PaulSpoerry.com

CNET ran benchmarks on the newly release Google Chrome browser. It turns out that not only does Chrome beat the competition, it completely annihilated them.

Here’s the site description of the speed tests:

• Richards: OS kernel simulation benchmark, originally written in BCPL by Martin Richards (539 lines).

• DeltaBlue: One-way constraint solver, originally written in Smalltalk by John Maloney and Mario Wolczko (880 lines).

• Crypto: Encryption and decryption benchmark based on code by Tom Wu (1,689 lines).

• RayTrace: Ray tracer benchmark based on code by Adam Burmister (3,418 lines).

• EarleyBoyer: Classic Scheme benchmarks, translated to JavaScript by Florian Loitsch’s Scheme2Js compiler (4,682 lines).

Get the full scoop over at CNET.

Google announced it will release a brand new open source web browser called Google Chrome. Yesterday a site went up, and has subsequently been taken down at http://gears.google.com/chrome/?hl=en (as of this morning clicking this link take you back to regular old Google).

According to Crunchbase the features include:

• Tabbed browsing where each tab gets its own process, leading to faster and more stable browsing. If one tab crashes, the whole browser doesn’t go down with it
• A distinct user interface that places tabs on top of the browser window instead of right below the address bar
• An “incognito” mode that lets you browse the web in complete privacy because it doesn’t record any of your activity
• A new JavaScript engine built from the ground up for speed
• Malware and phishing lists that automatically update themselves and warn you of bad websites
• A default homepage that displays your most commonly used sites and other personalized information

Read the rest of this entry �

Google started to use the Social Graph API to suggest links that can be added to your public Google Profile. If you add links to sites that are connected to other sites using FOAF or the XFN microformat, Google makes it easy to import all the links. For example, if you have an account at FriendFeed, add a link to your FriendFeed page to import the sites you shared: videos uploaded at YouTube, Google Reader shared items, del.ico.us bookmarks etc.

Google Profiles Suggested Links

Google’s unified profiles are slowly added to all Google services that allow user-generated content. “A Google Profile is simply how you represent yourself on Google products — it lets you tell others a bit more about who you are and what you’re all about. You control what goes into your Google Profile, sharing as much (or as little) as you’d like,” explains Google. For now, the profiles are displayed next to the list of shared items from Google Reader, in the Google Books library and next to the custom maps, reviews and edits from Google Maps.

There are lots of stores out there that offer price protection policies — when the price drops on an item you’ve purchased, they’ll refund you the difference. But there’s a catch… it’s up to you to watch prices.

Price Protectr makes it simple to keep track of your purchases, watch prices, and get your money back. It’s free. It’s easy. It’s free and easy money. How often do you get that offer?

www.priceprotectr.com

There’s a test version of the new Google customizable homepage (startpage), iGoogle, available to play with. When you start it up, the first thing you’ll notice are the pretty rounded corners on all your gadgets. The second thing you’ll notice are the tabs along the left side of the page, rather than across the top.

It appears to be organized this way: each of your tabs appear in the left navigation and listed under each tab are the gadgets included in that tab. When you click the link for a gadget, it appears on its own in the main portion of the window. Click the tab name and all the gadgets appear as before. The switching between gadgets and tabs is very fast, almost instantaneous, so when you open the Gmail gadget on its own, for example, it’s much faster than opening Gmail itself. Of course, you’re not getting all the Gmail features, only the ones that are part of the gadget. Google calls this feature, canvas view and you can also access it by clicking on the maximize button on the gadget itself when viewing an entire tab.

It all appears to be very much in the experimental stage. Things don’t seem to work even as Google’s Help page describes. For example, the Help page shows a screenshot of a feed in canvas view, which looks an awful lot like Google Reader.

When I try it though, I get what appears to be a single gadget on a page, with no extra functionality and a “you might also like..” list of suggested gadgets.

Finally, the new iGoogle integrates with Gmail chat, so you have access to the same IM in iGoogle as you do in Gmail.

Are you salivating yet? Dying to try it? Well sorry, it’s only open to developers. But wait, can you keep a secret? OK don’t tell anyone but if you go and sign up to play in the iGoogle sandbox, you’ll instantly have access to the new test version.

You do have to give them a few pieces of information about yourself but it’s mostly stuff Google knows about you already (email, name etc.)

Don’t want to play with it anymore? Go back to the same link and the experimental version will be turned off. (But remember, if anyone asks, you’re a developer, right?)

The full rollout of the new iGoogle is expected next month.

Announced in April, the new version of iGoogle that brings social applications is tested in a small number of randomly selected Google accounts.

The new iGoogle places the tabs on the left-hand side of the page and you can expand the tabs to see the list of gadgets and status information, like the number of unread Gmail messages. There’s a new chat feature borrowed from Gmail that lets you chat with your contacts while visiting iGoogle - that means iGoogle gets a sense of presence because you’ll know when your contacts are online. Since the chat feature will be enabled by default, it’s obvious that Google will be able to add options for sharing items and discussing posts with the contacts that are online.

iGoogle also adds a list of updates from your contacts similar to Facebook’s newsfeed: you can see stories shared by your contacts in Google Reader, recent photos uploaded to Picasa Web Albums, Google Talk status messages, shared iGoogle themes and gadgets.

Another change is that gadgets have an expanded interface, called canvas view. Gadgets authors will take advantage of this to display more information and make their gadgets more interactive, while your feeds can be read in a Google Reader-like interface. In the future, iGoogle will support OpenSocial applications and the transformation to a social site will be complete.

Google announced that the canvas view will be rolled out to a small percentage of users this month and to more users in July, while the OpenSocial applications “will not work in production until later this summer”.

The most excellent site GoogleSystem has a write up on how to enable you to chat with your site’s visitors using Google Talk.

Google Talk’s gadget was a nice addition, but you couldn’t use it to chat with unknown people or with the visitors of the site, like in Meebo Me. Now you can do that using the new chatback badges. You only need to add some code to your site and anyone could click on the generated badge to chat with you.

“A Google Talk chatback badge allows others to chat with you even if they haven’t signed up for Google Talk or a Google Account. You can put the badge in your blog or website, and people who visit those pages can chat with you. The badge will display your online status (whether you’re available to chat or not) and, optionally, your status message.”

If someone clicks on the badge, a special version of the Google Talk gadget will open and he will be able to chat with you.

The conversations are private and only one-to-one, so other visitors won’t be able to read them. For some strange reason, they’re not even added in Gmail’s chat section. Unfortunately, being constantly interrupted by other people is not very pleasant, so you can disable the link from your badge by setting your status to “busy” or by signing out of Google Talk.

I’ve put this in place on my site to test it out. It was extremely simple to enable, just scroll down to the bottom of the page and look in the About Me section and you’ll see my Google Talk badge!

“Throughout Lifehacker’s archive of over 14,000 posts, they’ve mentioned hundreds of free web and desktop apps that help you get things done—but which are the best? As they wrap up the year 2007, it’s the perfect time to put together an authoritative guide to their favorite pieces of free software and web services for common computing tasks on every platform. ”

I agree with nearly every selection they’ve made!

Application Launchers

• Launchy (Windows, open source)
  Previous coverage: Download of the Day: Launchy, Take Launchy Beyond Application Launching (Feature), Tweaking Launchy (Screenshot Tour)
• Quicksilver (Mac OS X, open source)
  Previous coverage: A Beginner’s Guide to Quicksilver, Advanced Quicksilver Guide, The Quicksilver Video Extravaganza, Nine Time-saving Quicksilver Triggers, Top 10 Quicksilver Plugins, Quicksilver Creator on the Future of QS (Exclusive Lifehacker Interview).

Backup Utilities

• SyncBackSE (Windows, local backup, freeware)
  Previous coverage: Automatically Back Up Your Hard Drive with SyncBack (Feature)
• Time Machine (Mac OS X, local backup, built into Leopard)
  Previous coverage: The Simplicity of Time Machine Compels You, Schedule Your Time Machine Backups with TimeMachineScheduler
• Mozy (Windows/Mac, online backup, up to 2GB free)
  Previous coverage: Back Up Files with Mozy

BitTorrent

• uTorrent (Windows, Free)
  Previous coverage: Organize Your BitTorrent Downloads with uTorrent
• Transmission (Mac OS X, open source)
  Previous coverage: Download of the Day: Transmission
• ted (Windows/Mac/Linux, free)
  Previous coverage: Automatically Download Your Favorite TV Shows with ted
• See also: A Beginner’s Guide to BitTorrent, Intermediate Guide to BitTorrent

Read the rest of this entry �

Google introduced a set of themes for your personalized homepage (or iGoogle) a few months back. But if you’re looking for a few more customization options, check out this new Google gadget. Once you install the gadget on your homepage, you can choose from a variety of custom skins, create your own, or submit themes for other users to install. It currently provides 10 new skins.

 The gadget features three main tabs; a skins directory which mimics the built-in iGoogle theme selector, a tab with details of how to create and upload skins and a skins submission form. Unlike many other gadgets, this one does rely on a server side component to retrieve a list of available skins from the database in JSON format and also to validate and insert new skins submissions. This little gadget will also permit a different skin per tab - and thankfully no more reloading the page when switching skins. Works in IE and FF.

   Custom iGoogle Skins

Check out BonstioNet for the latest.