Shhhhh, this is a secret. I’m starting to like the FireFox web browser a little bit more than Internet Explorer. OK, so my previous stance was this: I like Internet Explorer, I like FireFox, they both have their places.. On Windows I used IE, on Linux I used FireFox purely because that’s what was installed by default, and they both performed equally as well for what I needed (just normal web browsing). Both support tabbed browsing, plug-ins such as Flash and Java, and have a neat little search box up top which links straight to Google search.
But… that is changing. If anyone was awake still after reading my Cloud article you’ll know that I’m now Google-integrated. With FireFox I am able to install a few plug-ins which partner up the browser nicely with Google’s applications, and you would hope so too considering that Google supply Mozilla (the maker’s of FireFox) with a considerable chunk of development cash. The GMarks plug-in replaces the default ‘Bookmarks’ menu (which are “Favorites” <sic> for those Internet Explorer users) with a special Google Bookmarks menu, so all your bookmarks are stored centrally on Google’s servers and no matter which computer I use, I have the same bookmarks available. Also.. Google Notes has a plug-in for FireFox too giving me a little ‘Open Notebook’ button in the bottom-right.
Now, so as not to be too biased Internet Explorer does redeem itself a bit. I can access the same central bookmarks from IE using the Google Toolbar. It’s not as slick as full browser integration but it works, and the Google Toolbar does give me some extra nifty features like a form spell checker (useful when writing a blog!) and new email notifications. The best feature about the Google Toolbar in IE is it’s ability to store the customisations and configuration centrally, so if you have the toolbar installed in IE on multiple machines, it appears exactly as you configured it with the same button layout and preferences – you can’t do this on the FireFox version of the toolbar. Overall though in this particular battle FireFox is winning, but with Microsoft’s next version of Internet Explorer (v8) just around the corner it could still fight back. I installed the beta yesterday and will report back soon. The war is not over.
Well, partially at least. Making use of The Cloud, for those not nerdularically* minded, is another way of saying “all my files are stored somewhere in the Internet but I don’t know exactly where I just know that they aren’t on my computer any more”. I’ve chosen Google as I was already using their gmail service, but there are many others out there all with their own advantages. I mentioned I was only partially Cloud enabled… I’m using Google to host all of my email, my calendar, and my contacts – I use Outlook to access Gmail over IMAP and a plugin called KiGoo to give me access to my calendar and contacts. The only problem is KiGoo won’t work offline so if I have no Internet connection, I have no calendar or contacts. The solution is a Google provided plugin which sync’s the calendar with your local machine. Works great but no version for contacts yet. I have decided to keep all of my documents out of The Cloud for the time being – I am not fully entrusting of Google and still keep a local backup of my contacts, calendar and email on my NAS for safekeeping, also I don’t want to pay someone else to look after my data… the 200GB I’d require at a minimum would be fairly costly plus I’d still want to back it up locally on a NAS for streaming to the telly defeating the purpose of paying someone else to back up my data. Still, Microsoft are trialling a service called Azure which looks pretty nifty. The idea is based tightly around Windows integration so is unsuitable for my cross-platform requirements. Azure itself is a cloud-based application operating system which means a developer can come along, create an applicati0n, run it in the Azure Cloud and it is theoretically available everywhere y0u have an Internet connection. The part of Azure that us normals will see regularly is the Windows Live components. Specifically Hotmail / Live Mail, Live Messenger, Live everything. It’s pretty good from my tests, the Windows Live Mail application on y0ur PC will integrate with the web back-end synchronising your mail, calendar, contacts and windows favourites seamlessly between PCs. They even throw in a 25GB ‘skydrive’ for you to keep your documents in… The SkyDrive is nice in theory, but given the reliance on Windows with the rest of the Live suite it’s a real shame that the SkyDrive doesn’t integrate seamlessly with the Windows Document / My Documents folder at the moment.
