Google toys
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Firstly, I'm loving the new talk inbuilt into gmail. Shame I don't know hardly anybody who uses it. Everyone I know is on msnm. Just getting people to use gmail can be difficult, the answer is 'I already use hotmail'. Damn it, I say, hotmail blows. Ah well, it's up to them I guess.So, I've been playing with some new google toys. Hitting that magical 'more...'. I installed their web accelerator off google labs. A quick look through the blurb tells of how it can speed up your load times by pre-loading pages and running your connection through google servers. It's happy to use firefox (I wouldn't even consider it if it was for IE) and I'll give anything a go once. So I plug this baby in. Alas, I seems to make my internet connection freeze. That's not the sort of reaction I hope for out of an accelerator. It's happy to tell you how many seconds it's saving, just a shame it doesn't pass on the benefits.
I loved firefox. It's a very very cool browser. I proudly have the 'get firefox' button on my website (along with a songbird button, a media player based on the same engine) and I'm not the only one, of course. But I keep seeing peoples buttons with 'get firefox with google toolbar'. So like any web junky who wants to see al the bells and whistles I go check it out. Like with anything like this, I like to read about it first. Here is what it includes:
* Search box: It has a spell checker, but other than that, it's just a search bar and only a google one at that. Firefox already has a search bar that is modlicious
* Safe Browsing: This tells you whether you are on a phising site that has previously been reported. Personally, I wouldn't trust that anyway. Just stick to using your normal entry point to websites where you put your card details in and think about who you use. You wouldn't just give money to any old monkey off the street and ask them to go get you something!
* Subscribe to RSS: Hello?!?! I use firefox, do I not have this feature?!?!
* Use gmail as default when clicking mail links: Ahh, now that seems kinda useful.
* Google Page Rank: I always ignore this when I have to use an IE with a toolbar. I can make my own damn mind up whether a site is good. And it won't be based on whether or not someone has gone to SEO effort.
* Search for words on page: Already a function on firefox, just hit F3, and it already highlights those words your looking for.
There are a couple of other bits on it, mouse over to see a word in another language for example, but I'm not impressed. There is too little to make this worth it for firefox. Of course, if you insist on staying with IE, then you really should get the toolbar, otherwise, firefox without is cool for cats and makes me happy. :)
Also I've started to use the calendar, but that's all a bit too early days yet to see what that's like, but it does seem kinda neat. I'll talk about that after a bit more play.
posted by SkinOfStars @ 1:40 am,
