Internet Browsers

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Erick

Time and time again I hear people asking, “What is the best Internet Browser?”. Well, that’s a hard question to ask. Because almost all browsers have their ups and downs. During this article we’ll go through some different browsers so maybe you can find a little better one.

Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer is the default browser that ships with Windows. Personally, I hate this browser. Because of it’s popularity it’s targeted by many, many phishing, hack and scam attacks. This isn’t Microsoft’s fault, per say, but the fault of it’s popularity. Hackers are going to target the browser that has the must users so they can get the widest range of attacks off with minimal effort. Also Internet Explorer is currently one of the slower browsers out there. It takes more time to load pages on it than it does in other browsers. One of it’s strengths are the fact that is has wide compatibility due to its popularity. Like so many browsers, however, it’s extremely susceptible to search boxes piling up on your screen. You probably know what I’m talking about. You have Yahoo, Google, Lycos, MyWebSearch, Bing and Smiley Central all sitting on the top part of your browser. Luckily it is very easy to disable these.

Now lets get onto its stability. Overall, Internet Explorer has crashed more for me than any other browser. The common “Internet Explorer has stopped responding…” message pops up at me quite often. It is, however, regularly updated to fix a lot of bugs and security holes in it.

Lastly is the customization of it. You can’t theme Internet Explorer like you can FireFox and Chrome. Because of this, I don’t really like it. I love having my own personal look to my browser. The upside to not allowing custom themes is that Microsoft doesn’t need to worry about old themes being compatible with various browser updates.

All in all, I’d stay away from Internet Explorer. There are much better and much more secure alternatives out there.

FireFox

FireFox (From now on will be FF) is one of the more popular and secure browsers. Currently it is in second place for being the most popular browser and is quickly closing in fast on first place.

Security is great in FF. It comes with many features that add security and also has additional plugins that you can add which will enhance security. A bad thing about it is that because of it’s popularity it can often be targeted for attacks. Overall, it’s security is great compared to some less popular and less supported browsers.

Customization is amazing with FF. You can add themes, make your own theme, edit themes and rearrange the whole browser to be to your liking. You also have a large amount of plugins available to further customize your browser. For Internet Explorer fans there is also an IE theme for FF which mimics the look of Internet Explorer.

Stability is great. FF rarely crashes and works in a flash. Websites load quickly and run smoothly. You can have many, many tabs and windows open and FF still runs stable. It gets many updates which prevents a lot of common errors from occurring. You can also easily disable certain features which may slow down a browser.

Overall, I would highly recommend FireFox to both the home and business user. It’s a great browser for no charge at all.

Safari

Safari isn’t that old compared to a lot of browsers. My experience with it has been minimal but pleasurable. It has good speed and reliability.

The customization of Safari is minimal, now allowing different visual themes to enhance your experience. Unfortunately, I don’t really like it for this fact.

Reliability is great. It loads pages in a flash and rarely crashes. It’s stable when a lot of tabs are open and can handle a lot of content. It does, in some cases, go slowly while trying to access certain sites.

Overall, it’s a good browser. If you have it, don’t switch. But there are better alternatives out there.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome (Chrome) is an open source Chromium project. Google and Chromium redid the whole browser when they made chrome. We’ll go over through a lot of the good things and the bad things about Chrome.

The speed is great. It loads new pages quickly and loads cached pages nearly instantly. History is easy to clear and view. Downloads go quickly and are all stored in a single file or you can access them through the browser in a flash.

You can customize Chrome with hundreds of extensions and visual themes. Themes and add-ons include both user submitted and ones made my Google. The browser takes up very little space on the screen, compacting things into a very small but easy to navigate space.

Security is top-notch. Blow you will find a video explaining why Chrome is so secure compared to other browsers.

Overall, I recommend Google Chrome to anyone who is looking for a switch to a new browser. It’s great and has a lot more features coming up in the new 6.0 Beta (Which I’m currently in) and will release more information on this in the near future.

I hope you found this article informative. You are welcome to view more of our posts or leave a comment below with your thoughts. We’re happy to hear your feedback.

Posted in Internet, Software | Leave a comment

Advertising

Posted on June 26, 2010 by Erick

After starting and promoting my own business I came to the realization that advertising is vital. Not only does it promote services, but it also keeps sites on-line by helping pay the bills.

Now, with that being said. I also wanted to mention how incredibly annoying flashing ads that say “You are the 1,000,000 Visitor!”, because they fail to tell you that you’re not. Actually, come to think of it. You’re probably only the 1,000 visitor to that site. I also find it fishy that if I leave the site and come back, I’m still the 1,000,000 visitor.

Other annoying ads include the ones where you have to punch out Hilary Clinton, Jay Leno, Britney Spears and other annoying yet popular people. Really, I doubt winning a Flash game will get me an iPad without some sort of catch.

From my experience on the internet, I found that I love simple ads the most. Either a solid image or text. Animation isn’t always annoying, but it has to be used right. Bad animation is when you have red and blue flashing at you, changing every half second, while you’re trying to read an article on the internet. I realize a free laptop would be great, but that’s not the reason I go to that site.

Please, if you plan to have advertising, keep it simple. Don’t let it crap up the screen and make the site of low quality. If a site is riddled with annoying and unnecessary ads, pop-ups and other trash, I leave and never come back. I’m sure there are others like that, too. I try to keep all my sites as clean and neat as possible so the end-user has a better experience.

Well, there you have my rant of the day for Advertising.

Posted in Internet | Leave a comment

WoW Patch 3.3.5

Posted on June 24, 2010 by Erick

So patch 3.3.5 dropped last Tuesday, introducing a new (But annoying) chat interface. After logging on for my Icecrown Citadel raid on Wednesday, I was a bit annoyed at the fact Blizzard disabled officer-chat by default, which took me a minute to figure out.

Another new thing is the friends list that you can add friends from other realms to. You use their Real-ID to add them, which is great, except for one thing… Your real ID is your e-mail address. Personally, I don’t feel like letting people know what my login e-mail address is, even if I know them really well. I wish they’d think of a different feature. Something like a nick-name would be nice. BigBubba778. Yeah, that’s a good one.

I would also love to mention the new raid, Ruby Sanctum. This raid will be released in a couple weeks so it’s fair for everyone. I mean, we can’t have the Europeans or the people with dial-up complaining. Honestly, though, if you’re using dial-up you shouldn’t be on WoW. The Ruby Sanctum is under the Wyrmrest Temple by the Obsidian Sanctum. This will not, however, be the same as OS. There will be no 3D mechanic. What there will be is a heroic/regular mode for both 10 and 25-man. The gear off this boss will be comparable to ICC gear. 10-man is said to drop 251 and 25-man is said to drop 264. This will, of course, change to 264 and 277 for heroic 10 and 25-man respectively.

In some other random World of Warcraft news; the ICC buff was raised to 25% on patch day. This is one more step up from the 20%. This buff is expected to go all the way up to 30% before 3.3.9 comes out. What all this means is that Blizzard is trying to get everyone, even casual guilds to clear ICC, or at least most of it.

People were also asking “Can we take back Gnomergan now?” The answer is no. Patch 3.3.9 will introduce the taking back for the trolls and gnomes. This is also the pre-courser to to Cataclism, which is expected to be released in November.

I hope you found this article informative and not-so-boring. Please stay tuned for more game related news.

Posted in Gaming | Leave a comment

Viacom = Owned

Posted on June 23, 2010 by Erick

So finally a judge rules in favor of Google. The judge stayed that Google is protected under the DMCA. What this means is that YouTube lives another day and that Viacom did not get what they want. What this doesn’t mean is that it’s ok for people to upload copyrighted materials to YouTube or any other site. What this means is that the average user can not be punished by watching a video that had copyrighted material just because some one else uploaded it. This is what the DMCA protects sites like YouTube from. As long as YouTube cooperates with copyright owners, they are not breaking laws by having copyrighted material up on their site. The law states that YouTube and similar sharing sites must take down content if the copyright owner requests, but have no obligation to if the owner does not request this. This means that if Viacom or similar companies want their videos down bad enough, they’re going to have to do the hunting themselves.

Personally, I think this is great. Viacom has made many users mad over the years by biting the hand that feeds. It’s good to see a huge company like Viacom lose in court over a lawsuit like this. It’s refreshing to know that our country hasn’t completely went to crap and that judges do indeed have sense.

It may, however, be worth mentioning that Viacom plans to appeal the judgement and take it to a higher court. Lets see how that goes.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment