing up everywhere, so go try it out, it only takes a few minutes to create one.
Over the past few days the web has been awash with rumours of the HTC Dream, a Google Android phone. Well it looks official now, HTC will be releasing the phone very soon and it may be available as soon as September. It has received F.C.C. certification and T-Mobile the US carrier will be first to have it. No word yet on which Canadian carrier will have it or when.
Even though I have an iPhone now I am eagerly awaiting the reviews for the first Android phones. Competition can only be good for everyone. Apple gave the smartphone industry the kick it needed to start innovating and now things are about to be kicked up a notch with Android entering the scene. HTC also seems really serious about releasing great phones as they have proven with the HTC Touch Diamond which was based on Windows mobile. The UI of the Touch Diamond was nicely designed, but only skin deep, hopefully Android gives them the flexability to really flex their muscle and serve up an even better UI.
Google has also finally released an updated Android SDK today.
