HTML 5 Rocks

A new website put up by Google shows off the latest things that you can do with HTML5... Make sure to check out the slideshow in chrome which demos many of the new features of HTML5.

Liking the latest Chrome UI changes

If you do not have the dev or beta channel of Chrome, I can understand. There are days when I want to smash my flat panel, but then there are days when I come in to find nice subtle changes that just make sense and enhance my day. Take a look at what is coming down the road for those on the stable release... http://blog.chromium.org/2010/06/fresh-coat-of-chrome.html

How to change to the Dev channel of Chrome

How is Google improving chrome plug-in security?

The Chromium blog details how they are improving plug-in security for Chrome.

The highlights:

• Chrome will include the flash plugin in the Chrome installer and use Google auto-update to keep the Adobe flash plug-in on the latest version
• Chrome will use Google's own PDF viewer,
• The latest API Pepper will allow Chrome to sandbox plug-ins
• Try to keep users on the latest versions of all plug-ins

Chrome OS

Thought that this was an interesting article about the Chrome OS written by an ex-employee at Google.

Ex-Googler says Chrome OS will be a vastly different OS but won’t displace Windows

I think a dual boot situation is the way to go. There are still a number of websites I frequent that still only work with IE. It is disapointing, but it is reality. I thought about it and many of the things I already do are in the 'cloud'.... Gmail & Yahoo mail, searching online, writing things in a word processor or keeping track of things in spreadsheets (Google Apps vs. Microsoft Office) many of the bells and whistles that exist in Office that I use at work, I just do not take advantage of at home because I don't need to, so I use Google Apps. The one thing that I constantly do however, is retouch photographs from my digital camera before sending them to print. So Google would need to get Picasa browser based (which they may be able to do with Google Gears)

How to Get Silverlight to really work with Google Chrome

Tim Heuer tells us how to get this working with a hack he created.

http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2009/02/11/moonlight-and-silverlight-detection-google-chrome-user-agent.aspx

Wordpress 2.7 Members Only plugin update

A fix for users who have changed their home page has been added to the plugin, I have incremented the version to 0.6.7.2

This change fixes the following issue pointed out by Mingo:

When you select to have people go to the "Front Page" when they log in directly from the Login page, they are directed to http://blogurl/wordpress

People (like me) who have moved their front page outside of the /wordpress/ dir receive a 404 error.

You may download the updated version here.

Multiple Inboxes - Move to and Label not working

Trying to actually work with the multiple inboxes features, it doesn't appear like you can perform any of the actions in the main menu to any of the emails from the main dashboard.

For instance, I have wanted to add a label or Move to a label on one or more emails and it doesn't work. Please make this work google!

Google Analytics for your home's electricity

Google announced today that they are in the testing phases with an application that can provide your home's electricity usage over time called Google Power Meter. I would love to get a hold of this software... If anyone knows someone at Google that can hook me up with a free beta, I would love to help them test.

WordPress 2.7 FeedKey plugin now working for Comments

I was asked by a few people to make the changes to the Feed Key plugin for Wordpress so that users could subscribe with a feedKey similar to the changes I made to the Members Only plugin

You can download version 0.2.1 by right clicking and download the updated file here. Once downloaded, replace the feed-key.php file in your existing installation (~/wp-content/plugins/feed-key/).

All this work with WordPress is making me think I should convert over from my blogger account.

Wordpress 2.7 Members Only plugin FeedKey Fix

After upgrading from Wordpress 2.6 to 2.7, the Feed Key feature of the Members Only plugin I use at another blog was not working. Members Only is a WordPress plugin that requires users to login to your blog in order to read/write. In addition, you can protect your RSS feed as a unique URL is generated for each user.

Every user was getting the following error:

Feed Key is Invalid
The Feed Key you used is invalid. It is either incorrect or has been revoked. Please login to obtain a valid Feed Key.

The feed URL in the version of Members Only that worked with 2.6 changed during the upgrade to 2.7, so a simple URL change solved the problem. I attempted to contact the plugin's author Andrew Hamilton and sent him the updated files, but I have not heard anything from him, so I am posting here for those who can use it.

Along the way, the need arose for a comment feed, so I modified the existing plugin and added the URL needed for the comment feed. This change was also submitted to Andrew.

Right click and download the updated file here. Once downloaded, replace the members-only.php file in your existing installation (~/wp-content/plugins/members-only/).

If you have any questions / comments... let me know!

Updated: URL was fixed.

Only Google Gmail Goggles Can Prevent Drunken Emails

Google announced a new feature for Gmail this week called Mail Goggles which makes you answer simple math questions before sending those late night emails that you might regret.

How to restore deleted items in sharepoint

First, you must be logged in as a site collection administrator.

Click on Site Settings, or Site Actions -> Site Settings.

Once here under the Site Collection Administration section, click on Recycle bin.

This has saved me a few times from having to go to backup.

Solutions to IIS 401.1 Errors

I was running into some problems with IIS giving me 401.1 Errors in a website I had on a server once I had joined it to a domain. Here are some solutions that have worked for me in the past.

• Give the IUSR_COMPUTERNAME user read access to the directories provisioned in IIS.
• Delete the IUSR and IWAM users and restart IIS (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822165) 

Don't worry, restarting IIS will recreate the IUSR and IWAM users. Hope that these solutions will save you time.

Google Chrome TOS - WTF

Google owns all of your content your submit or post through it. Google has just announced that they changed their TOS to correct this.:

"11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services."

to this:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

Additional interesting tidbits from the TOS:

Google Chrome possibly turning into a Comcast by limiting usage:

"4.5 You acknowledge and agree that while Google may not currently have set a fixed upper limit on the number of transmissions you may send or receive through the Services or on the amount of storage space used for the provision of any Service, such fixed upper limits may be set by Google at any time, at Google’s discretion."

Google Chrome turns out to be add supported:

17.3 In consideration for Google granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Google may place such advertising on the Services.

Thoughts?

"Aw, Snap!" work around

Turns out that Google Chrome has issues with Symantec Endpoint Protection. See Chrome Issue #38. Well at least I know that my Symantec installation is working!

Unable to Get Google Chrome Running - "Aw, Snap!"

Installed Google Chrome on my desktop this morning via IE but I have Firefox as my default browser, and it asked if I wanted to import settings and such from Firefox (as I had envisioned). I had Firefox running and Chrome told me that I needed to have it shut down in order to pull the information. I tried clicking on the continue button but that didn't work, and I didn't want to close Firefox at the time, so I chose the option to import later. Chrome launched and then....

I got two application errors and then I see the following "Aw, Snap! Something went wrong while displaying this web page. To continue, press Reload or go to another page." on each of the two pages that Chrome launched. Creating new tabs resulted in the same behavior. Closing down the application results in the same behavior as well.

After a uninstall and then reinstall, same thing happened. I then did another reinstall and tried not importing anything, didn't work. Did another uninstall. I re-installed Google Gears installation (v0.4.1500) maybe that was causing the issue, nothing. I noticed that there were a few rogue GoogleUpdate.exe processes so I killed them all and did a reinstall and still nothing..

So my primary machine does not have Google Chrome installed on it. I am a bit dissapointed to say the least. Google, please let me know what I need to do in order for this to work!

Google Chrome - Test Drive

Last night I finally got some time to take Google Chrome for a spin. Earlier in the day I came across a URL address that was supposed to be the download location (http://gears.google.com/chrome) but navigating to that location and trying to download the application, I encountered javascript errors galore and was not able to download anything. I then found the link (http://www.google.com/chrome) and I was able to download without any problems.

The installation was not painful, all you had to do was agree to the TOS agreement, and determine if you want to participate in the usage statistics and crash reporting (this option can also be turned on/off after you install). Per google enabling this option will send crash reports to them when Chrome crashes as well as usage statistics. "When you choose to accept a suggested query or URL in the address bar, the text you typed and the corresponding suggestion is sent to Google. Google Chrome doesn't send other personal information, such as name, email address, or Google Account information."

Once the application was installed I was prompted to import IE bookmarks and settings. I guess that it only asked for IE since on my laptop that is my default browser (I do have firefox installed). I will have to test this on my desktop as firefox is my default browser there.

Once the installation was through, I double-clicked the icon on my desktop and Chrome launched instantly, quicker than any other application I have ever seen. 

To see what kind of footprint Chrome had, I launched both IE and Chrome and lunched 5 tabs to websites I frequent. Under the wrench icon at the right -> Developer -> Task Manager you can see all of the tabs running as well as the memory CPU and Network that each is using. Down at the bottom of that window there is a "Stats for nerds" link that brought me to the window you see at the left (the about:memory page) Interesting enough they included IE as a process they are monitoring and put it up against Chrome. I guess the developers wanted to ensure that whatever they built knocked IE by alot. In most cases Google Chrome utilizes 2x resources but looking at its shared memory footprint - its 5x less than IE!.

Adrian from Hardware 2.0 Blog shows the benchmarks he ran against the other browsers. Spoiler: Google Chrome blows them all out of the water.

So Chrome is amazing and all, but it lacks some of the same features that firefox does and IE doesn't. Microsoft Sharepoint sites which I run in house for collaboration still require you to enter your network username and password. IE under the covers knows how to handle AD authentication.

I really would like to see Google use the WebKit engine in the next version of their Blackberry Gmail app.

What do you think about the new browser? Let me know.

Google's Latest App: Chrome (a web browser)

Google has announced they will be entering the web browser space today. In addition to a blog post announcing the BETA, they have cleverly put their reasoning behind the Chrome architecture that has been designed from the ground up in a comic strip.

From what I have seen so far, it looks like it has potential. All you web developers will now have another browser to support in addition to all the others that you now do. Google is using the WebKit browser engine which is the same engine used by Safari.

The main design points that the design team are striving to solve are the 3 S's, security, speed and stability. Google says they will address these by having each tab be it's own process, and by developing their own javascript VM called V8 written by a dedicated team in Denmark.

The jury is still out, but if the truth be told, then Chrome will gain significant market share within days of its release.

Google Suggest : Yahoo Search Assist

So the Google suggest feature has been in the google labs while now and is graduating out of the labs and into the mainstream. I thought that this was interesting because Yahoo has pretty much the same feature called Yahoo Search Assist on their site for over a year now (see their release). The Google suggest is almost identical to what Yahoo revealed over a year ago.


Yahoo has had a year to make it better but the differences are still few, but I wish they both had the combined features that are missing. The explore concepts feature in yahoo would be nice Google... hint hint

All Software Has Bugs

I was wondering why I couldn't get into Gmail on Monday. Apparently they had a system wide outage and apologized publicly for it which is very uncommon for companies to do. Being in the technology field, I realize that scheduled downtime is needed and I believe it to be acceptable as long as it's after business hours and customers are notified in advance. The Internet and online applications have become utilities that many people rely on multiple times a day. Like the phone that you expect to always produce a dial tone every time you pick it up, you should be able to log into your email account and see your messages at your whim.

This is just a small (?) reminder to all that software has bugs and will break (nothing is perfect).

Update [8/14/08] : We have a VMWare installation here at work and were patching servers at 1:30 in the morning yesterday... VMware's CEO Apologizes For Major Bug