e-wot?

I had to post this before I edit all my clips into something less wobbly. It’s very rough, but this clip sums it up for me. Cars, noise and jostling to get a good position to film the action. What an experience!

I’ll edit all my clips later into something better, but for now this’ll do ^_^

Here’s the edited version. I still prefer the one above - more authentic.

Here’s a nifty little tool: http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com

What does it do? Well, if you hit a site that’s doesn’t appear to be working, type the URI into this thing and you can find out if it’s just you.

I just tried it when I couldn’t get into Wikipedia. Here’s what it said:

So it’s not just me! Well now, that’s a relief (I think).

Here’s a quick video I made (just over a minute) comparing IE6 with Firefox on a Promethean Interactive Whiteboard. It’s aimed at teachers who’ve only ever used Internet Explorer on IWBs (like some of the teachers I work with). It shows off tabs as the main advantage - of course there are many other advantages to using Firefox, but this is the main one.

Chrome works well on an IWB. The small UI means that you get more web content on the whiteboard. Good use of whiteboard screen real estate. The tabs work nicely too, as you’ll see from this short video I made.

Oh, and I was using Portable Google Chrome running off my thumb drive. Get it from Caschy’s blog here

The Sydney Morning Herald has a good article on the dangers of email. Click for ‘Email becomes a dangerous distraction’smh.com.au

The article reports:

Dr Thomas Jackson of Loughborough University, England, found that it takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email

This adds up: we can waste as much as 8 1/2 hours a week if we answer our email as soon as we get it.

I like the reason they offer for why people might feel compelled to check their email every five minutes:

Tom Stafford, a lecturer at the University of Sheffield, England, and co-author of the book Mind Hacks, believes that the same fundamental learning mechanisms that drive gambling addicts are also at work in email users. “Both slot machines and email follow something called a ‘variable interval reinforcement schedule’ which has been established as the way to train in the strongest habits,”

Well, it made me giggle.

Now I don’t get any pleasure from email at all. In fact, I avoid it as much as possible. But then maybe I’m just a Misanthrope.

This whole ‘dangers of email’ thing got me thinking about Merlin Mann’s Inbox Zero idea: 43 Folders Series: Inbox Zero

Here’s his video (hour long Google talk about Inbox Zero)

Via Slashdot Slashdot | Why Email Has Become Dangerous

I was listening to Buzz Out Loud this morning (ep. 801)and it appears that Chrome is faster than other browsers. And much faster than IE7. Here’s a link to some graphs.

I’ve tried it out on an interactive whiteboard in a classroom. I like the way it looks, but I think that the tabs in the title bar might be a bit of a stretch to reach for the vertically challenged teacher or student. Oh well.

The title bar/tab thing does look rather good tho. Here’s a screenie comparison, first there’s Chrome:

Then there’s Firefox (I’ve got lots of tabs open, I know):

First the pros.

Wow, it’s fast! Damn fast. Faster than any other browser I’ve used. Woo!

I love the fact that they’ve put the tabs in the title bar. Title bars are a waste of screen real estate, I reckon. Good move Google!

Simple UI.

Installation was a speedy breeze on my home PC. Really fast and all my Firefox bookmarks and search engines were imported really quickly. Did I say how quick this was? I did? Well I’ll say it again. It was a very quick installation.

Drag a tab and create a new window. Add more tabs to that window. Wow! Very cool.

Now the cons

I can’t easily swap/select different search engines. I’m addicted to this function in Firefox. Can’t live without it in fact. In Firefox I can search one query across 10 search engines in under 5 seconds (I timed myself). Chrome won’t let me do this. Sad, but it won’t. Here’s a post explaining more. 

I cannot search my bookmarks. Crap. I’m so used to this in Firefox that it’s another thing I can’t live without. Seriously a pity.  One day, when I only use Delicious (or some other online bookmarking service), this might be ok. Until then, it’s not.

Sadly both of those cons are app killers for me. In every other way, it’s a nice piece of work. Can’t wait for it to come out of beta. Hopefully then they’ll have fixed it for me. =)

This video is from the Google Chromium site. Chromium is the open source project behind Google Chrome.

Here’s a post on what’s happening with Google Chrome for MacOSX