I have a new article up at Tech in Hiding, regarding Google Chrome and how I have made it the center of my notebook usage.

Interesting article on Google Wave…

Look, I’m a computer guy.  It’s my career, I love gadgets, and I love technology.  So when Google came along and touted Google Wave as “email if email were invented today” (paraphrasing), then I was all kinds of curious and wanted an invite.  Thanks to my boss, I got one, and have dabbled in Google Wave with some co-workers and buddies.  And I keep hearing the same thing:

What do you use Google Wave for?

The longest session that I have had in Wave is with a couple of co-workers, and it became essentially an instant messaging-style chat, just prettier.  My one teammate commented that, because of how you can go back and edit anywhere in a Wave, the conversation would get confusing, and fast.  I agree, and I think that’s one of the reasons the “Playback” feature was implemented, so that you could view the evolution of the conversation like an old-fashioned VCR tape.

There are also a few other items that I feel are quirks in the design:

• Online presence of contacts.  When I’m logged in, I see a green dot in the lower right-hand corner of my icon, which looks like the Google Talk icon for “Available”.  The problem is, I can’t tell if any of my other contacts are available, since they do not have any indicators in their icons.  Odd, and a bit annoying.
• I like the new scrollbar in Wave, with the arrows on the top and bottom, but the implementation is still quirky.  If I click on the scrollbar arrows, a shadow bar rises / lowers and the screen scrolls.  When I let go, the scrollbar will snap into place where the shadow version is.  Actually dragging on the bar up and down is a bit laggy, however.
• Wave is really lacking in a social element.  Sure, it’s backed by Google, but it needs a real social networking piece / design / marketing to get people to really buy into it.  Right now, people I know just don’t know what to use it for.  Wave seems to be trying to invent a market, but isn’t doing a good job with establishing an identity.  All of these things are leading Wave to be a curiosity at this point.

I would like for Wave to grow, but I need to be given a reason to use it.  Right now, it’s kind of a geeky cool thing to do, but in the tech world, that moment is fleeting.  Without proper branding, Wave is in danger of being Google’s biggest flop.

Fantastic article… if you’re a Twitter fiend, it’s a must-read.

Look, it’s easy to just say that Google is king and I’m not switching to anything else.  I tend to look at alternatives and have some unusual tendency to gravitate- or at the very least try- the underdog option.  I use Google Search and Google Maps on my BlackBerry because they are fantastic.  In the past I had used Microsoft’s Live Search application, which combined search, mapping, movie listings, weather, and more into one application, and I really liked it.  That has given way to the new Bing application, since Microsoft likes to change their product name every 18 months or so (I’m looking at you, Live Search, nigh MSN Search).  So I gave it a shot on my BlackBerry.

And it gets one big “meh”.

• The initial search screen looks nice; it reflects the Bing site’s anti-Google aesthetic, with color pictures that change daily.  This is a nice touch, and I don’t mind it at all.  The problem is when you try to find the data you’re looking for.
• Bing search results are not bad but not as accurate as Google’s.  Perhaps it depends on what you’re looking for, but one thing Bing doesn’t match (in the mobile app, at least) is the depth of Google’s searches.  Doing a search for movies in the Google search app will load local movie listings and times, broken out by theater if you’d like.  Bing will show you some theaters and / or movies (oddly enough, missing the theater I usually go to), and only some movies.  When you click deeper to get more information, it tries to take you to an MSN site.  I say “try” because the app would get hung up on connecting to the site.  If you’re used to Google, it makes for a frustrating experience.
• Searching for directions was merely okay.  It got the directions I was looking for it took longer than Google Maps to load (and app / map navigation was not as smooth).  Bear in mind, this is over the 3G connection of my old Storm.
• Using Google to search for “weather” + my zip code brings me a forecast of the next few days of weather.  The same search in Bing only provides links to weather sites, and not even accurate ones at that.

Needless to say, Bing was not long on my BlackBerry, and I can’t recommend unless you’re a hardcore Bing fan.  Now where’s that Cuil mobile app?

This is a great tip that fixed one of the most maddening issues with Google Chrome that I ran into.

lesmy:

High-school dropout and Tumblr founder David Karp is doing a presentation today at the Eventoblog conference in sunny Sevilla, Spain. In one of his first slides, Karp shared some statistics about Tumblr, which appears to be growing pretty well, pretty quickly.

Last August, the Tumblr team shared some growth statistics and claimed 50 million visitors and a healthy 255 million impressions in July 2009. This month (which I reckon is not actually this month but rather October), Tumblr self-reports 20 million unique vistors and 420 million impressions.

This means either Tumblr lost about 30 million unique monthly visitors in the past few months, or there’s some mix-up about what’s being measured exactly and shared publicly (visits vs. visitors, perhaps?). But third-party measuring services like Compete acknowledge that traffic numbers are definitely heading in the right direction.

According to Karp, Tumblr is currently seeing 2 million Tumblr bloggers publish about 40 million new posts per month. About 10,000 new people sign up for Tumblr every day on average, and the retention rate is very high: close to 85% remains active after registering for the micro-blogging service (note that Tumblr, besides drop-dead simple, is free of charge).

And as you can tell from the picture I took of one of his slides, 35% use Tumblr on Facebook, while only 15% connects the service to Twitter. The bookmarklet is relatively popular too, with about one third of Tumblr’s users installing it. About 15% downloads the company’s iPhone application (which is admittedly really good).

Very interesting stuff regarding the “business” side of Tumblr.

“Can Aliens Make You Rich?”

It’s been about a month (I guess; too lazy to look back and verify) since I migrated Vox Bomb to Tumblr.  In that month, I’ve noticed an interesting shift in the way I’ve managed the blog.

Because Tumblr is a giant, eclectic community, there is a lot of information and media to be found, and with the number of people I’ve followed, there’s never a shortage of interesting things to discover and share.  Tumblr excels at this, better than most other blogging sites I’ve used (such as LiveJournal or Blogger).  It’s blogging for the Twitter crowd and those with ADHD.  It’s the most “social” blogging platform I’ve seen.  Short bursts of thought, pictures, quotes, and music.  Occasionally, there’s the longer piece.

Before, I would get stuck for things to write about.  Sometimes, there’d be great weeks; if I was reading a lot of books and discovering new tunes, I’d have plenty of material to draw from.  But sometimes, due to work and life, I’d get into a reading funk or can’t listen to as much music.  That’s where the grind can kick in and you wonder what to write about.   Before I’d average about a post a day, maybe two.  Now, I’ve adapted to the prevalent style on Tumblr, namely bite-sized posts.  I try to vary the posts; I’ll see if there are two or three posts that I’ll reblog from people I follow.  I’ll intermix that with two or three posts of my own, either my photography, the latest column over at Inside the Circle, links, videos, reviews, or music.  I’ve taken the tagline for the blog - Marauding the Pop Culture Hive Mind - and pushed it to its logical conclusion.  The stream of pop culture and media, of things I find interesting, has formed the core of Vox Bomb.  In a way, it’s liberating, since I find it easier to share stuff and in a way, being more “me”.  It’s harder, though, because I can’t gauge how well others are receiving it.  It’s also hard because I need to balance it with thought pieces and content longer than a sentence or two.

I don’t regret moving to Tumblr; in fact, it has been a boon and very convenient.  It hooks into Twitter and Facebook with ease; it’s dead easy to capture information quickly thanks to the bookmarklet I use in Google Chrome; and I don’t have to mess with plug-ins and upgrades.  I get way, way more discussion regarding my posts on Facebook than I ever did before with WordPress + WordBook.

So, for those reading, please provide feedback.  How do you like (or not like) the changes?  I am open to all feedback.  Don’t be shy. ;-)

Here’s an interesting article by Ariana Osborne on publishing on demand and Warren Ellis’ foray in the realm with his collection, Shivering Sands.