Jay: she did the Mac icons, didn't she? That is so cool! I wonder if your home is neat and tidy too. - Robert Scoble
These gift are absolutely the stupidest thing ( though obviously not for Facebook). What reasonably intelligent person would pay money to give these "gifts"? - Brian Sullivan
Brian, what kind of person would buy a diamond or other fundamentally worthless token? - Paul Buchheit
Robert: Yup. Susan was the first bit twiddler/pixel pusher. Little known fact: she also did the icons for windows 3.1 (and the solitaire deck) and OS2 for IBM. - Jay Tannenbaum
Susan Kare is your bride? Congrats! I can just picture the beautiful icons on the wedding favors. :-) - Kevin Fox
So this is the viable bussiness model to sell virtual gifts - Goofy2
As usual, Chris gets the big picture. - Chris Baskind
Chris is a tech superstar that I listen to deeply. He is excited by Google's moves and lays out the poor execution on the Mozilla side of the fence. - Robert Scoble
What I missed in the Chrome comic was a mention of browser add-ons like Firefox's. Surfing the web without Adblock Plus is hard to imagine. - Ole Begemann
or without the delicious add-ons... or the evernote add-on... but at least bookmarklets are (likely?) to still work. - Justin Long
The comic was aimed squarely at devs. There was little mention of what would make end users choose Chrome over IE. - Paul Grav
Best read so far, been waiting for a commentary like this... - Kevin Cearns
Gee, Ole... why wouldn't Google want you running AdBlock Plus? Can't imagine. ;) (Now, I agree, add-ons are cool, but as a publisher, I'm not going to weep over that one...) Anyway, I wouldn't count Firefox out. Obviously, what Google addresses is the performance/reliability side and building around apps. Both FF and Chrome are built around standards, both closely married to JavaScript for what they do next. I think this could be a great rivalry, frankly. - Peter Kirn via twhirl
They talk explicitly about plugins on pages 29-32 of the comic so you should be able to have your AdBlock. I seriously doubt Google cares that much about AdBlockers -- which makes up an extremely small percent of the overall market, and which is probably made up of people who don't click ads anyway. - Chris Messina
Chris: I suspect by plugins they mean Flash etc. and not Firefox-style extensions. But I hope I'm wrong. - Ole Begemann
Will they, wont they. Time will tell. Who do you want to hate today? - Steve Blamey
Interesting article. More choice = better for the users. But I think that you are over-hyping the death of Firefox. As far I can tell. Firefox 3.0 is much better than Firefox 2.0 and Firefox 3.1 will be better than Firefox 3.0. Multi-process, V8 and native Gears support are definitely a step forward but firefox is part of an ecosystem so I would not count them out (A lot of people said that Safari meant the death of firefox and firefox is doing much better today then back them). I look forward to revisiting this post in 18 months and see how the mozilla team/community proved you wrong! - Edwin Khodabakchian
Hmm, well, I didn't claim to foretell the death of Firefox at all. In fact, Firefox will likely continue to gain marketshare and attention (as the web is still expanding). One of my points is that Mozilla missed the opportunity to be the foundation of Chrome -- and will now have to play catch up -- instead of set the agenda for what's next. - Chris Messina
Do you think that was a technical decision or a control decision. From the last couple of interviews I have seen of John Lilly, I think that he has a really clear vision around performance, usability and ecosystem. Performance is coming in 3.1. Usability is driven by some of the concept Labs has been pushing out and ecosystem come from the fact that there are 100s of extensions to firefox and a really vibrant community around firefox. That is a very unique blend. Chrome has made some good progress around performance but there is not much innovation around usability and extensibility. Google has proven with Android acitivities and cross application data sharing that they are capable of innovating...but it will take before those things make it to Chrome so while firefox might have to play catch up in part of the architecture, Chrome will have to play catchup in others. - Edwin Khodabakchian
I am using chrome right now, and I really miss my shareaholic addon as well as my stumbleupon bar. hopefully the developers get crackin for plugins for this browser. - James Campbell
I'm hoping to see some good progress from Mozilla. I do worry a bit about them fish-tailing and not being able to say no to developers (whose needs are often very different from regular folks). We shall see.
@James Campbell:There will be a need for web hooks, no doubt... and places to insert additions or modifications to your browser experience -- I don't really doubt that (some standardization there would be nice too). - Chris Messina
"Brian Rakowski walks to the whiteboard in a small conference room in Building 41 on Google's Mountain View campus. A lanky, gregarious man in his twenties, Rakowski is the product manager of a top-secret project that's been under way for more than two years." - Bret Taylor via Bookmarklet
Congrats on the great article, Brian. - Bret Taylor
@john: alleyinsider is the last source i will trust as to whether it is going or not going to happen. But, really, as @slippy says, choice FTW! The rest will just pan out. - Ashwin Bharambe
That picture is great. It looks like a band photo. - Andrew Burd
Internets are the new rock'n'roll, Andrew, didn't you hear? - Slippy Lane
The photographer, Joe Pugliese, has a great website: http://www.joepug.com/ In fact it's so great I haven't got round to reading the Wired article yet - Adewale Oshineye
Enjoyable read except for this completely bizarre paragraph -- "Not long after that, Brin and Page came by to check in on the furtive beginnings of their browser. "I remember sitting at my desk, which at the time had a stuffed snake running along the back of it," says Pam Greene, an engineer on the team. "Sergey was bouncing on one of those exercise balls, watching Darin give a demo, and petting the snake." - Osi
"The snake, called Mr. Bigglesworth, seemed to purr softly in Sergey's lap, providing a calming influence during the demo. However, when one of the tabs crashed, taking the browser with it, Sergey's voice took a more strident turn. "I have gathered here before me the world's best developers," Sergey began, "and yet each of you has failed to kill Internet Explorer. That makes me angry. And when Sergey gets angry, Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset. And when Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset, people die!" - Karim
Sergey then pressed a nearby console button that retracted Darin's chair into the floor below. A flash of flame could be seen as the screaming developer vanished from the conference room. - Karim
Somebody help me!" Darin pleads. "I'm alive, only very badly burned!" This proves to be very distracting, and after being interrupted several times, Sergey picks up his phone, and reports the situation to a henchman. "I'll go deal with it," he assures Sergey. "If someone opens the retrieval hatch, I can get out," Darin explains. At this point, the hatch opens. Darin is at first grateful, but then a gunshot is heard. - Geoff Longman
After a pause, Sergey is satisfied Darin is dead and attempts to continue explaining his plan, only be interrupted by Darin again, who says indignantly "you shot me! You shot me right in the arm! Why did you-". Darin sentence is cut short by a second gunshot, which proves to be the end for him, as the hatch is heard to close. (http://www.moviedeaths.com/aus...) - Geoff Longman
Google’s Chrome is aimed at Windows, not IE
This is no longer about browser but about the an entire marketplace spread between desktop, mobile and web. With Chrome, Google’s taking a shot at Windows, not paltry Internet Explorer
I’ve covered this in more detail on my blog
http://sachendra.wordpress.com... - Sachendra
The point of Chrome is the same point one would make about the iPhone. Will iPhone outsell Nokia worlwide in total number of phones sold? Not a chance in hell! Has it changed the face of mobile phones forever...absolutely. This is where I think Chrome is a fantastic concept. By open sourcing D8 Google has literally empowered every other browser including Safari and Firefox to be Windows beaters. In actual fact IE may even implemented their own canibalised V8 to canibalise their Microsofts existing fat client business. If you ask me, Google is the master of judo in this case. google 2 MSFT 0 - John Kotsaftis via feedalizr
I haven't been able to find many details about the V8 design, but it's apparently a straight JIT (no interpreter) with inline caching of property accessors. I didn't see anything about HotSpot/TraceMonkey-style optimizing compilation, and it doesn't seem to use any intermediate language. (http://code.google.com/apis/v8...) Is this the future of dynamic language runtimes? Am I a nerd? - Jim Norris
Nice to see Wired putting out a great article in a timely manner for a change - rather than spend page upon page talking about minor internet celebs and how they gatecrashed gawker media parties to build their fame. - Jonathan Beckett
Jim, tracemonkey should still be faster. Paul friendfeeded an article comparing them. I should say that tracemonkey will still be faster eventually, unless V8 adds hotspot-like tracing as well, in which case, my money would ride on V8, since Google probably has half of the hotspot team :) - Sanjeev Singh
greeaat news for all involved. congrsts. - Alex Gawley
Congrats Ben! I could see that coming at some point - Dobromir Hadzhiev
Congratulations! I knew it was coming when I noticed you'd been making changes and even had a FF email address... and there was no denial: http://beta.friendfeed.com/e/5... - Tony Ruscoe
This is recognition for his great work! Congrats! - Winston Teo
Michael: Claim? Dude, it was EVERYWHERE. and Jeff: Priorities? Above relatively meaningless things like the Olympics and the Oscars - and CERTAINLY football (!), then this metric of viewership is a wonderful indication. - Steve Isaacs
This gets me to thinking...how likely is it that the "polls" that show a close race are complete bullshit promoted to keep ratings high? Why do I get the feeling that racists and crazed feminists aside that Obama is still running away with it? 36M is a big number. - JonathanJoseph
JonathanJoseph, I hope you are not saying only racists and crazed feminists are not in favor of Obama as President. That certainly is not the case. There are a good number of people who simply disagree with his vision for America. - Charles LePage
Excellent comparison! We could've used this at our recent Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs Meetup (we discussed constructing a Twitter strategy for your business). - jbrotherlove
Great article! I think a lot of people on the Web are now hip to the fact that OpenID can "transmit" their profile data to sites they are using for the first time.
When I signed up to comment at RWW today, I used an OpenID but the site "tossed" my SREG data and made me type my homepage, name and e-mail address.
Web site operators need to wake up, this technology is very easy to implement and your site visitors are tired of the short shrift. I know I am.
Brian Hendrickson - Brian Hendrickson via FriendFeed MT Plugin
I'm optimistic that over time we can transition from SREG (which only supports the most basic of contact information) with the forthcoming Portable Contacts API (portablecontacts.net).
Still, it's great to see Mixi get on the OpenID bandwagon -- especially given that it's a Japanese language site. - Chris Messina via FriendFeed MT Plugin
Yahoo Pipes intimidated the stew out of me the first time I looked at it. I am going to try again. - Mattb4rd
I've been wondering why we hear so little about Yahoo Pipes, such a cool application / add-on for any website - is there renewed traction there? - Marko via fftogo
@Mattb4rd - me too! But I found the Social media firehose was a nice entry to using pipes. - Erin McMahon
yahoo pipes is perhaps one of the most useful services available. Now if only I could make my own pipes instead of cloning other pipes! - Rahul Das
I tried to tinker with that Yahoo Pipes. IT'S CONFUSING!!! - Outsanity
same here... cool concept which is really easy to understand, but implementing it is super complicated and frustrating...needs way better User Interface... ok smart devs get busy!! - Susan Beebe
Because they don't have the balls to be assholes in person so they become typist a-holes online - Jeremy Campbell via twhirl
Half the time they don't even have the cojones to put their email address or contact info. I guess that's good, because it prevents me from replying ;) - Veronica
As Mattb4rd said, it's natural and takes no special effort. That's what makes the problem so bad for the rest of us. Secondly, those jerks don't have anything better to do. - Morton Fox
Sad little people, don't feed them and they go away. - Mike Mackley
Just imagine if they took as much energy into doing something nice. *shakes head* - AJ Kohn
Because they are too cowardly to say crap to your face. - Josh Haley
I think it's Michael Wesch who talked about the fame of being abusive in his video on the anthropology of Youtube - Badger Gravling
I think it's because there is a level of anonymity that allows people to believe that they can be someone else online, take on another persona, and act in this way. - Shafiq Jetha via twhirl
I personally think Mattb4rd got it right - it comes naturally to some people. Just ignore em - jerks are jerks. - Royce Mathew
Speaking as a recovering asshole, I'll say that people do it for many different reasons. Sometimes its because a given personality with whom you interact has become a communicative pebble in the online shoe of your life, and you just want to blast 'em. Sometimes it's because you've discovered that you're actually very good at being an asshole, and receive lots of praise for it. And sometimes it's because you're the kind of person that just loves to inflict pain. - Roger Benningfield
I find it surprising that ANYONE is actually a jerk to you. 51% of the internet really respects you, another 48% apparently has a mad geek crush on you, and you found a one percenter moron? Wow. - Brian Norwood
Ahhh Matt has a good point. Little boys often harass girls they have crushes on. - Brian Norwood
The internet tries to make the world idiot free, but the world makes a better idiot. Simple as that.. aka Pete's theory on internet "a#$hole /jerk" evolution :)- - Peter Dawson
Veronica, just ignore the jerks. Problem with the Internet is that jerks can hide behind their web browsers whereas in peron they can't. Use the power of the "ignore", "block" or whatever means to ignore them. - imabonehead
I'm glad to see everyone still hates Assholes, Veronica , you should post the message and the comments on your blog! . - Percival Carti3r
ripping off apple, but it's way better than the current one ;P - Michael J Cohen
Jealous! Soon as I get home I'm going to play around with my Ubuntu configuration some more. For fun I made it look as close to OSX as possible, now I want to scale it back a bit. But I'm keeping the dock! - Joe Pierce
What on here can't already be done with a theme? I am looking for revolutionary changes, not a new theme. - Tim Hoeck
Tim: LOL!! I think everyone's scrambling to have an "Apple like" UI =| It's sad to see Ubuntu folks following =( - Mona N.
Um... Gnome has been chasing the Apple cart for years ;) MS too for that matter (though, KDE tends that direction more). The OSS desktops /all/ take from the big boys and tweak and change and imitate as the crowd wants and the GUI is better for. Always been that way. - Michael W. May
i don't mind what the out o' the tarball ui looks like. my desktop always turns into LCARS anyway. - idnan
Other companies should take notes on their whole business model. They are killing advertising, and "surprise" you by upgrading your order and getting it to you overnight is genius. Connecting with their customers via twitter and other social sites is something other companies haven't gotten a handle on yet. Zappos A++ - Matt Musgrave
They're really stellar. I ordered boots that had a scuff on them, and so they've sent me a replacement with overnight shipping and a coupon for my next order! Plus, they're having the warehouse check the next boots to make sure they're not scuffed too. Awesome. And this was all over Live Chat! - Veronica
My order arrived at my door before the tracking number email! I was amazed. That's their strategy though, and it works. Free shipping and 365 day return policy. It's the little extra perks that attract more business. Genius. - Matt Musgrave
Zappos is great. I ordered some sandals, wore them for about 2 months and then they started to literally fall apart, the seams just stopped staying together, they let me return them even though they were not in resellable condition and replaced them with a new pair (that i eventually had to return because it didn't fit) Just his week I ordered Ugg Walleys and the first pair was twoo small so they overnighted me the next pair. I love Zappos, it seems I get upgraded expedited shipping everytime. - Andrew Fielding
I love Zappos service!! They make it so easy to buy and return items that don't fit or that you decide you do not want. Every other on line vendor should take note. - Jeff P. Henderson
This all sounds great from the customers' point-of-view, but I wonder if it's good for business. Clearly they lost a lot of money on Andrew Fielding. - Leo Laporte
@Leo, their stuff is kind of expensive - at least full retail price, and considering they don't have to pay retail store rent, they are probably doing OK. - Laura Norvig
I agree. I just bought a pair of Asics Gel-140 TR for my gym workouts. The sneakers were at my door the next day. Zappos is the main place I go to buy all of my sneakers and shoes. - AskMac via twhirl
Leo, they actually have now made money off of me. I've posted about how awesome they are on my blog and have ordered expensive shoes from them as well as signed up for their Credit Card with Chase bank. That one act of customer service has made me a loyal customer for life. - Andrew Fielding
If their business model was not profitable, I'm sure they would have changed it by now. Seems like treating the customer well is almost always a good business plan. - Jeff P. Henderson
Yeah, just turn it off. You'll be sealing yourself into a nice tight box, though :) - Rahsheen(isSoAwesome)
I love that feature. But, yes, you can turn it off. - Yolanda
you can also turn it off (well, hide at least) on a case by case basis. That way you get to judge each one of your friend's friends. - Judgy McJudgerson. - Laura Norvig
By default I've disabled friend of friend & last.fm, that keeps things manageable - Cains
erm... i've just spent ten minutes looking to see how to turn it off... am i missing something obvious? - Dean Whitbread
Click Hide (next to the 'like' button) --> See more options --> Select 'hide all stuff from friends-of-friends' , Loic :) http://img.skitch.com/20080820... - Mona N.
And I just love to get the info from FoF (= friends of friends). It's taking me to news I otherwise wouldn't pay attention to, wouldn't notice either. Besides that: it's probably worth looking at, because otherwise friends wouldn't 'like' it or comment on it. It's a great invention of FF. - Ton Zijp
thanks, will turn it off to see if I miss it - Loic Le Meur
Interesting that the people who say this usually are treating FriendFeed as a way to get messages out, but aren't participating in FriendFeed as much. I understand that in Loic
