The iPad: Uh-huh, Sure.....

As you maybe can tell, I am less than impressed with Apple's new tablet, called (rather disingeniously) the iPad.

So The Onion did this really awesome satire bit, "Frantic Steve Jobs Stays Up All Night Designing Apple Tablet", in which Jobs frantically glues 9 iPods to a cafeteria tray and slaps a bit of masking tape on the whole thing.  Unfortunately, that seems pretty close to reality here.  The iPad is basically an iPod touch, except with a huge screen.  The only thing that's new is the iBooks app . . . and hey, if I want to read books on the go, I'd rather have an actual eReader, like the nook.

So is it cool?  Very.  Are some people going to absolutely love it?  Heck yeah.  Am I one of them?  Eh, no.  I'll go for an iPod+Droid+nook combo any day.

Firefox vs. Opera vs. Safari vs. Camino vs. Shiira vs . . . Chrome?

Now that Google has finally released a Chrome beta for Mac, I have of course downloaded it . . . and am now seriously considering making it my default browser.  Now, I have to say that I happen to have every single web browser listed in the title.  And I know that that's far more web browsers than any normal self-respecting person needs, but I have never claimed to be normal.  And besides, how can I say that one web browser is the best when I haven't tried all of them?

Firefox.  Well, what can I say that hasn't already been said?  Widely regarded as the fastest, best, coolest browser, with thousands of add-ons (which other browsers don't come close to replicating).  However, maybe because I feel like being a rebel, I find I don't use it that often.

Opera.  I've used it as my default for a while.  It has some definite shortcomings, including a tendency to freak out over my school's website and refusing to let me tag people in statuses on Facebook.  However, those are more than made up for with its Speed Dial feature (which other browsers, like Safari and Chrome are starting to copy), the Widgets (I love playing Pandora through its widget, and any of the multiple "get lyrics" widgets), and the ability to save different groups of tabs as sessions.  In the end, Opera suffers most from its relative anonymity (although I think it's used more as a mobile browser than on computers) because it's an excellent browser without the widespread recognition it needs to become the next Firefox.

Safari.  Well, I know it's the default browser for Macs, but I have to admit that between Firefox and Opera, Safari has mostly shown up as a blip on my radar, and "oh, shoot, I need to update Safari to get x other application to work.  That said, Safari 4 is nice.  I don't really use it, but I like the Top Sites feature (though Opera's speed dial still wins in a debate between them, I think) and it does play videos (like on YouTube and Hulu) faster than either Firefox or Opera.

Camino.  I'm kind of eh on this one.  I mean, it's basically Firefox customized for the Mac without the add-ons.  It's fast, it's pretty, but I really use it only when I'm testing my website in different browsers or when my dad wants a screenshot of it to add variety to one of his books.

Shiira.  You know, it's a bit of a hassle to use because pretty much the entire development team is Japanese, which makes their website full of typos, but apart from that, I actually really like Shiira.  It gets better with every release – and real, tangible improvements, like adding tab expose and RSS feed support in the latest version, not just an "oh it runs faster" update.  Shiira is a web browser that I would love a lot more if I had more time to devote to exploring it, but I still highly recommend it.

Chrome.  The new love of my life.  Fast, sleek, pretty, with nice themes, a really cute home page that mimics Opera's Speed Dial while adding in what my recently closed tabs are.  I think I'll be using Chrome a lot more in the future, but I'm still not giving up on Opera :)

Probably the most non-professional reviews of web browsers you've ever read, but it's nice to get a new perspective sometimes, yeah?

iTunes 9 Is Love (Or It Should Be)

Apple's September conference always has me running home from school a bit earlier than usual to read the news and see what new updates have come out.  And I love most of the new updates this year.  Emphasis on most.

I won't spend too much time on analyzing all the new iPod updates, since you can read those pretty much anywhere.  Quick summary though: a new 64GB Touch, price cuts for the 8GB & 32GB Touches and the shuffle, video camera for the nano.  What I really want to focus on (read: rant about) is iTunes 9.

So iTunes 9 is a wonderful update, I'm not disputing that.  The new features are excellent.  It looks pretty, it runs faster.  And everything I've read about the re-designed iTunes store makes me excited.

Except.  You need Safari 4 to use the iTunes store.  And, well, me being me (tell me if I have anybody else who does this), I go back and forth between Opera and Firefox and never actually use Safari.  So I don't have Safari 4, 'cause, hey, what's the point?  And I can't actually download the update because (as usual) I've been lazy and haven't updated my OS recently, so I'm still running 10.5.2, while you need 10.5.7 to get Safari 4.

Now, really.  I need two updates before I can use half of what makes iTunes so great.  I know I partly have myself to blame, but seriously.  The Safari download could be easier/still availible to us who don't have time to update to 10.5.x every month.  Or . . . just . . . i dunno, make iTunes work with earlier versions of Safari?

The upshot of all this is, I'm very happy with almost everything new.  Just that pesky iTunes store stops me from enjoying everything like I should.

Google Caffeine: What's the Big Fuss?

So, being the tech nerd that I am, I'm sitting here trying out the new & improved Google, Google Caffeine, instead of doing what others would surely term "more useful things" (like cleaning my room. Ahem. Anyway.)

But as of right now, I don't really get the hype. I ran searches in both Caffeine, the regular google.com, and my (heavily customized) google.ie. And, really I didn't see that much of a difference. Here's some of what I found.

Search: "stargate movie"
Number of Results: Caffeine~ about 5 million, Google.com~ about 1 million, Google.ie~ about 4 million
Time for Search: Caffeine~ .16 seconds, Google.com~ .45 seconds, Google.ie~ .12 seconds
Most Useful Results on First Page: probably Google.ie. The first 6 results were the same in all searches.

Search: "queen rania"
Number of Results: Caffeine~ about 7 hundred thousand, Google.com~ about 4 hundred million, Google.ie~ about 1 million
Time for Search: Caffeine~ .23 seconds, Google.com~ .15 seconds, Google.ie~ .48 seconds
Most Useful Results on First Page: probably Caffeine. Although it's interesting to note that Caffeine was the only search that didn't give image results, it was also the only search to give the Queen's facebook page in the top ten results.

Search: "blondie"
Number of Results: Caffeine~ about 10 million, Google.com~ about 9 million, Google.ie~ about 9 million
Time for Search: Caffeine~ .19 seconds, Google.com~ .18 seconds, Google.ie~ .36 seconds
Most Useful Results on First Page: probably Caffeine. It also featured a "news" results section, unlike the other two searches.

Search: "iran presidential election 2009"
Number of Results: Caffeine~ about 15 million, Google.com~ about 30 million, Google.ie~ about 30 million
Time for Search: Caffeine~ .23 seconds, Google.com~ .30 seconds, Google.ie~ .34 seconds
Most Useful Results on First Page: I would say it's a tie between Google.com and Google.ie. Caffeine's results were, I think, a bit substandard here.

I know it's nowhere near as thourough a job as someone who was really serious about finding the little picky differences, or who was reviewing Caffeine for a serious newspaper would do, but it's enough for me. I'll be glad of the update, certainly, although to be honest search technology is one of the things I pay less attention to in the computer-world. So is Caffeine faster? Sometimes. Is it better? Eh, again, sometimes (but when it still takes less than a second, most people aren't really going to care/notice xD). It's not a huge new update, but it seems nice enough.

On the topic of search engines, has anyone tried this BlindSearch webpage? It lets you run a query through the site, and returns the results from Google, Yahoo, and Bing searches, then gives you the results in three columns. Without telling you which column is from which search engine. Then you pick which column you think gives the best results, and then it will tell you what search engine each column is. So either my anti-Microsoft bias is giving me the ability to somehow know which column is Bing, or Bing really is not a great search engine, because I've probably tried 25+ different searches, and have never once picked the Bing results. Quite funny, actually.

Apparently I can only hide from room cleaning for so long. This is all for today, but check my website for more Stargate Atlantis reviews, and check here again on Wednesday for the latest Warehouse 13 review!