The Nexus One has a slew of new features (like the new Android 2.1 OS, phone wide voice search, incredible multitasking support, and a full multitouch display) that a lot of other Android devices on the market don’t have and, in terms of speed and capability, really stands up against the iPhone’s (the 3GS and iPhone 3G included) on the market today.

Now, I’ve only had the device for a few days, but I can definitely say that my mobile productivity has increased greatly since switching from the iPhone already! The Nexus One is one of (if not) the fastest mobile phones available for purchase, with 512 MB of RAM and ROM and a 1 Ghz processor powering it, and because of this, and the Google Android OS’s ability to run multiple applications at at time, I’ve been able to scream through emails while surfing the web, listening to music, staying up to date on Facebook and Twitter, and taking notes in class, all at the same time, whereas on the iPhone I would have to jump from one app to the next individually, thus slowing down my work pace greatly (especially only on an iPhone 3G).

Another thing I will say is that the Google ecosystem just really seems to open up once you connect an Android device to your Google Account – suddenly things like Picasa, Google Voice and Maps, and so many other apps have new functionality and plug right into apps you’d already be using anyways. Its just a really easy and fun experience overall, and the way Android automatically backs up everything you do on the web for you, without any action on your behalf at all, is really convenient and great for when your always on the go.

I’ll leave you with a quick video of the Nexus One, and once I’ve spent a good amount of time with the phone I’ll definitely let you know if this device could truly be the toe-to-toe competitor of the iPhone we’ve all been waiting for!

The Google Nexus One – Unboxing And Quick Hands On Video

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Not exactly a scenario that most people with older hardware find themselves in! So what about general browsing of the internet? Well ‘jolly’ good also! Some content rich blogs for instance with flash banners and pictures littered over the screen are  smoother to scroll through.

Then twitter! Indeed I am a twitter user and with firefox found typing updates painful on my old laptop. Reminding me of the days of using mainframes via a very slow modem and waiting for the updated inputs to actually be processed…. you know…. type one character and wait for it to be displayed or type a series and hope you didn’t make a mistake! Again Google Chrome works smoothly with twitters ajax system on my overworked old laptop.

I intially thought I wasn’t going to get used to Google’s display. It shows in a new tab a selection of my most visited web pages for me to choose from. Being a chap who generally just uses bookmarks, I didn’t see the point. Yet obviously there are certain pages or sites I visit more often than most and I’ve gone a couple of days at times without even using my bookmarks.

Now sorry folks, I have not used Google Chrome for https, ftp etc. So can’t talk about security or ftp transfers etc. However for breathing new life into older hardware running windows, I thank you Google. Now I can’t wait for Google’s linux port of Chrome to use on my primary machine and indeed older linux systems.

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Today I happened to stumble upon this great and comprehensive guide to Google Analytics and wanted to share it with all of our small business owners who might have websites and are looking to pull in more visitors.

The guide can be found at http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/google-s-guide-to-analytics-472634. I hope you all find the guide helpful!

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Google Blog Search has relaunched with a new homepage. So why should you care and indeed use it? Well you can tag surf with wordpress and find blogs via many other avenues. Is this just another way that will get lost in the mix?

No, I believe the answer is. ‘A’ because Google are doing it and ‘B’ because it presents a clean simple method to search across the spectrum of blogs. With cleanly displayed results sortable by date etc, what else would you expect from Google? I especially like the subscribe feature (subscribe to an atom or rss feed of your search!), that I intend to try out. Job well done I think and useful for any business or home user.

So http://blogsearch.google.com/ should be another method for you to find relevant data, not just when you want to find a blog, but when you are doing your searches in general. Couple this with the fantastic Google Alerts and it is a great way of finding content.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/browse-what-world-is-saying-on-blog.html

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Here are two google search tips that I regularly use to help me find better results and in a format I find easy to quickly read.

Why not try speech marks when searching. Example: “Small Business Tech Blog” will search for that exact phrase and give almost 400 results rather than the 128 million results listed without the speech marks.

You could also mix and match…. you can use multiple speech marks. Examples: “Large Hadron Collider” “Blogs” or also add words without speech marks to produce more varied results. “Large Hadron” blogs

I don’t know about you, but I find wiki’s extremely helpful and well laid out. So why not try adding the word wiki to you search terms. I find this very useful for when I am in a rush and need to find details about subjects quickly. I personally find it easy to navigate wiki pages and usually they are very well written.

Example: “Large Hadron Collider” “wiki” as seen in the above screenshot finds useful relevant wiki results about the LHC.

Hope these two tips help you and please don’t hesitate to leave feedback.

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I don’t want to admit this, especially on a technology blog, but my main internet browser is Internet Explorer 7. (IE 7) It is considered the standard at work, and since I am so familiar with it I use it home as well. It is well within my comfort zone and it seems like such a pain to switch internet browsers I never bothered.

Then I hear about Google Chrome. I should admit that I love Google, especially iGoogle, which is your own customized Google page, Gmail, and Google Talk. I really enjoy how simplified and streamlined the Google products look. That is what pushed me to download and try Google Chrome.

The installation process was very simple and easy. It didn’t take long at all. Follow the prompts and you will have it installed in no time. The best thing was at the end of the installation process it prompted me to import my bookmarks and saved settings from IE. How awesome is that? I have a zillion bookmarks and all of my folders and organization (and lack there of at the moment) came through as well. The only thing that could make it better would be if it took care of the organization and put your bookmarks into folders for you!

Now on to play with Google Chrome. It has a very familiar to it. It would be very easy for someone using IE 7 to transfer over to Google Chrome. One of my favorite features is the New Tab button. You are wondering what is so great about the simple new tab button aren’t you? Well let me show you.

Just look at that beautiful page. It has icons of your most visited sites, as well as your recently added bookmarks on the right. When you first launch Google Chrome of course it will be blank, but as you start visiting your sites, the New Tab page will keep updating for you. Click on one of the icons of your web sites and it will take you there with just one click! It also appears that Google Chrome is much faster than other browsers. I haven’t tested that, but it does appear that way.

On the screenshot pictured above you can see another of my favorite features. Have you ever been searching and searching for something, then finally find it and accidentally close the tab? I hate it when that happens. Then I usually go through my history to find it again rather than the long and painful search. Google has solved that hassle for you! Notice under the Recently Added Bookmarks on the right, you see “Recently Closed Tabs.” There is your solution! If you close a tab, open a new one, and go right back to your site by clicking on the link! Isn’t that awesome?

Another unique feature is you can very easily see where your cursor is on the screen. Look at the screenshot below.

Notice on the Twitter page where it says “What are you doing?” There is a thing gold box around it? You know you will be typing there. If you look at the top of the screen where it says “Name or Location Search” how there is no gold box around that field? That’s because your cursor isn’t in that field to type in. Now you can easily tell where you are typing.

Some people use the “Home” button a lot to go to whatever you have your homepage set as. The default option at least when I installed Google Chrome is to not have a home page button. Since I have mine set as iGoogle in IE 7, I want a home page button. You can go into the options by clicking on the little wrench in the upper right hand corner of the screen and the choosing “Options.” Under the “Basics” tab, you see this screen.

Simply place a check mark in the “Show Home button on toolbar” and right above that you can set your homepage to whatever you would like.

Notice that the little “Home” button now appears to the left of the web address.

{Insert Home Button Pic Here}

Another toolbar icon that most people might miss is the print button. Myself, I don’t mind that it’s gone, since I always use Ctrl+P to print anyway. I did not find a way to make the print icon appear, but you can click on the blank piece of paper in the upper right corner and choose “Print” from the drop down menu.

With my playing around with Google Chrome today the only thing that really bothers me is when you start to type the web address of a website in, you have to use the down arrow key to maneuver down to select it. In IE 7 you can use the Tab key to move down and the Shift + Tab key to move up. I will have to break myself of that habit.

Other than the above, I have not found any problems with Google Chrome at all. I do believe that I will be switching over to Google Chrome. I like the look and feel of it, very streamlined and simple, which I really like. I feel like Google removed the extra junk that you don’t need and kept the necessary parts. I have to say good going Google and I wonder what kind of enhancements they will be making to it in the future. I look forward to seeing them.

If you wish to view the full size images of the screenshots you can find them on my Flickr account located here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/gamerbabe360/sets/72157607092973181/

Reference Google’s blog post:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-chrome-now-live.html

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Dion Rodrigues takes some screenshots of Google’s new browser Chrome. You can find them on Dion’s flickr account at: http://flickr.com/photos/dionrodrigues/tags/google/ Don’t forget to add our RSS feed to your blog reader. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-chrome-now-live.html

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Dion Rodrigues’ Thoughts on the new Chrome Browser:

- Scripts are handled exceptionally in Chrome and run faster then I’ve ever seen.
- UI is pleasing and simple to use for all levels of internet users.
- Rendering of pages is also exceptionally well done.
- All queries are sent from the Omnibox straight to Google search; no automatic .com formatting. This gets a bit frustrating at times.
- Overall browser speed is great, possibly faster then Firefox 3.
- Chrome task manager makes managing the performance of the browser easier then ever; stats for geeks is also a nice touch The recovery and management of processes (including killed ones) is one of a kind.
- Incredibly in-depth debug environment for developers!
- Browser has very strong security settings that don’t annoy the user (ie: no cookie or password popups). Incognito browsing mode is great for security and surfing important or private information in public places (ie: work).

Don’t forget to follow our RSS feed

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-chrome-now-live.html

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[youtube=http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=hrODvrfWaKs]

Don’t forget to follow our RSS feed!

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-chrome-now-live.html

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Some features:

• Windows only initially (MAC and Linux role out later)
• Fast browser
• Improved protection against rogue sites
• Used components of Apple’s webkit and firefox
• The code will be open source
• Sandbox tab’s: so if an application / site crashes it won’t kill the whole browser
• Google’s gears for offline working
• Improved Javascript engine

Let’s take off our Google fan hats for a second. This browser is exciting development, but this is the first public release. I don’t recommend you role out for your business use yet, even though there are going to be features that make this so incredibly tempting. Let the rest of the internet consume, digest and use the browser for a short while before rolling it out to business laptops and desktops. Google does keep projects in beta for long periods, so waiting for a full release might be going too far, but prudence is important with regard to security.

Okay Google fan hat back on… Many people have their browsers open all day and how we use our browsers has been adapting for quite some time. From remote desktop connections via browser windows to contact management and IM chat among other ways you can use your browser. This browser appears it will take this further. Their are hints that the way you manage your tabs will be different, perhaps in the direction of providing a desktop type experience? I am looking forward to how this browser improves upon my connectivity experience, especially once Apple Mac and Linux versions are rolled out as I personally prefer Ubuntu’s linux.

Let’s not rule Firefox out either. Firefox is a fantastic browser with amazing features and a huge selection of add on applications available. With Chrome being released and open source, it can only help to improve Firefox further, but does concern me it will dent firefox’s increasing share of the browser market.

The team at this blog will be trying the new browser. So well worth following our RSS feed to see screenshots and read further posts. Plus we are going to have a series of posts regarding Google products and services, well worth the read. So don’t forget to add our RSS feed.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html

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