Speed Up Those WebPages!!

Have you ever wondered why your pages are loading so slow? Well now you can find the answer with Page Speed which was released today. It is a Firefox add on that will suggest how to speed up your pages by doing things such as identifying issues with CSS and JavaScript. This is going to be really useful, especially for people like me who are beginner web developers. On this note, I absolutely love working on webpages, it will definitely be a future career for me, maybe as a side business. It's now time to give Page Speed a try. 

Sony Signs Up With Vevo

First of all, Vevo  is an awesome name. Along with Universal Music Group, Sony has joined up and will offer acts such as Akon, The Killers (Yes!!), Black Eyed Peas and so on. Along with music videos, Vevo will offer reality shows, video blogs and other great stuff. Personally, I can't wait for Vevo to lauch; YouTube is good, especially for home videos, but for mainstream content, it's OK. Hopefully Vevo will turn out to be a great product.  

Watching YouTube On The Big Screen

YouTube has been trying to get onto the big screen, yesterday they announced YouTube XL is available on all large screens, prior to this only Wii and PS3 owners could access this. This is a stripped down version of the YouTube website with a black background and large buttons and has a few extra features like continuous play (watch all related videos sequentially). I still watch most of my TV shows on the TV. Occasionally I'll buy one from iTunes, which requires downloading it, transferring it to my iPod Nano 3rd Ed, and placing this on the Universal Dock. It is OK, but I can't wait for the day when I can have the ease of TV surfing with the on-demand selection of internet video. 

Google Docs Supports More File Formats

Google Docs just received another great update, now .xlsx and .docx documents (Office 2007 files) can be uploaded and converted to Docs. Prior to this, if a document was in these formats, it would have to be converted to another format such as .doc or .odt and then uploaded. This can get really time consuming if your dealing with 100's of documents (it happened to me last semester). The only thing that is missing for me using Docs all of the time is the incorporation of an equation editor and larger file formats. The lab manuals that I prepare every year are over 200 pages filled with graphics and text, Docs just can't handle them. Hopefully the future (and Wave) will bring these features.

Google's Wave Is Going To Be A Tsunami

If you have time, check out the video below (Warning: it is 80 minutes long). It's about Google's new product called Wave which will change email, and the web, as we know it. The premise behind it is that Wave is built on today's technologies and knowledge and is being pitched as a new way of communication. You'll definitely agree with this after watching the video.

Chome Gets Zippier

I've been using Google Chrome since day one, and since then there has been some big improvements which has lead to an increasing market share. The latest stable version (channel) has the following improvements:

1. New Tab Page: Thumbnails can now be removed from the home/tab page.


2. Form Autofill: Finally Chrome gets this, it's such a huge time saver. Why type out information in forms when it has already been previously entered?


3. Bug fixing: Over 300 of them have been fixed.


4. Much faster: At least 30% faster!! This is blazing fast and leaves the other browsers behind. I'm doing an online course that requires IE8, it's absolutely brutal, I can make a sandwich between page loads!! The Chrome team added a new version of WebKit and updated the JavaScript engine, V8.


5. Full Screen Mode: Just hit F11 or visit the Tools menu.

What an update hey? The trend for increased usage of Chrome is definitely going to continue.

Google Sites Gets A Makeover

Google Sites just received a minor makeover. The navigation bar can now be set up as a tree structure and the new editor looks very similar to Google Docs (other minor changes are here). I'm so happy about the addition of this new editor, it creates a level of consistency across the Google Apps suite which is much needed since desktop office suites have been offering this for years. More changes to site navigation will happen in the next few months, along with integration of adsense and collaboration tools. It's nice to see Google adding these features to sites. I've been using it for the past 8 months and it's super at meeting my needs as an educator. My favorite aspect is the integration of Google Docs; documents can be embedded in a site and styled with just a few clicks. This indeed shows the power of cloud computing.