Image via Wikipedia

Google had retired its “Google Browser Sync for Firefox” long back. It was quite expected with the Chrome coming into the playing field. Google has been constantly updating its browser(at least the developer channel) which is gong to be the basis for its future operating system dreams.

The recent dev build (4.0.201.1) released, has bookmark synchronisation which syncs your browsers bookmarks to Google Docs (read Google Drive) and not Google Bookmarks as one would expect.

So do you want to try the new feature ? First join Google Chrome’s dev channel, which includes a buggier, feature loaded and less polished version of Google Chrome.

Start Chrome with the “–enable-sync” flag. You will find a option in the Tools menu called “Sync my bookmarks…”. Login into your Google Account and the process should start immediately.

The synced bookmarks are placed in Google Docs in “My Folders”.  This interface could be a precursor to GDrive which could act as online storage device.

Related articles

• Bookmarks Here, Bookmarks There, Bookmarks Everywhere
• Google Chrome: Now with Bookmark Syncing (for the Brave) (mashable.com)
• Race To Data Portability: Google Chrome vs. Mozilla Weave (readwriteweb.com)
• Google Chrome Adds Bookmark Sync Support (techie-buzz.com)
• Google Docs, Slowly Morphing into Google Drive (mt-soft.com.ar)
• And Google Said, Let There Be Chrome Bookmark Sync (techcrunch.com)
• Google Docs hints at GDrive… maybe (downloadsquad.com)
• How to Enable Bookmark Syncing in Chrome, Without an Add-on [Google Chrome] (lifehacker.com)

The following is from the satire site, “The Onion“.

Are you tired of Google knowing your every move, every thought, want, purchase, opinion? Then Google’s new opt-out village is for you…as long as you know how to farm and bury a dead body…

Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village

Related articles

• How to opt out of Google and protect your privacy: Move to remote village (downloadsquad.com)
• Video Explains How You Can Opt Out of Google Entirely! (marketingpilgrim.com)
• Onion: Google offers users total privacy in Opt Out Village (seattlepi.com)
• The Google Opt-Out Village [Video] (mashable.com)
• Video: The Onion discovers new Google ‘opt-out’ feature: Move to a secluded village! (crunchgear.com)
• The Onion is totally killing it (ouriel.typepad.com)

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.

There was no “Download Day”, no server downtime, no record to set… It all happened without much fanfare. Just a small statement in the most visited page in internet. “New! Download Chrome (BETA) – the new browser from Google”

Google calls it Chrome, People call it “Google OS”, Open Source Community will have its “Chromium”, IE would call it “Nightmare come true”, Opera would cry “copy cat”, Apple would say “Just another Safari“, Privacy Advocates will cry “Foul”, Some call it start of “Web 3.0″ or “Web 3.0 beta”, FireFox is just recovering from the “shock” and I just call it “cool“…

Imagine the simplicity and minimalistic colours of Google in a browser and you got “Chrome”. The way you had imagined and used tabs are going to change. The tabs are going to the top floor instead of being below the address bar. You can still switch tabs! You can kill the tab from the tab strip or from the process manager. When you kill the tab, you see a “sad tab.” If you reload the page, Google Chrome will even remember the scroll position.

New tab page shows most frequently visited page, most frequent searches, bookmarks, and recently closed tabs. You can choose whether a bookmark strip follows you as you surf (in case you want to save screen space).

Geeks, use the Task Manager to get details about a specific process running in Google Chrome, or to force a misbehaving tab or application to close. You can use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Esc to quickly open the Task Manager. For each active item in Google Chrome, you can monitor the amount of memory taken up, the amount of CPU used, and the network activity (bytes sent and received). To force a misbehaving webpage or application to close in Google Chrome, select the web page, then click the End process button. For those who need to go the extra mile, you have “Stats for Nerds”

More news for the techies, Google Chrome uses WebKit, not a new rendering engine to the web. It renders just like Safari. It multi processes all its tabs with separate threads making it more stable and resource efficient in long run. Chrome uses V8 virtual machine to execute javascript. According to one source, “V8 executes JavaScript much much faster than current technologies.” Chrome is open under a BSD License. The name of the project to open-source Google Chrome is Chromium.

The official Google blog announced the Chrome project being available to general public from today. For now only Windows users. Mac and Linux users watch out for updates. You can also check out the comic book explaining Google Chrome from Google.

Related articles

• The Chrome is out of the bag: Google’s browser arrives Tuesday
• Google launches Chrome web browser
• Google Chrome
• Google’s Browser Is A Warning Shot At Windows, Not At Internet Explorer
• Two Years After Denying its Existence, Google Launching “Chrome” Web Browser
• Google creating its own browser based on WebKit
• Google launches beta version of its open source browser
• A fresh take on the browser

Yesterday, Matt officially announced the release of WordPress 2.6 codenamed “Tyner” to the blogging community. WordPress release codename’s are named after jazz musicians and continuing with the tradition, 2.6 has been named after McCoy Tyner. It contains many new features that makes WordPress a more powerful  CMS (Content Management System).

One of the most important features of this release is Version Control System which enables Wiki-like tracking of edits similar to Wikipedia. This would be a very handy feature which enables the users to just undo and go back to a previous version of the post.

Another major feature introduced in this version is display of captions alongside the images. The example can be seen in the WordPress logo displayed in top of this post.  [Looks like alignment of captions has an issue. I am not just able to get it aligned]

Theme previews would be loved by any serious WordPress user. It was a long awaited feature. It enables to preview the theme, tweak and correct your mistakes before the whole world sees it.

WordPress uses Gears (previously known as Google Gears), an open source browser extension project started by Google. It is primarily for developers to manage offline storage thus enabling you to get a little extra juice. It maintains a cache or keeps a copy of commonly-used Javascript and CSS files on your computer, which can speed up the loading of some pages by several seconds (they just pop right up!). You can install Gears for Firefox or Internet Explorer, with support for Safari and Opera pending. WP 2.6 only uses the cache concept and the future versions are promised with more features in collaboration with Gears.

Other notable features in this release of WordPress are

• Word Count are displayed in the side bar when writing or editing the posts.
• You can reorder the gallery just by drag and drop.
• Bulk management of plugins. Just enable or disable all plugins in a single click.
• “Press This” bookmarklet which enables you to blog from anywhere just by clicking a boomarklet in your browser.
• More advanced image control enabling easy insertion, resizing.  Also shifting from Flash uploader to the classic uploader is easy.
• Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
• A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions. Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.
• Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.

With all these new features, I decided to jump the bandwagon without having to wait for my Hosting company to update the Fantastico which will help me automatically upgrade my WordPress installation. Now bit Feed is powered by WordPress 2.6

Related articles

• WordPress 2.6 is out. Should you upgrade. Yes!
• WordPress 2.6 adds revisions, Gears and Tumblr style blogging
• ‘Press It’ Bookmarklet in WordPress 2.6 Makes Tumblelogging Easy
• WordPress 2.6 Released Early
• Happy birthday, Google Gears!