It only took me one hour of playing with Google’s new web browser, Chrome, to realize that its just a web browser. I already have 2 web browsers installed on my machine (on good, the other not so much) so why do I need a third? The very short amount of time trialing Chrome was enough to give me a good feel for what Chrome is. To conclude here, I like the browser, but it just doesn’t offer me the same experience I get from Firefox, or the experience I expect from a traditional web browser. Although I have to say, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The things I like about Chrome is the way it manages tabs. Each tab is a new process. This is something I wish my main browser had so I can figure out what is causing it to use all my resources on the machine, and also protect the other pages I have open in case one causes a crash. Another thing I like about Chrome is its speed. It works pretty fast, although after importing my bucket loads of Bookmarks and History, it did effect the way Chrome handled, which could be why I have trouble with Firefox at times.

To be honest, I don’t really feel this as a true competitor in the browser space. I feel this is a spec browser which is to force Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and whatever to adopt Google’s features to make the browsers better. Google’s platform is the internet, so pushing out their vision of an ideal browser which enables access to their services makes sense that they want to make it a good experience from both the access program and the web service.

Even though I love Firefox and will continue using it as my primary web browser, I will still keep Chrome on my system. This is a perfect secondary browser for when you just want to quickly access a webpage without waiting for your browser to load and the two dozen tabs that come with it. Just click, wait a second and you’re all ready to zap onto a page. It’s really that fast and simple, which makes it the perfect quick and go browser. Other than that, it’s going to be interesting to see what else they will bring to the table.

The latest release of the best browser ever has just come. The Mozilla crew have done a top job with this version of their Firefox web browser and there are many features that make you all warm and gooey inside. If you need some convincing, carry on reading, otherwise get out of here and go download Firefox 3! You have less than 24 hours to download it to be part of the World Record that Mozilla are trying to achieve, most downloads in 24 hours. Here goes a few reasons why the new Firefox Rocks.

Places - They have completely revamped the bookmarks and it is really fast due to the fact it is stored in a database. History and Bookmarks are accessible from here and are easy to manage in folders and even tags. They have also separated the bookmarks into Bookmarks Menu, Toolbar and Unsorted. I really like how they have done this.

Smart Bar -The address bar isn’t just a standard address bar anymore. It is a lot more powerful. You can type in terms and it will show you where they are, whether its at the start of an address URL or page title, or in the middle or end, wherever the term is, it will find it. It it very good and getting the page you want up there so its very easy to access past pages and sites you have been to with the smart bar.

User Interface -Now, no matter what Operating System you use, Firefox 3 looks unique in all 4. They have made Windows XP, Vista, Mac OS X and Linux all have different themes that make it match the system better. The browser looks more integrated visually with the operating system than looking like something thrown on top of it. It may not be a huge thing feature wise, and may not make the browser work any better, but the refreshed looks is still a big deal.

There are lots of other great features but those are 3 of the most noticeable and wonderful ones. If you are a current Firefox user, its a no brainer to upgrade to 3. Memory management is hugely improved for starters and the whole browser generally is faster and is more solid. Firefox 3 is the future so upgrade as soon as possible, upgrade now!

Last month, I was playing around with a service called Dropbox. The name of the site pretty much tells you what it basically is, a service that allows you to drop files into a folder on your computer and it syncs it up onto the cloud (the internet) for access there.

When you first install the application, it puts a folder in your Documents directory called My Dropbox. This is where all your files go to get synced with the server, and it is also where files that get put into your Dropbox get downloaded to. When uploading files to the web, I found it to be quite slow, and when I say slow, I mean that my connection can handle a fair bit more. The other issue I had here was that the program wasn’t very good at telling me the progress of my upload, as well as the speed it was going. It was very inaccurate and most of the time, looked as if it had stalled.

You also have a public folder which is a folder that you can publicly share the files in, as long as you give the link to the people you want to share with. You can also share other folders too. You can view and download files using a web browser by logging on to your Dropbox account and you have access to all your files from there. You can also share folders with other Dropbox users. There you have a common folder and it appears on both peoples Dropbox’s and when anyone adds a file to it, it will automatically sync with the other people.

My only real grip was with the uploading of files to the Dropbox. There are still many ways in which this service can grow. The storage is limited to 2GB per user, and depending on how many files you have, and how much you want synced to the internet, this could be a huge limitation for some people. The service could also improve with backup. At the moment, it is only good at backing up individual files, and even then, there are services out there that do it a lot better.

There are many features that I have missed mentioning and overall, Dropbox is an amazing service. It does what it does reasonably well. I am really looking forward at seeing what they do to improve this service and make it a real competitor in the online storage/sync/backup space. If you would like to try it out, I have 9 invitations, and you can get one by commenting below. If you haven’t already, please do try out this great service.

I had been using Minefield since Alpha 8 which was quite a long time ago. My Firefox profile has been used by Firefox 2 since I last reinstalled Windows on my computer and it had bee used by multiple Alpha and Beta builds (lots of nightlies) and during all the updates, my profile had become a mess and full of information from various versions of Firefox/Minefield. When Firefox 3 RC1 came out, I decided that it was time to start my profile again, except I will save my load of bookmarks I have collected over the years.

The process of backing up my Bookmarks was really simple. Using the new Places manager, exporting the database was simple. I needed a way of getting the saved passwords so I had them on record incase I didn’t know a password and didn’t want to get that information emailed to me. I managed to find a cunning way of backing up and accessing them if needed. After that, I went into the application data folder and renamed my profile. I didn’t delete it straight away in case something when horribly wrong and I wanted to turn back.

This is where the first problem arose. I couldn’t open Firefox because it kept telling me it was still open and in use. It clearly wasn’t due to it not showing in the process manager. I renamed the profile back to its original name and Firefox opened fine. I renamed it back and again Firefox had trouble. What I needed to do was open Firefox with the profile manager so I could create a new profile from scratch. Peppery found it and told me over IM how to do it. It was relatively simple.

With a new profile, I felt lost. This wasn’t my browser! My browser has extensions and acts differently to this. I first went and downloaded a couple of extensions that I needed. After all that, I then went and changed some of the setting in the add-ons and in the program options. Now all I needed was my bookmarks, and my tabs. Restoring my bookmarks was just as simple and fast as exporting them. In a click or two, my bookmarks were all back, and from there, I could restore all my tabs.

Logging into all my sites was going to be a challenge. Because all my passwords were gone, I had to rely on my memory, and my cheat sheet, to assist me with logging on to websites and saving the passwords so I no longer have to remember, not that I have to remember, all my passwords. From this, I am reminded about one of the best features of Firefox 3, the simple password remember bar. It is a godsend compared to the old save password dialog box.

The only real problem I had with this is the address bar. In my old profile, I had 90 days of history and that really made the new address bar work great. It still works good with only bookmarks, but the thing that makes it a wonder, is the addition of history. The feature is definitely not as rich without it, and having no history made it quite useless. Although after a few weeks, it started to become useful again.

I do believe that a clean out was good, and I noticed a significant amount of speed improvements, but that was more likely due to it not having 90 days of history holding it back, and many unused extensions disabled. Even though I did lose history which was slightly annoying, I am very happy I did it and would consider doing it with the released of Firefox 4. I really love Firefox 3 and a clean out did wonders!

As mentioned in my previous post, I spend Monday and Tuesday away at a school retreat. In the morning, I went to school with my gear, which consisted of clothes, a pillow and a sleeping bag. From there, we went on the bus to a place not that far out of Dunedin. It was basically in the middle of a rural area so there were no shops or places to run away to. When we got there, I got my gear and went to my cabin. I shared this with 5 other guys, all but one of them were okay.

The whole time we were there, we did some games, discussions and some own time for personal thought. The group discussions were pretty interesting and mainly consisted of subjects about ourselves and our family. There were also some group activities such and the usual confidence course and getting over the giant wall etcetera.

During the night, we had dinner, which I do have to say was really horrible! They got fish and chips. The fish wasn’t that good and the batter on it was horrible. The chips were alright but I have had a lot better. Its not really the schools fault that is was bad, for they didn’t cook it. After that, we went and did our own thing, which was socialising for most people. The a bit later in the night, there was a mass. Yeah, its a Catholic School retreat so it was expected we would have something like this, but this was really the only religious stuff that happened, which I’m thankful for.

The next morning, we got packed and did a few more things. One of the things that we did was get back into our groups and individually say nice things about each member of our group. It was a really nice discussion and hearing what others thing about each other and what others thought about myself. We then wrote personal notes to each of our group members. This is probably the most interesting part of the retreat. Then it was time to go back to school.

We ended up getting back at 3:15pm. I had to catch the public bus to my house with a bag of clothes/pillow and a sleeping bag. This is rather awkward and I was tired from the lack of sleep that night which made carrying the items down the hill a challenge. When I got home, I realised I didn’t have my keys, they were inside the house. I also remembered that my sister wasn’t going to be home till late so she won’t be able to let me in. The only other person that could let me in was my neighbour, but she wasn’t home when I walked past. I went for a walk around the block and by the time I got back, she was home and she let me in.

The retreat was a great experience and I am happy I went. It didn’t bother me one bit that I didn’t have any computer or internet, or any communication to the outside (internet) world. The only problem with leaving the internet for more than 40 hours is the email banked up, the 20 or so pages of tweets on twitter, the dozen pages of articles on Digg and the thousand or so articles in my RSS reader. Lucky I was away during a quiet period or else I would have a whole lot more to catch up on. I AM BACK AND BETTER THAN EVER!!!

Tomorrow I will be leaving for an overnight school trip. We are going somewhere not too far away and will be doing something that I do not know. So as of around 11pm tonight, that will be the last time I use my computer until I get back on the Tuesday afternoon.

Now that’s around 40 hours with no computer, no cellphone or iPod or anything of the sort. I am not going to have any technology for a long time. I can’t remember the last time I have been away from my computer for that long, but its probably been years. The longest I am usually away from the internet world is about 10 hours which isn’t that long but I am going to be away from it all for 40 hours and in 10 hours the internet moves pretty fast so I’m going to have a lot to catch up on being away from it for 4 times that.

Being away from the internet for so long is going to make it hard to come back with a huge pile of articles in my RSS reader, stories on Digg, Tweets to read, and other things to catch up on. This opportunity my help me by evaluating my internet usage and possibly help me make some cuts on unnecessary parts so I have more time to do other stuff and be more productive. As well as helping me through the experience of going away, it may also help me in my current life, online and offline. Maybe 40 hours away from it all will do me some good after all.

From now, I will have no more school for 2 weeks. This has been a long term consisting of 11 weeks, although there was Easter break in the middle somewhere so it was probably more like 10 and a half weeks. Still, the term has been pretty long and has been pretty busy, as you would know if you have read the post from last week.

As far as schools concerned, we haven’t done that much at all this term. Have had 2 assessments in Statistics, which I managed to get an Excellence in, and the other one hasn’t been marked, 1 assessment in Geography, which hasn’t been marked either, 2 assessments in ICT, one passed, other not marked (but will be a pass),  1 assessment in Electronics which I passed and 1 in Physics which hasn’t been marked, but I know I haven’t passed it, yet.

Last day pretty much was mucking around. In ICT, I had finished the test in 2 and a half of the 4 periods given, so I ended up browsing the Internet and playing Minesweeper. In Electronics, I helped a friend try and troubleshoot a computer but it was well and truly fucked, then I started installing Windows XP on another machine and later on helped, which turned out to be actually doing it, installing RAM into another machine. Then last period of the day was the Physics test which was hard. Got to leave early which was a upside, I guess.

I don’t have anything planned for the holidays but it will more than likely consist of my being on the computer and internet doing basically nothing. Two weeks after doing that, school will start again. Not really looking forward to that but it will be nice to get test results back. Hopefully I can think of things to blog about during my holidays to make up for the lack of posts during the school time. HOLIDAYS ARE GO!!!