Christian Geekery

With all the bad PR about Google Buzz running around the web, I am struck with the reminder that people are very happy to trash others.  Is Buzz a failure?  I think it is too soon to tell.  I personally am underwhelmed with what I have seen so far, but time will tell if Buzz will actually make it.  I will keep an open mind, while remembering that not everything that Google does needs to be a hit.

For example I am still waiting to see something truly exciting come out of Wave.  I had fun playing with it for a week or so, but it never really spoke to me.  On the other hand, I really like Google’s Gmail, Reader, Analytics, Maps, and others.  Not too bad really.

The fact is I really like messing with new things, so when Google tries new things I will continue to want to be one of the first to check it out.

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This morning Google announced Buzz as kind of a country cousin of Google Wave integrated with Gmail.

The idea is to bring social networking into Gmail and even the rest of the Google apps.
Top list of features:

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Apple just released an iPhone software update. Included are some minor bug fixes and improvements, including improved accuracy of reported battery level on iPhone 3GS and resolved issues with third-party apps not launching.

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Dan Shafer wrote that Chrome; “Cool but Not (Yet) Compelling on Mac”
I agree with most of what Dan says, but have found that for myself Chrome is compelling and just stable enough for me to continue using it as my primary browser, at least for now.

Firefox is pretty bloated, but powerful enough due to its plugins, to continue to be valuable for many.  Safari is very fast, sometimes I can not tell the difference in speed between Chrome and Safari, but Safari has less critical (for me at least) extensions then FireFox does.  That is how it was, until The Chrome folks added extensions for Mac in the dev channel.  Shortly after that 1Password came through with a very alpha  extension that works pretty well for logging in.

One of my biggest gripes that I share with Dan is the inability to open a group of bookmarks into tabs.  Today I started looking around and found a workaround for part of the problem.  The extension is called “Sticky Tabs” and it gives you a way to save urls that open as tabs when you start up Chrome.  I will keep looking through the extensions and see if there is a better solution, or perhaps the developer of Sticky Tabs, could be convinced that adding a bit more functionality would be a good idea.

I run roughly twice the Chrome extensions then the number of plugins I run on Firefox with no obvious slowdowns in Chrome like I see in Firefox.  Not too shabby for Chrome, eh?

So for now I am still using Chrome as my main browser, even if I do occasionally wonder about the G-men taking over the digital world.

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I have been using Google Chrome almost exclusively since extensions became available to the Mac in the dev channel.  Today I worked out the last issue that I had with not being able to log in to Springloops, and discovered that there is an alpha version extension for 1Password.  Chrome is so much faster then Firefox, perhaps a bit faster then Safari, and I have some very useful extensions!  I may have reached the tipping point where I will no longer fall back on Firefox and Safari for more then testing.  Not bad at all!

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I have read everything from complaints about a closed system to complaints about the networks it will support.

Closed systems do not bother me much.  I am perfectly happy with my wireless router.  I feel no desire to hack it beyond geeky curiosity, though my particular model is a favorite for hackers.  I ventured into cracking my iPhone in the beginning, but discovered that I really did not care much about the results.  my iPhone already does what I need and more.  Heck, I even have a very nice RealTime Audio analyzer iPhone app that I use to help set up the sound in my church with great results!

I have very little problems with ATT 3G.  This is probably because I live in the sticks and do not have to contend with millions of others in a small area trying to use the network.  Besides I am mostly around free wireless hotspots, and rarely have problems getting access to my mail and other services that I rely on.

what really interests me about the iPad is what I have read about how it feels, its supposed intuitive interface, and its blazing speed.  I will probably buy on as soon as I can.  I may not get the 3G version, but will likely focus on storage instead.  I am very interested in the iWork version for iPad.

Really the only thing that gives me pause is thinking about the developer tools that I run locally on my laptop.  Things like Eclipse, Navicat, pgAdmin, and even TextMate.  These will not be available.  does it matter?  Am I better off just sticking with my MackBook Pro?  I can see times when having something between my phone and my laptop would be cool.  I am not like many developers that I have worked with, in that I am also very comfortable in the command line.  VI is my friend, I am a master at piping unix commands to manipulate data, and psql is not scary to me.  Yes I have grown to enjoy nice development environments, but in a pinch I am not paralyzed when they are not available.  So the big question will be for me at least… Can I find a usable ssh client?

Finally, at these prices, I really believe that the iPad will be a game changer.  Like the iPhone, I believe that it will grow far beyond the naysayers expectations.  I for one, look forward to being awed by its design and usability.

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Beautful sunset on the way to Monterey.

I just bought the $20 AudioTools app for my iPhone and used the Real Time Analyzer “RTA” to help “flatten” the sanctuary in our church.  I have been wanting to get an RTA and other tools for some time, but my church is a small country church and available funds are better used to help others.  After all we already had some pretty decent sound with minimal problems, or so I thought.

After using the RTA, I was simply amazed at how much crisper the sound was.  I was even able to put the lapel mic inches away from the mains without feedback.  The best I was able to do previously was about a foot.   I have no serious training other then what I can glean from others and reading a lot, so this may be no surprise to professionals out there. 

Personally I am very happy that a $20 investment in an iPhone App was able to help me to do a better job without spending hundreds more for professional quality audio tools.

And the latest version of the WordPress app…

I was reading about some of the toy camera apps available for the iPhone the otherday and was inspired to check a couple of them out. The one that I really like so far is the hipstematic. It does a very good job of recreating the color and images of some of the old plastic lens camera’s, and even different films.

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To being useful to people that really need to work with unmodified microsoft office files.

I personally like google docs, so far it has handled any kind of document that I have used it for.  Granted, my needs are sparse compared to some.  I don’t write a lot of documents and my spread sheets are pretty simple.  I use spread sheets for tracking my time on projects, invoicing, and sometimes even tweaking csv files. My most complicated spreadsheet tracks and graphs my blood pressure and heart rate.  However there are some issues that seem to drive MS heads nuts when Google Docs converts their docs.

Now Google docs allows you to upload any file unmolested up to a total of 1 Gig of storage.  You can also buy more storage pretty inexpensively.  This should get more people interested in using Google Docs for collaboration.  But there is a piece still missing.  Many office heads don’t want to deal with accessing their files through a browser and won’t even look at a solution like this without the ability to access their files as if they were mounted as a drive on the system.  This is one of the reasons why systems like DropBox are growing in popularity.  Now Google, or some other third party developer needs to come up with a slick and affordable solution to accessing google docs as if they were in a locally mounted drive.

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