Google has released their own web browser, Chrome – and everyone is talking about it this week. It certainly does have fewer buttons, and apparently doesn’t crash nearly as often as Firefox does. (Wish wish, hope hope!)

Have you tried it yet? Will you?

If you have, what do you think? If you haven’t, why not?

Chrome is a very clean and fresh approach to the browser. They haven’t released their API for extensions yet so I won’t be using it as a daily browser until then.  I rely on 20+ extensions for firefox for various web development enhancements and blogging utilities. Definitely some good features but all of them are currently available as an add-on to Firefox. FF3 is also incredibly fast, I used to be a big proponent of Opera but Firefox finally got it together with 3 and I haven’t looked back yet.

Now if we could just stop IE 8 from coming out, that would be awesome. Or, if IE could adopt one of the existing open source rendering kits like EVERYONE else. That would make developers lifes 10x easier, and give me back more of my own life. That would be great.

Nick Hammond

No.  There is no Mac version.

David Hibbs

I think a lot of people will be cheesed that there is no Mac version of the browser available. Then again, no one writes anything for Macs, so they should be used to that. ;)

Anyway, I’ve tried it and I like it - I’ll like it more when all of my Firefox extensions and add-ons are available for it as well.

Eric Reid

I have tried it. I am a little disappointed that they did not release a Mac and Linux version simultaneously, but it shows promise. While there is little that you cannot do from Firefox, The fact that it places each tab in it’s own CPU thread to prevent one poorly coded web page from bringing down the whole browser is neat. This is much like modern operating systems like Windows and Mac OS do with whole applications to prevent a single application from crashing the whole computer.

With that said, I do not think that Google should go down this path. I think that now that they have created the proof of concept they should work with Apple, Mozilla, and Microsoft (GASP!!) to get add these features to the other more dominant browsers on the market, rather than fragmenting the market further (can you call something that is given away for free “a market”?).

However, this could be a Trojan Horse on Google’s part to get the ball rolling on the long rumored “Google OS”. With the fact that their Google Gears framework is built into the browser, they could essentially build an entire OS around the browser with pseudo-web-based, offline applications on top of an existing OS.

Right now it does not show much use to other than being fast, but I will be following it’s development closely going forward.

Justin Wilson 

Well, first, there is no Mac version which is going to keep quite a few people away from Chrome. Even Sergey when interviewed about Chrome earlier this week said it was embarrassing that they couldn’t get a Mac version launched yet.

In any event, Google needs to be careful. What once started as just a search engine has turned tentacled out into television, radio, print advertising - content production - mobile phone operating systems, mapping, social networking and on and on. What hasn’t really significantly improved? Search.

Second, I don’t feel it is Google’s place to get into the web browser game. It smacks of “Microsoft” to me and blurs the lines even further between those two companies imo. Its been theorized now for about a year (maybe more) that Google was working on 1) a browser and 2) an operating system. They already are trying to develop their own office applications to undercut Microsoft Office. Full disclaimer: I do rather like Google docs.

William Smith

No Mac version.  Worthless.  Less than worthless, actually.  I’ll give it a shot when it exists, but until that time it’s vaporware to me.

From what I’ve read there’s little there I can’t get with Firefox and the right plugins, and the last thing we need is another browser with its own quirks to code against.  For what it’s worth, my Firefox crashes have decreased by a solid 95% since I switched to 3.0 and blocked all Flash of any kind.

Joseph Jaramillo

Even if they had a Mac version I wouldn’t try it. I understand that they are trying to position themselves against Internet Explorer but with few options at this time, and with reviews that say it’s slower than FireFox and Safari, there’s  just no point.

Roger Hurni

There are a lot of things out there people care about. And whenever someone cares about something, count on it, they feel the need to make you care about it too.

Some people are really worried about the hole in the ozone layer. Some are worried about foreign oil. Some are worried about terrorism.
Or animal cruelty.
Or curing AIDS.
Or taxing corporations.
Or pollution.
Or declining morals.
Or disappearing civil liberties.

Or, or, or. There are so many things that need fixing, no one can possible care about all of it. Some even throw their hands up in the air and say, “forget it. I’m going home to watch TV. Call me when the apocalypse begins.”

What cause do you care about? And if that’s the one cause you have, why don’t you care about anything else?

If you don’t care about anything, what drove you over that edge?

I’d like to think that I care a little about everything, and pitch in when I can. We use canvas bags when we shop and compact fluorescent bulbs at home in an effort to help the environment. However, I do not have my very own compost heap in the backyard. I donate whatever time and / or resources I don’t use myself to help whatever charitable cause I can, but I don’t spend every waking moment or spare penny on anything in particular. There are a couple causes I feel very strongly about – donating blood and preventing drunk driving. When the opportunity presents itself I like to educate people on those causes, but I’m not going to try and impose my beliefs on every person I come in contact with.

Vanessa Geary

Two topics I feel strongly about:
1.    The GLBT Community. Everyone should have the same rights as everyone else, no matter who they are. I contribute every year to <a href= http://www.wingspan.org/>Wingspan</a> in memory of a family member.
2.    Pro-choice. It’s a woman’s choice.

I care about all the other issues mentioned, however, I don’t have the time or energy to care about everything.

Ellen Stevens

I care about the inequality that exists throughout the world in terms of knowledge, lifestyles and opportunities.
It’s sad to think that we can all be living on this earth, yet live in such different times. I feel bad for many people who live for example, in third world countries, and will probably never know that there is a world of opportunities elsewhere.
It also saddens me when people in corporate America think a work project is a matter of life and death, while people in less developed nations are grateful for the day they eat. Why such a discrepancy in how we live our lives?
What really strikes at me:

• Women not treated equally. I’m speaking around the world, where they have little to no rights and are often subject to abuse.

• People starving. Literally…

• Physical cruelty toward other humans, in wars, toward women, children, animals, etc. People need to practice compassion, although it may be hard if violence is the only way they’ve been taught.

• The lack of resources available to people around the world to better themselves. Largely because they don’t know what’s out there.

I don’t think we can fix these all one at a time. It starts with infrastructure, so until there is change in government and education, there will continue to be an even larger gap among the human race.

I care because it’s a matter of human rights and having dignity to live a proper life. If we care about core human values, then we can understand the drastic inequities present in this world.

Rosa Milan

With cameras in phones, cheap video cameras, blogs, and anything else you can record your life with, we’re documenting our lives like no society ever has. Our days can be reported on, taped, podcasted, blogged, video blogged, micro blogged, photographed, commented on… all supposedly allowing us to live forever in the vast nexus of digital storage. (Though I hear Livejournal deletes your blog after a year of not logging in – so they can clear space for the living.)

But are we somehow taking away the specialness of life with all of this documentation? Does it cheapen our experiences to be able to dial up the video of them at a whim, relying on the value of our own memories?

Or

Do you think this is preferable, since you always have some touchstone to events that happened in your life? Rather than you mother’s scrapbook, full of photos taken on “special occasions,” do you like being able to call up a thought on a day you blogged back in 2003?

Well, I am not a blogger and nor do I wish to be, but it does seem that people are documenting their lives constantly, and I am okay with that, because I don’t have to read it if I don’t want to. If I ever did blog I would probably do it for myself as opposed to doing it so people will read it, more of a diary type thing, but as I said I don’t ever plan on doing that.

However, with two children I do photograph and video more than I would have ever thought possible thanks to my cell phone camera, my digital camera and my Flip. My mother used to drive me nuts by always wanting to take pictures when I was growing, and now I have turned into that person, but I have the advantage of being able to see those pictures or videos instantly to know if I want to keep or delete and I can send almost instantly to anyone I want. My mother may have developed those pictures once a year. I can have those pictures printed (virtually) and sent off in seconds.

People used to fear big brother was watching. Forget big brother, our entire society is eagerly waiting to capture any moment at the drop of a hat. And for some reason I am okay with that. One day we will be looking at this generation in great detail thanks to all of the blogs, images and video at our disposal and we will most likely say “What the hell were we thinking”

Brian Alig

People generally post on the Internet only what they are willing to share with the public. It is also quite common for people to filter their words and thoughts so only the most interesting and favorable information gets out. One way to think about it is that social media content producers are writing their autobiographies on the fly.

With people who become famous or renowned in their industry, a digital paper trail will serve as an excellent look into the lives of those individuals. For people who are not so lucky, the data will fade into obscurity along with the digital lives of billions of other average people.

As for affecting the specialness of life, I think having the ability to share a video of an event — or even an immediate recollection after an event — is favorable to relying on one’s memory and one’s ability to communicate to another person something that happened years ago. If anything, this will give people a better understanding and greater appreciation of what you had gone through.

Brian Shaler

It’s better by a long shot, but - like everything - it has its caveats. (You knew that was coming, right?)

Special moments are special regardless of whether or not they’re captured on film of any kind, and being so captured does not make them less so. The only “harm” inflicted by recording these moments is on our ability to get away with embellishing them the way feeble human memories typically do.

The memory of a child’s first steps is in no way less “special” because it was captured on film. Michael Phelps becoming the winning-est Olympian of all time is in no way lessened by the fact that it was captured by dozens of cameras in high definition, viewed by millions of people worldwide in real time, and viewable any time thereafter. The “vast nexus of digital storage” makes it possible to preserve these moments in a way that makes them less susceptible to being lost, and their being digital means it is far, far easier to preserve them exactly as they were recorded.

Some people have a love affair with printed paper, photographs, and other tactile means for recording human activity and/or production. I don’t buy that kind of sentimentality. The printed word’s value has nothing to do with it being “printed” - its value is intrinsic. A photograph lost in a fire has no value relative to a high quality scan of it stored in the cloud, where it can be recalled on demand; where companies far better at the task see to it that it is always there, ready.

I mentioned caveats, and in my opinion the problem with the ubiquity of recording devices is that they get us far too comfortable with exposing our private lives. The average person has no idea they’re caught on camera dozens - sometimes hundreds - of times a day. We’ve regressed into a society where privacy is no longer a right, but a privilege, and where precious few understand how to properly respond to any question that begins with, “If you’ve got nothing to hide…”

Joseph Jaramillo

The idea of capturing the moments of your life is and will always be special. But as a society I believe we are going a little overboard with allowing other people to access those moments. Any sense of privacy is being lost and sadly I don’t see that diminishing anytime soon.

Roger Hurni

That’s a good question you raise.

I had a little talk about something similar a couple days ago where it was asked if access to all this information makes us less intelligent? Basically meaning that instead of learning anything you can look it up on Google. While I understand the point I don’t believe so, in ways. Take for instance if you lose your phone. How many phone numbers of friends/family are you going to remember? Probably none as you’ve never really seen them before. But when I was a kid, I knew every friends numbers in my head because I didn’t have a cell phone to save them in.

At the same time I believe it intelligent to be able to know how/where to find anything when needed. That helps me learn.

As for the archiving of your life.
I see the specialness of life in the ability to index all that information and advance our quality of life. People have been indexing information with hieroglyphs and stories and pictures (yearbooks) ever since they could and all this digital media is just the next step in all that. … and yet we still have our memories :)

Technology helps us to live longer, cure diseases, and learn more about anything (not counting budgets or politics).

Chuck Reynolds

I do believe that ages ago people may have recorded their thoughts through diaries and journals more than people do today. They had less technological distractions, and more time to reflect on life. Fast forward to today, technology is making it easy and fun to record and share our lives with multimedia.

I don’t feel that ease of creation and sharing cheapens our imagination or the experiences recorded. I look at photos from my childhood and it helps me remember other things about a particular vacation which was NOT recorded on film, yet having a photo jars my memory about that era and helps “prove” to my brain that I was there and did that thing. Other memories follow. When we go through photos with our children they start talking about other things from the photos.

A problem with extreme documentation of our lives is we may miss out on life right now, while trying to create the “now” memories. Spending 12 hours glued to ustream.tv watching a someone life stream their (also) normal life while ignoring your own friends and family means that you are missing out on your own life. If something that great happens in a life feed, believe me, you can always see the Flickr photos, blog posts or tweets about it the next day.

As a photographer I’ve been guilty of dragging my pro gear to the park to photograph my kids playing. A ten minute lighting setup and a few thousand dollars of photo gear sitting on the ground is not very conducive to me playing with my kids and being a dad. A while back I found a website called, “UnPhotographable” by photographer Michael David Murphy. He describes events which he missed with his camera or which he chose to not photograph while truly appreciating the moment. I was never much into poetry, yet as a photographer I understand capturing a split second in time which tells a powerful story.

Since finding Michael’s blog, I’ve made a conscious efforts to take in some moments and cherish them in my mind. A cell phone photo (or just a memory) of my happy kids will will always trump a very well lit photo of a 5 year old wishing his dad would chase him around the park.

Adam Nollmeyer
Phoenix Photographer

I must say, the main reason I chose this topic for the question this week is that I just sold my Flip Video camera. It was neat for a while, but I realized as I was strolling through Jerome with my girlfriend that I wasn’t really being in the moment - I was sacrificing that moment so that I could point and click. What’s more, looking at the videos the next day, just as Adam described the YouTube example, the videos weren’t worth missing the moment of really “being there.”

How much more of our lives are lost like that? Frankly, I don’t mind killing time that way: I’m waiting for the movie to start, so I fire off a quick text to Brightkite and I’m on with my life.

For things I actually want to remember, though, I find all this documentation replaces my chance at a memory with a digital scrapbook. And that scrapbook is a pale imitation of having lived a life. The more we do this, the more I fear we won’t even care. We’ll be a population of documentarians with nothing worthy of documenting.

Eric Reid

I would answer “No” and “Yes”.

No – For those entering the fray of social media, blogs, etc. Too much is really not enough. You have to find out what types of content is truly sticky.

Yes – After you have been at it for a while, a good blogger/poster/tweeter understands the types of content which her audience really respond too. In other words, they develop a good gauge for what is interesting, compelling and provocative and subsequently a great content filter. Hint: If it doesn’t elicit further conversation, comments, replies or the occasional “thanks for your post”, then try a different approach. Unfortunately, some sources of social media content just tend to continually create the same kinds of content over and over and expect different results. I think there may be a term that defines that kind of behavior…

Chris Sietsema

I don’t necessarily mean the website you go to the most – I mean, www.igoogle.com is my home page, so I have no choice but to go to it most every day. So that doesn’t count.

What I mean is which site do you find the most useful? Or the most enjoyable? Or the most utilitarian?

Frankly, what site do you think is the best destination on the web for whatever reason, and why?

This is a surprisingly difficult question. Because I’ve been working in the Internet business for 15 years, I’m a bit cynical. Also, I’m interested in basically everything in the world, but highly interested in essentially nothing. I’m like a diner at an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet featuring Sweet N Sour information.

Ultimately, if I look at it from a time spent perspective, I probably devote more waking hours to the Convince & Convert blog and Twitter than anything else. Of all the sites out there, the one that I find the most consistent value in at the moment is probably Mashable. It’s the one site that really keeps me fired up about the state of the Web industry and what it’s capable of in the future.

Jason Baer

Lifehacker is my favorite site, and has been for quite some time – although, I subscribe to their RSS feed so technically I don’t visit it.

I just love the writing there, and the interesting topics. If you haven’t been to Lifehacker before, it is a site that centers on how to use technology to be more productive. There are lots of how-to’s. Most of the apps I use on a daily basis I heard about first on Lifehacker (Omnifocus, Evernote to name a few).

William Smith

I don’t go here every day, but I really like dictionary.com because it helps expand my understanding of the English language. If I don’t understand something I’m reading or if someone said something puzzling, I look it up. It helps me appreciate the meaning of the words as used in their context. There are still many new words I will continue to hear or read, so dictionary.com is a favorite in my eternal quest for knowledge.

Rosa Millan

This sounds cliche, but I love Facebook with a passion. It helps me connect with friends and family and some of the applications that I play around with (like the bumper sticker one)provide hours of meaningless enjoyment when it’s 3 a.m. and I can’t sleep. Plus, Facebook is actually where I found this internship and have done everything from sell textbooks to find babysitting help for my niece. Let’s put it this way - even my cats have their own Facebook page, which I need to check… brb… ;o)

Michelle Talsma

My favorite site at the current moment would have to be http://tadalist.com/, It lets you create basic todo lists and is available anywhere. I like todo lists, Chaos Theory anyone? haha

Nick Hammond

Google Reader. It’s not so much a site as a tool, but I come back to it so often it that it gets the nod.

Joseph Jaramillo

I’m addicted to ESPN.com. People that know me well think it may be a problem. Relevant stories, multimedia formats, timely info, quality content.

Chris Sietsema

I’ve long been a fanatic of Skeptic Magazine - so www.skeptic.com always has some of my favorite reading. There’s nothing quite so entertaining to me as science mixed with dashing people’s most closely held beliefs.

Eric Reid

This week, federal courts overturned the FCC’s fines against CBS for broadcasting footage of Janet Jackson’s evil, rampaging tit. Of course, as we all remember from those boring old days back in 2004, this is what started the un-intelligentsia of America to break out their black Crayons and write letters to their network, advertiser or congressman, saying, “I was offended, signed x.” It was a wave of indecent decency over what was, in any other country in the world, a second-rate floor show.

Is there anything you’ve seen on television that has actually offended you? I don’t mean general, politically correct responses like, “war,” or “starving children,” or any of those kinds of answers designed to get girls who wear Birkenstock sandals to give you their phone number. I mean has any specific moment in television history ever legitimately shocked you to the point where you had to turn off the TV, and then consider writing – or even actually write – a letter of protest to whomever you thought at that moment could do something about it?

I’d like to lodge my protest of the non-stop Brett Favre coverage.

William Smith

Very funny…

Alison Thor

I don’t think this question is well-phrased. To whom is this letter going? Are we complaining to the people who produced the programming, or the government? That’s an enormous difference for which you have not accounted.

I have been offended by some of the things I have seen or heard on TV, but I would never write a letter of protest to the government so they can “do something about it.” I change the channel. I post tweets. I express my opinions to those interested in hearing it. I might even fire off a letter to the person or people responsible for the program itself. But I’d never go to the FCC.

The mere fact we have an organization dedicated to policing the “decency” of anything on TV is a flagrant violation of Free Speech so far as I am concerned. This is America, and the single best course of action for deterring behavior we don’t like is not to indulge or promote it. When it comes to TV, that means changing the channel. Idiots (yes, idiots) like the people at the PTC - where the overwhelming majority of complaints regarding Janet’s ‘rampaging tit’ originated - want the FCC to mandate certain things off TV. They want the government to step in and do what market forces have thus far not done. Could anything be more anti-capitalistic, and by extension, un-American?

This topic gets my blood boiling. I’ll end this rant here.

Joseph Jaramillo

You know that ad where the old guys are sitting in a barn jamming in a circle formation – some sort of country/folk/blues/”I don’t want to hear another note starting now” band? You think, “what is that crap, Elvis?” but you realize the lyrics are different which causes you to tilt your head to the side. At the height of your confusion, you start getting distracted by the intense grins every single guy is sporting knowing full well no one has ever been that happy, much less in unison. The jam builds in intensity, there’s a dog, there’s more smiley head bobbing, and then suddenly the ring leader yells with full conviction as if he has just found the Lord

“Viva Viagra!”

That’s NASTY!

Mike Corak

OMG Mike, I thought you were kidding.

I’m offended by this too - but more because it sends the message that if you are white and lame, have no fear - you will at least be able to add your white lameness to the genetic soup.

Eric Reid

Absolutely not. And, to those crazies who actually write letters about dumb things like Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl slip-up or other blown-out-of-proportion little TV hiccups, I’ve got an answer for you – just turn the channel, oh and get a life too. If it’s that upsetting, then just turn it off and leave it be. There are thousands of TV channels now (at least on my TIVO there are) and there’s really no need to get upset about anything you see on TV when there will always be some watered-down channel a click away.

Amy Rushia

It really takes a lot to offend me, so I haven’t had the urge to write my congressman about anything I’ve seen on TV. And if people are so offended by stuff they see on TV, then they should just switch stations or turn it off!

Ellen Stevens

My travels have taken me to a few pretty screwed up third-world countries and I have travel enough in Europe to recognized that as Americans we’re an awfully inhibited bunch. I think that kind of exposure to other cultures has immune me from being offended by the small infractions deemed inappropriate by our FCC. So, I’ve never seen anything that truly offended me on TV in America, except those local newscasters who have no personality.

Roger Hurni