Author: Zealus

Categories
internet

Google Chrome Is On The Scene

 

This Blog in Google Chrome
This Blog in Google Chrome

So the Google got themselves a powerful ally. Aside from heavily sponsoring Firefox Google has now created another entity of its own.

Not to bash Google in any way, but the product (even though it’s beta) seems scarce of features. My personal annoyances follow, but in general – I am overly satisfied with the way this new browser works. The speed alone can make up for half of the list below…

– I want to see is the status bar. Aha! It only shows up when needed – i.e. when you mouse over the link or during the page load process. Neat, but a little… unexpected.

– I want to block that annoying advertising. Please, give me my AdBlock! Now! I mean it!

– I am Firefox addict, so right-clicking on the link and choosing SECOND option must open new tab. I explicitly trained myself to avoid first option – to open link in a new window, I want my links in new tabs. Please, let me switch these options.

– Flock is a foul creature, a bastard son of Firefox and social media that no one wants to deal with. Please don’t use it’s annoying yellow information bars on top – I get enough of those in IE 7.

– I really miss all the progress bars… Even from “teh dialup times” those bars were entertaining – for all those moments when I was patiently waiting for page to load. My cable connection isn’t directly hooked into Tier 1 Premium Bandwidth provider, so I get to wait sometimes. Please, give me back my nostalgic piece of history…

– It’s 2008 for crying out loud. Why do I still have to go into settings and change default encoding from Western ISO-8859-1 to Unicode UTF-8 ? Is there any specific reason for it or the whole world just started speaking Engish exclusively?

– Last, but not least. Could you possibly change that annoying blue-and-white color scheme? No, green and white would be even more annoying.

There are couple of more issues I probably missed from the first glance, but overall I have a feeling that this is a very robust product with plenty of features to follow. It may look scarce on features, but doesn’t Google’s own first page look the same?

P.S. This post has been created in Google Chrome… 🙂

Categories
social

More Gadgets, Less Fun

As I have posted before, gadgets make great conversation pieces. However, therein lies the problem.

More often then not I catch people being deeply into their Blackberries (mostly), Sidekicks or other smarter-then-average phones. People reading something. People zealously typing away. People so drawn into their gadgets that they hardly notice anything around them.

On the express bus I am taking to work sometimes it takes two or three “Excuse me” to make a person move their feet away from the very narrow passage between rows of seats. And last night I missed my stop because I was reading something off my PDA.

By being drowned into small PDA screens (around 2 – 3 inches on the average), we develop a tunnel vision, ignoring anything that happens not directly in front of us. Usually this leads to a lot of non-efficient decisions, inability to think outside of that tube of attention. TV has similar effects on people’s attention span.

What I essentially want is a larger screen on my smart phone. Heck, I’d go for a screen of a flexible size.

Categories
cellular

Blackberry vs. iPhone

RIM’s BlackBerry is the leader in the smartphone market today, but now that the iPhone 3G has become more attractive to both consumers and the enterprise, RIM needs to stop the iPhone onslaught as soon as possible.

There’s no argument about it – devices designed as business tools will work out better for business tasks then devices designed as status symbol. From my personal standpoint – the iPhone isn’t good or bad or evil – it’s just useless.

When you are indeed a business professional your tasks include sending and receiving e-mails, checking and updating schedules, going to meetings, taking notes and, possibly, sharing your thoughts with peers. While passive parts can easily be done with any device, including iPhone, the active parts, that include typing or some other kind of active interacting the Blackberry is ahead by leaps and bounds.

Instead of thoroughly analyzing let’s do the funny thing – let’s look at the way both devices are being positioned in minds of customers. In other words – what do we know about these devices from advertisings, promotions and other PR stunts.

Anything you know about the iPhone is related to entertainment – you can watch YouTube, listen to music, browse the web, run cool Apps. Any poster you can find projects iPhone as a fun cool gadget that will bring envy to your peers eventually making them go through same artificially-induced demand curve that ends with 10 days wait for shiny new thing.

Whatever you see or hear about Blackberry has nothing fancy, cool or entertaining about it. The device is much bulkier, calling it pretty would be an overstatement and it has that vibe about it that you’re connected to your job 24×7. Everything you know about Blackberry is about getting more productive on the go.

Surprised? Did’t think so. The distinct difference between the entertainment center posing as occasional work desk and work power horse occasionally serving as a music player cannot be missed.

So what’s in it for small business? Whether you need to project your status image among collegues and peers – go with the iPhone, you won’t miss. If you need to get the job done – the Blackberry should be your answer.

P.S. Neccessary disclosure: I own and alternate between Samsung Blackjack (creature very similar to Blackberry) and AT&T Tilt.