Podcast Consumption Up

The PEW Internet & American Life Project has conducted surveys over the past couple of years regarding America's downloading habits as they pertain to Podcasts. In a report published in August of this year the group has found that Internet users who have ever downloaded a podcast went from 7% in February of '06 to 19% in May of this year. Users who download podcasts on a daily basis went from 1% to 3% over the same time period. Check out the pdf version of the report here.

Panel Says Particle Collision Experiment No Threat To Earth / Humans

This week CERN will fire up it's particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland. The Large Hadron Collider lies in a 27-kilometre-long underground circuit and is set to begin low-energy operations on September 10th. Despite fears among the general populace, the group in charge of safety at the facility says in a report that the experiment poses no threat to mankind. "Nature has already conducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHC experimental programs on Earth – and the planet still exists," they wrote. Physicists from around the globe will be involved in the experiment that aims to answer "the secrets behind the laws of the universe, both on the tiny scale of quantum mechanics and the huge domain of galaxies and black holes." CBC Story here.

Seinfeld - Gates Ad - Huh?

Microsoft's new ad campaign said to cost $300 million was kicked off on Thursday night with a 90 second spot during NBC's National Football League season opener. The first ad features Jerry Seinfeld spotting Bill Gates trying on shoes in a discount shoe store and the usual Seinfeld zaniness ensues. I can only assume that the follow up ads will shed some light on the message that the company is trying to get out there... the ads had been touted as showing Microsoft as being more hip, and were meant to combat the extremely successful Apple - John Hodgman I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC ads. You be the judge...

Google Chrome Tips

Tom Spring of PC World has posted some handy tips and tweaks to the new Google Chrome browser. The highlights for me are:

1. CTRL + SHIFT + N automatically opens up a Chrome 'incognito' window which allows you to surf on a PC without leaving behind any digital footprints.
2. CTRL + SHIFT + T will open recently closed browser tabs.
3. Type about:internets into the address bar and you'll see a tribute to United States Senator Ted Stevens' take on the Internet. (This only works in Windows XP)
4. Chrome allows you to peel browser tabs off a browser so they can become their own browser window. Chrome also allows you to take two separate Chrome browsers and drag them together creating one window with two tabs.

Check out the complete list here.

iRobot Unveils New Roomba Models

In an e-mail to iRobot customers and fanboys, iRobot Corporation has announced 3 new Roomba models. The Roomba 532 and 562 Pet Series robots are dubbed as "Your new best friend in hairy situations" while the Roomba 610 Professional Series "Your new employee of the month". Both the Pet Series and the Professional Series appear to have all of the things we love about Roomba, only beefed up to handle heavy duty dirt. IRobot says this of the 610 "...designed to tackle large spaces and heavily trafficked areas." while the 562 is said to "...features the latest Roomba innovations plus special features to help tackle hairy situations." I've often wondered when iRobot would take the Roomba outside of the home and into commercial operations, now business owners can love Roomba as much as we love our trusty little robots at home!

Gaming Gone Mainstream, Not Just For Teens Anymore

A study by market research company The NPD Group suggests that video games are not just for teenagers anymore. "We were surprised to find that the standard of the classic young male as a video game enthusiast has forever changed," said Matthew Tattle, spokesman for NPD's Canada Games group. "With the increasing adoption of a digitally based lifestyle by the majority of consumers, it was only a matter of time before we would see gaming become part of the mainstream." The study was based on a survey of 16,774 respondents in Canada between June 13 and 30. When considering all of the platforms, offline PC gamers, who played at least 10 hours a week and are the oldest of the segments with an average age of 40. CBC story here.

I guess I'd qualify as a casual gamer, I enjoy playing as much as the next guy but only play occasionally and haven't put in 10hrs a week in years. My game time is equally spent between PC and console.

Get Your Chrome Now

As noted in yesterday's post Google has announced the release of it's new browser dubbed Chrome. This morning the Official Google blog is indicating that the beta version is available for download. At the moment Google Chrome Beta is available for Windows XP and Vista users. My First impression is that it is sleek looking with a simple google-esq interface and renders pages quickly. The install was fast and provided the option to import my Firefox bookmarks and prompted for the preferred search engine, it recognized that Google was my default but asked if I wanted to choose another anyway. I'm an avid Firefox fan but will be giving Chrome a chance. Click here to go to the download page! Send us your comments!

Introducing Google's "Chrome" Web Browser

The Official Google Blog is reporting the release of a Google browser named Chrome. The Google team has decided to start from scratch and create an open source browser that is "...is clean and fast." According to the blog post "By keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers." The desire for these isolated tabs was apparently the work of the Google Gears team who complained that current browsers were "...inherently single-threaded." To explain their thinking and describe the features of the Chrome browser, Google has created a comic book which does a great job I might add! Keep an eye out here for a download link, at the time of this post Chrome was not available to try but the Google guys are promising it's availability shortly.

Canadian Students Win Top Award In Google's Android Developer Challenge

Five Ontario students, 3 from University of Waterloo and 2 from the University of Toronto have teamed up to create "Ecorio" an Android application that "... gives users the ability to reduce their environmental footprint with tools that provide transit options for trips, allow them to invest in carbon reduction projects and share their tips with other users." according to the CBC. On the team's Facebook site they explain "We're not a company. We are 5 guys from Ontario, Canada and we think that this environmental thing might be for real. There are many people with lots of ideas on how we can live smarter, greener and sustainable lives. Ecorio is one piece of that mosaic" Well done gentlemen, I'm sure the $275,000 prize will cover some of that student debt! Read more about Ecorio at the team's web site.

Google Map Maker Launched

Developers from Google India have built another great Google web application! The Official Google Blog explains "... enables users everywhere over to create rich, deep maps and fresh local data. People can mark their favorite spots in their cities and hometowns, add features such as roads, parks, and buildings, tag small businesses to help users find them, and collaborate to map neighborhoods of interest."

The team has created this video to explain their motivation: