News and other tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share
Google Chrome version 4 has native support for Greasemonkey scripts. This means there are instantly 30,000+ extensions for the browser.
Link: http://blog.chromium.org/…
(via Lifehacker)
I just did a Google search on my name and was pleased to see that my personal website, www.cloman.com came up as the number-one result. The remaining nine results were all profile information from various websites that I belong to. In the past, my cloman.com page has been eclipsed by these other sites. The linked article, however, gives a simple piece of HTML code that tells Google which web page you consider to be the primary source of information about yourself. The trick is to add this attribute to the appropriate link(s): rel="me"
Link: http://marshallk.com/…
(via Lifehacker)
Last week, Google released version 4.0 of its super-fast Chrome browser. A much-desired enhancement is the ability to support extensions. Say hello to AdBlock!
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
Nearly all web surfing makes use of a DNS resolver, a computer program that takes your human-readable domain name (e.g., www.chadsnews.com) and turns it into a numeric IP address that’s understood by the routers and switches on the Internet. DNS resolvers are typically supplied by your ISP, but astute Chad’s News readers will already be aware of OpenDNS, a free DNS resolver that has advantages over the ones provided by ISPs.
Now Google is getting into the business by offering a free DNS resolver service. They say it speeds up the browsing experience, increases security, and does away with those pesky redirects to advertising pages (which my ISP, Qwest, does when it can’t find the domain name).
The downside is privacy. Here at the Chad’s News network command center, for instance, Google already knows a lot of information about us because we use gmail and the Google reader. Using the resolver would give them even more data about our web browsing habits.
If you want to do a trial of the Google resolver, there’s a Windows program called Google DNS Helper that does the switch for you and, if you don’t like it, will switch you back.
Link #1 (Google Site): http://code.google.com/…
Link #2 (More Details): http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/…
Link #3 (Negative Analysis): http://arstechnica.com/…
Link #4 (Speed Tests): http://www.pcmag.com/…
(via digg)
Are you tired of people asking questions online that can easily be answered by a simple Google search? If so, then the linked website is for you. Perform the search like you normally would on Google, and you’ll get a link. Copy that link and give it to the person instead of an answer. The results are funny.
Thanks to Tom for this topic.
Link: http://lmgtfy.com/
Lifehacker performed some non-scientific speed tests on the latest versions of popular browsers. As expected, Google Chrome completely destroyed the others in the JavaScript category. This is why I use Chrome for Facebook—Firefox just can’t handle it on my underpowered machine. The only reason I stay with Firefox is because of its wide variety of extensions. Note that I was a bit surprised to see that Apple’s Safari also had very fast JavaScript processing.
Link: http://lifehacker.com/…
Here at the Chad’s News network command center, we adopted gmail as a central repository for the multitude of email accounts that we use (currently nine of them). The switch was made several years ago, primarily for gmail’s superior spam filtering and the fact that the cloman.com server kept appearing on spam blacklists (one of the downsides of shared hosting). When using gmail to send a message from a non-gmail account, however, it puts your gmail address in the “Sender:” field of the message header. Certain email clients do not handle this well. Some versions of Outlook, for example, will say that the message is from “xyz@gmail.com On Behalf Of xyz@cloman.com”. Even worse some clients use the gmail address as the reply address, which is something I do not want and which defeats the purpose of using the cloman.com account in the first place. Simply put, this feature is annoying.
Google will not remove the “Sender:” field because its use is in accordance with email standards, but they now provide a workaround where you can use gmail to send messages from a different server. Thus I could, for example, use my cloman.com SMTP server from within gmail. In this case the “Sender:” field is omitted, and the problem is solved.
Astute readers will have immediately recognized that this doesn’t solve my core issue, which is that the cloman.com SMTP server appears on some spam blacklists. So I continue to use gmail’s server to send my cloman.com mail. But I have email accounts in other domains for which I am using this new feature.
Link: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/…
(via Lifehacker)
If you have a Google login and forget your password, you can have the reset code sent to your cell phone as a text message. Of course, you have to configure it with your cell phone number beforehand.
Link: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/…
(via Lifehacker)
Here at Chad’s News we have a love-love relationship with Firefox, but it has problems with the script-heavy Facebook site. So I use Google Chrome, with its faster JavaScript processing and minimal overhead, just for Facebook. And it makes a difference.
Google has just released a new version of Chrome. It has a few enhancements, about 300 bug fixes, and even faster script processing. If you haven’t already tried Chrome, this may be the time to test it out. I personally find it to be too minimalistic and wish it had some sort of ad blocking feature, but Chrome has benefits that you won’t find in Internet Explorer or Firefox.
(1) In a recent security contest, Chrome was the only browser left standing, and (2) it finally has support for user scripts (not as good as extensions, but it’s progress…). Oh yes, and the real reasons are because it’s lean and fast and it takes advantage of multiple CPUs.
Link #1: http://arstechnica.com/…
(via Lifehacker)
Link #2: http://lifehacker.com/…
When Google released Chrome into an already saturated browser market, I seriously questioned their decision. Turns out one of the reasons was to speed up JavaScript, the language behind many of today’s most popular websites. By making their JavaScript engine so much faster, Google essentially forced other browser companies to follow suit.
Link: http://www.techradar.com/…
(via Slashdot)
Google Street View is an extension of Google Maps with pictures taken from the street. Here, for example, is my address. The service has raised privacy concerns, and the linked article explains how to get pictures removed.
Link: http://komando.com/…
