Tag Archives: GMail

Google Chrome – The GBrowser Is Real

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If you haven’t heard yet, you’ve probably not been on the internet lately. Word is (links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) that today Google will finally announce the anticipated Google Browser, GBrowser, Google Chrome (link not yet active).

According to a number of sources, Google Chrome is based on the open source Webkit Project, which is the same engine used by a number of Apple products including Safari and Mail. The question here is why? They are already pretty tight with the Firefox team, why not use the Gecko engine used by Firefox, Thunderbird, Nvu, and others? Is the Gecko market too crowded? Did the Apple board of directors push Google CEO Eric Schmidt towards webkit?

The same thing could be asked of another product, why webkit and why not Presto? Presto is the engine used by the speedy Opera Web Browser and Adobe Dreamweaver. Of course, Webkit and Gecko offer one advantage here; cost. Though I said it before, and I’ll say it again, Opera’s mail client, M2 would be the perfect GMail Desktop Client. The two are practically identical.

Presto, Gecko, Webkit. It doesn’t really matter, what matters is Google is finally going to release a web browser.

What can we expect from Google Chrome? For that, I’d have to point you to Blogoscoped.com who first broke the news and now has some images of the browser. Let the countdown begin…

iTunes 7.7, iPhone/iPod Touch 2.0, App Store Released

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Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few days, you’ve probably heard that Apple has released iTunes 7.7 bringing with it the much anticipated App Store as well as the 2.0 software update for the iPhone and iPod touch. This also happs to be the day that the iPhone 3G is released. Pretty big day for Apple.

I’m in the process of updating my phone right now. It’s take about 20 minutes so far, and looks like it has another 20 or so to go. It did warn that it’d take a while. Word of warning, some people are experiencing issue with the update turning their precious iPhone into an iBrick because they couldn’t connect to the App Store (down due to traffic). I was able to browse the App Store, so I figured things should be safe now… we’ll see.

Aside from all the new games and applications, my favorite thing with this update is the ability to sync Google Contacts from GMail to iTunes. This is one of the things I’ve hated not being able to do since pretty much all of my email travels through GMail.

Here’s a roundup of iPhone related news for the past few days…

- How the iPhone App Store Will Kill iPhone Web Apps
- Battle of the iPhone Apps: MySpace vs Facebook
- iPhone App Store Is Live. So, What’s On The Menu?
- The Native iPhone 3G Apps We’ll See This Week (and Some We Won’t)
- Before the App Store “Opens”, it has already made Apple $55,000
- WordPress and TypePad Spawn Mobile Blogging
- That Didn’t Take Long…iPhone 2.0 OS Unlocked
- iPhone App Store: The Early List of Top Downloads
- iPhone Application Overview And Demo Videos

Enjoy the links!

GMail’s 10×10 Pixel Problem

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Do you use Google’s GMail service? I do, and love it. However a few weeks ago a “dot” appeared in the top left corner of the page. I didn’t think much about it at the time, as it looked like they were trying to make it look like a folded corner. As the days went on, I started to find the 10×10 pixel spot annoying. I constantly find my focus shifting to it.

On the 4th, someone posted a picture of the problematic pixels to Flickr, which in turn made it to Digg. Apparently there are many other people who find the spot annoying, and have their own theory as to what it is. Something to track page load speeds, tracking your activity, or as I though just a failed styling attempt. A number of people have also posted to Google Groups about it.

Even TechCrunch via TechCrunchIT is trying to figure out what this is. They’re even offering a free Tee-shirt (whoopie) to whoever comes up with the best, most entertaining, or most accurate theory.