Yesterday Google Labs quietly released two new Firefox extensions: Google Safe Browsing and Blogger Web Comments. Today, there seems to be a lot of talk about them coming up with a specialized music search. Marissa Mayer said they are not building their own music store, just trying to get people to iTunes and other stores (and earn a cut of affiliate revenue, of course see update at bottom).

One thing that drives me batty about some news sites and blogs is when they don’t link to the site/service/product they are talking about (CNET, see above). Please, if you write about something, always link to it for readers. Making them run to Google is not helpful. With that said, here’s how you actually check out the new Google Music. Just do a search for an artist like, well, say Iron Maiden via Google Music search. The word musicsearch? is a new special query after google.com.

Google Safe Browsing
An anti-phising tool that will alert you to sites that are bogus asking for personal or financial details.

Blogger Web Comments
“… makes it easy to see what bloggers are saying about a page you’re viewing in Firefox and even make your own blog post about it, all without leaving the page you’re on.” A little blue window pops up in the lower right of the browser. Check it out below:

When you click on the “leave comments” a window pops up to post to your blogger account. Once you login, it really is like leaving a comment — only you are leaving a comment on your blogger-based blog, not on the blog itself. I also noticed that the information being shown is coming from Google’s own blogsearch, which still is an incomplete listing of our blogs. They seem to be improving, however, and I’m not seeing as many splogs (spam blogs) as I’ve seen in the past.

Google Rumors
Lastly, there’s a Google rumor circulating (big surprise, huh?) that Google might buy the Opera browser. I don’t have any idea if that’s true, but if there is any truth to it, it does seem odd considering they are promoting and paying for Firefox downloads via Adsense. However, Opera has a good foothold in the mobile market and a great reputation among its users which makes them attractive. My personal opinion? Google won’t buy any browsers, they’ll either go the Flock route and do some sort of quasi-Mozialla browser or stay out of the browser market altogether waiting for the next big thing (browserless surfing?). After all, they make more money powering the search then wasting resources and manpower trying to compete with IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari.

Update 7:12pm PST: Hunter in the comments area (thanks) just pointed to a CNN article where a Google is reported as saying they are making no affiliate revenue. I’m not sure I buy this one, but for now will take it at face value. Think about the revenue possibility for directing millions of people directly to online music stores and Google wants none of that pie? Perhaps not a true affiliate agreement but there has to be some money changing hands here. If not now, then wait until the day revenues take a cut and this line of thinking gets changed.

Sometimes when adding or removing toolbars to Internet Explorer the list can get messed up and blank lines with checks next to them will appear.

By editing and removing iTBarLayout from the Windows registry the list can be fixed. Be sure to close all IE windows before editing registry and always be careful. To access the registry navigate to START -> RUN and then type: regedit. Then find the following registry key section:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer \Toolbar\WebBrowser\

Look for iTBarLayout along the right and delete. Then restart Internet Explorer. You may lose some custom toolbar positions or have to re-enable some toolbars.

Step by step instructions here

Find a post here that you would like to bookmark for future reference? I’ve added Yahoo’s new “Save to MyWeb” button to the bottom of every post and you can save and tag it (see photo).

I don’t use bookmarks much any longer, instead using services like MyWeb and del.icio.us to handle all my bookmarking needs. This way no matter what machine I’m on, managing and updating my bookmarks is a snap. No need for that clumsy import/export stuff.

Update 10/28/05 8:54am PST: Added step-by-step instructions how to add the MyWeb button to various blog systems.

As far as new browsers go it’s difficult for me to get excited about them because there are so many out there but lately I’ve been impressed by two different browsers. First was Opera which went free after being a pay or ad-supported browser. I didn’t expect I’d care much for that but have been using it every day since I downloaded it. Opera is well worth downloading and fitting into the Firefox / IE mix.

And now comes Flock which is based on Mozilla. My inital thoughts were that Flock would be just another overhyped bloated Firefox wannabe because it carried most the telltale signs: teasing private beta that only allowed a few of the usual suspects who say practically everything new is awesome, contained social networking tools, etc.

Glad to write that I was wrong. At least as a blogger I was wrong. I’m not sure how many non-blogger users will be ready for the Flock experience.

One of the devs, Bart, explains how and why Flock wasn’t just an extension:

In architecting our software, build systems and engineering processes, we have given considerable thought to how our code will be able to evolve alongside the Mozilla code, without forking it. We are trying to pay particular attention to this in areas where we are doing things slightly different from Firefox. For example, in the area of bookmarks, we implemented on top of the Firefox bookmarks architecture, while integrating social bookmarks.

The Flock team released a very early bleeding edge version — with source code — and comes packaged with some very promising and different built-in browser features. Yes, it crashed within 5 minutes of using some of those features, so might want to put this one on a test system only, but they aren’t saying this thing is even a stable beta yet, but a developer preview (readers that aren’t developers might want to wait for a true preview release).

Now what makes Flock different than Firefox, IE and Opera? The primary different feature I saw was a built-in blogging client. Flock attempts to make blogging and tagging a part of the browsing experience.

Integrated blogging - by clicking a feather icon a special blogging window will appear that you can drag and drop images or URLs into. I ran a test of this blogging window in the last post saving to draft.

Setting up posting to my Wordpress (WP) powered blogs was easy: just put in the blog URL and Flock searches for the xmlrpc script to interact via MetaWeblog API. You will also need to supply a username and password to be able to post. The add blog process worked good with Wordpress. I tried using Blogger, which by supplying one user/pass will automatically add all your blogger-based blogs to the account tab, but Flock crashed when it tried to retrieve my recent blogger posts. I didn’t test a Typepad blog, but it’s supposed to work with those simiarly. Bloggers will like this system once the gremlins are ironed out for an official release, but I wouldn’t add too many accounts or too much information to it just yet.

As for using the built-in blogging system? That’s also well designed with an semi-adjustable window (the form input fields stay the same size, but users can manipulate the width of the parent window). There is a button labeled “TOPBAR” which will show recent posts for whatever account is selected. I liked having the ability to click and drag any image I see from the browser or from my desktop.

Tag bookmarks in del.icio.us - whenever you tag or bookmark something in Flock you can have it automatically tagged to your del.icio.us account (sure, everybody has them, right?) which is handy. You’ll have to enter in your user/pass each time you start Flock, but this is a hany feature. Could it have been done as a Firefox extension? Probably, but it’s the kind of thing that is cool to have built-in. I would also like to be able to send/tag to Yahoo MyWeb and Furl.

I noticed that when I bookmarked Flock, it automatically added the Flock homepage and Flock start page to my tags at del.icio.us. I also noticed that 1,300+ other people, as of this writing, had done the same. That’s a smart way for Flock to get get to the front of the line in the popular page under the tags: “flock” and “flock start.” I guess for those devs wanting to get their software noticed on del.icio.us, just include this functionality? Smart. (Update: this is a bug that has been fixed for the next version, indicates solutionwatch)

Submit Flock Bug Report
Help Flock get more stable by reporting bugs here (I did)

Join Flockstars Mailing List
Using Mailman, Flock has a mailing list.

This is only developer version 0.4.8, I am curious to see what Flock does next. Their list of incomplete features is long. For those of us who enjoy tagging and blogging Flock seems like a browser designed for us.

For those more interested in the user experience, Flock isn’t really all that different from Firefox or Opera. Yeah, there is a built-in RSS aggregator that breaks down items by date but that’s not anything all that revolutionary or new.

Overall, though, I was impressed with what I’ve seen so far. A good start. Bloody good start.

What others are blogging about Flock
Dion has a good idea for a future feature: blog a browsing session
Chris Pirillo wonders why his service gada.be isn’t included in the default search?
Tom Rafferty from Ireland has “mixed feelings about it” This one is more about what is to come, Tom, I think then what is already there.
Scoble: “I really like using this browser.”

Update 9:05am: I’m adding and updating what I’m reading other bloggers are saying at the end of this post. I don’t typically read too much of what other bloggers say about new products/services first before writing my own opinion so that I don’t become tainted. I do the same thing with movies, books, games and other reviews. I’ll read the other reviews after making my own opinion. Sometimes this makes me look like the lone voice in the crowd liking something that others hate, but it keeps my opinion pure. FYI for those who are using aggregators which do not update modified posts, you might miss some information on some posts at Hmm.

Testing out posting via Flock with the Flock blog posting window.
You can drag and drop images from the browser and drop them straight into your
blogging client. Right click on the image and a bunch of  image properties
become available for use.

The bullet and numbering functionality in the toolbar looks nice but functionality wise is unfinished and incomplete. It does shows that the ability to click a button and add bullets and numbering will be as easy as pressing a button on the toolbar. Also a ton of configuration options.

More on this one in a little bit. Note: I created a special user for posts made viaFlock (see byline).

Since I’ll be somewhat backed up with coding work the next few days, some reviews have been are piling up. The list of things I want to review over the coming days is growing and includes:

- Yahoo Mail - This new version is supposed to rock. I’ve read lots of good things about this one and want to compare it to Gmail, as others are doing.
- In depth reviews of two new games we bought including World of Warcraft MMORPG and Reel Deal Vegas Casino (single and online version). I’ve played the latter a little bit, but not the former yet. My Reel Deal Vegas name is “TD”
- Opera blog community - I started a free test/demo blog there last week and would like to share my experiences with readers. I’ve also been using the Opera browser almost every day for a week now and would like to chime in with more detailed thoughts of that experience.
- JotSpot Live hosted Wiki service - new third party hosted Wiki service that uses AJAX. Check out what Techcrunch has to say about JotSpot. Free for users for up to five wiki pages per month, but those pages contain ads.
- Yahoo Publishing Network (YPN) update - we’ve been testing YPN for almost a month now on a couple other sites and I’d like to update readers on how these tests are going.
- Yahoo “Livewords” function as part of their Yahoo Desktop Search - I took a look at their desktop search awhile back, I’d like to try it out again with this new function. Yahoo has been doing some really cool things in 2005 and I’m interested to see how this works. Albert Lee, Sr. Product Manager of Yahoo talked about this yesterday.

If any Hmm readers have tried/used any of these products/services and want to leave your opinion, possibly for inclusion in these upcoming Hmm review posts, please comment or trackback below. I wish I had more time today to try, use, experience and write all these reviews, but I must get back to the coding mines.

Taking my trusty bird though, just in case I run into any noxious gases.

Opera, long criticized by being in a difficult competitive position because it was a commercial browser, has stripped the banner ads and licensing fees and decided to make its base browser free.

Here’s a few Digg users comments:

blitz: “Changes nothing for me, I still won’t use it.”
wastern: “if only they had done this 4 years ago they may be where firefox is today….day late and dollar short”
tactusben: “Still no good. They still charge for the Series 60 version of Opera, and that’s the only reason why I’d use it.”
nomore: “I like Opera. It seemss faster, sleeker, and a lot more light-weight than Firefox”

My hmm
I have downloaded Opera a few times but haven’t ever used (at least that I can remember anyway). It wasn’t the fact that it was a pay browser that bothered me because I have actually paid for another browser called iRider. In fact, that was one of the very first things I wrote about on this blog (the 2nd post here ever). iRider is up to version 2.21 and I still think it’s worthy of a download but admittedly I don’t use it very much these days, some 2+ years later. One of the things I like about iRider is it seems happy being a niche player and doesn’t mind the commercial price tag.

Opera has never seemed to be that way to me and I couldn’t see the one “gotta have it” install feature. Yeah, I’m one of those holdouts who didn’t jump because of the tabbed browsing. I didn’t fully appreciate tabbed browsing until working with Firefox, actually, and then that seemed like a feature no browser should be without.

So this morning I downloaded and finally installed version 8.50 of Opera. I noticed even at 3:37am when I tried to go to the download page I got an error message a few times trying to get to the file. Their server must be getting pounded by all the people who had the banner-ads supported version or from the looky-loos like me who were finally ready to give them a shot. BitTorrent users, can get an Opera torrent here.

Opera installation and configuration
The installation process was smooth and surprisingly fast. These days I sort of expect it to take 30 seconds or a minute for a version 8 of any product. When I first launched the Opera browser there was a noticeable pause (like 8 seconds or so). One of the criticisms I’ve heard about Opera was overhead. I noticed that Firefox with 8 tabs and eight extensions installed and running was consuming nearly four times the overhead as Opera with three tabs and no add-ons or toolbars. IE with one tab and four toolbars was consuming slightly more memory. A better, more fair test would be with stripped down new installs of each browser, but I didn’t see anything abnormal out of the box anyway. Perhaps the experience worsens as Opera is used more. I’ll have to come back to this one after running it more.

The Opera browser first launched fully maximized and showed a page highlighting the various features. The very first thing that struck me about the toolbar layout was the skinny height/width toolbar area (pictured below), which I thought was a plus. Not as bloated as IE or as tall as Firefox. I’ve never cared for big icons in the browser toolbar area. That area should be as lean and mean as possible so the user has more actually browsing space.

Of the features they were toting, tabbed browsing was #1 on the list. Integrated Google search was #2. I noticed from their dropdown menu that I could also search: Opera, Amazon, eBay, download.com and Google search. Could I easily add customized search? This answer wasn’t there in the form of a “add custom search” option and I didn’t easily find. Darn.

Opera feature #3 was a Password Manager. No use for me since I use a Pockect PC to desktop password management program. Next the Trash can. In the upper right corner there is a trash can that works a little like the Windows recycle bin in that: “If you mistakenly close a Web page, you can re-open it from the Trash can. Try it by closing the tab you’re reading right now (click the red X). Go to the Trash can and re-open it!” Ok, I closed the tab and just as it promised, the first item in the dropdown list was the Opera startup page (quote above from this page). This is a slick way to handle browser history, but I don’t know that I’d call it “brilliant.”

#5 on the feature list is Sessions which allows saving collections of open pages as a session. I do open collections of pages each day so having a one click sesson would be handy. I tried making one for all the sites I keep open in tabs. It was as easy as going to FILE -> SESSIONS -> Create session and adding a unique session name. I named this “startup” checked the box that said: “Show these pages every time I start Opera” and clicked OK. I then restarted Opera. Eight seconds or so later, the session I saved was there with the three open tabs. Nice!

Since the start page was gone I wanted to return to it but my trash can was empty. Bummer, that it doesn’t remember between sessions. So that trash gets taken out on each browser restart? Bummer if you are working on something and it crashes.

The #6 highlighed Opera feature was the security bar which indicates whether HTTPS is enabled by putting a lock inside a yellow highlighted box inside the browser URL window. It sure makes it obvious to see the security level. I checked this out by visiting and logging into my Sharebuilder account. After entering in the password and submitting a popup appeared for something called Wand, which wanted to know if I wanted Opera to remember this each time. From the dropdown menu there were options for this time only, every time or across the entire server. I chose the none of the above option, but I could see where this could be handy for sites with logins where security wasn’t as important. I went back to the digg.com tab I had open and chose the entire server option for that login.

Something else I noticed in the browser URL window was the blue RSS button on the digg homepage. I clicked that and easily subscribed. I did the same with MakeYouGoHmm which gave me the choice of RSS 2.0 or Atom 0.3. Nice to know it recognized this offered both choices. The built-in Opera RSS Aggregator reminded me a bit of Outlook in the way it was multi-paned. It even had a quick reply box — which didn’t work. That would have been cool if they could have passed the information in the quick reply to our comment form. No dice.

In the bottom of the Opera startup page, there are links to tutorials, a community site, a photo album service and even a free blog hosting service. The Blogging force was irresistable and I decided to check that out and whip up a quick test blog. I’ll save the details of experience for a different post.

The only real disappointment I had starting out with Opera is that I didn’t try this out sooner. This is definitely a browser worth trying out and testing more extensively.

Will I use it more than my trusted one-two Firefox/IE punch or will it go the way of iRider? Too early to tell, but I’m certainly impressed so far. At least I didn’t go for the uninstall right away. Give this a try. There is nothing to lose now that the ads and licensing are gone.

Seems like the whole Firefox being more secure facade is faltering.

From March 2005 to September 2005 10 vulnerabilities were published for Microsoft Internet Explorer, 40 for Mozilla Firefox. In April-September timespan there were 6 exploits for MSIE, 11 for Firefox. Conclusion? As you can see, the facade that Firefox is the cure to the Internet Explorer security blues is quickly fading.

The bottom line in today’s wild, wild web is if your software is popular you have a bullseye on your back for malicious programming. Sad, but true. It’s just completely ignorant to run out any kind of claims of a particular app ‘being more secure.’ If Apple continues to gain users and market share then they too will have to deal with problems on the same scale.

While all of these sites might not be new, they were new to me and I registered recently, thanks to reading about them in the October 4, 2005 PC Magazine digitally via Zinio.

shadows - from those Pluck folks, it’s their attempt at Yahoo MyWeb and del.icio.us. Toolbar and/or bookmarklet interface. It’s ok.
clipmarks - another clip, tag and save site. You have to use their toolbar and people visit clipmarks.com to view/download clipmark collections. Too bad it requires a toolbar. The End User License Agreement lists “content provided to Amplify” so it’s from those Amplify folks. I remember Amplify. Neat idea, but it never really caught on that well. Sure enough here’s what amplify.com says:

We are excited to introduce our new technology called Clipmarks (www.clipmarks.com). Just like Ampilfy, we created Clipmarks to help you better manage the online information you care about. Though we love Amplify, we believe that Clipmarks is a more enjoyable and effective solution, so we have temporarily taken Amplify down (current users can continue to use it) so that we can focus all our resources on Clipmarks.

Hmm. Might want to be careful on how much times is spent on this one. I clipped and tagged a recent Hmm blog entry.

jeteye - classified as a community search engine users can create and share custom created jetpaks which are: “Its a collection of web links, notes, images or other jetpaks assembled by anyone about anything. They can be saved, organized, shared, or searched. ” Basically, collections of content with their own comments, generated by search result. I did a search for TDavid and it thought I meant david, grrr.

CallingID.com - an IE-only (as of this writing) toolbar that provides detailed information about a site URL in an effort to reduce phishing and pharming scams. The netcraft toolbar provides some of the same functionality but without the $39.99 annual price tag. As of this writing, you can download and try it out for the first year for free.

Recently bought a Compaq SR1550NX and these are my notes for modifying the system:

- goodbye Compaq Organize
- adios Easy Internet Sign-up (have cable)
- Remove Quicken installer
- Remove Money 2005 installer
- Google Toolbar - replace with MSN tabbed browsing and Yahoo toolbar. I was surprised that they preloaded the Google Toolbar.
- Wildtangent Games (205 MB woth) and driver - removed no thanks
- Norton Security Center (three month trial) - replaced with Grisoft
- Remove SpySubtract - replace with Microsoft Antispyware
- added SlingPlayer for watching TV remotely. The Slingbox is currently my favorite gadget of the year.