Gordo's shared items
Not sure what presents to get for the holidays? How about giving away a free browser? Your friends and relatives won’t think you are too cheap to get them a real present. They might even thank you, if the present is Google’s shiny new Chrome browser all wrapped up in virtual wrapping paper.
In a holiday promotion, Google lets you give ChromeForChristmas. It’s a pretty simple, but effective, marketing site. You choose some themed paper which gets wrapped around the Google Chrome logo and then is delivered via email to the person receiving the “gift,” along with an e-card with your picture or even a video attached. They get to unwrap the virtual gift and are prompted to download Chrome.
Google is starting to push Chrome in a big way now, not just in the U.S., but also abroad. The Chrome beta is now available on Macs and it is now offers a growing array of extensions. There are worse presents you could give.
(Hat Tip to Paul Foster)
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It’s freezing cold in San Francisco right now (which is to say, 50 degrees). As such, I’ve been using my heater like a madman trying to stay warm. I know that’s going to hurt when I get my electricity bill at the end of the month, but I have no idea how much it’s going to hurt. A Y Combinator startup, Wattvision, launching in beta today, wants to solve that problem.
The idea is simple: Wattvision wants to give you a realtime picture of your home (or office) energy consumption. But to do this, you need a device that can tap into your power meter. That’s where the Wattvision WiFi Sensor comes in. But the good news is that you don’t need an electrician to set this up for you. If you have a digital power meter, you can very easily attach the Wattvision Sensor and you’re all set. From there it will send your data wirelessly to the web, where you can monitor it. And if you have an iPhone, Wattvision has also created an iPhone-optimized version of their site so you can watch your home energy consumption on the go.
So the first big question is: How much does this cost? The Wattvision Sensor is normally $199, but alongside the beta launch, Wattvision is offering to give a $50 discount to the first 100 TechCrunch readers that use the coupon code “wvbetaTC“. In a world where many tech startups cling to the idea of “free,” $199 may seem like a hard sell, but this is actually very cool stuff. Take a look at Wattvision’s main page to see a realtime example of how easily you can monitor your power usage with this device. Done the right way, this could actually end up saving you more than the $200 you spend on the device. It’s interesting data, and you can compare it to data from others in your area. You can also tweet out your consumption results or send them to Facebook to enable some interesting social pressures.
There will also be a pricing model based on how much data you want to see. But for the beta launch, Wattvision isn’t focusing on that just yet. And if you order a sensor now, you’ll get the home standard plan (the 2nd-tier plan) for free for six months. The different plans mainly involve the speed at which the monitoring data comes in (15 seconds versus 8 seconds, for example) and how far back you can view your consumption history. Also in the higher tier plans you will have options to get alerts send to your email or phone, and the ability to have multiple accounts. More on these plans can be found here.
But the second, and potentially bigger question is: How can Wattvision compete with companies like Google and Microsoft which are also getting into this field (with PowerMeter and Hohm, respectively)? When I asked Wattvision co-founder Savraj Singh about that, he had a good answer:
We’re taking the bet that people and small businesses are interested in their live energy use–now–and they want something that works with their existing electricity meters. The big players are taking the long-route — getting partnerships with power companies and banking on the coming smart grid deployments. Unless your power company is on board, you can’t get those systems today. And the fastest you can get data from the latest smart grid technology is, typically, every 15 minutes. Wattvision updates every 10 seconds, and will also be compatible with the smart grid when it arrives. We’re also a for-profit endeavor, which means we’re hoping to stay sharply focused on customer needs, whether consumers or businesses, and excel at things like customer service and satisfaction.
Y Combinator’s Paul Graham goes on to note that he likes the idea of a small startup moving faster than the giants. “It’s like Apple back in 1976,” he tells us. That said, “we think those guys are doing great work and we’re keen to find areas where we can collaborate,” Singh also noted.
Find out more about Wattvision in the video below. And again, use the “wvbetaTC” code if you’re interested in getting your hands on one of the first devices at $50 off.
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It’s been a big year: 3 million downloads, Xobni Plus, Xobni Enterprise, Xobni for Salesforce & Xobni Mobile soon. While we’re very proud of our accomplishments so far, we have a lot we want to do, and know that we wouldn’t be where we are without our loyal fans and users.
As a small token of our appreciation, we’ll be giving away Xobni Plus to 25 people who tweet and/or post to their public Facebook wall: “All I want for Christmas is Xobni! http://xobni.com/holiday” (Of course, you can replace “Christmas” with a holiday of your choice.) We’ll choose the winners randomly from the posts we see by searching on Twitter and Facebook.
And for those of you limited in your choice of software, or the ability to buy Xobni Plus due to your employer’s well-intended policies, we have come up with a fun (and hopefully productive) way for you to get Xobni Plus at work. Click here http://xobni.com/holiday to see a quirky, ad-libs-like letter for you to download or cut/paste/email to your IT person of choice. It briefly explains the benefits of Xobni for professionals and the new Xobni Enterprise that will allow you to start using Xobni’s full functionality at your company. We’ll also be offering a discount on Xobni Enterprise for companies who mention your letter. And if that’s not enough, we’ll be giving away an Amazon Kindle to the person who uploads to most creative letter to Scribd, so have fun!
Cheers!
Mozilla and Google share a common enemy: Microsoft. They also share a lot of money (Google invests millions of dollars in Mozilla and is responsible for most of its revenue). And it would seem that ideologically they share the same belief that the web is the platform of the future. All of this has blunted a lot of the talk that Google’s Chrome browser was competing with Mozilla’s Firefox browser. But with the launch of extensions for Chrome it’s pretty hard to deny it at this point.
Perhaps Firefox’s biggest selling point is that it has an expansive library of extensions that work with the browser. Even as Firefox gets beaten in performance tests, and people complain about its bloat, the extensions are always the thing that users go back to as the reason that they can’t switch. But now Chrome has those too. Sure, not as many yet, but they’re coming — fast.
And fast is maybe the main key to this. As Google demonstrated tonight at a Chrome Extension launch event at its headquarters in Mountain View, it is very, very easy to make extensions for Chrome. “Extensions are just web pages,” Chrome engineer Erik Kay noted at one point before he and fellow engineer, Aaron Boodman, made an extension live on stage in all of five minutes.
Later on in the event, Google had third-party extension developers come up and describe just how easy it was to create them for Chrome. Obviously, those guys are all going to say the right things on stage, but I had conversations with a number of different extension developers after the event — every single one of them gushed about the ease of making a Chrome extension.
Not only did they gush, but many made the obvious comparison to making an extension for Firefox. Again, every single one of them noted just how much easier it was with Chrome. This is largely thanks to the fact that Chrome extensions really are built simply using web languages as Kay noted. Creating a Firefox extension is a much more involved process.
But perhaps even more problematic for Mozilla is the extension submission process. With Chrome, for the majority of extensions, once you submit them, they are instantaneously live in the Extensions Gallery. The exceptions are if they use native code or access the file system, Google reserves the right to review them (which basically amounts to the developer signing an agreement that they have no malicious intent, and sending it to Google).
The process for submitting a Firefox extension can take longer — in some cases significantly longer, I was told by multiple developers. The few I asked wouldn’t go so far as to compare it to Apple’s App Store review process, but they said it’s not entirely dissimilar either. Google, on the other hand, is much more open. And that’s gaining them a lot of fans in the extension developer community.
One of them is James Joaquin, the CEO of Xmarks, one of the most popular extensions for Firefox (it was formerly known as Foxmarks), that just launched a Chrome version. Joaquin could not believe just how quickly you can get an extension out there with Chrome compared to what it’s like for the other browsers.
Michael Galpert, one of the founders of Aviary, makers of another new Chrome extension was also amazed by the extension updating process. Much like Chrome itself, extensions auto-update, removing a problem that developers often find annoying: That most users will not take the time to update, even when prompted. Some users may be uneasy that developers can push updates at their extensions as they please, but Galpert thinks the trade-off is definitely worth it.
It’s also worth noting that thanks to this auto-updating feature, Google is able to remotely kill any extension that is found to be doing bad things to people’s systems. Yes, Google has a kill switch, much like Apple does for iPhone apps.
Also significant is that for the installation and updating of Chrome extensions, no browser restart is necessary. Again, with Firefox, that is the case. “It just works,” Kay noted in a very Apple-like way.
But in terms of the extensions themselves, nothing is more important than performance. With Firefox, unfortunately, that’s been an issue. The more extensions you have, the worse the overall browsing experience seems to get. Google is promising that Chrome extensions will not suffer from the same fate.
Kay noted that the team installed 50 extensions on one browser to see how it would affect things like startup time and page load time. At first, they did a slow page load times, but Google went to work and made some tweaks to get the load times running in line with regular Chrome load times — again, with 50 extensions running.
Every Chrome extension is also its own process. At one point Kay and Boodman showed off a “badly behaving extension” that was designed to wreak havoc on a system’s CPU resources. While it did that, the other tabs and extensions remained running, unfazed. Using the Task Manager within Chrome, they simply shut down the offending extension and continued browsing as if nothing had ever happened.
Google has also developed a new technology that it calls “Isolated Worlds,” which allows them to keep the scripts a webpage normally uses separate from the scripts an extension may run. This is important from a security perspective.
Basically, the gist I got from tonight was that Google has perfected browser extensions. Again, obviously Google is going to be selling that message, but it’s actually the third-party developers who seem even more excited about it. At one point early on, Google thanked Mozilla and Firefox for making extensions something that people demanded. They then dove into their presentation about how they’ve made them better.
Over the past several months, Internet Explorer has continued to lose market share as Firefox and Chrome gain it. But at some point, with the extension excuse now out of the way, I’m starting to think Chrome will begin eating into Firefox’s share as well.
Yes, right now Chrome is just a single-digit sliver of the market, but it has a few very compelling things in its favor. First, it’s now available on all the major platforms (Windows, OS X, Linux). Second, it offers the best performance (though some tests have Safari slightly ahead). Third, it has extensions — that third-party developers seem to love making already.
Sure, it may not be Google’s stated goal to take on Firefox. In fact, they would undoubtedly say their goal is simply to create the best overall web experience for end users. I’m sure they wouldn’t even admit to trying to battle Internet Explorer. But when you’re saying your browser is the best, you’re also saying that someone else’s is worse. And now that Chrome Extensions have equalized things, Google is making the case that its browser is the best, and Firefox is worse. And developers already seem to be in agreement. That’s not good news for Mozilla.
[photo: 20th Century Fox]
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The head of AT&T’s wireless unit said Wednesday that the carrier is working to improve its network for iPhone and other smart-phone subscribers in New York and San Francisco.
- Getty Images
- AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega
Manhattan and San Francisco, particularly the city’s financial district, “are performing at levels below our standards,” Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T Mobility, said at an investors conference.
Those two cities see especially high smart-phone penetration, which has put pressure on AT&T’s data network. The company expects to see gradual improvements in New York and plans to replace some microcells in San Francisco, he said.
“This is going to get fixed,” Mr. de la Vega said. “In both of those markets, I am very confident that you’re going to see significant progress.”
With about 3% of smart-phone customers driving 40% of data traffic, AT&T is considering incentives to keep those subscribers from hampering the experience for everyone else, he said. “You can rest assured that we’re very sure we can address it in a way that’s consistent with net-neutrality and FCC regulations.”
Many customers don’t know how much bandwidth they’re consuming, Mr. de la Vega added. When AT&T conducted a broadband test, customers often reduced their data use. Longer-term, he said, a pricing scheme based on usage is likely, though it will be determined by industry competition and regulatory guidelines.
Mr. de la Vega made several company announcements, including a network upgrade in three cities and that AT&T expects to sign its two millionth U-verse subscriber today. He also said AT&T will provide connectivity for the Interead Cooler, an e-reader that will compete with Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader.
UPDATE: An AT&T spokesman added: “Ralph de la Vega made significant news today in saying that, based on independent drive testing, we have 98.68 percent nationwide voice retainability, which means that the difference between AT&T and the industry leader is less than 2/10 of a percentage point on this important metric. That translates to a difference of less than 2 calls out of a thousand.”
At long last Google has just released the highly anticipated Google Chrome Beta for Mac. I’ve been using the developer build for months and it’s been amazingly fast.
This video shows the secret technology behind Google Chrome’s amazing speed.
Here’s the Google Chrome Beta for Mac intro video.
Google has also released Google Chrome Beta for Linux.
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Whether you're a student, teacher, or parent, I think you'll appreciate this story of how one teacher can completely and permanently change someone's life in only a few lessons.
I met Kimo Williams when I was 17 - the summer after I graduated high school in Chicago, a few months before I was starting Berklee College of Music.
I called an ad in the paper by a recording studio, with a random question about music typesetting.
When the studio owner heard I was going to Berklee, he said, “I graduated from Berklee, and taught there for a few years, too. I'll bet I can teach you two years' of theory and arranging in only a few lessons. I suspect you can graduate in two years if you understand there's no speed limit. Come by my studio at 9:00 tomorrow for your first lesson, if you're interested. No charge.”
Graduate college in two years? Awesome! I liked his style. That was Kimo Williams.
Excited as hell, I showed up to his studio at 8:40 the next morning, though I waited outside until 8:59 before ringing his bell.
(Recently I heard him tell this same story from his perspective and said, “My doorbell rang at 8:59 one morning and I had no idea why. I run across kids all the time who say they want to be a great musician. I tell them I can help, and tell them to show up at my studio at 9am if they're serious. Almost nobody ever does. It's how I weed out the really serious ones from the kids who are just talk. But there he was, ready to go.”)
He opened the door. A tall black man in a Hawaiian shirt and big hat, a square scar on his nose, a laid-back demeanor, and a huge smile, sizing me up, nodding.
After a one-minute welcome, we were sitting at the piano, analyzing the sheet music for a jazz standard. He was quickly explaining the chords based on the diatonic scale. How the dissonance of the tri-tone in the 5-chord with the flat-7 is what makes it want to resolve to the 1. Within a minute, I was already being quizzed, “If the 5-chord with the flat-7 has that tritone, then so does another flat-7 chord. Which one?”
“Uh... the flat-2 chord?”
“Right! So that's a substitute chord. Any flat-7 chord can always be substituted with the other flat-7 that shares the same tritone. So reharmonize all the chords you can in this chart. Go.”
The pace was intense, and I loved it. Finally, someone was challenging me - keeping me in over my head - encouraging and expecting me to pull myself up, quickly. I was learning so fast, it had the adrenaline of sports or a video game. A two-way game of catch, he tossed every fact back at me and made me prove I got it.
In our three-hour lesson that morning, he taught me a full semester of Berklee's harmony courses. In our next four lessons, he taught me the next four semesters of harmony and arranging requirements.
When I got to college and took my entrance exams, I tested out of those six semesters of required classes.
Then, as he suggested, I bought the course materials for other required classes and taught myself, doing the homework on my own time, then went to the department head and took the final exam, getting full credit for the course.
Doing this in addition to my full course load, I graduated college in two and a half years - (got my bachelor's degree when I was 20) - squeezing every bit of education out of that place that I could.
But the permanent effect was this:
Kimo's high expectations set a new pace for me. He taught me “the standard pace is for chumps” - that the system is designed so anyone can keep up. If you're more driven than “just anyone” - you can do so much more than anyone expects. And this applies to ALL of life - not just school.
Before I met him, I was just a kid who wanted to be a musician, doing it casually.
Ever since our five lessons, high expectations became my norm, and still are to this day. Whether music, business, or personal - whether I actually achieve my expectations or not - the point is that I owe every great thing that's happened in my life to Kimo's raised expectations. That's all it took. A random meeting and five music lessons to convince me I can do anything more effectively than anyone expects.
(And so can anyone else.)
I wish the same experience for everyone. I have no innate abilities. This article wasn't meant to be about me as much as the life-changing power of a great teacher and raised expectations.
Kimo knows how much he means to me, and we're friends to this day. Read his full biography and buy his CDs at his website omik.com.
P.S. On a related note, see my talk to incoming first-year Berklee students.
Sometime in the past few hours, the Mac Detailed Status page on Chromium’s website has been changed to the “Mac OS X Roadmap.” Why? Because the team has wiped out the bugs that were blocking a beta release of Chrome for Mac, and it is on the verge of launching.
Yes, those 8 remaining bugs we noted a few days ago are gone, as you can see here. On the new Roadmap page, the goal has been changed from “Beta” to “Stable/Feature Parity.” And here’s the key opening phrase: “Now that we have an initial beta release under our belts.” Google has yet to announce this, but we expect them to do so very soon, possibly even today at some point.
Based on the lastest Chrome for Mac dev build, it would seem that version 4.0.249.22 is potentially the Chrome for Mac beta release candidate. As we noted a couple days ago, it is missing a number of features that Chrome for Windows offers, but this build just added a way to set automatic updates for all users (of the machine it is installed on).
With its new Stable/Feature Parity Status, the Google team is acknowledging that there will be some missing features initially in Chrome for Mac. But updates will be coming often. Here’s what they say:
Now that we have an initial beta release under our belts, our goal is to fill in the missing features and release on a regular schedule. WinChrome’s track record demonstrates our desire to release early and often (4 major releases in about a year), so expect frequent releases that add needed functionality and improve the user experience. The majority of the tracking for this milestone will be in the bug system, and as soon as we determine what it entails, we’ll link the appropriate keyword queries here.
The following are all things needed for feature parity with windows/linux, in no particular order.
App mode
Bookmark manager
Cookie manager
Full-screen
Font and language settings
Task manager
Extensions and page actions
Bookmark Sync
PDF viewing inline
64 bitWe are still working out the definitions of M5 and M6 (beta? stable? etc.), but in the meantime, you can watch those milestones as an indicator of what will show up in the upcoming larger release.
It’s worth noting that the latest build of Chromium (the open source browser that Chrome is built from), which is now at 4.0.263.0, has bookmark sync enabled and working. Previously, you had to hack the browser a bit to turn this feature on, but now it’s an option in the menu system, so you can probably expect that to be in the first update to Chrome for Mac beta.
In the Open Issues area of Chromium’s site, only 15 total bugs for M4 (milestone 4 — version 4, the Chrome for Mac beta version) remain. But none of them are “beta blockers” so again, it would appear that Google can formally launch it at any time now. Look for that to happen very soon. In the meantime, you can download what will likely be the beta candidate here.
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