Ways to waste time on Google.

random December 11th, 2008

I came up with a saying… “I trust in God for most things, and for everything else, i trust Google.”

That being said, here’s a list of a few ways to a kill an hour or two of your time with google. These are just a couple of links, but they’re well worth your time… I promise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_hoaxes#April_Fool.27s_hoaxes

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=number+of+horns+on+a+unicorn+per+acre+litre&btnG=Search

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Google Chrome strikes a win

development, news, web 2.0, windows September 2nd, 2008

I’m impressed. It’s everything I would have expected from Google, and more. 

The Google Chrome Beta was just released, and I don’t think I’ll be going back to Firefox any time soon. It’s fast. It’s stable. It’s pretty. 

The first thing you’ll notice is the layout. Tabs are located above everything in the title bar area, and because of this, you get more screen space for browsing. It also just makes sense. (more on this later). The status bar is non existant as well, freeing up even more screen space. Instead, when you hover over a URL, a small bar pops up that tells you where you’re going, the unobtrusivly disappears. Very classy, very well-thought out. 

More on the tabs: Each tab has it’s own process now, which you can see by viewing the built in task manager. From this, you can view how much memory each tab and each plugin are using… and kill the process if it gets out of hand. Gone are the days of Firefox and IE using 200+ megabytes of memory… even though you’ve closed all your tabs. They’ve taken the concept of tabs, and make them the king. Instead of having a browser filled with tabs, you have browser tabs that are grouped together by a slick interface. That may sound like the same thing to some of you… but it really isn’t. 

I ran a few tests on it, including the Acid3 and Acid2 test. It did better than Firefox in the Acid3 test, scoring a 78/100 (not bad!), and passes the Acid2 test with flying colors, as expected at this point.

The javascript speed is pretty exciting. After running about 6 tests, Chrome performs anywhere from 4 to 25 times faster than Firefox, and is right on par with Safari, being anywhere to 50% to 120% of the speed, depending on the test. It’s even 2 to 5 times faster than (*cough*) unbloated IE6. 

The beta release is Windows only at this point at http://www.google.com/chrome , but source code is available for those who want to build it on linux at http://www.chromium.org 

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Why I’m using the new Cuil search engine.

Technology, web 2.0 August 16th, 2008

A few ex-Google employees launched a new search engine a few weeks ago, and its nothing like what’s out there now.

Cuil (the Gaelic word for both knowledge and hazel) does not collect any data from searches. There are no cookies stored, no search queries logged, and no private data collected. None. They do not analyze search queries in an attempt to have more popular results appear first, and instead rely on the actual information on web pages to provide relevant results. Because they don’t rely on popularity, they index many more pages. Cuil, having launched only 18 days ago, has approximately 3 times as many pages indexed as Google or Yahoo.

The revolutionary way results are displayed is one of the main selling points for me. Results are all displayed “above the fold”, in a 2 or 3 column format that makes it easy to see your first, most relevant set of results. When applicible, a thumbnail image of what you’re searching for unobtrusively appears next to resulting pages. If relevant, a list of categories to search will appear to help you find what you’re looking for.

Give it a shot, it’s well worth it.

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Add Google Analytics code to your entire website in a flash

development December 28th, 2007

Some people love dreamweaver. Some people hate it. I personally have found it to be greatly useful. I never leave the code view, as the design view is completely pointless, and almost never reflects what the page will actually look like.

Here’s one really neat thing you can do. There is a find and replace feature (CTRL-F) in dreamweaver that can take all files in your site, and replace one piece of text with another. This has many uses, but my favorite is this one:

Find in: Entire Current Local Site
Search: Source Code
Find: </body>
Replace: *analytics code* </body>

Find and Replace
Click to enlarge thumbnail

You can add the code to hundreds of pages at once. All you have to do is a synchronize after that, and BAM, you’re done.The only caveat, is that if you don’t have the entire site on your local hard drive… well… you can’t do it. See the previous post for my rant on that, and how to get me to send you five bucks if you tell me how to do it.

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