Month: July 2010


Thoughts on Making the Switch From Firefox to Chrome


I always used Chrome as a secondary browser. Firefox was always my main one and if I needed another browser with separate cookes (so I could log in to two gmail accounts, for instance), I’d use Chrome. But Firefox 3.6 is behind the times and with 4.0 beta 1 looking fucking hideous, I temporarily switched to Chrome as my default browser until Mozilla releases and/or gets their shit together with Firefox 4.

But you really need to spend time using a browser to understand it inside out. Here are a few of its quirks that annoy me that I never noticed because I used to use Chrome so infrequently:

  • The preferences dialog is confusing as hell and poorly organized
  • You cannot middle click to open links in a new tab in chrome:// pages (plugins, bookmarks manager etc)
  • There needs to be a custom print dialog box and a print preview
  • There needs to be a native proxy support, not use the IE/system proxy setting dialog
  • You can’t clear browsing data on exit.
  • Memory usage sucks. I have like 9 chrome.exe processes running.
  • There’s some funkiness going on with selecting text on pages sometimes. It’s slightly annoying
  • You can’t open files from the browser. You need to download them first. This is more secure, but its annoying when you want to open a torrent from the browser. With Chrome, I need to download it first then click on it.
  • Firefox has a huge advantage for the location bar. I hate how you can’t control what pops up in the location bar. It searches history over my bookmarks.
  • It never seems to remember my window preferences / always opens windowed instead ofmaximized(maybe a beta issue?)

Other than that, it’s better at rendering pages. It’s faster. Its UI is clean. That’s enough to make me happy for now.

Uh, on the second though, those are a lot of quirks / things that annoy me. If Firefox ever gets their UI problems sorted and boosts browser speed, I’m running back to it.


Saturday Song of the Week: Shawn Anthony – Good Stuff


Introducing something you’ve never heard of before! I was watching an old episode of Entourage and this played as the boys walked into Ari’s office. I had to look it up since it wasn’t anything big.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm0blIz10dg

It’s a mix of SKA and Hip Hop, but the reggae-ish music is catchy. It might be a little repetitive, but whatever. You also get a, mediocre yet catchy guitar solo at 2:43. It wasn’t available on the interwebs anywhere and there are a few skips in the video, so I had to pick it up in iTunes.

Oh and ladies, I’ve got that good stuff.


iOS 4 Multitasking is Full of Shit


It’s not real multitasking. It pretty much pauses the app in the background and focuses on the frontmost app. Plus, Apple needs to approve it in the App Store and if they don’t like what you’re doing (such as connecting to servers in the background), they can kill it.

In addition, let’s examine the footnote. The App needs to be rewritten for iOS 4 to take advantage of this. Therefore, it requires the programmer to update the software. On a Droid, you can just multitask anyway with old and new apps.

I had a complete ramble about this a few week ago, but WordPress was an asshole and lost it. I also have no energy to rewrite it.


Droid X vs. HTC Incredible


Mike over at ScoopandSlam (hey look, free shout out) asked me for my comments on the Droid X vs. the HTC Droid Incredible. I pretty much wrote him a book in my comment on his post, so I figured I might as well archive it on my blog. If you’re brave (or geek enough to read my book, go ahead, otherwise you’ll probably be bored. To quote myself:

Straight up the Droid X has better hardware. Take a look at this chart. Also, the Engadget review on the Droid X is decent, but they spend too much time comparing it to the EVO 4G. I can only speculate based on reviews and and my research, but here are my further comments:

There’s something about HTC that pisses me off. Probably SenseUI with that huge fucking clock on the homescreen (you can probably turn that off though) and the moronicly shaped waste of space software phone/menu buttons on the bottom. At the same time, I’ve never seen Motoblur, but from commercials, it looks very similar to the regular Google UI/ my Droid (only with different icons). Android skins piss me the hell off. From screenshots, I like Motoblur better, but I would much prefer for these hardware companies to stop fucking with UI customizations and leaving it the way Google intended it to. All of these customizations are fragmenting the Android OS and confusing people, letting morons like Apple and RIM’s Blackberry gain more users because their interfaces are consistent.

Because of the two UI themes, neither phone pleases me. SenseUI kills me, so I automatically put the Incredible out of my mind. At the same time, the Droid X is so damn huge, it doesn’t impress me either. So if I needed a new Android phone right now, I’m at a loss. I love the idea of the Nexus One because it’s sleek, but that’s out of the question because Verizon dropped it in favor of the two you’re pondering. Google also fucked up the launch of the Nexus One – they should have released it to carriers to sell and not created their own web store, plus releasing it to T Mobile was just dumb as shit and caused them to lose mad sales. Anyway…

The Incredible and Droid X are both very good pieces of hardware, but the Droid X is better. I hate the fact that the Droid X has such a huge screen. However, I did read that it was lighter than the Droid and if you said it fit into your pocket nicely and wasn’t too bad, go for it. The Droid X also has 7 homescreens, which is nice because in all honesty, there are so many cool widgets 3 screens simply isn’t enough.

Something to note: the Droid Incredible has the same sized screen as the original Droid. And on my Droid, the virtual keyboard is a pain in the ass and cramped (I’ve actually been using the physical keyboard). You eventually get used to it though. But with a bigger screen, the keyboard is more spread out and probably easier.

Droid X also records in HD and plays HD video, plus it has an HDMI out.

So my only concern is that you’d look like you’re hoding an iPad to your head when making calls, but if that’s not too bad for you, it doesn’t matter.

I’d lean Droid X, pending you taking a look at MotoBlur. Although it’s completely up to you.

Either way, if you go with an Android phone you’ll be happy. And they both have crazy cameras lots of storage and fast processors. No matter what you get, once you get it enjoy it and ignore the other one/ new phones that come out. Otherwise you’ll go crazy comparing things. I was SO pissed when the Nexus one was announced because I didn’t have the best phone anymore.

Good luck.


This Just About Sums Up My Day at Work


This pretty much sums up my summer IT job. I was GChatting and the subject randomly came up. The conversation was so excellent, I decided to post it: