Activity for June 26

Review - Google Chrome for Windows
2.0.169.1 (Mar 16, 2009)

coover: RTFM. Hit CTRL+B to open and close the bookmarks bar.

Chrome is a great browser and most of the negative reviews here are from fearmongers.

The real debate here is whether you like the rendering engine from Mozilla, IE, Opera, or the webkit rendering engine. If you enjoy the speed of webkit and the js engine that Chrome uses, then it goes down to interface. Chrome is an excellent browser and I use it and Firefox mainly.

I find Chrome to be a more enjoyable browsing experience as it is very fast and more featured than Safari and less cluttered than Opera. I find it to be weak for web developers as many of Firefox's plugins are indispensable to me as a developer.

[shrugs]

And as far as 'Who is Trusting Chrome? Who is Trusting Google?' -- many people. Google exists to make money and to improve the web. While you may not believe the latter, it is in Google's best interest to fulfill their mission statement as they have developed many trust based relationships between themselves and other businesses. If this trust is broken, then it hurts Google financially. Unlike Microsoft and many other companies, Google is a company whose message and actions define both who they are and how successful they are.
Review - Google Chrome for Windows
2.0.158.0 (Jan 23, 2009)

Fantastic WebKit browser. I'm a developer and enjoy the DOM inspector and really just enjoy the efficient, fresh take on the browser interface. Rendering is extremely reliable and fast.

I'm still at a loss as to why people like 'Sven' claim that this is 'worse browser out there'. I think it is 'great browser out there.'
Review - Miranda IM
0.8.0 Test Build 26 (Jan 5, 2009)

I love Miranda and have used it for a very long time. Recently I switched to Digsby as it DOES already have social media plugins as well as a more organized menu system and is a more pleasant overall experience. Digsby does have tons of opt-out applications in it and a few things that a pro user will want to disable (the creators have made it to utilize distributed computing when your computer is idle as a way to monetize Digsby).

So - my Miranda rating is down from a 5 to a 4 because there is real competition in the multi-im client world. Miranda needs to polish up a bit and start adding features and making itself more viable to end users!
Review - Instantbird for Windows
0.1.3 (Dec 19, 2008)

To everyone who thinks this has great potential, take the time to try 'Digsby', which BN had posted a few days ago... too many Multi-IM clients are focused on standards compliant application framework development and the end result suffers and is neglected. I'm passionate about the benefits of Miranda IM... hate Pidgin due to GTK and the feeling that the project has lost momentum and interest (right when audio/video became a focus in Google Summer of Code)... and well, Digsby impresses me GREATLY. It does everything that this app is setting out to do, and it's already available with a lower memory footprint.

And Kylde, Digsby does not install malware. It installs a way for the organization to generate revenue. As a developer, I can appreciate their model as it is transparent and for users like you and I, we can opt out because we actually -care-. There's nothing malicious about Digsby.

http://blog.digsby.com/archives/68

"Lastly, we have made this module 100% optional. You can disable it in the main menu by going to “Help > Support Digsby” and disabling the “Help Digsby Conduct Research” option. We linked to this blog post in the FAQ section of our website and we’ll be adding more info explaining this feature into Digsby itself, as well as, more extensive options like the ability to set how much of your CPU to use."
Review - SeaMonkey for Windows
2.0 Alpha 2 (Dec 10, 2008)

5 so as to not damped the positive feedback...

I'm familiar with Seamonkey. But I don't understand what the point is. How is SeaMonkey better than Firefox 3.1 + Thunderbird 3.0b1?

s the HTML Editing and the chat client actually compelling enough to want to use this? Otherwise, what's the point? I encourage people rating this to state -why- this is their choice... which I feel that no one really has stated clearly.
Comment - Windows 7: Will you pay to upgrade or won't you?
2.0 Alpha 2 (Jun 26, 2009 - 3:57 PM)

... I own two licensed OEM copies of Vista. Both work wonderfully for me with SP2. For only $49.99, I'm happy to continue running licensed software and am looking forward to Windows 7.

I do not understand the negativity on this forum.

If 'M$' owes anyone anything, then simply do not use their operating system. By using a product, you do owe something to the license by which it is distributed. A sensible person will choose to not use Windows and respect that their choice in and of itself is enough of a protest.

What I do think would have been a nice move on Microsoft's part would be to have nixed the 'Ultimate' version and just rolled in the 'bonus features' to the other versions. I do not personally feel that Ultimate offers most users anything unique that is worth the price difference. I also do personally feel that Microsoft did poorly on their promise to provide bonus downloadable content for Vista Ultimate users. The upgrade should be $50 for Ultimate users as they've already paid the premium once.
Comment - iTunes App store's biggest competitor will be WinMo Marketplace
2.0 Alpha 2 (Jun 12, 2009 - 1:34 PM)

This article might want to support its title ... I assume that this was either a [bad] quote from the WWDC ... or if it is a prediction, it should be supported better in the article...

I don't think that WinMo Marketplace will be a competitor as iPhone/iPod owners won't be shopping there and vice-versa. I think that comparing the G1, Blackberry and iPhone is more reasonable as those phones are more similar and their stores are more similar ... I know that WinMo is trying to get back into being relevant in the same manner -- but it's just too different -- and as a few people HAVE pointed out below -- many of the apps for WinMo are vaporware / abandonware ... it's like including all of the projects on SourceForge in estimating a number of applications available for Linux or what not...
Comment - Sen. Hatch rails on the Pirate Bay, Canada
2.0 Alpha 2 (Jun 12, 2009 - 1:31 PM)

I'm no supporter of Hatch, but I'm not so sure that he's an old white guy with no grasp on things.

Concerning the Performance Rights Act -- what is interesting is that this will cause bands to choose labels differently based upon a label's usage of this. I believe that a label should be able to choose to continue business as normal, wherein larger labels with pop stars will likely take advantage of this. What this could then lead to is more indie acts and low cost acts being publicized due to lower costs to do such -- it can actually have a benefit as presently, the record, radio and television industry pretty much controls what we hear outside of the Internet.

And he is right in the fact that pirating music is illegal. Whether we appreciate the attention to the obvious or not, it's kind of true.
Comment - Best Buy has a pleasant Q4; now, about that customer service...
2.0 Alpha 2 (Mar 27, 2009 - 12:53 PM)

The death of Circuit City, as mentioned here, is also likely to have redistributed a customer base who would normally shop at Circuit City to Best Buy -- so there's validity in that.

And about the link reference to worst company of the year 'Best Buy vs T-Mobile' - I just reviewed all of those 'battles' and I'm not sure where the Consumerist is coming from. Most people voted Best Buy because they'd had nothing but good experiences with T-Mobile and love their G1 phones... other dumb fights were Target vs AIG (One company helping to destroy our economy vs. another that provides a pleasant shopping experience at reasonable prices)... then Wal*Mart vs. HP ... I mean - the reference to that made very little sense. It seems that they've pitted bad companies against good ones and put it up to a vote, which makes very little sense other than turning heads and upping the impressions on their ad displays (similar to the BetaNews article about Firefox's end game -- it's NOT news ... it's NOT an editorial -- it's the journalistic version of showing nude pictures of Rachael Ray -- we look because we are bewildered, and that's about it.)
Comment - The big squeeze: JPEG to jpeg to jpge to jphzepxpg
2.0 Alpha 2 (Mar 24, 2009 - 2:09 PM)

Yeah, but PNG is 8-bit. PNG-24 tends to be larger than JPG. So there's really a point to everything.

I think that it would be nice if JPEG's contained information within their meta tags about how many times the image had been resaved... although, someone using a screen capture would obviously invalidate that data...

There's just a point to all image formats really... except gif. And nobody say GIF animation.