smart computer use?

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!

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I’ve been relying on the internet now for a while for both my career as a web developer and also as a source of information and entertainment. Good times…

Average Internet Usage

I probably spend a lot more time online than an “average” internet user… but that could all be relative. What is average internet usage? Hard to say probably. I’ve seen polls and studies that eluded to the fact that average Internet users use the Internet from maybe 2-3 hours per day.

That’s not too bad. Plenty of time to read some news, check email, maybe browse around a bit, and so on.

Now… I look at how long I am online each day… at least 8 hrs on most days, mainly due to work and extra-curricular Internet activities… but mostly from work.

Anyways, all this time online has given me a pretty focused list of the top things that annoy Internet users. This list might be tilted towards my own usage and experience, so feel free to comment and add anything that you might feel annoys you about Internet use.

Ok, Here’s My “Top 5 Things That Annoy Internet Users”

#5 – Email SPAM

I’m starting this off at #5 because SPAM can be addressed somewhat easily these days with some of the better SPAM filtering services that are available. But it’s still out there.

SPAM is something that I have to deal with every day. My clients SPAM problems even get to work their way into my life as they seek me out for info on how to stop SPAM.

Luckily I’ve found Gmail to be rather good at helping me filter my SPAM. The SPAM folder in my Gmail account, which pulls in email for around 10 of my email accounts, hovers between 2,000 and 2,500 SPAM emails that have been filtered out on average over the 30 span that Gmail keeps SPAM in the SPAM folder.

Good stuff. Glad I’m not manually trying to handle all that SPAM anymore.

#4 – Pop-up or Annoying Ads

I don’t think ads are bad as a whole. People need to make money on the Internet and ads help do that.

What I don’t like is the highly obtrusive ads that either pop-up or have other highly annoying behaviors. The wrong type of ad implementation, even on a good web site, can just flat out kill the user experience.

I would guess that you probably feel the same!

#3 – Hard-to-use Online Forms

How many times have you tried to fill out a form on a web site to register for something, only to commit a validation error somehow (not putting enough characters in your username, forgetting to fill a required field) and end up having to either re-fill a bunch of fields or somehow manage to erase all the stuff you just entered?

Many web sites have horrible form usability. Some forms don’t tell you what is required or what is valid data to enter. Some do but it might be unclear as to the specifics. Some forms have wacky tab ordering, so that when you hit the tab key the cursor doesn’t jump to the next logical field. Some forms somehow manage to erase data that you took 5-10 minutes to fill out if you don’t correctly hit the back button or something.

I don’t know how many times I’ve become frustrated with the usability of a web form. Usually it’s the larger forms that kill me when they don’t work right, but any size form can set me off if it’s unusable. Granted, there are many sites that handle forms great… but there are way more that will do something to test your patience.

#2 – Too Many User Accounts and Passwords

I have a spreadsheet (yes, a spreadsheet) to manage my various Internet accounts and passwords. This spreadsheet probably houses over a hundred different username/password combos that I need to remember for various web sites… online banking, eBay, blog site admins, forum accounts… and the list goes on and on.

Google kinda helps me out by letting me use the same username/password combo for all their services such as Gmail, Google Analytics, Google Adsense, and the like. But that is a very small chunk of my total password collection. I’m sure there are people out there that have user account collections that dwarf my measly 100 row + spreadsheet.

#1 – Connection interruptions and outages!

There really is nothing more annoying than your Internet connection dropping when you are needing it to work. Considering the short attention span of most Internet users, I would say that even 5 minutes of downtime on an Internet connection is enough to drive somebody insane and crazy. Especially when you are trying to do something urgent or are feeling very little patience on the day as a whole.

As I type this I’m even battling with a spotty Cable One internet connection. “We love to make you smile” I think is their slogan. Yeah right. If a bad Internet connection makes me smile than good job CableOne… but it doesn’t.

A bonus CableOne rant…

Plus, while I’m on my CableOne rant… I don’t even feel like calling support anymore because they always make me un-plug and re-plug the modem and also disconnect all my cabling to the modem and then reconnect it (huge pain in the ass).

They make me do this each time I call in, even when I call in repeatedly over several days due to something that is not my problem. It’s like they don’t even have a log that says I called a few times and they already made me unplug my modem and take all my cabling apart a few times over the last few days. Cripes.

But, I guess I’m not the only person who is dissatisfied with their Internet provider. CableOne probably works good for some folks too. But not me.

Peace.

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Just recently, Darwin has experienced the powers of the Internet and has found his papers published upon it.

The first draft of Charles Darwin’s “On The Origin Of Species” is among a wealth of papers belonging to the intensely private man who changed science being published on the Internet on Thursday for the first time.

Comprising some 20,000 items and 90,000 images, the release on http://darwin-online.org.uk is the largest in history, according to the organizers from Cambridge University Library which holds all the Darwin papers.

The rest of the article, titled “Darwin’s private papers get Internet launch“, can be read at newsdaily.com.

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Imagine that. A striptease, a trojan, and code cracking. Not as kinky as it sounds. I guess this whole thing is just an example of the dark underbelly of the internet.

A nifty little program that Trend Micro detects as TROJ_CAPTCHAR.A disguises itself as a strip-tease game, wherein a scantily clad “Melissa” agrees to take off a little bit of her clothing. However, for her to strut her stuff, users must identify the letters hidden within a CAPTCHA.

Read the rest here.

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This is some good stuff, www.ff0000.com, the web site of Red Interactive. It’s fun for a business to business web site.

Take on the roll of a strange, drawn looking character and run around the screen interacting with other site users.

Yet another way to kill some time while sitting in front of a computer. You’ll have a good amount of fun flying up to the cloud line and typing communications to other site users, if anybody else is visiting the site at the same time.

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