Google Chrome - Interesting ...

Google Chrome (BETA) for Windows

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

One box for everything
Type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages.

Thumbnails of your top sites
Access your favorite pages instantly with lightning speed from any new tab.

Shortcuts for your apps
Get desktop shortcuts to launch your favorite web applications.


Some other interesting features -

  1. Task manager for websites - Also Google claims that if one of the TABs crashes then it won't crash the browser, other tabs will be still alive. (I am yet to experience this)
  2. Visual Browser History - This is a feature Chrome borrowed from Google Desktop / Google Web History. Type Ctrl+H to open your browser history and search for a term.
  3. Reopen webpages you closed by mistake - Firefox 3 has this "Undo Closed Tab" option in the menu while you can open closed tabs in Opera via the Ctrl+Z shortcut. To re-open a closed tab in Google Chrome, just hit Ctrl+T and you’ll see an option that says "Recently closed tabs" - click the one you closed by accident.
  4. Separate Profiles for safer browsing - for more read http://www.labnol.org/software/create-family-profiles-in-google-chrome/4394/
  5. Very good context menus - Context menus live up to their name ... they are really relevant.

and many more ....

Try it yourself.

If you ask me, I feel Chrome has miles to go before it sweeps other browsers, atleast it needs some fast progress in plugins which I am sure will happen. Till then it's just a novice browser and its too early to compare it with Mozilla. Atleast I rely on my mozilla plugins heavily.

Link to download Chrome - http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?hl=en
Happy browsing ...

Google Sites

Google Sites Launched

After more than a year since the JotSpot acquisition, Google finally launched a service that uses JotSpot's technology: Google Sites. The new service is a part of Google Apps and allows you to create web sites collaboratively. "People can work together on a Site to add file attachments, information from other Google applications (like Google Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube and Picasa), and new free-form content. Creating a site together is as easy as editing a document, and you always control who has access, whether it's just yourself, your team, or your whole organization," explains Google.

Google offers templates, a rich-text editor, 10GB of storage for each Google Apps account and integration with other Google services so you can embed gadgets, calendars, spreadsheets, presentations, photo slideshows and videos. You can invite people to collaborate or just view a site and you can also publish the site so that anyone can view it.

VentureBeat likes the new service. "Creating a new site with Google Sites is very easy. (...) You can start out by creating a front page for your site and from there decide whether to add more standard pages" or use one of the built-in templates: dashboard, blog, file cabinet, list.


Webware notices that Google doesn't offer too many features. "As is typical for Google productivity applications when they first launch, the functionality inside Sites is on the spare side, but the collaboration features are clear, easy to use, and well-chosen. This is a capable workgroup wiki, and even in this early stage its integration with the Docs and Apps suites makes it an excellent collaboration tool."

Here are three examples of Google Sites: a company intranet, a ski club site and a team project.



The video shows how easy is to create a simple site:

The new service is enabled by default for all the new Google Apps accounts, but administrators need to enable it explicitly for the existing accounts.

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