It's a tough call to make–but Firefox is better than Chrome

Which is the best browser? Certainly it would have to be a standards-based browser, so that would rule out Internet Explorer 7 and before (IE 8 is at least better than previous releases, even if it’s still not at all outstanding). Preferably a good browser would be free and open source so that it offers a free and accessible platform for developers, so that would rule out Opera (which really is an excellent browser, though probably not a platform in itself). Safari meets the free and open source test (more or less given its relationship to the Webkit project), but given that it comes from Apple, there is some questions as to whether it can likely offer a solid and open development platform.
But offering all of those things is Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome. So which one of those is better? Since Firefox has been around for a few years, it has a lead in the overall platform situation–many features, add-ons and plugins are available to modify the browser for myriad specialized uses, including the ability to use bookmarklets in the toolbar, implement IRC chat, use the Stumbleupon toolbar, and use local Javascript create UI changes on popular web sites like Gmail or Yahoo Mail.
But Chrome already has a plugin system in beta builds, so many of the popular tools available on Firefox should be available soon. So the really difference comes down to usability and performance. And those are the reasons I have recently gone back to Firefox after using Chrome for several months. Even though Chrome is really very fast, Firefox 3.5 has narrowed the raw performance gap compared to Chrome (and the also very fast Safari) for loading one page at a time. And in terms of handling multiple tabs and overall user interface, Firefox is just better. It can load a page that you open up in a tab, even with Flash in it, even though you don’t visit it. Chrome can’t really seem to load a page effectively unless you sit with its tab open, at least for a few seconds. In the modern multi-tabbed web user experience, it’s easy to see why Firefox is definitely in the lead for now.

Facebook sucks, time to move on

How close are we to admitting that Facebook is just the next Myspace, waiting in line to languish in obscurity and infamy?
I’ll tell you this–it looks like they’re slowballing my updates stream via Twitter. (I have my Facebook Twitter app configured to update my profile.) This could be Twitter API issues, sure, but based on the last few days I think that they may be simply waiting until a tweet is a day old before they put it into my “mini-feed” or “live feed” or whatever stupid name they use to refer to a profile page.
You know, Myspace is backed by vile Australian buccaneer Rupert Murdoch (if you don’t get my reference then you’re not watching enough Keith Olbermann), but Facebook is actually backed by people who are even worse persons in the world than that. Go ahead and research it if you want, there’s no reason to say any more about that one here.
Anyway Facebook’s user experience totally sucks–its photo sharing tools are right out of the 9th circle of hell, its visual design could best be described as DarkBlue Corporate Douche, its recommendation system is worthless, Microsoft is among its shareholders and the loathsome and idiotic Sarah Palin is becoming its highest profile active user.
All that was fine for a while because I would only use Facebook to post links to outside resources hosted on my own web sites and also auto-post an echo of my Twitter stream, and I would log in occasionally to find out what people were up to, because instead of having blogs with RSS feeds that I can read in Google Reader, many people I know (some of them otherwise rational, sane people) have decided to lock their data into a stupid web site where they have very little control over it (remember how Facebook claimed the rights to all photos posted on it for a while until they got caught and “changed” the policy?). But the Twitter auto-post feature acting slowly, perhaps intentionally, is probably the decisive event that turns me off to using Facebook for a while.

Local Food 365 presentation


localfood365.com
twitter.com/localfood365
Carlton Jackson and part of the Local Food 365 team explain why they believe in the idea of local food and how they plan to bring urban farming to Cleveland and Northeast Ohio with their startup.
A presentation from Cleveland Startup Weekend 2009.
11/22/2009
recorded by Daniel J. McKeown / pacificpelican.us

link to video