New year, new decade. But we still haven’t gotten past everything Web 2.0. We’re still dealing with the consequences of the social media revolution. The question is, which side are you on?
Pull the brakes?
We’ve seen people dumping Facebook and still not getting the Twitter mania, but here’s something pretty recent: the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine is making the meme rounds for those who suffer from social networking overexposure.
Most of the time we just hop on the bandwagon, publish the smallest details of our lives with abandon, and regret our actions only when it’s too late. Sites like My Parents Joined Facebook and Lamebook capitalize on those slip-ups, and we’ve all heard stories of people getting fired for something they posted online. A clean break from it all could be the answer. Or an exaggeration.
Interestingly though, Facebook has blocked the Suicide Machine. Thanks for playing!
Shift into high gear?
Tina Roth Eisenberg a.k.a. Swiss Miss tweeted that her unborn son already has a “gmail account, 3 domain names and a twitter account”. Pretty sweet, I’d say.
Again, this isn’t really a new phenomenon, but not many people are looking that far ahead. After all, who knows what the Web will be like in five to ten years. If domain names will still be the way to access websites.
Or maintain cruising speed?
Most of us probably lie in the middle and won’t think to axe their accounts or be so protective of their online identities as though they were real estate. Even if your new year’s resolution for social networking isn’t anything drastic, it’s still important to stay on top of your privacy concerns and online persona. Have you tweaked Facebook’s Privacy Settings yet? How about all the authorized third-party apps that have access to your Twitter account? Do you Google yourself every once in a while to see how other people find and paint a picture of you?
Bonus: try integrating a workout into those beloved websites. Now there’s a productive idea.
Philipp Lensen of Google Blogoscope shares a comic about Google’s open source web browser called Chrome. TechCrunch has posted leaked screenshots too. I suggest you read all those links as they explain very nicely the many, many features Google Chrome has, then try it out for yourself.
With all the revolutionary new features planned for this web browser, do the rest of the factions of the more-than-a-decade-long Browser Wars stand a chance? Let me run through several points that may or may not convince you that the ‘Wars are over:
Reworking web browser concepts
“Chrome”. Google Chrome is so named because the developers wanted to weed out all the unnecessary interface elements that get in the way of an optimal user experience. Google is pretty good at this—see Gmail.
Omnibox. I’ve complained about this before. We have too many blank bars in our browsers, why not stick to just one? Combining the ambitiousness of Firefox 3’s “AwesomeBar”, search keyword shortcuts, and Google’s mighty search engine, users might not need any other button in the toolbar.
Independent tabs and sandboxing. Chrome runs tabs as separate processes to isolate any unruly behavior, whether it’s a memory leak or malicious code.
Using Google’s assets
Webpage testing. Google will use its large—an understatement—collection of crawled websites to test if their browser is working properly on them. It will prioritize by popularity to be efficient in testing the millions, billions, and trillions of pages, of course.
Search and anti-phishing. I’ve mentioned the Omnibox. Google will incorporate its search into the singular browser bar to make finding websites a breeze. (I think AwesomeBar sounds better though.) And since Google is a pretty good keeper of blacklisted sites, Chrome also detects when a website is potentially harmful.
Google Gears. Another obvious move. Google Gears was created to make web browsing more responsive and efficient by linking together the online and offline, so it’s mandatory for Chrome to incorporate this feature.
Inspired by the best of other worlds
WebKit. WebKit is possibly the fastest and smartest browser rendering engine out there. It powers Safari and several Mac OS X applications, as well as Google Android and now Google Chrome.
Privacy Mode. Microsoft is set to introduce a history-free, cookie-free browsing feature in Internet Explorer 8 called InPrivate (though everyone else calls it “porn mode”). Now Google follows suit with “incognito browsing”.
Better JavaScript performance. Mozilla recently announced it was able to dramatically improve JavaScript loading by up to 37.5 times, a feature coming to Firefox 3.1. (Another comparable feature to Firefox is the previously-mentioned Omnibox.)
Speed Dial. Opera has sported this feature since version 9.2.
On to the questions…
Why? My answer? Because they can. Google’s answer? Watch it here. Google is the epitome of a Web 2.0 company, having revolutionized search, then e-mail, then every other activity that can be done online. It rehashed old elements of the Internet, and doing so on a browser feels like a natural extension of their work.
Does Google Chrome comply with Web Standards? Since Chrome is going to run on WebKit, can we trust that we won’t have to debug for yet another browser? Unfortunately, it failed the ACID3 test (which, on the other hand, Safari passed in version 3.2.1).
Will Google end its “search bar relationship” with Firefox and other browsers? Now that Google has its own browser, does it still need to push for the search bar feature in browsers like Firefox, IE, and Safari? Probably not. But most users will still use Google—the search engine—one way or the other. And if you’ve watched the video linked above, Sergey Brin says the general goal is to get people to use “alternative” browsers such as Firefox. (Of course, assuming that Firefox and Chrome remain minor players in the game.)
Is this a milestone in web browser history? Put another way, is this the best thing since tabbed browsing? I can’t really answer a resounding yes. Web browsers must pay attention to detail and reduce bloat—it’s a difficult balance. Google Chrome is a lean browser that contains only a few notable features. We’ll have to wait for a few more releases to see where they’re going with this.
Do you trust Google to browse in its browser? Between a proof-of-concept security flaw discovered hours after the browser’s release and a questionable (but recently modified) license agreement, are you confident in using yet another Google product? This is perhaps the biggest question of all.
This post over at The Blog Herald got me thinking. It’s about geotagging posts, which means showing people where you are on a map.
Why? Well, sometimes it might be relevant to see where in the world you were when you published a post, especially if you’re doing a travel-focused blog.
However, do you really want people to know where you are? Tabloids in Sweden ran a story on burglars using blogs to find out who was on vacation, and then broke into their houses. While that might happen for sure, I believe this particular story was a way to scare people into buying issues, reading about those scary blog things.
That being said, being at least a bit anonymous is what a lot of people find appealing with blogs.
Would you consider geotagging your blog posts?
Matt Mullenweg, of WordPress fame, is mad, and this time I’m not bitching about not giving designer credits in the upcoming (?) WordPress.com theme marketplace. No, this is even zanier.
You see, Matt recently published a post titled Top Emailers on his blog, listing the ten people that sent him most e-mails in 2007. Toni Schreider popped him 996 of ‘em by the way, he tops it.
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