New Firefox Faster at Browsing

I've noticed while using Firefox 4 that it seems to change pages much faster than 3.6 did. i don't notice that it loads any quicker, but once it is open the performance is definitely better. I've used Chrome in the past, & unlike other users never noticed a difference but that's just me.

I will continue to use this as I've always been a user. In the past I had some websites that wouldn't render using FF. PG&E was one, Verizon Wireless was another. That seems to have changed. Good to know the web designers are finally getting their heads out of their u-no-what. I'm also monitoring performance. FF4 is currently using a very small amount of RAM (why does Windows insist on using kb for performance? Is 6,000 in kb or mb & does that mean 6 mb because that seems awfully small). I'm going to use Speed Test just to see if there's been an improvement since the last time I used it when I was getting 1.2 mbps download speed (I'm paying for 1.5).

Formula One DQ's Sauber

Today I watched the replay of Saturday night's F1 race from Melbourne. An interesting race, but not really exciting until the end. That's the problem with F1. But now we get to the biggest problem with this series & one of several reasons it will never be popular in the US.

One of the interesting things going on was the performance of the rookie driver from Mexico Sergio Perez. He only changed tires once, unlike other drivers who had trouble with the tires degrading fairly quickly. Behind him was his teammate Kamui Kobayashi, who undoubtably received sympathy because of the disaster in Japan.

So what happens? After the race both cars get disqualified because the upper rear wing was a bit smaller than required. This has been an ongoing thing in F1, DQing cars for silly minor rules violations. Meanwhile drivers from big teams do much more egregious things & maybe, maybe get a drive thru penalty(Button had one for going completely off the course). But DQ? No points, no nothing. It's overkill.

IndyCar Screws Up Website Coverage

For some unknown reason IndyCar.Com decided to change their website. Specifically Timing & Scoring. This is where you can see the info on every driver: lap times, laps since pitting, time behind leader & other drivers, etc.

Last year it was well done, color coordinated. you could see everything easily. This year for some reason they decided to mess with the layout. For instance: Timing & Scoring & position on track(a map showing every car) are two different links. Why do it that way so I can't switch back & forth? Worse was the decision to make the screen small & unreadable unless you full screened it. Meaning you couldn't switch back & forth with the map or the forums on Speed or Track Forum unless you minimized T&S. That's not a good system. Plus T&S just simply looks ugly. One guy on the forum said it looked like a teenager made it with a webcam in his basement. I have to agree. Not attractive at all.

This is part of the obsession with changing things year to year that everybody does. Websites do it. like Gawker which screwed up all their websites. What was wrong with the way they were? Browsers do it. Firefox 4 looks OK. But App Tabs only work in theory. I had to re-pin Gmail like 3 times today. C'mon. Heck the Dollar Tree next door moved everything around. Like where's the bread?!

There was no need to change what worked last year. That goes for the series itself. We'll see how double-file re-starts work. The start was awful, but hey, it's the first race.

Playing With Firefox 4

I downloaded FF4 yesterday along with 5 million other people around the world. I wanted to see what the difference would be. Firefox is my browser of choice & has been for several years. Now the folks at Mozilla have done major changes to their browser, but is it really that much of an improvement?

Let's start with the new look, which is similar to Google Chrome. The menu bar has been hidden, I guess because they decided it takes up too much space. I disagree with that, but that's just me. It has been replaced with a Firefox button that is orange so you can't miss it. When you click on this button you find all the menus that would be on the menu bar. Bookmarks, history, the options (like font size), print, etc. Also options relating to toolbars & the now missing status bar, which you can re-enable. This is necessary because a lot of extensions have their icons on that bar, like ScribeFire which I use to do this blog.

Then there is pinned aps. This is something new & it took me a while to figure it out. You go on a website that you use a lot, like Gmail & right click it. A menu shows up with the option to pin it as an app tab. that means it appears as an icon next to the Firefox button. It is always open, meaning if you click it you don't have to wait for it to load, because it's already open. But be careful! If you go to another site while on it, the app tab will switch. So you have to go to another tab before surfing. Took me awhile to figure that one out.

And now we come to tab groups. I'm still not sure I like this & may not keep it. This means you can have a bunch of tabs open & put them in a grouping. there is an icon on the right next to next tab. Click it & it will show your current tabs. You can have a lot of tabs open & create multiple groups by dragging tabs out of the original grouping to start a new group. Fine. But if you close a tab, it goes away. No save button. Actually I think tags are better, because once you tag something you won't lose it. Close everything, & when you want to go back you open the menu & look for recent tags. This has been around since FF3.

Speed. I'm not sure. It's supposed to be many times faster than FF3.6 but I'm not sure I see it. Some sites still seem to take forever to load, & I don't notice that the original start up in the morning is any faster than 3.6 was. It's not that I have a slow machine. Mine has a 3.07 GHZ processor with 4GB of RAM. That's a lot better than my previous machine (2 GHZ, 768 MB RAM).

Add ons. Under the Firefox button you will find an add on listing. When you click it, you go to the newly re-designed AMO site. The problem is that a lot of stuff , especially themes are not compatible yet. Give it time. I lost AniWeather & StatusBar Ex. Hopefully those come back. But AdBlock Plus & No Script do work.

So this is after a day & a half of using it. There are a lot of reviews out there, so take mine as an amateur with a grain of salt. Add your own thoughts if you want to.

You Tube Fails In Search

One of the podcasts that I like to listen to is Tech News Today from the TWIT network. Now I can download it from iTunes but that takes time. Or I can find it on You Tube, which is what I usually do. But the procedure is a pain. Just now I tried to find the most recent episode. But none of them are in any kind of order.

So if I know the number, why can't I go in the search box & write "Tech News Today 203"? I'm waiting for an answer You Tube. It won't let me. In fact it comes up with a bunch of unrelated shows with that number. Excuse me. Isn't You Tube owned by Google, the best search engine? Then why does this site have the worst search out there?

And why does Real Player take an hour to download the video, but iTunes only 15 minutes? Maybe that's why no one uses Real Player. I only have it on my computer so I can watch Al Jazeera. I think Google really needs to fix search in a program with as high a profile & as popular as You Tube is, or people will go elsewhere.

AARP Doesn't Understand The Web

I got my new membership card this week & decided to see what I could use it for. Hmmm. Discounts using the card at various websites. That's cool. Discount coupons from Kellogg's. So I try to do that only to find out that AARP has no clue as to what they're doing.

Click on the link to Kellogg's on the website & it takes you to the website. OK so far. Now you want to get the discount coupon so you click that link. Now you are, get this, back on the AARP site where you have to log in yet again! But you are already logged in so it gets confused. This is stupid & while trying to access the supposed coupons using two different browsers (Firefox 3.6.15 & IE 8) nothing happened.

So claiming you have discounts & actually having them are two different things. It's maddening. Maybe someone should try to actually print a coupon. They might find that their site doesn't work. You can't use AARP for Kellogg's discounts. You can register with Kellogg's but why would I do that? I don't need AARP for that. I wonder about the other coupons advertised on their site. Are they nonexistent too?

Cell Phone Problems

I have a prepaid Samsung Smooth. This was an OK phone for a while. I use it about once a month. That's one reason I don't have a contract phone. I just wouldn't use it & the cost is out of line. $70 a month? Data at $30? No thanks.

But recently this phone has started to give me issues. The sound has gone south. it is very choppy with the sound going out during calls. That happened today while i was calling the drugstore 2 blocks away. Suddenly I couldn't hear the pharmacist. Not good. So I go on Verizon's website & find that while nobody is talking about my phone, some people are having choppy calls on more expensive phones, like Droids.

This is why I will never be a big cell phone user. i just don't think the technology is that good. Yeah I can make calls from anywhere, but the reception can be very bad. If I can't hear someone while I am in my house in a major residential area in a big city, how about in the middle of nowhere?

Maybe more expensive phones are supposed to be better, but then again, this phone was fine until a few months ago. And all phones are using the same towers to make & receive calls. So what's the issue?

Nuclear Worries in California

Watching all the news from Japan causes those of us on the west coast to worry. Not so much about radiation reaching this far across the ocean, but rather because we have two similar plants here.

Diablo Canyon is a nuclear plant near San Luis Obispo (200 miles south of San Francisco). It's 26 years old & is above the ocean. And since it's in California, it's on a fault line. This is not a heavy populated area. San Luis has a population of around 30,000. But San Onofre is the other plant. It's located between LA & San Diego, also on the ocean & obviously on a fault.  The San Jose Mercury says 6 million people, but that's not correct. There's at least 10 million in the LA basin & another 2 million is the San Diego area. Not even counting how many live across the border in Mexico(for those of you who don't read maps, SD is on the border directly next to Tijuana-who knows what it's pop. is).

Is this an issue? You bet it is. I live in Silicon Valley so I am 150 miles from Diablo Canyon & 400-450 miles from San Onofre in an area with 5½ million people. We are being told "the big one" is coming so be prepared, but we don't talk about those reactors. but with the disaster in Japan, now we do.

And now TV is talking about it, & politicians. CNN has a link on it's website to NHK World. That's their 24hr news channel. Their prime minister had a press conference yesterday & all he talked about was the power plants which have now had 3 explosions. So hopefully we are safe. There have been upgrades to our plants & because of the nature of our faults(slip-strike not subduction) there wouldn't be a tsunami.

iPhone Screws Up DST

When I read this in my paper this morning, I wanted to laugh. The super successful much beloved iPhone can't figure out daylight saving time. Oh brother. For some people it actually set the phone's clock back an hour, meaning this ultra modern gadget was off 2 hours!

So as a non user, non owner I am highly amused. Apparently it had the same issue when DST ended last year. Well I only have a prepaid Samsung Verizon phone which I don't use as an alarm clock, so I don't care, besides it has the correct time. I just which it sounded better, but then again I only use it once a week to see if my direct deposit has gone to the bank.

My HP desktop also has the right time, having updated itself, which means my iPod has the correct time (but old music since I added some 60's stuff yesterday-White Rabbit FTW-love that song). I see from Tech Crunch that blogger is updating it's template & dashboard. hope it doesn't interfere with my blog. I write using ScribeFire through Firefox.

MSNBC Embarrasses itself again

With people like myself interested in news about the Japanese earthquake & tsunami(hey I live in California)I turn to cable news. And what is MSNBC doing? The same crap they do every weekend, their prison doc bloc. Seriously? The 5th largest earthquake ever recorded, a massive tsunami that actually caused destruction on the west coast (Santa Cruz harbor 30 miles south of Silicon Valley had boats destroyed by waves), & you incompetents are showing this "lock up" garbage.

Meanwhile CNN first had Wolf Blitzer covering it, then switched to CNN International which had several reporters on the scene. This is what I want to see when there is a major international story. But MSNBC, & the over the air networks don't want to change their pre-programmed stuff. This is what modern technology is about. Providing information, not "no one cares, lets show gangs in prison, or reruns of some sitcom or cop show".

I am glad I have removed this joke of a network from my "favorites" on my remote, because this was just bad & whoever at the network made this decision needs to explain themselves.

Music Licensing Problems With iTunes

As an older user of iTunes I sometimes come across an issue that fans of current music seldom do. Namely popular bands not having all their music, or their most popular available. Now you could blame Apple, but I prefer to blame the labels because ultimately that's where the problem lies.

The first time I came across this was while looking for Aerosmith songs on iTunes. The band started in the 70's & their best known song is probably "Walk This Way", a song that they recorded twice. The second version was their comeback which they recorded with rappers Run DMC. That's the only version available on iTunes. Plus a live version from a 90's CD.

Then today I came across the same issue with The Kinks. A band best known for their 60's songs (plus 70's hit Lola a song about a guy who somehow doesn't know he's dating a transvestite). They were part of the original "British Invasion" with The Beatles, Rolling Stones & Dave Clark Five. Their first hit "You Really Got Me" may be the first hard rock song. It's not on iTunes, nor are any of their original 60's albums.

Why is this? I suspect it's an issue with both these bands contracts with their original labels. You see this with several acts on iTunes. Mostly acts that changed labels several times. It becomes an issue getting the rights to the recordings if there is a problem. Maybe a legal thing about payments or negotiations over copyright or ownership of those recordings. Both acts I mentioned were on multiple labels, while The Beatles spent their entire career on EMI, & while the Stones did change from Decca(London records here) to their own label, they controlled rights which kept problems down.

It's fairly obvious that Apple has been unable to make a deal with Columbia over the early Aerosmith stuff, it's also clear that either Apple or the Kinks have been unable to make a deal over rights from Reprise. This may always be a problem, especially with acts that last a long time, but it is a problem for we music fans who simply want to hear the songs.

Gawker re-design is failure for comments

I like to read articles on Lifehacker & Gizmodo. The problem is the awful re-design they did. Among the issues is the inability to read the comments. I was reading an article on the possible death of the Zune. It had 14 comments. Only 4 or 5 were available. Huh?

Why is it that popular websites just have to ruin their sites in the name of re-design. Notice I didn't call it progress, because it isn't. Like the new look to the site. I click to return to the old style because it's more readable. You can see the first paragraph of the article which tells you if you want to go on.

But why do the right thing when you can "improve"? Because a lot of people have jobs at sites where the main thing seems to be "how do I put my stamp on the site", rather than what does the reader want.

Used Kindles More Expensive Than New?

Just out of curiosity I decided to check Amazon for used Kindles. It's not that I'm a big book reader, or that I have to have the latest tech device. I just wanted to see the cost of a used one as opposed to the new one which starts at $139 (WiFi only).

Now this is interesting. A new 3G & Wi-Fi goes for $189. Amazon has 2 used ones from $239. Huh? Really. Am I reading this right? How about the Wi-Fi only? Buy new for $139, 1 used for $179, another for $200! Hmmm. I wonder if a used $499 iPad sells for $600? No. Those actually are cheaper than new ones.

This is one reason I will never buy one. This is a scam. There is no justification for a used product selling for more than new. Think a used TV sells for more than a new one from the same manufacturer, same screen size? Of course not. It's been used. Same with a car.

Now I did buy my iPod as "refurbished" direct from Apple. It cost $50 less than a new one & 1 ½ years later it works just fine (used it for 2 hrs today). So I don't know what's going on here.