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It's an Android world out there!!!
With Google's unveiling of the Nexus One Android smart phone, It is hard to ignore the presence and the future of Android Mobile Platform. In a short period of time, Google's Android, which competes with Microsoft's Windows Mobile, Apple iPhone OS, Symbian and Palm OS has garnered lots of attention and recognition.
Very soon, we will see more and more Android-powered gadgets in the market, for starter, here's
Android-powered Smartbook:
Android-powered Home Phone:
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Google Chrome: Auto Pin Tab
One of the Firefox extension that I really like is FaviconizeTab, it allows you to shrink any tab down to only a web site's favicon to save precious tab bar real estate. You can also set certain URLs to automatically launched in Faviconize state every time you launch Firefox.
In Google Chrome, this can be done without any extensions. 'Pin Tab' feature is already built into Google Chrome. To enable this feature, all you need to do is, right click on the tab and select “Pin Tab” from the bottom. However, to make Google Chrome open with permanently Pinned Tabs, you will need to add some commands to the shortcut.
- Locate the shortcut for Google Chrome depending on where you usually launch Google Chrome. (Start menu or Task Bar)
- Hold 'Shift' and right click on shortcut for Google Chrome. Select 'Properties'
- In the address area for 'Target:' you will need to add the following command to the end of the target path. Leave a single space in between the final quote mark and the "pinned tab count command". Enter the number of permanent pinned tabs that you would like to have in place of the "x". --pinned-tab-count=3
- Then, you will need to add the URL for each website that you would like to have as a permanently pinned tab after the "pinned tab count command". Leave a single space in between each URL and the "pinned tab count command" as shown below. "C:\Users\Bobby Leong\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --pinned-tab-count=3 https://mail.google.com https://www.google.com/calendar http://www.facebook.com
- Once you have that finished, click "Apply", then "OK".
Once you start Chrome (and each time thereafter) you will have a very nice set of permanently pinned tabs ready to go.
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Google Chrome: Extensions now available!
Finally, after a year of waiting, extensions are currently available on Google Chrome Beta for Windows and Linux, and on the Dev channel build for Mac. The extensions gallery includes 371 extensions. Most of the extensions are lightweight, simple and minimalistic interface and few of them are customizable. There's a Gmail extension that displays the number of unread messages from your inbox, an extension that lets you subscribe to feeds, a Google Reader notifier, a Google News button, an ad-blocker, a Google Tasks button, Twitter and Facebook. So far there is no complex extensions such as, toolbars, download managers and etc.
Here's a list of Chrome extensions that I'm current using:
- Xmarks for Chrome BetaI use Xmarks to synchronize all my bookmarks on my desktop, laptop and the cloud. It's also able to synchronize between Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and across multiple profiles, if needed.
- Send from Gmail (by Google) This extension will open a Compose window in Gmail when you click any email address on a webpage. It also provides a button that will create a Gmail message when clicked, using the page title as the subject and selected page text and link address as the message. It makes forwarding a link or contents to your friends as easy as 1-2-3.
- Aviary Screen Capture Aviary Quick Screen Capture addon will perform a screen capture of the visible portion of any webpage and then open the capture INSTANTLY in a basic image editor where you can do markup (draw arrows and rectangles), edit (crop, rotate and resize) and get the exact pixel colors of the image. Must have avid bloggers and designers alike!
Some Firefox extensions that I miss:
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Google Living Stories: A news experiments
Google have been busy launching new projects every now and then. Today, a new Google project popped up in Google Labs that is a unique extension of this effort. It’s called Living Stories, and its goal is to provide a new and efficient way to read news coverage on breaking stories from one location. The goal is to create specific pages where you can view all of the coverage on a story.
To understand the beauty of Living Stories, check out this news coverage of Battling Swine Flu by The New York Times. The page you are taken toward is a rich multimedia experience, complete with a timeline outlining key events, a sidebar that breaks down coverage (Global, vaccine related and etc), and an RSS feed-like display of recent articles. It’s clean and simple, but effectively explains key issues.
Now if Living Stories are able to aggregate the news and materials from different sources, be it either from mainstream media or alternative media, we will be able to read the news in different Point of Views without bias.
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Google Goggles: Use pictures to search the web
There is no need to type your search anymore. Google has launched a visual search application for Android phones called Google Goggles, allowing users to point their phone at anything, from buildings and landmarks to business cards and papers and search for it. Just take a picture with your mobile phone cameras, and Google will return the query results related to subject that you interested.
Unfortunately, Google Goggles is only available on phones that run Android 1.6+ (i.e. Donut or Eclair). And that makes quite a number of phones out there unable to try out this ground-breaking technology. For those who are running Android 1.6+, go to Android market from your phone and search for "Google Goggles".Comments [0]
Google launched Public DNS Service
Google just launched the Google Public DNS. Just like OpenDNS, Google Public DNS will allow users to bypass their ISPs Domain Name Servers (DNS). DNS servers are, in many respects, the backbone of the Internet. DNS allows you to type a domain name like www.google.com into a browser instead of a machine-readable IP number like http://74.125.45.100/. Google argues that it wants to give consumers an alternative to their ISPs' DNS services in order to make the Internet "faster, safer and more reliable."
I've been using OpenDNS all these while, in my experience, it's definitely better and faster compared to Singnet's DNS server. Now let's see if Google's solution is any better! Google Public DNS uses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as its IP addresses. They have also released a set of step-by-step instructions for Windows, Mac and Linux users that can be found here. For 2Wire 2701HGV-E (aka Singtel Mio Box) user, you may do the following steps:- Open a Web browser and access the gateway user interface by entering 192.168.1.254 or http://gateway.2Wire.net.
- Click the Broadband Link tab.
- Click the Advanced Settings link under the tab to open the Broadband Link Advanced Settings page.
- Click the Manually configure your DNS information radio button.
- In the Primary Server field, enter 8.8.8.8.
- In the Secondary Server field, enter 8.8.4.4.
- Leave the Domain Name field blank.
- Click SAVE.
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Gmail Labs: Default text styling
Gmail editor now supports custom default text style for your messages! You can turn on default text styling from the Labs tab, then go to Settings and set your preferences just once.
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Google Wave invites to be given away!
I have got some Google Wave invites to be given away. If you want a Google Wave account, drop a comment below and I will pick 28 random winners!
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I'm starting to love Posterous!
Seriously! After using Posterous in the last few days more frequently, I feel that I getting to love it for it's simplicity. Before Posterous, I found myself have no time to update my blog, all the logging in, creating new articles, sizing of images are wearing me out.
One of the greatest feature of Posterous is working directly from the email - exceptionally well with Gmail. With Gmail's offline support, I can write a blog post anytime, anywhere I like even without internet connections. Once there is internet access, Gmail will automatically send the email to Posterous for posting. In addition, I don’t have to be bothered with editing or customization process like resizing images, upload media files and embed them to my own blog. Posterous handles all emails sent properly. I sent multiple images, they will be displayed as a gallery-like entry. I send an audio files, it will have an embed audio player. For videos sent, they will be displayed in a video player. I sent a YouTube link, it will be trans-coded into an embedded player.So, it’s like send and forget, no more cumbersome login and forms!
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