I watched parts of Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote at the F8 conference yesterday, and I liked what I saw.

So I’m not a Facebook developer, and as such I don’t yet have access to Timeline, but when I fired up Spotify this morning, it offered to connect with my Facebook account and add the things I’m listening to to my timeline (and I did it, but as I wasn’t sure what it would do, I’ve initially set it to show up for me only. (In a slightly ironic twist, I was just semi-deriding that option this morning!)).

Either Timeline’s coming very soon, or we’ll be able to have all these external data sources feeding into FB well in advance of the launch, which means it’ll come pre-populated, which is cool. It also means they’ve been thinking about this for a bit, and the recent changes have been more about the behind-the-scenes stuff needed to make this work than the up-front cosmetics.

I think that, especially as someone who’s been interested in the Memex/Gorden Bell-MyLifeBits-type projects for some time now, I’m really looking forward to see this. And if Facebook has a full export feature day one, we’re looking at a pretty useful thing.

After watching the Google ChromeOS press event on the 7th of December, I had gone to the form (a link for which had conveniently popped up on my “new tab” screen of the Chrome 9 browser I run on my Linux workstation – I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader as to whether or not that affected things) to request to take part in the just-announced Cr-48 netbook test. On Thursday, I come to find out Google had sent me one! In itself, this is pretty amazing for me: I’m not usually the first person to see new things Google rolls out, or get invites to try new products (I’m still waiting for the slight redesign of the Google Maps interface to grace my browser). This is, however, even more amazing to me considering, given the scope of the pilot program, the relatively few devices (60,000 by some reports) that they were making available.

But, having said that, I have been a heavy Google user for some time now: I use most of their products, including several “Apps for your domain”, Docs, Reader, Maps, and more recently Health, to name but a few. Going to the dashboard for my account reveals a surprising number (even to me!) of products that I’ve touched over the years.

I was a little slow in getting into Chrome, mostly because it started as a Windows-only thing, but thanks to Chromium, a year or so later, I was running it on my Linux workstation. Having the stable Mac version come out got me more on-board, and although I would oscillate between Chrome and Firefox, Chrome was gaining ground. When the synchronization feature was added was when I started using it full-time on my Mac, and I had been playing with a very early build of ChromeOS on a VM.

I would say here that the following ramblings are more about the experience of actually using ChromeOS on dedicated hardware than the hardware itself, although it’s impossible to a) completely separate the two, and b) not talk about new hardware!

So, fast-forward to the 9th and the opening of my surprise cool box(TM).  A small but decently-sized notebook, it’s not overly heavy, and the surprisingly-light (to me, anyway) and thin battery doesn’t add too much to the weight.  The promised full-size keyboard is reminiscent of a MacBook (although without the backlight! I’m surprised how much I miss that), as is the trackpad (more on that below), although only in concept: it’s smaller and isn’t glass.

Putting in the battery and opening the lid prompted it to boot and go through it’s initial setup, which was simply accepting the license (which I did read, by the way), getting on the network, logging in with my Google account credentials and taking a photo for the login screen (there’s a built-in web cam).  By the time the browser came up, it had already synced my bookmarks, preferences and themes (I turned on the syncing of extensions, apps and autofill later), and I was ready to go!

Within minutes I had figured out what I see others are reporting as well: the trackpad is really, really bad. It’s overly sensitive, skips around a lot, and scrolling is uneven.  Fortunately, the lone USB port accepts keyboards and mice (even the wireless Logitech keyboard/mouse receiver I have), and while you can’t disable the trackpad completely, turning down the sensitivity seems to help a bit. (A side note, I plugged a mass-storage device into the USB slot, and detected the filesystem and showed me the label, but wouldn’t let me browse it.)

Otherwise, it’s a nice unit: from general web surfing to (g)email  and document editing (I’ve used Google Docs as my office suite for some time now), it’s a nice substitute for a full-size laptop.  Its 1.66Gz Atom processor isn’t the speediest thing out there, but it does an ok job.  So far, the battery life has been good: a full charge can easily get me through a day, but that’s not constant use, which I haven’t yet tested.  The near-instant wake is great, although I have noticed that the re-establishing of the network connection lags a bit at times.

I wish I could comment on using it with Verizon’s 3G network (100MB of bandwidth per month is provided for free for 2 years), but my unit for some reason can’t complete the activation (I have a ticket in to the Google “Chrome Notebook Ninja Team”, but have yet to hear back).  Looking forward to testing that.

One of the most talked-about change is the move to make the caps-lock key a “search” key, and I’ve been ok with this.  The misconception is that accidentally hitting the key will wipe out what you’re doing, but it actually just opens a new tab. You can change the behaviour of the key via the settings (including changing it back into a caps-lock (sans indicator!) ), but the setting I’d most like to see is having it be the shortcut for the find-in-page search, and open a new tab with a modifier key.  While I’m on the subject, they have a function that pops up an overlay of the keyboard, showing you the keyboard shortcuts, and updating when you hold a modifier key.  Brilliant, and surprising Apple hasn’t thought of this.

One of the big problems as I see it with a system like this is if you’re going to have everything in the cloud, how do you move stuff between apps?  I would love for there to be some sort of API where I could drag a file from my Dropbox account and drop it on the tab for my Google Docs account, and the file would be transferred.  In the mean-time, however, I have discovered that saving a file from a download does indeed save it locally, and puts it in an area that is browsable to a “file upload” form element dialog.  Nice.  Of other particular coolness is when you hold the power button, the screen shrinks and after a couple of seconds, goes to the lock screen.  Holding it again for a couple more seconds shuts it down.

A couple of final thoughts: once again, I realize I’m not the target audience of “technology consumer” (closer this time!), but one thing that would make this so much more useful to me would be an SSH app: I do a bunch of web stuff, and my editor of choice is still vi.  There *is* an ssh client included with the text “console” (oh, again I know this wouldn’t be for everyone, but could I please have the option of a full system shell? Please?), so it’s something, but having the SSH session in a tab would be nice.  Yes, I realize what I’m asking for here – this pretty much opens the discussion of “can Google extend the browser in such a way that a native app can run inside it?”, and there are some big issues there.

I’m torn between the usefulness of a full keyboard and the simplicity of a tablet here, and while I definitely see an advantage to both depending on what I’m doing, I’d still much rather travel with a laptop-style machine (I’m not going to touch ebook reading here, except to say that I won’t be reading ebooks on this thing, or any laptop for that matter), and I’m excited to see where Google’s going to take ChromeOS.

That the original one I bought has lasted this long is not only a testament to how well these things were built, but also a fortunate thing for me: in 1999, Microsoft changed the design such that the keys were smaller and the feel was very mushy.  I had been hoping to upgrade, but just 30 seconds on the new one and I took an instant dislike to it.

One of the three stopped working some time ago, and this one is showing signs of wear: some of the keys are just sitting loose after several disassembles for cleaning, and some keys aren’t contacting as well as they should be (a well-used and worn shift key chief among them), so I’m finally taking the plunge.  This is fuelled by a couple of things: first, I’m starting to find other keyboards that I like (despite what it looks like, the new thin Apple Mac keyboard is quite nice), and switching back and forth is a still a little jarring. Second, the connector is still the PS/2-style and computers with those ports are getting rarer to find; I’d rather adjust now before being forced into it. I’m not going too far though: I’ve chosen the Logitech Desktop Wave. Even though the two halves of the keyboard aren’t physically separate, the keyboard is still curved, which I think (hope) is the main reason I like the Natural (I’m a little fearful that part of the reason for my affinity to the Natural *was* the physical split, but like all things, it’s probably just a matter of getting used to it).

One last note: the upper right-hand side of my Natural has an interesting feature: a “linux inside” “sticker” (ok, not a sticker, it’s stuck on there with 16-year-old scotch tape).  Around the same time I got the keyboard, my friend and mentor PJ had come across a postscript file with nice renderings of “linux inside” done in the style of Intel’s “intel inside” logo that they were using.  The keyboard had, of course, the Microsoft name stencilled in the upper corner, and we couldn’t have *that*, so I seized the opportunity.  I think I might miss that as much as the actual keyboard!  Oh, one other thing I will miss: the look on most people’s faces when they come to my office to change their passwords, look down at my keyboard, and realize they’re going to have to try to type on this thing! I’ve had several comments over the years although everyone seems to manage ok.

I’ll probably follow this post up at some point with an update on how things are going, especially as the new keyboard has a bunch of special keys and controls on it, so it might be interesting trying to get this to work on Linux, but I’m thinking I may be pleasantly surprised…we’ll see.

The (from what I can tell, substantiated) rumour from the first Ironman movie was that they didn’t really have a script; they made it up as they went along, and that worked out very well for them. Too well, because it appeared that they attempted to do the same again, and in the absence of a compelling origin story, just didn’t have enough plot to sustain the movie.

I do have to say that I enjoyed the movie overall – I don’t think I had any expectations beyond the shiny technological eye-candy and big summer-movie explosions, so I went in with my brain turned off. This was apparently the correct approach, because I looked over at my wife while the credits were rolling and we were waiting for the end scene (we are those few that actually stay and read the credits anyway, but if you’re in the other camp, you’ll want to hang out until the credits are done (remember the after-the-credits scene from the first one? (hmmm, is this review getting too parenthetical?))) and she had a slight frown on her face and she shook her head slightly…a clear indication of too much thinking during the movie – not always a bad thing, except in summer popcorn movies, and especially in sequels of said movies.

The main problem with the movie was that the plot complications were too easily solved – you never felt that there was anything big at stake – and the obligatory scenes of Tony Stark building something just didn’t come close to the original building of the suit in the first movie. I did feel that the ending of the first movie lacked something with the whole the-weakened-hero-wins-anyway, so I was glad to see they didn’t fall into any traps of repeating themselves here, but it did seem a little too easy. Oh, and three words: “convenient unmentioned upgrades”.

A quick word too about the tech: there was some seriously cool stuff in here (Tony’s PDA during the senate hearing scene), but in the first movie, JARVIS and the UI he had in his house for R&D, etc seemed believable: you could see some of that becoming reality sometime soon. The interface he used where his motions manipulated a 3D projection was pretty fantastical, but stuff like that is coming, and they helped it to be believable by limiting it to a particular work area. In this one, the projections filled the room but were still easily manipulated. And for me it wasn’t that something like that couldn’t ever exist, or that my suspension of disbelief just couldn’t deal, it was more as if they didn’t really put any thought beforehand into how the system worked. It was as though the director said what he wanted, the CG team came up with something cool, and then they told the actor what to do so it didn’t look completely silly (oh so close!).

Overall a fun ride, but definitely summer popcorn movie: turn your brain off and just go for the eye-candy. With that trip to the theater now costing $21 for two tickets, this was one for which I could have happily waited for the DVD.

Anyway, I wish I could claim that big life events from the past 6 months or so were being expressed in those chunks of 140 characters or less, but things have been pretty quiet. Oh, not to say *nothing* has happened, but nothing I’d bore the couple of people who might have forgotten to remove this blog’s feed from their RSS reader with.

Don’t despair, however: as is wont to happen, I occasionally have something to say, and I’ve got a few things running around in my head. I’ll do my best to expand those beyond 140 character chunks and attempt to make them resemble English (with real sentence structure, and everything!). At least to the point where both of you will reconsider removing that RSS feed…

All you bloggers/tweeters out there who can post everything from significant events to the ingredients list of your last (current?) meal, my hat’s off to you. I’m just not that kind of person, I guess.

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