Daniel, DK, Farinelli, Jerrick, Justin, Nicole

Stories this week:

[1:05] SingTel vs Local iPhone Developers
[7:10] MOE Adopts Open Standard Internet Email and Collaboration Services for Over 30,000 Teachers
[15:10] Sony Ericsson’s motion activated MH907 headset could change things forever (update: or not)
[17:50] Phoenix Instant Boot BIOS starts loading Windows in under a second

[21:35] Byte of the week: Chrome Frame on IE

If you notice the not-so-great quality, Justin made a boo boo because he forgot to switch his MacBook Pro mic to the H2 mic instead. Sorry! m(_ _)m

Jerrick, Justin

Stories this week:

[1:08] Samsung opens up TouchWiz development
[3:25] Snow Leopard Seeds uses 32bit Kernel and drivers by default
[6:16] Twitter Documentary
[8:34] PS3 Slim
[15:00] Study Touts Internet Explorer 8 As Worlds Most Secure Browser
[19:21] HP Mini 1000 hacked into touchscreen tablet

[23:40] Byte of the week: Posterous

Daniel, Farinelli, Nicole, DK, Hisham

Stories this week:

[00:35] Get well soon, Steve! Now the rest of you, stop panicking!!

[08:00] Google closes down lesser known services

[13:50] Google Chrome gets Mac and Linux deadline and extensions foundation

[18:22] Apple’s MobileMe free trials could lose your data

[20:50] We can’t get enough of the Palm Pre!
- Under the hood
- Great article about the Pre

[37:25] More CES!
- [37:40] Dell Adamo
- [38:25] Samsung announces a unified User Interface across their products
- [42:35] The LG watch phone
- [45:20] Asus comes up with a whole bunch of stuff (including a cool keyboard, a NAS and a tablet)

[46:30] Byte of the Week: Poladroid.net (I only just noticed that it’s actually Pola-Droid-dot-net and not Polaroid-dot-net!)

Whooda’ Thunk it. We’d be reunited as one at the open doors of the home, the crib, the HQ of Tech65. At Jerrick’s home where his mother’s recent return has meant a nicely cleaned home and nicely chilled cola. In the spirit of openness we’re glad to see that many more companies have joined Google’s Open Handset Alliance. We look at various speed limits that graphics card companies and solid state memory companies try to break and also wish a very happy 40th to the mouse. Now don’t you think it’s time you stepped down and let some fresh faced junior take over?

Listen to Me! You have No Time! The 100th. It’s COMING!
Left Hand of Destruction, Red Ring of Death, Black Knight of Insolence, Pink Tunic of Destiny.

Stories this week:

[0:40]InteresThink3

[3:58]Open Handset Alliance

[6:02]Sony Ericsson, HTC say new Android-powered handsets due next year

[10:30]Android Dev Phone 1

[16:27]Google takes Chrome out of beta

[21:55]Fastest Storage in the World

[26:24]Nvidia is slated to announce newest graphics card, two bolted together 260s.

[29:00]Happy 40th birthday to Mouse

[30:40]Byte of the week : Soup.io

Join the fighters as they tell the tales of their adventures in the world of technology this week…

-Fei Long, Dhalsim and Ryu

Stories this week :

[1:00]Samsung Flagship Store in Singapore.
- Shoutout to Daniel Goh.

[5:45]Dell launches the Inspiron Mini

[10:23]Lenovo’s Blogger’s Night in Singapore
- Lenovo U110

[18:20]Apple event on the 7th Sepember.

[30:49]Google launches a browser, Google Chrome.

[38:37]Byte of the Week : Ping.fm

The installer is a measly 427kb and takes all of 2 seconds to install. It automatically copies over any relevant Firefox bookmarks, preferences etc so there is no loss of productivity fom the get go. I’ll come out and say it right here and now, Chrome is NOT a pretty thing [for now]. The lack of polish is frighteningly obvious, and the over-simplistic design is likely to put off a lot of people. Maybe it’s just me, what with being too attached to Opera.

Main features

1. Written from the ground up for the new ways in which we use the Web.
2. A fresh new way to think of tabs
3. Among the innovations are new ways of memory handling, basically each tab and each type of request is handled as a separate process
4. A task manager for web browsers – with info on memory-intensive tabs and plugins[!!]
5. Asynchrous JS + auto-timeout killing = SWEET
6. The new v8 JS VM
7. An ingenious way to prevent memory bloat as a direct result of #2
8. Advanced security and NO popups, thanks to #2
9. Google Gears built in
10. Debugged and code-tested with Google’s infrastructure on the top sites surfed by audiences worldwide
11. Btw, where are the ads? [yeah I'm pleasantly surprised.]

The decision to reinvent the browser is commendable. Google is right to say the level of sophistication we see in web apps today weren’t even dreamt of when the Internet and the first browsers came out so what we need is new code that handles such tranmissions uniquely [and better].
I haven’t actually done speedtests [I don't know how] but Chrome is zippy. It’s almost as fast as WebKit it uses WebKit, the same engine that powers Safari and we know how fast WebKit really is.

Tabs have been completely reworked in that previously, they just served as a convenience of loading different pages within one window, reducing the need to switch around. In Chrome however, tabs are windows in their own right and can be dragged off to form a new window. What this means is conceptually powerful. [Isn't this a WebKit feature?]
The address bar is within each tab, and it’s also the search bar. Whatever you do within the tab is independent of the rest of the browser.

Since each tab also means a new process, any one process or page hanging will not theoretically hang other tabs.
The fact that every tab and request is process driven helps in the the security aspect because these “processes” not unlike desktop apps can be artifically nerfed to become sandboxed with only limited/minimal/zero rights to the HDD etc. This inherently makes browsing more secure in that even if harmful code is accidentally run, it cannot touch your data in any way. That said, plugins work outside the sandbox in a sense, and they may be insecure. Google has tried to stop this by making sure plugin code also runs in a spearate process but I guess this must be a continual battle against good and evil, as hackers will definitely try to circumvent the protections, and developers will work hard to secure all bases.

When other search engines or services are used eg Amazon, Facebook, Piratebay etc, their search handler shortcuts are automatically added. In a tribute to Opera, these new search engines can be searched with a keyword [tab] search+query easily.
Opera got Speed Dial right, but Chrome takes it further. In Chrome the user’s favourite sites will be listed on the main page and the sidebar will list the most used search engines. There is no need for customisation and these lists are automatically populated. I guess it’d be nice if there were customisation options though.

And finally, in a bid to fulfil one of the mission statements, Chrome offers the ability to bookmark webapp pages like GMail etc as a “Chrome application” with its own icon on the desktop. When these are clicked, they load Chrome without the address bar and browser buttons etc, so it’s just like a desktop app, not unlike Prism and Adobe AIR, except it’s built into the browser. Pretty powerful stuff if you use it right.

The v8 VM for javascript is exciting. The mere fact that JS is loaded and executed independent of the HTTP request means no waiting time while content is loading.. javascript enhancements will just load in their own time. Other VMs have been done before, but v8 is in a class of its own in that it doesn’t parse and interpret and then run semantically. It parses, compiles and runs directly. No interpretations. This is the equivalent of speaking to your Japanese friends with the help of a translator vs speaking to them directly in Japanese. Also there is dynamic allocation of classes, ie hidden clases, for the variables and classes and objects called by javascript. In a very general sense, it’s like adding small tags to bookmark certain points in the code to call that part of the code faster than parsing all the way from the top each time. Especially useful in longer loops I guess.
The garbage collection gets a overhaul mainly because v8 keeps track of the “address” of all variables/classes/objects as well that values they contain as well independently. As such, there will be no confusion if the number 15 is staying at house 15 for example. The “memory” for addresses also means that when these variables are no longer needed, the entire address can be bulldozed, not just the occupants.
The most amazing part about all this is…v8 is independent and freee for use in EVERY browser. Google Chrome uses it in the same way as a plugin, by means of an API, and that means any browser can as well. Fingers crossed for Opera.

Having Google Gears built in makes Chrome preferable to Mozilla software with Gears plugin for accessing GMail and Google Docs for now. If you recall, the Google Gears API serves as a offline cache so that services that use it can be run even offline. The “files” that are created reside on the HDD until the next time you go online, at which time they auto-sync with the online storage and service. If you use Google Gears a lot, then you will know just how much this boosts productivity.

Again, Chrome is an ugly duckling for now, I really don’t like the pretty bland windows. Coming from the Mac camp, the lack of minimum amount of visual appeal is not a sight for sore eyes. However the code is powerful and it’s open source. Google is actively inviting developers to take their code and run with it; so if Google really means for Chrome to be a “framework” for browsers to come, then I can’t wait to see what the future holds.