Posted on 27/12/2010, 3:19 am, by Colin Charles, under
General.
Google recently launched a Chrome Web Store. The web browser has always had an “appstore” model, considering you could have extensions and plugins. Firefox popularised this.
What the Firefox add-on‘s appstore does not have yet, is paid apps. You can donate to applications, but you can’t buy applications. The Chrome Web Store allows purchasing applications, as evidenced by their top paid apps page. We’re generally already used to buying desktop apps (I write this using MarsEdit which I purchased, and on my toolbar I can already see OmniOutliner and TextMate). If the future is living in your web browser, you will end up buying apps within your web browser. Google is pushing this lifestyle with their ChromeOS Cr-48 notebook.
You get everything you need for the Chrome browser in the web store. Apps (extension of web pages), Extensions (your add-ons), Themes and they also have curated collections (holidays, students, et al).
In other news, go download WOT. You don’t even have to restart Chrome to have it working. This is a bonus over installing stuff on Firefox (though I hear, Firefox 4 will allow you to install extensions without restarting the browser too). I also installed Chrome for a Cause during the one week where the more tabs you opened up, the more you could donate for a cause.
Do you have a favourite Chrome extension/app? Anything I must try?
Posted on 13/12/2010, 3:56 am, by Colin Charles, under
General.
There are two search engines that have promise that made themselves public in 2010: DuckDuckGo and Blekko. DuckDuckGo has active search spam removal, you can access it via secure HTTP (HTTPS), and is a search engine that also relies on crowd sourced data.
Web of Trust has reputation ratings of over millions of websites, and has an active community of about 15 million users now. Best of all, there’s no bots doing these ratings, but community members (trust metrics are crowd sourced).
DuckDuckGo and Web of Trust have a partnership now, so you can simply change the settings to display WoT ratings instead of the favicons when a search is done using DuckDuckGo. Visit your settings page and look for Site Icons. Change it from the default of favicons to WoT and you’ll get trust ratings in your search instantly! While you’re there, look at other ways of customising your search experience with DuckDuckGo.
Gabriel Weinberg, the founder of DuckDuckGo is looking for ideas on how he can further integrate the WoT data, and has a thread at the DuckDuckGo community. Feel free to chime in on that, and lets see more search engines implement such data (even though you can already get such data if you have the browser plugin installed).
Posted on 13/6/2010, 4:30 am, by Colin Charles, under
General.
Do you use Web of Trust (WOT)? Its a great plugin, available for Firefox, Chrome and other browsers, that help you browse the web in a safer fashion. From June 11 to June 18 2010, you can fill up the community survey, and stand a chance to win an Apple iPod Nano.
Posted on 10/5/2010, 7:45 pm, by Colin Charles, under
General.
I went to get Flashblock installed in my browser after a hiatus, and saw something interesting:
That’s the add-ons page telling me that you can now make a small donation to the developer of the plugin so they can continue development on it. There’s a suggested amount (in this case $5), and when you do click on Contribute, you’re given options: one-time suggested donation, any price you’d like to give, or a recurring monthly contribution. All this is fulfilled quite simply via Paypal. I actually know of one of the developers of Flashblock – a Malaysian developer, Philip Chee.
I find Flashblock useful. Donating definitely makes sense. Then I immediately thought of WOT – Web of Trust. I use the service on a daily basis. Would a donation of $10 to WoT make sense? Absolutely. It makes the web safer for me to browse. It adds that added layer of security before I go ahead and click on a link.
Do you donate to the add-ons that you use the most? Did you even know you could donate to add-ons for Firefox? I would totally appreciate some comments on this.
Disclosure: I have a professional interest in Web of Trust.
