I usually do plenty of research before buying gadgets so there are very few purchases I regret, but this year there’s one that I feel really bad about. My Logitech MX1000 laser mouse. Not because it’s a bad mouse, quite the contrary in fact, but because it lacks a tail.
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In a move that’s somewhat unusual for Google, they released version 1.0 of their Chrome browser today. This probably eliminates the last reason not to try this new browser for people who are hesitant to try beta software. Versions 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 were already pretty stable, and judging from the announcement blog post they’ve managed to make it even faster.
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Google Chrome’s default tab length works really well with Google’s web analytics system… 
We used to have a similar problem over on Choking on Popcorn, where Bringing Down the House became Bringing Down the Ho. We felt really sorry for Queen Latifah…
I’ve been fascinated by this new trend in computing. Every hardware manufacturer seems to be introducing low power components aimed at simple ‘internet PCs’. Not everyone needs their PC to be able to run Crysis at 60 fps. I think it’s great that manufacturers are recognizing this, but it really is a shame that most of these products don’t quite fit together just yet.
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Last weekend marked the return of the ‘HCC days’ here in The Netherlands. Ever since the dawn of the home computer, enthusiasts would gather in Utrecht once a year to admire the latest models and buy stuff a discount prices. In the age of the internet, with prices being even lower in web shops and blogs detailing every new gadget long before it hits the shops, this formula lost most of its appeal. What I found most interesting about the event however was to browse through old an refurbished stuff and find stuff worth gambling a few euros on to see if it still works. Luckily, the new formula still allowed for this kind of stand. Because this year, I wanted to replace my ‘TVPC’.
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I’m a movie fan. I go to the cinema as often as I can, but I also watch a lot of movies in the comfort of my own home. I’ve got a neat little setup that is not at all high-end and hasn’t cost me an excessive amount of money. I did hand-pick every component. But because I bought all the components one by one and didn’t quite go through all the specs beforehand, some things didn’t work out as well as they could have. Here are some things to be aware of when buying AV equipment.
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This week, Gmail introduced a set of skins (”themes”) for their web email application. Luckily, there are a few that are quite functional, but there’s also a large number with obtrusive graphics and terrible color schemes. I was quite relieved to find there was a ‘classic’ theme that looks almost exactly like the old familiar gmail interface. Am I the only one not ‘getting’ this skinning thing?
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Stephane Grenier sent me a copy of his newly published book Blog Blazers, 40 top bloggers share their secrets this week. Having a new book mailed to me reminded of my adventures into book publishing when I contributed to a book about Flash optimization back in 2002. Since then I’ve become an avid blogger, and although I read very little paper nowadays I was curious about this project. Stephane interviewed 40 successful bloggers about how they became just that, and the results are hard to put down.
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I came across this article on Ars Technica a while ago while looking for ways to improve Flash performance on my two Ubuntu machines. I wanted to see if there was a way to get YouTube clips to play properly. Both my 1 GHz Pentium III and the 1.6 GHz Atom have trouble with Flash videos and especially it seems with Flash’s full screen mode.
Ars tested how much CPU load YouTube caused on some pretty interesting machines.
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