Google has recently removed the beta label of Chrome, which claims more than 10 millions active users in just over 3 months.

Since launching, Google has collected tons of customer feedback and performance reports, and they keep rolling out new features and bug fixes. Chrome is fast, stable and secure without a doubt, but it still doesn’t support Mac and Linux. Also, an extension platform (Firefox’s add-ons style) is strongly required by a substantial amount of users.

As you may know, many google products are in beta for years, including GMail, Google Calendar, etc. So, why google took Chrome out of beta so quick?

Reason 1: Google is not happy to pay Firefox millions every year

Google paid Firefox $66 million this year for the default search box in the Firefox browser, and the bill would go up if Firefox gets more online search market share. So, Google desperately wants to reduce that bill by encouraging people to use their own brower, Chrome, and it gives users more confidence by simply removing the magic beta label.

Reason 2:  OEMs require a full release Chrome

Some computer manufactures (OEMs) agree to pre-install Chrome on their new computers if Google takes Chrome out of beta. It always makes sense to keep the key customers and partners happy, especially when they offer to help you.

Google Chrome Beta, was released on September 2, 2008, focuses on applications rather than web pages.

• Strength – It is fast, secure and multi-processing structured.
• Performance - Chrome uses V8 JavaScript engine to generate javascript code dynamically and hide class transitions automatically. It also uses multi-processing architecture, which allows the browser to shut down a single Tab or a plugin wherever problem occurs but to keep the whole browser alive.
• Security - Chrome warns users when they attempt to visit a harmful website based on google’s phishing and malware blacklists, which is being updated periodically.
• Usability - The Tabs are placed at the top of the window in order to make the navigation faster and smoother. Additionally, Chrome displays 9 most visited web sites and sites most often searched on the home page. This concept was first introduced with Opera’s Speed Dail.

IE8 Beta, released on March 5, 2008, was targeted for web developers and designers. It behaves significantly diffent compared to IE7 and IE6.

• Strength - It is the default browser in Windows
• Security - InPrivate, allows IE8 not to save searching and browsing history, cookies and form data. In another word, it clears the browser cache by default.
• Usability - Search Suggestions, Web Slices, Tab Color Grouping
• Performance - Accelerators, Automatic Crash Recovery

Firefox 3 final version was released on June 17, 2008 after 8 alpha, 5 beta and 3 release candidates.

• Strength - Thousands of add-ons, themes and the community of developers / designers behind it.
• Usability - The download manager and bookmark storing system are redesigned, and they looks easy to use. Also, it separates the themes for Mac, Linux and windows, and that means users will have a more native look and feel on different operation systems.
• Performance - It employs Gecko 1.9 to enhance the existing layout engine. It passes Acid2 test and gets better results on the Acid3 test compared to Firefox 2. Basically, it means that Firefox 3 is more CSS and javascript friendly.

Safari 3 final release of the Windows version was offered on March 18, 2008.

• Strength - It is the default browser in Mac, and it has an elegant interface.
• Performance - It supports for CSS Web fonts and animations and improves support for SVG and HTML 5 media. Performance improvements.
• Usability - As-you-type text search, Quartz-style font-smoothing

Performance Comparison:
Average page loading time (Bizroof Application) :

• IE 8: 1.2 seconds
• FF3 1.1 seconds
• Safari 1.0 seconds
• Chrome: 0.6 seconds

Acid3 Scores:

• IE 8: 17/100
• FF3: 70/100
• Safar: 73/100
• Chrome: 74/100

We are proud to announce that our CRM platform is integrated with Yahoo’s Fire Eagle, and we believe the marriage of the contact management and geo-location will extend users’ benifits.

Enjoy!

NBC Online Video Hub – Videos of all games (Watch while “on the go” and off-line)

New York Times – Schedule, Timetable, Tracker and News

NBC Olympics – Real-time Complete Medels Standings

CNET News – Break News

Google has launched a brand new searching related app today, Insights for Search.

It helps users to track multiple search terms’ popularity across different verticals, geographic regions and time periods.
Let’s take an example of the search term CRM Software. The results include all popular search terms related to the search term and a list of Rising Searches as well.

1. Top Searches List: free crm, crm software free, microsoft crm software, business software, open crm, act crm
2. Rising Searches List: web based crm, vtiger, sugar crm, top crm software, sage software, saleslogix

In addition, it provides a heat map to explain where the searching come from.

Bizroof uses prototype and scriptaculous as javascript framework in order to provide desktop-like look and feel. But, the framework itself is big in size and therefore takes quite a while to load. Although it only happens once to download the files, it still annoys the first-time visitors.

Without gzip – The first screenshot shows all the components needs to be downloaded for our sign in page, and the total file size is more than 310KB. It takes 8 seconds to response with standard DSL connections. Gosh! That is pain in the neck!

Screenshot 1 - Firebug Report - Without gzip

With gzip – The best solution we found is to gzip all the javascipts and css files. As shown in the second screenshot, for the same sign in page, first-time visitors only have to download 75KB, that takes less than 3 seconds. After the page loaded once, only 14KB need to be loaded each time, and that takes 0.6 seconds on average. What a big change! All we need to do is just to gzip all the javascripts and css files.

Screenshot 2 - Firebug Report - With gzip

To Developers and designers

In case you want to know what exactly we’ve done to gzip the files, here are a examples:

Javascript Example: prototype.js

1. Rename the file to prototype.js.php
2. Add the following php script as the first line of prototype.js.php
   <?php require_once(’gzip-javascripts.php’); ?>
3. Create the gzip-javascripts.php which will compress the files

<?php
if ( ((!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])) ? strtolower(htmlspecialchars((string) $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])) : ” && strpos((!empty($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])) ? strtolower(htmlspecialchars((string) $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])) : ”, ‘msie 6.0′) === false) && extension_loaded(’zlib’) && !ini_get(’zlib.output_compression’) && ini_get(’output_handler’) != ‘ob_gzhandler’ && ((version_compare(phpversion(), ‘5.0′, ‘>=’) && ob_get_length() == false) || ob_get_length() === false) ) {
ob_start(’ob_gzhandler’);
}
header(”Cache-Control: public”);
header(”Pragma: cache”);
$offset = 2592000; // 60 * 60 * 24 * 30, Expire time
header(”Expires: “.gmdate(”D, d M Y H:i:s”, time() + $offset).” GMT”);
header(”Last-Modified: “.gmdate(”D, d M Y H:i:s”, filemtime($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'])).” GMT”);
//header(’Content-Type: text/css; charset: UTF-8′);  //Uncomment this line for CSS files
?>

4. Use the new file name

For example: <script type=”text/javascript“ src=”/js/prototype.js.php“>

Matt

Delicious 2.0 finally released after the looong wait!

Several BIG changes I noted:

Domain name changed to delicious.com – Personally, I like del.icio.us more, and I thought that was a smart idea.

It is Quicker – The single-page-loading-time has been reduced dramatically.

I haven’t found any news about their new infrastructure yet, but it is definitely better than before.

It is sexier – The new design is clean and shiny. But, the font size is a bit small and may not be classified as easy-to-read.

It has a Search – Wow! I like the search facility, which is quick and accurate. I think they are using a caching system rather than real-time database queries, otherwise it can’t be that quick.

Not using Content Delivery Network (CDN) ? – On Yahoo’s Best Practices for Speeding Up your Web Site, they suggest to use CDN to reduce response times for across multiple, geographically dispersed servers. But, Delicious 2.0 is not using that technique.

Jason

Cuil is so brave that they labeled themselves as Google-killer.

I like it and I think their launch was very successful in terms of broadcasting their messages, which have been posting onto many media giants, including PC World, TechCrunch, Time, Yahoo!, CNET, Mashable etc.

Unfortunately, cuil went offline just few hours after the over-heated launch. But, that is always a good problem to have. (I hope we could have that problem when bizroof was launched. )

I have to be honest that scalability and relevance are the 2 main problems for cuil at the moment. However, they have successfully created a BIG index, which I believe is the hardest part for searching engines.

Some suggestions

It is not an easy job at all to startup brand new search engines and compete with Google, Yahoo and MSN, even with $33M funding.

So…… maybe one of the followings could help……

1. Open Source – Get some help from all the developers on the planet. (Firefox is a good example in the web browsers industry)
2. Human Editing – Go a little bit further and keep in mind that you guys have got a fabulous indexing system. Wikipedia and DMOZ are successful, aren’t they?

Good luck, Cuil, and we will give you a hand if you need.

Have you noticed there were some changes in the Google PageRank toolbar during this weekend (July 25th and 26th 2008)? I have seen some changes of many sites PR, especially for new sites. It has been 150 days since the last Toolbar PR export (February 26th 2008), but I am not sure weather it is a major update or just a minor tweak this time. 

Jason

Well, we launched Bizroof CRM 3 days ago, and here is all the stats so far! We don’t hide; we don’t lie; and we want to share.

Report One – Usage

1. 754 registered users
2. 43 pending invitations sent by all existed users
3. 16,870 contacts (people + organizations)
4. 7,506 events
5. 1.87 GB files
6. 108,212 notes
7. 93,002 tags

Report Two – Hits & Page views

1. 8.1 GB Bandwidth (Total Traffic)
2. 232,849 Hits
3. 13.89 Hits/Visit

Report Three – Web Server Requests

Report Four – Client Browsers

1. FF3.0 – 4.4%
2. FF2.0 – 31.3%
3. FF1.5 – 0.2%
4. IE8.0 – 0.01%
5. IE7.0 – 27.2%
6. IE6.0 – 26.1%
7. Safari – 4%