7Feb10 Sketchpad in HTML5: Why Flash is no longer relevant
Back in the old days when the Web was young the the solution to the problem of rich interaction with an online resource fell to Adobe’s Flash. Thanks to HTML5, however, the browser does all the business and in a way that is open and accessible to all. Case in point: Sketchpad. I can’t embed it here, but feel free to check it out with any major new browser and report back how amazing it is. Go ahead and check it and let me know what you think. As you see loading is instantaneous and the ability to create rich interfaces all within the browser is amazing. I’m sold.
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5Feb10 BenderConverter Grabs Video From the Web
Tools that help you download videos from YouTube and other video sharing services on the web are old hat, but BenderConverter is a simple-to-use web-based solution with a wide variety of download options. At BenderConverter you can not only perform the basic conversions available at most conversion sites—like turning a web-based video into an MPEG or AVI file—but you can also download it as an audio file (MP3 and WAV) or a variety of video files like 3GP for phones, MOV, MP4, and WMV. You can even download it converted to an animated GIF or have BenderConverter convert the frames into JPEG images.
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4Feb10 Google and NSA team up to protect the cloud
The Washington Post is reporting that internet search giant Google, and America’s electronic security agency, the NSA, will be teaming up to analyze data from the recent cyber attack that is believed to have originated from China. Neither the NSA nor Google is commenting on the partnership, however the Post has an anonymous source who claims, “the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google’s policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans’ online communications.” The Post went on to say, “the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users’ searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data.” What do you think? Does the thought of the NSA working with Google make you feel more secure? Read
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3Feb10 Corporation Says It Will Run for Congress
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3Feb10 Emergency vehicles

service-vehicles

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2Feb10 IE6 – RIP’09

Well it looks like Google is going to phase out their support for Internet Explorer 6.  If you are still using IE6 then you should know you are using a browser with many well documented security flaws.   What you probably didn’t know is that a lot of web sites are phasing out their support for IE6 including Google.  Google says that  as of March 1, 2010, you will not be able to access Google apps with IE6.

Here is what Google sent me today:

Dear Google Apps admin,

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology.  This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5.  As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers…

It is very important that you consider upgrading your Internet Explorer browser to IE8 (via windows update) or moving to another browser like Mozilla Firefox , Google Chrome or Apple Safari .  If you are working at a corporate office I suggest you consider a portable version of Firefox or Chrome from Portable apps which runs without the need to install anything to your PC.  You can install it directly to your USB drive or to a folder on your desktop.

I use a portable version of Google Chrome at my office for several reasons:

  1. Google Chrome uses the proxy settings setup in IE by my IT team so I don’t have to worry about having to configure Chrome myself.
  2. Google Chrome is based on Webkit, one of the best HTML rendering engines and it’s as fast as Safari.
  3. If I open multiple tabs in Chrome, they all run with seperate processes so a crash in one tab only kills that tab and not the entire machine.  Also it has better memory managment then IE and Firefox and will not crash my computer.
  4. I can run it from my USB drive and Google Chrome will save all my cache there so when i disconnect my USB drive, I leave no trace on the host machine I ran it from.
  5. Google chrome has lots and lots of screen real estate.

So I don’t know if my solution is the one for you, I only know that everyone needs to let go of IE6.

Cheers, Paul

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