richardschwarz - now it's personal!

Friday, July 10, 2009

Google Operating System... but not Android

Google has announced (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html) that it will be creating an Operating System specifically built for netbooks. It's not hard to see, though, Google expanding upon this over time to drive the OS onto the more traditionally bloated area of laptops and desktops. I'd be interested, for example, in putting it on (at least in a virtual machine) on my desktop for a look-see.

Some points of interest:

It will be built around the linux kernel - I bolded that for a reason. They're not building it around a linux distribution (eg. gOS or ubuntu etc).
From what I can gather, it will be a new windowed version of Chrome (the browser) running on top of that kernel - nice sandboxing of apps, just like in Chrome
It will be aimed 100% at web-apps only. This is obviously good for google - master of the web app domain
It will be open source. This means more security (read all about that here)
They've already got some hardware support (link)
Being made by google, and being based on chrome, you can bet that there will be a host of privacy concerns. Hmmmm. Better start watching for black 4WDs and people wearing sunglasses on cloudy days. :)

Obviously, there's a lot more points to note, but you can read about it in the google blog, or by doing a google search.

For those of you who are conspiracy freaks (like me), you could be forgiven for thinking that this is just one more step to google taking over the world!

But I love it.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Chrome 2

Love it. It's like version 1, but better, faster and more... just more.

It's fast, really fast. I know that I've said that about Firefox before, but Chrome is really speeding along. I'm currently posting this using Chrome. Nice.It loads faster than either Firefox or IE 7 0r 8, which is saying something. You'd think the people who make the OS would be able to make it move.

I've noticed a few issues, though. While it is built on the open source project Chromium, it still uses a lot of personal information hooks (which google assures us are not too damning and/or permanent) including a unique ID for the download of Chrome that you're using.

Another issue is that of plugins. Nowadays, there's a lot of stuff out there which is quite useful to view in a browser (like pdf files) and Chrome, or at least my Chrome, won't open them. Not surprisingly things like flash and flvs (they are the file of choice behind most video sharing sites like youtube) do play, and play well, but the other, less googled plugins just aren't there.... yet.

Google has said that they are planning on building in a plugin architecture, but I understand their hesitancy in doing so.

There are two main problems with browsers including plugins: security and speed.

Security becomes an issue when you allow someone else to add scripts (often with a great amount of power/priveledges) to an otherwise secure browser. This reduces the possibility of a browser vendor being able to assure users of the security of their program. They have no power to control what the programmers of the plugin add to the code. And at the moment, Google have scored on the security issue. Its a complete redesign from the other browsers out there. I like that.

Secondly a browser will slow down the more plugins are added - this is simply because it is more program code which has to be run and stored in memory. A plain vanilla installation of Firefox is blazingly fast. Add a few plugins (say 10 or so) and it becomes less weildly and more labourious.

Anyway, at the moment I've got three browsers going: IE, Firefox and Chrome. IE because I don't have much choice, Firefox for the plugins (I do need them from time to time) and Chrome, because I like its user interface and its speeeeeeeeed.

Make up your own mind. After all, it is yours.

New layout

Small post...

I've altered the layout a little and added a tag list. If you're at all interested in a segment of the blog, like say Open Source, now you can quickly isolate those posts having anything to do with it. You can also subscribe to it in your favourite feed reader too.

As a part of the tag list, I've stripped out a lot of superflous tags(labels) and tried to streamline the whole scenario. There really isn't any excuse for poor usability. Other than not caring. Hmmm.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Google Wave - A new (and better) form of communication

I thought I'd break my hiatus from blogging to bring this to you all. Firstly, because I'm really excited, and secondly because I'm really really excited.

Lars and Jens Rasmussen (the guys who basically created uber cool google maps) have gotten together, with a few other aussies in Sydney (yay!!!) and have come up with Google Wave.

"Uh huh?!" I hear you mutter at your screen(s). Well it is a really cool new communication form that kind-of melds email, IM, blogging, facebooking (or Orkuting for all you google freaks out there) and all those other types of messaging together.

Look, I really can't explain it enough, except to make one of my fatefull pronouncements (like the one I made back when google was next to unknown) and state simply - this will redefine the way you communicate online, and it will be the next big thing. Oops. That's done it.

No seriously, this isn't like "this is the year of Linux", or like "Duke Nukem Forever will come out, sometime"... this is for real. Even if no-one else reading this ever takes it up (silly people) I will.

Find out why by going to the google wave page (http://wave.google.com/) and watch the video and read all about it. Really - it's 1 hour 20 minutes in length, but if you're anything like me, you'll be sold after the first 10. And it actually makes sense.

BTW: this is the same video below.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Not blogging for a while.... AGAIN!!!!

Struggling to make stuff work at the moment. Stupid internets [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internets]. What a silly bunch of tubes![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes]

Anyway, lots of plans to update this again - and more often... YAY!

But not right now.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Human fail of the Turing Test

Perfect proof that the Turing test doesn't really test machine intelligence... it simply tests the ability to hold a decent conversation. This means that some humans will fail. Epically.

I'm not usually one to hold Dilbert (http://www.dilbert.com) up as a noteworthy soothsayer of Artificial Intelligence, however, Scott Adams summed up my bemusement (there are plenty of other less savoury words which could be used instead... but I won't use them here - it'll hurt the Nets) at what some people will say.