After reading several good reviews about Google Chrome, I decided to download and try it for myself.
I love its streamlined look – retaining only the essential icons. I also love its incognito surfing concept – allowing you to surf the net and not leaving a trace of it for the next user. For a single mom with three pre-puberty kids, trust me. This is awesome.
I also love its bookmarking feature. Lifeted from Gmail’s concept, you can just click on the star on the address bar and voila! - its bookmarked already.
Hate those pesky download managers or pop up boxes? Chrome has eliminated those as well. Just click on download and you’ll see that status at the bottom of the screen.
I also love it’s all-in-one concept. Click on a new tab and everything is there: bookmarks, recently visited pages or history and search history. Saves a lot of time for me.
With every beta release, of course, comes the bugs or glitches. I’m not really sure if it has something to do with my PC configuration but whenever I play a video from YouTube, the page crashes. I get Shockwave Flash crashed or Shockwave Flash is unresponsive error. I tried doing the same with Firefox and Internet Explorer and it worked just fine.
Also, if you and your family use Chrome’s save password feature, you get stuck with the last user’s account. Bookmarks also need some working on. It would be better if they let you arrange your bookmarks. It would also be better if they show how much of the page is being loaded.
All in all, I would say once Google smoothens out its rough edges, Google Chrome will be THE browser for the net surfer.
i remember the last time i made tacos for the children – three years ago – and they didn’t like it. they were 9 and 7 years old that time. yesterday, i made tacos and i was pleasantly surprised to see they now love it! in fact, one of the twin girls can finish as much as 4 tacos in one sitting! and she’s 10 yrs old! their taste buds must have also changed, huh? but im not complaining. if taco is the way for her to eat tomatoes and onions – she can have all the tacos she wants.
im on a lose-weight phase right now and i thought id go on a taco diet for a while. i remember my cousin before who was on a taco diet for a week – all she can eat – and she never gained weight. in fact, she lost weight. think about it. no carbohydrates (except the shells which are minimal), lots of hot sauce and tomatoes and onions and lettuce and ground beef…
ill tell you if its really effective after a week…
they say cab drivers are the best tourist guides. i say they’re a lot more. they are windows to the harsh reality of life… and the colorful.
mang leon is around 50-55 yrs old, white-haired, on the thin side with weather-beaten face and crinkly eyes – eyes that smiled and laughed a lot. i was riding on his cab on my way to the bus station last night. our conversation started from a news report on the radio about a man who conned a medical representative into giving him her cellular phone, claiming he was a doctor. we were both shocked, not of the incident, but because we couldn’t believe someone would still be gullible enough to take the bait, hook, line and sinker. so anyways, after the news, i asked mang leon if he ever encountered anything similar while on the job, knowing cab drivers’ are usually ripped off by hold-uppers. fortunately he hasnt encountered such but he then started to tell me stories…
photo from aristide
one of his buddies had a passenger, in white suit, who claimed his name to be “dr. araneta”. the passenger asked his buddy if he would leave his taxi cab at his place, and drive his mercedes benz and bring the doctor and his guests to a nearby town for a certain amount of money. the driver agreed. “dr. araneta” then told him he has several errands to do first, drop by the hospital, the country club, the mall then onto his house to get the mercedez benz before picking up his guests. from the hospital on the way to the country club, the doctor asked the driver a favor. he told the driver he still has to get pesos from his house and all he’s got are dollars. he needs to buy something from the mall before proceeding to his place. “dr. araneta” then asked if he can borrow 700 pesos from him and will pay him back at the doctor’s place. believing “dr. araneta”, the driver gave him 700 pesos. they then went to the mall and the doctor went in to buy some stuff. and the driver waited. and waited…. and waited… “dr. araneta” never came back.
flabbergasted, i just laughed and laughed with mang leon- i wasnt sure at whom – at mang leon’s buddy or “dr. araneta”… but i think i was more shocked at discovering up to what extent people would do to get money – even play a part! while some work their ass off day and night to earn honest living…
and mang leon went on and on and regaled me stories of men and women trying to con drivers… and the sad part is these people taking advantage of cab drivers are relatively well off compared to the latter – who has to scrape in at least 1500-2000 pesos a day to meet the operator’s quota and gasoline – in excess of which is their take home – which is on the average around 300-400 pesos… for a family of 6-8.
so next time you take the cab, take a closer look at your cab driver… they’re not just drivers… they’re life.
here’s a sample of a scrapbook page you can make online on scrapblog. scrap, blog and share! what’s cool is that you have an array of cute trimmings to choose from…just drag and drop… crop here… twist there… and voila! digital scrapbook! so now you can do something abut your burgeoning folder of digital photos.
vyrew is a browser-based conference and always-on collaborative platform that provides instant visual communication without the need for client downloads or installations. users can set-up a meeting through voice conference and/or text chatting. what differentiates this from other web-based IM software is it provides users a functional workspace or virtual whiteboard and enables shared viewing of presentations, files and photos. and with the always-on collaboration feature, users can leave and return to the minutes of the meeting with all the content, annotations, chat history intact and archived.
still in beta release, vyew 2.0 is something worth watching out for this coming June. vyew will eventually be a powerful interactive and collaborative platform with a growing set of plug-ins, such as Yahoo maps, Google search, diagram tools, notepad, games, photo slideshow, and more.
oh… did i also mention that vyew allows users to share their desktops real-time? i dunno with you guys, but this is what has got me falling in love with vyew…
since da vinci code‘s showing last thursday, i’ve been hearing nothing but negative feedbacks. i myself was a little bit dissapointed about it. the book was more captivating and thrilling. maybe because ive read the book and documentary about it so the movie was anti-climactic.
anyways, before it was shown, my best friend worriedly told me, or asked my, "peachy, you do know, do you, that da vinci code is fiction?"
and i go like, "duh? who the heck would think otherwise?"
there have been countless discussions and debates over the da vinci code. but nothing amuses me more than the roman catholic church’s stand against it. my question is: why would you be troubled about something that goes against your belief? unless your belief is not that strong. otherwise, why would you even be bothered. right? and therein lies the problem. as my best friend told me, the roman catholic church itself is scared because da vinci code will shake their followers and test their belief about the very foundation of catholicism.
leonardo da vinci’s last supper fueled more talks about jesus christ’s mortality and relationship to mary magdalene. as to its veracity, who knows. but one thing remains.
i was a sims 2 addict and usually spent the whole day playing sims 2 – constructing and re-constructing houses for my sims characters. those real-life graphics have now become more useful, though. as i was surfing looking for some relevant web 2.0 sites, i came upon plan3d and stylehive fashion show.
plan3d is a new generation of home design software that lets you see your ideas in realistic 3D with shadows and reflections. you can use it to design one room, create a three story home, remodel a bathroom or kitchen, landscape your yard or sketch out an office building.
stylehive fashion show, on the other hand, uses the popular game, second life, to showcase stylehive’s fashion line.
what’s interesting in both these applications are the ingenious ways of using 3d simulation games for something relevant. if only all games are like these, i wouldn’t mind playing the whole week!
with so many web 2.0 sites popping up, it’s not surprising that there are also many web 2.0 directories created. openBC has one, eConsultant has another one and listible has one also.
nothwithstanding the hula over what web 2.0 really is, these lists might just add confusion to the users. following kaye’s post about thinkfree, i think it would be best to feature and review some sites that has value and let this be a jumpstart to learning portal on web 2.0 and web 2.0 apps.
here’s a site that might be useful to parents and would-be parents out there.
Minti is a virtual place where parents can visit anytime to share and gain valuable advice on parenting. The content is created by members in the form of articles. The articles are tagged, rated and commented on by the community to encourage the integrity and relevancy of the information created. Topics range from pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, babies, early childhood, schooling, tweens, teenage years and beyond. Consider Minti as your global parent support group and expect lots of new features to be constantly added to the site so we can all be better at the most important job in the world: parenting.
interestingly, one of Minti’s co-founder is half-filipina, rachel cook. mom to toddler codi and passionate about parenting , rachel conceptualized Minti early 2005, foreseeing the benefits of wikipedia and the need for online parent-to-parent advice-opedia.
members can share their experiences in raising children and give and/or seek advice and. each advice are rated by the members with the best sounding advice getting the highest rate. with the complexities of parenthood, minti has sorted out its advices or posts through folksonomy.
over-all, i’d say this is one web 2.0 app that deserves hi-5 for integrating and utilizing relevant web 2.0 features and content.
i finally found the time to check out amiglia, an interactive family tree maker. what i love about amiglia is that you can actually upload and share photos, recipes (yup, recipes), music, video, etc… it literally is a family activity… online.
a filipino child was punished during lunch hour in his school in canada for proper table etiquette – using spoon and fork in eating lunch!!! and the principal went further by calling the boy “pig”!
latest news was that the mom will ask for public apology from the school and principal.
notwithstanding the fact that the boy has been publicly humiliated, this incident has been traumatic as well. i hope the mom and the local community will give the boy the support he needs at this time…
and concerned school officials be never allowed to work in any educational institutional anymore…
After reading several good reviews about Google Chrome, I decided to download and try it for myself. 
