GOOGLE took its Chrome browser out of test mode last week, just 100 days after it introduced the beta version. After giving the test version a whirl last September, however, I haven’t had much reason to return to it. In fact, I’ve found many reasons to say “no” to Google’s browser.
HANDS down, Gmail is my favorite Web-based e-mail service. With no distracting display ads, the service is reasonably fast, and the seven gigabytes of free storage is enough for most mere mortals. What’s more, with Google’s search technology, Gmail makes it a snap to locate that message you wrote two years ago. A recent addition, the ability to apply themes (available from the Settings link), makes the e-mail service visually appealing as well. In fact, like many other people, I like Gmail so much I maintain multiple accounts. Unfortunately, Gmail doesn’t make it easy for you to keep multiple accounts open in one browser—which became the impetus for this week’s column.
Digital entertainment made easy: the 42-inch Philips LCD TV
IF you’re serious about your digital entertainment, you might want to give the new 42-inch LCD from Philips a close look. From the outside, the Philips 42PFL7403 LCD TV is sleek, featuring a minimalist piano-black bezel frame that is uninterrupted by speaker grills.
ONE of the cool things about Firefox is that you can customize the browser with third-party add-ons to make it work better for you. If you really want to extend Firefox’s capabilities, check out these extensions (or others that work in a similar manner) that are available on the Firefox Add-ons site.
I was sad—but none too surprised—to learn that PC Magazine, once a heavyweight in technology publishing, would stop printing next year, another casualty in a rapidly changing industry. Back in the day when processor speed was measured in megahertz and a megabyte of memory was more than most people had, PC Magazine was required reading for anyone tracking the rise of personal computers. In the early 1980s, the magazine practically invented the idea of comparative hardware and software reviews and quickly developed a reputation as a leading source of information about PC and PC-related products.
DECISIONS, decisions. The latest version of Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux distributions, was released late last month, leaving me with the usual poser: to upgrade or not to upgrade? For Ubuntu users, it’s a decision that that must be made fairly often—a new version of the free operating system is released every six months.
IT’S been four years now since Web 2.0 was first used to describe more interactive and collaborative Web sites that behaved like desktop applications. In those days, there were only a handful of sites that qualified. Nowadays, there are hundreds of such sites, offering users everything from online storage to social networking to browser-based video and image editing. Here are sites that I’ve tried and found useful—or simply amusing.
HISTORIC is how most people will describe the US elections this year. Coming after eight disastrous years that weakened the United States and damaged its reputation abroad, it’s no surprise that change was the big theme for both presidential candidates. And what a dramatic change these elections portend. The Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, is poised to be the first African-American to become President, but much has already changed even before the last ballot is tallied. From the start, the contrast between Obama, 47, and his Republican rival, Senator John McCain, 72, was stark. It wasn’t just black on white, but the new kid versus old school, digital versus analog, the iPod user versus the Luddite who never learned how to send an e-mail.
IT’S the kind of news that should strike fear in the hearts of chief executives and MIS managers who condone the use of unlicensed software in their companies. Earlier this month, police raided the Makati office of a large construction company, seizing 24 computers loaded with pirated software.
IN the Internet age, you can access any content you want, right? Wrong. If you have ever tried to watch full episodes of popular American TV shows on Web sites such as Hulu, or buy songs from iTunes, you’ll quickly realize that not everything that technology makes possible is doable. Often, it is licensing problems that get in the way. At other times, the technology choices that content providers make can severely limit your ability to access their material—or even lock you out. Unfortunately, this is more likely to happen if you run on an open source operating system such as Linux, than a closed system like Windows or Mac OS X.
I never took to MS Office 2007. Having used earlier versions of MS Word for years, I was frustrated when I couldn’t easily find the menus or commands where they used to be on its newfangled ribbon interface. I also disliked that its applications wrote by default to a file format that was unreadable by earlier versions of MS Office. So this week, when I heard that a new version of my favorite free MS Office replacement, OpenOffice, would be released, I greeted the news with some reservations.
With Fring installed, you can make free voice calls or send instant messages to registered users of Skype, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, and networks based on SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) from your mobile phone. If your phone is connected to a Wi-Fi network, then the call is absolutely free. If no Wi-Fi signal is available, you can connect to a 3G network and pay only for the Internet access, which these days is about P10 for 30 minutes—which is cheaper than the cost of a typical GSM phone call.
Want to tell the world you're a Linux user? Feel free to grab this logo and stick it anywhere on your Web site or blog.
About
Digital Life is a blog that features a technology column by the same name that appears every Tuesday in Manila Standard Today, a national daily from the Philippines. This blog gives readers easy access to the column, which started in November 2002. Copyright 2007 Chin Wong.
GOOGLE took its Chrome browser out of test mode last week, just 100 days after it introduced the beta version. After giving the test version a whirl last September, however, I haven’t had much reason to return to it. In fact, I’ve found many reasons to say “no” to Google’s browser.
HANDS down, Gmail is my favorite Web-based e-mail service. With no distracting display ads, the service is reasonably fast, and the seven gigabytes of free storage is enough for most mere mortals. What’s more, with Google’s search technology, Gmail makes it a snap to locate that message you wrote two years ago. A recent addition, the ability to apply themes (available from the Settings link), makes the e-mail service visually appealing as well. In fact, like many other people, I like Gmail so much I maintain multiple accounts. Unfortunately, Gmail doesn’t make it easy for you to keep multiple accounts open in one browser—which became the impetus for this week’s column.
IF you’re serious about your digital entertainment, you might want to give the new 42-inch LCD from Philips a close look. From the outside, the Philips 42PFL7403 LCD TV is sleek, featuring a minimalist piano-black bezel frame that is uninterrupted by speaker grills.
ONE of the cool things about Firefox is that you can customize the browser with third-party add-ons to make it work better for you. If you really want to extend Firefox’s capabilities, check out these extensions (or others that work in a similar manner) that are available on the Firefox Add-ons site.
I was sad—but none too surprised—to learn that PC Magazine, once a heavyweight in technology publishing, would stop printing next year, another casualty in a rapidly changing industry. Back in the day when processor speed was measured in megahertz and a megabyte of memory was more than most people had, PC Magazine was required reading for anyone tracking the rise of personal computers. In the early 1980s, the magazine practically invented the idea of comparative hardware and software reviews and quickly developed a reputation as a leading source of information about PC and PC-related products.
With Fring installed, you can make free voice calls or send instant messages to registered users of Skype, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, and networks based on SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) from your mobile phone. If your phone is connected to a Wi-Fi network, then the call is absolutely free. If no Wi-Fi signal is available, you can connect to a 3G network and pay only for the Internet access, which these days is about P10 for 30 minutes—which is cheaper than the cost of a typical GSM phone call.
