Google Chrome (4) Extensions

Finally I have installed Google Chrome 4 (it's still beta) so I tried some of the new extensions that the browser provides. First I had no idea that there were already so many extensions. But what made even greater impression to me was that not only they were many, but they were also good! I mean, for just half an hour I installed 15 and uninstalled only two of them but not because they were bad and I also disabled another two just because I think I don't really need them.

Some of the extensions I loved were Google Mail Checker and Google Reader Notifier (these two are just MUST-HAVE extensions!), the RSS Subscription Extension (by Google) is something that I've wanted for Chrome since I saw it for the first time, as well as XML Tree. SmoothScroll is something I also needed badly in Chome and now I have it along with everything else I wanted :). You could also check out Feedly, Picnik Extension for Chrome and Facebook Notifications if you are also using Chrome. The last one is actually quite small extension - it provides you only the notifications in Facebook - if you'd like to be able to also see what's happening on your wall, update your status, read the News Feed etc, you should look for another Facebook extension (I had installed two more - they were the two ones that I uninstalled - I did it because the idea behind Chrome and the reason I love it is that everything should be as simple as possible and that's why I left with the simples of the three Facebook extensions.

For desert I left my comment about the Beautify Facebook extension. There's only one thing to say about it: "WOW!!!". It's incredible! Have you seen Google Wave - it's greatest design and HTML 5 look and stuff? Well, Beautiful Facebook turns Facebook to such a kind of equivalent! That's one of the most beautiful things I've seen in my whole life! And I'm not just saying that - I really, absolutely love it! I even installed one more extension to check out if there is an easy way to make browser screenshots, so I could upload one here in this blogpost (I used picnic for that). So see it for yourself!

That's all I have to say for now. But if I have anything else to add about Chrome Extensions - I'll do it right away :)

Google sync

Just last week I bought a new mobile phone - LG KS20 to be exact - and I was more then happy when the next day I read in my feeds, that Google launched a new service for smart phones and pocket  PCs. That's Google Sync. The interesting part about it was that it could communicate with windows mobile based devices over the active sync protocol.

This was the perfect opportunity to me to transfer my contacts to my new phone, so I tested the service right away, even that Google's staff warned in the google sync's official web site that it's still a beta version and it may not work properly. Well I had no contacts or anything else that I could've lost, so I just connected my phone to the PC and setup my google sync. I was very pleased that the connection was easu to establish, all of my ontacts were transfered to my phone in just a minute and everything. It was great. However, then I tried to change the listing of my contacts, since they all looked like "Last Name, First Name" style and I hate that. I tried to list them first to see the first name and then - the last one (after all they are FIRST and LAST names, right?). The thing that I did not like was that after only several seconds, the names were listed back the old way. I had to remove my google sync conection in order to make them stay the way I wanted. I'm not sure if this is actually a bug, and whose fault it is, but to me it looks like I can read data from my google account, but I can't write back and I don't like this part. It's cool to transfer everything from my g account to my phone, but the opposite isn't working the way I'd like, so I guess that I'll be waiting for official version before using google sync again. After all - I got what I wanted and this make me feel calm and happy. Good luck Google, to making this service one of the best, like all of your other products :).

Google Chrome

It's here, it's now, but is it really "wow"? If you ask me - it's NOT! Yesterday was the first day when Google Chrome's BETA was released. I said to myself - OK, it's just a BETA, I won't be testing it, since I've seen many betas with many bugs and since I like Google (along with Adobe - they are my two favorite software companies) I thought that I didn't want to get a bad impression about their software. However for the last 48 hours I've read many news, and about 15% of them had to do something with Google Chrome (and that's quite much - when the iPhone 3G was out, this percentage was only about 10!). All of this just made me so curious, that I just had to see it for myself, moreover I'm very keen on CSS coding and how different browsers interpret CSS (believe me - there still isn't a single web browser that manages to handle strong CSS correctly - IE7 and Firefox 3 have only a few bugs, but still).
So in less than half an hour ago, I downloaded Google Chrome, hoping that the day when CSS won't be a big problem comes NOW, but... I'm disappointed. Google Chrome gives me a bug with a simple line-height value! Can you believe that? A simple line-height argument! Now this is just too much. Sure - it's the fastest JavaScript-interpretation-browser I've seen, but a line-height CSS bug?! You must be kidding me! I know, it's just a beta version and soon there will be lots of updates and so on, but I'm not speaking of something Google might have not noticed while they were developing Chrome... or have they? How come they have missed so basic thing?
My message for Google is: This time you've "outdone" yourselves! I expect something far better for the official release of Chrome.

Homepage rearange by Google

Don't haste forward to going to http://www.google.com/ since you may not notice any change. Actually untill now Google has made modifications only to the Japanese version of their homepage. There isn't much information about it (at least not in English) but what I've read states that this is an innovation, which is quite well accepted by the Japanese (I guess that I'll also accept it well). Soon the version for all languages will look the same way. That is there will be tabs under the search form, as follows: "Featured," including Gmail, YouTube, News, Maps and Transit, "Various search," that hosts links to Image Search, Blog Search, Books and Google Desktop, "Useful tool," with Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Reader and Google Toolbar and, finally, "More enjoyable," and YouTube once again, Picasa, Blogger and Google Earth.

Source: Softpedia

The University of Google

A few days ago I saw an interesting post in the blog of a friend of mine - Dimitar Milanov. You can see what he wrote about the "Google University" right here (Note: his blog is in Bulgarian).
Since that "Google University" stuff is interesting I thought that I may add something too.
First you should probably read this article.
According to Prof Brabazon students do their homework as follows:
1. Log on to Google/Wikipedia.
2. Type a few words the engine should search for.
3. Copy the first thing you see.
And these three steps make students dumb.
According to me students did not get dumb because of doing this, but they did this because they were dumb. Prof Brabazon blames Google and Wikipedia for her students being lazy and dull. That's insane! Sure, these technologies make many things easier, but so do all other technologies. You can blame television and radio as well for making people watch and listen to the news instead of reading them. But there is actually no harm in all of this.

"Too many students don't use their own brains enough. We need to bring back the important values of research and analysis."

Prof Tara Brabazon

It's not anyone else's fault but theirs that they do not use their brain! But how come they entered any university in the first place if they are so stupid?

"I ban my students from using Google, Wikipedia and other websites like that. I give them a reading list to work from and expect them to cite a good number of them in any work they produce."

Prof Tara Brabazon

This is no way to make someone learn how to make researches! You can not ban someone from using Google, Wikipedia etc. ! That's just the wrong method. Something right may just be that you tell the person: "Make a report on .... by using 5-10 articles you find via Google and nothing else. And any nonsense I see in your work will lower your mark!". That way student will really learn HOW to use information sources in order to get only good information.

Limiting yourself to just a number of books may be as stupid as using only Google's first result.