sentient beings

Google is releasing their own web browser with a number of very interesting features.

I could repeat all of that in this blog, or you could simply check out the interesting comic Google just launched.

I'll be downloading Google Chrome tonight!

After waiting anxiously for a couple of weeks, I got my iPhone. I could go on for hours raving about the iPhone. Its slim and sleek design and the unique interface. The fact that I got this "at a bargain" because I've been with T-mobile ever since it wasn't T-mobile but still named Ben. This is the greatest technological item currently in my position.

I like the way it feels and like most of how it handles - and how it worked right out of the bo ... Hold on, it didn't work right out of the box! read on

Microsoft has created a rather interesting experiment. While trying to prove that people find Vista okay if they don't know it's Vista, they ditched Silverlight once more in favour of Flash, to get their point across.

This website is pure marketing. There is no experiment or at least none that you can see from the videos. The "users" don't actually use the computer - from all you can see it's someone actually using the computer and making the "user" look what's happening. That's like trying to decide if the Ford Ka or the Toyota Aygo has the best handling by watching them on TV.

There is no-one showing what Mojave actually looks like. There is no explanation on how they know these people never used Vista. And there's the other thing: have you taken a look at the people that are in this experiment? If you stood outside any building and picked off 30 persons, what would the odds be of them all being well groomed, looking good.

I'm afraid we're looking at a video production rather than a real experiment. Still, interesting how Microsoft releases Silverlight and then subsequently continues to use Flash to make sure their message gets across to as many people as possible.

Edit: it looks like Microsoft came around and replaced the Flash by Silverlight.

I've always admired Google. Stripped from all the hip eyecandy, they have always offered pure functionality at a very high level. The quality of Google applications are such that they almost shame similar applications and force them to shape up.

Google changed the way people searched. Google Calendar is a fantastic app with functionality and an ease-of-use that a lot of desktop applications miss. GMail is incredibly useful and Google Docs offer a perfect solution for editing documents online.

And then, there's YouTube. This weekend, spent a few hours learning some extra ropes in Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 and did a special title for a live video of my band. It's an explosion that flashes across the bottom of the screen and then the titles come up from behind the explosion. The video actually has a lot of blue in it because of the lighting on stage. Youtube, using the old Sorenson Spark coded that was used in Flash 7, made my video look like it was composed of lego bricks, rather than single pixels and the title I spent the last few hours on was completely illegible. I experimented with a multitude of quality and codes settings but still ran into the Sorenson Spark conversion. I switched to Vimeo but still wasn't pleased with the quality and especially not with the 500 MB upload limit - especially since I have a pile of HD footage lying around that I'm determined to use someday.

Blip.tv came to me while looking for something completely different. I never really paid much attention to blip.tv since the site says "BETA" and I wouldn't want to waste my time on something that may be history later today. I uploaded my latest effort and lo and behold Blip.tv did an excellent job on the video. In addition, Blip.tv has an excellent player. Blip.tv has my vote!

Still, it's a pity that YouTube, despite being Google, lacks proper encoding and has no HD support.