Gimp vs. Photoshop This article claims that Gimp is just as good as Photoshop for the average home user who just wants to touch up personal photos. It's written by a guy who works in a commercial prepress shop, so I guess that means he knows what he's talking about.  ¶ 12:02 p.m. 1 comments

  Jakob Nielsen Rant Jakob Nielsen gives in to the urge to rant about internet hype, while vainly trying to pass if off as commentary on web usability. What on earth has Google's stock price, and my portfolio, got to do with building web sites?  ¶ 10:51 a.m. 0 comments

  Googling for Gold BusinessWeek Article This article is basically about how Google has so much money that they can do anything. And everyone, from venture capitalists to Wall Street bankers to startup entrepreneurs wants some of it. But Google is taking their time.

But the thing that struck me was this closing thought from the article:

Surprisingly for a company of Google's size, clout, and business needs, it doesn't yet have a thriving in-house VC arm. And that's despite some glaring holes in its product lineup. ... For starters, Google has a long way to go to match the breadth, depth, and richness of Yahoo's portal. Ditto a peer-to-peer marketplace along the lines of an eBay, as well as Microsoft-like software applications.

Does this mean that Wall Street (or at least BusinessWeek) thinks that Google's business needs to be more than search and advertising? Do they really think Google is lacking because they don't "match the breadth, depth, and richness of Yahoo's portal"?

Personally I can't imagine Google putting up a portal like Yahoo. I see them as totally different companies and I think Google would be worse off building that kind of a portal.

No wonder the stock price is so high. Wall Street seems to think that Google will be Yahoo, eBay and Microsoft combined. Personally, I don't see it.





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  Firefox Scrolling Annoyance One of the best features of Firefox is tabbed browsing. I love it and use it all the time. In fact, I can't browse without tabs anymore.

Having said that, I do find one aspect of the Firefox implementation of tabs very annoying. The active tab is unresponsive when I'm downloading a new page in another tab in the background. So, for example, I cannot scroll the active page until the page loading in the background tab completes loading.

This is backwards. Priority should always be given to the active tab. It's obvious that I'm willing to wait for a page that is loading in a background tab, otherwise I'd just load it in the active tab, so why slow down what I am actively doing?

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a setting somewhere in Firefox to configure this, but even if there is, it should be on by default.  ¶ 10:46 a.m. 0 comments

  Caffeine in Green Tea According to the chart on this website, green tea has 15mg of caffeine for an 8 ounce cup. I didn't think it had any. And regular brewed tea has about 40mg on average. Drip coffee comes in at 115 to 175 mg. The site lists the amount of caffeine in all kinds of soft drinks in addition to tea and coffee.  ¶ 11:43 a.m. 0 comments

  National Geographic on Google Earth This entry on the Google Blog talks about how Google Earth is now integrated with National Geographic content -- both pictures and stories. You just have to enable the National Geographic layers, and you'll see the familiar yellow logo on the map. Zoom in to see pictures and read the stories.

I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds very cool.  ¶ 1:18 p.m. 1 comments

  Blog Reviews If you're looking for some new blogs to read, check out the blog reviews over at Forbes.com. The blogs they review cover a range of topics, including political, media, medical, health and fitness, small business and more.  ¶ 11:23 p.m. 0 comments