All my blogging juice has been sapped by Google Buzz this week. I’m having way too much fun with it. It mashes everything I like about Google Reader up with FriendFeed. I’m especially digging the real time updates on shares and comment threads.
Anyway, here’s what I wanted to share: Since Buzz integrates heavily with Google Reader, you can use it’s “share” bookmarklet to forward links on to Buzz. Here’s a Bookmarklet I hacked together that works really well for this…
I’m what you might call a browser vagabond. I switch web browsers every few months, sampling the latest releases and trying to find that perfect fit for what I want and need out of the single most important piece of software on my desktop. I think I may have found the closest thing to perfect with Opera 10.
Opera 10 Beta 2 (Unite Build)
For the last 6 months or so I’ve been using Google Chrome, and really enjoying it. It’s blazingly fast, has a tremendously elegant user interface, uses my favorite rendering engine (WebKit), is open source, and is updated very frequently (I run off the dev builds.) But it was far from perfect, especially in comparison to what I had left behind with Firefox. Namely, it lacks extensions, a robust web developer toolset (the Inspector is broken and falls way behind tools like Firebug) and suffers from a lack of customization options.
The last time I had tried Opera was with the release of v9. I had tracked the improvements the company had made to browser for many years, and tried each major release. Although I had always found it’s performance to be top notch, the user experience really bugged me. The interface was… bizarre, in my opinion. Although it could be customized I never managed to come up with a layout that rivaled the simplicity of Firefox.
Like many, I was intrigued when I heard about Opera’s “Unite” system. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s an experiment (of sorts) in expanding upon the concept of the browser from just a viewer of the Internet into a participant; it embeds functionality (exposed as modular “services”) that transform it into a server. There are a variety of services, from a file browser and web server to a streaming media player and social note sharing hub. Heck, it can even serve as a personal OpenID provider. The concept is pretty exciting, and I’m already in love with the file sharing and media playing functionality, but after playing with the beta I realized that Unite isn’t really the big seller for me: the browser itself is.
In one release, Opera managed to fix everything that bugged me about the browser. The tabs, the navigation controls, the panels/sidebar; they repackaged the chrome in a way that is minimal (which I love), flexible/customizable (important for many) and easily transitioned to from other browsers. With the user interface problem resolved, I was able to sample the features old and new that Opera has to offer;
If you haven’t given Opera a try lately, please do. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with what you find. The latest beta version can be found here, the Unite-enabled beta builds can be found here, and the general release version is available from their homepage.
Google dropped the bomb late last night;
Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.
People are going to pull this news in a lot of different directions. Some will call it a genius, overdue step; others will tweet dazed and confused, pondering what the point is. Here’s the low down: It’s a Linux OS. It’s lightweight and will likely run on dirt cheap hardware, and is directly targeting the netbook market. It’s designed with a focus on the web browser. They aren’t the first to do it, nor will they be the last.
Chrome OS’s target audience will in all likelihood be less tech savvy individuals who use their browser for everything (my parents would be a perfect fit here; they do everything out of the browser these days), developing countries with old hardware (but Internet access, obviously) and schools. I could see Libraries seeing this as a nice fit too, assuming there are content control capabilities in there somewhere.
I think it’s a step in the right direction in a lot of ways, and I really applaud Google for pushing things as they are right now. Chrome, Android and now Chrome OS. Keep on pushing those boundaries, 1.0 x 10100.
Evan is a Game Designer at High Voltage Software in Chicago. He loves Apples, open source and spending copious amounts of time playing MMOs.
Currently playing World of Warcraft, Minecraft and Uncharted 2
