FireFox has been my browser of choice for quite some time. I am the kind of guy who likes customization. There is a certain ways my computer has to be set up, its just the kind of person I am. Perhaps for me the most important feature of FireFox would be plug-ins. This is the best tool for customization of your browser. Now, I have been impressed with newest Internet Explorer, add-ons are step in the right direction, but at this point there are no add-ons to help with coding, but when it comes to FireFox, well, let me just list some:

Most obvious - Web Developer – lets just say that this is a must have if you are coding for web. List of features is just too long and I am just to lazy to list everything, lets just say without it any kind of coding for web would just take too long.

Firebug - simply put one of the best tools for debugging your web site. Add YSlow and get in depth analysis of what is going on with your project.

Pencil – free and quite powerful tool for UI prototyping and diagrams, try it out. It won’t replace industry standard software, I for one prefer Visio or coffee shop napkins and black pen, depends on where the idea strikes me, but if you need to do something quick, Pencil would do just fine.

FireFTP I can’t really count number of times I needed to ftp something quickly. FireFTP serves just that purpose. I can’t really recommend it for transferring bunch of files, keeps on timing out, but then again, I have not really played with all settings to affect that.

Codetch - an IDE like plugin which lets you work with your files in a manner similar to Dreamweaver. Once again, for a full blown project I would use a stand alone IDE, most likely Visual Studio or Komodo Edit, but for a quick change Codetch does the job.

There are more, much more. These are the things that I use quite often. Now, with all that great functionality, would I consider FireFox as a development platform? The answer is no. There are tools that are designed specifically for development purposes, while FireFox is a browser. It might be handy to keep a jump drive with overloaded FireFox installed handy for some quick coding while your machine is unavailable, but for full blow development project, there are tools that can do the job much better.

1. Pets all-a-Twitter

So apparently our lives are so empty and decimated that we want to know of the latest hairball produced by someone else s cat. After all, its not like there are things happening in the world, right? Sockington the Cat with its 480000 followers – give me a break. No sane or reasonable person would be interested in an entry such as:

“chuf chuf chuf chuf chuf chuf chuf chuf chuf chuf chuf chuf chuf chuf CHUF CHUF CHUF CHUF CHUF CHUF CHUF COME ON STAY DOWN THERE”

I know we all love pets, they are adorable, cute and “think they are people” and such, but the cat itself could not possibly care less about what its master is posting on its behalf. What really gets me is that there are 480000 people out there who consider this to be interesting. It is almost as sad as the fact that I am writing about it now instead of doing something productive.

2. Wiser Washer

Is my laundry done yet? How about now? Now? Maybe Now? This time it is definitely done, right? How about now? This reminds me of a lengthy car trip with my kids and that eternal “Are we there yet?” Here is a radical idea – observe the washing machine: does it make sounds? Does it shake violently? Is a sound of rushing water present? Is the handle pointing to a position different from the one marked “Off”? If you answered “no” to all 4 – your laundry is done. Better yet, a normal cycle on my washing machine takes about 45 minutes. There is this device called “clock” – it measures time. Really convenient when doing laundry.

3. Communicating with plants.

Here is a new thing, I guess the target market are those who bought “Pet Rock”. The idea is – give me $100.00 less a penny plus shipping and your plants would be able to annoy you with requests for water and other things. I am not at home, so it is difficult for me to estimate this, but I have total of probably 14 plants at home, including the one my kid brought home from school for Mother’s Day. Let me promptly send $1400.00 of my hard earned currency units just so a freaking geranium situated on the window at my living room would boss me around. Sounds just like a marvelous idea. NOT.

4. Monitor Power Usage

I am quoting the author on this one – “If communicating with your plants via Twitter sounds cool, then you should be turned on, or more appropriately, turned off, by the idea of tracking power usage in every room of your home via Twitter.” So in essence, you got your Pet Rock, you got the plants barking orders at you like the nazi from WWII movie, now you are not quite done yet, get the new best thing – monitor your power usage. Look, I am all about saving the environment, I recycle, I don’t waste energy and so on, but what possible use would the information about my power consumption be? Look at the laundry example – walk into the room, turn off the lights and other electrical devices when not in use. There, I just saved you bunch of cash, cause guess what – the hardware to monitor your power usage costs money.

5. Fresh from the oven Twittering.

Zapp Brannigan: Kif, I have made it with a woman. Inform the men. I don’t know about you, and I love coffee and all, but if my local coffee house would inform me when there is a fresh pot ready, I would be annoyed. Same goes for pastry, sweet, fresh delicious pastry. Come on, not everything in life should be digitized, modernized and optimized. What fun is it to go to your local coffee shop and ask the staff if their pastries are fresh or not. It can be made into a game of sorts. Imagine if this trend will actually take off, what kind of line ups would you face. And I don’t care for baked goods, all I want is my pure java. Am I alone on thinking that this can be abused beyond our wildest dreams?

6. Tooting and Twitting.

Wow, now this is the use of technology that is going to revolutionize our lives. And yes, this means exactly what the title implies. Here is the quote from Randy Sarafan, the inventor of such helpful service “the first part of life that needed to be documented was my daily flatulence at work. I am not going to lie, I am a gassy individual. Since my flatulence is a part of life, it would be fraudulent of me to document life as it happens without documenting these occurrences.” I can’t comment on this.

7. Baby Movements

I am a father myself, when my wife was pregnant every movement of the child was like a little miracle, but if I would have suggested to strap a vibration sensing equipment onto my wife’s belly, I would probably end up sleeping on a couch for a while. Have anyone considered what baby wants? Does he or she feels the same way about sharing those first life experiences with total strangers? Come on, this is a waste of time, effort and money.

Bottom line is life is great. Technology is great as well, but at times there is too much technology in our lives. I can manage my laundry and my plants without a high tech gizmo telling me what to do. I don’t need to follow people’s pets and document gas. It is pointless, just like the fact that the time I wasted writing this post could be better spent doing something creative. I became a software developer because I am the one who tells machines what to do, I am the boss, not a piece of the hardware that measures content of water in the plant soil and orders me to act.

I am not saying that I avoid twitter, I do use it daily but not to learn about some one else’s gas, I get links to some great articles that people who are much smarter then I write about subjects that interest me. I don’t promote my posts using twitter or any other sources, no need, I mostly write for myself anyways. The saddest part of this whole story is that I found this article via Twitter.

One of the key things that analysts who work with this data are constantly looking for would be up-to-date information. Let’s face it; some things are fluid, changing all the time. If you would want to keep track of the population of a major city, lets say New York, how would you go about doing it? Keep on updating the data manually as new results come in? Have an intern whose job it would be to check daily if those numbers have changed? Well, if you can afford interns, then I guess you can afford some kind of integrated system build based on latest statistical data, but what about the rest of us?

Ever changing data is what sets apart current information from outdated. Consider that some heavy decisions are based on this data; I would imagine that it is important to always be up-to-speed. I am not going to say that GoogleLookup is THE solution, it is A solution, but this is a step in the right direction. Makes me want to consider giving Google Docs another look, despite the worries I have about having my documents indexed.

To me things like that are what make on-line based office solutions more attractive to businesses and simple users. Have a look at documentation, try this for yourself – all I can say, I am thoroughly impressed. For complete list of functions click here.

Update – all invites are gone now.

As I was about to go home, I got a link to download the Chrome in it’s beta form.  Well, I have to admit – thins thing is great.  At least so far I am very happy with what they have done.  UI is simple and to the point – at first I thought having your tabs above the address bar is bizarre, but after couple of minutes I realized that this is where they are supposed to be – after all that’s a tab, and it has it’s own address bar and the rest.  By placing it above the rest of the window, that whole point is just emphasized.  According to the comics, the main thing was having multi threaded browser, where javascript would not lock up your browser, and I guess they’ve got that figured out.  There are couple of sites out there where I had to switch to IE just to view the content, as FireFox would take forever to load it – with Chrome this is not an issue.  Chrome is supposed to be a great platform for use with web apps as static HTML is a thing of the past, and that is a great point.  Web is not going anywhere, complexity of web apps are growing exponentially and will continue to do so in the future, we need to have a new browser to accommodate these trends.

There are couple of things that I think could have been done better, but after all this is beta, and I am sure the product will be improved.  For instance – after install I had to go through the dialog on importing settings from FireFox.  Passwords and usernames are fine, but my bookmarks from FireFox are nowhere to be found, although to be fair I have not really conducted extensive search.

Overall Chrome is great and it will become even better as it will mature