Tiffany B. Brown

1. Jason is the host with the most and makes a fabulous breakfast.
2. Veggie sausages are kind of yummy.
3. Melle, Anna, and Mo give the best hugs EVAR.
4. Sea urchin gonads do not taste good. (And when Jason says “You are not ready for uni,” believe him.)
5. Tequila Corazon is my new drank.
6. Medieval chastity belts were some straight-up torture devices for all parties involved.
7. I kind of like Disneyland … and sequined mouse ears with sparkly red bows. But shh, don’t tell anyone.
8. I gots mad skillz with a plastic laser gun. Jason, however, does not.
9. Before Buffy, people bought vampire kits.
10. There is such a thing as an un-Twitterable Twitter-perfect moment.

Update: I updated this post with more about Chrome’s features and some related links.

I may craft this into a better post later, but for now, I wanted to share some initial thoughts and observations about Google’s Chrome browser, which was released earlier today.

Keep in mind that I’m rolling in true nerd style here: blogging at LAX on my T-Mobile HotSpot collection connection waiting to board my flight to Atlanta. Expect typos, incomplete thoughts and possible profanity because I’m in that kind of mood.

I have only spent a few short hours with the browser, but I can safely say that it may be a game changer. Chrome, which is based on WebKit, has super speedy load times and man-handles JavaScript. I don’t think Google Chrome is using SquirrelFish just yet. But I fully expect that a final release (or at least a later beta) will.

What I’m digging

• Slim, trim interface. Google got the interface right. It’s streamlined and simplified with only what you need to see at any given time. Other options (like your bookmarks bar) can be turned on and off as desired.
• Speed. I’m running this on a Windows XP Parallels virtual machine. Still fast. As f*ck.
• Dead-simple plug-in installs. Chrome realized that I needed to install Flash. One click and a few minutes later, the player was downloaded, installed, and ready to use.
• Most visited sites: Similar to Opera’s Speed Dial feature, but automated. Chrome automatically saves and organizes the sites you visit most and loads them as your home page when you start the browser (above photo).
• Combined search address bar. Consider it a lesson learned from Firefox, which despite having separate boxes for the URL and web search, will actually search the web if you type a keyword in the address bar. Google Chrome dispenses with the separate boxes. You want to search the web? Type in the address / search bar and hit enter.
• Incognito surfing. It’s similar to Safari’s private browsing feature. Incognito lets you fire up a separate browsing window that gets rid of cookies and your surfing history when you close it.
• Application shortcuts Think of it as a site-specific browser, along the lines of Fluid or Mozilla’s Prism extension. Application shortcuts load separately from the Chrome browser window, and and offers a focused environment for web applications such as GMail or Zoho Writer.
• The nerdiest of nerdy sh*t. Yeah, Chrome lets you tweak your security settings and such. And yes, it has developer tools that don’t require extensions, or special configuration commands. But it’s killer nerd feature is Task Manager. Yes, Google Chrome lets you see which of your tabs and/or plug-ins is sucking up your CPU usage.
• Crash protection. Flash might crash, but it won’t take your browser down with it.

What I’m not digging

• Combined search address bar. Firefox’ keyword search is basically a Google “I’m feeling lucky” search. I like that Firefox removes the Google page middle man. Chrome, conversely, takes you to a Google search results page.
• No really. That’s the only thing I don’t like so far.

Now when looked at individually, there’s not much about Chrome that hasn’t been done before. Unified search bar? Firefox (sort of). Single-site browsing (or site-specific browsing)? Firefox + Prism. Frequently visited pages? Opera Speed Dial.

The innovation, however, comes in the aggregate. No browser available today has an interface that is more thoughtfully-designed than Chrome. Period. Google rounded-up the best browser trends and innovations of the last few years, sprinkled them with G-Dust, and released them as one hell of a browser.

I am surprised, however, that Google’s Chrome is only available for Windows, considering it’s based on the WebKit project — the same software that powers Apple’s Safari browser. I’m also curious why they chose a WebKit core over a Mozilla core, considering the history of collaboration and sharing between Google and the Mozilla Corporation.

For what it’s worth, Google says, that Mac OS X and Linux versions are coming soon. And I hope by “coming soon” they mean “next week.” In the meantime, Windows users can download Chrome and put it through its paces.

Related

• The Pencil Project, Prism and the browser as platform
• JavaScript in Firefox 3.1 will be wicked fast
• Essential Firefox Extensions
• My new favorite Firefox extensions
• Google chrome’s FAQ for web developers

What happens when two nerds, a Wonkette post, and a copy of Photoshop wind up in the same room at the same time. [Original photo]

It’s been a few years in the making, but Target has finally settled an accessibility lawsuit brought by the National Federation of the Blind.

Because the case never went to trial, we still do not have a final legal answer about whether web sites are covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act. But what it does indicate is a shift in Target’s approach to web accessibility.

Read more about the settlement. And what the WaSP Accessibility Task Force says about the case.

Via Nate → The Blosma Code.

John Resig of jQuery fame, has a post about a huge performance boost coming to Firefox 3.1: TraceMonkey.

TraceMonkey, Resig explains, uses a computing technique known as trace trees (PDF) which adds just-in-time native code compilation to SpiderMonkey, Firefox’s current rendering engine.

What does this mean? As Resig explains:

It means that JavaScript is no longer confined by the previously-challenging resource of processing power. With this improvement it’s leap-frogged any sort of traditional and has gone head-to-head with computationally-powerful languages like C.

In other words, we’ll get JavaScript processing speeds that are Usain Bolt-on-crack fast, opening the door for more powerful JavaScript-powered applications.

Firefox’s announcement comes a few months after the WebKit team’s announcement of SquirrelFish, which will be the JavaScript engine used in Safari 4.

Resig and Brendan Eich also point out that these TraceMonkey improvements (and presumably SquirrelFish’s improvements) in conjunction with HTML 5’s canvas element will mean we’ll see some slick JavaScript animation and game experiences, such as this one by Zachary Johnson.

The obvious roadblock to widespread adoption of all of this whiz-bangy JavaScript+<canvas> goodness is, of course, Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer 7 does not support the canvas element. Version 8 of the browser will not, although there is a workaround for IE7 available.

Still, without the dominant web browser on board — and conceivably not coming on board for at least a few years — the widespread use of JavaScript animations may not take off for some time.

Want to check see TraceMonkey in action? Download a nightly build of Firefox (codenamed Minefield), and in the about:config panel, set javascript.options.jit.content equal to true.

Also check out Mike Schroepfer’s screencast What can you do when your browser is 7 times faster?

Black Web 2.0 is becoming one of my daily must-read blogs. Angela, Markus and crew do a tremendous job of covering web tech and start-ups, with a particular focus on sites targeting black audiences. They’re doing what I tried to do with this blog before I got a full-time job that cuts in to my surfing time :-).

Markus and I did an IM-terview last night, and it’s on the site now. We had fun.

Good news for some open source software developers: if someone violates the conditions of your license, they’re infringing on your copyright.

From Ars Technica:

A federal appeals court has overruled a lower court ruling that, if sustained, would have severely hampered the enforceability of free software licenses. The lower court had found that redistributing software in violation of the terms of a free software license could constitute a breach of contract, but was not copyright infringement. The difference matters because copyright law affords much stronger remedies against infringement than does contract law. If allowed to stand, the decision could have neutered popular copyleft licenses such as the GPL and Creative Commons licenses. The district court decision was overturned on Wednesday by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

According to “Condition or Covenant, and Why Should You Care?” from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, key point was whether ‘copyleft’ licenses — in this case, Artistic License 1.0 — are covenants or conditions (read the EFF article to learn the difference).

The court ruled that the license in question specified certain conditions that had to be satisfied in order for the user to be a licensee. In a nutshell: if you don’t meet those conditions, you are not licensed, and are violating the author’s copyright.

Related: Jacobson v Katzer decision [PDF Link]