Author Archive | Harry McCracken

Happy Googleversary: Google 1998, Google 2008

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 5, 2008 at 1:26 pm

The most important company the Web has known to date is turning ten. When, exactly, is up for debate, depending how you do the math–but the blogosphere seems to have decided to mark the anniversary this weekend.

If you want to understand how a venerable Web site has evolved over the years, there’s no better tool than the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which caches old versions of sites. As with all sites it stores, the Wayback Machine’s record of Google’s history is imperfect–for one thing, many of its stored versions are missing the iconic Google logo. But it’s got some pages that do a good job of capturing Google in its very earliest days.

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Can Dell Be Dell Without Factories?

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 5, 2008 at 12:02 pm

This is startling: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Dell is trying to sell at least some of its factories to contract manufacturers–and maybe all of ’em. For any other computer company, the news would not be all that striking; these days, such a high percentage of electronics manufacturing is done by third parties that it’s more noteworthy when a computer manufacturer is actually…well, a computer manufacturer.

But this is Dell we’re talking about–the company that’s been, at its high points, the biggest computer on the planet based on the excellence of its factories and the efficiency of its direct-to-customer model. For more than twenty years, it’s obsessively refined its manufacturing and logistics processes to build PCs as efficiently and cheaply as possible. It is, in other words, a control freak of a company; it’s hard to imagine it letting go of the very process of making Dell PCs.

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Gates! Seinfeld! Shoes! Churros! Same Old Windows Vista!

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 5, 2008 at 9:25 am

The $300 million Windows ad campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates is here–or at least the first installment is. It debuted last night on NBC during football, and thanks to the miracle of YouTube, here it is on Technologizer. Go ahead and watch it, if you haven’t seen it yet–I’ll wait:

What to make of it? Given that it barely mentions computers, and refers to Windows only in the form of a logo at the end, it’s obviously meant to whet our appetite for ads to come rather than push a product. (TechCrunch has a memo from Microsoft Senior Vice President Bill Veghte that says “The first phase of this campaign is designed to engage consumers and spark a new conversation about Windows–a conversation that will evolve as the campaign progresses, but will always be marked by humor and humanity.”) So it would be a mistake to render any verdict on how well Microsoft invested its millions at this point.

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Project Fakebar: Improvising a Google Toolbar Substitute for Chrome

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 4, 2008 at 10:59 pm

Two days ago, I mentioned that the wildly popular, extremely useful Google Toolbar didn’t work in Google’s Chrome browser. I said I missed it. So do  legions of other people, judging from the thousands of Toolbar fans who have read that post, and the 140 who have commented on it so far. Who knew that a humble toolbar could be so beloved?

I think it’s pretty much a given that Google will eventually either release a Toolbar for Chrome or essentially build in all of its functionality. But it’ll only happen on Google’s timetable, and I suspect it isn’t priority #1. And while Toolbar is cool, it’s not exactly advanced technology–what it does, mostly, is to provide fast access to various Google services.

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Dell Joins the Mini-Laptop Movement

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 4, 2008 at 10:50 am

Remember when laptops were big, heavy, and cost two or three thousand dollars? Most of the action at the moment involves undersized cheapie models like the eee PC, HP Mini-Note…and Dell’s new Inspiron.
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Google Chrome: Our Coverage So Far, and a Poll

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 3, 2008 at 10:44 pm

Was it only day before yesterday that we got the startling news–via the startling medium of a graphic novel by a leading cartoonist–that Google had secretly been working on a Web browser and was about to release it? Yup–and it was only yesterday that that browser became available for download.

I’ve had a blast writing about Chrome over the past 60 hours or so. And you guys sure like reading about it–my posts have gotten as much traffic and comments as anything I’ve done on Technologizer to date. Herewith, a recap in case you missed any of the major coverage here to date:

Ten Questions About Google Chrome: My initial thoughts about what the browser might mean, before we knew much about it.

Google Chrome Comic: The Readers’ Digest Version: A highlight reel from the 38-page Scott McCloud comic book that Google commissioned to introduce its browser.

Google Chrome: Hey, That Logo Looks Familiar: Random musings on its color scheme!

Google Chrome: My Stream-of-Consciousness Notes: I install and explore the browser, and share some initial impressions as I do.

Needed for Chrome: The Google Toolbar: I discovered that Chrome doesn’t support the Google Toolbar or replicate its features. I missed it. Judging from how much traffic and comments this post got, I have plenty of company.

Chrome vs. the World: I had so much fun writing about Chrome yesterday that I contributed this piece to PC World, with some thoughts on what Google’s browser may mean to the competition.

Google Chrome: Impressive! Innovative! Incomplete!: Some thoughts after twelve hours of hands-on time with the browser.

Project Fakebar: Since there’s no Google Toolbar for Chrome yet, I attempt to fashion a rough approximation, and tell you how I did it.

That’s it so far–I’m sure there will more to come. Now for a quick T-Poll:

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Google Chrome: Impressive! Innovative! Incomplete!

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 3, 2008 at 12:58 am

(UPDATE! I’m conducting a poll about Chrome–please go here to take it, and to get a recap of all of Technologizer’s Chrome coverage.)

When Google says that Chrome “is far from done,” it’s not engaging in aw-shucks modesty. This browser is missing some of the basic stuff that I thought made a browser a browser in 2008, such as RSS support and the ability to zoom entire Web pages, not just text. It can’t be customized through extensions or even run the Google Toolbar. It explores almost none of the fascinating possibilities opened up by the world’s dominant provider of Web services building its own browser. If the question is whether serious consumers of Web content should dump whatever browser they’re using at the moment for Chrome, the answer is “probably not.”

And yet…using Chrome is an exciting experience–the most fun I’ve had with something new from Google in a long time. It’s exciting partly because of what Google has done with Chrome, partly because of what it plans to do, and partly because of what it could do.

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Harry @ Small Business Trends

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 3, 2008 at 12:05 am

Got a growing business? Then I think you’ll like Anita Campbell’s Small Business Trends, a Web site that’s chock-full of real-world advice for small companies that don’t want to stay that way. At the moment, it’s also spotlighting some advice from…well, me: I was invited to contribute to the site’s Small Business Success Center, and had a lot of fun writing a post about some of the dopey things I’ve been known to do when it comes to technology. My post, “Oh, the Tech Mistakes That I’ve Made,” is here. And I’ll be answering a few questions from Anita in the coming weeks about my small-business experiences as the founder of the very small business known as Technologizer. Stop by if you have a chance!

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Needed for Chrome: The Google Toolbar

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 2, 2008 at 1:51 pm

(VITAL UPDATE! If you came here looking for a Google Toolbar for Chrome, the bad news is that there isn’t one. The slightly less bad news is that it’s possible to construct a rough approximation–I explain how to do so in this post.)

(UPDATE! I’m conducting a poll about Chrome–please go here to take it, and to get a recap of all of Technologizer’s Chrome coverage.)

I don’t have any numbers, but I suspect it’s a safe bet that Google’s most widely-used application to date is the Google Toolbar. It’s available for IE and Firefox, and integrates either of those browsers with multiple Google services, including Gmail, online Google Bookmarks, and Google Maps. It’s also got other handy features like a spell checker, a form filler, and the ability to send links to pages via Gmail or SMS.

You might assume that Google’s new Chrome browser would come with Toolbar built in–or even if it didn’t put all of its features into the browser in toolbar form, replicate some or all of them elsewhere in the interface. But based on my first couple of hours with Chrome, it looks like just about none of Toolbar’s features are available in Chrome. Even ones that seem like naturals, such as quick access to your Gmail inbox and Google Bookmarks.

How about installing Toolbar in Chrome? Chrome has a framework for extensions, so I thought it was possible that I could do so. I visited the Toolbar download page, and noticed that it seemed to think I was using Firefox. But I tried anyway, and was sent to a page that asked me to agree to the Toolbar terms and conditions before installing. I did so. And at that point, I got this message:

In other words, not only is there no Toolbar for Chrome, but the Toolbar download site gets totally flummoxed when you visit it in Chrome; it shows no signs that it knows that Google has a browser of its own.

One of the most fascinating things about Chrome is the potential it opens up for Google to deeply integrate its myriad services with a browser in a way that’s never been done before. Depending on your outlook, that’s either tremendously exciting or kind of scary. (Or, come to think of it, both.) Getting access to Google Toolbar’s features in Chrome, one way or another, would be neither exciting nor scary–just useful. I hope it happens soon–and that Google fiddles with the Toolbar download site to at least acknowledge Chrome’s existence…

(ADDITIONAL SELF-SERVING PLUG: If you want a stopgap until there’s a real Google Toolbar for Chrome, check out my instructions for creating a Google Fakebar.)

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