You may or may not agree with Apple’s stance on not allowing Adobe Flash on the iPhone or iPad.
However I don’t know about you. but whenever my web browser is acting up, or crashing, or hogging CPU cycles, or memory, nine times out of ten, when I check the activity monitor Flash is the culprit !
If only there was a way you could disable or block flash…
Wait a minute there is!
If you’re running Google Chrome you can install the FlashBlock extension.
The extension automatically blocks flash content on webpages.
Each flash element is being replaced with a placeholder that allows you to load only selected elements on a given page.
You can also manage a whitelist of allowed websites via a configuration panel.
In general, FlashBlock helps with lowering memory usage, reducing cpu cycles,
and can be used as an alternative to AdBlock.
I’ve just installed it & will let you know how I get on !
Evernote have just released an awesome new feature whereby you can search all your notes direct from the Google Chrome Address bar.
For those of you that haven’t heard of it, Evernote is a fantastic app that allows you to capture lots of information in notes that can be synchronised across multiple devices/computers.
You can access these notes direct from the software on your computer, or via the web or even via your mobile device.
It’s really good and I’ve come to depend on it.
And now:
“Google Chrome’s address bar doubles as a search bar, which makes it really easy to search various sites without actually going to them first. Now, you can add Evernote as a search engine in Google Chrome and search your notes from anywhere. Here’s how to set it up:
Go to the Preferences (Mac) or Tools (Windows) menu
Click on the Manage button in the Default Search section
Click to add a new search engine
Type the following:
Name: Evernote
Keyword: Evernote.com
URL: http://www.evernote.com/search?q=%s”
And here’s a litte video to help you more:
Very nice Evernote, you just keep getting better and better!
I’ve finally forced myself to spend some proper time using and testing Google’s Chrome internet browser on my Macbook.
I must say I’m quite impressed…
Boy is it fast, and not just to load pages, but the whole app launching takes a fraction of the time of my regular browser, Firefox.
My biggest positive however is memory usage.
Those of you who end up with ten or twenty tabs open will, like me, probably notice your machines memory getting filled up, and also the processor can start to churn a lot, presumably trying to manage all the memory usage !
However one of Chrome’s much vaunted features is that every tab runs as its own process.
This is not something you really appreciate until you start using the browser for a while, but pretty soon you can appreciate how this helps keep the memory and processor footprint of the browser down to a minimum.
Obviously the Firefox plugins that you may have installed are not available for Chrome, however the only one I’m truly missing is 1Password which is kind of an essential in my day to day life.
Google have finally said it would release an open-source operating system based on its Chrome browser. The OS will be free, geared (at first) toward netbooks, and focused on “speed, simplicity, and security.”
There have been rumours of this for a long long time ! !
It will be “Cloud-based” meaning that all of your files will reside in the cloud and probably called Chrome OS
Clearly this will be aimed and making the most of Google’s online services like Google Docs.
The OS Wars are now officially back on, with the Google Chrome OS looking like a worthy contender to do battle with Mac and Windows.
Google’s blog give some details of the basic aims of the OS.
“We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.”
This is clearly a direct challenge to market leader Microsoft and its Windows system.
Google Chrome OS will be aimed initially at small, low-cost netbooks, but will eventually be used on PCs as well.
Google said netbooks with Chrome OS could be on sale by the middle of 2010.