bruceb news

There’s an easy way for you to keep up with web sites you visit regularly. If you’re not using some kind of a news reader or feed reader to keep up with blogs, news sites, and other frequently updated web pages, it’s time for you to take a look.

If a page is updated regularly, it almost certainly has an RSS feed. You can set up software that will automatically read the feed and let you focus on the new items from that site. All of your favorite "feeds" are presented in a single place with a consistent look, more streamlined than the original pages. […] continued

Little did I know that Google would add a new syncing feature right after my article about smartphones on Monday.

Google is now using its implementation of ActiveSync to sync Gmail, Gmail Contacts, and Google Calendar over the air to some smartphones. Here’s the official Google blog entry about the new feature. Before today it wasn’t possible to push Gmail over the air to your phone so messages arrive immediately. This is a big deal for Gmail users!

As you might expect, you can sync Google mail/contacts/calendar over the air with phones built on Google’s Android software. The interesting thing is that now it also works on the phones that can sync with Exchange Server: Windows Mobile phones, iPhones, and Nokia S60 phones. […] continued

Did you notice that the Google logo on the main search page had a spaceship beaming up one of the “O”s in “Google” for a couple of days? Bless their hearts, Google can be marvelously odd sometimes.

The logo is frequently changed for special events and holidays, but there was no obvious reason for the spaceship last week. Google issued a statement that did not explain anything:

“We consider the second ‘o’ critical to user recognition of our brand and pronunciation of our name. We are actively looking into the mysterious tweet that has appeared on the Google twitter stream and the disappearance of the ‘o’ on the Google home page.

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Microsoft’s new search engine Bing is an interesting alternative to Google. In my experience, search results with Bing are at least equivalent to Google and frequently better in some way, particularly when the left-hand column includes a useful way to narrow down the search results. If you use bruceb favorites as your home page, you’ve probably noticed the Bing search box at the top of the page – try it instead of the Google box sometime. I’ve actually set Bing as my default search in Internet Explorer – click on the down arrow by the search window in the upper right hand corner and click on “Find more providers.”

Here’s a nice list of 50 tricks for Bing that’s worth looking over – you might find something that makes life online a little easier. […] continued

I ran across an interesting article about the effect Apple is having on the wireless business. The conventional wisdom has been that AT&T and Verizon are abusing their market power when they enter into exclusive arrangements with handset manufacturers. A letter from four senators got the FCC looking into the exclusive handset deals, and the Department of Justice has started an “initial review” that potentially could lead to antitrust action.  Realistically, it’s only AT&T’s exclusive right to sell the iPhone that causes concern, although there are similarly restrictive deals for the Palm Pre (Sprint) and devices built on Google Android (currently T-Mobile). […] continued

Lots of people have installed Firefox to do their Internet browsing. Sometimes, out of curiosity, I ask people why they use it instead of Internet Explorer. There are people who can give an articulate, well-reasoned answer to that question, although as it happens I haven’t met any of them yet. (“My brother knows somebody who said it was cool.”) But that’s fine – it’s a lovely Internet browser.

If you install a program on your computer, you assume responsibility for keeping it up to date. That is particularly true of your Internet browser, since the bad guys are primarily using rigged web pages to attack your computer and install malware. […] continued

Bing is Microsoft’s new service for Internet searches. As I wrote last month, its search results are more or less comparable to Google and it has some nice design touches that can make it easier to use than Google. You may want to give it a look, especially if you’re doing searches in the categories of travel, shopping, health, or local business information – Bing has particular strengths for those searches to help you narrow in on useful information.

New York Times columnist David Pogue just wrote a column about the comparison between Bing and Google and the surprising discovery that Bing can be more useful in small but important ways.  Want to check for yourself? […] continued

Google announced tonight that it plans to turn its web browser, Google Chrome, into a full-fledged operating system. Its first target is netbooks, which will primarily be used for web browsing and email and which can benefit from a lean OS that starts quickly and has little superfluous content.

The press will be all over this. It is a “direct challenge to Microsoft.” “This is Google dropping the mother of bombs on its chief rival, Microsoft. . . .And it’s a genius play.” “This may be the biggest threat Microsoft has ever faced to one it its keystone products,” says analyst Rob Enderle. […] continued

I love occasional glimpses behind the scenes. In The Wizard of Oz, I would have been Toto, pulling back the curtain to figure out what was running the big head. The New York Times gives us a fascinating look at the data centers powering the online services that drive our world – Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and more. Most of us have only the vaguest idea that somewhere there must be a lot of computers indexing the web and showing us Google search results. Not only are there a lot of computers, the scale of it probably exceeds anything you would guess. […] continued

Just a quick note about Google’s announcement of a new service named “Google Wave,” intended to mash up email, instant messaging, social networks, and real-time collaboration into a single space.

“Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication.

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