Episode 5: Subzero (Oh, and Google!)
Boulder Open Podcast Episode 5: Subzero (Oh, and Google!) Google is a popular topic. Google Chrome is finally released for the Mac. Yet another browser to test against as developers. Chrome renders the same as webkit (Safari) so how much do we really need to test? Chrome OS isn't going after Windows or Mac, it's about Netbooks and set-top devices. Linux is running the Boxee device. The network is the computer (so said Scott McNealy of Sun back in the day) - oh so far ahead of it's time. Sun will soon become a part of Oracle. Chrome is a decent browser. Michael uses IE8 on Windows. Chrome on the Mac doesn't have extensions today so it's fast. Dave says GMail is slower than it used to be. (brief GMail speed test). What's the point? Do we need another browser? There is plenty of innovation in Chrome. Each page is a process, each plugin is too. Harder to crash. Apple implemented some of the same features that were in Chrome. Dave spends about 50% of his time in the browser, Michael is about 80%. Michael uses Mail.app instead of web based email. Competition breeds evolution. Chrome is more of a competitor to Firefox since it is the only other major browser that runs on all other systems. Chrome should present files in the browser in a sexy way, instead it looks like NCSA Mosaic. Google Chrome OS boots from a dongle which makes it really easy to play with. Would you trust that source? We really protect our Google account names like we used to our bank accounts. Archived email contains receipts and reminders - lots of private data if someone gets into your email. Lots of personal stuff. Michael purges the Trash and Junk folders and stores all of his email on his me.com account - even from other email accounts. Don't rely on the cloud separately. How does Michael back up email if it's all in the cloud? Mail.app keeps a local cached copy of the email stored on the server. Then Michael's email is backed up by TimeMachine. Three copies. Google offline is no longer in the labs. Google is killing Gears because of HTML 5 specs. A company is selling an external keypad for GMail commands (that's just silly, really). Apple went through great pains to make HTML 5 work in Safari (webkit) - it was ahead of it's time. Google was right to use it instead of Firefox. IE8 is nice, Safari 4 is rock solid. Michael tests HyperSites in 14 browsers (Mac, Linux, and Windows). Michael's media center runs Windows 7. Dave's HP laptop doesn't do full screen Hulu well at all. Michael thinks it's the on-board video card or the driver itself. Background processes might be to blame too. The MacBook Pro screams with Hulu. Dave wants a Mac Mini sized media center - Michael's is too big. Boxee released hardware - they worked with D-Link. Boxee doesn't do Hulu but gets around it by integrating Firefox which Hulu allows. There's no spoofing going on so it's all good. Michael and his wife Heather spent about four hours tooling around the new Boxee content. See http://boxee.tv for more. They were announced last year at CES, so this time will be a huge return for them. Boxee was going to embed their software into other devices. Boxee is the perfect software for a TV directly or a Blu-ray player. TVs will have built-in WIFI, etc. expect more at CES. Built-in wireless HDMI over WIFI sounds cool. Dave mentions a standard for up to three yards (ultra-wideband?) he saw at CES. WIFI is going to be too crowded with all of these devices and it'll be reflected with dropped frame rates. Thanks to Townsend & Townsend ( http://townsend.com ) for the space for this show! For more, see http://boulderopenpodcast.com
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