Chrome Browser Fast Internet Explorer 9 Faster

Posted on March 10, 2011 by Stephen Pate

ComputerWorld tests show Chrome has picked up speed but Opera and IE9 are faster

Chart by ComputerWorld, shorter is better

ComputerWorld touts the new Chrome 10 browser as faster Hands-on: Chrome 10 pushes the browser speed barrier

“The new version of Google’s Chrome browser adds speed, password syncing and a new Options tab.”

The comparison to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 is a bit disengenuous since the tests show IE 9 (being released on March 14th) is the fastest browser.

Opera 11 is faster than Chrome 10 as well.

Speed isn’t everything. Ease of use and functionality mean more than raw speed since the browser is waiting for instructions most of the time.

We’ll report more in IE 9′s new features later. How to make your computer 5 times faster without spending a cent

Changes at NJN Network

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Stephen Pate

Thanks for checking our site – you were one of the 2.2 million impressions we got last month!

Things have changed since we started NJN Network in 2007 and we’ve changed with them.

We try to be where you are, which is a lot of places on the Internet.

We used to print and re-print 10 stories a day, many of them came from other sources. You could follow us at this site, through RSS and maybe Facebook.

Today the internet is more efficient at distributing content so we rely on Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Google and BuzzFeed to spread the news around.

NJN Network has been on your iPhone and Blackberry since February 2010, on the iPad since May and Android since September.

Twitter is the quickest way to get at our content – that’s why we have a Hot Tweets box at the top of the page. It rotates the latest 20 stories. Continue reading →

Official Android Honeycomb Feb 2 tablet video

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Stephen Pate

Full length video of new Honeycomb Android OS for tablets from Google

Honeycomb Android tablets will arrive Q2 2011.

Unlike Apple’s closed iOS, Google’s operating system and tablets are OPEN SYSTEMS which means Adobe Flash videos and an environment similar to the Android smart phone. Video follows the break. Continue reading →

Firefox to add do-not-track feature

Posted on January 24, 2011 by Stephen Pate

Firefox will allow users to foil advertisers who track what you read and buy

Firefox 4.0 beta

The ability of advertisers to spy on you will be limited in Firefox and Chrome soon.

As we wrote in Why you don’t always get the best price, your computer is watching you and telling vendors the highest price you will pay.

It’s extremely annoying and an invasion of privacy.

Washington Post – Mozilla announced it will put a do-not-track feature in its Firefox browser to allow users to opt-out of online behavioral advertising.

The company has said it does not know whether the feature, an HTTP header, will ship with Firefox 4.0. Mozilla Technology and Privacy Officer Alex Fowler posted an outline of the feature to his personal blog on Sunday, explaining the background of the feature and how the company thinks it will affect users. “We believe the header-based approach has the potential to be better for the web in the long run because it is a clearer and more universal opt-out mechanism than cookies or blacklists,” Fowler wrote.

Politico is reporting that Google Chrome will implement a similar feature today, in the form of an extension called “Keep My Opt-Outs,” based on the National Advertising Initiative’s existing opt-out tool.

Android 3 Honeycomb preview

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Stephen Pate

New Google OS is just for tablets trying to create a richer experience compared with the iPad

Very cool,très awesome.

Google is previewing close integration between their many services such Gmail, SteetView, Google Maps, a sleek new YouTube, and face chatting with the millions of Gmail users.

Release date – March 2011 which should co-ordinate with all the new tablets being announced at CES.

Is iPhone Android or Windows Phone 7 the best for you

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Stephen Pate

Whatever choice in phones the financial consequences are more dependent on the carrier

Future Shop smart phone display in the front entrance now (iPhone picture - Stephen Pate)

The push is on to sell everyone a smartphone with email, internet, picture and video access. Some people will use them for phone calls.

For young and old smartphones are a status symbol. The social pressure in school is enormous as sharing photos and videos is replacing texting as the top activity.

It’s a big business that pays dividends for the phone carriers and retailers like Future Shop and Best Buy. The carriers are kicking back millions of dollars to push these fun but expensive phones.

The cost of the phone is irrelevant. They are being discounted to $99 or nothing. Verizon has built a business on giving you the second phone free. Continue reading →

In Data Portability Deathmatch, Users Lose Out

Posted on November 21, 2010 by Stephen Pate

Users are the losers as Facebook and Google duke it out over data portability

Co-authored by Rainey Reitman and Marcia Hoffman, EFF

In the last few weeks, Facebook and Google have been engaging in a public tussle over an issue that is near and dear to EFF’s heart: data portability. The crux of the issue is that when you sign up for Facebook, you can find your Gmail contacts or invite them to join the social networking service with a few quick clicks. But when you sign up for Google, Facebook prevents you from easily inviting all of your Facebook friends to Google, despite the fact that Facebook makes it easy for users to export their contacts to other services like Yahoo!.

Earlier this month, Google altered its terms of use for API users in an attempt to push Facebook into making contacts more portable. Basically, if services (such as Facebook) aren’t willing to make contact data portable to Google, then Google will stop making Gmail contacts exportable to their sites. Somewhat ironically, Google is promoting data portability by restricting data portability.
Continue reading →

Google TV is almost here

Posted on October 6, 2010 by Stephen Pate

Set-top box will blur computers and TV in the living room

Story updated since 5 AM.

ABC video.

The Sony handheld controller for Google TV is set to launch on October 12th and promises to revolutionize television. Other than a controller, will Google TV be free? Will they drive us crazy with even more ads?

After the break? More video of course.
Continue reading →

Chrome and Firefox may break Outlook

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Stephen Pate

Google Chrome browser

Installing Chrome or Firefox beta may cause hyperlinks in Outlook to stop working

After I installed the Google Chrome 6 browser, hyperlinks stopped working in Outlook 2010. You can only imagine how frustrating it is to not be able to click the links in email and have the browser find the page.

This is a known issue with Chrome. There are dozens of pages of help tips under the search “hyperlinks not working”.

The actual error messages are “General failure. The URL was “(insert URL)”. Application not found” or “Error launching browser” Continue reading →

IE 9 Chrome or Firefox 4 which one

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Stephen Pate

They all have a new version or beta out this month

Three of the major browsers have new versions but not all of them are ready for prime time. Here’s my take based on use. Update – you might want to check out Chrome and Firefox may break Outlook. In a week of trying, the links are still broken from installing Chrome.

IE 9

Microsoft released their public beta of IE 9 this week. Of course it’s supposed to be faster and it seems faster than Chrome. The advantage is sub second so it won’t make life that much better.

IE 9 supports HTML 5 and the new video standard H.264 without a plug-in. IE 9 has GPU (graphical processor) accelerators that make some intensive graphics faster and smoother.

Overall, it seems cleaner and less cluttered that IE 8.

However, the IE 9 Beta is not ready for prime time. It would not install on one Widows 7 64 bit computer but would on another. Microsoft suggested 6 updates but none of them were installable. Continue reading →

Why Facebook and Twitter will drive the future

Posted on September 14, 2010 by Stephen Pate

By Sean Parker bad-boy genius behind Napster and Facebook

Think about one guy who has changed music and the internet but he is still only 30. He is worth about $1 billion. That’s Sean Parker the real person behind Napster, Facebook and other game changing technologies. He is also the fictionalized character in the new movie about Facebook. Justin Timberlake plays him in The Social Network.

Over the weekend I happened to find another movie with a Sean Parker character, Hackers. It contains the scene when Sean’s father (mother in the movie) took his keyboard in the middle of a hacking session. The FBI trace his computer when he can’t hang up and they confiscated his computer the next day.

The presentation from last year is a little dry but he is the boy-genius of this era, replacing Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. He makes his points well. For more Sean Parker gossip, click on Vanity Fair who interviewed him about The Social Network.