Google Earth 5

You know Google right? Its that company that plans to index all information everywhere in the world. They’ve outdone themselves again this time with Google Earth 5. The main new features are a time machine (way cooler than that Apple invention) and a way to see under the sea.

The sea now shimmers, though the picture does not show it.

The depth of the ocean is now represented.

You can now see through time.

Some imagery of Cupertino from 1953.

One interesting thing is that if you zoom out a lot, the star field changes with the date. They seem to be accurately calculated star positions for each date.

Areas of scientific interest (Antarctica for one) seem to have lots of older imagery.

You can see an ice shelf that broke off a while ago on Antarctica.

I’m not sure if this is a new feature, but right clicking gives this:

Moving the mouse up while right clicking zooms out, down zooms in, and rotating the mouse around it rotates the view. All operations are centered around it, so zooming in zooms in on the point where you right clicked.

Overall this is a really cool update to what is already a really cool piece of software.

Images copyright Google 2009

Gmail verification number

Has Gmail locked you out? Ever? It happened to me once, but you can probably see the problem with not being able to access email. Gmail apparently emails a verification number to your other email when you sign up, so keep this number, it can unlock your account.

Crossover Chrome

Crossover Chrome, built by Codeweavers, is Chrome for the Mac and for Linux. Its buggy and unstable, they used the Wine API’s to port it over. It does not auto-update. Available at Codeweavers. If you can wait though, the official team at Google is working on Mac and Linux native ports.

Stainless, When will the Chrome craziness end?

Stainless is a new Chome-based browser for the Mac, and it looks pretty good(image and original article from TUAW).Its just a tech demo at this point, but it would be great if this was ported over.

Google Time Machine

Google recently found an old 2001 database, and worked with the internet archive to make the links point to the Internet Archive pages from back then. The net effect, you can google like its 2001!

The new Google Desktop

In the one corner we have Windows Vista, weighing in at just over 15GB with updates and backups, sans programs, and in the other corner we have Google Desktop, weighing in at just over 0.0019GB. Huh.

Now that wasn’t really fair, Google Desktop is just one program, while Windows Vista is a huge operating system, but it really shows that this time, Google is concentrating on efficiency.

Things that I’ve noticed that have improved:

1. 1.9MB download, I don’t know how big it was before, but it certainly looks small for the functionality it offers.

2. 6 second install time, now I know for certain that the time was at least 15 seconds before.

3. Indexing seems a little lighter on the hard drive now.

4.  Ram usage is down a lot:

The same Ctrl-Ctrl window comes up for searches. As always, poor integration between Google Desktop and windows search is one of the big limiting factors of Google Desktop. The deskbar looks better, and its great to finally see some good gadgets for it.

The need to go to a browser to do a full search is really frustrating, and it would be really useful if they could just have done things properly and allowed email to be searched from the double-ctrl window.

Overall, much better performance and ram usage. The ram, hdd, and cpu usage are now down to levels far below the indexing service in vista. Please fix the integration, or at least give a decent non-browser search window.

Chrome Channel Chooser

Previously, I told you how to update Chrome to the latest dev build. Google now has an official way to do this. It is called the Chrome Channel Chooser.

http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel/

It basically lets you tell Chrome to update using the built in updater, but to download dev builds instead of official builds. (Note, this only works for Chromium, not Chrome)

Google+Valve=The Inquirer?

It seems that the inquirer has started a rumor that is now being repeated everywhere, that google will buy valve. Here are the links to some of the repititions:

Joystiq

Gizmodo

CVG

TechCrunch

And of course, the place that started it:

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/09/17/google-valve

This has been picked up on newspond and digg as well.

I wouldn't expect this to happen, but its an interesting rumor.

IE Marketshare Falls

Internet Explorer marketshare fell by 1.4 percentage points to 71% today. Chrome grew to 0.7%, firefox grew by 0.3% points, safari grew by 0.4% points, and opera grew by 0.01% points. It seems that all of the publicity comparing Chrome to the other alternative browsers has gotten some of the less likely users to experiment, at least that's my theory. Whatever the cause, this is good news for the opensource movement.

Chrome happenings

Seeing as Chrome is all that has been in most blogs, I thought that it would be appropriate to get all of the chrome out of my system and do a marathon. So, Portable chrome. It functions just like regular chrome, but you can stick it on a flash drive, network drive, or any other medium that doesn't requires the that software not require installation. It is available here.

Chrome vs Chromium

There have been a lot of reviews of Google Chrome, but it is often forgotten that it is opensource and therefore can be edited and compiled by anyone. Chrome and Chromium look the same.

I've honestly forgotten which is on the left and which is on the right they look so similar. Chromium feels a bit faster, and some flash videos seem to play better. Checking the builds shows that the current Chromium build is a bit newer than the Chrome beta. Chromium is available here.

I'll be reviewing the two together in full tomorrow, not looking at the differences, but treating them as one browser because of the similarities.

Update: As of build 1800 of Chromium, the tabs do not scale correctly. They cover up(when there are enough of them) the minimize and maximize buttons, and the add-tab button covers up the close button. The workaround for now is to right-click on a tab to close it, and to use the tasbar to alter the window.

Its Chrometastic

Google recently released a new web browser, Chrome. I've been using it as my main browser since it came out, and on the weekend there will be a special Chrome post(lots of screenshots and tests). Until then, here's one screenshot: