6 Social Networking Extensions for Google Chrome

Chrome is an open source browser released by the internet giant Google in 2008.From the Netscape to this day the browsers have always played a vital role in the way to access the web. Browser has mostly been the integral component or a gateway to the world of internet .

With IE, Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, Opera and many more running in the race, the chrome has made its own mark in the user arena. With its most simplistic User interface and the minimal number of options and with my own experience i would like to say, chrome has evolved to be one of the fastest browsers today.

Social networking is an integral part of todays individual who are affiliated to the internet. It may be to keep in touch with your school friend or discussing the hot topics happening around or planning a new project or a party at your college its all happening on the networking sites.You decide which movie to go on the weekend, decide which book to read, discuss sports, current affairs etc... Social networks are the platform to express oneself and present it to the world in the way you want it to be.

Even though i'm a hardcore fan of Mozilla, i started using chrome. Mozilla has millions of plugins, which can be installed with the browser and with just a click, i can access all my friends updates on the social network sites..

Similarly in chrome there are extensions for few of my favorite networking sites...Let me start with the extension for

The extension called Facebook for chrome is just the thing i was looking for.I can directly access my wall, friends updates, other notifications.Just go to the link above and click on install and its done.. You dont have to restart the browser like in Mozilla which requires a restart after installing a plugin.

'Myspace-A place for friends' being the second in the race of social networks, the chrome extension alsois titled Myspace for chrome.This allows me to access to my profile, mail inbox, my pictures, friends status etc.

LinkedIn is the business social networking site. Here you can find the CEO's of biggest firms to the employee of a small organization. You can actually recommend people for a job, upload your education details, work experiences etc.The extension available for chrome doesn't allow you to do all of the above.. but it can help you to be updated with the news on linkedIn.You don't have to be logged in to check the updates..rather you just have to fill in the feed URL for your profile and it will get the feed whenever there is an update.

Orkut is similar to the social networking sites like facebook and myspace. you can add your friends and share your pictures etc.The chrome extension for ORKUT can give you access to your scraps, videos, pictures etc with just a click.

Even though Twitter cannot be claimed as a complete social networking site, but you can share you ideas with your followers in a message of just 180 characters.This is just the right place to share your links and other messages which you want your followers to know. With the name Chromed Bird the extension allows you to tweet, read your friends tweets, reply or share or retweet the same.

With all the Buzz happening around social networks, Google didn't wanna be left behind and hence they buzzed off with this new twitterlike application which comes with your gmail. This is again the place where you can actually send in messages to your Friends and share links.And with chrome buzz you can read the buzzing from your friends.. but i couldn't find a way to buzz back to my friends...The only disadvantage is you need to have a gmail account to get access to google buzz. So this one is only for the Google community.

With all the above extensions installed on my chrome browser, i can access my friends with just a single click and update them about anything i want to say or anything interesting happening around.The best thing i like about the extensions in chrome is that it doesn't require a browser restart unlike in Mozilla where it asks for the restart whenever you install a plugin.

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Search anything with Everything

I've tried a lot of desktop search applications like Google Desktop, Copernic and many others but nothing beats Everything! Well, I meant the software. Most of them slow down the system which is very irritating for me. And after a long search on the internet, I finally came across this software. 

Everything is a light-weight desktop search tool (around 330kb). It's super-fast file indexing doesn't make you wait for long hours slowing down your system. It takes just a few seconds and it is done the first time you run the software. It has a very simple user interface, easy to install, minimal resource usage, real time updating and what not! It has both installable and portable versions. I strongly recommend this software to those who need a light-weight desktop search. Give it a try and I'm sure you'll love it.

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iPhone's New Firmware!

On March 17th, Apple unveiled the much hyped new firmware version of iPhone - version 3.0 beta and since then the blogosphere and the twitterverse is abuzz with this news. The new firmware brings some exciting new features, like the Copy and Paste functionality, iPhone Tethering and Multimedia messaging.

But sadly, this beta version of the firmware is available only to the iPhone App developers and the final iPhone 3.0 firmware will be released during the summer for consumers and till then there is no direct way of accessing and testing out the features of this new firmware on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Now the good news is, here on TechPP you can download the iPhone 3.0 firmware beta for your iPhone (2G and 3G) or for your iPod Touch (1G and 2G), thanks to Saad Hamid. He will also provide you instructions on how to install and get it working on your device without any problems. Below you will find the download links for each of the device.

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Phantom OS- A New Rvolution ?

Russian programmer Dmitry Zavalishin is working on a revolutionary new concept for an operating system. In Zavalishin’s Phantom OS, snapshots of the entire system will be continually saved to disk, preserving state for running applications and active data. There are no files in the traditional sense, instead a file is merely an object with persistent state. Neat!

Phantom is new, but it can currently boot, execute applications, and continually save system state to disk. A GUI is planned, as are cross-development tools. The new OS is planning to support interpreted scripting languages like Ruby and Python, and virtual machine programming languages like C# and Java. What, no perl?!

The saved-state nature of Phantom makes it a real contender for both the mobile market, as well as servers. Switch off your phone running Phantom and then turn it back on with no loss of data or apparent interruption in what you were doing. For server environments, a power loss may no longer be a big deal.

It’s great to see real innovation in the OS space. Challenging the status quo may mean that Phantom has an uphill battle before it, but it’s refreshing to see people really thinking outside the box.

*Source -Crunchgear.

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Intrepid- Flash Update Problem

I usually run any updates on a my Ubuntu. For the Flash update in Intrepid Ibex I’ve made an exception: each page I opened that contained Flash (and in these days, which doesn’t?) pulled my CPU to 100%. That’s annoying.

If you have the same problem, just search for the flash update in your Update Manager and install it. Right click in the list, select “Uncheck all” and select only the flash update. After a restart of firefox you should be OK.

In my install the Update Manager started complaining that it wanted to do a Partial update. Don’t worry, just click “Close”.

Overall 8.10 is running extremely well. There are a few bugs that are annoying:

• NetworkManager forgets the password if you use multiple wireless networks.
• The dimming of the screen still doesn’t work right. If I plug in then it will dim to a fixed value, even if I selected it to be at a lower value. And plugging it in will select a higher value.
• Suspend and Wakeup works very good on my Sony. But it seems that changing anything during sleep kills the stability. I mean stuff like: unplug, or plug, the AC or attached (yes, or detach) an external monitor. I understand that’s complicated stuff: you wake up and the world has changed. I have that every day.
• I still had to do some tweaking to make the external monitor work. What’s good: at least it tried to adjust the Virtual setting in xorg.xonf.
• Compiz still can’t handle more then 2048×2048. Is it just me, or is that a bit outdated?

What I miss in the release is the USP, the killer app, … Of course it’s faster, uses less memory, works better with the hardware, but what makes this release special? It should have been the theme, but that is too weak for me.

It’s going to be a good release. Probably it will bring Ubuntu up to the level where XP was after about 7 or 8 years: stable and just working. Let’s hope the next release will take that step extra that pulls it above M$(yea!, M$) and Apple.

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Intrepid Ibex vs Windows 7

I’ve downloaded the Windows 7 build 7000 beta, I wonder if it can match Ubuntu’s Performance, usability and feature set.

First the download itself: it took a long time since Microsoft didn’t expect so many people to download the beta..Is that naive or just plain stupid?

But after a full night downloading(yeah!,moreso, because of my internet plan :P) the ISO is in.

I had Vista before and I assume that Windows 7 should run on a machine with at least Vista’s settings: I have created a partition with 16Gb disk, 2Gb memory and 128Mb video memory, 3D enabled. Microsoft promised that Windows 7 would be more resource friendly.

It takes ages before Windows 7 has figured out what hardware the machine contains, but the installation itself runs smoothly. It requires 2 restarts, but thats normal with Windows(:P). After about 50 minutes I’m on a working desktop. But, darn!, Aero doesn’t work, that was to be expected. The install takes about 7Gb (!). So I ended up manually updating the drivers for the system and the video. Another restart required.

Ubuntu clearly wins here. The Ubuntu installation is easier, more logical and much faster.

Going over to the General performance issues. I feel thats its still slow. When I click anything it opens slow, very slow. The Card Deck application took about 50 seconds to open.

I have the feeling that Windows 7, as Vista, depends to much on Aero for the frontend that not being able to run Aero breaks the whole system. Also Windows 7 still starts a lot of services after it has already shown the desktop which causes it to be less responsive in the first minutes. After this is done the system response improves a lot. It’s not as fast as Windows XP , but it’s much better then Vista.

Memory usage after startup is 300Mb, that’s impressive!

Ubuntu is faster. That’s no surprise.

After playing with the monitor settings I managed to kill the resolution of the monitor, it now displays 800×600. So if you want to play with Windows 7: don’t fool around with the screen resolution!

I’m a Gnome addict, I never liked the Windows and KDE interface approach. The new taskbar which an act like a dock is pretty nice. It takes a lot of screen space though, which is a general problem with the Windows 7 visual design. The icon tray is still there, include the bizarre ‘hide icon when not active’ function.

Explorer (the file manager, not the browser) is very much the same as in Vista. The only difference I could find was that the ‘open folder’ triangles fade out when the pane is inactive. What’s strange is that the Folder Settings dialog is still the same as in windows XP, that dialog is 10 years old…

If I look at the default installation only, so no personalisation then Windows 7 is doing quite good. The Ubuntu default config with the awful orange/brown colors and the Gnome default layout is horrible. Windows 7 looks more clean and the start menu is fast and easy to use.

While configuring Windows 7 more to my liking I was reminded of why I prefer Ubuntu: Windows can’t be configured. You can can choose a predefined setup that matches your needs best, but you can’t tweak it completely. Windows is and stays what it is.

When you play around with Ubuntu it enables you to make it exactly as you want it. This takes time and effort, so not everybody will do that. If you stay with the default config I’d say Windows 7 is actually better then Ubuntu, but if you’re ready to think and do some tweaking Ubuntu is so much better than Windows 7.

On the ease of use I would say Ubuntu and Windows 7 are equal. Ubuntu is more configurable, but most people won’t use that, Windows is familiar and that’s working ok. On the visual level I like Ubuntu better (especially with the Shiki Colors scheme!), but that’s mainly taste. Windows 7 looks good, so I’d call this a draw.

There is a huge difference in the approach that Windows 7 and Ubuntu take the pre installed features here. Windows 7 is an operating system, with everything that an OS needs: kernel, GUI, utilities, even some end user applications like Notepad and Paint.It’s not a fully operation system after installation; you need to install your productivity tools yourself: mail, word processor, spreadsheet, etc. This makes sense: not everybody wants to use what your supplier offers you.

Ubuntu installs a lot more end user applications, it actually comes fully loaded. After installation you can start working. This is easier, but it also forces you to use the preinstalled tools or to deinstall them and install your own preferences.

When it comes to the preinstalled features Ubuntu is a clear winner. Windows delivers near to nothing when it comes to end user applications.

What Windows does deliver a complete stack of OS features. In that section it is a good competitor of Ubuntu. Please mind that I’m looking at this from the standpoint of the end user, and not a system administrator. Windows 7 even includes a decent command line tool, which supports some more Unix oriented commands like ‘ls’ and ‘cat’. A peculiar decision of Microsoft.

Windows 7 has a complete and understandable set of tools to manage the system. Ubuntu tends to get a bit hard to understand for newbies at some points, although this is improving fast.

Windows 7 has sufficient features to call it a good OS, but Ubuntu delivers a much more complete set of features. Ubuntu is the winner here.

Conclusion

Windows 7 is far better then Vista. It’s faster, looks a little better and takes yet another small step towards the future. But. I’ve downloaded 2.44Gb to be able to install a system that contains only an OS. Nothing more, just a kernel, a GUI and some utilities. It takes 7Gb on your harddisk after installation and it can’t run 3D graphics in a slower machine.

I have mixed feelings here. On the one side Windows 7 is really going somewhere, it’s good. But on the other side Ubuntu is so much better when you tweak it a bit. When Canonical would invest some more time in delivering a more tasty off the shelf install then it would easily defeat windows. But they don’t.

There is no winner in this competition. Windows 7 will be the next most used OS, there is no question about that. Ubuntu is trying to compete, but it will never be able to. In the end Ubuntu is a better OS, which a better GUI, but it should show that much better then it does now.

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