It was only after I did the research when I realized that a lot of hard work really went into the development of Google Chrome for Mac OS X. In fact, it literally took over one year to release into beta. In September of 2008, software engineer, Mike Pinkerton, was assigned to help with the Chromium Project and Google Chrome.
Prior, he had accepted a position at Google back in September of 2005 to do work for their Firefox team, and four months later moved to Google’s Mac Client Team. Pinkerton has many years of experience in the web browser industry starting in 1997 with Netscape Communications. But interestingly enough, it was during that time when Mike Pinkerton and his partner began working on the Camino web browser.
Camino is a Mozilla based browser developed specifically for Mac computers. Camino is a very fine tuned web browser. In fact, just last month, Camino 2.0 was officially released. Now the ironic part to all this is the fact that while Mike Pinkerton was developing Camino, he also was developing Google Chrome at the same time. Active users have been eagerly waiting over a year for the release of Google Chrome for Mac and the update on Camino, and interestingly enough, both came within a month from each other.
The great news is that Google Chrome is finally here for Mac and also a great alternative to FireFox is available as well. I’ll provide a review on Camino in the near future. In the mean time, I’d like to dig into Chrome for Mac and explain some of the features.
To begin with, Pinkerton explained that it was important to make sure that the Mac version of Chrome was fast, stable, and secure, just like the Windows version. He stated that they completely rebuilt Chrome for Mac from the bottom up and made many fo the useful Mac OS X features apart of the Google Chrome experience.
Some of these native features include integrating the Mac OS Spell Checker. Another is Keychain. They wanted to make it so that passwords created by users could be stored and accessed centrally even when created by other web browsers. Additional features unique to Mac include sandboxing support which helps make Chrome even more secure.
To learn more about the key features of Google Chrome and more details about Google Chrome for Mac, I recommend tuning into Mike Pinkerton’s presentation video below:
One of the key features that I personally enjoy the most is the Omnibox. Becuase of that, I want to also include a second video that explains more about it and how it can benefit you:
All in all, I am very glad to see Google Chrome finally available for Mac. Keep in mind, this is a beta release and there’s going to be a lot more work done before it’s final. Also, beta for Mac is different than beta for PC. For instance, Google Chrome for Mac doesn’t support extensions yet which make it difficult to customize, although as of writing this, TechCrunch has some updates about that. You can check out the post on Google Mac Blog and the post on Google Chrome Blog to learn more. If you want to learn more about Mike Pinkerton, you should check out his blog and follow him on Twitter. Over the next few weeks I am going to use both Chrome and Camino and write a future article depicting their differences.
When Google Chrome web browser was first introduced, instantly I was hooked. The browser performed beautifully, it was super fast, and amazingly stable. Seriously, it never crashed. But keep in mind, the browser wasn’t perfect. Simple things bothered me such as the lack of add on features, inability to auto discover RSS feeds, and huge complications with setting Chrome as the default web browser. these imperfections, while they might seems severe, were nothing compared to dealing with Internet Explorer crashing, and FireFox performing slow. Again, using Chrome is literally like riding on a greased lightning bolt. It’s fast, super fast.
Google Chrome has other important features that I enjoy, such as being able to use the address bar as a Google search bar:
With all that goodness, unfortunately, my use for Google Chrome came to a sudden end when I purchased my first MacBook computer. Talk about bitter sweet feelings. First off, your next computer purchase totally needs to be a Mac. I personally recommend it. I will never use a Windows based computer again. Mac computers are so well built, I had to take a few minutes to figure out how to turn my MacBook off. I literally had my MacBook running for two months before I finally needed to restart it, and I simply didn’t know how to do it.
That said, here’s the conflict. In my opinion, Google Chrome is by far the best web browser available. It blows Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari out of the water. The interface is very clean, simple, and extremely condusive towards a healthy browsing experience. But since I purchased my MacBook, the problem is that Google Chrome hasn’t been available for Mac. The great news is that this has all changed. Google Chrome for Mac is finally available via their early access release channel.
Installing Google Chrome on your Mac computer is very easy. It took me less than a minute. Simply visit the early access release channel. Click on the Mac Tab and proceed to download the Dev Channel: GoogleChrome.dmg. After the file has been downloaded, extract it and then drag the Chrome appliction into your Application folder:
Once Chrome has been installed, you can access it by opening up Finder and navigating to your Applications Folder.
For convenience, you may want to drag the Chrome icon into your Dock. I hope that you’re as happy as I am being able to use Google Chrome again. Now Mac users have the best of both worlds. we can all use the best web browser on the best computer available.
A lot is changing with Yahoo!, and even the famous yodel is subject to change. In fact, earlier last week, Yahoo! set up a mobile recording studio in the middle of Times Square and invited anyone passing by to record their version of the yodel. Lucky winners with the best yodel will become famous and earn bragging rights that their yodel is the official Yahoo! yodel. The yodel was one of the things discussed in the interview with Elisa Steele.
She offered assurance that Yahoo! was going to continue using the original yodel; however, to align properly with their promise of making Yahoo! all about about person relevance, they are going to be collecting personal yodels around the globe. In fact, in addition to setting up mobile studios, such as the one in Times Square, Yahoo! has created a web based Yodel Studio.
So you might wonder why would Yahoo! want to re-brand after 15 years of being one of the most widely recognized and successful companies in the world. It may seem strange that Yahoo is investing time and money into creating one of the largest re-branding campaigns ever. Yahoo decided to launch their new brand campaign is to remind consumers where Yahoo! is today, and the kind of services they can offer people in the modern era of the Internet today. Check out this video below that captures the exclusive thoughts of Elisa Steele behind the new Yahoo! marketing campaign.
This Q&A with Elisa Steele is the first in a new series of videos called Yahoo! Yodelcasts, hosted by Nicki Dugan, blog editor for Yahoo!
To stay on top of current events and news about Yahoo! I recommend reading their Yodel Anecdotal blog and subscribing to their RSS Feed. It wouldn’t hurt to pick up a subscription to their YouTube Channel as well.
What are your thoughts about the new Yahoo! and do you think that their new marketing efforts will cause you to switch to using Yahoo! Share your thoughts in the comments below.
I have been using TwitterFeed.com for about a year and quite honestly, I have not been able to find another service like it. TwitterFeed.com is a free service that allows you import various RSS feeds and each time they update, TwitterFeed will automatically post a tweet will on your Twitter page.
That said, I received an email from TwitterFeed today informing me that their team has been hard at work making improvements to their system. And, I’ll admit, it’s been awhile since the last time I logged in, and indeed, a lot has changed. Over the last year, TwitterFeed has grown a lot and today there’s over 350,000 publishers pushing out almost 600,000 feeds, all of which generate around 5.5 million total clicks daily.
Dealing with this explosive growth, the staff at TwitterFeed admit that it was challenging to maintain a level of reliability, and at times they would experience floods of traffic that would overwhelm their system. In an effort to accommodate the quick growth, they have been working on expanding their system by building a completely new architecture which will capable of handing millions of posts sent to FaceBook, Twitter, and other places daily.
The great thing about TwitterFeed is their newly released features. For starters, they’re now working with Pubsubhubbub, which means that on some sites such as TypePad and Blogger, users will be able to publish their TwitterFeed posts in real time. Soon features will become available to WordPress.
The feature I am most excited about is the FaceBook integration. On TwitterFeed, you can now automatically publish your RSS feed entries into FaceBook. Additionally, you will also be able to track statistics. Specifically, you’ll be able to differentiate between FaceBook traffic and Twitter traffic, and ultimately see which place is delivering more traffic back to your site.
Tracking statistics is important, and that’s also where their new Google Analytics Integration kicks in. TwitterFeed now includes special ‘UTM’ tags within each post so that you can study traffic patterns and gain an understanding of how and where people are coming from within FaceBook and Twitter.
The staff is in the process of rolling out these new updates today. They do warn that it may be a few days until everything is complete but assure that once the migration into the new system is complete, everything will operate much smoothly and expandability will occur with ease. If you’re looking for an easy and automatic way to share your RSS feed content on FaceBook and Twitter, I recommend getting a free TwitterFeed.com account. Signing up is totally free, and the benefits are invaluable.
In my previous article I wrote about a tool called Google Moderator, and how it can help you as a site owner collect valuable feedback from your visitors. I realized that creating polls and surveys is another excellent way for you to gather feedback from your visitors. With Google Moderator, you give visitors open access to submit ideas, ask questions, or offer suggestions.
While that’s very important, perhaps there’s a few specific things that you’d like to know? And with that, that’s where PollDaddy.com comes into play.
PollDaddy.com is a site that offers you the tools to build your own custom polls and surveys which then allow you to engage with your audience. Polls and surveys are useful because it makes it possible for you to find out how your visitors feel about certain things.
PollDaddy.com has many helpful features such as real time reporting, and data exporting via XML, CSV, Email, or even RSS. Additional features include customizable skins, an advanced survey editor, and 11 question types to choose from with multiple options for each.
I have used PollDaddy.com many times on my own blog in the past and so have leading companies such as PCWorld, Read/WriteWeb, WIRED, TechCrunch, and FOX. You can sign up for a free account which includes all the tools needed.
You can sign up for a Pro account or a Pro2 account which gives you even more features. Take a minute to compare accounts to find the one that is right for you. Lastly, to make the best of their service, PollDaddy.com offers tips and tricks on their blog. Their blog is updated often, so I recommend subscribing to their RSS feed to keep updated with their latest entries.
