Tech — Category

Today Google released it’s long rumoured, hotly anticipated, entry into the web browser market – Google Chrome.

It is another back-to-the-basics web browser, it provides nothing revolutionary to the layman user, but the insides is a bit of an evolution for your basic web browser. In an essence, Chrome looks at the web as a powerful platform rather than a series of pages. You could be forgiven for completely missing this swing, as it has happened all rather quickly. However the moment Google’s email product Gmail hit the market, we knew the web was going to start turning into something special.

It has gotta be named Chrome for a reason.

Google Chrome is just a web browser, but one that has been completely optimised so the web apps run as if they were on your desktop. The user interface is also optimised – the home page contains your most visited websites, and you have the most minimal toolbars I’ve seen in a browser. It contains back, forward, refresh, an address bar, and two buttons that pop open menus. The tabs are at the very top of the browser window, a place that has always made the most sense to me.

It loads in a snap, the pages wait for no one to draw. Whilst Firefox has a draw delay, even removing this still did not match the performance of Chrome. Some say that Chrome runs slower, but after running one of the selector tests, it wiped the floor with Firefox 3. Stuff just runs fast.

Chrome’s memory management is also a plus, with the task manager loaded, opening Gmail and then closing it again, I was able to regain all the memory Gmail took, it was as if I never opened it.

I think this is a huge kick for web browser makers to get their act into gear and start thinking the same way. Microsoft is already coming up with tab sandboxing for Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla are on their way into making Tamarin work with Javascript 2 (it’s Mozilla’s Javascript Virtual Machine, and it runs code almost as fast as native programs) (Mozilla also have Prism, which I see Chrome takes a page from). I have a feeling that this is Google pulling the best stuff that is incoming and forcing it onto us right now, and boy do we need it!

I have my thoughts about Firefox with this though. Mozilla has no excuses now for its rather sluggish performance and memory guzzling ways. We may see some major changes in this arena with Gecko 2, which will be the base for Firefox 4, but we have over a year before then. This is also true for Internet Explorer, but I’m not in a mood to care about that web browser just yet (although, I do like what they’ve done with the auto-complete).

Rumour had it that Vodafone were rethinking their iPhone plans, and today it was announced that they did. You can now get an iPhone for just $40 per month, with a cool $699 for the phone first (8gb). How nice of them. Could be much better still though (i.e. unlimited data).

It is making me want an iPhone again. But first, I think I’ll get a Macbook.* Then I’ll wait to see Telecom release their deals, rumour has it that Telecoms GSM network will be officially launched in November with the iPhone in tow. Some iPhone users will see the Telecom network available for selection under the Network option too.

Meanwhile, I am quite content with my current Sony Ericsson W850i, except a couple of days ago when I went to hunt for drivers and found that it had been practically been completely wiped from the website. Shucks.

Back on to Vodafone, they are heavily advertising their $1 for 10MB “casual” data plan. Hooray I say, cause I use Opera Mini on my W850i to check up on Tweets and emails and the quick check up on Wikipedia. They are even advertising on some websites where you’d benefit. Interestingly, this includes YouTube. You’ll get a nice Flash ad next to the video saying that you can “carry your favourite clips in your pocket” for only $1! Sweet! Ummm, no. In fact, if you hit YouTube mobile, you’ll get a nice warning from the Google folks telling you to only enter with an unlimited plan!

* Yes, you read that right… I am going to get a Macbook. Sometime late next month hopefully.

A game to check out on the US PlayStation Store right now is the Pixel Junk Eden demo. The game is set to be released later this year. When I first saw it, I wondered what on Earth it was, there were just plants growing? How is that a game?

Then I got the demo that was out on Thursday, and I must say it was quite something. There are three levels in the demo, and if the total Spectra count is anything to go by (Spectra are the things you must collect in each level) there will be 25 levels in total. It took me about 11 minutes just to get two Spectra in one level, so there would be lots of gameplay to waste on this one.

The aim of the game is to create your own Eden, by tapping into other gardens and stealing their Spectra, which grows new plants. In the levels, you leap from plant to plant, destroying enemies to release pollen and activate seeds to go further in the level. When leaping from plants you get silk to spin from, which can destroy enemies, collect pollen and also fetch synchronisation crystals (run out of crystals, you get ejected from the garden).

Well worth a look, and from the looks of it, it will support 1080p visuals natively. Not a common feature.

The FreeView Consortium has announced some details about the PVR system they have approved for use with FreeView|HD.

Of interest,

It will run a system with features like American TiVo, which suggests similar content for viewers and features series link technology similar to that employed by Sky’s new HDi decoders.

and

Browning explained that – using Shortland Street as an example, if the receiver has a programming clash for a weeknight episode, it will look forward and choose between rescreenings on other digital channels, or pick the episode out of the weekend ‘Omnibus’.

The device will include two tuners, but an unspecified hard drive size.

Meanwhile, the Sony PlayTV for PlayStation 3 has been dated for Europe, to be released on September 10th this year. Major technical challenges were to blame for the delay, as the device was supposed to be released around March… at least, that’s what the SCENZ chief had said late last year. They snuck in some PlayTV-required code in the latest firmware update, 2.41. New Zealand and Australia are looking at a January/February release next year, “because on their digital terrestrial they haven’t actually set the standards yet.” Ummm, Australia hasn’t, but New Zealand has.

While on the topic of FreeView, I got a FV|HD box the other week and was somewhat impressed by the quality. You wouldn’t of thought that upscaled content would look better, but it certainly does.

Everyone was anticipating to pay $100+ every month to get the iPhone goodness, and well, they got it.

But the cheapest plan is $80. It includes 120 minutes, 600 texts (unknown if this also includes txts to Telecom mobiles) and 250MB of data.

The next plan up is $130, 250 minutes, 600 texts and half a gig of data.

The most expensive, coming in at a whopping $250, has 600 minutes, 600 texts and one gig of data. It is this plan that the iPhone is $199, 8gb. With the cheapest plan the iPhone (8gb) is $549.

I guess these were anticipated. But ludicrous. With Vodafone NZ hyping up the data plans by releasing no information about them until today, they can expect a bit of a backlash. It has already started happening on the GeekZone forums, and GPForums. Silly Vodafone. Now we wait for the international iPhone plan tables to updated and see where we fit in the scheme of things.

And yeah, I’m thinking I’ll just stick with my current phone now.

The moment all us gadget geeks have been waiting for is finally upon us! Vodafone NZ have announced their announcement (heh) of iPhone plans for tomorrow at 10am.

In the same announcement, they dropped that prices will start from NZ$199 for the phone in a 2 year contract.

That was a bit of surprise (it was expected for the price to be around $300, as US$199 is ~NZ$270), but would we be getting equally good news tomorrow?

The Kiwi tech blog world will asplode around 10am. Yes, I’ll still be near a computer at the time.

An actual release time has now been announced, 10am PDT (California time). So that means that here in New Zealand will be 5am the 18th of June (tomorrow). When you wake up, you’ll find Firefox 3 all ready to download for your enjoyment

Extensions have already been busy updating, All-in-one sidebar, Greasemonkey, Firebug, etc etc. Firefox 3 will let you know which extensions are broken when it first starts so there shouldn’t be any troubles.

Expect to see Firefox 3 released tomorrow. Help it get into the record books for most downloads over 24 hours by hitting the image below,

In Firefox 3, the location bar learns some new tricks. This has given in the unofficial name of Awesome Bar because it gives a lot more control. Here are some tips to using it,

Tags make it easier

Bookmarking has been made a lot easier thanks to the Star icon to the right of the location bar. Click once, and you’ve bookmarked it. You might not know that you can click again to change the bookmark properties, with a new feature known as “tags.” Fill out the Tag field with keywords about the bookmark. When you want to go back to this page, just type one or few tags in the location bar to see it.

Name and then some

I follow a forum thread which gets increasingly bigger, and I don’t want to subscribe to the forum. Creating a bookmark is useless as it would quickly go out of date as the thread is quite popular. But, as forum software tends to put the first post ID in the URL, I can use that to get to the page quickly. I could easily type in the web site name, but you can also type in parts of the URL and it will still match.

So, if I want a GP Forums thread, each URL contains the word “thread” in them, so I can type “gp forums thread” and it will give me all threads that I have been to on GP Forums, despite “GP Forums” appearing in the title, and “thread” appearing in the URL. I can add the word “gta” and then I get all threads that have “GTA” in the title.

If I want all New Zealand sites I’ve been to about Vodafone, I could go “.co.nz vodafone” and get a list that way.

Turn the frequent search terms into bookmarks

If you find yourself doing a rather common search, you can turn it into a dynamic bookmark that you can access from your bookmarks toolbar or menu. Just go to Bookmarks » Organise Bookmarks, and in Search Bookmarks type in your terms (i.e. “.co.nz vodafone”). Change your Search Area to History and you should get your results that look similar to the location bar ones (without the bookmarks though). Click the Save button and give it a name. It will automatically go into the Bookmarks Menu, you can drag and drop it to where ever you please.

What are your tricks? Comment!

Eagle eyed GPForum users were quick to point out a PlayStation 3 scam, due to the very poor presentation. If anything, this post should go into a “How not to scam people” book or something.

User meeekael posted a link to this TradeMe auction. Clearly set out to catch someone out who did not know much about the PlayStation 3, it was advertised as an 80gb PAL PlayStation 3, of which none exists (unless you change the hard drive yourself) and out of the list of games, one is a Wii exclusive and three aren’t even out yet.

After plenty of quizzes from TradeMe members, he quickly pulled it down, just to come back with a 60gb PS3 for sale. This time he wasn’t going to bother with any games, clearly he can’t do research and is out for a quick buck, so thought not to include a list of anything. Just a 60gb PS3. He even provided a picture, with his face blurred and a crudely cropped photo of a recent paper.

THIS IS FOR ALL THOSE WHO DID NOT BELIEVE ME WITH MY 80GIG. I HAVE TAKEN THE GAMES AWAY. TAKEN THE 80GIG CONSOLE AWAY AND GIVING YOU A 60GIG. YOU CAN THANK ALL THOSE WHO DOUTED ME. OH YEH THATS ME IN THE PICTURE THIS HAS BEEN SENT TO TRADEME HEAD OFFICE SO DONT BUG ME

After some hairy questions from GP members, someone commented,

Personally I think stuff him! If he wants a “legit” one from someone in NZ that he can go and see, then let him, or report him to TM for ruining yr auctions?

After getting the question answered, the same person asks,

Are they sealed in their boxes, sorry for many q’s but was scammed $665 outta some guy and no PS3 to show for it. Trying to not get caught again ya know….

Oh dear.

What is interesting is he says that “the console is brand new in the box” and “i have six units in possesion.” But, the picture?

Why does he have them out of the boxes, and why are there eight in the picture when he only has six?

Member farenheit,

Why is there a badly composited newspaper in that photo? If these are brand new, what are they doing out of their boxes?…Scam much? BAM!

The BAM!?

Hmmm, that looks familiar.

The person in that picture is actually Dr Frank Mueller, one of the people behind the PlayStation 3 cluster at North Carolina State University. Original find.

• GPForums thread

So, thanks to GPForum members meeekael and farenheit, TradeMe is a safer place. And watch out for seller naturallyforyou, apparently who’s selling things that are “good for you.”