smart computer use?

Found this one on Mashable today:

We’re in luck, because Google just finished their worldwide rollout of local search results on a map. So now all you have to do is search for what you want — coffee, gym, food, flowers, or dentist, for example — and Google will guess your location and display local business results for your search term on a map.

The first thing that came to mind was – wow, Google is now making navigating real life as easy as navigating through a video game world using an interactive map. That’s the gamer in me.

The reality is that this is just plain sweet. This is just another example of Googles continued addition of seemingly small things to their applications that make them a whole lot more usable for us end users.

I had the opportunity to read through a review of the Google Chrome 2.0 Beta over at TG Daily.

Personally, I like using Google Chrome because it is so simple. I tend to run it side-by-side with FireFox and have a certain lineup of sites that I like to view through Chrome just cause it seems so snappy!

From TG Daily:

Historically, moving from a 1.x to 2.0 version suggests a host of new improvements. Sadly in Google’s case, their Chrome 1.0 moving to 2.0 is just a marketing trick like the one we saw three months ago when Google removed the BETA label and proclaimed Chrome to be a finished product. On the bright side, however, 2.0 beta does feature a faster Javascript engine that could be reason enough to upgrade. They’ve also updated the WebKit rendering platform which enables full-page zoom and three other features that will find its audience. The question is: Will this “major” new version, once it comes out of beta, fall on deaf ears?

Certain feelings of disdain are felt through the article, mostly in regards to lack of features and to the strange handling of the Beta label by Google.

Speed is still one of the biggest draws for Google Chrome, and they are stepping this up by introducing a new Javascript engine dubbed “V8″.

Google claims that the first thing you might notice about this new beta is its speed improvement. How true! I’d started out by running beta on a low-end netbook and immediately noticed snappier performance. Google says the new beta performs 25 percent faster on Google’s V8 benchmark (known to be skewed towards Chrome’s V8 engine), and a whopping 35 percent faster on the common Sunspider Javascript benchmark — compared to its current stable version. In addition, the company claims that the browser is nearly twice as fast as the original beta version.

Another new feature that is covered in the review that I really like is the tab dragging and side-by-side capabilities. A quick demonstration:

Slick! I like the looks of that!

The other new features include:

• Full page zoom
• Auto-scrolling
• Auto-forms completion (TG claims it’s half-baked, haha)

One thing that I kinda chuckled about was their comments about the new features not necessarily justifying a new version:

If you’re like me, you’ll be wondering if four new features and a speedier Javascript engine justify the full 2.0 versioning. One would expect the beta version 2.0.169.1 of a browser to pack far more improvements over the current version 1.0.154.48, and if not then to be a 1.1 beta version.

This 2.0 beta simply updates the browser’s V8 Javascript engine, resulting in overall speed gains, and throws in the latest WebKit rendering platform that results in full-page zoom and auto scrolling. On top of that, the company coded two more feature, 1) forms auto-fill and 2) side-by-side view by tab dragging — of which 1) seems half-baked.

Overall, I’m going to be grabbing this 2.0 as soon as I can. I certainly like the speed of Chrome and see the new features as quite nice, even if they might not justify a full 2.0 release. Either way, it’s another browser to play with!

What the hell is Fmail?

I’ve a got a story for you.

Recently, I tried to punch in “gmail” in the Firefox address bar, thinking that since Firefox is smart it’ll just automatically take me over to my Gmail account.

Well… I typed Gmail wrong and instead typed in “fmail” and hit the Enter key.

Nuts. After watching the screen trying to load some web page, and watching in awe realizing that I had typed in “fmail” instead of “gmail”, I figured “What the heck. I’m just gonna sit and see what happens”.

Loading continues…

Fmail has a home page. There is a good ol’ landing page for Fmail.

It’s a Facebook email app. Nice. Alright, I guess I’m not really interested in email apps at this current time. After 8+ years of battling with trying to find the ultimate email app, I’ve ended up using a free web app provided by Google. Yeah, good times. I’m not going to even think about trying out Fmail, even though I ended up their by accident.

Cripes. I gotta be more careful when just entering simple keywords in the Firefox address bar.

Back to the World Series. Go Rays!

Alright. Maybe I was too harsh. I’ve quickly noticed that Fmail appears to interface with Gmail in Facebook. Props. That is a good platform to work from for Facebook, bringing in Gmail and all. I was too harsh. Yeah I like Fmail. I should maybe log into Facebook more often.

I guess you could say that I’m rather new to the Blackberry smartphone craze. Up until I got a Blackberry Curve, I really didn’t use a phone for much more than anything but making phone calls. I have a few months of Blackberry use under my belt now, and I have 4 blackberry apps that I find to be very useful, meaning that I use them frequently to good effect.

Gmail for Mobile

This is the single most usefull Blackberry app for me. I pipe all my email accounts into Gmail and use Gmail as my main email interface. This is because I use 3 different computers on a day to day basis and need to keep my email organized and accessible on a common platfrom from all three computers.

Gmail just makes handling my email so easy.

So… the first thing I did when I got a Blackberry Curve was to download the Gmail for Mobile app that allows me to use Gmail right on my phone. Brilliant!

It helps me to keep on top of my communications while on the go. Good stuff. Plus I like it a lot better than the built in email on the Blackberry Curve.

Google Maps for Mobile

Another Google product? Yes!

Google Maps on a Blackberry smartphone is just flat out useful. I rarely use map services on my computers because I’m kind of an on-the-fly traveler. When I’m out on the go, that is when I need to access map services, and being able to use Google Maps right on my Blackberry is very handy for finding places quickly.

Flickr for Mobile

This little app from Flickr allows me to upload photos right from my phone to my Flickr account. I can add descriptions and tags easily too. This is a useful app mainly because I like to take a lot of random photos with the camera on my Blackberry and then I can just upload them straight to Flickr and move on.

Flickr is nice too because I can set up photo streams on my blogs. What I am easily able to do is this:

1. Take a photo on the Blackberry
2. Upload it to Flickr and tag it properly
3. Watch the photo automatically get put into the photo stream on my blog

Great!

Yahoo Instant Messenger for Mobile

Being a web developer, I have a lot of contacts that are not local who use Yahoo Instand Messenger as a primary way to communicate with me.

Having this little chat app running on my phone allows me to communicate with my Yahoo contacts easily, without needing to be in front of my computer.

It’s very nice to be able to give direction to a programmer on a web project through my phone. It makes me more accessible to the developers and programmers that I work with and allows me to in turn let them work efficiently because they don’t need to sit around and wait for me to get back in front of a computer to chat with them for on-the-fly types of situations.

Bridging the gap

One thing that I noticed about my list is that all my most useful apps are allowing me to mimic actions that I would typically need a computer to do. This just goes to show how smartphones in general are starting to bridge the gap between what computers and phones can be used for.

Interesting.

There’s plenty more

There are a lot more useful Blackberry apps out there, I’m just scratching the surface here with my little 4 point list.

I hope that you might find this information useful, feel free to share any apps that you find useful on a regular basis.

So, I’ve recently noticed that this site is at page rank 4 for Google. Not the greatest, but could be worse. I don’t think any of my other sites register on the page rank scale yet. So… looking at that, I made the decision to put in more effort. Who wouldn’t? I was hoping one of my sites would eventually start gaining some status.

The leason to be learned here is that it is important to check this kinda stuff out. You can speculate all you want, but as soon as you see factual data show you how much weight a site has or how much a site converts, it’s all just speculation.

Now… I gotta figure out how to get some of the other sites up there in page rank.

Fun stuff.