Chrome

With the launch of Google Chrome Web browser there is now a real challenge to Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox. I have been a big user of Firefox for the last few years and only using IE on some CMSs where Firefox didn’t render correctly. 

I liked the look of Chrome from the start, clean and simple. The biggest change is the address bar is combined with the search bar which Google calls the Omnibar. It took a while to get use to it but I have to say I like it. As you type the drop down gives you the suggestions, history as well as offering a full Google search. The controls are minimalistic with a couple of icons on the right as well as your bookmarks.

The tabs are very clever as you can mover them all over the place; pull them out into new windows and then put them back in the same window. Each tab is isolated so if one of the tabs crashes the rest keep working.

I have also created some short cuts in Chrome with a desktop icon that makes it seem like a Web application. You can also create a Start Menu or QuickLaunch shortcut.

What it lacks at the moment is toolbars. That is rather surprising as I expected that it would launch with a Google Toolbar but perhaps Google has some surprises on that front. I recommend you give Chrome a go.

Ad Tech

I was at the Ad Tech exhibition this month. I am not a big fan of conferences and found the overall attendance appeared down. The usual big SEO agencies were there and it was good to speak to some of our competitors. It is always good to have a good snoop at what they are doing and nice to see that their service is not as good as ours!

There seemed to be a number of American companies there pushing Behavioural Targeting (BT) that collects information on user’s preferences through their browsers and then targets ads to them accordingly. They were really pushing it along with email marketing. I think there are some real privacy issues with this. My feeling is that users don’t necessarily like to be targeted; I don’t and don’t know anyone who does.

I also had a chance to catch up with a few old contacts, one from my affiliate days. We talked about the ‘good old days’ of the Web back in the ‘90’s! If we were BTed I suspect we might be served up with ads of Saga holidays and Zimmer frames!