Category: General Tech

Ars:

We have already mentioned a few of the downsides of this beta (lack of bookmark organization, no extensions), but there are other downsides that inevitably come as part of prerelease software. A few Ars staffers have already had Chrome crash during not much more than regular browsing (though I, personally, have not). There’s also the cadre of users who are mounting a campaign against the “toppy tabs” that sit above the address bar—not a detail that I’m in love with, but is also not throwing me for a loop either.

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Enjoy.

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The sad thing is that they even have to crowd-source this.

This also comes to mind.

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Tablet computers have never really taken off, but if rumors are correct, 2010 will be the Year of the Tablet. Jeff Bertolucci of PC World raises a good question, though: do consumers want these things? Here’s an excerpt:

Conceptually, a tablet device is appealing: An 8- or 10-inch LCD color display with touch input — essentially a netbook screen minus the rest of the computer. A tablet could resolve many of the ergonomic limitations of today’s smartphone, namely the small display that limits its usefulness as a Web browser and media player.

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Mike Rowe of the Discovery Channel recently filmed a video interview, answering questions submitted by Reddit users. It’s great. Here’s the best question:

Is there any chance you’ll stop having sex with my wife in her dreams? It’s getting pretty old, Mike.

Here are links to the interview on YouTube:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

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I’m totally bookmarking this chart.

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Loren Britcher:

I want a 3GS with the original aluminum enclosure. Plastic gets slimy.

Shawn Blanc agrees too.

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Apple Insider:

Apple has outfitted its Mac Pro desktop machines with a new 3.33GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon upgrade option, at a cost of $1,200, as well as 2TB hard drives for the Mac Pro and Xserve.

The new, faster processor for the Mac Pro is offered in addition to the basic 2.66GHz quad-core, and the 2.93GHz Intel Xeon, which costs an extra $400. The new “Nehalem” Xeon processor-equipped Mac Pros debuted in March. They feature an updated system architecture that delivers twice the performance of the previous model, and start at a price that was $300 lower than its predecessor.

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Electronista:

Comcast chief operating officer Stephen Burke called Hulu’s existing business model “smart and appropriate” and said there weren’t any plans to change the way the streaming video site works. He points out that the split already works in Comcast’s favor, as much of Hulu’s content comes from basic cable and leaves out the premium channels that Comcast would want to reserve for On Demand Online.

Burke added that NBC (and now Comcast) was only one of three studios involved in Hulu and thus couldn’t determine its fate outright. However, he noted that Comcast doesn’t have any plans to implement a pay-only section of Hulu.

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If you’re like me, your ISP’s DNS sucks. I’ve being using OpenDNS for years to avoid Comcast’s DNS issues. While not everyone is thrilled with their service, I don’t mind a redirection here and there for faster browsing and the ability to filter traffic.

Today, Google launched their own independent DNS service at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. While it’s not as robust as OpenDNS yet — Google doesn’t offer any filtering, for example — it doesn’t redirect any traffic, which is a plus for some users.

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Miland Alvares at Smoking Apples:

For the full year that the first gen iPhone was out, the only way to put it to any real use was to jailbreak it. Then the app store came along and changed the game of using third party applications on iPhone OS. ‘Official’ apps were far more refined, polished, and as is evident by the current figures, far more in number. But if the App Store is famous for anything other than its sheer size, is the stringent rules by which Apple allows an application to be sold at the store. In most cases Apple doesn’t even have to reject the apps—the developers of the apps in question know they won’t make it. Yes, they are that cool.

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Wayne Lau for Ars Technica:

Overall, I like the Droid. The hardware design is merely par for the course; it’s well-made but has some rough edges. The hardware specs, however, combined with Android 2.0, makes this a good enough device to be a solid competitor to the iPhone 3GS. This is the hardware that Android should have shipped with. In some areas it is better, in some areas on par, and some areas slightly worse than the iPhone or other high end smartphones. But all of it is “just good enough.” It all depends on your preferences in phone features. If multitasking matters, the Pre and the Droid are your only choices. Droid lets you play music on Pandora, navigate, and check Twitter all at the same time, with no lag and no delays. If you’re looking for a media player phone or a camera phone, on the other hand, you might check elsewhere. It just comes down to the feature set you’re looking for.

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