Keep on burning.

I was strolling along the web today when I stumbled onto this article from Business Insider. I’ve been hearing for a while now that Google Chrome’s share of the browser market had been going up, while Firefox had been falling. Now it sounds like there’s been an interesting shift in the browser wars.

The little Google search window you see at the top right corner of your Firefox browser is a paid product placement: For the past several years, Google has paid Mozilla something on the order of $1 per copy to have that window there. Last year, that Google search window accounted for 84% of Mozilla’s $123 million of revenue, or about $100 million.

The Google-Mozilla search deal ended in November. There has been no update about whether it has been renegotiated.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/and-will-google-now-kill-off-firefox-completely-by-pulling-the-plug-on-its-toolbar-deal-2011-12?utm_source=%23frankguillen&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=FrankGuillen+Buzz#ixzz1fftBYiGP

This gives me a bit of a sad.

Now, I have to say though, I am using Google Chrome these days. I was a devout Firefox user a few years back, but switched when I was noticing how much system resources Firefox was taking up, and how much lighter Chrome seemed to be.

Still, I always liked Firefox a hell of a lot better than Internet Explorer!

Now it’s starting to look like Firefox may actually go the way of the dodo. I doubt it’ll disappear entirely, but something’s gonna give, that much seems certain.

Farewell, you cuddly looking fox of fire.

It's actually a bit smaller than I expected.

Well after waiting almost two months, my Kindle Touch finally arrived a couple days ago. I’ve spent the time playing with the device, and of course digging into some books that I’d bought.

I must say I’m very pleased with the experience I’ve had.

Now, keep in mind this is my first e-reader, so I really don’t have anything to compare to. The size feels just right. It just sorta fits in my hand. I’m also very easily able to hold the Kindle one handed, and tap to turn pages. Makes it very easy to read while I’m eating or drinking something.

On a related note, the weight feels pretty good. Just going off of rough estimating, I’d call it a little lighter than my phone (HTC EVO 4G). The device still feels solid, not flimsy at all.

Reading is a breeze, text is crisp and easy to read, and of course changing font sizes is simple with the multi-touch.

I had bought a couple books before my Kindle actually arrived, and was reading on the Kindle app on my phone. Now that I have the device, it’s so much nicer being on the e-ink display rather than the lcd. There’s a lot of eye-strain involved in reading on a screen that is essentially blasting a bright light into your eyes. Even for me, and I’m used to being on the computer 12+ hours a day.

What was surprising to me, was that what I thought was a speaker, those four lines on the bottom front of the device, is actually a single button. This button is simply a home button, it takes you to the home screen and that is it.

The actual speakers on on the back of the device, and they sound about as well as you would expect the tiny things to sound. It’s basically the same as a cell-phone speaker.

I like having the experimental features such as the built in mp3 player and web browser. Granted browsing the web isn’t the best experience on an e-ink display, but it’s still neat to have the option if the need arises.

The mp3 player is very basic, and with only 3 gigs of memory, it’s not like you’re gonna be storing your entire music collection on here. But if you have an album or two that you like to listen to while reading it’s handy.

Final Musings

Overall I have to say I really like the device and would recommend it to my friends, and to you as well. I would also say though, that if you’re in the market for an e-reader, to look into the Nook Simple Touch as well. I’ve heard some pretty good things about that device as well, and they seem fairly comparable in features, and they’re matched on price.

I’ve played Battlefield all the way back to Battlefield 1942. I really played Battlefield 2 the most though. All the excitement, the amazingly large scale maps and combat, getting access to vehicles and aircraft, it was so much fun.

Battlefield 3 brings it all back and then some!

Singleplayer

Now let me just get this out of the way, no one should buy Battlefield 3 for the singleplayer. It’s just not the point of a proper Battlefield game. And from what I’ve played of BF3′s singleplayer game, DICE really shouldn’t have wasted their time. It just seems, well almost boring. So much of what I’ve played consists of quick-time events, following a very very linear script, to the point where it feels like if you’re not standing in the exact right spot you’re gonna get killed. You have to follow the game’s script, or else.

Don’t get me wrong, I like a nice story based, linear game. Battlefield 3 just does it wrong.

But hey, I didn’t buy this game for singleplayer. I bought it so I could play that awesome multiplayer with my buddies. And on that, BF3 delivers.

Multiplayer

Honestly, it’s back to Battlefield 2 type gameplay. The huge expansive maps. Tanks, choppers, jets, it’s perfect! This is the way Battlefield is supposed to be.

Don’t get me wrong, there are the smaller maps as well, and those are lots of fun too. But when I think Battlefield, I think about the Conquest game mode, with all the vehicles and 32 player teams, large epic battles. And it’s all here.

Bottom line, this is Battlefield, the way it’s supposed to be. Now stay out of my jet!

Graphics

Uh…wow. Just wow. I knew there was a reason I just built a new machine. The graphics are just amazing looking. A lot of that is the lighting, there’s a lot of atmosphere that’s given to the experience by that.

Environments are superbly detailed, and that only gets better as the game goes on, seeing that a lot of that environment likes to be destroyed. Buildings crash down, cars explode, and you really have to think about whether that object you’re hiding behind is actually cover, or just concealment.

All the explosions, the smoke, there’s just such an atmosphere of realism to this game that’s amazing.

Best of all, where as I was getting around 40fps during the beta, I’m getting 100fps in the retail game. DICE must have done some serious optimizing between the two builds.

Final Musings

Get this game, just go, hop on Origin and get it. Now. Why are you still here? Oh, and hop on over to the TMBJ Maddness server once you have it, you may find me there. I go by the name Gornashk.

This thing looks gorgeous! 4.65 inch, 1280 x 720 screen, 1.2Ghz dual core processor, 7.2mm thin. I am drooling, just drooling.

Mmmm… Ice Cream…

ICS looks like quite a large improvement over Gingerbread. I’m actually watching a video on TechCrunch as I’m typing this so I’m getting everything fresh in my mind. I like the styling, very clean and very much my type of design style that I like.

Adjustable size widgets, oh man I’m happy about that. How many times have I played the jigsaw puzzle game of getting my widgets adjusted just right, oh nope can’t use that one here, it’s 3 wide, only room for 2, and so on. None of that now.

The speech recognition looks like it will be much nicer, obviously not perfect for sure, but I think it’s getting better.

Everything looks like it’s moving very smoothly throughout this video, I don’t know how much of this is the hardware and how much is due to Android itself, but it looks very responsive and quick, always a plus.

Ok, that camera, is freaking awesome. The shutter lag looks to be very small. I like that a lot. Seriously, how often has the shutter lag on a camera phone screwed you over? 8 MP doesn’t mean squat when you can’t take the photo in time. The rest of the stuff, filters, panoramic photos, all that stuff can be done in other ways, but it’s nice to have it built in.

The facial recognition unlock looks pretty cool, but why would i use this? It looks like it takes a couple seconds, and I could just swipe my finger on the screen and unlock way faster than this. But hey maybe they’ll quicken it up a bit.

Also, would it work if I just held up a 2d picture to the camera? Damn I want to play with this stuff now!

Om nom nom nom!

Android now records how much data you’re using, and what apps are using that data. I love this. I have unlimited data on my plan right now, but a lot of people don’t, and being able to see in a pretty graph where your data is going, how much you’re using, and even limit your data usage is awesome. Plus I like pretty graphs.

Google’s really going after this NFC thing. I think that whole thing with Google Wallet sounds pretty cool, but of course I haven’t played with it at all. Sure would like to though!

Final Musings

In the end, I want one! I don’t know what else to say, I just want it!

I also have a craving for some ice cream.

Back in the day, this was the good stuff.

I used to rock a Blackberry Curve. I was so happy to get my first smartphone and check out all the cool things I could do with this device that was so small. Of course, with how tech moves, I look back to that and think about how ancient that device was. A physical keyboard?! HAH!

Here’s the problem that I see with Blackberry. They really haven’t gotten beyond what they were back then. Where their competitors have been racing ahead, cramming new tech and flooding with apps and things to do, Blackberry has stayed more or less stagnant. Sure they’ve got apps, they’ve got a touchscreen phone, but it all feels like a half-hearted attempt at catchup.

They almost remind me of an automotive company, which keeps churning out the same car year after year, not much in the way of changes. Look at the Bold. Has that really changed all that much compared to when it was introduced? Some minor things here and there, but it’s mostly the same device. You don’t get the wow factor that comes with the newest Android powerhouse.

I feel like I've seen this before somewhere....

These days the only people interested in Blackberry seem to be enterprise professionals and such. But even that’s gonna go away with Google and Apple making pushes into that space. It certainly doesn’t help any to have their entire services go down right as a new iPhone is launching. I would not be surprised to find there were quite a few people that were gonna pick up a Blackberry, saw that and went, “Yeah, no I’ll just go this way instead”.

I’m really not sure what Blackberry could do to keep up, I’m no market analyst or anything. Maybe they should be considering porting their key services over to Android and building an Android device or two? That could be interesting for sure.

But I’m sure what they really want to do is make their Blackberry OS explode into massive usage.

Related Links

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/16/blackberry-bold-9930-review/

Every so often I go over to Newegg.com and put together a new wishlist for a PC to build. I like picking out all the parts and finding what kind of machine I can get if I could afford the bloody thing. I’d gotten the building bug again lately, and this time I had the money I needed so decided to go ahead and build this new one.

Parts List

Building the system was pretty easy, thanks in large part to the awesome and easy to work with case that I bought. This is actually my first time building a dual GPU system. I was somewhat wondering how easy it would be having two graphics cards, not neccesarilly that it would be hard to physically put them in, but that I could keep them cool and quiet. Turns out I didn’t have to worry about that. The motherboard keeps the two PCI-E x16 slots far enough apart that there’s a good amount of space between the two cards. This is a really good thing.

If you’ve ever built a system you know the drill. It’s all pretty much the same from one system to another. I did run into one weird issue with my system not wanting to reboot, or even turn back on after being turned off. It would start to turn on, then shut off, turn on, shut off, turn on, shut off, all before it would POST. I decided to fiddle with the easy parts first, and so reseated the RAM, then moved both sticks over a slot to the other channel. Still didn’t work. Then I took out one stick, booted up just fine. So I shut down, placed the stick back in, and haven’t had any issue after that. Seems a bit odd there.

Noise

The system is quiet. Like, really quiet. Compared to my old system, this thing is a whisper. When I built my girlfriend’s system using the Antec 900 case, I thought that thing was quiet. This system blows that out of the water. The case fans are 140mm’s, with one 120, and when Cooler Master says they are silent fans, they mean it. The Zalman CPU cooler with it’s 135mm fan whispers along while keeping the CPU nice and chilly. (And it glows! Every one loves glowies!)

I even added a second fan to the top exhaust and an intake fan on the side (both 140mm) and it’s still so quiet. I love it.

Seriously, when I put a disc in the Blu-Ray drive, it’s like a bomb goes off with all the noise. Not that it’s really loud, just compared to the absolute silence the sudden noise is startling. Having Windows installed on the SSD also reduces noise quite a bit. The system isn’t hitting the HDD so much.

Really the only time this system makes much of any fan noise is when doing heavy gaming. The Battlefield 3 beta ended before I could get my side fan intake that blows right onto the graphics cards, so to keep things cool I was cranking up the GPU fans, and those things get super loud. I’m hoping that with the side fan installed, I can keep the graphics cards below 90 degrees without having to make it sound like a jet engine is taking off (unless of course I’m flying a jet in BF3 I suppose).

Performance

I’m not going to give you benchmarks and charts and crap, I leave that for Anandtech and Tom’s Hardware. My experience with this system? It’s awesome. Boot-up is done in about 30 seconds, Windows loaded, ready to use. It’s so quick with having that SSD.

One of the first games I loaded up was World of Warcraft, and putting most settings on Ultra, I was getting 45 – 60 fps in Orgrimmar at peak times. Orgrimmar can be pretty taxing with the dozens of people flying and standing around, so I figured that was the good test to try to break it. I never dropped below 45 fps there, so i’m really happy with that.

Next I loaded up Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Now, my old system was choking on that game at 1680 x 1050 on Low settings. This system, at 1920 x 1080 (not to mention I have two monitors plugged in, even if the game is only on the one) with settings set to High? Holy crap! I was averaging 130 frames per second. One Hundred Thirty! I don’t think I ever saw Fraps drop below 90 fps. To say that I was pleased is an understatement. I was freaking ecstatic!

Finally, I remember that the Battlefield 3 beta was out, so I rushed over to get that downloaded. I can’t double check what my settings were now, but I believe I had them mostly at High, and I was never dropping below 40 fps. The game looks gorgeous and ran great.

Finally

The system is running great, I really couldn’t be happier with the power. I anticipate holding onto this system for quite a while and upgrading the graphics cards a couple generations down the road. This system should have a good shelf life for me. Can’t wait for Star Wars: The Old Republic to drop so I can have the settings cranked up in that. This system is ready for Battlefield 3 to drop, and that’s another game that I’m planning on picking up for sure now.

When Qwikster was first announced, I actually thought it was kind of a good idea. The new company looked like it was basically set up to take the declining DVD rentals, tuck them into the corner where they could slowly die, and let Netflix proper focus solely on building it’s streaming service. DVD’s are gonna go away anyways eventually, cut that bit out now and put your energy into the part that will grow and make more money.

Sounds great from a business perspective. Not so great from the user perspective however. My thoughts and such after the break.

This about sums up the issue.

Suddenly, instead of one nice orderly queue for all your streaming and by-mail rentals, users would have had to manage accounts on two seperate sites. That’s just an added hassle that’s not needed.

Now none of this affects the pricing change from a couple of months back. Streaming and DVD rental will still cost $15.98 and up for both.

Personally, I would pay that for just the streaming service. I’m currently only on the streaming service, and I use the crap out of that thing. Granted the selection of movies is not the best, I’m typically watching tv shows on there. With more Discovery channel programming being added on top of everything else, I’ve actually gotten to the point of cutting the cord and shutting off cable tv.

In the end, it’s probably for the best that Qwikster got canned. Makes things easier on the user, and right now Netflix really needs to keep their users happy if they want to grow that streaming service.

Related Links

The Netflix Blog – DVDs will be staying at netflix.com

Engadget – Netflix backtracks on Qwikster, will keep DVDs and streaming under the same URL

CNET – Netflix cancels Qwikster spinoff

This post is going to be mainly about the case I picked out. Having researched around a bit, I settled on the Cooler Master CM690 II Advanced. I’ll tell you right off the bat, I love this case! It’s got to be the easiest time I’ve had routing cables, and also the cleanest looking interior I’ve had because of it.

The motherboard tray is lifted off the back panel quite a bit, and with plenty of holes around it, leaves lots of space to route the cables and keep them nicely hidden and out of the way.

I’m liking how the PSU’s are being kept at the bottom of the case more these days. This case is designed to have the PSU fan on the bottom, sucking up air from the gap between the bottom of the case and the floor. While it’s a decently sized gap, I wouldn’t put the machine down on carpet like that.

SSD tray with 5 HDD trays

The hard drive trays are nicely toolless, as are the 5-1/4 inch drive bays. The SSD tray is also a nice touch, though I did have to screw that in to keep it in place.

Apparently there is room up top for a water cooling radiator set-up, though I’ve never done a water cooled system so I didn’t mess with that too much. The case comes with three fans, with room for four more (or three if you get the windowed version). I’ve never seen a fan behind the motherboard before. While I didn’t install one there, I wonder how much that would affect CPU temps.

The fans run very quietly. I really like having large slower moving fans. Two 140mm’s and one 120mm fans can push the air needed without making a huge racket. With all the cables tucked out of the way, airflow looks very good.

The exposed drive bay at the top is pretty cool. I don’t have a lot of bare drives laying around, but I can certainly see how that could come in handy. In fact, I think I left some files on my old machine, so I may just pop it’s HDD into that spot to pull them off.

Overall I’m very happy with this case. It’s nice and roomy, has features that makes a build much easier and includes many options for whatever type of system you’re building. I would definitely build a system with this case again.

One thing that’s always bugged me about the Kindle was the price of the books themselves. They seem to be barely discounted off the price of paper books. That just doesn’t quite seem right to me.

Another thing, was that I’m one of those guys that likes to display a collection. I’ll always prefer to have a physical media copy, such as my Blu-ray collection, to have displayed on a shelf. Books that I really enjoy, I like to get in hardcover to have a really nice copy on my bookshelf.

These two things led to my (likely not so brilliant) idea.

What if Amazon started giving a free Kindle copy of a book if you buy the physical copy? How freaking awesome would that be?! They could even limit it to just hardcover editions.

This would be the perfect solution to me. You keep the people like me happy, because we still buy our displayable copy of the book, but can have it with us wherever we go in the Kindle. Publishers may also be happy, because as I recall they would prefer to sell good old dead trees rather than digital copies. Then again, they may prefer it as is, so if people really really want both, they have to pony up for it. Feel free to correct me on that point though.

So here’s the thing, there’s got to be a reason why this isn’t already being done. What is it? What am I missing that makes this an unattractive prospect for either Amazon or the publishers?

Discuss!

So it’s finally official, after months, no, years of rumors, we finally have official confirmation of Star Trek: The Next Generation coming to Blu-Ray. I have to say I am very excited. We’re talking a full restoration from the original film negatives. Because of how tv was edited back then, they are actually scanning that original film and re-editing the entire series. All the visual effects will be recompositioned from the filmed elements available. I’d bet we may also see a few CGI touch ups here or there, but it sounds like this is to be an authentic restoration of the actual footage from the day.

We’ll also be getting a 7.1 DTS Master Audio soundtrack to go with our shiny HD picture. Now how is that for freaking awesome!

More thoughts and the trailer after the break.

Aspect Ratio (Beware, ranting ahead)

And just so we’re all aware, the aspect ratio will be the original aired 1.33:1 (4:3). I’m gonna get this out of the way right now. THIS IS AS IT SHOULD BE! I can’t tell you how many comments I have seen from people that want to see this in a 16:9 format. I don’t know if they don’t understand what they’re talking about, or if they simply don’t care. Here’s how it breaks down.

Star Trek: The Next Generation was filmed on 35mm film. That film has an aspect ratio of 1.37:1. The show was aired with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. A very tiny amount is left off on the sides of the frame, but not enough to fill 1.77:1 (16:9) screen. So, in order to turn TNG into a widescreen format, the top and/or bottom of the picture would have to be cropped out.

WHY WOULD YOU WANT THIS?!?!

If you’re dead set on having widescreen TNG, hit that little aspect ratio button on your remote, put your display in Wide or Zoom or whichever it’s called for your device, and there you go. Zoomed and cropped picture for your enjoyment.

Back to the good stuff

So here’s what’s going to happen, on January 31, 2012 we’ll be getting a sampler disc featuring three episodes, Encounter at Farpoint, The Inner Light, and Sins of the Father. The complete first season is to be released “Later in 2012″.

Seeing that the “The Next Level” sampler disc is likely to be $15 or so (MSRP of $22), I figure I’ll pick it up just to check out how good this looks. Though if the trailer below is any indication, these Blu-Rays should look spectacular.

Speaking of the video quality, the good people over at TrekCore did some comparison images using the footage that is in the trailer, and comparing to the respective scenes on the DVDs. Even with the compression of Youtube, the difference is amazing.

Now just imagine the subsequent difference when we have the true HD in our hands. Heck, I kinda want to see a three way comparison from the DVD, Youtube trailer, and Blu-Ray all together, just for the hell of it.

Speaking of, here’s that trailer that I promised.

Final Musings

I grew up on Star Trek, specifically The Next Generation, so to have it coming to Blu-Ray gets me very very excited. I have watched my DVD set, I don’t know how many times, but it’s been quite a bit. And I’ve always seen how muddied and crap it looked. To get the full restoration treatment for TNG is a treat and I definitely plan on purchasing these as soon as I possibly can.

Oh, did I mention? SQUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!

Recommended Links

Trekmovie.com

TrekCore Blu-Ray Comparison