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Google Chrome is one of those programs that has been around for a while, but when you first tried it, you weren’t that crazy about it. It was somewhat buggy, it didn’t have any type of customization available, and you couldn’t block ads. As much as I wanted to make the switch (being the Google nutjob that I am), I couldn’t do it without a few features that just weren’t available:
1. I needed ads blocked. Period. Even most of them would be sufficient.
2. Add-ons. I want to be able to customize it.
3. A way to integrate my Google Bookmarks so that I can use them like regular bookmarks.
Then one day a couple months ago, I heard that extensions were finally hitting the mainstream. Google Chrome Extensions were a great idea, but you needed to download Chromium, which was the “guinea pig” version of Chrome (which means it doesn’t always work properly), and you had to do a lot of nerdy command-line work to get it up and running. It wasn’t pretty. Once one-click extension support came around, it was time to dive back in.
Now, a few months later, I couldn’t be happier.
Hey, Firefox is a great product. Go ahead and download it if you’d like. It’s stable and it’s popular. But Firefox is very prone to bloatedness. After a while, it takes forever to load Firefox. Chrome just pops right up. It just feels light. Check out the screencast I took below of a comparison between a Firefox start and a Chrome start and you will see what I mean. The little box that pops up in the middle is Launchy, which is my application launcher. In layman’s terms, the box pops up and I start typing the name of the program. When the box disappears, that means I hit “enter” and the application is starting. First I try opening Firefox, then Chrome. Check it out:
If you time it, Firefox takes a full 7 seconds to load up for use, and Chrome takes about 1/2 a second – that means Chrome, in this situation, is 14 times faster loading!
Interested yet? Here are my full reasons why you should give Chrome a chance:
Okay, okay – enough gushing. Time to get into the nuts-and-bolts: how do you set this thing up? Remember – it needs to do all the stuff that my awesome Firefox setup could do.
This is easily the most complicated part of the process, but it’s not that hard, really. Without a true contender to the ad-blocking throne, the best way to do it, in my experience, has been through a program called Privoxy. There’s a 7-step process to it that is awesomely-simplified in this post by Lifehacker and Geekzone. Just follow it, step-by-step, and you’re done. Bada bing.
Remember from my Firefox setup, I make full use of bookmarklets – little bookmarks that can do some awesome things in your Bookmarks Toolbar. I’ve found the easiest way to do this is to open up a Firefox window next to your Chrome window and literally drag your bookmarklets from Firefox and drop them into the Chrome toolbar. If you don’t have that, here are links to my bookmarklets and what they do. Instead of clicking on the link, just drag it up to your Bookmarks Toolbar:
Like Firefox plugins, these add-ons help you further customize your browsing experience. There are plenty out there, so feel free to browse around. Here are mine:
No complicated Greasemonkey stuff. Just click “Install” on these bad boys:
Am I preaching to the choir? Do you already use Chrome? What are your favorite extensions/scripts? Why should we encourage more Chrome usage? If you’re a diehard Firefox user and you’re not convinced, tell us why. If you’re an Internet Explorer advocate, seek help immediately – we cannot help you here.
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Boy, do I hear this stuff a lot.
I’ve got friends and family who will ask about The Practical Nerd, and then they’ll spout off some reason why they don’t follow it and apologize to me. First, it’s not like I get offended for every person that doesn’t read what I have to say. My words aren’t for everybody (though, in most cases, they should be reading this stuff!). But as a blogger, you tend to thicken your skin towards that stuff. But the Cooler People of the world have an excuse for not reading a few blogs, and they think they need an excuse for everything. Just think of some of the long, drawn-out explanations you might hear for the following topics:
And the list goes on. Today, however, I want to go with the three reasons I hear most often for people who tell me they don’t follow The Practical Nerd, or blogs in general. Consider it my rebuttal to the Cooler People of the world.
Hey, back off! It’s only for nine months!
Yes, I have recently moved back in with my parents to save some dough before I get married and be a grown-up forever. But I want to list just a few types of people who have very successful blogs: brilliant marketers, people who have successfully morphed their lives into dream lives, sports commentators and pundits, best-selling authors, people who lost weight without having high-priced personal trainers scream in their ears while millions of people watch, and personal finance experts. These are not people who live in their parents’ basements. These are people who have changed lives and are darn good at what they do. They have valuable life experience and they share it with you. This leads to…
Bloggers do rant, there’s no doubt about that. But here are a few blogs I follow that have some ridiculously useful information:
That’s just the tiniest footprint of all the blogs out there. Sure, some are full of idiots who just want to complain about [insert topic here]. Some are celebrity rumor blogs like that piece of crap Perez Hilton. But some are honest, interesting people who are trying to teach and help. Those are the people I follow.
In addition, there are plenty that give you a good laugh after a long day, like 11 Points, Awkward Family Photos, Calvin and Hobbes (the best comic strip of all-time, every day).
This one is easily the most common one I get, and usually the word “life” is emphasized as a way to make me feel like some kind of loser.
Do you ever read a magazine? How about the newspaper? Ever watch anything on TV? Then you have time. It’s that simple.
What is the best use for your time? Is it watching another crappy fake “reality” show? These are shows with people who add nothing to society other than generally wanting a bunch of attention so that they can justify their giant contracts and sponsorships by playing to your emotions with overproduced crap. Why not experience the true reality of people’s lives and actually learn from and enjoy their experiences without corporate involvement? That’s what a blog does. The blog is the ultimate reality show. There are podcasts, video podcasts, and plain ol’ blogs that all exist for people to bare their lives. There are some captivating stories out there that would put the “I’m a single father with three kids and instead of getting a job I traveled all the way here to sing for you” stories to absolute shame. Put down the remote and belly-up to the monitor for a few minutes.
Newspapers and magazines are going by way of the dodo. Think you’re going to miss much? Most magazines have their articles on their websites, and most can be subscribed to. Same with newspapers. You can get your daily dose of news just about anywhere, and you can tailor it to just be news you’re interested in.
Then use an RSS subscriber like Google Reader to pull them in. Instead of searching through each individual website, it will highlight all the new content, pull it to the front, and you can move through it, skipping articles you don’t want to read and highlighting the ones you do. The other reason I use Google Reader is because it’s web-based, so I can access it on my work breaks or on my phone’s web browser, which is great for waiting rooms and other times where you just need to kill a little time. Plus you don’t have to carry around anything extra – you already have your phone! And finding that article from the past you were just thinking about is as easy and entering a few terms into the search box. All your sites are saved and past content can be searched in seconds.
The truth is, many blogs are written by respected, well-rounded people with inspirational and practical advice for you that can be read any time. You have the time. Start following a few blogs and see how your life will change for the better as a result. Or not. Then you can go back to sitting on the couch and watching Jersey Shore instead. I’m not here to judge.
It was one of the biggest games of the season. Any season, really. Any time my Green Bay Packers are dueling with the Chicago Bears, it is must-see television. Regardless of standings and divisions, the Packers-Bears rivalry is fierce. And to be honest, it was bigger than usual, because the Packers are trying to push their way into the playoffs. Every win counts.
At my church, we were having a pot-luck lunch. I was eating a little shredded beef and watching Ryan Grant take it to the house on the first Packer play of the game. We were having fun, and the Packers were winning.
Then I had to go to work.
I sat in the car at the office parking lot while listening to the last precious few minutes of the game that I could hear. I didn’t have a radio at work, so this would be it. After this, it was going to be word-of-mouth.
Thank God for Google.
My computer at work blocks just about everything: email, Twitter, Facebook, ESPN, whatever. But it doesn’t block Google, and I can’t think of a workplace that would. So, when I want to keep up with a game, I type the team name in the search box, and the first result on Google’s results page is a scoreboard with a game clock. I just hit “refresh” every time I check in to see the score, and I’m okay.
This game was different, though, as the Packers were up 13-0 when I left the car. After a few refreshes, it was 14-13, Bears. I was stunned. I had no idea what was going on; who was in? Who wasn’t in? Did anybody get hurt? Did we give up a big play? WHAT?!?
Then I saw a little box that was updating with Twitter results down the page. It wasn’t blocked because it was google.com, not twitter.com! I moved to the options section (see above picture) and clicked “Updates”. Up came a scrolling, constantly-updating commentary on the game from the Twitter universe.
There’s no game on as I write this, so you’ll have to imagine it.
It was beautiful. I could just keep checking, and any big play was commented on by plenty of people! It was like having a crowdsourced play-by-play of the game (and the Pack won, too!). I could see when somebody missed a field goal, when Jay Cutler threw an interception (or two), or any big defensive stand.
If you’re at work and you want to keep track of the big game, just search for the team name on Google and click “Updates”. Then you can see what the world is talking about as it happens.
This has other great implications, too:
Anything you can search Twitter for, you can use this for. Obviously, you want to work hard and make sure you’re getting things done, too. But if you can’t miss the big news or game, Google’s new real-time search is a killer way to do it quickly and easily.
This month’s issue of Men’s Health magazine featured a list entitled “17 Things That Waste Your Time”. It had a lot of great stuff in it, and as I read it, I thought about a bunch of things in this world that just flat-out need to go. The beauty of this list is that it’s all stuff we have the power to change. So here are things that I believe we all need to kick to the curb and rid our lives of:
1. Your massive ego. Pride is great. Confidence is great. But back those things up with your actions. And if you think you’re awesome, you stop learning and growing. Stay humble and keep on learning. You need it.
2. Men’s “marriage is a trap” attitude. A real man knows when he finds the woman he wants to be with for the rest of his life. Today’s “man” likes to say that staying married to the same person is like being in a jail cell. The hippies of the world like to say that free love and lots of wild, “free” sex is the way to go. I can’t think of anything more manly than respecting the love of your life and committing yourself to her forever. And in that same vein…
3. Meaningless marriages and constant divorces. Marriage is a contract. It is a public statement that you will be faithful to your spouse until death. When you get divorced, you are telling everyone around you that you are a liar. Plain and simple. Love is a great part of a relationship, but it needs to be balanced out with logic: can you spend the rest of your life with him/her as he/she is, right now, every day, morning-noon-and-night? Realistically answer that question before you pop the other question.
4. Paying bloated prices on anything. Think you can’t get it cheaper? Think again. Television shows, music, movies, weddings, cars, homes, you name it. We live in a world today where you can get anything on a budget that will last a long time with proper care and attention. Instead of just getting the eye candy or the “hip” new thing, figure out what you need and pay for that.
5. A Sloppy appearance. I say time and again that I was born in the wrong decade. There was a time when a man was a man when he was in a suit, and a woman was a woman when she was in a skirt (or a nice pair of slacks – I’m not a sexist or anything). I walk around and I see baggy pants with boxers hanging out, shirts that reveal “tramp stamps”, boobs hanging half out of shirts, and various vulgarities plastered across t-shirts and the butts of sweatpants. Take some pride in your appearance: cut your hair – or at least wash it, trim your facial hair (if you’ve got it), wash your clothes, and for the love of Pete, bathe properly. Brush your teeth. Wear clothes that fit. Limit your tattoos and your piercings. You’re not a kid anymore, start looking like an adult.
6. Rudeness to strangers. I was going to put “lousy customer service” here, but it goes farther than that. When you make eye contact with someone – anyone – shoot them a quick smile, a nod, or even a “Hi”. It makes their day pleasant, and it makes your day a little more pleasant too.
7. Texting language. Too many abbreviations. I’ll tell you right now, I judge your intellect based on your online behavior. You are in front of a full keyboard, and you must have taken some sort of typing class (and spelling classes) in your lifetime. Spell out the words and use proper grammar already.
8. Getting drunk every time you touch a beer (or drink). Some of the best times I’ve had with my best buddy is when we go out to a bar, have two good beers, and then call it a night. What is this fascination with getting ripped every night? You feel like garbage in the morning, you look like garbage in the morning, and you lose a crapload of money that you could have spent on something more important. It’s stupid. Have a little respect for yourself and know when to quit.
9. Escaping reality. From spending hours upon hours playing video games to smoking weed or the aforementioned getting plastered all the time, what are you running from? Live life. Put your money towards reality. If you are just looking for an escape, try looking for a real escape – identify the problems in your life and the steps you can take to change them. It’s in your hands, not anyone else’s.
10. “Reality” TV. The bulk of reality shows on television are heavily edited and acted to manipulate your emotions. Instead of watching the trials and tribulations of somebody else and their personal lives, get your butt off the couch and go have some experiences of your own. You know why executives put these shows on TV? They’re cheap. That’s it. They’re cheap, and they know that a bunch of lazy people will sit around and watch it, crying or getting upset, while they rake in the cash.
“Did you see what happened last night on ‘America’s Fattest Fatties’? A 900-pound woman lost a pound and a half and then cried for 20 minutes!”
11. Whining. Take a strong look at how much of your day you spend complaining. Do you forward a bunch of emails that tend to start with “I can’t believe Bush/Obama/Palin did [insert something horrible here]…” Is it important to remain informed and educated about the goings-on of the world? Absolutely. It’s your duty to. But stop spending so much time telling others about how much it bugs you. Have something else to talk about.
12. The personal lives and political leanings of celebrities. Alec Baldwin and George Clooney are rabid Democrats. I’m a conservative man. And guess what? I still think Baldwin’s hilarious (even though I don’t care for 30 Rock) and I want to see The Men Who Stare At Goats. Their personal lives have no effect on me. I have my own life. Those guys exist to entertain me. That’s their job, regardless of what they think. Remember Jon and Kate Gosselin? I don’t care that they’re divorced. It doesn’t change anything for me. And guess what? It really doesn’t change anything for you either.
13. Your sense of entitlement. I learned something a long, long time ago: I don’t deserve crap. I ran a marketing business for two years, but I don’t deserve more clients or a good position at a marketing firm somewhere. I have a college degree, but that doesn’t give me the right to a job. I’ve put up with a lot of hardships in my life and made a lot of sacrifices, but that doesn’t mean I deserve a good life now. I have to work at it. You only get somewhere in life by the sweat of your brow. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and learn from your experiences. That will make you infinitely more dangerous, and you will ultimately succeed.
14. The “I can’t live without my ________” attitude. Yes, you can. Sorry, iPod lovers. There was actually a time when you didn’t have access to all of your music at all times. You had to walk down the street and listen to – *gasp* – nothing! And all you DVR-addicts, you used to have to set a VCR, or even watch it LIVE! Bathroom breaks only during commercials? Oh, the horror! And take care of yourself by eating right and exercising, and you’ll have more energy that you can fit into that “must-have” morning cup of coffee.
15. Accepting your lot in life. You don’t deserve better, but you can certainly have better. But it’s up to you. It ain’t gonna fall in your lap.
16. Constant cursing. Curse words exist for impact. A well-placed one can stop a conversation dead in its tracks. That’s what they’re there for. Censor yourself and use it only when necessary. Not only that, have some respect for the people around you. Not everybody wants to hear your barrage of filth. And hey, since when did “free speech” turn into the right to be a jackass to everybody around you? And yes, I’m aware of what word I just used.
17. Cheap beer. Busch Light, Natty Light, Milwaukee’s Best, and God help me, Pabst Blue Ribbon. Have some respect for yourself and your liver. Put something quality in there. Find some awesome local brews in your area. Yeah, it’ll cost a couple more bucks, but you’ll be drinking with a little more dignity (and besides, remember #8? It’s not like you’ll be drinking 18 of them anyway!).
18. Paper. I’m a strong advocate for paperless offices, and it’s not because it’s better for the environment or anything. It’s because it works better, it’s more secure, and it’s more organized. People complain about the reliability of computers and networks, but that’s because they haven’t taken the proper steps to secure them. Using Evernote in your every day life and combining it with the myriad of services that Google offers, and you have nothing to worry about, whether you are online or offline.
19. The “everybody is right” philosophy. If everybody is right, then nobody is right. There’s a strong movement in this world that you need to believe that everyone’s religious beliefs are right for them. You know what that means? That means that it doesn’t matter, and we’re all screwed. I’m a Christian. It is my fundamental belief that a lot of people’s beliefs are wrong. Guess what? That’s okay. That’s what gives my faith meaning – if I’m right, certain people in this world have to be wrong. That doesn’t mean you are better than them. It just means you are putting stock in something. Along those same lines…
20. Blind faith. A lot of fundamental Christians believe in God because they were raised that way. They don’t have a single intelligent argument for anybody else’s belief systems. They just rely on the “you’re going to hell” argument. If you’ve got faith in something, take time every day to continually educate yourself on that faith and the beliefs of others. Intelligent debate still exists, it’s just that people don’t take the time to do it anymore. Don’t just fall into insults (like many commenters on this post will undoubtedly do).
21. Money as a status symbol. You are not your stuff. You are what you do. You are what you believe. You are what people perceive you to be. Instead of spending all that energy on accumulating more crap, work on how you treat your fellow man/woman. Focus on doing things for your loved ones and show that you appreciate them. Have some pride in whatever work you do. Respect yourself and the world around you. That’s the key to being well-liked and respected. Give and you shall receive.
Those are all the ones I came up with. What stuff in this world do you think needs to go? Share them with us in the comments! Let’s talk!
So Gmail is down again today for some of us. Let the onslaught of angry tweets begin:
Gmail contacts have been down for hours now… Why am I starting to feel like Google is slowly turning into Microsoft… the deal with Gmail is: give up your life, gain awesome apps. this morning i’ve fulfilled my side… but now i wait Thanks Gmail…. just another reason to have a Hotmail account!
Gmail contacts have been down for hours now… Why am I starting to feel like Google is slowly turning into Microsoft…
the deal with Gmail is: give up your life, gain awesome apps. this morning i’ve fulfilled my side… but now i wait
Thanks Gmail…. just another reason to have a Hotmail account!
Okay, so it’s easy to bag on Google for this and make you regret your decision to switch to Gmail in the first place. I mean, heck, what good is email if you can’t use it, right? Well, I don’t get too mad about it for a few reasons:
The “what if it goes down” attitude needs to be applied to just about every form of communication. Your cell phone can fall in the toilet. Your internet connection can go down. Mail sometimes gets lost. Your electricity can go out right in the middle of a Packer game (happened over the weekend – neighbors’ kid plowed a 4-wheeler into the electrical box and knocked out the power for the entire block). Your car can break down. The plane you’re in may need an emergency landing. The sun can be blocked by clouds all day, etc.
I could go on and on. The truth is, you always need a backup plan for everything in life. If you are running your life through Gmail (and you should!), you need to have a backup plan for when it goes down periodically. If you are putting all your eggs in the Gmail basket and not backing that up somewhere, you only have yourself to blame if your day goes off the tracks because of a little outage.
A few hours feels like decades in today’s “gotta-have-everything-NOW” world. But in the grand scheme, it’s not so bad. If your computer dies and you use Outlook for your email, it can be days before you get your email back up, and even then, you might not get your mail back, which leads me to…
Even if Gmail goes down for a while, when it’s back up – you don’t notice much of a difference. Email that was sent to you in the meantime is still there. Email that you’ve kept is still there. If you’re storing all your email on your home computer, you run the risk of losing all of it when that computer goes down. Google keeps your mail backed up in several places that are in different locations. If something happens to one of your databases, they can just switch to one of the backups and you’re fine.
If you open up a Web browser, type in “http://mail.google.com”, and you can’t access your mail, you’re not completely out of luck. While not always the case, many times there are several ways you can access your Gmail in the event of an outage and not ruin your entire day:
Your smartphone. Google Sync can push your email, contacts, and calendar to your phone, if you have the capabilities. My Windows Mobile phone can pull email from Google into its own email program. It may not always be the most convenient, but it’s something.
Microsoft Outlook. As much as I hate bloated, overpriced Microsoft products, Outlook is on a lot of computers. You can set up Outlook to grab your Gmail, and, like today’s outage, you won’t miss a beat.
Mozilla Thunderbird. I don’t have Outlook, and many of you don’t, either. Mozilla Thunderbird comes from the same company that makes Firefox, so you know it’s good. It’s like a free version of Outlook. As you can expect, then, you can set it up to pull your Gmail, and it works the same way. It has an Account Wizard, so you just have to tell them you use Gmail, enter in your information, and it will automatically set it up for you.
Set up Gmail’s Offline Access feature. Lifehacker has a great article on setting this up, but it basically allows you to access your Gmail whether Gmail is up or not, and whether or not you have a working internet connection.
You know there’s going to be outages. Everything online has outages (Twitter, anyone? Facebook?). If you rely on this stuff, take a few steps to ensure that it won’t ruin your life. It’ll take five minutes. I understand that a company at Google’s level needs to be more reliable, but I’m not about ready to throw it under the bus yet. As long as I know there are ways to keep using it, I’ll keep using Gmail.
