Filed under: Google, Microsoft, Browsers

If Internet Explorer can’t beat Google Chrome on speed, security, or standards compliance, it appears as though they figured its Achilles Heel might be privacy.

Earlier today, Microsoft’s Peter LePage decided to attack Chrome because of its autocomplete feature — a giant privacy risk, he claims. “As I start to type an address into the address bar, Fiddler [a debugging tool] shows that for nearly every character I type, Chrome sends a request back to Google,” LePage says. “I haven’t even hit enter yet to load the website and Google is already getting information about the domain and sites I’m visiting.”

Filed under: Developer, Mozilla, Browsers

When it comes to making web pages, I can whip up a rounded div or add a splash of gradient for a nice fade effect successfully with little trouble, but like many, when trying to deduce out why some stupid DIV is misbehaving, I can waste an entire day spinning my wheels.

Checking out the various blogs and forums are of course a great resource, but probably my most useful and productive help comes courtesy of my favorite Firefox add-ons.

Filed under: Utilities, Android

With all the hoopla that surrounds the iPhone OS it’s hard for some to imagine that some geeks…don’t have (or want) an iPhone. Android, Google’s mobile platform has been getting a lot of credit and recognition, especially as their app store continues.

Once you get past the cheesy games and fart machines, Android offers some great tools to people when they aren’t tied down to a desk. For server and IT administrators, Android may have all the tools you need to become even more mobile. Here’s a rundown of some of the best IT applications for Android:

Filed under: Features, DLS Interviews

In theory, the Web is supposed to level the playing field for new musicians; its democratic nature lets them find their own audience, without having to beg for the approval of a record label.

Of course, real life turns out to be much more complicated than the theory. It may not be a nice thing to say, but there is a lot of bad music being made. Of course that’s very subjective, but by “bad” I mean music that very few people would find enjoyable. Maybe we can call it “niche music,” or “the product of budding musicians trying to find their way.” At any rate, a random stroll through MySpace makes the point abundantly clear; as a listener, it’s not always easy to find the good stuff.

Filed under: Google, Browsers

A gold star for Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray, who predicts that Apple will sell

200,000

iPads this weekend.

And a big Bronx Cheer for Shaw Wu, Katy Huberty, Andy Hargreaves, and all the other wimpy analysts who refuse to stick their necks out.

(What fun is that, folks?  As one of my old bosses was fond of saying, equity research is about perpetual public humiliation.  So get cracking!)

Via Connie Guglielmo of Bloomberg.

(And, to be fair, Toni Saconnaghi of Bernstein puts the number between 300,000-400,000, which suggests that Munster’s doing his usual lowball-WOW-UPSIDE!-routine.)

Ah, the good old days.  When you lugged that copy of the Brothers Karamazov everywhere, people saw that you were reading it and quietly approved of you.

And, now, these days, with Kindles, you could be reading anything!

Like porn, for example.  Or trash.  Or Twilight.

And what good is that?  Half the point of slogging through all those Books You Should Read was the societal boost you got from being seen reading them.

And then, of course, from the publisher’s perspective, there’s the loss of all that free advertising.

Motoko Rich, NYT:

A new look for London’s Guardian:

Janine Gibson explains why:

We have this morning launched our new guardian.co.uk front page. There are several reasons for this; some technical, some editorial, but all to do with using it as a better window for the vast variety of what we’re producing around our network.

This is very much an evolution of our front. Knowing how much we all like things to look familiar and be the same when we arrive at a much-used front page, we’ve tried to stay very much within the framework of our design. But as our journalism – and the web – changes, we needed to break some of the rigidity around our format to better reflect our live coverage (for example) or our multimedia or what our communities of users are saying.

Chat on the phone while driving and your driving skill drops 20%-30%, say researchers.  Unless you’re one of the 2.5% of people who are “super-taskers”, who can do everything at once.

Are you one of the 2.5%?

Almost certainly not.  But presumably this is like day-trading, where 80% of people think they’re in the top 1% (as they have to be to actually make it worth doing).

Matt Richtel has more in the NYT >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Must Be A Bull Market: The Dumbest Job Ever, Day Trading, Is Cool Again

Part 2 of my TechTicker colleague Aaron Task’s sitdown with VP Joe Biden…

Aaron Task: With the April 15 tax filing deadline rapidly approaching, Vice President Joe Biden wants all Americans to know about the roughly $300 billion in tax breaks that were part of the Recovery Act passed last year.

There is a tax calculator on the White House web site to help Americans determine whether they’re eligible for any or all of the following:

• – Making Work Pay: The Work Pay tax credit of $400 for an individual or $800 for married couples filing jointly.