Work(ing Title)

After a half hour with Google’s new browser, a few things have become apparent. I’m not really interested in rehashing the business and industry implications that everyone and their mother wants to focus on, so instead I just thought I’d throw out some of my experience just playing:

First, the integration of tabs could be perfect. By including the navigation elements within each tab, they are strongly reinforcing the notion that each tab is its own web page. While the underlying plumbing hammers this point home far more thoroughly, I think it’s just as important to help the user understand that each tab is its own, fully-independent portal to the web. So independent in fact that tabs are easily moved between windows, or grown into their own windows, with a simple drag and drop. Perfect.

Second, the UI design or ‘chrome’ from which it takes its name is exquisite. The latest Firefox release never made it into my lifestyle because I thought it was just hideous. In fact, most of the reason I have dutifully used IE7 since moving to Windows is that it blends into the UI of the whole OS. With the integration of the search and address bars (not to mention the inclusion of navigation elements within each tab), Google has really laid down some serious Kung Fu to build something so powerful and yet so understated.

Third, the speed increase is so significant that the browsing experience changes. While a faster connection to the ‘net or a fresh machine are the typical ways in which one finds a ‘faster’ browsing experience, this is something else. Because of Chrome’s updated processing schema, the browsing experience feels more like a desktop application, despite the fact that it is the Internet application. The first analogy that comes to mind is something akin to using an iPhone touch screen for the first time; the software responds so quickly that you find yourself no longer noticing any sense of speed.

All in all it’s an extremely pleasing product, and I hope it will challenge the team behind Internet Explorer to step up their game. Also, I look forward to hearing reactions from all my OS X friends once they get their hands on it.

A Yahoo named Amr Awadallah whacked up a subtitle parody of 300 as a commentary on Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo.

As Microsoft, we are the Persian forces, coming to the free land of Yahoo to ask for submission or some such nonsense. Sunnyvale gets to be the bastion of liberal thought, while Redmond is portrayed as a uninspired collective wanting nothing more than to grow in size.

I can really only appreciate the design of the joke, because as a part of Microsoft, I have a more humane view of the company than the rest of the world. The part of this that upsets me is how handcuffed we are. There’s no effective way we at Microsoft can comment on this sort of thing with the same tone; it’d only be funny to my co-workers, while for anyone else it’d be in extremely poor taste.

As a postscript, you’ve got to enjoy the irony of an ad for this parody appearing on Facebook.

My Friday started as innocently enough. Email and breakfast at my cafe, then a long slow mass transit trip to the airport for a flight to LAX. The Red Bull HQ wasn’t the sort of place LA cabbies seemed familiar with (but really, are they familiar with anything?), but I got myself there nonetheless. The Code Trip vs. Red Bull Party was largely an exercise in drooling over the gorgeous office space Red Bull calls home in Santa Monica (many thanks to Nate Warner for rolling out the waving wooden carpet).

After a riveting demo of SQL Data Services from Dave Robinson, I adjourned for the evening. Saturday was spent with my good friends Josh Fulton from Incase and the Nemesis of Evil and an early night of sleep.

Today began, well, just watch…

Steve Caravaial points out the existence of a sweet and free little add-on for Outlook that enables Live Mail accounts to be managed within your big, burly enterprise mail client:

For those that want to manage their Hotmail account (now known as Windows Live Hotmail) from Outlook 2003 or 2007, you can download the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector free of charge. You can also view your Windows Live Hotmail contacts in Outlook with the connector. So go check out all the benefits. I just installed it and it works great.

 Joshua Allen lays out a great recap of Open Social’s first two months of life, and the tea leaves are not reading in Google’s favor:

Social networking is Facebook’s core business, while it’s a side project for Google. Although Google has just attempted to add social networking to Google Reader (via Scoble), and is trying to take on Wikipedia with Knol, it remains to be seen whether they can be a great social networking platform. Even Umair Haq, the perennial Google fan-boy, admits that Google might not have the right DNA.