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.

With the passing of James Kim this week, people who are reached by this story will ask themselves how such tragic events could be avoided. In my mind there are two things that keep coming up in attempts to prevent this sort of terrible thing from happening again. The first is an issue of public information, and the second is an issue of ubiquitous communications.

This morning’s Chronicle article about the pilot with a hunch has become the tipping point. It was this man’s knowledge of a common wrong turn made by out-of-towners that lead him to find Kati Kim and her daughters. ” ‘I saw the picture of the kids in the paper,’ Rachor said. ‘I really know that area well. I live out there, so I know it better than most. I fly over it once a week.’ “ I’m obviously thankful that Mr. Rachor was correct in his assumption and was able to help rescue Kati and her kids. However it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth when you consider that both governmental and privately-contracted search teams weren’t looking where this local man knew to look. To me it shows that not finding the Kim’s earlier was an issue of privatized knowledge. While clearly not on purpose, Mr. Rachor and others familiar with this particular area of Oregon, have failed to publicize and share their knowledge with the world. Could the road network in Oregon be better mapped by its own citizens using OpenStreetMap?

The other aggravating part of this story is the inability of the Kim family to simply ask for help. I think it’s a safe assumption they had a mobile phone, though they were probably in an area without network coverage. Here on my desk is a Helio Drift with assisted GPS technology. While more accurate directions could not have helped the Kim family combat a snowed-out road, the ability for such a device to report its own location could have proved invaluable. All of this however is dependent on the reach of the network, something that is typically dictated by capitalist market forces. The single largest reason there is no network coverage is a lack of demand and/or revenue potential.

I have for some time functioned under the belief that the purpose of a government is to accomplish those tasks that persons cannot accomplish on their own. To control, rule, regulate, manage, or guide is how the Englishmen from Oxford define governance, and the story of the Kim’s reminds that our government is failing us. While our representatives spend their time arguing over farm subsidies and oil drilling and abortion rights, the innovations that can help prevent meaningless losses of life like James Kim are left to the market. How much longer will we stand by while a universal communication network is overlooked as a necessity of modern life? The EU recognizes that broadband is critical to its development and success. Show me the people who will make access to the network the priority in their political careers, and I’ll show you who I’m voting for.

I got this in my inbox this morning. My favorite new travel tool Farecast has added RSS support. Using this simple form, I can generate a feed that will push their cost predictions to me as they change. Tres cool!

Well that was a nice rest. Spending a week in Paris does a lot for one’s sense of Americana; the lack of smoking, good coffee, and malaise. I really bit down hard on the euro lifestyle, as it’s taken me another three weeks to truly get my mind back in gear. Maybe when I go back next year (bet your ass) I won’t be so wide-eyed as to neglect my inner geek.

Thirty days without blogging has certainly given me ample time to find things to talk about. Here are just a couple that came out of catching up with my beloved Slate:

From last week’s Sinister and Rich: The Evidence that Lefties Earn More:

Learning and working in a world of machines designed for majority righties, lefties are at a disadvantage. Tools like the screwdriver work well for both. But others, like the scissors and the standard classroom writing desk and the electric food slicer and the band saw—not to mention writing from left to right, with all the smudges and blackened fingers that entails—are explicitly designed for righties. This ought to make lefties less productive. (Hence the basis for Ned Flanders’ Leftorium, the fictional store for left-handed people on The Simpsons.)

I don’t grant the premise that because scissors were designed to be used with the right hand it was harder for me to learn to cut construction paper, or that my handwriting took longer to develop because I smudged the ink. I smudged some of my writing early on, but you know what? I learned very quickly how I had angle the paper and my hand in order to avoid it. I wasn’t measuring myself against the other kids and thinking, “Why do they hold their pens differently than I do?” I was too busy learning how to hold the pen for fuck’s sake.

Also I don’t like the grammar in that Simpsons reference. Is it the store that’s fictional, thereby inferring that show may not be? And if you haven’t figured out that the Simpsons isn’t real, then using the awesome power of the Internet you should be able to deduce from one picture of those yellow-5 freaks that there isn’t a Leftorium.

And from this morning’s The CEO Real Estate Scame: The Newest Infuriating Perk for Corporate Executives:

Since the beginning of this summer, at least a half-dozen companies, including eBay and Nike, have disclosed in their routine Securities and Exchange Commission filings that they’re now protecting their executives from real estate market forces. The terms in the filings vary—”protection against loss”; “loss protection”; and “price protection”—but the meaning is the same: They are essentially guaranteeing that executives’ homes will sell for a good price. In other words, companies that depend on free markets are making sure their own executives are safeguarded from them.

Are we really foolish enough to argue logic in the face of human greed? I’d love to live in a world where we all understood that you don’t get your employer to pay for things that aren’t a legitimate cost of doing business, but at that point I might as well wait around for Elizabeth Shue to show up at my door with the keys to an LP640 between her teeth.

America’s corporate elite, for the most part, got to their towers of power (YEA!) by being greedy bloodsucking bastards. If they can figure out how to expense the sleep necessary to be concious in the office the following morning, then by fuck they’re going to do it.

So did I miss the meeting where Israel declared war on Lebanon? I didn’t catch the memo when this became a thing. I haven’t got a map to lead me to the place where something like this occurs. It’s one thing to occasionally volley missles into Palestinian territory; I’ve always considered that to be the full-scale version of throwing rocks at your neighbor who you can’t stand.

This is on the other hand is like walking across the street to your neighbor’s house with a knife in your teeth, slashing his tires, and kicking in the door. And lest we forget, when Hezbollah declares “war on every level” it’s like the neighbor you’ve picked a fight with happens to be an MMA fighting champion. These guys invented modern terrorism, so Israel is really humping a hornet’s nest on this one.

According to some quick web searching, Beirut is home to around 1.3m people whereas San Francisco is home to .75m. Beirut has 10 Starbucks for crying out loud. Do you know how many Starbucks there are in Tel Aviv? ZERO.

When’s the last time a country without a Starbucks attacked a country with a Starbucks?!