After a bit of incubation, a little turning away, I’m finding myself back in Google Chrome.  The interface is very clean–that’s one big appealing item.  There are built in developer tools (should have known better) such as an inspector element, javascript console and javascript debug.  These are quite handy right out of the, er, box.  The performance is comparable to FF/IE, and as the picture below shows, the Task Manager shows Chrome with the lowest memory use (memory is still not unlimited for me, especially with MacBook Pro using VMWare/BootCamp — sorry, not fully on Mac or Linux here).  Chrome could become the favorite.

Ultimately, in the Windows environment, I’ve seen that IE has the best memory usage, which one would hope should be the case.  Chrome doesn’t clutter the interface up with much in the way of buttons and toolbars.  Keeping this minimalist approach makes sense.

So if I want a no frills moment, Chrome will be the way to go.    As plug-ins become available, it will be interesting to see how detrimental the result becomes.  Off to check for add-ons, plug-ins, widgets, and all manner of goodies for this refreshing browser.  I’m chrome-browsered, google-injected, and steppin’ out over the wifi…

One can look at the world pre- or post- google.  Maybe you wouldn’t necessarily want to do that, but you still could.  I know for sure it has made research a lot easier, and it has saved my tail more than once.  I for one do not have such an encyclopedic mind as to immediately know exactly what to do when some obscure error comes up in html, xml, visual basic, or any other app–or for that matter, any other matter of life!

In short, google has exceled.  Sure other search engines have been existent for a longer period of time, but none has been so simple and elegant as the king of white background and understatement.

This same less is more philosophy seems to have come to Google Chrome, the company’s new internet browser.  This morning I finally decided to take the plunge.  Just about the first thing I did when I installed was to make Chrome the default browser.  What came over me?  I haven’t seen the reviews, but here are my impressions:

• Would love to see toolbars/plugins – being a firefox/ie user for a good number of years, i miss the plugins such as Web Developer, Compete stats, blinklist, and more.  The developer community certainly has had a great deal of time with these other browsers vs. chrome, but they’d still be nice to see out of the box.  I’m sure the volume of plugins will mushroom in the coming months.
• Open source code – solid, great to see this, it should ease plugin development!  And yes, should I care to do some spare bathroom reading, it would be nice to print out a section or two.
• Memory footprint – Chrome does well here.  Less than 50% of my firefox memory usage–but with Chrome at no plugins, this is a big advantage.
• Ease of installation – There was no issue here, it downloaded quickly even on a (gasp) gprs connection to my laptop.  Not necessarily a distinguishing factor, but it’s nice to have.
• GUI Impressions:  Lives up to simple and elegant.  Here’s where an absence of toolbars is of benefit.  Chrome just lets you get to your web pages.  There’s solid storage/thumbnails of visited sites, as well as integration with your google account.  Big convenience here, but I have not necessarily been big on storing my browsing history on my google account.
• Performance – no true technical benchmarking here, just impressions, which are that this is average, and a page or two typically working perfectly in other browsers crash in Chrome.

__________

I see Chrome as a 3 out of 5 for the moment.  It’s no longer the default browser (that lasted about 5 minutes).  I might use it as an outlyer for now, to see if pages rendering well elsewhere will work well here.

Of course, Google overall as always blows me away with innovation, convenience, pertinent results, endless capabilities.

Looking at my igoogle this morning I saw a post concerning ihop’s free pancakes.  Had to follow the link to see what the hoopla was about.  I did not see much about it in Main Stream media–but what’s mainstream media these days?  To me, it’s my own personal page, frankly what I snag on google.

Seeing that this is benefiting Children’s Miracle Network, it became more intriguing.  My buds and I will definitely be heading there on 2/24/09.  It’s in my calendar for sure.

A friend recently told me about an inspiring lecture by Ben Zander. After a look around in the video player, I stumbled upon TED, which was the conference at which the lecture took place. On this site are experts, tall figures in the worlds of Technology, Entertainment, and Design (hence TED). You can join the TED community as well, add your profile and join in the dialogue.