It has been over a week now, and most tech addict users can express their opinions. The big question is the same from the title: Does Google Chrome rule or suck?

Please make up your mind and choose a side. You can be in the side where the bad EULA is still haunting the users, or the fact that scroll up was not implemented on laptops. Also this side had some laughs with the childish crash from :% characters typed in the address bar.
On the other side there are those in love with V8 - the powerful Javascript engine, Google fans and users with wide acceptance to everything from Google.

Right know it is time to choose. Cheers!

Does Google Chrome suck or rule?

• It sucks!!!
• It rules!!!

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From the start I will tell you that there is no such thing as the perfect search engine. But I will try to explain what is good in major search engines, and should exist as features in the next perfect search engine. I will start to list the search engines quoted in this topic. Some are familiar some are no names, but for sure all have at least one good feature. Here we go: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live, Ask, Quintura, Powerset, Wikia and Cuil.

First page features:

AUTOCOMPLETE: [Google, Yahoo, Ask, Cuil].
This is standard right now, because this feature helps the user select faster a certain search term based on initial letters. The drawback is that sometimes it can slow the user and confuse him at the same time.

PRIVACY / EULA: [All subjects have this feature].
I think that this feature is a must on the front page of any search engine. The user must know the legal limitations in order to decide whether the service is worth using or not.

WEB / IMAGES / VIDEOS: [All subjects have this feature].
One strong feature is diversity. If the search engine can provide different type of data, then the first screen should display this capability.

Results page features:

RELATED SEARCH: [Most of the subjects].
The user is undecided. Sometimes he doesn’t know in what category is the search result situated. So the related search will help him in narrowing the results and finding relevant data.

SEARCH TERM HIGHLIGHTED IN RESULTS:[All subjects have this feature].
I’m glad that this is a standard feature. It is very good to see how the search term is displayed inside result’s content. This also helps the user to stay on focus on a certain domain.

ORDERED RESULTS:[Quintura, Ask].
This is a feature that is not implemented in most search engines. I think it is a major drawback, because a simple number in front of the result will make the user remember easier the search result. Also this will give a certain structure to the overall look of the results page and it can sustain a better user experience.

Global features:

GREAT USER EXPERIENCE: [Quintura, Powerset, Cuil].
It seems like the newcomers have some advantages in this field through some innovation or improved features. Quintura for example has it’s own interactive tag cloud while Cuil and Powerset have other interaction features. Wikia has its own features but I don’t think that for now are in the search results benefit, except for the following.

SCROLLING ACTION: [Wikia].
This is a feature that I like very much. It is an automatic results display while scrolling. In this case you don’t have to press on a page number from pagination, in order to see other results. Awesome feature and pretty accessible.

IMPROVED RANKING ALGORITHM: [None so far].
There are many ranking systems but what’s the point? We need a ranking system based on quality not links quantity. Also a better system against copy/paste sites. This will make the search results more relevant and the users happier.

CONTENT:[We can combine all together].
The content is huge. But its quality is the problem. If the search engines can sort their data, then the search process will be less painful and more productive.

Overall there are some needed features and some standards to be implemented. Also I believe that it will take some time until a new competitive search engine will appear. Cheers!

As you can see, this title is not saying whether the article is positive or has sarcasm in it. Should it be positive ? Should it have sarcasm? We will find out soon.

What is Google Knol? Knol comes from knowledge and it represents Google’s effort in creating a powerful compendium with interesting articles. … No, I’m kidding. Let me rephrase it. Google Knol is the response to the fact that Wikipedia does not allow Google to place Adsense on their pages. That’s more close.
Many would ask why is this so important. Because at any search term on most of the search engines, a Wikipedia link will appear in the first 5 results. And since Wikipedia is a non-profit foundation, I don’t think they will have ads on their pages soon. And they shouldn’t.

Let’s go back to Google Knol. It is a way for contributors to write articles and to share revenues from Adsense with Google. This type of business is not the first met on the web. In fact I think that another reason for Google Knol project was the attention that Squidoo and Helium have. This websites have the same business model, with writers gaining revenues from advertising sources placed on those sites. Both sites have many contributors and are in a continuous growth.

Knol ahead … in Google
Knol will try to bring Google … on Google. That means it will try to get Knol in the first search results on Google. Google Knol will also try to get more users around, and to consolidate Google into a strong user base. But only time will tell how much people will love Know or how useful it will be. Until that time, Wikipedia is a good source of inspiration for Knol-ers.

Regarding the interface and design, Knol is like Google. Has the same look, which is not my favorite. The interface is not so intuitive with feature placed somewhere in the bottom side. I think they should try harder. Anyway … I hope I am wrong. And this is just for the users.

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Every person is good at something, it doesn’t matter what. At some level, everyone can do something of good quality. The same concept can be applied to companies worldwide. Whether is domain selling or database software, web applications or movie applications, operating systems or online commerce, each of this areas of activity is represented by big names: GoDaddy, Oracle, Adobe, Autodesk, Microsoft and Ebay.

As you know, on the search engine side, there is one player at the moment: Google. But this player lately, is active on almost every market. The last move was the release of their so called virtual world Lively (sounds too close to Microsoft’s Live). I don’t know the plan for this service but I think that Google will try to advertise this space as well. This announcement along with the service is the first release in some time. But, as I was saying several months ago, Google has no innovation.

No innovation
Actually Google is now a lot like Microsoft.  I’m saying that because Google has now the same business model as Microsoft -> Develop (Buy) and Sell. Now the innovation is left in the hands of start-ups and Google can claim the upcoming market, with the help of their bank deposits.

Powerful start-ups
Another thing that makes me think this way is that the new start-ups are more and more powerful. We can take a look at Facebook which now is a solid company and a great adversary against Google.

Bad services
As you know, Google has its share of bad applications or services that cannot compete with strong players on the market. I can say that Google Checkout will never beat Paypal or be a hit, Orkut will never bring much revenue, Google Answers is dead, Picassa web is far from Flickr and so on.

Microsoft + Yahoo
And in the end I can think at the most discouraging thought: Microsoft + Yahoo. This will be a milestone in IT history. Seeing the stats for Live.com, I think that Microsoft has the power to catch Google.

With this arguments I think that Google will FAIL. Not to mention lack of semantic search. Maybe they will buy a start-up for that.

Cheers

And I am not joking. Not a long time ago my opinion regarding the spreadsheets applications was next to zero. Why? … I don’t know, maybe because in my area, in my work-flow I didn’t need such tool. But lately the power of spreadsheets has come to me.

First, I was surprised to see how money management for a start-up was able through spreadsheets. That was a video tutorial by Ryan Carson published on Vitamin. It was a simple yet well explained tutorial from the basic costs of a start-up to the monthly income.
Later, I started to manage certain elements from my upcoming website and it really helps me in keeping the work-flow very fluid. And the nicest part is that the applicability is not limited, you can keep your game scores in a spreadsheet or you can hold your coding snippets.

Well, this graphic rating is about spreadsheets but, it is also about Google Spreadsheets. As you know Google has an online spreadsheet app. And also there are others like Thinkfree or Zoho in this area, but not as powerful as Google Spreadsheets.
This has to do with an issue I had in my work-flow regarding a collaborative task. So basically the task was planning a to-do list. And we tried at our coordinator’s suggestion Google Spreadsheets. It was awesome. Realtime multiple editing with highlight feature. Chat feature between session members.
For our task it only had one drawback - tiny comments in fixed size boxes. C’mon … that was the worst idea in the spreadsheets user experience.

In the end we thank all mighty Google for this product.

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